Author: Lois McMaster Bujold
Category: Science
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Dy Jironal’s jaw tightened, and he smiled thinly. “Why, how militant Chalion is grown, that our very maidens seek to give us better advice upon our strategies.”
“They could hardly give us worse,” growled Orico under his breath. Only a slight sideways flick of the eyes betrayed that dy Jironal had heard him.
Dy Sanda said, in a puzzled voice, “Yes, and why wasn’t the castillar ransomed with the rest of his officers when you surrendered Gotorget, dy Jironal?”
Cazaril clenched his teeth. Shut up, dy Sanda.
“The Roknari reported he’d died,” replied the chancellor shortly. “They’d hid him for revenge, I’d assumed, when I learned he yet lived. Though if the silk merchant spoke truth, maybe it was for embarrassment. He must have escaped them, and knocked about Ibra for a time, until his, um, unhappy arrest.” He glanced at Cazaril, and away.
You know you lie. I know you lie. But dy Jironal did not, even now, know for certain if Cazaril knew he lied. It didn’t seem much of an advantage. This was a weak moment for a countercharge. This slander already half cut the ground from under his feet, regardless of the outcome of Orico’s inquiry.
“Well, I do not understand how his loss was allowed to pass without investigation,” said dy Sanda, staring narrowly at dy Jironal. “He was the fortress’s commander.”
Iselle put in thoughtfully, “If you assumed revenge, you must have judged he’d cost the Roknari dearly in the field, for them to use him so thereafter.”
Dy Jironal grimaced, clearly misliking where this line of logic was leading. He sat back and waved away the digression. “We are come to an impasse, then. A man’s word against a man’s word, and nothing to decide it. Sire, I earnestly advise prudence. Let my lord dy Cazaril be given some lesser post or sent back to the Dowager of Baocia.”
Iselle nearly sputtered. “And let the slander go unchallenged? No! I will not stand for it.”
Orico rubbed his head, as if it ached, and shot side glances at his chilly chief advisor and his furious half sister. He vented a small groan. “Oh, gods, I hate this sort of thing…” His expression changed, and he sat upright again. “Ah! But of course. There is just the solution…just the just solution, heh, heh…” He beckoned to the page who had summoned Cazaril, and murmured in his ear. Dy Jironal watched, frowning, but apparently could not make out what had been said either. The page scampered out.
“What is your solution, sire?” asked dy Jironal apprehensively.
“Not my solution. The gods. We will let the gods decide who is innocent, and who lies.”
“You’re not thinking of putting this to trial by combat, are you?” asked dy Jironal in a voice of real horror.
Cazaril could only share that horror—and so did Ser dy Maroc, judging by the way the blood drained from his face.
Orico blinked. “Well, now, there’s another thought.” He glanced at dy Maroc and at Cazaril. “They appear evenly matched, withal. Dy Maroc is younger, of course, and does very well on the sand of my practice ring, but experience counts for something.”
Lady Betriz glanced at dy Maroc and frowned in sudden worry. So did Cazaril, for the opposite reason, he suspected. Dy Maroc was indeed a very pretty duello dancer. Against the brutality of the battlefield, he would last, Cazaril calculated, maybe five minutes. Dy Jironal met Cazaril’s eyes directly for almost the first time in this inquiry, and Cazaril knew he was making the identical calculation. Cazaril’s stomach heaved at the thought of being forced to butcher the boy, even if he was a tool and a liar.
“I do not know if the Ibran lied or not,” put in dy Maroc warily. “I only know what I heard.”
“Yes, yes.” Orico waved this away. “I think my plan will be better.” He sniffed, rubbed his nose on his sleeve, and waited. A lengthy and unnerving silence fell.
It was broken when the page returned, announcing, “Umegat, sire.”
The dapper Roknari groom entered and glanced in faint surprise at the people assembled, but trod directly to his master and made his bow. “How may I serve you, my lord?”
“Umegat,” said Orico. “I want you to go outside and catch the first sacred crow you see, and bring it back in here. You”—he gestured at the page—“go with him for witness. Hurry, now, quick quick.” Orico clapped his hands in his urgency.
