Penric's Fox: Penric and Desdemona Book 3

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Thala didn’t look entirely elated at this news, but asked, “Like a Temple choir?”

  Lunet’s smile was suddenly all fox. “Not exactly, no.”

  Combining weirding voices? Oh my, as the princess-archdivine might say. Or even, My, my, my. Pen really wanted to see that.

  Lunet stared off at some point over Oswyl’s shoulder, and remarked, “Although shamans share some of the problems I suspect sorcerers may have. Ordinary people are afraid to get close to us, afraid of the powers in our blood that they do not understand. As if because we possess strange beasts, we are them.”

  “That sounds… foolish,” said Oswyl in a tentative tone. “If you don’t understand something, you should just try to learn more, that’s all.”

  Lunet’s gray eyes glinted at him from under her ruddy lashes. Pen could not parse her expression, although Des murmured, Heh. Not too hopelessly thick, that boy.

  Thala looked curiously at Pen, and said, “Then it would seem sorcerers have a doubly lonely time of it. If ordinary people fear them, and other sorcerers cannot be too near them.”

  That girl saw too much, and said too little, but when she did… ouch. “We always have our demons,” Pen offered. He thought Des would have patted his head in approval if she could.

  “Ah, you’re all here!” came a voice, and Pen turned in some relief to wave at Inglis.

  He strolled near and looked them over, almost smiling. “All well this morning with our new foxes?” he asked Lunet.

  “Aye. Penric’s Learned Hamo came to see them. He’s in there now.” She gestured toward the stall. “Private conclave.”

  Inglis paused, extending what shamanic perception Pen did not know, but he nodded. “Right.” He looked at Pen. “Will it be all right?”

  A comprehensive question, that. “I’ll know in a little.”

  Inglis tapped his fingers on his trouser seam, nodded again at the Grayjays. No, at Thala. “Would you like to look around the menagerie while we wait? I could show you our wolves.”

  “I’d be quite interested in that,” said Thala, rising at once to her feet and almost-smiling back at him.

  Lunet’s eyes narrowed in merriment, watching this play. She leaned over and said to Oswyl, “And I could show you our other foxes.”

  “Oh! Ah, you have more?”

  “And the lynxes. They’re really fine.”

  Oswyl mustered an actual smile at her, and rose as well, suddenly all amiable cooperation. On Oswyl, it looked very odd.

  Rather than departing as a group, the two shamans started to draw the two Grayjays off in opposite directions, though Lunet paused to politely ask over her shoulder, in a most unpressing tone, “And you, Learned Penric?”

  He waved her off. “Inglis showed me around the other day. I’ll wait here for Hamo.”

  “Oh, all right.”

  How very tactful of you, Pen.

  As they rounded the corner, Pen could hear Oswyl asking, in an almost-convincing simulation of his habitual inquirer’s style, “And how long have you been a member of the Royal Fellowship, Shaman Lunet? How did you become interested in the calling…?”

  Hah, murmured Des. Shamans really do work together.

  Pen watched them out of sight, then sighed, “Don’t mind me. I’ll just sit here and talk to myself.”

  Now, now, boy.

  Pen’s lips twitched.

  His smile faded as he studied the silent stall door. This must be what it was like waiting for a judge to return from his chambers and deliver a verdict. He considered extending his Sight, but thought it might be felt as intrusive; it would certainly be felt. Going over and leaning on the stall door would scarcely be better, putting three chaos demons in such close proximity.

  At length, his careful patience was rewarded when Hamo emerged, brushing a few straws off his trousers and closing the lower door behind him. He looked around a trifle blindly, then walked over and sat on the mounting block farthest from Pen.

  “So?” said Pen quietly. “What do you think?”

  “Stable,” said Hamo slowly, “for an ascendant demon. Magal’s and Svedra’s influences lingering, I think. Safe enough for the moment. But I must be careful not to thoughtlessly take this fox for the same thing as a new elemental, ignorant of the uses of its powers. The same marred imprints that make it tamer make it more dangerous. It will require much more shrewd and mindful care.”

