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everyone knows there is no water upon a mountaintop; it all runs away to the
valleys.
Cazaril swallowed panic, and looked around surreptitiously for the returning
attendant. She was not yet in sight. Lord dy Lutez, it was said, had died
under the water torture in the dungeons of the Zangre.
Beneath the castle stones, but still high enough above the town of Cardegoss.
He licked slightly numb lips, and tried, You know, I never heard that while
the man was alive. It is my opinion that some tale-spinner made it up later,
to sound shivery. Justifications . . . tend to accrue posthumously to so
spectacular a fall as his was.
Her lips parted in the strangest smile yet. She drew the last threads of the
stem pith apart, aligned them upon her knee, and stroked them flat. Poor
Cazaril! How did you grow so wise?
Cazaril was saved from trying to think of an answer for this by Ista s
attendant, who emerged again from the door of the keep with a hank of colored
silk in her hands. Cazaril leapt to his feet and nodded to the royina. Your
good lady returns . . .
He gave a little bow in passing to the attendant, who whispered urgently to
him, Was she sensible, my lord?
Yes, perfectly.
In her way . . .
Nothing of dy Lutez?
Nothing . . . remarkable. Nothing he cared to remark upon, certainly.
The attendant breathed relief and passed on, fixing a smile on her face. Ista
regarded her with bored tolerance as she began chattering about all the items
that she d had to overturn and hunt through to find her strayed thread. It
crossed Cazaril s mind that no daughter of the Provincara s, nor mother of
Iselle s, could possibly be short of wit.
If Ista spoke to very many of her duller company with the cryptic leaps of
thought she d sprung on him, it was little wonder rumors circulated of
madness, and yet . . . her occasional opacity of discourse felt more like
cipher than babble to him. Of an elusive internal consistency, if only one
held the key to it.
Which, granted, he did not. Not that that wasn t also true of some sorts of
madness he had seen . . .
Cazaril clutched his book and went off to seek some less disturbing shade.
SUMMER ADVANCED AT A LAZY PACE THAT EASEDCazaril s mind and body both. Only
poor Teidez chafed at the inactivity, hunting being curtailed by the heat, the
season, and his tutor. He did pot rabbits with a crossbow in the dawn mists
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around the castle, to the earnest applause and approval of all the castle s
gardeners. The boy was so out-of-season hot and restless and plump if ever
there was a born dedicat to the Son of Autumn, god of the hunt, war, and
cooler weather, Cazaril judged it was surely Teidez.
Cazaril was a little surprised to be accosted on the way to nuncheon one warm
noon by Teidez and his tutor. Judging by both their reddened faces, they were
in the middle of another of their tearing arguments.
Lord Caz! Teidez hailed him breathlessly. Didn t the old provincar s
swordmaster too take the pages to the abattoir, to slay the young bulls to
teach them courage, in a real fight, not this, this, dancing about in the
dueling ring!
Well, yes . . .
See, what did I tell you! Teidez cried to dy Sanda.
We practiced in the ring, too, Cazaril added immediately, for the sake of
solidarity, should dy
Sanda need it.
The tutor grimaced. Bull-baiting is an old country practice, Royse. Not
befitting training for the highborn. You are destined to be a gentleman at the
least! not a butcher s apprentice.
The Provincara kept no swordmaster in her household these days, so she d made
sure the royse s tutor was a trained man. Cazaril, who had occasionally
watched his practice sessions with Teidez, respected dy Sanda s precision. Dy
Sanda s swordsmanship was pretty enough, if not quite brilliant.
Sporting. Honorable. But if dy Sanda also knew the desperate brutal tricks
that kept men alive on the field, he had not shown them to Teidez.
Cazaril grinned wryly. The swordmaster wasn t training us to be gentlemen. He
was training us to be soldiers. I ll give his old method this credit any
battlefield I was ever on was a lot more like a butcher s yard than it was
like a dueling ring. It was ugly, but it taught us our business. And there was
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