“Really, it was the first thing I ever taught her. How to sew up skin. She was a shockingly quick study. It set the tone for our future dealings in a way, hm, that I’ve never been able to get back under my control since.” He looked up, producing an awkward smile. “And that’s my one and only war story, in full.”
Nikys wagered not. Neither sole nor complete, though evidently pivotal.
“And here I am telling it to the general’s widow. You lived through those times. I’m sure you’ve seen worse.”
“No,” said Idrene, with a thoughtful look at him. “Merely more.”
He hesitated, then inclined his head in delicate appreciation.
“How did you get out of the tree house?” Nikys couldn’t help asking.
“Ah. The game couldn’t last, of course. After about two weeks I grew so feverish Lady Tanar became frightened enough to ask for help. Of her mother, fortunately for me. I think the servants would have turned me over to the soldiers, or just tossed me into the street. Lady Xarre chose otherwise. I was kept discreetly in her household until I recovered. I found ways to make myself useful, and stayed.”
So much so that he was still there fourteen years later?
“Lady Xarre took a risk,” Idrene observed. Her tone made it an observation of fact, not a judgment.
Bosha opened his hands. “Time went on, the capital settled back down. I was forgotten soon enough. My family were not great lords. None of my older brothers survived to renew the threat. Nor was I going to start the clan over.”
Which was one reason the court bureaucracy favored eunuchs for high posts; they could not put the aggrandizement of their nonexistent children over the needs of the empire. Despite all, the clan game was still played, with families cutting and placing a spare son in such service to later boost brothers or nephews. Nikys wondered if the Boshas had once had some such plan for their odd fifth son. It seemed to have gone profoundly awry, if so.
“My father lived for a while, after. I was glad of that.” His crooked lips drew back in a smile that was all sharp edges, like a poisoned blade. “Long enough to know I was his sole remaining son.”
He turned about and climbed down from the cart to ready the horse for the next stage.
Which raised another question, which Nikys absolutely could not ask: had Bosha been a volunteer, exactly, for his bureaucratic career? Or had he been pressured or forced into it by a family overburdened with sons competing for their inheritances? That, too, happened sometimes.
No, she thought, contemplating his story. I’ve no need to ask.
* * *
The starlight scintillated overhead as they took the road again, but the deep shadows on the ground slowed them to a walking pace. At times even the earnest carthorse balked, and Bosha would go to its head to lead it, murmuring reassurances in the fuzzy flicking ears. Nikys hoped the pale man’s misery in bright light was repaid by better vision at night.
At least they were making steady progress away from Limnos. She hesitated to call it the right direction, as they would have to double back north by ship to circumnavigate the Cedonian peninsula and reach Orbas again. If they had to sail without Penric would there be some safe way to leave him word which ship they’d taken?
Would he be safe at all, or was he being as overconfident as whatever error had led him to that first ugly sojourn in the bottle dungeon? His powers were astonishing, but subtle, and she knew he could be taken by surprise, or overwhelmed by numbers. Her mind’s eye went on to produce an unwanted string of vivid playlets of how this might happen, growing more and more horrific and bizarre. And unlikely, she told herself sternly. He would not end up smashed on the rocks, or drowned in the sea, or beaten by brutal soldiers till the blood ran down to flood those blue eyes with opaque red. He had skills. He had tricks. He had Desdemona.
So few people knew how valuable that bright blond head was, that was the trouble. How irreplaceable. The notion of him being killed by ruffians wholly ignorant of what they destroyed was the most sickening of all.
She wished her imagination came with a lever to shut it off, like an irrigation gate. This nightmare garden needed no watering.
The darkness was cooling rapidly. Nikys leaned against her mother, who leaned equally exhausted against her, and not just to share heat. As the horse plodded on, Nikys wondered if she had just traded a gold coin for a gold coin.
XIII
Des felt the presence of the women in the corridor before Pen heard the key in the lock. Swiftly, he huddled himself up on the cot facing the wall, drapery drawn over his head, simulating a prisoner in deep depression at her fate. Rather as Idrene had looked when they’d first come in, come to think.
