If I can. He hoisted the baggage and shuffled after them to the stairs.
* * *
The blue Cedonian sky was hazier this morning as they walked down to the harbor. If this heralded some change in the fine weather, Pen thought, eyeing it, it wasn’t going to be soon enough to impede their departure.
The squawks of white gulls played over the clatter of men and equipment on the two piers readying ships for sea. Crates of goods from last night’s unlading were piled up ashore, waiting for their carriers to come take them to their inland destinations. A crew of men unpacked an arriving wagon, lifting long ceramic flasks of wine from their straw bed and carting them off to a dock. Another crew wrestled with ingots of copper, distinctive with their green patina and red scratches, stacking them on a handcart. Ikos watched it all with great professional interest, as he and the behatted Bosha, mismatched sightseers, veered off to loiter on a low wall as if enjoying the maritime spectacle.
“All this way,” mourned Pen, “and I never saw great Thasalon.”
“Since any view we’re like to get would be from inside an imperial prison,” said Idrene, “best not to make that wish.”
“Aye,” Pen sighed.
Idrene clutched the packet with their papers as they approached the Customs shed. Nikys raised her chin and inhaled.
At a clatter of hooves on the cobblestones behind them, Penric wheeled around. And froze.
A man in the uniform of an imperial courier dismounted from his sweating horse and tied its reins to a bollard, looking over the docks and ships with sharp, flashing eyes. Turning to his saddlebags, he withdrew a leather dispatch case. He began to walk purposefully toward the Customs shed.
“Keep smiling, don’t panic, and play along,” Pen muttered through his teeth to Nikys and Idrene as they paused to see what had distracted him, and stiffened in turn. “I can take care of this.”
Nikys gripped Idrene’s hand. In caution? In reassurance?
This one is going to be costly, warned Des, fully alert. It wasn’t an attempt to dissuade him.
Not nearly as costly as failing, Pen thought grimly back.
Aye.
Sight, Des.
Pen set down their baggage and moved to intercept the courier, plastering a smile on his features. That strange, compelling, colorful interior view of a soul’s essence, hidden within the outer material form, flickered into focus in Pen’s mind’s eye. “Oh, officer!” he called, the reverberations of the shamanic weirding voice entering his tones even as he pushed the words out. They touched the man like tendrils, barely catching on that firm sense of duty. His head jerked toward Pen, and he frowned, but stopped.
“Good morning,” Pen continued. “Have you ridden from Guza?”
Pen felt the assent swirling within the man even as he returned in a quelling growl, “What is it to you?”
“I think you want to let me see that paper,” Pen purred, holding out his hand as though such an exchange were the most natural thing in the world. The fellow shook his head as if throwing off an insect, but, slowly, opened his case. “You need to deliver that paper to me.”
The courier extracted a document, stood at some echo of attention, and held it out. Pen took it and ran his eyes hastily through what he guessed was some standard Cedonian bureaucratic preamble—Bosha would know—to the critical paragraph, a description of Idrene in much the same terms as the sailor had given them yesterday afternoon. The official detainment order for the customs inspectors, clearly.
Pen twitched it behind him and set it alight. It was a puff of ash before it reached the cobbles.
“You have delivered your urgent message to the Customs-shed officer,” Pen continued, driving the words, and the geas of persuasion, as deep into his target as possible. The tendrils set like hooks, like sucking mouths, into the officer’s spirit, and Pen winced. Geases could be nasty almost-organisms, at times, parasitizing the life of their victim for their own prolongation. A true shaman could create one that would last for weeks. Pen hoped for a day. “You have done your duty. Now you need to take care of your loyal horse.” A geas worked best when laid in alignment with the subject’s natural inclinations. “And then go drink a flagon of wine. You’ve earned it. You delivered your message in Akylaxio just as ordered.” Pen simulated a Cedonian military salute, which the man, his eyes slightly dazed, returned.
Blinking, the man returned to his horse, untied it, and led it off. By the time he reached the street, his steps were a firm stride again. He didn’t look back. He might bear other copies of the circular to deliver further along the coast, but their existence did not concern Pen.
