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July 20 - July 26, 2025
Mercy, High Ones. Not justice, please, not justice. We would all be fools to pray for justice.
The closest thing to a home he had left, he supposed. Cazaril was unutterably weary of being a stranger everywhere.
“The Temple Hospital of the Mother’s Mercy took me in. When I felt a little better”—when the weeping had tailed mostly off, and the acolytes had decided he was not mad, merely nervous—“they gave me a little money, and I walked here. I was three weeks on the road.” The room was dead silent. He looked up, to see that the Provincara’s lips had gone tight with anger. Terror wrenched his empty stomach. “It was the only place I could think of!” he excused himself hastily. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” The warder blew out his breath and sat back, staring at Cazaril. The lady companion’s eyes were wide. In
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“The difference, Royse, is that a skilled soldier kills your enemies, but a skilled duelist kills your allies. I leave you to guess which a wise commander prefers to have in his camp.”
How strangely we are blinded by the surfaces of things. The gods, presumably, saw straight through. He wondered if the gods found this as uncomfortable as he sometimes did, these days.
She turned the page. “Let us,” she said in an icy voice, “go on.” Five gods, he’d seen exactly that same look of frustrated fury in the eyes of the young men who’d picked themselves up, spat the dirt from their mouths, and gone on to become his best lieutenants. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so difficult after all.
“You may have slandered an honest man. Or you may have struck a blow for justice. I don’t know. The point is…neither do you.”
Should he list himself as Item One in that bridal inventory? He pictured the entry: Sec’t’y-tutor, One ea. Gift from Grandmama. Aged thirty-five. Badly damaged in shipping. Value…?
The royse’s stern secretary-tutor, Ser dy Sanda, seemed unnecessarily unnerved by Cazaril’s empty rank of castillar. He laid claim to a higher place at table or in procession above the mere ladies’ tutor with an insincerely apologetic smile that served—every meal—to draw more attention than it purported to soothe. Cazaril considered trying to explain to the man just how much he didn’t care, but doubted he’d get through, so contented himself with merely smiling back, a response which confused dy Sanda terribly as he kept trying to place it as some sort of subtle tactic.
Lady Betriz’s teeth were set. “That fellow! He acts like, like…” “Like one of the castle cats,” Iselle supplied, “when a strange cat comes around. What have you done to make him hiss at you so, Cazaril?” “I promise you, I haven’t pissed outside his window,” Cazaril offered earnestly, a remark that made Betriz choke on a giggle—ah, that was better—and look around guiltily to be sure the waiting woman was too far off to hear.
Cazaril’s smile twisted. He said gently, “We lords, at our oars, then? We sweating, pissing, swearing, grunting gentlemen? I think not, Palli. On the galleys we were not lords or men. We were men or animals, and which proved which had no relation I ever saw to birth or blood. The greatest soul I ever met there had been a tanner, and I would kiss his feet right now with joy to learn he yet lived. We slaves, we lords, we fools, we men and women, we mortals, we toys of the gods—all the same thing, Palli. They are all the same to me now.”
Or”—Umegat turned his cup upright again, and lifted the jug—“sometimes, a man may open himself to them, and let them pour through him into the world.” He filled his cup. “A saint is not a virtuous soul, but an empty one. He—or she—freely gives the gift of their will to their god. And in renouncing action, makes action possible.” He
“The gods do not grant miracles for our purposes, but for theirs. If you are become their tool, it is for a greater reason, an urgent reason. But you are the tool. You are not the work. Expect to be valued accordingly.”
