The Curse of Chalion - Lois McMaster Bujold [64]
Betriz sighed. “I’m not even sure Teidez realizes it’s not all for his own sake.”
“I’m afraid dy Sanda, for all his very real concern, has not laid it all out in blunt enough terms. Grant you he’d need to be pretty blunt to get through the fog of flattery Teidez floats in right now.”
“But you do it for Iselle, all the time,” Betriz objected. “You say, watch this man, see what he does next, see why he moves so—the seventh or eighth time you turn out to be dead on the target, we cannot help but listen—and the tenth or twelfth time, to begin to see it, too. Can’t dy Sanda do that for Royse Teidez?”
“It’s easier to see the smudge on another’s face than on one’s own. This flock of courtiers is not pressing Iselle nearly so hard as they are Teidez. Thank the gods. They all know she must be sold out of court, probably out of Chalion altogether, and is not meat for them. Teidez will be their future livelihood.”
On that inconclusive and unsatisfactory note, they were forced to leave it for a time, but Cazaril was glad to know Betriz and Iselle were growing alive to the subtler hazards of court life. The gaiety was dazzling, seductive, a feast to the eye that could leave the reason as drunk and reeling as the body. For some courtiers and ladies, Cazaril supposed, it actually was the cheerful, innocent—albeit expensive—game it seemed. For others, it was a dance of display, ciphered message, thrust and counterthrust as serious, if not so instantly deadly, as a duel. To stay afoot, one had to distinguish the players from the played. Dondo dy Jironal was a major player in his own right, and yet…if not every move he made was directed by his older brother, it was surely safe to say his every move was permitted by him.
No. Not safe to say. Merely true to think.
HOWEVER DIM HIS VIEW OF THE MORALS OF COURT, he had to grant that Orico’s musicians were very good, Cazaril reflected, opening his ear greedily to them at the next evening dance. If Royina Sara had a consolation to match Orico’s menagerie, it was surely the Zangre’s minstrels and singers. She never danced, she rarely smiled, but she never missed a fête where music was played, either sitting next to her sodden and sleepy spouse, or, if Orico staggered off to bed early, lingering behind a carved screen with her ladies on the gallery opposite the musicians. Cazaril thought he understood her hunger for this solace, as he leaned against the chamber wall in what was becoming his usual spot, tapping his foot and benignly watching his ladies twirl about on the polished wooden floor.
Musicians and dancers stopped for breath after a brisk roundel, and Cazaril joined the smattering of applause led by the royina from behind her screen. A completely unexpected voice spoke next to his ear.
“Well, Castillar. You’re looking more your old self!”
“Palli!” Cazaril controlled his surge forward, turning it into a sweeping bow instead. Palli, formally dressed in the blue trousers and tunic and white tabard of the Daughter’s military order, boots polished and sword glittering at his waist, laughed and returned an equally ceremonious bow, though he followed it up with a firm, if brief, grip of Cazaril’s hands. “What brings you to Cardegoss?” Cazaril asked eagerly.
“Justice, by the goddess! And a good job of it, too, a year in the making. I rode up in support of the lord dedicat the provincar dy Yarrin, on a little holy quest of his. I’ll tell you more, but, ah”—Palli glanced around the crowded chamber, where the dancers were forming up again—“maybe not here. You seem to have survived your trip to court—you’re over that little burst of nerves now, I trust?”
Cazaril’s lips twisted. “So far. I’ll tell you more, but—not here.” A glance around assured him