“Dy Yarrin will tell me of it, when I get back. I mean to see you safe to the Zangre’s gates. I’ve not forgotten your tale of poor Ser dy Sanda.”
Cazaril glanced over his shoulder at the two young officers pacing behind as they crossed over to the temple plaza. Oh. The armed escort was for him. He decided not to complain, asking Palli instead, “Who looks like your prime candidate for holy general, then, to present to Orico? Dy Yarrin?”
“He would be my choice,” said Palli.
“He does seem a force in your council. Has he a little self-interest, there?”
“Perhaps. But he means to hand the provincarship of Yarrin down to his eldest son, and devote his whole attention to the order, if he is chosen.”
“Ah. Would that Martou dy Jironal had done likewise for the Son’s Order.”
“Aye. So many posts, how is he serving any of them rightly?”
They climbed uphill, threading their way through the stone-paved town, stepping carefully across central gutters well rinsed by the recent cold rains. Narrow streets of shops gave way to wider squares of fine houses. Cazaril considered dy Jironal, as his palace loomed once more on their route. If the curse worked by distorting and betraying virtues, what good thing had it corrupted in Martou dy Jironal? Love of family, perhaps, turning it into mistrust of all that was not family? His excessive reliance on his brother Dondo was surely turning to weakness and downfall. Maybe. “Well . . . I hope that level heads prevail.”
Palli grimaced. “Court life is turning you into a diplomat, Caz.”
Cazaril returned a bleak smile. “I can’t even begin to tell you what court life is turning me—ah!” He ducked as one of Fonsa’s crows popped over a nearby housetop and came hurtling down at his head, screaming hoarsely. The bird almost tumbled out of the air at his feet, and hopped across the pavement, cawing and flapping. It was followed by two more. One landed on Cazaril’s outflung arm and clung there, shrieking and whistling, its claws digging in. A few black feathers spiraled wildly in the air. “Blast these birds!” He’d thought they had lost interest in him, and here they were back, in all their embarrassing enthusiasm.
Palli, who had jumped back laughing, glanced up over the roof tiles and said, “Five gods, something has stirred them up! The whole flock is in the air above the Zangre. Look at them circle about!”
Ferda dy Gura shielded his eyes and stared where Palli pointed at the distant whirl of dark shapes, like black leaves in a cyclone, dipping and swooping. His brother Foix pressed his hands to his ears as the crows continued to shriek around their feet, and shouted over the din, “Noisy, too!”
These birds were not entranced, Cazaril realized; they were hysterical. His heart turned cold in his chest. “There’s something very wrong. Come on!”
He was not in the best shape for running uphill. He had his hand pressed hard to the violent stitch in his side as they approached the stable block at the Zangre’s outskirts. His courier birds flapped above his head in escort. By that time, men’s shouts could be heard beneath the crows’ continued screaming, and Palli and his cousins needed no urging to keep pace with him.
A groom in the royal tabard of the menagerie was staggering in circles before its open doors, screaming and crying, blood running down his face. Two of Teidez’s green-and-black-clad Baocian guards stood before the doors with swords drawn, holding off three Zangre guards who hovered apprehensively before them, also with blades out, seeming not to dare to strike. The crows lacked no such courage. They stooped awkwardly at the Baocians, trying to claw with their talons and stab with their beaks. The Baocians cursed and beat them off. Two bundles of black feathers lay on the cobbles already, one still, one twitching.
Cazaril strode up to the menagerie doors, roaring, “What in the Bastard’s name is going on here? How dare you slay the sacred crows?”
One of the Baocians pointed his sword toward him. “Stay back, Lord Cazaril! You may not pass! We have strict orders from the royse!”
Lips drawn back in fury, Cazaril knocked the sword aside with his cloaked arm, lunged forward, and wrenched it from the guardsman’s grasp. “Give me that, you fool!” He flung it to the stones in the general direction of the Zangre guards, and Palli, who had drawn in a panic when the unarmed Cazaril had waded into the fray. The sword clanged and spun across the cobbles, till Foix stopped it with a booted foot stamped down upon it, and held it with a challenging weight and stare.
Cazaril turned on the second Baocian, whose blade drooped abruptly. Recoiling from Cazaril’s step, the guardsman cried hastily, “Castillar, we do this to preserve the life of Roya Orico!”
“Do what? Is Orico in there? What are you about?”
A feline snarl, rising to a yowl, from inside whirled Cazaril around, and he left the daunted Baocian to the Zangre guards, now encouraged to advance. He strode into the shadowed aisle of the menagerie.
The old tongueless groom was on his knees on the tiles, bent over, making choked weeping sounds. His thumbless hands were pressed to his face, and a little blood ran between his fingers; he looked up at the sound of Cazaril’s step, his quavering wet mouth ravaged with woe. As he ran past the bears’ stalls, Cazaril glimpsed two inert black heaps studded with crossbow bolts, fur wet and matted with blood. The vellas’ stall door was open, and they lay on their sides in the bright straw, eyes open and fixed, throats slashed.
At the far end of the aisle, Royse Teidez was rising to his feet from the limp body of the spotted cat. He pushed himself up with his bloodied sword, and leaned upon it, panting, his face wild and exultant. His shadow roiled around him like thunderclouds at midnight. He looked up at Cazaril and grinned fiercely. “Ha!” he cried.
The Baocian guard captain, a twisted little bird still in his hand, plunged out of the aviary into Cazaril’s path. Bundles of colored feathers, dead and dying birds of all sizes, littered the aviary floor, some still fluttering helplessly. “Hold, Castillar—” he began. His words were whipped away as Cazaril grasped him by the tunic and spun him around, throwing him to the floor into the path of Palli, who was following on his heels muttering in astonished dismay, “Bastard weeps. Bastard weeps . . .” That had been Palli’s battle-mumble at Gotorget, when his sword had risen and fallen endlessly on men coming up over the ladders, and he’d had no breath for cries.
“Hold him,” Cazaril snarled over his shoulder, and strode on toward Teidez.
Teidez threw back his head and met Cazaril’s eyes square-on. “You can’t stop me—I’ve done it! I have saved the roya!”
“What—what—what—” Cazaril was so frightened and furious, his lips and mind could scarcely form coherent words. “Fool boy! What destructive madness is this, this . . . ?” His hands opened, shaking, and jerked about.
Teidez leaned toward him, his teeth glinting in his drawn-back lips. “I’ve broken the curse, the black magic that has been making Orico sick. It was coming from these evil animals. They were a secret gift from the Roknari, meant to slowly poison him. And we’ve slain the Roknari spy—I think . . .” Teidez glanced somewhat doubtfully over his shoulder.
Only then did Cazaril notice the last body on the floor at the far end of the aisle. Umegat lay on his side in a heap, as unmoving as the birds or the vellas. The carcasses of the sand foxes lay tumbled nearby. Cazaril had not seen him at first, because his clear white glow was extinguished. Dead? Cazaril moaned, lurched toward him, and fell to his knees. The left side of Umegat’s head was lacerated, the gray-bronze braid disheveled and soaked with gore. His skin was as gray as an old rag. But his scalp was still sluggishly bleeding, therefore . . .