The Curse of Chalion - Lois McMaster Bujold [189]
A hideously cheerful voice bellowed in his ear, “Rise and ride, Captain Sunshine!”
He spasmed and clawed at his covers, tried to sit up, and thought better of the effort. He pulled open his glued-shut eyelids, blinking in the candlelight. The identity of the voice finally penetrated. “Palli! You’re alive!” He meant to shout joyfully. At least it came out audibly. “What time is it?” He struggled again to sit up, making it onto one elbow. He seemed to be in some evicted officer-dedicat’s plainly furnished bedchamber.
“About an hour before dawn. We’ve been riding all night. Iselle sent me to find you.” He raised his brace of candles higher. Bergon was standing anxiously at his shoulder, and Foix too. “Bastard’s demons, Caz, you look like death on a trencher.”
“That…has been observed.” He lay back down. Palli was here. Palli was here, and all was well. He could shove Bergon and all his burdens off onto him, lie here, and not get up. Die alone and in peace, taking Dondo out of the world with him. “Take Royse Bergon and his company to Iselle. Leave me—”
“What, for dy Jironal’s patrols to find? Not if I value my future fortune as a courtier! Iselle wants you safe with her in Taryoon.”
“Taryoon? Not Valenda?” He blinked. “Safe?” This time he did struggle up, and all the way to his feet, where he passed out.
The black fog lifted, and he found Bergon, round-eyed, holding him slumped on the edge of the bed.
“Sit a minute with your head down,” Palli advised.
Cazaril obediently bent over his aching belly. If Dondo had visited him last night, he’d not been home. The ghost had kicked him a few times in his sleep, though, it felt like. From the inside out.
Bergon said softly, “He ate nothing when we came in last night. He collapsed straightaway, and we put him to bed.”
“Right,” said Palli, and jerked his thumb at the hovering Foix, who nodded and slipped out of the room.
“Taryoon?” Cazaril mumbled from the vicinity of his knees.
“Aye. She gave all two thousand of dy Jironal’s men the slip, she did. Well, first of all, before that, her uncle dy Baocia pulled his men out and went home. The fools let him go; thought it was a danger removed from their midst. Yes, and made free to move at will! Then Iselle rode out five days running, always with a troop of dy Jironal’s cavalry for escort, and gave them more exercise than they cared for. Had ’em absolutely convinced she meant to escape while riding. So when she and Lady Betriz went walking out one day with old Lady dy Hueltar, they let her go by. I was waiting with two saddled horses, and two women to change cloaks with ’em and go back with the old lady. We were gone down that ravine so fast…The old Provincara undertook to conceal she’d flown for as long as possible, pass it off that she was ill in her mother’s chambers. They’ve doubtless tumbled to it by now, but I’ll wager she was safe with her uncle in Taryoon before Valenda knew she was gone. Five gods, those girls can ride! Sixty miles cross-country between dusk and dawn under a full moon, and only one change of horses.”
“Girls?” said Cazaril. “Is Lady Betriz safe, too?”
“Oh, aye. Both of ’em chipper as songbirds, when I left ’em. Made me feel old.”
Cazaril squinted up at Palli, five years his junior, but let this pass. “Ser dy Ferrej…the Provincara, Lady Ista?”
Palli’s face sobered. “Still hostages in Valenda. They all told the girls to go on, you know.”
“Ah.”
Foix brought him a bowl of bean porridge, hot and aromatic, on a tray, and Bergon himself arranged his pillows and helped him sit up to eat it. Cazaril had thought he was ravenous, yet found himself unable to force down more than a few bites. Palli was keen to get away while the darkness still cloaked their numbers. Cazaril struggled to oblige, letting Foix help him back into his clothes. He dreaded the attempt to ride again.
In the post’s stable yard, he found that their escort, a dozen men of the Daughter’s Order who’d followed Palli from Taryoon, waited with a horse litter slung between two mounts. Indignant at first, he let Bergon persuade him into