Still sitting on the wall overlooking it all, both Bosha and Ikos swiveled their heads in worry to watch the officer. Not looking back at them, Pen managed an it’s all right, stand down wave, which he hoped they interpreted correctly.
It wasn’t entirely all right. Memory alteration fiddled not only with free will but with the very essence of a soul, and thus bordered on sacrilege. Good intentions and even good results were valid theological defenses only up to a point. Pen could hope he’d not transgressed beyond it. He wouldn’t say pray, as he’d decided long ago not to bother the gods with questions when he didn’t really want to hear the answers.
The blood was already starting to trickle. Pen snorted and sucked it back to send down his throat. “Now I need to get out of sight for a few minutes,” he told the women. “Quickly.”
Nikys, who had watched him with the sacred dogs, understood at once. She dropped Idrene’s hand and grabbed Pen’s, towing him back toward the stacks of crates as the trickle turned into a flood and Pen choked, gasped, and choked again. His eyes watered wildly. He clapped his other hand to his mouth as he coughed out blood. It stained his palm in quick stripes as he reached the shelter and dropped to his knees, then his hands and knees, coughing wetly. The scarlet splattered onto the stones, spreading.
And kept coming. Struggling for breath between spasms, Pen wondered if he could actually drown himself. There was a new hazard for the list…
“Mother’s tears, Pen!” gasped Nikys, holding his quaking shoulders. “This is much worse than before.”
And Idrene’s startled voice, “Is he dying?”
It must look as if he were hacking out his lungs in gobbets. Which, admittedly, sounded much more dramatic than It’s a nosebleed. Pen wheezed and shook his head. “Ugly magic,” he got out between coughs. “High cost. Des hates it.” Shamanic magics did not come naturally to a chaos demon, and Pen suspected his body paid a premium price for his use of them at all. It was as if chaos and blood were coins of two different realms, and the moneylender charged an extortionate fee for their exchange.
Should I do something? Des asked, anxious. There are harbor rats lurking about…
Don’t. Trying to divert or delay his somatic payment for this magic with some uphill healing had unpleasant side-effects, afterward. Better than dying, to be sure, but still better was to pay off the debt at once. It just looked alarming.
He studied the cup or so of blood splashed on the ground under his face. All right, was alarming. But his desperate coughing ceased, his lungs stopped pulsing, and the blood issuing from his stinging nose dwindled to mere drips, then tailed off altogether. He let Nikys roll him into her arms, smiling weakly up at her distraught face.
He should explain about the nosebleed, but her lap was such a lovely soft cushion…
Malingerer, scoffed Des.
Are you going to tell on me?
Never. He knew he was going to be all right when his demon’s temporary fright faded back into amusement. Enjoy your treat. After all, so do I.
Not thinking about that, Des. It throws me off my stride.
As you wish.
“Bastard’s teeth, is all that red gush his?” asked Ikos’s voice, much too close to Pen’s ear.
“You were supposed to steer clear of us.” Pen cracked open his eyes. “You two.” Bosha had taken up a guard stance at the entry
of the space between the crate stacks. Pen added to Ikos, “This, by the way, is what happens to me when I force a geas on an unwilling person. So you see I didn’t cast one on Acolyte Hekat yesterday.”
“Huh.” His face retreated out of Pen’s sight.
“Should I follow that courier and do anything about him?” Bosha asked over his shoulder in a neutral tone.
Was he offering to assassinate the man? Dear me, he is! crowed Des. What a handy fellow to have around. Pen hastened to explain that his geas made further intervention unnecessary, which Bosha, after a considering moment, accepted.
Ikos returned with what proved to be his shirt, wetted with seawater, and handed it to Pen without comment.
“Do I look a fright?”
Nikys nodded, her clutch not slackening.
“I’d best tidy up. I don’t want to be kept from boarding because they fear I have some sort of plague. Aside from being a sorcerer.” Deciding, since it was Ikos’s shirt, that he couldn’t make it much worse, Pen wiped the gore from his face and hands—he’d managed to keep most of the splash off his tunic—then let Nikys have it to finish the job to her satisfaction.
