Iselle looked the physician over and nodded satisfaction. "Dedicat Rojeras, please examine my secretary and report back to me."

"Royesse, I don't need to see a physician!" And I most especially don't need a physician to see me.

"Then all we shall waste is a trifle of time," Iselle countered, "which the gods give us each day all the same. Upon pain of my displeasure, I order you to go with him, Cazaril." There was no mistaking the determination in her voice.

Damn Palli, for not only putting this into her head, but teaching her how to block his escape. Iselle was too quick a study. Still... the physician would either diagnose a miracle, or he would not. If he did, Cazaril could call for Umegat, and let the saint, with his undoubted high connections to the Temple, deal with it. And if not, what harm was in it?

Cazaril bowed obedient, if stiffly offended, assent, and led his unwelcome visitor downstairs to his bedchamber. Lady Betriz followed, to see that her royal mistress's orders were carried out. She offered him a quick apologetic smile, but her eyes were apprehensive as Cazaril closed his door upon her.

Shut in with Cazaril, the physician made him sit by the window while he felt his pulse and peered into his eyes, ears, and throat. He bade Cazaril make water, which he sniffed and studied in a glass tube held up to the light. He inquired after Cazaril's bowels, and Cazaril reluctantly admitted to the blood. Then Cazaril was required to undress and lie down, and suffer to have his heart and breathing listened to by the man's ear pressed to his chest, and be poked and prodded all over his body by the cool, quick fingers. Cazaril had to explain how he came by his flogging scars; Rojeras's comments upon them were limited to some hair-raising suggestions of how he might rid Cazaril of his remaining adhesions, should Cazaril desire it and gather the nerve. Withal, Cazaril thought he would prefer to wait and fall off another horse, and said so, which only made Rojeras chuckle.

Rojeras's smile faded as he returned to a more careful, and deeper, probing of Cazaril's belly, feeling and leaning this way and that. "Pain here?"

Cazaril, determined to pass this off, said firmly, "No."

"How about when I do this?"

Cazaril yelped.

"Ah. Some pain, then." More poking. More wincing. Rojeras paused for a time, his fingertips just resting on Cazaril's belly, his gaze abstracted. Then he seemed to shake himself awake. He reminded Cazaril of Umegat.

Rojeras still smiled as Cazaril dressed himself again, but his eyes were shadowed with thought.

Cazaril offered encouragingly, "Speak, Dedicat. I am a man of reason, and will not fall to pieces."

"Is it so? Good." Rojeras took a breath and said plainly, "My lord, you have a most palpable tumor."

"Is... that it," said Cazaril, gingerly seating himself again in his chair.

Rojeras looked up swiftly. "This does not surprise you?"

Not as much as my last diagnosis did. Cazaril thought longingly of what a relief it would be to learn that his recurring belly cramp was such a natural, normal lethality. Alas, he was quite certain that most people's tumors didn't scream obscenities at them in the middle of the night. "I have had reasons to think something was not right. But what does this mean? What do you think will happen?" He kept his voice as neutral as possible.

"Well..." Rojeras sat on the edge of Cazaril's vacated bed and laced his fingers together. "There are so many kinds of these growths. Some are diffuse, some knotted or encapsulated, some kill swiftly, some sit there for years and hardly seem to give trouble at all. Yours seems to be encapsulated, which is hopeful. There is one common sort, a kind of cyst that fills with liquid, that one woman I cared for held for over twelve years."

"Oh," said Cazaril, and produced a heartened smile.

"It grew to over a hundred pounds by the time she died," the physician went on. Cazaril recoiled, but Rojeras continued blithely, "And there is another, a most interesting one that I have only seen twice in my years of study—a round mass that, when opened, proved to contain knots of flesh with hair and teeth and bones. One was in a woman's belly, which almost made sense, but another was in a man's leg. I theorize that they were engendered by an escaped demon, trying to grow to human form. If the demon had succeeded, I posit that it might have chewed its way out and entered the world in fleshly form, which would surely have been an abomination. I have for long wished to find such another one in a patient who was still alive, that I might study it and see if my theory is so." He eyed Cazaril in speculation.

With the greatest effort, Cazaril kept himself from jolting up and screaming. He glanced down at his swollen belly in terror, and carefully away. He had thought his affliction spiritual, not physical. It had not occurred to him that it could be both at once. This was an intrusion of the supernatural into the solid that seemed all too plausible, given his case. He choked out, "Do they grow to a hundred pounds, too?"

"The two I excised were much smaller," Rojeras assured him.

Cazaril looked up in sudden hope. "You can cut them out, then?"

"Oh—only from dead persons," said the physician apologetically.

"But, but... might it be done?" If a man were brave enough to lie down and offer himself in cold blood to razor-edged steel... if the abomination could be carved out with the brutal speed of an amputation... Was it possible to physically excise a miracle, if that miracle were in fact made flesh?

Rojeras shook his head. "On an arm or a leg, maybe. But this... You were a soldier—you've surely seen what happens with dirty belly wounds. Even if you chanced to survive the shock and pain of the cutting, the fever would kill you within a few days." His voice grew more earnest. "I have tried it three times, and only because my patients threatened to kill themselves if I would not try. They all died. I don't care to kill any more good people that way. Do not tease and torment yourself with such desperate impossibilities. Take what you can of life meantime, and pray."

It was praying that got me into this—or this into me... "Do not tell the royesse!"

"My lord," said the physician gravely, "I must."

"But I must not—not now—she must not dismiss me to my bed! I cannot leave her side!" Cazaril's voice rose in panic.

Rojeras's brows rose. "Your loyalty commends you, Lord Cazaril. Calm yourself! There is no need for you to take to your bed before you feel the need. Indeed, such light duties as may come your way in her service may occupy your mind and help you to compose your soul."

Cazaril breathed deeply, and decided not to disabuse Rojeras of his pleasant illusions about service to the House of Chalion. "As long as you make it clear that I am not to be exiled from my post."

"As long as you grasp that this is not a license to exert yourself unduly," Rojeras returned sternly. "You are plainly in need of more rest than you have allowed yourself."

Cazaril nodded hasty agreement, trying to look at once biddable and energetic.

"There is one other important thing," Rojeras added, stirring as if to take his leave but not yet rising. "I only ask this because, as you say, you are a man of reason, and I think you might understand."

"Yes?" said Cazaril warily.

"Upon your death—long delayed, we must pray—may I have your note of hand saying I might cut out your tumor for my collection?"

"You collect such horrors?" Cazaril grimaced. "Most men content themselves with paintings, or old swords, or ivory carvings." Offense struggled with curiosity, and lost. "Um... how do you keep them?"

"In jars of wine spirits." Rojeras smiled, a faint embarrassed flush coloring his fair skin. "I know it sounds gruesome, but I keep hoping... if only I learn enough, someday I will understand, someday I will be able to find some way to keep these things from killing people."