Even the great Behar could not compete with that mystery. His lips drawing back in a grin, Cazaril set the volume down on his coverlet and swung his still-trousered legs out of bed, fastened his tunic, wriggled his feet into his shoes, and picked up the candle with the glass chimney to light his way up the back stairs.
He met Dondo dy Jironal coming down. Dondo was dressed in his usual courtier’s attire, blue brocade tunic and linen-woolen trousers, though his white vest-cloak swung from his hand, along with his sword in its scabbard and sword belt. His face was set and flushed. Cazaril’s mouth opened to give some polite greeting, but his words died on his lips at Dondo’s murderous glare. Dondo stormed on past him without a word.
Cazaril swung into the upstairs corridor to find all its wall sconces lit and an inexplicable array of people gathered. Not only Betriz, Iselle, and Nan dy Vrit, but Lord dy Rinal, one of his friends and another lady, and Ser dy Sanda were all crowded around laughing. They scattered to the walls as Teidez and a page blasted through their midst, in hot pursuit of a scrubbed and beribboned young pig trailing a length of scarf. The page tackled the animal at Cazaril’s feet, and Teidez hooted triumph.
“In the bag, in the bag!” dy Sanda called.
He and Lady Betriz came up as Teidez and the page collaborated on inserting the squealing creature into a large canvas sack, where it clearly didn’t want to go. Betriz bent to give the struggling animal a quick scratch behind its flapping ears. “My thanks, Lady Pig! You played your part superbly. But it’s time to go back to your home now.”
The page hoisted the heavy sack up over his shoulder, saluted the assembled company, and staggered off, grinning.
“What is going on up here?” demanded Cazaril, torn between laughter and alarm.
“Oh, it was the greatest jest!” cried Teidez. “You should have seen the look on Lord Dondo’s face!”
Cazaril just had, and it hadn’t inspired him with mirth. His stomach sank. “What have you done?”
Iselle tossed her head. “Neither my hints not Lady Betriz’s plain words having served to discourage Lord Dondo’s attentions, or to convince him they were unwelcome, we conspired to make him the assignation of love he desired. Teidez undertook to secure our player from the stable. So, instead of the virgin Lord Dondo was confidently expecting to find waiting when he went tiptoeing up to Betriz’s bed in the dark, he found—Lady Pig!”
“Oh, you traduce the poor pig, Royesse!” cried Lord dy Rinal. “She may have been a virgin, too, after all!”
“I’m sure she was, or she would not have squealed so,” the laughing lady on his arm put in.
“It’s only too bad,” said dy Sanda acidly, “she was not to Lord Dondo’s taste. I confess I’m surprised. From all reports of the man, I’d have thought he’d lie down with anything.” His eyes flicked sideways, to check the effect of these words on the grinning Teidez.
“And after we’d doused her with my best Darthacan perfume, too,” sighed Betriz hugely. The merriment in her eyes was underscored by a glittering rage and sharp satisfaction.
“You should have told me,” Cazaril began. Told him what? Of this prank? It was clear enough they knew he would have suppressed it. Of Dondo’s continued pressings? Just how vile had they been? His fingernails bit into his palm. And what could he have done about them, eh? Gone to Orico, or Royina Sara? Futile . . .
Lord dy Rinal said, “It will be the best tale of the week in all of Cardegoss—and the best tail, too, if a curly one. Lord Dondo hasn’t played the butt for years, and I do think it was past his turn. I can hear the oinking already. The man won’t sit to a pork dinner for months without hearing it. Royesse, Lady Betriz”—he swept them a bow—“I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
The two courtiers and the lady took themselves off, presumably to spread the jest to whatever of their friends were still awake.
Cazaril, suppressing the first several remarks trying to rip from his lips, finally ground out, “Royesse, that was not wise.”
Iselle frowned back, undaunted. “The man wears the robes of a holy general of the Lady of Spring yet undertakes to rob women of their virginity, sacred to Her, just as he robs . . . well, so you say we have no proof of what else he robs. We had proof enough of this, by the goddess! At least this may teach him the unwisdom of attempting to steal from my household. The Zangre is supposed to be a royal court, not a barnyard!”
“Cheer up, Cazaril,” dy Sanda advised him. “The man cannot revenge his outraged vanity upon the royse and royesse, after all.” He glanced around; Teidez had gone off up the corridor to collect the trampled ribbons the pig had shed in its attempted flight. He lowered his voice, and added, “And it was well worth the trouble for Teidez to see his, ah, hero in a less flattering light. When the amorous Lord Dondo stumbled out of Betriz’s bedchamber with the strings of his trousers in his hands, he found all our witnesses lined up waiting. Lady Pig nearly knocked him down, escaping between his legs. He looked an utter fool. It’s the best lesson I’ve been able to bring off all this month we’ve been here. Maybe we can start to regain some lost ground in that direction, eh?”
“I pray you may be right,” said Cazaril carefully. He did not say aloud his reflection that the royse and the royesse were the only people Dondo could not revenge himself upon.
Nevertheless, there was no sign of retaliation in the next several days. Lord Dondo took the raillery of dy Rinal and his friends with a thin smile, but a smile nonetheless. Cazaril sat to every meal in the expectation of, at the very least, a certain pig served up roasted with ribbons round its neck to the royesse’s table, but the dish did not appear. Betriz, at first infected by Cazaril’s nerves, was reassured. Cazaril was not. For all his hot temper, Dondo had amply demonstrated just how long he could wait for his opportunities without forgetting his wounds.
To Cazaril’s relief, the oinking about the castle corridors died down in less than a fortnight as new fêtes and pranks and gossip took its place. Cazaril began to hope Lord Dondo was going to swallow his so publicly administered medicine without spitting. Perhaps his elder brother, with larger horizons in view than the little society inside the Zangre’s walls, had undertaken to suppress any inappropriate response. There was news enough from the outside world to absorb grown men’s attention: sharpening of the civil war in South Ibra, banditry in the provinces, bad weather closing down the high passes unseasonably early.
In light of these last reports, Cazaril gave an eye to the logistics of transporting the royesse’s household, should the court decide to leave the Zangre early and remove to its traditional winter quarters before the Father’s Day. He was sitting in his office totting up horses and mules when one of Orico’s pages appeared at the antechamber door.
“My lord dy Cazaril, the roya bids you attend upon him in Ias’s Tower.”
Cazaril raised his eyebrows, set down his quill, and followed the boy, wondering what service the roya desired of him. Orico’s sudden fancies could be a trifle eccentric. Twice he had ordered Cazaril to accompany him on expeditions to his menagerie, there to perform no offices more complex than what a page or groom might well have done, holding his animals’ chains or fetching brushes or feed. Well, no—the roya had also asked leading questions about his sister Iselle’s doings, in an apparently desultory fashion. Cazaril had seized the opportunity to convey Iselle’s horror of being bartered to the Archipelago, or to any other Roknari prince, and had hoped the roya’s ear was more open than his sleepy demeanor would indicate.