Needs must drive. He would broach it to Palli tomorrow.
Cazaril prayed on his knees before bed to be spared from the nightmare that had recurred three nights running, where Dondo grew back to life size within his swelling stomach and then, somehow dressed in his funeral robes and armed with his sword, carved his way out. Perhaps the Lady heard his plea; at any rate, he woke at dawn, his head and heart pounding, from a new nightmare. In this one, Dondo somehow sucked Cazaril’s soul into his own belly in his place, and escaped to take over Cazaril’s body. And then embarked on a career of rapine in the women’s quarters while Cazaril, helpless to stop him, watched. To his dismay, as he panted in the gray light and regained his grip on reality, Cazaril realized his body was painfully aroused.
So, was Dondo plunged into a lightless prison, sealed from sound, deprived of sensation? Or did he ride along as the ultimate spy and voyeur? Cazaril had not imagined making love to Be—to any lady since this damned affliction had been visited upon him; he imagined it now, a crowded quartet between the sheets, and shuddered.
Briefly, Cazaril envisioned escaping by the window. He might squeeze his shoulders through, and dive; the drop would be stupendous, the crunch at the end . . . quick. Or with his knife, taken to wrists or throat or belly or all three . . . He sat up, blinking, to find a half a dozen phantasms gathered avidly around him, crowding each other like vultures around a dead horse. He hissed, lurched, and swiped his arm through the air to scatter them. Could a body with its head smashed in be animated by one of them? The archdivine’s words implied so. Escape through suicide was blocked by this ghastly patrol, it seemed. Dreading sleep, he stumbled from bed and went to wash and dress.
Coming back from a perfunctory breakfast in the banqueting hall, Cazaril encountered a breathless Nan dy Vrit upon the stairs.
“My lady begs you ’tend upon her at once,” Nan told him, and Cazaril nodded and pushed up the steps. “Not in her chambers,” Nan added, as he started past the third floor. “In Royse Teidez’s.”
“Oh.” Cazaril’s brows rose, and he turned instead to pass his own chamber and go down the hall to Teidez’s, Nan at his heels.
As he entered the office antechamber, twin to Iselle’s above, he heard voices from the rooms opening beyond; Iselle’s murmur, and Teidez’s, raised: “I don’t want anything to eat. I don’t want to see anyone! Go away!”
The sitting room was cluttered with weapons, clothes, and gifts, strewn about haphazardly. Cazaril picked his way across to the bedchamber.
Teidez lay back on his pillows, still in his nightgown. The close, moist air of the room smelled of boy sweat, and another tang. Teidez’s secretary-tutor hovered anxiously on one side of the bed; Iselle stood with her hands on her hips on the other. Teidez said, “I want to go back to sleep. Get out.” He glanced up at Cazaril, cringed, and pointed. “I especially don’t want him in here!”
Nan dy Vrit said, in a very domestic voice, “Now, none of that, young lord. You know better than to talk to old Nan that way.”
Teidez, cowed by some ancient habit, went from surly to whiney. “I have a headache.”
Iselle said firmly, “Nan, bring a light. Cazaril, I want you to look at Teidez’s leg. It looks very odd to me.”
Nan held a brace of candles high, supplementing the wan gray daylight from the window. Teidez at first clutched his blankets to his chest, but didn’t quite dare fight his older sister’s glare; she twitched them out of his hands and folded them aside.
Three scabbed, parallel grooves ran in a spiral partway around the boy’s right leg. In themselves, they did not appear deep or dangerous, but the flesh around them was so swollen that the skin was shiny and silvery. Translucent pink drainage and yellow pus oozed from their edges. Cazaril forced himself to keep his expression even as he studied the hot red streaks climbing past the boy’s knee and winding up the inside of his thigh. Teidez’s eyes were glazed. He jerked back his head as Cazaril reached for him. “Don’t touch me!”
“Be still!” Cazaril commanded in a low voice. Teidez’s forehead, beneath Cazaril’s wrist, was scorching.
He glanced up at the sallow-faced secretary, watching with a frown. “How long has he been feverish?”
“Just this morning, I believe.”
“When did his physician last see this?”
“He would not have a physician, Lord Cazaril. He threw a chair at me when I tried to help him, and bandaged it himself.”
“And you let him?” Cazaril’s voice made the secretary jump.
The man shrugged uneasily. “He would have it so.”
Teidez grumbled, “Some people obey me. I’ll remember who, too, later.” He glowered up at Cazaril through half-lowered lashes, and stuck out his lower lip at his sister.
“He’s taken an infection. I’ll see that a Temple physician is sent in to him at once.”
Teidez, disgruntled, wriggled back down under his covers. “Can I go back to sleep now? If you don’t mind. And draw the curtain, the light hurts my eyes.”
“Yes, stay abed,” Cazaril told him, and withdrew.
Iselle followed him into the antechamber, lowering her voice. “It’s not right, is it?”
“No. It’s not. Good observation, Royesse. Your judgment was correct.”
She gave him a satisfied nod, and he bowed himself out and made for the end stairs. By Nan dy Vrit’s shadowed face, she at least understood just how not-right it was. All Cazaril could think of, as he hastened down the stairs and back across the stones of the courtyard toward Ias’s Tower, was how very seldom he’d seen any man, no matter how young or strong, survive an amputation that high upon the thigh. His stride lengthened.
By good luck, Cazaril found dy Jironal at once, in the Chancellery. He was just sealing a saddlebag and dispatching a courier with it.
“How are the roads?” dy Jironal asked the fellow, who was typically lean and wiry and wore the Chancellery’s tabard over an odd assortment of winter woolens.
“Muddy, m’lord. It will be dangerous to ride after dark.”
“Well, do your best,” dy Jironal sighed, and clapped him on the shoulder. The man saluted and made his way out past Cazaril.
Dy Jironal scowled at his new visitor. “Cazaril.”
“My lord.” Cazaril offered a fractional bow and entered.
Dy Jironal seated himself on the edge of his desk, and folded his arms. “Your attempt to hide behind the Daughter’s Order in its plot to unseat me is doomed to fail, you know,” he said conversationally. “I intend to see that its failure will be miserable.”
Impatiently, Cazaril waved this aside. He’d have been more surprised had dy Jironal not had an ear in the order’s councils. “You have much worse troubles this morning than anything I can offer you, my lord.”
Dy Jironal’s eyes widened in surprise; his head tilted in an attitude of sudden attention. “Oh?”
“What did Teidez’s wound look like when you saw it?”
“What wound? He showed me no wound.”
“On his right leg—he was scratched by Orico’s leopard, apparently, while he was killing the poor beast. In truth, the marks didn’t look deep, but they’ve taken an infection. His skin burns. And you know how a poisoned wound sometimes throws out feverish marks upon the skin?”