The Curse of Chalion - Lois McMaster Bujold [17]
An attractive, fresh young royesse was a pawn, not a player, in the politics of Chalion. Her bride-price would come high, but a politically and financially favorable marriage might not necessarily prove a good one in more intimate senses. The Dowager Provincara had been fortunate in her personal life, but in her long years had doubtless had opportunity to observe the whole range of marital fates awaiting highborn women. Would Iselle be sent to far Darthaca? Married off to some cousin in the too-close-related royacy of Brajar? Gods forbid she should be bartered away to the Roknari to seal some temporary peace, exiled to the Archipelago.
She studied him sidelong, in the light from the lavish branches of candles she had always favored. “How old are you now, Castillar? I thought you were about thirteen when your father sent you to serve my dear Provincar.”
“About that, yes, Your Grace. I’m thirty-five.”
“Ha. You should shave off that nasty mess growing out of your face, then. It makes you look fifteen years older than you are.”
Cazaril considered some quip about a turn in the Roknari galleys being very aging to a man, but he wasn’t quite up to it. Instead he said, “I hope I did not annoy the royse with my maunderings, my lady.”
“I believe you actually made young Teidez stop and think. A rare event. I wish his tutor could manage it more often.” She drummed her thin fingers briefly on the cloth and drained the last of her tiny glass of wine. She set it down, and added, “I don’t know what flea-ridden inn you’ve put up at down in town, Castillar, but I’ll dispatch a page for your things. You’ll lodge here tonight.”
“Thank you, Your Grace. I accept with gratitude.” And alacrity. Thank the gods, oh, five times five, he was gathered in, at least temporarily. He hesitated, embarrassed. “But, ah…it won’t be necessary to trouble your page.”
She raised a brow at him. “That’s what they exist for. As you may recall.”
“Yes, but”—he smiled briefly, and gestured down himself—“these are my things.”
At her pained look, he added weakly, “I had less, when I fell off the Ibran galley in Zagosur.” He’d been dressed in a breechclout of surpassing filthiness, and scabs. The acolytes had burned the rag at their first opportunity.
“Then my page,” said the Provincara in a precise voice, still regarding him levelly, “will escort you to your chamber. My lord Castillar.”
She added, as she made to rise, and her cousin-companion hastened to assist her, “We’ll speak again tomorrow.”
THE CHAMBER WAS ONE IN THE OLD KEEP RESERVED for honored guests, more on account of having been slept in by several historical royas than for its absolute comfort; Cazaril had served its guests himself a hundred times. The bed had three mattresses, straw, feather, and down, and was dressed in the softest washed linen and a coverlet worked by ladies of the household. Before the page had left him, two maids arrived, bearing wash water, drinking water, towels, soap, a tooth-stick, and an embroidered nightgown, cap, and slippers. Cazaril had been planning to sleep in the dead man’s shirt.
It was abruptly all too much. Cazaril sat down on the edge of the bed with the nightgown in his hands and burst into wracking sobs. Gulping, he gestured the unnerved-looking servitors to leave him.
“What’s the matter with him?” he heard the maid’s voice, as their footsteps trailed off down the corridor, and the tears trailed down the inside of his nose.
The page answered disgustedly, “A madman, I suppose.”
After a short pause, the maid’s voice floated back faintly, “Well, he’ll fit right in here, then, won’t he…”
3
The sounds of the household stirring—calls from the courtyard, the distant clank of pots—woke Cazaril in the predawn gray. He opened his eyes to a moment of panicked disorientation, but the reassuring embrace of the feather bed drew him down again into drowsy repose. Not a hard bench. Not moving up and down. Not moving at all, oh five gods, that was very heaven. So warm, on his knotted back.
The Daughter’s Day celebrations would run