The Curse of Chalion - Lois McMaster Bujold [151]
“Is he punished?” he asked her.
She rubbed the back of her neck in a weary gesture. “How do I know? Head injuries are the strangest of all. I once saw a woman whose eyes appeared wholly undamaged go blind from a blow to the back of her head. I’ve seen people lose speech, lose control of half their body but not the other half. Are they punished? If so, the gods are evil, and that I do not believe. I think it is chance.”
I think the gods load the dice. He wanted to urge her to take good care of Umegat, but clearly she already was doing so, and he didn’t want to sound frantic, or as though he doubted her skill or dedication. He bade her a polite good morning instead, and took himself off to track down the archdivine and apprise him of the ugly turn of Teidez’s wound.
He found Archdivine Mendenal in the temple at the Mother’s altar, celebrating a ceremony of blessing upon a rich leather merchant’s wife and newborn daughter. Cazaril perforce waited until the family had laid their thanksgiving offerings and filed out again before approaching him and murmuring his news. Mendenal turned pale, and hurried off to the Zangre at once.
Cazaril had developed unsettling new views of the efficacy and safety of prayer, but laid himself down on the cold pavement before the Mother’s altar anyway, thinking of Ista. If there was little hope of mercy for Teidez’s own sake, lured into violent sacrilege and left there by Dondo, surely the Mother might spare some pity for his mother Ista? The goddess’s message to him via Her acolyte’s dream the other day had sounded merciful. In a way. Though it might prove to be merely brutally practical. Prone on the polished patterned slates, he could feel the lethal lump in his belly, an uncomfortable mass seeming the size of his doubled fists.
He rose at length and sought out Palli at Provincar dy Yarrin’s narrow old stone palace. Cazaril was conducted by a servant to a guest chamber at the back of the house. Palli was seated at a small table, writing in a ledger, but laid his quill aside when Cazaril entered and motioned his visitor to a chair across from him.
As soon as the servant had shut the door behind him Cazaril leaned forward and said, “Palli, could you, at need, ride courier to Ibra in secret for the Royesse Iselle?”
Palli’s brows climbed. “When?”
“Soon.”
He shook his head. “If by soon you mean now, I think not. I am much taken up with my duties as a lord dedicat—I have promised dy Yarrin my voice and my vote in the Council.”
“You could leave a proxy with dy Yarrin, or some other trusted comrade.”
Palli rubbed his shaven chin, and vented a dubious, “Hm.”
Cazaril considered claiming to be a saint of the Daughter, and pulling rank on Palli, dy Yarrin, and their entire military order. It would require complicated explanations. It would require divulging the secret of Fonsa’s curse. It would entail not merely admitting, but asserting, his…peculiar disorder. God-touched. God-ravished. And sounding as mad or madder than Ista ever had. He compromised. “I think this may be the Daughter’s business.”
Palli’s lips screwed up. “How can you tell?”
“I just can.”
“Well, I can’t.”
“Wait, I know. Before you go to sleep tonight, pray for guidance.”
“Me? Why don’t you?”
“My nights are…full.”
“And since when did you believe in prophetic dreams? I thought you always claimed it was nonsense, people fooling themselves, or pretending to an importance they could otherwise never claim.”
“It’s a…recent conversion. Look, Palli. Just do it for, for the experiment. To please me, if you will.”
Palli made a surrendering gesture. “For you, yes. For the rest of it…” His black brows lowered. “Ibra…? Just who would I be riding in secret from?”
“Dy Jironal. Mostly.”
“Oh? Dy Yarrin might be interested in that. Something in it for him?”
“Not in any direct way, I