It was a solemn oath; Cazaril's brows rose. Orico meant it, apparently. Iselle pursed her lips, then accepted this with a slight, wary nod.

A faint dry breath, puffed through feminine nostrils—Cazaril's eyes went to Royina Sara. Her face was shadowed by the window embrasure, but her mouth twisted briefly in some small irony at her husband's words. Cazaril considered what solemn promises Orico had broken to her, and looked away, discomfited.

"By the same token," Orico skipped to his next evasion like a man crossing stepping-stones on a steam, "our mourning makes it too soon to offer you to Ibra. The Fox may construe an insult in this haste."

Iselle made a gesture of impatience. "But if we wait, Bergon is likely to be snatched up! The royse is now the Heir, he's of marriageable age, and his father wants safety on his borders. The Fox is bound to barter him for an ally—a daughter of the high march of Yiss, perhaps, or a rich Darthacan noblewoman, and Chalion will have lost its chance!"

"It's too soon. Too soon. I don't disagree that your arguments are good, and may have their day. Indeed, the Fox made diplomatic inquiries for your hand some years ago, I forget for which son, but all was broken off when the troubles in South Ibra erupted. Nothing is fixed. Why, my poor Brajaran mother was betrothed five different times before she was finally wed to Roya Ias. Take patience, calm yourself, and await a more seemly time."

"I think now is an excellent time. I want to see you make a decision, announce it, and stand by it—before Chancellor dy Jironal returns."

"Ah, um, yes. And that's another thing. I cannot possibly take a step of this grave nature without consultation with my chief noble and the other lords in council." Orico nodded to himself.

"You didn't consult the other lords the last time. I think you're most strangely afraid to do anything dy Jironal doesn't approve. Who is roya in Cardegoss, anyway, Orico dy Chalion or Martou dy Jironal?"

"I—I—I will think on your words, dear sister." Orico made craven little waving-away motions with his fat hands.

Iselle, after a moment spent staring at him with a burning intensity that made him writhe, accepted this with a small, provisional nod. "Yes, do think on my petition, my lord. I'll ask you again tomorrow."

With this promise—or threat—she made courtesy again to Orico and Sara and withdrew, Betriz and Cazaril trailing.

"Tomorrow and every day thereafter?" Cazaril inquired in an undervoice as she sailed down the corridor in a savage rustling of skirts.

"Every day till Orico yields," she replied through set teeth. "Plan on it, Cazaril."

WINTRY YELLOW LIGHT SLANTED THROUGH GRAY clouds later that afternoon as Cazaril made his way out of the Zangre to the stable block. He pulled his fine embroidered wool coat around him and drew in his neck like a turtle against the damp, cold wind. When he opened his mouth and exhaled, he could make his breath mist in a little cloud before him. He blew a few puffs at the ghosts that, pale almost to invisibility in the sunlight, bobbed perpetually after him. A damp frost rimed the cobbles beneath his feet. He pushed the menagerie's heavy door aside just enough to nip within and pulled it shut again immediately thereafter. He stood a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the darker interior, and sneezed from the sweet dust of the hay.

The thumbless groom set down a pail, hurried up to him, bowed, and made welcoming noises.

"I have come to see Umegat," Cazaril told him. The little old man bowed again and beckoned him onward. He led Cazaril down the aisle. The beautiful animals all lurched to the front of their stalls to snort at him, and the sand foxes jumped up and yipped excitedly as he passed.

A stone-walled chamber at the far end proved to be a tack room converted to a work and leisure room for the menagerie's servants. A small fire burned cheerfully in a fieldstone fireplace, taking the chill off. The faint, pleasant scent of woodsmoke combined with that of leather, metal polish, and soaps. The wool-stuffed cushions on the chairs to which the groom gestured him were faded and worn, and the old worktable was stained and scarred. But the room was swept, and the glazed windows, one on either side of the fireplace, had the little round panes set in their leads polished clean. The groom made noises and shuffled out again.

In a few minutes, Umegat entered, wiping his hands dry on a cloth and straightening his tabard. "Welcome, my lord," he said softly. Cazaril felt suddenly uncertain of his etiquette, whether to stand as for a superior or sit as for a servant. There was no court Roknari grammatical mode for secretary to saint. He sat up and half bowed from the waist, awkwardly, by way of compromise. "Umegat."