One gives you the shirt off his back, mused Des, and the other offers to help you bury bodies. I do believe you have made some new friends, Pen!
Hush, Pen thought back. But he believed so, too. Or a brother-in-law and a… did Idrene realize they were going to acquire a eunuch-in-law?
I imagine she will, said Des. She seems quite as shrewd as Nikys.
He grinned and let Ikos and Nikys pull him to his feet. The gray dizziness passed off as he caught his breath.
When he had composed himself, the three taking ship continued the interrupted trek for the Customs shed, leaving Ikos and Bosha to lurk warily among the crates. Pen let Idrene, all assured-army-widow this morning, although of a different and fictional officer, present their papers to the clerk. They all watched in feigned indifference as their baggage was turned out onto the table, but it was soon clear this modest party bore no contraband. The clerk grew interested in Pen’s medical case, though not for any official reason, and seemed content with Pen’s explanation that he was an aspiring student of the healing arts.
Then it was time to traverse the dock to the gangplank of the Saonese ship, and be herded up it by sailors ready to get underway. Three sturdy masts, Pen observed with approval, and even larger than the cargo vessel on which he’d traveled from Lodi to Patos not four months past, which now seemed a century ago. Making this Pen’s second sea voyage ever. Would it be as life-altering as the first?
XVIII
A bench ran along the taffrail at the stern of the big merchanter. After stowing their scant baggage in their cabin, they all went out and sat upon it to watch the sailors work the ship out of the harbor. Nikys contemplated the receding shore, as did Idrene. Their hands found each other, as if to assure that this one part of their lives, at least, was not lost to them. Pen leaned his head back under the wide sky and gazed up. Distant figures, no matter how carefully watched-for, grew indistinguishable, then the town became a blur on the sun-hazed coast, and then the coast, too, dropped below the horizon. They were away.
It felt to Nikys as though her body had been bound strangling-tight by wires, and one by one, each wire was being clipped away till none were left. She breathed, shook out her arms, sensed her blood move freely. Stretched her neck. Exhaled.
“Penric…” No, that wasn’t right. “Desdemona. Can I talk with you?”
“Mm?” Pen turned his head. “Of course. Any time.”
She stood. “Let’s go to the cabin.”
Pen followed her up at once, amiable if baffled.
Idrene smiled behind her hand. “Take all the time you like. I’ve had my fill of tiny rooms. I plan to sit right out here as much as possible, this voyage.”
Nikys rolled her eyes, but said, “Thank you, Mother.” And meant it.
The cabin was tiny indeed, two pairs of bunks built into the bulkheads facing each other across a narrow aisle. It did have a small, square window on the end, presently hooked open on the sight of the sea falling behind them, stirred by the ship’s passage. The air was fresh and fine.
Nikys gestured Pen to one bunk, and sat on the other facing him. With his long legs, they were nearly knee to knee.
Nikys hardly knew where to begin, only that she had to begin. With a feeling of jumping into murky but deep water, she said, “Desdemona, have you ever been married before?”
She wasn’t sure if it was Pen or Des responsible for his head going back and his eyebrows up, but she could mark the little changes in the tension of his face as the demon came to the fore. “By which I suppose you are asking if any of my sorceresses were married before?”
“Yes, that. During the time you were with them. I know some were widowed…”
Pen held up his fingers to keep count. Or Des held up Pen’s fingers. “Of the ten, five were never married. Sugane, Rogaska, of course Mira, Umelan, and Ruchia. Vasia and Aulia were both widowed before they acquired me, and did not remarry after. Litikone, well, I was a very young demon then. With no Temple guidance, I suppose it seemed more like contracting a madness than a power. Her husband became frightened and moved out, which was why she went to Patos to end her days as a servant to Vasia. Who was the first to acquire me purposely, if still untutored.