Without evincing the least surprise or question, Umegat bowed again and padded back out. Cazaril caught dy Maroc giving the chancellor a piteous Now what? look; dy Jironal set his teeth and ignored it.
“Now,” said Orico, “how shall we arrange this? I know—Cazaril, you go stand in one end of the room. Dy Maroc, you go stand in the other.”
Dy Jironal’s eyes shifted in uncertain calculation. He gave dy Maroc a slight nod, toward the end of the room with the open window. Cazaril found himself relegated to the dimmer, closed end.
“You all”—Orico gestured to Iselle and her cohort—“stand to the side, for witness. You and you and you too,” this to the guards and the remaining page. Orico heaved to his feet and went about the table to arrange his human tableau to his close satisfaction. Dy Jironal stayed seated where he was, playing with a quill and scowling.
In much less time than Cazaril would have expected, Umegat returned, with a cranky-looking crow tucked under his arm and the excited page bouncing around him.
“Was that the first crow you saw?” Orico asked the boy.
“Yes, my lord,” the page replied breathlessly. “Well, the whole flock was circling above Fonsa’s Tower, so I suppose we saw six or eight at once. So Umegat just stood in the courtyard with his arm out and his eyes closed, quite still. And this one came down to him and landed right on his sleeve!”
Cazaril’s eyes strained, trying to see if the muttering bird might, just possibly, be missing two tail feathers.
“Very good,” said Orico happily. “Now, Umegat, I want you to stand in the exact center of the room, and when I give the signal, release the sacred crow. We’ll see which man he flies to, and then we’ll know! Wait—everyone should say a prayer in their hearts first to the gods for guidance.”
Iselle composed herself, but Betriz looked up. “But sire. What shall we know? Is the crow to fly to the liar, or the honest man?” She stared hard at Umegat.
“Oh,” said Orico. “Hm.”
“And what if it just flies around in circles?” said dy Jironal, an exasperated edge leaking into his voice.
Then we’ll know the gods are as confused as all of the rest of us, Cazaril did not say out loud.
Umegat, stroking the bird to calm it, gave a slight bow. “As the truth is sacred to the gods, let the crow fly to the honest man, sire.” He did not glance at Cazaril.
“Oh, very good. Carry on, then.”
Umegat, with what Cazaril was beginning to suspect was a fine sense of theater, positioned himself precisely between the two accused men, and held the bird out on his arm, slowly removing his controlling hand. He stood a moment with a look of pious quietude on his face. Cazaril wondered what the gods made of the cacophony of conflicting prayers no doubt arising from this room at this instant. Then Umegat tossed the crow into the air, and let his arms hang down. It squawked and spread its wings, and fanned a tail missing two feathers.
Dy Maroc held his arms widespread, hopefully, looking as if he wondered if he was allowed to tackle the creature out of the air as it swooped by him. Cazaril, about to cry Caz, Caz to be safe, was suddenly overcome with theological curiosity. He already knew the truth—what else might this test reveal? He stood still and straight, lips parted, and watched in disturbed fascination as the crow ignored the open window and flapped straight to his shoulder.
“Well,” he said quietly to it, as it dug in its claws and shifted from side to side. “Well.” It tilted its black beak, regarding him with expressionless, beady eyes.
Iselle and Betriz jumped up and down and whooped, hugging each other and nearly frightening the bird off again. Dy Sanda smiled grimly. Dy Jironal gritted his teeth; dy Maroc looked faintl
y appalled.
Orico dusted his plump hands. “Good. That settles that. Now, by the gods, I want my dinner.”
ISELLE, BETRIZ, AND DY SANDA SURROUNDED CAZARIL like an honor guard and marched him out of Ias’s Tower to the courtyard.
“How did you know to come to my rescue?” Cazaril asked them. Surreptitiously, he glanced up; no crows were circling, just now.
“I had it from a page that you were to be arrested this morning,” said dy Sanda, “and I went at once to the royesse.”
Cazaril wondered if dy Sanda, like himself, kept a private budget to pay for early news from various observers around the Zangre. And why his own arrangements hadn’t worked a trifle better in this case. “I thank you, for covering my”—he swallowed the word, back—“blind side. I should have been dismissed by now, if you all hadn’t come to stand up for me.”
