Ista began gently pressing the thorns from her rose stem, and lining them up in a row like the teeth of a saw. "Yes. It accumulates. That's the word, precisely. It collects calamity like a cistern, as its slates and gutters collect rainwater. You will do well to avoid the Zangre, Cazaril."

"I've no desire to attend court, my lady."

"I desired to, once. With all my heart. The gods' most savage curses come upon us as answers to our own prayers, you know. Prayer is a dangerous business. I think it should be outlawed." She began to peel her rose stem, thin green strips pulling away to reveal fine white lines of pith.

Cazaril had no idea what to say to this, so merely smiled hesitantly.

Ista began to pull the whip of pith apart lengthwise. "A prophecy was told of the Lord dy Lutez, that he should not drown except upon a mountaintop. And that he never feared to swim thereafter, no matter how violent the waves, for everyone knows there is no water upon a mountaintop; it all runs away to the valleys."

Cazaril swallowed panic, and looked around surreptitiously for the returning attendant. She was not yet in sight. Lord dy Lutez, it was said, had died under the water torture in the dungeons of the Zangre. Beneath the castle stones, but still high enough above the town of Cardegoss. He licked slightly numb lips, and tried, "You know, I never heard that while the man was alive. It is my opinion that some tale-spinner made it up later, to sound shivery. Justifications... tend to accrue posthumously to so spectacular a fall as his was."

Her lips parted in the strangest smile yet. She drew the last threads of the stem pith apart, aligned them upon her knee, and stroked them flat. "Poor Cazaril! How did you grow so wise?"

Cazaril was saved from trying to think of an answer for this by Ista's attendant, who emerged again from the door of the keep with a hank of colored silk in her hands. Cazaril leapt to his feet and nodded to the royina. "Your good lady returns..."

He gave a little bow in passing to the attendant, who whispered urgently to him, "Was she sensible, my lord?"

"Yes, perfectly." In her way...

"Nothing of dy Lutez?"

"Nothing... remarkable." Nothing he cared to remark upon, certainly.

The attendant breathed relief and passed on, fixing a smile on her face. Ista regarded her with bored tolerance as she began chattering about all the items that she'd had to overturn and hunt through to find her strayed thread. It crossed Cazaril's mind that no daughter of the Provincara's, nor mother of Iselle's, could possibly be short of wit.

If Ista spoke to very many of her duller company with the cryptic leaps of thought she'd sprung on him, it was little wonder rumors circulated of madness, and yet... her occasional opacity of discourse felt more like cipher than babble to him. Of an elusive internal consistency, if only one held the key to it. Which, granted, he did not. Not that that wasn't also true of some sorts of madness he had seen...

Cazaril clutched his book and went off to seek some less disturbing shade.

SUMMER ADVANCED AT A LAZY PACE THAT EASED Cazaril's mind and body both. Only poor Teidez chafed at the inactivity, hunting being curtailed by the heat, the season, and his tutor. He did pot rabbits with a crossbow in the dawn mists around the castle, to the earnest applause and approval of all the castle's gardeners. The boy was so out-of-season—hot and restless and plump—if ever there was a born dedicat to the Son of Autumn, god of the hunt, war, and cooler weather, Cazaril judged it was surely Teidez.

Cazaril was a little surprised to be accosted on the way to nuncheon one warm noon by Teidez and his tutor. Judging by both their reddened faces, they were in the middle of another of their tearing arguments.

"Lord Caz!" Teidez hailed him breathlessly. "Didn't the old provincar's swordmaster too take the pages to the abattoir, to slay the young bulls—to teach them courage, in a real fight, not this, this, dancing about in the dueling ring!"

"Well, yes..."

"See, what did I tell you!" Teidez cried to dy Sanda.

"We practiced in the ring, too," Cazaril added immediately, for the sake of solidarity, should dy Sanda need it.

The tutor grimaced. "Bull-baiting is an old country practice, Royse. Not befitting training for the highborn. You are destined to be a gentleman—at the least!—not a butcher's apprentice."

The Provincara kept no swordmaster in her household these days, so she'd made sure the royse's tutor was a trained man. Cazaril, who had occasionally watched his practice sessions with Teidez, respected dy Sanda's precision. Dy Sanda's swordsmanship was pretty enough, if not quite brilliant. Sporting. Honorable. But if dy Sanda also knew the desperate brutal tricks that kept men alive on the field, he had not shown them to Teidez.

