"That's right." Cazaril's voice went oddly calm; his heart, which had sped, slowed. His lips drew back in a strange grin. "That's right," he breathed again.

Cazaril held up his left hand, palm out, and with his right jerked out his belt knife, last used for cutting bread at supper. Dy Joal's hand spasmed on his sword hilt, and he half drew.

"Not within the roya's hall!" cried dy Maroc anxiously. "You know you must take it outside, dy Joal! By the Brother, he has no sword, you cannot!"

Dy Joal hesitated; Cazaril, instead of advancing toward him, shook back his left sleeve—and drew his knife blade shallowly across his own wrist. Cazaril felt no pain, none. Blood welled, gleaming dark carmine in the candlelight, though not spurting dangerously. A kind of haze clouded his vision, blocking out everyone but himself and the now uncertainly grinning young fool who'd hustled him for a touch. I'll give you touch. He spun his knife back into its belt sheath. Dy Joal, not yet wary enough, let his sword slide back and lifted his hand from it. Smiling, Cazaril held up his hands, one arm bleeding, the other bare. Then he lunged.

He caught up the shocked dy Joal and bore him backward to the wall, where he landed with a thump that reverberated down the corridor, one arm trapped behind him. Cazaril's right hand pressed under dy Joal's chin, lifting him from his feet and pinning him to the wall by his neck. Cazaril's right knee ground into dy Joal's groin. He kept up the pressure, to deny dy Joal his trapped arm; the other clawed at him, and he pinned it, too, to the wall. Dy Joal's wrist twisted in the slippery blood of his grip, but could not break free. The purpling young man did not, of course, cry out, though his eyes rolled whitely, and a grunting gargle broke from his lips. His heels hammered the wall. The bravos knew Cazaril's crooked hands had held a pen; they'd forgotten he'd held an oar. Dy Joal wasn't going anywhere now.

Cazaril snarled in his ear, low-voiced but audible to all, "I don't duel, boy. I kill as a soldier kills, which is as a butcher kills, as quickly, efficiently, and with as least risk to myself as I can arrange. If I decide you die, you will die when I choose, where I choose, by what means I choose, and you will never see the blow coming." He released dy Joal's now-enfeebled arm and brought his left wrist up, and pressed the bloody cut to his terrified victim's half-open, trembling mouth. "You want three drops of my blood, for your honor? You shall drink them." Blood and spittle spurted around dy Joal's chattering teeth, but the bravo didn't even dare try to bite, now. "Drink, damn you!" Cazaril pressed harder, smearing blood all over dy Joal's face, fascinated with the vividness of it, red streaks on livid skin, the catch of rough beard stubble against his wrist, the bright blur of the candlelight reflected in the welling tears spilling from the staring eyes. He stared into them, watching them cloud.

"Cazaril, for the gods' sake let him breathe." Dy Maroc's distressed cry broke through Cazaril's red fog.

Cazaril reduced the pressure of his grip, and dy Joal inhaled, shuddering. Keeping his knee in place, Cazaril drew back his bloodied left hand in a fist, and placed, very precisely, a hard blow to the bravo's stomach that shook the air again; dy Joal's knees jerked up with it. Only then did Cazaril step back and release the man.

Dy Joal fell to the floor and bent over himself, gasping and choking, weeping, not even trying to get up. After a moment, he vomited.

Cazaril stepped across the mess of food and wine and bile toward Urrac, who lurched backward until stopped by the far wall. Cazaril leaned into his face and repeated softly, "I don't duel. But if you seek to die like a bludgeoned steer, cross me again."

He turned on his heel; dy Maroc's face, drained white, wavered past his vision, hissing, "Cazaril, have you gone mad?"

"Try me." Cazaril grinned fiercely at him. Dy Maroc fell back. Cazaril strode down the corridor past a blur of men, blood drops still spattering off his fingers as he swung his arms, and out into the chill shock of the night. The closing door cut off a rising babble of voices.

He almost ran across the icy cobbles of the courtyard toward the main block and refuge, both his steps and his breath growing faster and less even as something—sanity, delayed terror?—-seeped back into his mind. His belly cramped violently as he mounted the stone stairs. His fingers shook so badly as he fumbled out his key to let himself into his bedchamber that he dropped it twice and had to use both hands, braced against the door, to finally guide it into the lock. He locked the door again behind him, and fell, wheezing and groaning, across his bed. His attendant ghosts had fled into hiding during the confrontation, their desertion unnoticed by him at the time. He rolled onto his side, and curled around his aching stomach. Now, at last, his cut wrist began to throb. So did his head.

He'd seen men go berserk a few times, in the madness of battle. He'd just never imagined what it must feel like from the inside, before. No one had mentioned the floating exhilaration, intoxicating as wine or sex. An unusual, but natural, result of nerves, mortality, and fright, jammed together in too small a space, too short a time. Not unnatural. Not... the thing in his belly reaching out to twist and taunt and trick him into death, and its own release... .

Oh.

You know what you did to Dondo. Now you know what Dondo is doing to you.

It was by chance, late the following morning, that Cazaril spied Orico ambling out the Zangre gates toward the menagerie with only a page at his heels. Cazaril tucked the letters he'd been carrying to the Chancellery office into the inner pocket of his vest-cloak, turned from the door of Ias's Tower, and followed. The roya's master of the chamber had earlier refused to disturb his lord's after-breakfast nap; clearly, Orico had finally roused himself and now sought comfort and solace among his animals. Cazaril wondered if the roya had awoken with as bad a headache as he had.

As he strode across the cobbles, Cazaril marshaled his arguments. If the roya feared action, Cazaril would point out that inaction was equally likely to be bent to ill by the curse's malign influence. If the roya insisted that the children were too young, he would note that they should not then have been ordered to Cardegoss in the first place. But now that they were here, if Orico could not protect them then he had an obligation to both Chalion and the children to tell them of their danger. Cazaril would call on Umegat to confirm that the roya could not, did not, in fact, hold the curse all to himself. Do not send them blindfolded into battle he would plead, and hope Palli's cry would strike Orico as much to the heart as it had him. And if it didn't...

If he took this into his own hands, should he first tell Teidez, as Heir of Chalion, and appeal for his aid in protecting his sister? Or Iselle, and enlist her help in managing the more difficult Teidez? The second choice would better allow him to hide his complicity behind the royesse's skirts, but only if the secret of his guilt survived her shrewd cross-examination.

A scraping of hooves broke into his self-absorption. He looked up just in time to dodge from the path of the cavalcade starting out from the stables. Royse Teidez, mounted on his fine black horse, led a party of his Baocian guards, their captain and two men. The royse's black-and-lavender mourning garb made his round face appear drawn and pale in the winter sunlight. Dondo's green stone glinted on the guard captain's hand, raised to return Cazaril's polite salute.

"Where away, Royse?" Cazaril called. "Do you hunt?" The party was armed for it, with spears and crossbows, swords and cudgels.