It was only a dream. If I live, so does he.

Cazaril lay back down upon the hard boards, curled around his bellyache, for half the turning of a glass, exhausted, despairing. The row of crows kept watch over him in unnerving silence. It gradually came to him that he would have to go back. And he hadn't planned a return route.

He might climb down the bracing frames... but that would leave him standing in the bottom of a bricked-up tower atop a years-long accumulation of guano and detritus, crying to be let out. Could anyone even hear him through the thick stone? Would they take his muffled voice for an echo of the crows' caws, or the howling of a ghost?

Up, then? Back the way he'd come in?

He stood at last, pulling himself up by the rail—even now, the crows did not fly away—and stretched his cramped and aching muscles. He had to physically shove a couple of crows from the railing to clear a place to stand; they flapped off indignantly, but still with that uncanny silence. He rucked up the brown gown, tucked hem in belt. When he balanced on the rail, it was a short reach to the tower's rim. He grasped, heaved. His arms were strong, and his body was lean. One hideous moment of consciousness of the air below his bare kicking legs, and he was up over the stones and out onto the slates. The fog was so thick, he could barely see down into the courtyard below. Dawn, or just after dawn, he guessed; the lesser denizens of the castle would already be awake, this tag-end-of-autumn morning. The crows followed him solemnly, flapping up one by one through the gap in the roof to find perches on stone or slate. Their heads turned to track his progress.

He had a vision of them, mobbing him to spoil his next leap from the tower up to the main block, revenging their comrade. And then another vision, as his feet scrambled and his arms shook, of letting go, letting it all go, and falling to his welcome death on the stones below. A wrenching cramp coiled in his gut, driving out his breath in a gasp.

He would have let go then, except for the sudden terror that he might survive the fall, leg-smashed and crippled. Only that drove him up over the eaves to the slates of the main block's roof. His muscles cracked as he lifted himself. His hands were scraped raw by their frantic gripping.

He was not sure, in this paling fog, which of the dozen dormer windows erupting out of the slates he'd emerged from last night. Suppose someone had come along and closed and locked it, since? He inched slowly along, trying each one. The crows followed, stalking along the gutters, flapping up in brief hops, their clawed feet slipping on the slates, too, at times. The mist beaded, glistening, on their feathers, and in his beard and hair, silver sequins on his black vest-cloak. The fourth casement window swung open to his scrabbling fingers. It was the unused lumber room. He slid through, and slammed it upon his black-liveried escort just in time to stop a couple of the birds from flying in after him. One bounced off the glass with a thud.

He crept down the stairs to his floor without encountering any early servants, stumbled into his chamber, and closed the door behind him. Tight-bladdered and cramping, he used his chamber pot; his bowels voided frightening blood clots. His hands trembled as he washed them in his basin. When he went to fling the bloodied wash water out into the ravine, the opening window dislodged two silent, sentinel crows from the stone sill. He closed it tight again and locked the latch.

He weaved to his bed like a man drunk on his feet, fell into it, and wrapped his coverlet around himself. As his shivering continued, he could hear the sounds of the castle's servants carrying water or linens or pots, feet plodding up stairs and down corridors, an occasional low-voiced call or order.

Was Iselle being waked now, on the floor above, to be washed and attired, bound in ropes of pearls, chained in jewels, for her dreadful appointment with Dondo? Had she even slept? Or wept all night, prayed to gods gone deaf? He should go up, to offer what comfort he could. Had Betriz found another knife? I cannot bear to face them. He curled tighter and shut his eyes in agony.

He was still lying in bed, gasping in breaths perilously close to sobs, when booted steps sounded in the corridor, and his door banged open. Chancellor dy Jironal's voice snarled, "I know it's him. It has to be him!"

The steps stalked across his floorboards, and his coverlet was snatched from him. He rolled over and stared up in surprise at dy Jironal's steel-bearded, panting face glaring down at him in astonishment.

"You're alive!" cried dy Jironal. His voice was indignant.

Half a dozen courtiers, a couple of whom Cazaril recognized as Dondo's bravos, crowded dy Jironal's shoulder to gape at him. They had their hands upon their swords, as if prepared to correct this mistaken animation of Cazaril's at dy Jironal's word. Roya Orico, clad in a nightgown, a shabby old cloak clutched about his neck by his fat fingers, stood at the back of the mob. Orico looked... strange. Cazaril blinked, and rubbed his eyes. A kind of aura surrounded the roya, not of light, but of darkness. Cazaril could see him perfectly clearly, so he could not call it a cloud or a fog, for it obscured nothing. And yet it was there, moving as the man moved, like a trailing garment.

Dy Jironal bit his lip, his eyes boring into Cazaril's face. "If not you—who, then? It has to be someone... it has to be someone close to... that girl! The foul little murderess!" He spun around and stormed out, curtly motioning his men to follow him.

"What's afoot?" Cazaril demanded of Orico, who had turned to waddle after them.

Orico looked back over his shoulder, and spread his hands in a wide, bewildered shrug. "Wedding's off. Dondo dy Jironal was murdered around midnight last night—by death magic."

Cazaril's mouth opened; nothing came out but a weak, "Oh." He sank back, dazed, as Orico shuffled out after his chancellor.

I don't understand.

If Dondo is slain, and yet I live... I cannot have been granted a death miracle. And yet Dondo is slain. How?

How else but that someone had beaten Cazaril to the deed?

Belatedly, his wits caught up with dy Jironal's.

Betriz?

No, oh no... !

He surged out of bed, fell heavily to the floor, scrambled to his feet, and staggered after the crowd of enraged and baffled courtiers.

