Lois Bujold - The Curse of Chalion

The man standing on the Fox's other side was proclaimed by his chain of office to be the chancellor of Ibra. A wary and intimidated-looking fellow, he was the—from all reports, overworked—servant of the Fox, not a rival for his power. Another man's badges marked him as a sea lord, an admiral of Ibra's fleet.

Cazaril went to one knee before the Fox, not too ungracefully despite his saddle-stiffness and aches, and bowed his head. "My lord, I bring sad news from Ibra of the death of Royse Teidez, and urgent letters from his sister the Royesse Iselle." He proffered Iselle's letter of his authority.

The Fox cracked the seal, and scanned rapidly down the simple penned lines. His brows climbed, and he glanced back keenly at Cazaril. "Most interesting. Rise, my lord Ambassador," he murmured.

Cazaril took a breath, and managed to surge back to his feet without having either to push off the floor with his hand or, worse, catch himself on the roya's chair. He looked up to find Royse Bergon staring hard at him, his lips parted in a frown. Cazaril blinked, and favored him with a tentative nod and smile. He was quite a well-made young man, withal, even-featured, perhaps handsome when he wasn't scowling so. No squint, no hanging lip—a little stocky, but fit, not fat. And not forty. Young, clean-shaven, but with a vigor in the shadow on his chin that promised he was grown to virility. Cazaril thought Iselle should be pleased.

Bergon's stare intensified. "Speak again!" he said.

"Excuse me, my lord?" Cazaril stepped back, startled, as the royse stepped forward and circled him, his eyes searching him up and down, his breath coming faster.

"Take off your shirt!" Bergon demanded suddenly.

"What?"

"Take off your shirt, take off your shirt!"

"My lord—Royse Bergon—" Cazaril was thrown back in memory to the ghastly scene engineered by dy Jironal to slander him to Orico. But there were no sacred crows here in Zagosur to rescue him. He lowered his voice. "I beg you, my lord, do not shame me in this company."

"Please, sir, a year and more ago, in the fall, were you not rescued from a Roknari galley off the coast of Ibra?"

"Oh. Yes... ?"

"Take off your shirt!" The royse was practically dancing, circling around him again; Cazaril felt dizzy. He glanced at the Fox, who looked as baffled as everyone else, but waved his hand curiously, endorsing the royse's peculiar demand. Confused and frightened, Cazaril complied, popping the frogs of his tunic and slipping it off together with his vest-cloak, and folding the garments over his arm. He set his jaw, trying to stand with dignity, to bear whatever humiliation came next.

"You're Caz ! You're Caz !" Bergon cried. His frown had changed to a demented grin. Ye gods, the royse was mad, and after all this pelting gallop over plain and mountain, unfit for Iselle after all—

"Why, yes, so my friends call me—" Cazaril's words were choked off as the royse abruptly flung his arms around him, and nearly lifted him off his feet.

"Father," Bergon cried joyously, "this is the man! This is the man!"

" What ," Cazaril began, and then, by some trick of angle and shift of voice, he knew. Cazaril's own gape turned to grin. The boy has grown! Roll him back a year in time and four inches in height, erase the beard-shadow, shave the head, add a peck of puppy fat and a blistering sunburn... "Five gods," he breathed. "Danni? Danni!"

The royse grabbed his hands and kissed them. "Where did you go ? I fell sick for a week after I was brought home, and when I finally set men to look for you, you'd disappeared. I found other men from the ship, but not you, and none knew where you'd gone."

"I was ill also, in the Mother's hospital here in Zagosur. Then I, um, walked home to Chalion."

"Here! Right here all the time! I shall burst. Ah! But I sent men to the hospitals—oh, how did they miss you there? I thought you must have died of your injuries, they were so fearsome."

"I was sure he must have died," said the Fox slowly, watching this play with unreadable eyes. "Not to have come to collect the very great debt my House owed to him."

"I did not know... who you were, Royse Bergon."

The Fox's gray eyebrows shot up. "Truly?"

"No, Father," Bergon confirmed eagerly. "I told no one who I was. I used the nickname Mama used to call me by when I was little. It seemed to me more unsafe to claim my rank than to pass anonymously." He added to Cazaril, "When my late brother's bravos kidnapped me, they did not tell the Roknari captain who I was. They meant me to die on the galley, I think."

"The secrecy was foolish, Royse," chided Cazaril. "The Roknari would surely have set you aside for ransom."

"Yes, a great ransom, and political concessions wrung from my father, too, no doubt, if I'd allowed myself to be made hostage in my own name." Bergon's jaw tightened. "No. I would not hand myself to them to play that game."

"So," said the Fox in an odd voice, staring up at Cazaril, "you did not interpose your body to save the royse of Ibra from defilement, but merely to save some random boy."

"Random slave boy. My lord." Cazaril's lips twisted, as he watched the Fox trying to work out just what this made Cazaril, hero or fool.

"I wonder at your wits."

"I'm sure I was half-witted by then," Cazaril conceded amiably. "I'd been on the galleys since I was sold as a prisoner of war after the fall of Gotorget."

The Fox's eyes narrowed. "Oh. So you're that Cazaril, eh?"

Cazaril essayed him a small bow, wondering what he had heard of that fruitless campaign, and shook out his tunic. Bergon hastened to help him don it again. Cazaril found himself the object of stunned stares from every man in the room, including Ferda and Foix. His tilted grin barely kept back bubbling laughter, though underneath the laughter seethed a new terror that he could scarcely name. How long have I been walking down this road?

He pulled out the last letter in his packet, and swept a deeper bow to Royse Bergon. "As the document your respected father holds attests, I come as spokesman for a proud and beautiful lady, and I come not just to him, but to you. The Heiress of Chalion begs your hand in marriage." He handed the sealed missive to the startled Bergon. "In this, I will let the Royesse Iselle speak for herself, which she is most fit to do by virtue of her singular intellect, her natural right, and her holy purpose. After that, I will have much else to tell you, Royse."

"I'm eager to hear you, Lord Cazaril." Bergon, after a taut glance around the chamber, took himself off to a window-door, where he popped the letter's seal and read it at once, his lips softening with wonder.

Amazement, too, touched the Fox's lips, though it rendered them anything but soft. Cazaril had no doubt he'd put the man's wits to the gallop. For his own wits he now prayed for wings.

CAZARIL AND HIS COMPANIONS WERE, OF COURSE, invited to dine that night in the roya's hall. Near sunset, Cazaril and Bergon went walking together along the sea strand below the fortress. It was as close to private speech as he was likely to obtain, Cazaril thought, waving the dy Guras back to trail along through the sand out of earshot. The growl of the surf cloaked the sound of their voices. A few white gulls swooped and cried, as piercing as any crow, or pecked at the smelly sea wrack on the wet sand, and Cazaril was reminded that these scavengers with their cold golden eyes were sacred to the Bastard in Ibra.

Bergon bade his own heavily armed guard walk at a distance, too, though he did not seek to dispense with them. The silent routine of his precautions reminded Cazaril once more that civil war in this country was but lately ended, and Bergon had been both piece and player in that vicious game already. A piece that had played himself, it seemed.