“No thanks needed,” said dy Sanda. “I believe you’d have done as much for me.”
“My brother needed someone to prop him,” said Iselle a trifle bitterly. “Else he bows to whatever force blows most proximately.”
Cazaril was torn between commending her shrewdness and suppressing her frankness. He glanced at dy Sanda. “How long—do you know—has this story about me been circulating in the court?”
He shrugged. “Some four or five days, I think.”
“This was the first we heard of it!” said Betriz indignantly.
Dy Sanda opened his hands in apology. “Likely it seemed too raw a thing to pour in your maiden ears, my lady.”
Iselle scowled. Dy Sanda accepted reiterated thanks from Cazaril and took his leave to check on Teidez.
Betriz, who had grown suddenly quiet, said in a stifled voice, “This was all my fault, wasn’t it? Dondo struck at you to avenge himself for the pig. Oh, Lord Caz, I’m sorry!”
“No, my lady,” said Cazaril firmly. “There is some old business between Dondo and me that goes back to before…before Gotorget.” Her face lightened, to his relief; nevertheless, he seized the chance to add prudently, “Grant you, the prank with the pig didn’t help, and you should not do anything like that again.”
Betriz sighed, but then smiled just a little bit. “Well, he did stop pressing himself upon me. So it helped that much.”
“I can’t deny that’s a benefit, but…Dondo remains a powerful man. I beg you—both—to take care to walk wide around him.”
Iselle’s eyes flicked toward him. She said quietly, “We’re under siege here, aren’t we. Me, Teidez, all our households.”
“I trust,” sighed Cazaril, “it is not quite so dire. Just go more carefully from now on, eh?”
He escorted them back to their chambers in the main block, but did not take up his calculations again. Instead, he strode back down the stairs and out past the stables to the menagerie. He found Umegat in the aviary, persuading the small birds to take dust baths in a basin of ashes as proof against lice. The neat Roknari, his tabard protected by an apron, looked up at him and smiled.
Cazaril did not smile back. “Umegat,” he began without preamble, “I have to know. Did you pick the crow, or did the crow pick you?”
“Does it matter to you, my lord?”
“Yes!”
“Why?”
Cazaril’s mouth opened, and shut. He finally began again, almost pleadingly. “It was a trick, yes? You tricked them, by bringing the crow I feed at my window. The gods didn’t really reach into that room, right?”
Umegat’s brows rose. “The Bastard is the most subtle of the gods, my lord. Merely because something is a trick, is no guarantee you are not god-touched.” He added apologetically, “I’m afraid that’s just the way it works.” He chirped at the bright bird, apparently now done with its flutter in the ashes, coaxed it onto his hand with a seed drawn from his apron pocket, and popped it back into its nearby cage.
Cazaril followed, arguing, “It was the crow that I fed. Of course it flew to me. You feed it too, eh?”
“I feed all the sacred crows of Fonsa’s Tower. So do the pages and ladies, the visitors to the Zangre, and the acolytes and divines of all the Temple houses in town. The miracle of those crows is that they’re not all grown too fat to fly.” With a neat twist of his wrist, Umegat secured another bird and tipped it into the ash bath.
Cazaril stood back from him as ashes puffed, and frowned. “You’re Roknari. Aren’t you of the Quadrene faith?”
“No, my lord,” said Umegat serenely. “I’ve been a devout Quintarian since my late youth.”
“Did you convert when you came to Chalion?”
“No, when I was still in the Archipelago.”
“How…came it about that you were not hanged for heresy?”
“I made it to the ship to Brajar before they caught me.” Umegat’s smile crimped.
Indeed, he still had his thumbs. Cazaril’s brows drew down, as he studied the man’s fine-drawn features. “What was your father, in the Archipelago?”
“Narrow-minded. Very pious, though, in his foursquare way.”
“That is not what I meant.”
“I know, my lord. But he’s been dead these twenty years. It doesn’t matter anymore. I am content with what I am now.”
Cazaril scratched his beard, as Umegat traded for another bright bird. “How long have you been head groom of this menagerie, then?”
