"Oh," said Ista.

Cattilara swallowed, and knuckled her eyes. "My lord's men and the princess's servants rode out together, looking for the murderer, but he was long fled. The entourage became a cortege, and took Umerue's body back to Jokona. Illvin... never awoke. We are not sure if it was from some vile Roknari poison on the dagger that pierced him, or if he fell and hit his head, or if he was struck some other dire blow. But we are terribly afraid his mind is gone. I think that horror grieves Arhys more than even Illvin's death would have, for he always set great store by his brother's wits."

"And... how was this received in Jokona?"

"Not well, for all that they brought their evil with them. The border has been very tense, since. Which did you some good, after all, for all my lord's men were in readiness to ride out when the provincar of Tolnoxo's courier galloped in."

"No wonder Lord Arhys is on edge. Appalling events indeed." Leaking roofs, indeed. Ista could only be grateful to Arhys's short temper, not to be lodged tonight in Princess Umerue's death chamber. She considered Cattilara's horrific account. Lurid and agonizing, yes. But there was nothing uncanny about it. No gods, no visions, no blazing white fires that yet did not burn. No mortal red wounds that opened and closed like a man buttoning his tunic.

I would look upon this Lord Illvin, she wanted to say. Can you take me in to view him? And what excuse would she give for her morbid curiosity, this dubious desire to enter a man's sickroom? In any case, she did not want to gawk at the high laid low. What she really wanted was to mount a horse—no—a cart, and be carried far from here.

It had grown dark enough to drain the color from her sight; Cattilara's face was a fine pale blur. "It has been a very long day. I grow weary." Ista climbed to her feet. Cattilara sprang to assist her up the stairs. Ista gritted her teeth, let her left hand lie lightly on the young woman's arm, and pushed her way up with her right hand on the railing. Cattilara's ladies, still conversing among themselves, straggled after them.

As they reached the top, the door at the far end swung open. Ista's head snapped around. A runty, bowlegged man with a short grizzled beard emerged, carrying a mess of dirty linens and a bucket with a closed lid. Seeing the women, he set his burdens down outside the door and hastened forward.

"Lady Catti," he said in a gravelly voice, ducking his head. "He needs more goat's milk. With more honey in't."

"Not now, Goram." With an irritated wrinkling of her nose, Cattilara waved him off. "I'll come soon."

He ducked his head again, but his eyes gleamed from under his thick brows as he peered across at Ista. Curious or incurious, she could hardly tell in these shadows, but she felt his stare like a hand on her back as she turned right to follow Cattilara into the suite of rooms waiting for her on the gallery's other end.

His footsteps clumped away. She glanced back in time to see the door on the far end open and close once more, an orange line of candlelight flaring, narrowing, and blinking out.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CATTILARA'S LADIES WRAPPED ISTA IN A GRACEFUL, GAUZY nightdress, and tucked her into a bed covered in the finest embroidered linens. Ista had them leave the candle in its glass vase burning on her table. The women tiptoed out and shut the door to the outermost of the two chambers, where the acolyte and a maid would sleep tonight, within the royina's call. Ista sat up on a generous bank of pillows, contemplating the wavering light and the darkness it drove back. Contemplating her options.

It was possible to resist sleep for days on end, till the room swayed and strange, formless hallucinations spurted across one's vision like sparks spitting from a fire. She'd tried that, once, when the gods had first troubled her dreams, when she'd feared she was going mad and Ias had let her go on thinking so. It had ended badly. It was possible to drown one's wits, and dreams, in drink. For a little while. She'd tried that, too, and it had worked even less well, in the long run. There was no refuge from the gods to be had in madness, either; quite the reverse.

She brooded about what might be lying, on a bed not dissimilar to this if less delicately perfumed, in that room on the other end of the gallery. Actually, she rather thought she knew quite precisely how the bed, and the rugs, and the room—and its occupant—appeared. She didn't even need to look. I never saw Goram the groom before, though. Although she supposed his existence was implied.

So, You dragged me here, whichever of You harries me. But you cannot force me through that door. Nor can you open it yourselves. You cannot lift so much as a leaf; bending iron or my will is a task equally beyond your capacities. They were at a stand, she and the gods. She could defy them all day long.

But not all night long. Eventually I must sleep, and we all know it.

She sighed, leaned over, and blew out her candle. The hot wax smell lingered in her nose, and the dazzle of its light left a colored smear in her eyes as she rolled over and thumped her pillow into shape beneath her shoulder. You cannot open that door. And You cannot make me do it, either, send what dreams You will.

Do Your second-worst. Your worst, you have done to me already.

HER SLEEP AT FIRST WAS FORMLESS, DREAMLESS, BLANK. THEN SHE swam for a little in ordinary dreams, their anxious absurdities melting one into another. Then she stepped into a room, and all was changed; the room was solid, square, its angles unyielding as any real place, though not any place she'd yet been. Not Lord Illvin's chamber. Not her own. It was bright afternoon outside, by the light falling through the tracery of the shutters. She knew it for a room in Castle Porifors by its style, then she realized she had glimpsed it once before, in a flash of candlelight. Lord Arhys had cried out...

All was serene and empty now. The chamber was clean and swept. And unpeopled, but for herself—no, wait. A door opened.

A familiar figure was briefly backlit by the hazy light falling into the flower-decked court beyond. It filled the door from side to side, heaved its hips through, let the door swing shut. Briefly, her heart lifted in joy and relief to see Learned dy Cabon safe and well.

Except... it was not dy Cabon. Or not dy Cabon only.

He was fatter, brighter, whiter. Faintly androgynous. Did that flesh swell as if to contain the uncontainable? His garments were spotless— by that alone, Ista might have known the difference—and luminous as the moon. Above the creases of his smile, cheerfully echoed by the curves of his chins, the god's eyes glinted at her. Wider than skies, deeper than sea chasms, their complexity bent inward endlessly, each layer a lamination of other layers, repeated into infinity, or the infinitesimal. Eyes that might simultaneously contemplate each person and living thing in the world, inside and out, with equal and unhurried attention.

My Lord Bastard. Ista did not speak His name aloud, lest He mistake it for a prayer. Instead, she said lightly, "Aren't I a little overmatched?"

He bowed over his immense belly. "Small, yet strong. I, as you know, cannot lift a leaf. Nor bend iron. Nor your will. My Ista."

"I am not yours."

"I speak in hope and anticipation, as a suitor may." His smile bunched his fat face tighter.

"Or with the trickery of a rat."

"Rats," he observed, sighing, "are low, shy, straightforward creatures. Very limited. For trickery, one wants a man. Or a woman. Trickery, treachery... truth, triumph... traps for bears..."

She twitched at this possible reference to Foix. "You want something. The gods' tongues can grow quite honeyed, when they want something. When I wanted something—when I prayed on my face, arms outflung, in tears and abject terror—for years—where were You then? Where were the gods the night Teidez died?"