  Pen rubbed his booted toe across the cobblestones. “I was thinking about how the Order sometimes pairs a trained aspirant with an aged sorcerer, to acquaint the demon with its proposed new home in advance.” A gruesome deathwatch Pen had been spared by Ruchia’s sudden roadside accident, or at any rate, the experience had been compressed to minutes and not weeks or months. “What if, once the vixen has weaned her cubs, she might be given into the care of such an aspirant? It might make for a more gentle transition. And a kinder surveillance.”

  Hamo tilted his head. “She would make an extraordinary pet,” he allowed.

  Pen could not only picture it, he envied it. The vixen and her young sorceress-to-be, going about together. If he didn’t have a demon already…

  You just think it would be madly stylish to have a clever pet fox, Des mocked him. He didn’t deny it.

  “It would take some careful matchmaking,” said Hamo.

  This man, Pen was reminded, made sorcerers for the Temple. “I expect you’re up to that.”

  “Maybe,” said Hamo, his eyes narrowing as he considered Pen knew-not-what pertinent factors. “Maybe. I so want to salvage… I must take some thought who might… hm. Hm.”

  Pen liked the tone of those hms. Very hopeful. By the time the cubs were weaned, Hamo would have had some weeks to scour, really, the whole Weald for suitable candidates, among all the aspirant-divines scattered across the Hallow King’s realm. The task, he had no doubt, would be done well, and shrewdly. Somewhere out there was a very lucky aspirant indeed.

  Are you regretting the haste and disorder of our own pairing? Des’s query was soft, the faintest tint of hurt coloring her doubt. Not that it could be undone now. Save by a few arrows to his back or some like mischance.

  Pen returned ruefully, Oh, I have for a while suspected we had a better Matchmaker than Hamo, conscientious though he is.

  …That thought would be more flattering if it were more comforting.

  Aye, Pen sighed.

  *

  The Easthome royal magistrates hanged Halber kin Pikepool a week after the Grayjays had returned him to their custody.

  Penric did not attend. Hamo did, he heard.

  *

  Three days before they were to depart for Martensbridge, Penric made a formal request to call upon the princess-archdivine.

  She received him in her private chambers, waving out the servants attempting to pack all that she had brought, topped by all that she had acquired in the royal capital, for the four-hundred-mile journey home. The Easthome hills were fine in their way, but they were not the austere white peaks fencing his horizon that Pen was used to. Though the mountains, he was sure, would wait for him, with the endless patience of stone. All the impatience of flesh and nerve drove him now.

  He flashed his finest smile as he seated himself on blue-and-white silk, safe now against the trousers of his Order’s well-laundered whites. “I have a proposal for you, Your Grace. To enhance my abilities as your court sorcerer.”

  “Shouldn’t there be more pleasantries before you leap in?”

  “Oh. Er, do you want some?”

  “Not particularly.” A quirk of her gray eyebrows indicated interest without commitment. “Do go on.”

  “I’ve been speaking with my friend Shaman Inglis. And with his superior, Master Firthwyth, over at the Royal Fellowship. He is supervisor of the training of the young shamans. The Fellowship being part school, part farm, part a community of historical scholarship, and part, these days, hospice for injured or sick creatures.”

  “It sounds a lively place,” she concede
d.

  He nodded vigorously. “Anyway, Master Firthwyth agrees that it would be of great interest for me to study awhile with the royal shamans. Learn what I can of their magics.”

  “And what do my nephew’s shamans gain from this?”

  “Well, they get to study me back, I expect.”

  “How long do you imagine this study would take?”

  “Hard to say. I mean, a shaman can spend a lifetime exploring his calling, but I already have a calling of my own, that, er, calls to me as well. But the Fellowship maintains a fine and growing library. I was allowed to see it, when I was over there visiting the other day.” Inglis had sternly forbade him to drool on the priceless volumes.

  “And how long would it take you to read every book in it? A month?”

  “Oh, longer than that!” He hesitated. “…A year?”

  “A cap of sorts, I suppose.” A quizzical tilt of her elaborately braided head. “And what would my reimbursement be, for the loss of your services during all that time?”

  “When I came back, I could do more kinds of things?”