Umegat closed the door, assuring privacy. Cazaril leaned forward, clasping his hands upon the tabletop, and spoke with the urgency of patient to physician. "You see the ghosts of the Zangre. Do you ever hear them?"

"Not normally. Have you?" Umegat pulled out a chair and seated himself at right angles to Cazaril.

"Not these—" He batted away the most persistent one, which had followed him inside. Umegat pursed his lips and flipped his cloth at it, and it flitted off. "Dondo's." Cazaril described last night's internal uproar. "I thought he was trying to break out. Can he succeed? If the goddess's grip fails?"

"I am certain no ghost can overpower a god," said Umegat.

"That's... not quite an answer." Cazaril brooded. Perhaps Dondo and the demon meant to kill him from sheer exhaustion. "Can you at least suggest a way to shut him up? Putting my head under the pillow was no help at all."

"There is a kind of symmetry to it," observed Umegat slowly. "Outer ghosts that you may see but not hear, inner ghosts that you may hear but not see... if the Bastard has a hand in it, it may have something to do with maintaining balance. In any case, I am sure your preservation was no accident and would not be accidentally withdrawn."

Cazaril absorbed this for a moment. Daily duties, eh. Today's had brought some curious turns. He spoke now as comrade to comrade. "Umegat, listen, I've had an idea. We know the curse has followed the House of Chalion's male line, Fonsa to Ias to Orico. Yet Royina Sara wears nearly as dark a shadow as Orico does, and she is no spawn of Fonsa's loins. She must have married into the curse, yes?"

The fine lines of Umegat's face deepened with his frown. "Sara already bore the shadow when I first came, years ago, but I suppose... yes, it must have been so."

"Ista likewise, presumably?"

"Presumably."

"So—could Iselle marry out of the curse? Shed it with her marriage vows, when she leaves her family of birth behind and enters into the family of her husband? Or would the curse follow her to taint them both?"

Umegat's brows went up. "I don't know."

"But you don't know that it's impossible? I was thinking that it might be a way to salvage... something."

Umegat sat back. "Possibly. I don't know. It was never a ploy to consider, for Orico."

"I need to know, Umegat. Royesse Iselle is pushing Orico to open negotiations for her marriage out of Chalion."

"Chancellor dy Jironal will surely not allow that."

"I would not underestimate her powers of persuasion. She is not another Sara."

"Neither was Sara, once. But you are right. Oh, my poor Orico, to be pressed between two such grinding stones."

Cazaril bit his lip, and paused a long time before venturing his next query. "Umegat... you've been observing this court for many years. Was dy Jironal always so poisonous a peculator, or has the curse slowly been corrupting him, too? Did the curse draw such a man to his position of power, or would any man trying to serve the House of Chalion become so corroded, in time?"

"You ask very interesting questions, Lord Cazaril." Umegat's graying brows drew down in thought. "I wish I had better answers. Martou dy Jironal was always forcible, intelligent, able. We shall leave aside consideration of his younger brother, who made his reputation as a strong arm in the field, not a strong head in the court. When he first took up the post of chancellor I would have judged the elder dy Jironal no more susceptible to the temptations of pride and greed than any other high lord of Chalion with a clan to provide for."

Faint enough praise, that. And yet...

"Yet I think..." Umegat seemed to continue Cazaril's very thought, his eyes rising to meet his guest's, "the curse has done him no good either."

"So... getting rid of dy Jironal is not the solution to Orico's woes? Another such man, perhaps worse, would simply rise in his place?"

Umegat opened his hands. "The curse takes a hundred forms, twisting each good thing that should be Orico's according to the weaknesses of its nature. A wife grown barren instead of fertile. A chief advisor corrupt instead of loyal. Friends fickle instead of true, food that sickens instead of strengthening, and on and on."

A secretary-tutor grown cowardly and foolish instead of brave and wise? Or maybe just fey and mad... If any man who came within the curse's ambit was vulnerable, was he destined to become Iselle's plague, as dy Jironal was Orico's? "And Teidez, and Iselle—must all her choices fall out as ill as Orico's, or does he bear a special burden, being the roya?"