He trusted he wouldn’t have to attempt a geas. Apart from the challenge of trying to cast it on three subjects at once, the trouble with using a geas on a person—as contrasted with an animal—was that when it wore off, the person remembered.
“Madame Gardiki?” The dedicat’s voice was not unkind. The other two presences seemed bored but watchful. “Your dinner is here.”
Idrene’s voice had been a warm alto. Pen lightened his baritone and shoved his face into his pillow. “Just leave it on the table. I’ll get to it.” And, after a calculatedly reluctant moment, “Thank you.”
Rattling and bustle, as they took the old meal tray and left the new one, refilled the pitcher of drinking water, refreshed the ewer on the washstand, swapped out the chamber pot in the discreet commode chair in the corner. Herded back to the doorway. The dedicat’s voice, tentatively: “Is there anything else you need tonight, Madame?”
Pen shook his head into his pillow.
“Goddess bless,” said the dedicat, and withdrew with her silent outriders.
Oh, She does! thought Pen as the lock clicked over once more. It was the one thing he’d wanted most from this dangerous masquerade: a clear half-day’s start for Idrene and Nikys. The attendants would not return till dawn, barring some random bed-check. Should that occur, Des could rust the lock to slow their entry, and he could… well, no. That would trap him on the wrong side of the door. Hiding under the bed was bound to fail, being the first place to search. Cabinets and chests would be as bad, had they existed.
Pen went to the deep window and looked out. In the last level light, a few golden sails hurried toward the harbor of Guza. He wondered if Nikys was aboard one, or if they’d already landed. The specks were much too far away to make out figures aboard.
The window had wooden shutters on this side to close against the drafts. Would parchment or glass be substituted in winter? If not, it would make for a gloomy chamber. The opening was taller than wide. He could not fit in his shoulders square-on, but turning sideways he might slip through easily. Lying along the grainy sill, he put his head out for a survey.
He looked into a wide gulf of air, across the darkening blue strait, and down a dizzying slide of stone to a distant necklace of rocks with the white lace of surf foaming over them. Mountaineer or no, the drop was as appalling as it was awe-inspiring. A thin crinkle might be the lower reaches of the penitential steps. An upper course, hacked into bare rock, still lay sixty feet below his window. He shuddered, and determinedly found another direction to study.
Left and right, he could just make out the apertures of the fourteen other windows cut on this level. No ledges, no handholds to even begin to entice him out. He was secretly relieved. Twisting his neck, he studied the jutting joists and braces of the balconies twenty feet up. A man with a grappling hook and a death wish might make something of that, but he had brought neither.
His escape, when it came, would have to be through the corridor. Somewhere to his left, the precipitous stairway must rise to the level of the buildings and climax at a gate other than the closely guarded, and presently raised, drawbridge. Such a postern was doubtless locked and barred for the night, which was fine from this side even without magic.
That exit would leave him to make his way down all two thousand steps in the mo
onless night. Never had he been more grateful for Des’s dark vision. At least it seemed unlikely he’d have to crawl over any other climbers on the curves.
Feeling heartened to have a clear plan, he washed his hands, sat, and consumed Madame Gardiki’s dinner. It was a cut above the seminary food in his old student refectory; probably the same as the ladies of the Order were sitting down to eat together somewhere. The portions could have stood to be a little more generous. A search of the room after he’d cleaned his plate turned up only a small bag of almonds, which he methodically cracked and ate by way of dessert.
There would still be too many women abroad in the precincts to venture out yet. He emptied his own clothes out of his sack and gratefully put them on, then used Madame Gardiki’s hairbrush to tidy his still-black hair and tie it into a proper queue. Gathering up her few belongings, he put them in the sack by way of trade. He might have a chance to give them back to her. Her dress he would put back on over his tunic and trousers, to give the proper silhouette to any watchers he might encounter in the darkened halls, later.
