The Curse of Chalion - Lois McMaster Bujold [155]
Cazaril bent his head.
The crowd of courtiers in the antechamber and sitting room dispersed, but for Teidez’s secretary, who stood looking bereft and useless. Only the acolytes and servants whose task it now was to wash and prepare the royse’s body remained. The stunned and distraught chorus of cantors sang one last prayer, this time a threnody for the passage of the dead, their voices choked and wavering, and then they, too, turned to make their way out.
Cazaril was not sure if his head or his belly ached more. He fled into his own chamber at the end of the hallway, shut the door behind him, and braced himself for Dondo’s nightly onslaught, not, his knotting stomach told him, to be any further delayed.
His familiar cramps doubled him over as usual, but to his surprise, Dondo was silent tonight. Was he, too, daunted by Teidez’s death? If Dondo had intended the boy’s destruction to follow from Orico’s, he had it now—too late to serve any purpose he’d pursued in life.
Cazaril did not find the silence a respite. His heightened sensitivity to that malevolent presence assured him Dondo was still trapped within him. Hungry. Angry. Thinking? Intelligence had not been a notable characteristic of Dondo’s spewing before now. Perhaps the shock of his death was passing off. Leaving…what? A waiting. A stalking? Dondo had been a competent hunter, once.
It occurred to Cazaril that while the demon might seek only to fill its two soul-buckets and return to its master, Dondo likely did not share that desire. The belly of his best enemy was a hateful prison to him, but neither the Bastard’s purging hell nor the chilled forgetfulness of a gods-rejected ghost was a very satisfactory alternative fate. Exactly what else might be possible Cazaril could scarcely imagine, but he was intensely aware that if Dondo sought a physical form through which to reenter the world, his own was closest to hand. One way or another. His hands kneaded his belly, and he tried to decide, for the hundredth time, how fast his tumor was really growing.
The cramps and the wracking quarter hour of terror passed. Iselle’s request returned to his mind. Composing the necessary letter to Ista informing her of her son’s death would be excruciating; little wonder Iselle should desire assistance. Unequal to the task though Cazaril felt himself to be, whatever she asked of him in her grief and devastation he must undertake to supply. He uncurled himself, heaved out of bed, and climbed the stairs.
He found Iselle already seated at his antechamber desk, his best parchment, pens, and sealing wax laid out before her. Extra candles were lit all around the chamber, driving back the dark. Upon a square of silk, Betriz was just laying out and counting over an odd little pile of ornaments: brooches, rings, and the pale glowing heap of Dondo’s rope of pearls that Cazaril had not yet had opportunity to deliver to the Temple.
Iselle was frowning down at the blank page and turning her seal ring round and round on her thumb. She glanced up, and said in a low voice, “Good, you’re here. Close the door.”
He shut it quietly behind him. “At your service, Royesse.”
“I pray so, Cazaril: I pray so.” Her eyes searched him.
Betriz said, in a worried voice, “He is so sick, Iselle. Are you sure?”
“I am sure of nothing but that I have no time left. And no other choices.” She drew a long breath. “Cazaril, tomorrow morning I want you to ride to Ibra as my envoy to arrange my marriage to Royse Bergon.”
Cazaril blinked, laboring to catch up with a baggage train of thought evidently already far down the road. “Chancellor dy Jironal will never let me leave.”
“Of course it can’t be openly.” Iselle made an impatient gesture. “So you will ride first to Valenda, which is nearly on the way, as my personal courier to take the news of my brother’s death to my mother. Dy Jironal will agree, delighted, he’ll think, to see the back of you—he’ll doubtless even lend you a courier’s baton by which to commandeer horses from the Chancellery