“From its beginning. About six years. I came with the leopard, and the first birds. We were a gift.”
“Who from?”
“Oh, from the archdivine of Cardegoss, and the Order of the Bastard. Upon the occasion of the roya’s birthday, you see. Many fine animals have been added, since then.”
Cazaril digested that, for a little. “This is a very unusual collection.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“How unusual?”
“Very unusual.”
“Can you tell me more?”
“I beg you will not ask me more, my lord.”
“Why not?”
“Because I do not wish to lie to you.”
“Why not?” Everyone else does.
Umegat drew in his breath and smiled crookedly, watching Cazaril. “Because, my lord, the crow picked me.”
Cazaril’s return smile grew a trifle strained. He gave Umegat a small bow and withdrew.
Cazaril was just exiting his bedchamber on the way to breakfast, some three mornings later, when a breathless page accosted him, grabbing him by the sleeve.
“M’ lord dy Cazaril ! The castle warder begs you ‘tend on him at once, in the courtyard!”
“Why? What’s the matter?” Obedient to this urgency, Cazaril swung into motion beside the boy.
“It’s Ser dy Sanda. He was set upon last night by footpads, and robbed and stabbed!”
Cazaril’s stride lengthened. “How badly was he injured? Where does he lie?”
“Not injured, m’lord. Slain!”
Oh, gods, no. Cazaril left the page behind as he clattered down the staircase. He hurried into the Zangre’s front courtyard in time to see a man in the tabard of the constable of Cardegoss, and another man dressed as a farmer, lower a stiff form from the back of a mule and lay it out on the cobbles. The Zangre’s castle warder, frowning, squatted down by the body. A couple of the roya’s guards watched from a few paces back, warily, as if knife wounds might prove contagious.
“What has happened?” demanded Cazaril.
The farmer, in his courtier’s garb taking, pulled off his wool hat in a sort of salute. “I found him by the riverside this morning, sir, when I took my cattle down to drink. The river curves—I often find things hung up upon the shoal. ‘Twas a wagon wheel, last week. I always check. Not bodies too often, thank the Mother of Mercy. Not since that poor lady who drowned herself, two years back—” He and the constable’s man exchanged nods of reminiscence. “This one has not a drowned look.”
Dy Sanda’s trousers were still sodden, but his hair was done dripping. His tunic had been removed by his finders—Cazaril saw the brocade folded
up over the mule’s withers. The mouths of his wounds had been cleaned of blood by the river water, and showed now as dark puckered slits in his pale skin, in his back, belly, neck. Cazaril counted over a dozen strikes, deep and hard.
The castle warder, sitting on his heels, pointed to a bit of frayed cord knotted around dy Sanda’s belt. “His purse was cut off. In a hurry, they were.”
“But it wasn’t just a robbery,” said Cazaril. “One or two of these blows would have put him on the ground, stopped resistance. They didn’t need to…they were making sure of his death.” They or he? No real way to know, but dy Sanda could not have been either easy or safe to bring down. He rather thought they. “I suppose his sword was taken.” Had he ever had time to draw it? Or had the first blow fallen on him by surprise, from a man he walked beside in trust?
“Taken or lost in the river,” said the farmer. “He would not have floated down to me so soon if it had still been dragging him down.”
“Did he have rings or jewelry?” asked the constable’s man.
The castle warder nodded. “Several, and a gold ear loop.” They were all gone now.
“I’ll want a description of them all, my lord,” the constable’s man said, and the warder nodded understanding.
“You know where he was found,” said Cazaril to the constable’s man. “Do you know where he was attacked?”
The man shook his head. “Hard to say. Somewhere in the bottoms, maybe.” The lower end of Cardegoss, both socially and topographically, huddled on both sides of the wall that ran between the two rivers. “There are only half a dozen places someone might pitch a body over the town walls and be sure the stream would take it off. Some are more lonely than others. When did anyone here see him last?”
“I saw him at supper,” said Cazaril. “He said nothing to me about going into town.” There were a couple of places right here in the Zangre where a body might also be pitched into the rivers below… “Has he broken bones?”