That left her shawl. He eyed the window, and thought he might put the wrap to best use by pitching it out to be found on the rocks below. Leaving her gaolers to wonder if they were searching for an escapee, or the body of a suicide carried off by the tide, a theory supported by her still-locked door. That should be good for some splendid misdirection.
Satisfied, Pen drank a couple of glasses of water to assure he wouldn’t oversleep past dawn, then lay down on the cot for a restoring nap.
* * *
Someone was calling him. Ake…p…ake…up…wake…up!
Des…?
A heavy hand gripped his shoulder, and Pen froze, mentally scrambling to prepare some burst of action. Or magic. Or both.
About time! cried Des.
And then an anxious male voice murmured, “Mother…?”
…Oh, said Des. Dear.
It was not a voice Pen recognized. Certainly not Adelis’s. Pen let his snatched-up chaos carefully leak away. Sighed. And said to the wall, “By which I’d guess you must be Ikos Rodoa.”
The figure, a black hulk in the darkness, gasped and recoiled. The faint starlight and sea-light glimmering in from the window barely allowed eyes to distinguish shadow from substance, though Pen thought he might have sensed him by the smell, a long workday’s worth of dried sweat. Des, light.
The colorless clarity of Pen’s night-sight sprang forth, revealing a sturdy man with broad shoulders, Cedonian-dark hair, and rounded features that might be pleasant were they not clenched in dismay. The man whipped a blade from his belt, but did not at once attack, possibly because he could not tell Pen’s head from his tail in the gloom.
Not quite sure what was going to happen when he remedied that, Pen said, “I’m a friend. Don’t cry out,” and allowed the pair of candles on the washstand to flare to life. The sudden yellow glare seemed searing to dark-adapted eyes, and they both blinked and scrunched their lids against it. The wavering knife blade winked flame.
Why did every Cedonian he met start by trying to stab him? Slowly, Pen rolled over and sat up on the edge of the bed, holding his hands open and still.
“You’re not my mother!”
Pen suppressed an acerb reply in favor of efficiency. “Madame Gardiki escaped earlier. Your effort is admirable but a bit late.” Wait. The door… the door was still locked. The rush of shock at last cleared the sleep fog from his brain, and he added sharply, “How in five gods’ names did you get in here?”
The man pointed mutely at the window.
Pen jerked up and strode to stare out, to be confronted with a confusing mess of cables, pulleys, and a couple of dangling loops that resembled, and may have been, canvas saddle girths. He followed four long ropes upward to where they were apparently hooked to some balcony joists. He didn’t look down again, because that would be too unsettling. “Ah,” he said, a little thickly. “That’s right. You’re the bridgebuilder.” He drew back inside.
“Who in the Bastard’s hell are you?” Ikos demanded.
Or out of it, murmured Des, as intent and perplexed as Pen.
“My name is Penric. I’m… helping Nikys rescue her mother.”
The dark eyes flickered at his half-sister’s familiar name, if Pen was guessing this right. “Why?”
The simple answer had worked before, and had the advantage of being true. “I’m courting Nikys.”
“Oh.” Ikos sheathed his knife and raised a large hand to scratch through his mop of short-cut hair. “Time someone did that.” His eyes narrowed. “D’you know what’s going on? I’d stopped in at Mother’s house a few weeks ago. Neighbor said she was arrested, and General Arisaydia blinded in Patos. Why they’d take her if he’d already been blinded made no sense to me, but I followed on and tracked her here. Took me another week to figure how to get her out.”
At his expectant look, Pen said, “Adelis’s sight recovered, and he and Nikys escaped to Orbas.”
“Huh! That’s a miracle. But that explains. Those idiots at Thasalon court have sure made themselves an enemy now.” He nodded shortly.
Pen was rather fascinated by just how fast Ikos connected the political gaps in this complicated tale. But then, he was a Cedonian born and bred.
Ikos frowned around. “Is that water?” He strode to the washstand and drank directly from the pitcher, long gulps, then paused to stare, puzzled, at the candles.