He arrived at his invaded office antechamber to hear dy Jironal bellowing, "Then bring her out, that I may see!" to a disheveled and frightened-looking Nan dy Vrit, who nevertheless blocked the doorway to the inner rooms with her body as though ready to defend a drawbridge. Cazaril nearly fainted with relief when Betriz, frowning fiercely, came up behind Nan's shoulder. Nan was in her nightdress, but Betriz, rumpled and weary-looking, was still wearing the same green wool gown she'd had on last night. Had she slept? But she lives, she lives!

"Why do you make this uncouth roaring here, my lord?" Betriz demanded coldly. "It is unseemly and untimely."

Dy Jironal's lips parted in his beard; he was clearly taken aback. After a moment, his teeth snapped closed. "Where is the royesse, then? I must see the royesse."

"She is sleeping a little, for the first time in days. I'll not have her disturbed. She'll have to exchange dreams for nightmare soon enough." Betriz's nostrils flared with open hostility.

Dy Jironal's back straightened; his breath hissed in. "Wake her? Can you wake her?"

Dear gods. Might Iselle have... ? But before this new panic closed down Cazaril's throat, Iselle herself appeared, pushed between her ladies, and walked coolly forward into the antechamber to face dy Jironal.

"I do not sleep. What do you want, my lord?" Her eyes passed over her brother Orico, hovering at the edge of the mob, and dismissed him with contempt, returning to dy Jironal. Her brows tensed in wariness. No question but that she understood whose power forced her to her unwelcome wedding.

Dy Jironal stared from woman to woman, all indisputably alive before him. He wheeled around and stared again at Cazaril, who was blinking at Iselle. Aura flared around her, too, just like Orico, but hers was more disturbed, a churning of deep darkness and luminous pale blue, like the aurora he'd once seen in the far southern night sky.

"Whoever," grated dy Jironal. "Wherever. I'll find the filthy coward's corpse if I have to search all of Chalion."

"And then what?" inquired Orico, rubbing his unshaven jowls. "Hang it?" He returned a raised-brow look of irony for dy Jironal's driven glare; dy Jironal whirled and stamped back out. Cazaril stepped aside to let the entourage pass, his gaze flicking covertly from Orico to Iselle, comparing the two... hallucinations? No one else here pulsed like that. Maybe I'm sick. Maybe I'm mad.

"Cazaril," said Iselle in urgent bewilderment as soon as the men had cleared the outer door—Nan hurried to shut it behind the invaders—"what has happened?"

"Someone killed Dondo dy Jironal last night. By death magic."

Her lips parted, and her hands clasped together like a child just promised its heart's desire. "Oh! Oh! Oh, this is welcome news! Oh, thank the Lady, oh, thank the Bastard—I will send such gifts to his altar—oh, Cazaril, who—?"

At Betriz's look of wild surmise in his direction, Cazaril grimaced. "Not me. Obviously." Though not for want of trying.

"Did you—" Betriz began, then pressed her lips closed. Cazaril's grimace tilted in appreciation of her delicacy in not inquiring, out loud before two witnesses, if he'd plotted a capital crime. He hardly needed to speak; her eyes blazed with speculation.

Iselle paced back and forth, almost bouncing with relief. "I think I felt it," she said in a voice of great wonder. "In any case, I felt something... midnight, around midnight, you said?" No one had said so here. "An easing of my heart, as if something in me knew my prayers were heard. But I never expected this. I'd asked the Lady for my death..." She paused, and touched her hand to her broad white forehead. "Or what She willed." Her voice slowed. "Cazaril... did I... could I have done this? Did the goddess answer me so?"

"I... I don't see how, Royesse. You prayed to the Lady of Spring, did you not?"

"Yes, and to Her Mother of Summer, both. But mostly to Spring herself."

"The Great Ladies grant miracles of life, and healing. Not death." Normally. And all miracles were rare and capricious. Gods. Who knew their limits, their purposes?

"It didn't feel like death," Iselle confessed. "And yet I was eased. I took a little food and didn't throw it up, and I slept for a time."

Nan dy Vrit nodded confirmation. "And glad I was of it, my lady."

Cazaril took a deep breath. "Well, dy Jironal will solve the mystery for us, I'm sure. He'll hunt down every person to die last night in Cardegoss—in all of Chalion, I have no doubt—-until he finds out his brother's murderer."

"Bless the poor soul who put his vile plans in such disarray." Formally, Iselle touched forehead, lip, navel, groin, and heart, spreading her fingers wide. "And at such a cost. May the Bastard's demons grant him what mercy ever they can."

"Amen," said Cazaril. "Let's just hope dy Jironal finds no close comrades or family to wreak his vengeance upon." He wrapped his arms around his belly, which was cramping again.

Betriz came near him and stared him in the face, her hand going out but then falling back hesitantly. "Lord Caz, you look dreadful. Your skin is the color of cold porridge."

"I'm... ill. Something I ate." He took a breath. "So we prepare today not for grievous wedding but joyous funeral. I trust you ladies will contain your glee in public?"

Nan dy Vrit snorted. Iselle motioned her to silence, and said firmly, "Solemn piety, I promise you. And if it is thanksgiving and not sorrow in my heart, only the gods shall know."

Cazaril nodded, and rubbed his aching neck. "Usually, a victim of death magic is burned before nightfall, to deny the body, the divines say, to uncanny things that might want to move in. Apparently, such a death invites them. It will be a terribly hurried funeral for such a high lord. They'll have to assemble all before dark." Iselle's coruscating aura was making him almost nauseated. He swallowed, and looked away from her.

"Then, Cazaril," said Betriz, "for pity's sake go lie down till then. We're safe, all unexpectedly. You need do no more." She took him by his cold hands, clasped them briefly, and smiled in wry concern. He managed a wan return smile, and retreated.