"I think the curse has grown worse for Orico over time." The Roknari's gray eyes narrowed. "You have asked me a dozen questions, Lord Cazaril. Allow me to ask you one. How came you into the service of Royesse Iselle?"

Cazaril opened his mouth and sat back, his mind jumping first to the day the Provincara had ambushed him with her offer of employment. But no, before that came... and before that came... He found himself instead telling Umegat of the day a soldier of the Daughter astride a nervy horse had dropped a gold coin in the mud, and how he had arrived in Valenda. Umegat brewed tea at the little fire and pushed a steaming mug in front of Cazaril, who paused only to lubricate his drying throat. Cazaril described how Iselle had discomfited the crooked judge on the Daughter's Day, and, at length, how they had all come to Cardegoss.

Umegat pulled on his queue. "Do you think your steps were fated from that far back? Disturbing. But the gods are parsimonious, and take their chances where they can find them."

"If the gods are making this path for me, then where is my free will? No, it cannot be!"

"Ah." Umegat brightened at this thorny theological point. "I have had another thought on such fates, that denies neither gods nor men. Perhaps, instead of controlling every step, the gods have started a hundred or a thousand Cazarils and Umegats down this road. And only those arrive who choose to."

"But am I the first to arrive, or the last?"

"Well," said Umegat dryly, "I can promise you you're not the first."

Cazaril grunted understanding. After a little time spent digesting this, he said suddenly, "But if the gods have given you to Orico, and me to Iselle—though I think Someone has made a holy mistake—who is given for the protection of Teidez? Shouldn't there be three of us? A man of the Brother, surely, though whether tool or saint or fool I know not—or have all the boy's hundred destined protectors fallen by the roadside, one by one? Maybe the man is just not here yet." A new thought robbed Cazaril of breath. "Maybe it was supposed to have been dy Sanda." He leaned forward, burying his face in his hands. "If I stay here talking theology with you much longer, I swear I'll end up drinking myself blind again, just to make my brain stop spinning round and round inside my skull."

"Addiction to drink is actually a fairly common hazard, among divines," said Umegat.

"I begin to see why." Cazaril tilted back his head to catch the last trickle of tea, grown cold in his cup, and set it down. "Umegat... if I must ask of every action not only if it is wise or good, but also if it's the one I'm supposed to choose, I shall go mad. Madder. I'll end up curled in a corner not doing anything at all, except maybe mumbling and weeping."

Umegat chuckled—cruelly, Cazaril thought—but then shook his head. "You cannot outguess the gods. Hold to virtue—if you can identify it—and trust that the duty set before you is the duty desired of you. And that the talents given to you are the talents you should place in the gods' service. Believe that the gods ask for nothing back that they have not first lent to you. Not even your life."

Cazaril rubbed his face, and inhaled. "Then I shall bend all my efforts to promoting this marriage of Iselle's, to break the hold of the curse upon her. I must trust my reason, or why else did the goddess choose a reasonable man for Iselle's guardian?" Though he added under his breath, "At least, I used to be a reasonable man..." He nodded, far more firmly than he felt, and pushed back his chair. "Pray for me, Umegat."

"Every hour, my lord."

IT WAS GROWING DARK WHEN LADY BETRIZ BROUGHT a taper into Cazaril's office and drifted about for a moment lighting his reading candles in their glass vases. He smiled and nodded thanks. She smiled back and blew out her taper, but then paused, not yet returning to the women's chambers. She stood, Cazaril observed, in the same spot where they had parted the night of Dondo's death.

"Things seem to be settling down a little now, thank the gods," she remarked.

"Yes. A little." Cazaril laid down his quill.

"I begin to believe all will be well."

"Yes." His stomach cramped. No.

A long pause. He picked up his quill again, and dipped it, although he had nothing more to write.

"Cazaril, must you believe you are about to die in order to bring yourself to kiss a lady?" she demanded abruptly.

He ducked his head, flushing, and cleared his throat. "My deepest apologies, Lady Betriz. It won't happen again."

He dared not look up, lest she try anew to break through his fragile barriers. Lest she succeed. Oh, Betriz, do not sacrifice your dignity to my futility!

Her voice grew stiff. "I'm very sorry to hear that, Castillar."

He kept his eyes on his ledger as her footsteps retreated.