After a moment, she said, "You used to play the lute very pleasantly, when you were a page."
"Uh..." Cazaril's crooked, callused hands tried to hide themselves in each other for a spasmodic instant. He smiled in renewed apology, and displayed them briefly on his knees. "I think not now, my lady."
She leaned forward; her gaze rested for a moment on his half-mangled left. "I see." She sat back again, pursing her lips. "I remember you read all the books in my husband's library. The master of the pages was always complaining of you for that. I told him to leave you alone. You aspired to be a poet, as I recall."
Cazaril was not sure his right hand could close around a pen, at present. "I believe Chalion was saved from a deal of bad poetry, when I went off to war."
She shrugged her shoulders. "Come, come, Castillar, you quite daunt me with your offer of service. I'm not sure poor Valenda has posts enough to occupy you. You've been a courtier—a captain—a castle warder—a courier—"
"I haven't been a courtier since before Roya Ias died, my lady. As a captain... I helped lose the battle of Dalus." And rotted for nearly a year in the dungeons of the royacy of Brajar, thereafter. "As a castle warder, well, we lost the siege. As a courier, I was nearly hanged as a spy. Twice." He brooded.And three times put to the torture in violation of parley."Now... now, well, I know how to row boats. And five ways of preparing a dish of rats."
I could relish a mighty dish of rat right now, in fact .
He did not know what she read in his face, for all that her sharp old eyes probed him. Perhaps it was exhaustion, but he hoped it was hunger. He was fairly sure it was hunger, for she at last smiled crookedly.
"Then come to supper with us, Castillar, though I'm afraid my cook cannot offer you rat. They are not in season, in peaceful Valenda. I shall think on your petition."
He nodded mute thanks, not trusting his voice to not break.
IT BEING STILL WINTER, THE MAIN MEAL OF THE household's day had been taken at noon, formally, in the great hall. The evening supper was a lighter repast, featuring, by the Provincara's economy, the leftover breads and meats from noon, but by her pride, the very best of them, supplemented by a generous libation of her excellent wines. In the shimmering heat of the high plains summer, the procedure would be reversed; nuncheon would be light fare, and the main meal taken after nightfall, when Baocians of all degrees took to their cooler courtyards to eat by lantern light.
They sat down only eight, in an intimate chamber in a new building quite near the kitchens. The Provincara took the center of the table, and placed Cazaril on her honored right. Cazaril was daunted to find the Royesse Iselle on his other side, and the Royse Teidez across from her. He took heart again when the royse chose to while away the wait for all to be seated by flicking bread-balls at his older sister, a maneuver sternly suppressed by his grandmother. A retaliatory gleam in the royesse's eye was only sidetracked, Cazaril judged, by some timely distraction from her companion Betriz, seated across and a little down from him.
Lady Betriz smiled across the board at Cazaril in friendly curiosity, revealing an elusive dimple, and seemed about to speak, but then the servant passed among them with a basin for hand-washing. The warm water was scented with verbena. Cazaril's hands shook as he dipped and wiped them on the fine linen towel, a weakness he concealed as soon as he might by hiding them in his lap. The chair directly across from him remained empty.
Cazaril nodded to it, and asked the Provincara diffidently, "Will the dowager royina be joining us, Your Grace?"
Her lips pressed closed. "Ista is not well enough tonight, unfortunately. She... takes most of her meals in her chamber."
Cazaril quelled a moment of unease, and resolved to ask someone else, later, exactly what troubled the royse and royesse's mother. That brief compression suggested something chronic, or lingering, or too painful to be discussed. Her long widowhood had spared Ista the further dangers of childbirth that were the bane of young women, but then there were all those frightening female disorders that overtook matrons... As Roya Ias's second wife, Ista had been wed in his middle age when his son and heir Orico was already full-grown. In the little time Cazaril had been at the court of Chalion, years ago, he had watched her only from a discreet distance; she'd seemed happy, the light of the roya's eye when the marriage was new. Ias had doted upon toddler Iselle and upon Teidez, a babe in the nurse's arms.
Their happiness had been darkened during the unfortunate tragedy of Lord dy Lutez's treason, which, most observers agreed, had hastened the aging roya's death by grief. Cazaril couldn't help wondering if the illness that had evidently driven Royina Ista from her stepson's court had any unfortunate political elements. But the new roya Orico had been respectful of his stepmother, and kind to his half siblings, by all reports.
Cazaril cleared his throat to cover the growling of his stomach and gave attention to the royse's superior gentleman-tutor, on the far end of the table beyond Lady Betriz. The Provincara, with a regal nod of her head, desired him to lead the prayer to the Holy Family blessing the approaching meal. Cazaril hoped it was approaching rapidly. The mystery of the empty chair was solved when the castle warder Ser dy Ferrej hurried in late, and made brief apologies all round before seating himself.
"I was caught by the divine of the Order of the Bastard," he explained as bread, meat, and dried fruit were passed.
Cazaril, hard-pressed not to fall on his food like a starving dog, made a politely inquiring noise, and took his first bite.
"The most earnestly long-winded young man," dy Ferraj expanded.
"What does he want now?" asked the Provincara. "More donations for the foundling hospital? We sent down a load last week. The castle servants are refusing to give up any more of their old clothes."
"Wet nurses," said dy Ferrej, chewing.
The Provincara snorted. "Not frommyhousehold!"
"No, but he wanted me to pass the word that the Temple was looking. He was hoping someone might have a female relative who would be moved to pious charity. They had another babe left at the postern last week, and he's expecting more. It's the time of year, apparently."
The Order of the Bastard, by the logic of its theology, classified unwanted births among the things-out-of-season that were the god's mandate: including bastards—naturally—and children bereft of parents untimely young.