  “What things?”

  “If I already knew—if anyone knew—I wouldn’t have to go study to find out, now would I?”

  “That’s… actually a less specious argument than it sounds at first blush.”

  They exchanged nods, like two swordsmen saluting.

  She drummed her fingers on her silk-swathed knee. “When we returned home, I was going to tell you… Master Riedel of the Mother’s Order in Martensbridge was very impressed by your new edition of Learned Ruchia’s work on sorcery as applied to the arts of medicine. He wanted to extend you an invitation to study at the hospice. Part-time, as your other duties permitted.”

  “Oh.” Pen sat up. He hadn’t realized his gift of the fresh-printed volumes to the hospice’s library, and his few meals at the princess-archdivine’s table with Master Riedel, had borne such excellent fruit. “Oh, yes, I’d like to do that! Too.”

  “Not instead?”

  “Too,” he said, with more certainty. “Though I grant I can’t do both at once. Not even with sorcery.”

  “Then you have a puzzle.” She sat back in some fascination, as if to watch him solve it. Or, possibly, as if to watch a man trying to eat a meal twice the size of his head, Pen wasn’t sure.

  “Two of Des’s prior riders,” he said slowly, “had trained and practiced as physicians.”

  “Master Riedel is aware. He thinks it would make you a very quick study.”

  Pen nodded. “In my prior experiences with, with drawing on Des’s vast knowledge, it doesn’t exactly just appear on its own in my mind. I have to induce it, more or less. Like, I don’t know, digging a ditch from an irrigation channel to its water source. Then it flows on its own. Well, sometimes it’s more like raising it bucket by bucket, but in any case. It was so with the languages. What Master Riedel might teach me would allow me to know all Des knows, eventually.”

  Pen wasn’t going to ask Des’s opinion on this one. She’d had her own reasons for jumping to not-yet-Learned Ruchia last time, rather than the physician-aspirant that the Temple had planned for her. Besides, having transcribed every word of Ruchia’s medical text for printing, not to mention translating it into two and a half languages so far, he’d gained more than a trickle of understanding already.

  “The point is,” he slowly felt his way forward, “if I study the shamanic magic first, I will have a chance of bringing something new back to more formal medical studies. More than just a review of things already known.”

  Llewyn pursed her lips. “That is an honestly compelling view.” She hesitated. “And how would you plan to support yourself, during this scholarly holiday?”

  “I, er, was hoping you could grant me a stipend?”

  “So I am to pay to be deprived of your services for some undefined amount of time?”

  “…Yes?” Pen tried for a sop. “Although I am fairly sure Wegae and Yvaina kin Pikepool would feed me, from time to time. I’ve already enjoyed some very interesting dinners over there.”

  “Set a savory table, do they?”

  “I don’t remember the food. But Yvaina has had this terrific notion, if I can get Learned Hamo interested. She proposes to invest in a press, using the sort of printing plates I produce with sorcery. Except I had this idea, really from rusting out Treuch’s knife before he gutted me, well, anyway, explaining it over dinner, it occurred to me that a sorcerer could create steel plates as well as wooden ones. Which could last for thousands of copies, not just dozens or hundreds. So students wouldn’t ever have to stab each other over sharing expensive texts again. And then she asked if I couldn’t do woodcuts or engravings the same way, and I said no, never thought about it because I couldn’t draw, but then she said, maybe some sorcerer who could. And I said, Oh. Of course. I think I can get Hamo to let me teach the technique to some of his people. And then—”

  Llewyn held up a hand to stem this tide. “Remind me to have my secretary explain the concept of a percentage recompense to you. Soon. Possibly tonight.”

  “Er, yes, Archdivine.” Pen subsided.

  “Certainly before you are turned loose in Easthome to cut whatever swathe seems inevitable.”

  Pen’s heart rose in hope. In quite another tone, he said, “Yes, Archdivine.”

  “Hah.” She rubbed her fine chin, regarding him thoughtfully. “There is a line from a poem that rises to my mind. I no longer remember from where, but that’s the hazard of my years—oh. Do you suppose Baroness kin Pikepool’s press would ever share out poetry?”

