The Curse of Chalion - Lois McMaster Bujold [186]
Dy Joal and his troop had descended upon them yesterday, at first seeming merely rough travelers. Only when a couple of the bravos had made to molest the castillar’s cook, and her husband and the real castle warder had gone to her defense and attempted to eject the unwelcome visitors, had steel been drawn. It truly was the house’s custom to take in benighted or storm-threatened wayfarers from the road over the pass. No one here had known or recognized dy Joal or any of his men.
The old castillar gripped Ferda’s cloak anxiously. “My elder son, does he live? Have you seen him? He went to my castle warder’s aid…”
“Was he a young man of about these men’s age”—Cazaril nodded to the dy Gura brothers—“dressed in wool and leathers like your own?”
“Aye…” The old man’s face drained in anticipation.
“He is in the care of the gods, and much comforted there,” Cazaril reported factually.
Cries of grief greeted this news; wearily, Cazaril mounted the stairs to the kitchen in the mob’s wake, as they spread out to regain their house, recover their dead, and care for the wounded.
“My lord,” Ferda murmured to him, as Cazaril paused briefly to warm himself by the kitchen fire, “had you ever been to this house before?”
“No.”
“Then how did you—I heard nothing, when I looked in that cellar. I would have left those poor people to die of thirst and hunger and madness in the dark.”
“I think dy Joal’s men would have confessed to them, before the night was done.” Cazaril frowned grimly. “Among the many other things I intend to learn from them.”
The captured bravos, under a duress Cazaril was happy to allow and the freed housemen eager to supply, told their half of the tale soon enough. They were a mixed lot, including some lawless and impoverished discharged soldiers who had followed the grizzled man, and a few local hirelings, one of whom had led them to dy Zavar’s holding for sake of its amazing vantage of the road from its highest tower. Dy Joal, riding to the Ibran border alone and in a hurry, had picked them all up from a town at the foot of these mountains, where they had formerly eked out a living alternating between guarding travelers and robbing them.
The bravos knew only that dy Joal had come there looking to waylay a man expected to be riding over the passes from Ibra. They did not know who their new employer really was, although they’d despised his courtier’s clothes and mannerisms. It was abundantly clear to Cazaril that dy Joal had not been in control of the men he’d hastily hired. When the altercation about the cook had tipped over into violence, he’d not had either the nerve or the muscle to stop it, administer discipline, or restore order before events had run their ugly course.
Bergon, disturbed, drew Cazaril aside in the flickering torchlight of the courtyard where this rough-and-ready interrogation was taking place. “Caz, did I bring this wretched chance down upon poor dy Zavar’s good people?”
“No, Royse. It’s clear dy Joal was expecting only me, riding back as Iselle’s courier. Chancellor dy Jironal has sought to tear me from her service for some time—secretly assassinate me, if there proved no other way. How I wish I hadn’t killed that fool! I’d give my teeth to know how much dy Jironal knows by now.”
“Are you sure the chancellor set this trap?”
Cazaril hesitated. “Dy Joal had a personal grudge against me, but…the world knew merely that I’d ridden to Valenda. Dy Joal could only have had surmise of my true route from dy Jironal. Therefore, we may be certain dy Jironal had some report of me from his spies in Ibra. His knowledge of our real aim lags—but not, I think, by much. Dy Joal was a stopgap, hurriedly dispatched. And certainly not the only such agent. Something else must follow.”
“How soon?”
“I don’t know. Dy Jironal commands the Order of the Son; he can draw on its men as soon