"What accusation?"

"A very serious one, Royesse, and not for your ears," said dy Jironal. "You should withdraw."

Pointedly ignoring him, she pulled up a chair and plunked down into it, folding her arms. "If it's a serious accusation against the most trusted servant of my household, it is very much for my ears. Cazaril, what is this about?"

Cazaril gave her a slight bow. "A slander has apparently been circulated, by persons not yet named, that the scars on my back were punishment for a crime."

"Last fall," dy Maroc put in nervously. "In Ibra."

By Betriz's widening stare and caught breath, she had obtained a good close view of the ropy mess as she'd followed Iselle around Cazaril. Ser dy Sanda's lips too pursed in a wince.

"May I put my tunic back on, sire?" Cazaril added stiffly.

"Yes, yes." Orico waved a hasty assent.

"The nature of the crime, Royesse," dy Jironal put in smoothly, "is such as to cast very serious doubts on whether the man should be a trusted servant of your, or indeed, any lady's household."

"What, rape?" said Iselle scornfully. "Cazaril? That is the most absurd lie I have ever heard."

"And yet," said dy Jironal, "there are the flogging scars."

"The gift," said Cazaril through his teeth, "of a Roknari oar-master, in return for a certain ill-considered defiance. Last fall, and off the coast of Ibra, that much is true."

"Plausible, and yet... odd," said dy Jironal in a judicious tone. "The cruelties of the galleys are legendary, but one would not think a competent oar-master would damage a slave past use."

Cazaril half smiled. "I provoked him."

"How so, Cazaril?" asked Orico, leaning back and squeezing the fat of his chin with one hand.

"Wrapped my oar-chain around his throat and did my best to strangle him. I almost succeeded, too. But they pulled me off him a trifle too soon."

"Dear gods," said the roya. "Were you trying to commit suicide?"

"I... am not quite sure. I'd thought I was past fury, but... I had been given a new benchmate, an Ibran boy, maybe fifteen years old. Kidnapped, he said, and I believed him. You could tell he was of good family, soft, well-spoken, not used to rough places—he blistered dreadfully in the sun, and his hands bled on the oars. Scared, defiant, ashamed... he said his name was Danni, but he never told me his surname. The oar-master made to use him after a manner forbidden to Roknari, and Danni struck out at him. Before I could stop him. It was insanely foolish, but the boy didn't realize... . I thought—well, I wasn't thinking very clearly, but I thought if I struck harder I could distract the oar-master from retaliating upon him."

"By retaliating against you instead?" said Betriz wonderingly.

Cazaril shrugged. He'd kneed the oar-master hard enough in the groin, before wrapping the chain around his neck, to assure he wouldn't be amorous again for a week, but a week would have passed soon enough, and then what? "It was a futile gesture. Would have been futile, but for the chance of the Ibran naval flotilla crossing our bows the next morning, and rescuing us all."

Dy Sanda said encouragingly, "You have witnesses, then. Quite a large number of them, it sounds like. The boy, the galley slaves, the Ibran sailors... what became of the boy, after?"

"I don't know. I lay ill in the Temple Hospital of the Mother's Mercy in Zagosur for, for a while, and everyone was scattered and gone by the time I, um, left."

"A very heroic tale," said dy Jironal, in a dry tone well calculated to remind his listeners that this was Cazaril's version. He frowned judiciously and glanced around the assembled company, his gaze lingering for a moment upon dy Sanda, and the outraged Iselle. "Still... I suppose you might ask the royesse to give you a month's leave to ride to Ibra, and locate some of these, ah, conveniently scattered witnesses. If you can."

Leave his ladies unguarded for a month, here? And would he survive the trip? Or be slain and buried in a shallow grave in the woods two hours' ride out of Cardegoss, leaving the court to construe his guilt from his supposed flight? Betriz pressed her hand to whitened lips, but her glare was wholly for dy Jironal. Here, at least, was one who believed Cazaril's word and not his back. He stood a little straighter.

"No," he said at last. "I am slandered. My sworn word stands against hearsay. Unless you have some better support than castle gossip, I defy the lie. Or—where did you have the tale? Have you traced it to its source? Who accuses me—is it you, dy Maroc?" He frowned at the courtier.

"Explain it, dy Maroc," dy Jironal invited, with a careless wave.

De Maroc took a breath. "I had it from an Ibran silk merchant that I dealt with for the roya's wardrobe—he recognized the castillar, he said, from the flogging block in Zagosur, and was very shocked to see him here. He said it was an ugly case—that the castillar had ravished the daughter of a man who took him in and gave him shelter, and he remembered it very well, therefore, because it was so vile."

Cazaril scratched his beard. "Are you sure he didn't simply mistake me for another man?"

Dy Maroc replied stiffly, "No, for he had your name."

Cazaril's eyes narrowed. No mistake here—it was a lie outright, bought and paid for. But whose tongue had been bought? The courtier's, or the merchant's?

"Where is this merchant now?" dy Sanda broke in.

"Led his pack train back to Ibra, before the snows."

Cazaril said, in a mild voice, "Just exactly when did you have this tale?"

Dy Maroc hesitated, apparently casting back, for his fingers twitched down by his side as if counting. "Three weeks gone, he rode out. It was just before he left that we talked."

I know who's lying now, yes. Cazaril's lip turned up, without humor. That there was a real silk merchant, who had really ridden out of Cardegoss on that date, he had no doubt. But the Ibran had departed well before Dondo's emerald bribe, and Dondo would not have troubled to invent this indirect route for getting rid of Cazaril until after he'd failed to purchase him direct. Unfortunately, this was not a line of reasoning Cazaril could adduce in his defense.

"The silk merchant," dy Maroc added, "could have had no reason to lie."

But you do. I wonder what it is? "You've known of this serious charge for over three weeks, yet only now have brought it to your lord's attention? How very odd of you, dy Maroc."

Dy Maroc glowered at him.

"If the Ibran's gone," said Orico querulously, "it's impossible to find out who is telling the truth."

"Then my lord dy Cazaril should surely be given the benefit of the doubt," said dy Sanda, standing sternly upright. "You may not know him, but the Provincara dy Baocia, who gave him this trust, did; he'd served her late husband some six or seven years, in all."

"In his youth," said dy Jironal. "Men do change, you know. Especially in the brutality of war. If there is any doubt of the man, he should not be trusted in such a critical and, dare I say it"—he glanced pointedly at Betriz—"tempting post."

Betriz's long, incensed inhalation was, perhaps fortunately, cut across by Iselle, who cried, "Oh, rubbish! In the midst of the brutality of war, you yourself gave this man the keys to the fortress of Gotorget, which was the anchor of Chalion's whole battle line in the north. You clearly trusted him enough then, March! Nor did he betray that trust."

Dy Jironal's jaw tightened, and he smiled thinly. "Why, how militant Chalion is grown, that our very maidens seek to give us better advice upon our strategies."

"They could hardly give us worse," growled Orico under his breath. Only a slight sideways flick of the eyes betrayed that dy Jironal had heard him.

Dy Sanda said, in a puzzled voice, "Yes, and why wasn't the castillar ransomed with the rest of his officers when you surrendered Gotorget, dy Jironal?"