"This binds the dy Jironals to me—and to Teidez."

"Say rather, it binds us to them! The advantage is a trifle one-sided, I think!"

"You said you did not wish to marry a Roknari prince, and I have not given you to one. And it wasn't for lack of offers—I've refused two this season. Think on that, and be grateful, dear sister!"

Cazaril wasn't sure if Orico was threatening or pleading.

He went on, "You didn't wish to leave Chalion. Very well, you shall not leave Chalion. You wanted to marry a Quintarian lord—I have given you one, a holy general at that! Besides," he went on with a petulant shrug, "if I gave you to a power too close to my borders, they might use you as an excuse to claim some of my lands. I do well, with this, for the future peace of Chalion."

"Lord Dondo is forty years old! He's a corrupt, impious thief! An embezzler! A libertine! Worse! Orico, you cannot do this to me!" Her voice was rising.

"I'll not hear you," said Orico, and actually put his hands over his ears. "Three days. Compose your mind and see to your wardrobe." He fled her as if she were a burning tower. "I'll not hear this!"

He meant it. Four times that afternoon she attempted to seek him in his quarters to further her plea, and four times he had his guards repulse her. After that, he rode out of the Zangre altogether, to take up residence in a hunting lodge deep in the oak woods, a move of remarkable cowardice. Cazaril could only hope its roof leaked icy rain on the royal head.

Cazaril slept badly that night. Venturing upstairs in the morning, he found three frayed women who appeared to have not slept at all.

Iselle, heavy-eyed, drew him by the sleeve into her sitting chamber, sat him down on the window seat, and lowered her voice to a fierce whisper.

"Cazaril. Can you get four horses? Or three? Or two, or even one? I've thought it through. I spent all night thinking it through. The only answer is to fly."

He sighed. "I thought it through, too. First, I am watched. When I went to leave the Zangre last night, two of the roya's guards followed me. To protect me, they said. I might be able to kill or bribe one—I doubt two."

"We could ride out as if we were hunting," argued Iselle.

"In the rain?" Cazaril gestured to the steady mizzle still coming down outside the high window, fogging the valley so that one could not even see the river below, turning the bare tree branches to black ink marks in the gray. "And even if they let us ride out, they'd be sure to send an armed escort."

"If we could get any kind of a head start—"

"And if we could, what then? If—when!—they overtook us on the road, the first thing they would do is pull me from my horse and cut off my head, and leave my body for the foxes and crows. And then they would take you back. And if by some miracle they didn't catch us, where would we go?"

"A border. Any border."

"Brajar and South Ibra would send you right back, to please Orico. The five princedoms or the Fox of Ibra would take you hostage. Darthaca... presupposes we could make it across half of Chalion and all of South Ibra. I fear not, Royesse."

"What else can I do?" Her young voice was edged with desperation.

"No one can force a marriage. Both parties must freely assent before the gods. If you have the courage to simply stand there and say No, it cannot go forth. Can you not find it in yourself to do so?"

Her lips tightened. "Of course I could. Then what? Now I think you are the one who has not thought it through. Do you think Lord Dondo would just give up, at that point?"

He shook his head. "It's not valid if they force it, and everyone knows it. Just hold on to that thought."

She shook her head in something between grief and exasperation. "You don't understand."

He'd have taken that for the wail of youth everywhere, till Dondo himself came that afternoon to the royesse's chamber to persuade his betrothed to a more seemly compliance. The doors were left open to the royesse's sitting room, but an armed guard stood at each, keeping back both Cazaril on one side and Nan dy Vrit and Betriz on the other. He did not catch one word in three of the furious undervoiced argument that raged between the thickset courtier and the red-haired maiden. But at the end of it Dondo stalked out with a look of savage satisfaction on his face, and Iselle collapsed on the window seat nearly unable to breathe, so torn was she between terror and fury.

She clutched Betriz and choked out, "He said... if I did not make the responses, he would take me anyway. I said, Orico would never let you rape his sister. He said, why not? He let us rape his wife. When Royina Sara would not conceive, and could not conceive, and Orico was too impotent to get a bastard no matter how many ladies and maidens and whores they brought to him, and, and even more disgusting things, the Jironals finally persuaded him to let them in upon her, and try... Dondo said, he and his brother tried every night for a year, one at a time or both together, till she threatened to kill herself. He said he would roger me till he'd planted his fruit in my womb, and when I was ripe to bursting, I'd hang on him as husband hard enough." She blinked blurry eyes at Cazaril, her lips drawn back on clenched teeth. "He said, my belly would grow very big indeed, because I am short. How much courage do I need for that simple No, Cazaril, do you think? And what happens when courage makes no difference at all, at all?"

I thought the only place that courage didn't matter was on a Roknari slave galley. I was wrong. He whispered abjectly, "I do not know, Royesse."

Trapped and desperate, she fell to fasting and prayer; Nan and Betriz helped to set up a portable altar to the gods in her chambers and collected all the symbols of the Lady of Spring they could find to decorate it. Cazaril, trailed by his two guards, walked down into Cardegoss and found a flower-seller with forced violets, out of season, and brought them back to put in a glass jar of water on the altar. He felt stupid and helpless, though the royesse dropped a tear on his hand when she thanked him. Taking neither food nor drink, she lay back down on the floor in the attitude of deepest supplication, so like Royina Ista when Cazaril had first caught sight of her in the Provincara's ancestors' hall that he was unnerved, and fled the room. He spent hours, walking about the Zangre, trying to think, thinking only of horrors.

Late that evening, the Lady Betriz called him up to the office antechamber that was rapidly becoming a place of hectic nightmare.

"I have the answer!" she told him. "Cazaril, teach me how to kill a man with a knife."

"What?"

"Dondo's guards know enough not to let you close to him. But I will be standing beside Iselle on her wedding morning, to be her witness, and make the responses. No one will expect it of me. I'll hide the knife in my bodice. When Dondo comes close, and bends to kiss her hand, I can strike at him, two, three times before anyone can stop me. But I don't know just how and where to cut, to be sure. The neck, yes, but what part?" Earnestly, she drew a heavy dirk out from behind her skirts and held it out to him. "Show me. We can practice, till I have it very smooth and fast."

"Gods, no, Lady Betriz! Give up this mad plan! They would strike you down—they'd hang you, afterward!"

"Provided only I was able to kill Dondo first, I'd go gladly to the gallows. I swore to guard Iselle with my life. Well, so." Her brown eyes burned in her white face.

"No," he said firmly, taking the knife and not giving it back. Where had she obtained it, anyway? "This is no work for a woman."

"I'd say it's work for whoever has a chance at it. My chance is best. Show me!"

"Look, no. Just... wait. I'll, I'll try something, find what I can do."