Cazaril grinned wryly. "The swordmaster wasn't training us to be gentlemen. He was training us to be soldiers. I'll give his old method this credit—any battlefield I was ever on was a lot more like a butcher's yard than it was like a dueling ring. It was ugly, but it taught us our business. And there was no waste to it. I can't think it mattered at the end of the day to the bulls whether they died after being chased around for an hour by a fool with a sword, or were simply stalled and thwacked on the head with a mallet." Though Cazaril had not cared to stretch the business out, as some of the young men had, making macabre and dangerous play with the maddened animals. With a little practice he had learned to dispatch his beast with a sword thrust nearly as quickly as the butcher might. "Grant you, on the battlefield we didn't eat what we killed, except sometimes the horses."

Dy Sanda sniffed disapproval at his wit. He offered placatingly to Teidez, "We might take the hawks out tomorrow morning, my lord, if the weather holds fine. And if you finish your cartography problems."

"A ladies' sport—with hawks and pigeons—pigeons! What do I care for pigeons!" In a voice of longing Teidez added, "At the roya's court at Cardegoss, they hunt wild boar in the oak forests in the fall. That's a real sport, a man's sport. They say those pigs are dangerous!"

"Very true," said Cazaril. "The big tuskers can disembowel a dog—or a horse. Or a man. They're much faster than you expect."

"Did you ever hunt at Cardegoss?" Teidez asked him eagerly.

"I followed my lord dy Guarida a few times there."

"Valenda has no boars." Teidez sighed. "But we do have bulls! At least it's something. Better than pigeons—or rabbits!"

"Oh, potting rabbits is a useful soldier's training, too," Cazaril offered consolingly. "In case you ever have to hunt rats for table. It's much the same skill."

Dy Sanda glared at him. Cazaril smiled and bowed out of the argument, leaving Teidez to his badgering.

Over nuncheon, Iselle took up a descant version of a similar song, though the authority she assailed was her grandmother and not her tutor.

"Grandmama, it's so hot. Can't we go swimming in the river as Teidez does?"

As the summer simmered on, the royse's afternoon rides with his gentleman-tutor and his grooms and the pages had been exchanged for afternoon swims at a sheltered pool in the river upstream of Valenda—the same spot overheated denizens of the castle had frequented when Cazaril had been a page. The ladies were, of course, excluded from these excursions. Cazaril had politely declined invitations to join the party, pleading his duties to Iselle. The true reason was that stripping naked to swim would display all the old disasters written in his flesh, a history he did not care to expound upon. The misunderstanding with the bath man still mortified him, in memory.

"Certainly not!" said the Provincara. "That would be entirely immodest."

"Not with him," said Iselle. "Make up our own party, a ladies' party." She turned to Cazaril. "You said the ladies of the castle swam when you were a page!"

"Servants, Iselle," said her grandmother wearily. "Lesser folk. It's not a pastime for you."

Iselle slumped, hot and red and pouting. Betriz, spared the unbecoming flush, drooped at her place, looking pale and wilted instead. Soup was served. Everyone sat eyeing their steaming bowls with revulsion. Maintaining the standards—as always—the Provincara picked up her spoon and took a determined sip.

Cazaril said suddenly, "But the Lady Iselle can swim, can she not, your grace? I mean, she presumably was taught, when she was younger?"

"Certainly not," said the Provincara.

"Oh," said Cazaril. "Oh, dear." He glanced around the table. Royina Ista was not with them, this meal; relieved of concern for a certain obsessive subject, he decided that he dared. "That puts me in mind of a most horrible tragedy."

The Provincara's eyes narrowed; she did not take the bait. Betriz, however, did. "Oh, what?"

"It was when I was riding for the provincar of Guarida, during a skirmish with the Roknari prince Olus. Olus's troops came raiding over the border under the cover of night, and a storm. I was told off to evacuate the ladies of dy Guarida's household before the town was encircled. Near dawn, after riding half the night, we crossed a high freshet. One of his provincara's ladies-in-waiting was swept off when her horse fell, and was carried away by the force of the waters, together with the page who went after her. By the time I'd got my horse turned around, they were out of sight... We found the bodies downstream next morning. The river was not that deep, but she panicked, not having any idea how to swim. A little training might have turned a fatal accident into merely a frightening one, and three lives saved."

"Three lives?" said Iselle. "The lady, the page..."

"She had been with child."

"Oh."

A very daunted silence fell.

The Provincara rubbed her chin, and eyed Cazaril. "A true story, Castillar?"

