“Just resting a moment.” Cazaril produced a quick, concealing smile, and levered himself up, though he kept a hand on the wall, as if casually, for balance. “What’s afoot?”
“I hoped you would have time to take a stroll down to the temple with me. And talk to some men about that”—Palli made a circling gesture with his finger—“little matter of Gotorget.”
“Already?”
“Dy Yarrin came in last night. We are now a sufficient assembly to make binding decisions. And with dy Jironal also arrived back in town, it’s as well we chart our course without further delay.”
Indeed. Cazaril would search out Orico immediately upon his return, then. He glanced at the two companions and back at Palli, as if seeking introduction, but with the hidden question in his glance, Are these safe ears?
“Ah,” said Palli cheerfully. “Permit me to make known to you my cousins, Ferda and Foix dy Gura. They rode with me from Palliar. Ferda is lieutenant to my master of horse, and his younger brother Foix—well, we keep him for the heavy lifting. Make your bow to the castillar, boys.”
The shorter, stouter of the two grinned sheepishly, and they both managed reasonably graceful courtesies. They bore a faint family resemblance to Palli in the strong lines of jaw and the bright brown eyes. Ferda was of middle height and wiry, an obvious rider, his legs already a little bowed, while his brother was broad and muscular. They seemed a pleasant enough pair of country lordlings, healthy, cheerful, and unscarred. And appallingly young. But Palli’s faint emphasis on the word cousins answered Cazaril’s silent question.
The two brothers fell in behind as Cazaril and Palli walked out the gates and down into Cardegoss. Young they might be, but their eyes were alert, looking all around, and they casually kept their sword hilts free of entanglement with cloak and vest-cloak. Cazaril was glad to know Palli did not go about the streets of Cardegoss unattended even in this bright gray winter noon. Cazaril tensed as they passed under the dressed-stone walls of Jironal Palace, but no armed bravos issued from its ironbound doors to molest them. They arrived in the Temple Square having encountered no one more daunting than a trio of maidservants. They smiled at the men in the colors of the Daughter’s Order and giggled among themselves after passing, which slightly alarmed the dy Gura brothers, or at least made them stride out more stiffly.
The great compound of the Daughter’s house made a wall along one whole side of the temple’s five-sided square. The main gate was devoted to the women and girls who were the house’s more usual dedicats, acolytes, and divines. The men of its holy military order had their own separate entrance, building, and stable for couriers’ horses. The hallways of the military headquarters were chilly despite a sufficiency of lit sconces and the abundance of beautiful tapestries and hangings, woven and embroidered by pious ladies all over Chalion, blanketing its walls. Cazaril started toward the main hall, but Palli drew him down another corridor and up a staircase.
“You do not meet in the Hall of the Lord Dedicats?” Cazaril inquired, looking over his shoulder.
Palli shook his head. “Too cold, too large, and too empty. We felt excessively exposed there. For these sealed debates and depositions, we’ve taken a chamber where we can feel a majority, and not freeze our feet.”
Palli left the dy Gura brothers in the corridor to contemplate a brightly colored quilted rendering of the legend of the virgin and the water jar, featuring an especially voluptuous virgin and goddess. He ushered Cazaril past a pair of Daughter’s guardsmen, who looked closely at their faces and returned Palli’s salute, and through a set of double doors carved with interlaced vines. The chamber beyond held a long trestle table and two dozen men, crowded but warm—and above all, Cazaril noted, private. In addition to the good wax candles, a window of colored glass depicting the Lady’s favorite spring flowers fought the winter gloom.
Palli’s fellow lord dedicats sat at attention, young men and graybeards, in blue-and-white garb bright and expensive or faded and shabby, but all alike in the grim seriousness of their faces. The provincar of Yarrin, ranking lord of Chalion present, held down the head of the table beneath the window. Cazaril wondered how many here were spies, or at least careless mouths. The group seemed already too large and diverse for successful conspiracy, despite their outward precautions to seal their conclave. Lady, guide them to wisdom.
Palli bowed, and said, “My lords, here is the Castillar dy Cazaril, who was my commander at the siege of Gotorget, to testify before you.”
Palli took an empty seat halfway around the table and left Cazaril standing at its foot. Another lord dedicat had him swear an oath of truth in the goddess’s name. Cazaril had no trouble repeating with sincerity and fervor the part about, May Her hands hold me, and not release me.
Dy Yarrin led the questioning. He was shrewd and clearly well primed by Palli, for he had the whole tale of the aftermath of Gotorget out of Cazaril in a very few minutes. Cazaril added no coloring details. For some here, he didn’t need to; he could mark by the tightening of their lips how much of what was unspoken they understood. Inevitably, someone wanted to know how he had first come to such enmity with Lord Dondo, and he was reluctantly compelled to repeat the story of his near beheading in Prince Olus’s tent. It was normally considered bad manners to denigrate the dead, on the theory that they could not defend themselves. In Dondo’s case, Cazaril wasn’t so sure. But he kept that account, too, as brief and bald as possible. Despite his succinctness, by the time he was done he was leaning on his hands on the table, feeling dangerously light-headed.
A brief debate followed on the problem of obtaining corroborating evidence, which Cazaril had thought insurmountable; dy Yarrin, it seemed, did not find it so. But then, Cazaril had never thought to try to obtain testimony from surviving Roknari, or via sister chapters of the Daughter’s Order across the borders in the princedoms.
“But my lords,” Cazaril said diffidently into one of the few brief pauses in the flow of suggestion and objection, “even if my words were proved a dozen times over, mine is no great matter by which to bring down a great man. Not like the treason of Lord dy Lutez.”
“That was never well proved, even at the time,” murmured dy Yarrin in a dry tone.
Palli put in, “What is a great matter? I think the gods do not calculate greatness as men do. I for one find a casual destruction of a man’s life even more repugnant than a determined one.”
Cazaril leaned more heavily on the table, in the interests of not collapsing in an illustrative way at this dramatic moment. Palli had insisted his voice would be listened to in council; very well, let it be a voice of caution. “Choosing your own holy general is surely within your mandate, lords. Orico may well even accede to your selection, if you make it easy for him. Challenging the chancellor of Chalion and holy general of your brother order is reaching beyond, and it is my considered opinion that Orico will never be persuaded to support it. I recommend against it.”
“It is all or nothing,” broke in one man, and “Never again will we endure another Dondo,” began another.
Dy Yarrin held up his hand, stemming the tide of hot comment. “I thank you, Lord Cazaril, for both your testimony and your opinion.” His choice of words invited his fellows to note which was which. “We must continue this debate in private conclave.”
It was a dismissal. Palli pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. They collected the dy Guras from the corridor; Cazaril was a little surprised when Palli’s escort did not stop at the house’s gates. “Should you not return to your council?” he asked, as they turned into the street.