“Aulia of Brajar was my first trained Temple divine, and what a huge difference that made, but she was already older, and widowed, and very firm of will. Which was how I came to be handed off at her death to the great physician Amberein of Saone. She was still married, with her childbearing behind her of course, but her husband, dear fellow, was already used to dealing with a strong-minded woman. I had not guessed a sorcerer could live in intimacy so well, before. Helvia was another of the same stamp.
“Ruchia… was Ruchia, my dearest rider until Pen. The first to really treat me as a partner and a person, if still unnamed. Forty years with her quite spoiled me for anything less.”
Pen’s hands had lowered to clasp between his knees; he looked up from them. “Six of the ten had borne children, before me. None after, of course.”
“Why of course? Is it something to do with the chaos?”
Pen, yes, it was Pen now, cleared his throat. “Yes. Sorceresses who conceive suffer early miscarriages. Unless they are very knowledgeable and adept. Amberein or Helvia could certainly have brought a child to term, but they had already finished their families. Or Ruchia, but she did not choose it. Something emotionally complicated to do with herself being a foundling of the Bastard’s orphanage, I gather.”
Nikys pursed her lips. “What of sorcerers?”
“Um… I’m less sure. Well, no. I’ve heard of sorcerers who managed to get married, and have families.” He added reluctantly, “Though they are more often bachelors or widowers. Or their wives leave them, because it’s too much like living with a crazy man.” He smiled ruefully as if inviting her to argue with this, and looked more rueful when she only nodded. “I’ve never been married,” he pointed out. “Although I am trying to rectify that.”
His lips twitched back, as Des said, “Feeling left out, lad?”
“Who wouldn’t? Looking at…” A feeling gesture at Nikys, and a melting smile.
Nikys resisted melting. Barely. She tried to remember everything on her list. “I don’t want to move to Adria.”
Pen sat up. “I could transfer to Orbas, with some help from the duke. The duke pressuring his archdivine, rather. Even the Temple hierarchy must give way in the face of the sacrament of marriage. …Usually.” He added after a moment, “And if not, well, I’m in Orbas, they’re in Adria, what are they going to do about it? Although I would like to be able to travel back there someday, at need.” He nodded, as though the point were disposed of. Perhaps it was. Though, being Pen, he added after another moment, “I might still like to take you to visit Adria sometime. When it’s not having a clash with Cedonia, but then, you’re not going t
o be a Cedonian anymore, are you? It’s really a very interesting realm.”
Nikys grimaced. “I’d never have left Cedonia, if Cedonia had not betrayed Adelis. No going back now.”
“Sometimes,” sighed Pen, “that happens. Even without betrayal.” Missing the white peaks of his distant cantons? Though Nikys was of the strong opinion that the Mother’s Order in Martensbridge had betrayed him too, and first, through their nearly lethal mishandling of his healing skills. And he knew it, or he would not have near-fled that beloved home, either.
Nikys fought her way back to her points. “I want a house.” Though she temporized, “Someday, at least. I realize it might not be possible right away.”
“Well, so do I.”
“Oh. …Huh.”
“I haven’t spent the past decade perching in other people’s palaces by choice, exactly. It was just easiest. Convenient to my work.”
She supposed that was so. “I think you live mostly inside your own head. It hardly matters where you’ve put your body.”
“So a house will do just fine, then.” Another maddening smile.
She swallowed. “Children…”
“Those, too.” He nodded. “They will go with the house. Like a cat.”
“What?”
“That was Pen, not me,” Des put in. “I don’t know what he’s thinking, either. Yes, you do.”
Nikys drew breath and faced her darkest fear. Head-on, because it was time. “I may be barren. Kymis and I were never able to get a child.” She didn’t want to add, And we tried, though she supposed it was implied. She had never met a man before Pen so able to toss her like a coin between shyness and exasperation.
“Could be many different reasons for that.” He glanced her up and down. Wait, why did it feel as though those blue eyes had just knifed through her? Sorcerers, agh. “There’s nothing obviously amiss on your side, at least.” Was that all it took? The eyes crinkled. “It might require some experimenting to be sure. I could help you with that.”
The Prisoner of Limnos (Penric & Desdemona Book 6) Page 14