"Yes," Cazaril sighed. Her flesh had been bruised and battered, cold, blue-tinged, inert as clay beneath his clutching fingers, her sodden clothes heavy, but not as heavy as his heart. "I had to tell her husband."

"Huh," grunted dy Ferrej. The table's most reliable raconteur, he did not try to top this tale.

"It's not an experience I ever wish to repeat," added Cazaril.

The Provincara snorted and looked away. After a moment, she said, "My granddaughter cannot go sporting about naked in the river like an eel."

Iselle sat up. "But suppose we wore, oh, linen shifts."

"It's true, if one needed to swim in an emergency, one would most likely have clothes still on," Cazaril said helpfully.

Betriz added wistfully under her breath, "And we could cool off twice. Once when we swam, and once when we sat about drying out."

"Cannot some lady of the household instruct her?" Cazaril coaxed.

"They do not swim either," said the Provincara firmly.

Betriz nodded confirmation. "They just wade." She glanced up. "Could you teach us how to swim, Lord Caz?"

Iselle clapped her hands. "Oh, yes!"

"I... uh..." Cazaril stammered. On the other hand... in that company, he might keep his shirt on without comment. "I suppose so... if your ladies went along." He glanced across at the Provincara. "And if your grandmother would permit me."

After a long silence, the Provincara growled grudgingly, "Mind you don't all catch chills."

Iselle and Betriz, prudently, suppressed hoots of triumph, but they cast Cazaril sparkling glances of gratitude. He wondered if they thought he had made up the story of the night-ride drowning.

THE LESSONS BEGAN THAT AFTERNOON, WITH CAZARIL standing in the middle of the river trying to persuade two rather stiff young women that they would not drown instantly if they got their hair wet. His fear that he had overdone the dire safety warnings gradually passed as the women at length relaxed and learned to let the waters buoy them up. They were naturally more buoyant than Cazaril, though his months at the Provincara's table had driven a deal of the wolf-gauntness from his bearded face.

His patience proved justified. By the end of the summer, they were splashing and diving like otters in the drought-shrunken stream. Cazaril had merely to sit in the shallows in water up to his waist and call occasional suggestions.

His choice of vantage had only partly to do with staying cool. The Provincara was right, he had to allow—swimming was lewd. And loose linen shifts, thoroughly wetted down and clinging to lithe young bodies, made fair mockery of the modesty they attempted to preserve, a stunning effect he carefully did not point out to his two blithe charges. Worse, the effect cut two ways. Wet linen trews clinging to his loins revealed a state of mind—um, body—um, recovering health—that he earnestly prayed they would not notice. Iselle didn't seem to, anyway. He was not entirely sure about Betriz. Their middle-aged lady-in-waiting Nan dy Vrit, who declined the lessons but waded about in the shallows fully dressed with her skirts hoisted to her calves, missed nothing in the play, and was clearly hard-pressed to control her snickers. Charitably, she seemed to grant him his good faith, and did not laugh at him out loud, nor tattle on him to the Provincara. At least... he didn't think she did.

Cazaril was uncomfortably conscious that his awareness of Betriz was increasing day by day. Not yet to the point of slipping anonymous bad poetry under her door, thank the gods for the shreds of his sanity. Playing the lute under her window was, perhaps fortunately, no longer within his gift. And yet... in the long summer quiet of Valenda, he had begun to dare to think of a life beyond the turning of an hourglass.

Betriz did smile at him—that was true, he did not delude himself. And she was kind. But she smiled at and was kind to her horse, too. Her honest friendly courtesy was hardly ground enough to build a dream mansion upon, let alone bring bed and linens and try to move in. Still... she did smile at him.

He stifled the idea repeatedly, but it kept popping up—along with other things, alas, especially during swimming lessons. But he'd sworn off ambition—he didn't have to make a fool of himself anymore, dammit. His embarrassing arousal might be a sign of returning strength, but what good did it do him? He was as landless and penniless as in his days here as a page, and with far fewer hopes. He was mad to entertain fantasies of either lust or love, and yet... Betriz's father was a landless man of good blood, living a life of service. Surely he could not despise a like sojourner.

Not despise Cazaril, no—dy Ferrej was too wise for that. But he was also wise enough to know his daughter's beauty and connection with the royesse was a dowry that could bring her something rather better in the way of a husband than fortuneless Cazaril, or even the local petty gentry's sons who served the Provincara's household as pages now. Betriz clearly considered the boys to be annoying puppies anyway. But some of them had elder brothers, heirs of their modest estates...