Pen quickly redirected his attention. “When you got Madame Gardiki out”—had he planned to transport her on that terrible contraption, like a timber being raised into place?—“what were you going to do with her?”
“Couldn’t take her home, they’d look there. Eventually. Same problem hiding her in my work crew. I figured to send her to some friends in Trigonie. I built a bridge there two years ago.”
All right, that was reasonable, although there was a bit of a gap between dangling from a balcony on Limnos to surprising some host in the duchy of Trigonie. It didn’t sound much more tenuous than any of Pen’s plans. Each of their schemes, it seemed, were sound in their ways. Until they’d run headlong into each other…
And now there was a problem. Two problems.
Ikos evidently felt it, too. Propping his fists on his hips, he looked Pen up and down. “Brother-in-law, eh?”
Pen mentally fitted the term on Ikos in turn, and felt disoriented. “If she’ll have me.”
“Then I suppose she’d be upset with me if I left you here. Mother’d likely have words, too.” He sighed in a very traditional male-put-upon-by-women manner. Possibly not completely sincere. Given the amount of trouble he’d put himself to, unasked, to arrive in this spot.
Pen had one dress between them, and he didn’t think it would fit Ikos, shorter and squarer than Penric anyway. Pen would have to use his dark-sight to guide the two of them through the precincts as quickly and quietly as possible, and take a chance on encounters with the residents. Maybe Ikos would have a clue where the stair-postern lay.
“We had better go out together,” said Pen.
“Aye,” Ikos reluctantly agreed.
Pen started for the door. Ikos started for the window.
They both stopped. “Where’re you going?” asked Ikos. He pointed seaward. “Way out’s that way.”
“You… propose to take us both in your, uh, device?” Des actually screeched: He’s not getting me up in that thing! Pen winced.
“Why not? I was going to take my mother. It’s perfectly safe to twice her weight and mine. I tested it.” He rubbed his stubbled jaw. “What’s the matter? Got no head for heights?”
“I do reasonably well at them,” said Pen, while Des gibbered, No, no, no! “But that’s a lot of height out there.” If it was true a dying man saw his life flash before his eyes, Pen thought that fall might give enough time for all thirteen of his and Des’s.
Ikos shrugged. “Way I figure, once a drop is enough to kill you, any more you add makes no difference.”
&n
bsp; “A reasonable argument.”
No it’s not, it’s insane!
Pen went to take another look at the contraption, and check the clock of the stars. The two girths, he judged, must be intended as seats like bosun’s chairs. The succession of pulleys was more complex, the logic of their sequencing not immediately obvious to his untrained eyes. It was certainly an ingenious device.
Des radiated something like murderousness at his open intrigue.
Pen raised his eyes to the horizon to check for any recognizable constellations, and drew a harsh breath. The stars to the east were melting away into the steel gray of dawn. He turned back to the room. “It’s much later than I’d thought.”
Ikos tilted one hand back and forth. “The stairs were about what I’d calculated, but walking my way across under the balconies took longer than I’d planned. May be faster going back for the practice.” He hesitated. “Slower for the added weight.”
“I think we’d better try my way.”
“Which is what?”
“Sneaking.”
Ikos’s mouth screwed up in misgiving. “How’re you getting out the door?” He paused. “How’d you get in here, for that matter?”
“I’m good with locks.”
“Well, so would I be, if I had my tool belt with me. Left it behind for the weight, though.” His eyes narrowed at Penric. “How do I know there aren’t half-a-dozen guardsmen the other side of that door, waiting for me?”
“There aren’t. Yet. Besides, if this were that sort of trap, better to have them on this side of the door. You’d be trussed like a chicken already.”
A long, thoughtful silence. “I like my way better.”
How was he to persuade Ikos to trust him in three minutes, when three months had not sufficed for his sister Nikys? Pen sucked breath through his teeth. Threw up his hands. “Fine. Your way. So long as it’s now.”
The Prisoner of Limnos Page 10