It almost surprised Cazaril that the aura did not reflect off the wet pavement at his feet. He gave Iselle an apologetic salute and went aside with the Roknari. The three women waited at the edge of the portico, Iselle leaning on Betriz’s arm.
“My lord, at your earliest convenience, I beg that I might have some private audience with you.”
“I’ll come to you at the menagerie as soon as I have Iselle settled.” Cazaril hesitated. “Do you know that you are lit like a burning torch?”
The groom inclined his head. “So I have been told, my lord, by the few with eyes to see. One can never see oneself, alas. No mundane mirror reflects this. Only the eyes of a soul.”
“There was a woman inside who glowed like a green candle.”
“Mother Clara? Yes, she just spoke to me of you. She is a most excellent midwife.”
“What is that, that anti-light, then?” Cazaril glanced toward where the women lingered.
Umegat touched his lips. “Not here, if you please, my lord.”
Cazaril’s mouth formed a silent Oh. He nodded.
The Roknari swept him a lower bow. As he turned to pad quietly into the gathering gloom, he added over his shoulder, “You are lit like a burning city.”
Chapter 13
The royesse was so drained by the ordeal of Lord Dondo’s odd funeral that she was stumbling by the time they had climbed to the castle again. Cazaril left Nan and Betriz making sensible plans to put Iselle straight to bed and have the servants bring a plain dinner to their chambers. He made his way back out of the main block to the Zangre’s gates. Pausing, he glanced out over the city to see if a column of smoke was still rising from the temple. He fancied he saw a faint orange reflection on the lowering clouds, but it was too dark by now to make out anything more.
His heart leapt in shock at the sudden flapping around him as he crossed the stable yard, but it was only Fonsa’s crows, mobbing him again. He fended off two that attempted to land on his shoulder, and tried to wave them away, hissing and stamping. They hopped back out of reach, but would not leave, following him, conspicuously, all the way to the menagerie.
One of Umegat’s undergrooms was waiting by the wall lanterns bracketing the aisle door. He was a little, elderly, thumbless man, who gave Cazaril a wide smile that showed a truncated tongue, accounting for a welcome that was a kind of mouthed hum, the meaning made clear by his friendly gestures. He slid the broad door back just enough to admit Cazaril before him, and shooed away the crows who tried to follow, scooping the most persistent one back out the gap with a flip of his foot before closing it.
The groom’s candlestick, shielded by a blown-glass tulip, had a thick handle made for him to wrap his fingers around. By this light he guided Cazaril down the menagerie’s aisle. The animals in their stalls snuffled and thumped as Cazaril passed, pressing to the bars to stare at him from the shadows. The leopard’s eyes shone like green sparks; its ratcheting growl echoed off the walls, not low and hostile, but pulsing in a weirdly inquiring singsong.
The menagerie’s grooms had their sleeping quarters on half the building’s upper floor, the other half being devoted to the storage of fodder and straw. A door stood open, candlelight spilling from it into the dark corridor. The undergroom knocked on the frame; Umegat’s voice responded, “Good. Thank you.”
The undergroom gave way with a bow. Cazaril ducked through the door to see a narrow but private chamber with a window looking out over the dark stable yard. Umegat pulled the curtain across the window and bustled around a rude pine table that held a brightly patterned cloth, a wine jug and clay cups, and a plate with bread and cheese. “Thank you for coming, Lord Cazaril. Enter, please, seat yourself. Thank you, Daris, that will be all.” Umegat closed the door. Cazaril paused on the way to the chair Umegat’s gesture had indicated to stare at a tall shelf crammed with books, including titles in Ibran, Darthacan, and Roknari. A bit of gold lettering on a familiar-looking spine on the top shelf caught his eye, The Fivefold Pathway of the Soul. Ordol. The leather binding was worn with use, the volume, and most of its company, free of dust. Theology, mostly. Why am I not surprised?
Cazaril lowered himself onto the plain wooden chair. Umegat turned up a cup and poured a heavy red wine into it, smiled briefly, and held it out to his guest. Cazaril closed his shaking hands around it with vast gratitude. “Thank you. I need that.”
“I should imagine so, my lord.” Umegat poured a cup for himself and sat across the table from Cazaril. The table might be plain and poor, but the generous braces of wax candles upon it gave a rich, clear light. A reading man’s light.
Cazaril raised the cup to his lips and gulped. When he set it down, Umegat immediately topped it up again. Cazaril closed his eyes and opened them. Open or shut, Umegat still glowed.
“You are an acolyte—no. You’re a divine. Aren’t you,” said Cazaril.
Umegat cleared his throat apologetically. “Yes. Of the Bastard’s Order. Although that is not why I am here.”
“Why are you here?”
“We’ll come to that.” Umegat bent forward, picked up the waiting knife, and began to saw off hunks of bread and cheese.
“I thought—I hoped—I wondered—if you might have been sent by the gods. To guide and guard me.”
Umegat’s lip quirked up. “Indeed? And here I was wondering if you had been sent by the gods to guide and guard me.”
“Oh. That’s . . . not so good, then.” Cazaril shrank a little in his seat, and took another gulp of wine. “Since when?”
“Since the day in the menagerie that Fonsa’s crow practically jumped up and down on your head crying This one! This one! My chosen god is, dare I say it, fiendishly ambiguous at times, but that was a little hard to miss.”
“Was I glowing, then?”
“No.”
“When did I start, um, doing that?”
“Sometime between the last time I saw you, which was late yesterday afternoon when you came back to the Zangre limping as though you’d been thrown from a horse, and today at the temple. I believe you may have a better guess than I do as to the exact time. Will you not take a little food, my lord? You don’t look well.”
Cazaril had eaten nothing since Betriz had brought him the milk sops at noon. Umegat waited until his guest’s mouth was full of cheese and chewy crust before remarking, “One of my varied tasks as a young divine, before I came to Cardegoss, was as an assistant Inquirer for the Temple investigating alleged charges of death magic.” Cazaril choked; Umegat went on serenely, “Or death miracle, to put it with more theological accuracy. We uncovered quite a number of ingenious fakes—usually poison, though the, ah, dimmer murderers sometimes tried cruder methods. I had to explain to them that the Bastard does not ever execute unrepentant sinners with a dirk, nor a large hammer. The true miracles were much more rare than their notoriety would suggest. But I never encountered an authentic case where the victim was an innocent. To put it more finely still, what the Bastard granted was miracles of justice.” His voice had grown crisper, more decisive, the servility evaporating out of it along with most of his soft Roknari accent.
“Ah,” Cazaril mumbled, and took another gulp of wine. This is the most wit-full man I have met in Cardegoss, and I’ve spent the last three months looking past him because he wears a servant’s garb. Granted, Umegat apparently did not wish to draw attention to himself. “That tabard is as good as a cloak of invisibility, you know.”