The Provincara drew in her breath. The warder, who had been leaning farther and farther forward in his seat during this recital, burst out, "You protested, surely!"

"Oh, five gods, yes. I protested all the way to Visping. I was still protesting as they dragged me up the gangplank and chained me to my oar. I kept protesting till we put to sea, and then I... learned not to." He smiled again. It felt like a clown's mask. Happily, no one seized on that weak error.

"I was on one ship or another for... for a long time." Nineteen months, eight days, he had counted it out later. At the time, he could not have told one day from the next. "And then I had the greatest piece of good fortune, for my corsair ran afoul of a fleet of the roya of Ibra, out on maneuvers. I assure you Ibra's volunteers rowed better than we did, and they soon ran us down."

Two men had been beheaded in their chains by the increasingly desperate Roknari, for deliberately—or accidentally—fouling their oars. One of them had been sitting near Cazaril, his benchmate for months. Some of the spurting blood had got in his mouth; he could still half taste it, when he made the mistake of thinking of it. He could taste it now. When the corsair was taken, the Ibrans had trailed the Roknari, some still half-alive, behind the ship on ropes made of their own guts, till the great fishes had eaten them. Some of the freed galley slaves had helped row, with a will. Cazaril could not. That last flaying had brought him within hours of being cast overboard by the Roknari galley master as broken and useless. He'd sat on the deck, muscles twitching uncontrollably, and wept.

"The good Ibrans put me ashore in Zagosur, where I fell ill for a few months. You know how it is with men when a long strain is removed of a sudden. They can grow... rather childish." He smiled apologetically around the room. For him, it had been collapse and fever, till his back half healed; then dysentery; then an ague. And, throughout it all, the bouts of inconsolable weeping. He'd wept when an acolyte offered him dinner. When the sun came out. When the sun went in. When a cat startled him. When he was led to bed. Or at any time, for no cause. "The Temple Hospital of the Mother's Mercy took me in. When I felt a little better"—when the weeping had tailed mostly off, and the acolytes had decided he was not mad, merely nervous—"they gave me a little money, and I walked here. I was three weeks on the road."

The room was dead silent.

He looked up, to see that the Provincara's lips had gone tight with anger. Terror wrenched his empty stomach. "It was the only place I could think of!" he excused himself hastily. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

The warder blew out his breath and sat back, staring at Cazaril. The lady companion's eyes were wide.

In a vibrating voice, the Provincara declared, "You are the Castillar dy Cazaril. They should have given you a horse. They should have given you an escort."

Cazaril's hands flapped in frightened denial. "No, no, my lady! It was... it was enough." Well, almost. He realized, after an unsteady blink, that her anger wasn't at him. Oh. His throat tightened, and the room blurred. No, not again, not here... He hurried on. "I wished to place myself in your service, lady, if you can find any use for me. I admit I... can't do much. Just now."

The Provincara sat back, her chin resting lightly on her hand, and studied him. After a moment, she said, "You used to play the lute very pleasantly, when you were a page."

"Uh..." Cazaril's crooked, callused hands tried to hide themselves in each other for a spasmodic instant. He smiled in renewed apology, and displayed them briefly on his knees. "I think not now, my lady."

She leaned forward; her gaze rested for a moment on his half-mangled left. "I see." She sat back again, pursing her lips. "I remember you read all the books in my husband's library. The master of the pages was always complaining of you for that. I told him to leave you alone. You aspired to be a poet, as I recall."

Cazaril was not sure his right hand could close around a pen, at present. "I believe Chalion was saved from a deal of bad poetry, when I went off to war."

She shrugged her shoulders. "Come, come, Castillar, you quite daunt me with your offer of service. I'm not sure poor Valenda has posts enough to occupy you. You've been a courtier—a captain—a castle warder—a courier—"

"I haven't been a courtier since before Roya Ias died, my lady. As a captain... I helped lose the battle of Dalus." And rotted for nearly a year in the dungeons of the royacy of Brajar, thereafter. "As a castle warder, well, we lost the siege. As a courier, I was nearly hanged as a spy. Twice." He brooded. And three times put to the torture in violation of parley. "Now... now, well, I know how to row boats. And five ways of preparing a dish of rats."

I could relish a mighty dish of rat right now, in fact.

He did not know what she read in his face, for all that her sharp old eyes probed him. Perhaps it was exhaustion, but he hoped it was hunger. He was fairly sure it was hunger, for she at last smiled crookedly.

"Then come to supper with us, Castillar, though I'm afraid my cook cannot offer you rat. They are not in season, in peaceful Valenda. I shall think on your petition."

He nodded mute thanks, not trusting his voice to not break.

IT BEING STILL WINTER, THE MAIN MEAL OF THE household's day had been taken at noon, formally, in the great hall. The evening supper was a lighter repast, featuring, by the Provincara's economy, the leftover breads and meats from noon, but by her pride, the very best of them, supplemented by a generous libation of her excellent wines. In the shimmering heat of the high plains summer, the procedure would be reversed; nuncheon would be light fare, and the main meal taken after nightfall, when Baocians of all degrees took to their cooler courtyards to eat by lantern light.

They sat down only eight, in an intimate chamber in a new building quite near the kitchens. The Provincara took the center of the table, and placed Cazaril on her honored right. Cazaril was daunted to find the Royesse Iselle on his other side, and the Royse Teidez across from her. He took heart again when the royse chose to while away the wait for all to be seated by flicking bread-balls at his older sister, a maneuver sternly suppressed by his grandmother. A retaliatory gleam in the royesse's eye was only sidetracked, Cazaril judged, by some timely distraction from her companion Betriz, seated across and a little down from him.

Lady Betriz smiled across the board at Cazaril in friendly curiosity, revealing an elusive dimple, and seemed about to speak, but then the servant passed among them with a basin for hand-washing. The warm water was scented with verbena. Cazaril's hands shook as he dipped and wiped them on the fine linen towel, a weakness he concealed as soon as he might by hiding them in his lap. The chair directly across from him remained empty.

Cazaril nodded to it, and asked the Provincara diffidently, "Will the dowager royina be joining us, Your Grace?"

Her lips pressed closed. "Ista is not well enough tonight, unfortunately. She... takes most of her meals in her chamber."

Cazaril quelled a moment of unease, and resolved to ask someone else, later, exactly what troubled the royse and royesse's mother. That brief compression suggested something chronic, or lingering, or too painful to be discussed. Her long widowhood had spared Ista the further dangers of childbirth that were the bane of young women, but then there were all those frightening female disorders that overtook matrons... As Roya Ias's second wife, Ista had been wed in his middle age when his son and heir Orico was already full-grown. In the little time Cazaril had been at the court of Chalion, years ago, he had watched her only from a discreet distance; she'd seemed happy, the light of the roya's eye when the marriage was new. Ias had doted upon toddler Iselle and upon Teidez, a babe in the nurse's arms.