Paladin of Souls - Lois McMaster Bujold [95]
Liss’s brows drew in, as she studied the still form. “Have you served him long?”
“Going on three years.”
“As a groom?”
“Groom, sergeant, messenger, dogsbody, whatever. ‘Tendant, now. The others, they’re too spooked. Afraid to touch him. I’m the only one who does it really right.”
She cocked her head to one side; her puzzled frown did not diminish. “Why does he wear his hair in the Roknari style? Though I must say, it suits him.”
“He goes there. Went there. As the march’s scout. He was good enough to pass, knows the tongue—his father’s mother was Roknari, for all she learned to sign the Five, he told me once.”
Footsteps sounded outside, and he looked up in trepidation. The door opened. Lady Cattilara’s voice said sharply, “Goram, what are you about? I heard voices—oh. I beg your pardon, Royina.”
Ista turned, crossing her arms; Lady Cattilara dipped in a curtsey, though she shot a brief scowl at the groom. She wore an apron over the fine dress she’d appeared in at dinner, and she was trailed by a maid bearing a covered pitcher. Her eyes widened a little as they passed over the courtly garb of the patient. She breathed out through her nostrils, an incensed huff.
Goram hunched, dropping his gaze, and took refuge in a sudden renewal of his unintelligible mumble.
Ista was moved by his hangdog look to try to spare him trouble. “You must excuse Goram,” she said smoothly. “I asked him if I might view Lord Illvin, because . . .” Yes, why? To see if he resembled his brother? No, that was weak. To see if he resembled my dreams? Worse. “I perceived Lord Arhys was most troubled by his plight. I’ve decided to write to a certain highly experienced physician of my acquaintance in Valenda, Learned Tovia, to see if she might have any advice in the case. So I wished to be able to describe him and his symptoms very exactly. She is a stickler for precision in her diagnoses.”
“That is extremely kind of you, Royina, to offer your own physician,” said Lady Cattilara, looking touched. “My husband is grieved indeed by his brother’s tragedy. If the master physicians we have sent for continue to prove unwilling to travel so far—such adepts tend to be old, we are finding—we should be most grateful for such aid.” She cast a doubtful glance at the maid with the pitcher. “Do you think she would want to know how we feed him the goat’s milk? I’m afraid the process is not very pretty. Sometimes he chokes it up.”
The implications were clear, sinister, and repulsive. Given all the labor to which Goram had gone to present his fallen master in the most dignified possible light, Ista had no heart to watch that long body stripped of its courtly adornment and subjected to indignities, however necessary. “I expect Learned Tovia is well acquainted with all the tricks of nursing. I do not think I need to mark it.”
Lady Cattilara looked relieved. With a carry-on gesture to the maid and Goram, she ushered Ista and Liss back out onto the gallery, and walked with them toward Ista’s chambers. Twilight was gathering; the courtyard was altogether in shadow, though the highest clouds glowed peach against the deepening blue.
“Goram is a very dutiful man,” Cattilara said apologetically to Ista, “but I’m afraid he’s more than a trifle simple. Though he is by far the best of Lord Illvin’s men who have undertaken to attend him. They are too horrified, I think. Goram had a rougher life, before, and is not squeamish. I could not begin to manage Illvin without him.”
Goram’s tongue was simple, but his hands were not, in Ista’s judgment, for all that he seemed the exemplar of a lack-witted attendant. “He appears to have a rare loyalty to Lord Illvin.”
“No great wonder. I believe he had been an officer’s servant, in his younger days, and been captured by the Roknari during one of Roya Orico’s ill-fated campaigns, and sold as a slave to the Quadrenes. In any case, Illvin retrieved him—on one of his trips