  Pen sat nonplussed, then afire. “I was thinking of texts, but certainly, why not? Or maybe books of tales… Really, anything.” He paused, wanting to ask what she would offer for a stipend, but his curiosity was caught. “What was the verse?”

  “Just a fragment, really. A call-and-response song. The bard was describing an itinerant scholar. ‘Joyfully he learned/joyously taught.’ Went about in rags, poor man, which I thought quite unfair.”

  “Probably had spent all his money on copyists. One must make choices, after all.”

  She snorted, delicately. But then asked, “And what does Desdemona think of all this?”

  Pen started to open his mouth, then said, “Des?” yielding control of his speech to her.

  “I’m for the shamans,” said Des without hesitation. “It will be something new. Also, Ruchia has some very fond memories of one.”

  Pen shut his mouth again quickly, before she could go into the more ribald details. And then wondered what (possibly horrifying) conversations Des and Llewyn might get into if he wasn’t around, listening in.

  Surely you must test that, Des quipped. He tightened his teeth.

  Llewyn tapped his hand. “Just bring him back to me, Desdemona.”

  “As you wish, Archdivine,” agreed the demon.

  FIN

  Author’s Note:

  A Bujold Reading-Order Guide

  The Fantasy Novels

  My fantasy novels are not hard to order. Easiest of all is The Spirit Ring, which is a stand-alone, or aquel, as some wag once dubbed books that for some obscure reason failed to spawn a subsequent series. Next easiest are the four volumes of The Sharing Knife—in order, Beguilement, Legacy, Passage, and Horizon—which I broke down and actually numbered, as this was one continuous tale divided into non-wrist-breaking chunks.

  What were called the Chalion books after the setting of its first two volumes, but which now that the geographic scope has widened I’m dubbing the World of the Five Gods, were written to be stand-alones as part of a larger whole, and can in theory be read in any order. Some readers think the world-building is easier to assimilate when the books are read in publication order, and the second volume certainly contains spoilers for the first (but not the third.) In any case, the publication order is:

  The Curse of Chalion

  Paladin of Souls

  The Hallowed Hunt

  In terms of internal world
chronology, The Hallowed Hunt would fall first, the Penric novellas perhaps a hundred and fifty years later, and The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls would follow a century or so after that.

  The internal chronology of the Penric novellas is presently

  “Penric’s Demon”

  “Penric and the Shaman”

  “Penric’s Fox”

  “Penric’s Mission”

  “Mira’s Last Dance”

  Other Original E-books

  The short story collection Proto Zoa contains five very early tales—three (1980s) contemporary fantasy, two science fiction—all previously published but not in this handy format. The novelette “Dreamweaver’s Dilemma” may be of interest to Vorkosigan completists, as it is the first story in which that proto-universe began, mentioning Beta Colony but before Barrayar was even thought of.

  Sidelines: Talks and Essays is just what it says on the tin—a collection of three decades of my nonfiction writings, including convention speeches, essays, travelogues, introductions, and some less formal pieces. I hope it will prove an interesting companion piece to my fiction.

  The Vorkosigan Stories

  Many pixels have been expended debating the ‘best’ order in which to read what have come to be known as the Vorkosigan Books (or Saga), the Vorkosiverse, the Miles books, and other names. The debate mainly revolves around publication order versus internal-chronological order. I favor internal chronological, with a few adjustments.

  It was always my intention to write each book as a stand-alone, so that the reader could theoretically jump in anywhere. While still somewhat true, as the series developed it acquired a number of sub-arcs, closely related tales that were richer for each other. I will list the sub-arcs, and then the books, and then the duplication warnings. (My publishing history has been complex.) And then the publication order, for those who want it.

  Shards of Honor and Barrayar. The first two books in the series proper, they detail the adventures of Cordelia Naismith of Beta Colony and Aral Vorkosigan of Barrayar. Shards was my very first novel ever; Barrayar was actually my eighth, but continues the tale the next day after the end of Shards. For readers who want to be sure of beginning at the beginning, or who are very spoiler-sensitive, start with these two.