His gaze jumped out of the lost past and back to Cazaril. Remembering to smile, he held out his hand, thumb up, and waggled it gently from side to side. “The Bastard, though the weakest of His family, is the god of balance. The opposition that gives the hand its clever grip. It is said that if ever one god subsumes all the others, truth will become single, and simple, and perfect, and the world will end in a burst of light. Some tidy-minded men actually find this idea attractive. Personally, I find it a horror, but then I always did have low tastes. In the meantime, the Bastard, unfixed in any season, circles to preserve us all.” Umegat’s fingers tapped one by one, Daughter-Mother-Son-Father, against the ball of his thumb.
He went on, “The Golden General was a tidal wave of destiny, gathering to crash upon the world. Fonsa’s soul could match his soul, but could not balance his vast fate. When the death demon carried their souls from the world, that fate overflowed to settle upon Fonsa’s heirs, a miasma of ill luck and subtle bitterness. The black shadow you see is the Golden General’s unfulfilled destiny, curdling around his enemies’ lives. His death curse, if you will.”
Cazaril wondered if this explained why all of Ias’s and Orico’s military campaigns that he’d ever been in had fared so ill. “How . . . how may the curse be lifted?”
Umegat sighed. “In six years, no answer has been given me. Perhaps it will run out in the deaths of all who flowed from Fonsa’s loins.”
But that’s . . . the roya, Teidez—Iselle!
“Or perhaps,” Umegat continued, “even then, it will continue to trickle down through time like a stream of poison. It should have killed Orico years ago. Contact with the sacred creatures cleanses the roya from the corrosion of the curse, but only for a little time. The menagerie delays his destruction, but the god has never told me why.” Umegat’s voice went glum. “The gods don’t write letters of instruction, you know. Not even to their saints. I’ve suggested it, in my prayers. Sat by the hour with the ink drying on my quill, entirely at His service. And what does He send instead? An overexcited crow with a one-word vocabulary.”
Cazaril winced in guilt, thinking of that poor crow. In truth, he felt far worse about the crow’s death than Dondo’s.
“So that’s what I’m doing here,” said Umegat. He glanced up keenly at Cazaril. “And so. What are you doing here?”
Cazaril spread his hands helplessly. “Umegat, I don’t know.” He added plaintively, “Can’t you tell? You said . . . I was lit up. Do I look like you? Or like Iselle? Or Orico, even?”
“You look like nothing I’ve seen since I was lent the inner eye. If Iselle is a candle, you are a conflagration. You are . . . actually quite disturbing to contemplate.”
“I don’t feel like a conflagration.”
“What do you feel like?”
“Right now? Like a pile of dung. Sick. Drunk.” He swirled the red wine in the bottom of his cup. “I have this belly cramp that comes and goes.” It was quiescent at the moment, but his stomach was still swollen. “And tired. I haven’t felt this tired since I was sick in the Mother’s house in Zagosur.”
“I think,” Umegat spoke carefully, “that it is very, very important that you tell me the truth.”
His lips still smiled, but his gray eyes seemed to burn. It occurred to Cazaril then that a good Temple Inquirer would likely be charming, and adept at worming confidences from people in his investigations. Smooth at getting them drunk.
You laid down your life. It’s not fair to whine for it back now.
“I attempted death magic upon Dondo dy Jironal last night.”
Umegat looked neither shocked nor surprised, merely more intent. “Yes. Where?”
“In Fonsa’s Tower. I crawled over the roof slates. I brought my own rat, but the crow . . . it came to me. It wasn’t afraid. I’d fed it, you see.”
“Go on . . .” breathed Umegat.
“I slew the rat, and broke the poor crow, and I prayed on my knees. And then I hurt. I wasn’t expecting that. And I couldn’t breathe. The candles went out. And I said, Thank you, because I felt . . .” He could not speak of what he’d felt, that strange peace, as if he’d lain down in a place of safety to rest forever. “And then I passed out. I thought I was dying.”
“And then?”
“Then . . . nothing. I woke up in the dawn fog, sick and cold and feeling an utter fool. No, wait—I’d had a nightmare about Dondo choking to death. But I knew I’d failed. So I crawled back to bed. And then dy Jironal came bursting in . . .”
Umegat drummed his fingers on the table a moment, staring at him through slitted eyes. And then he stared with his eyes closed. Open again. “My lord, may I touch you?”
“All right . . .” Briefly, as the Roknari bent over him, Cazaril feared some unwelcome attempt at intimacy, but Umegat’s touch was as professional as any physician’s; forehead, face, neck, spine, heart, belly . . . Cazaril tensed, but Umegat’s hand descended no farther. When he finished, Umegat’s face was set. The Roknari went to fetch another jug of wine from a basket by the door before returning to his chair.
Cazaril attempted to fend the jug from his cup. “I’ve had enough. I’ll be stumbling if I take any more.”
“My grooms can walk you back to your chambers in a little while. No?” Umegat filled his own cup instead, and sat again. He ran his finger over the tabletop in a little pattern, repeated three times—Cazaril wasn’t sure if it was a charm or just nerves—and finally said, “By the testimony of the sacred animals, no god accepted the soul of Dondo dy Jironal. Normally, that is a sign that an unquiet spirit is abroad in the world, and relatives and friends—and enemies—rush to buy rites and prayers from the Temple. Some for the sake of the dead—some for their own protection.”
“I am sure,” said Cazaril a little bitterly, “Dondo will have all the prayers that money can buy.”
“I hope so.”
“Why? What . . . ?” What do you see? What do you know?
Umegat glanced up, and inhaled. “Dondo’s spirit was taken by the death demon, but not passed to the gods. This we know. It is my conjecture that the death demon could not return to its master because it was prevented from taking the second and balancing soul.”
Cazaril licked his lips, and husked fearfully, “How, prevented?”
“At the instant of attempting to do so, I believe the demon was captured—constrained—bound, if you will—by a second and simultaneous miracle. Judging by the distinctive colors boiling off you, it was from the holy and gracious hand of the Lady of Spring. If I am right, the acolytes of the Temple can all go back to bed, for Dondo’s spirit is not abroad. It is bound to the death demon, who is bound in turn to the locus of the second soul. Which is presently bound to its still-living body.” Umegat’s finger rose to point directly at Cazaril. “There.”
Cazaril’s jaw fell open. He stared down at his aching, swollen belly, and back up at the fascinated . . . saint. Briefly, he was put in mind of Fonsa’s entranced crows. Violent denial boiled to his lips, and caught there, stopped by his inner sight of Umegat’s clear aura. “I didn’t pray to the Daughter last night!”
“Apparently, someone did.”
Iselle. “The royesse said she prayed. Did you see her as I saw her today—” Cazaril made inarticulate motions with his hands, not knowing what words to use to describe that roiling perturbation. “Is that what you see in me? Does Iselle see me as I do her?”
“Did she say anything about it?” asked Umegat.
“No. But neither did I.”
Umegat gave him that sidewise stare again. “Did you ever see, when you were in the Archipelago, the nights when the sea was Mother-touched? The way the wake glowed green in the breaking waves of a ship’s passage?”