Cazaril was the only one here with the air, if not the fact, of authority needed to carry out this next step. "You are going straight to your chamber, until your brother orders otherwise. I will escort you there."

"Take your hand off me!" Teidez yelped, as Cazaril's iron grip closed around his upper arm. But he did not quite dare to struggle against whatever he was seeing in Cazaril's face.

Cazaril said through his teeth, in a voice dripping false cordiality, "No, indeed. You are wounded, young lord, and I have a duty to help you to a physician." He added under his breath, to Teidez's ear alone, "And I will knock you flat and drag you, if I have to."

Teidez, recovering what dignity he could, grumbled to his guard captain, "Go quietly with them, then. I'll send for you later, when I have proved Lord Cazaril's error." Since his two captors had already spun the captain around and were marching him out, this ended up addressed to the Baocian's back, and fell a little flat. The injured grooms had crept up to Palli's side, and were trying to help him with Umegat. Palli glanced over his shoulder and gave Cazaril a quick, reassuring wave.

Cazaril nodded back, and, under the guise of lending support, strong-armed the royse out of the nightmarish abattoir he had made of the roya's menagerie. Too late, too late, too late... beat in his brain with every stride. Outside, the crows were no longer whirling and screaming in the air. They hopped about in agitation upon the cobbles, seeming as bewildered and directionless as Cazaril's own thoughts.

Still keeping a grip on Teidez, Cazaril marched him through the Zangre's gates, where, now, more guards had appeared. Teidez closed his lips on further protest, though his sullen, angry, and insulted expression boded no good for Cazaril later on. The royse scorned to favor his wounded leg, though it left a trail of bloodied footprints across the cobbles of the main courtyard.

Cazaril's attention was jerked leftward when one of Sara's waiting women and a page appeared in the doorway to Ias's Tower. "Hurry, hurry!" the woman urged the boy, who dashed toward the gates, white-faced. He nearly caromed off Cazaril in his haste.

"Where away, boy?" Cazaril called after him.

He turned and danced backward for a moment. "Temple, lord. Dare not stay—Royina Sara—the roya has collapsed!" He turned and sprinted in earnest through the gates; the guards stared at him, and, uneasily, back toward Ias's Tower.

Teidez's arm, beneath Cazaril's hand, lost its stiff resistance. Beneath his scowl, a scared look crept into his eyes, and he glanced aside warily at his self-appointed detainer.

After a moment's indecision, Cazaril, not letting go of Teidez, wheeled around and started for Ias's Tower instead. He hurried to catch up with the waiting woman, who had ducked back inside, and called after her, but she seemed not to hear him as she scurried up the end stairs. He was wheezing as he reached the third floor, where Orico kept his chambers. He stared in apprehension down its central corridor.

Royina Sara, her white shawl bundled about her and a woman at her heels, was hurrying up the hall. Cazaril bowed anxiously as she came to the staircase.

"My lady, what has happened? Can I help?"

She touched her hand to her frightened face. "I scarcely know yet, Castillar. Orico—he was reading aloud to me in my chambers while I stitched, as he sometimes does, for my solace, when suddenly he stopped, and blinked and rubbed his eyes, and said he could not see the words anymore, and that the room was all dark. But it wasn't! Then he fell from his chair. I cried for my ladies, and we put him in his bed, and have sent for a Temple physician."

"We saw the roya's page," Cazaril assured her. "He was running as fast as he could."

"Oh, good..."

"Was it an apoplexy, do you think?"

"I don't think... I don't know. He speaks a little, and his breath is not very labored... What was all that shouting, down by the stables, earlier?" Distractedly, not waiting for an answer, she passed him and mounted the stairs.

Teidez, his face gone leaden, licked his lips but said no more as Cazaril turned him around and led him down to the courtyard.

The royse did not find his voice again till they were mounting the stairs in the main block, where he repeated breathlessly, "It cannot be. Dondo told me the menagerie was black sorcery, a Roknari curse to keep Orico sick and weak. And I could see that it was so."

"A Roknari curse, there truly is, but the menagerie is a white miracle that keeps Orico alive despite it. Was. Till now," Cazaril added bitterly.

"No... no... it's all wrong. Dondo told me—"

"Dondo was mistaken." Cazaril hesitated briefly. "Or else Dondo wished to hurry the replacement of a roya who favored his elder brother with one who favored himself."

Teidez's lips parted in protest, but no sound came from them. Cazaril didn't think the royse could be feigning the shocked look in his eyes. The only mercy in this day, if mercy it was—Dondo might have misled Teidez, but he seemed not to have corrupted him, not to that extent. Teidez was tool, not co-conspirator, not a willing fratricide. Unfortunately, he was a tool that had kept on functioning after the workman's hand had fallen away. And whose fault was it that the boy swallowed down lies, when no one would feed him the truth?

The sallow fellow who was the royse's secretary-tutor looked up in surprise from his writing desk as Cazaril swung the boy into his chambers.

"Look to your master," Cazaril told him shortly. "He's injured. He is not to quit this building until Chancellor dy Jironal is informed what has occurred, and gives him leave." He added, with a little sour satisfaction, "If you knew of this outrage, and did nothing to prevent it, the chancellor will be furious with you."

The man paled in confusion; Cazaril turned his back on him. Now to go see what was happening with Umegat...

"But Lord Cazaril," Teidez's voice quavered. "What should I do?"

Cazaril spat over his shoulder, as he strode out again, "Pray."

As he turned onto the end stairs, Cazaril heard a woman's slippers scuffing rapidly on the steps. He looked up to find Lady Betriz, her lavender skirts trailing, hurrying down toward him.

"Lord Cazaril! What's going on? We heard shouting—one of the maids cried Royse Teidez has run mad, and tried to slay the roya's animals!"

"Not mad—misled. I think. And not tried—succeeded." In a few brief, bitter words, Cazaril described the horror in the stable block.

"But why?" Her voice was husky with shock.

Cazaril shook his head. "A lie of Lord Dondo's, nearly as I can tell. He convinced the royse that Umegat was a Roknari wizard using the animals to somehow poison the roya. Which turned the truth exactly backwards; the animals sustained Orico, and now he has collapsed. Five gods, I cannot explain it all here upon the stairs. Tell Royesse Iselle I will attend upon her soon, but first I must see to the injured grooms. Stay away—keep Iselle away from the menagerie." And if he didn't give Iselle action, she'd surely take it for herself... "Wait upon Sara, both of you; she's half-distracted."

Cazaril continued on down the stairs, past the place where he had been—deliberately?—decoyed away by his own pain, earlier. Dondo's demonic ghost made no move to grip him now.

Back at the menagerie, Cazaril found that the excellent Palli and his men had already carried off Umegat and the more seriously injured of the undergrooms to the Mother's hospital. The remaining groom was stumbling around trying to catch a hysterical little blue-and-yellow bird that had somehow escaped the Baocian guard captain and taken refuge in the upper cornices. Some servants from the stable had come over and were making awkward attempts to help; one had taken off his tabard and was sweeping it up, trying to knock the bird out of the air.