Penric's Mission

XIII

Penric took Nikys’s… Madame Khatai’s arm in escort as they walked back through the shadows to the inn. He suppressed a wince at the thought of her having trailed him to the temple alone this late at night, in a strange town.

It was no great distance, observed Des.

Des, just don’t… embarrass me with this woman.

Rather do it yourself, would you? An impression of a huff. If I have to listen to you pine after her, so can she. And rather more usefully.

It was bad enough that he’d made Nikys listen to his fractured confession. There are impediments. Starting with my Temple oath to the archdivine of Adria.

Your god is the same everywhere, Adria, Cedonia… or Orbas.

My god was just now silent on the subject of my direction, you will note. As ever. And everywhere. A sameness of sorts, I suppose.

What, you prayed for guidance and in the very next moment that nice child came and sat down beside you. I thought she was going to pat you on the head. I could have told her a board would work better. What do you expect from Him, a letter signed and sealed and hand-delivered? A parade with trumpets?

Penric said hesitantly, You like her? You don’t always like the women I, er, meet.

They don’t always like me. But she seems willing to learn. Not so sure about the brother.

I thought you all found him quite scenic to look upon.

Yes, till he opened his mouth and was so rude to us.

We’ve met worse. I thought him teachable. Give him time.

The time you aren’t planning to allow? Contradictory, Pen.

He smiled tightly. If consistency is what you want, I’ve taken oath to the wrong god.

They made their way as quietly as possible through the inn’s front door, Penric turning the key again behind them. The place afforded no night-porter, fortunately. They creaked up the dark stairs and made their way to their chamber, marked by a faint orange glow under the door. He was therefore not too surprised to enter after Nikys and find Arisaydia sitting up in the room’s one chair, glaring at them by the light of a tallow candle, his eyes red sparks. His unsheathed sword lay across his lap.

He kept his voice low, but fierce. “Where have you been?”

It must have been alarming for him to wake up to the empty room. Or at least to the absence of his sister; Pen hadn’t planned on that. Good that he hadn’t gone charging out into the town in some wrong direction and repaid them the jolt. “The temple,” he answered, equally quietly.

“At this time of night?”

“The gods will hear prayers any time.”

“Actually,” said Nikys, doffing her cloak and hanging it on a peg, “I found him robbing the offering boxes.”

At Arisaydia’s stare, Penric said, “You want to hire horses tomorrow, don’t you?”

“I was afraid we would be pressed to forage for mounts like an army in enemy territory,” he admitted reluctantly. “But buying would be better still, to leave no witnesses to our direction.”

“You were thinking of stealing them?” said Nikys, her brows rising. She glanced sidelong at Pen. “It’s hard to imagine Cedonia as an enemy country.”

Arisaydia’s hand touched his temple, as if to say, Not so hard for me now. But he clearly still mourned this hostile transformation, even as he set his face to the wind. “No horses for sale in this crossroads village at this time of night anyway.” He sighed out his tension and rose. “Try to sleep.”

At least he sheathed his sword before he lay down again, but he did pass Penric a special brotherly glower as he blew out the candle.

Pen lay on his pallet and sorted out his options.

There weren’t that many. From Skirose, a lesser military road ran east to the sea, and west over the spine of Cedonia to link up with the net of roads around Thasalon. A minor local road ran south into the hills, branching into tracks unfit for wheeled vehicles over the stony passes to the neighboring province. It was another hundred or so miles across that province to the next range of mountains. Beyond them lay the lands of Orbas, Cedonia’s sometimes-client-state, sometimes-ally, sometimes-enemy, presently attempting a neutral independence. Thasalon would be happy to forcibly reconvert it to a tax-paying province, if the emperor didn’t have a compass-turn of other pressures to attend to: Adria to the east, the Roknari to the north coast and islands, the Rusylli to the southwest.

Penric’s most direct route home was east to the sea and across it to Adria. Overland, it would be a longer journey, south around the arc of the coast through Orbas and Trigonie, before he came to Adriac lands once more. Although once to Orbas, he would no longer be running as an outlaw of sorts, and could presumably report to the Temple and seek aid from a local chapter of the Bastard’s Order. So heading south with Arisaydia and his sister—all right, with Nikys and her brother—wouldn’t be deciding anything, necessarily. An alternate course would be to find a coastal ship to take them to one of the few ports of Orbas, although Pen doubted his ability to persuade Arisaydia aboard a form of transport he could neither control nor abandon at will.

Nikys would, of course, follow her twin. Not some possibly-lunatic stranger she’d just met a fortnight ago. Arisaydia was correct, if not right, to take that for granted. Did he realize how much he assumed of her?

Not that oh-so-Learned Penric was in a position to offer her anything better than a different dangerous flight and uncertain welcome, now was he?

Pen, said Des, exasperated, what you are in a position to do is to stop fretting and go to sleep, so we aren’t all worthless for any action in the morning.

She wasn’t wrong. He grumbled and rolled over.

They ate breakfast soon after dawn in the inn’s common room, as apart from its other patrons as they could arrange, and silently. Fare included porridge, unexceptional, dried figs and apricots, decent, a small ration of white cheese, horrifyingly familiar squares of dried fish which Nikys and Arisaydia consumed without comment, and an excessively generous bowl of tough half-dried black olives, which Penric sampled suspiciously and passed along to his companions. After, they returned to their room to count out Pen’s coins on the washstand, and plan.

“If we make for the coast,” Pen reasoned, “and then pick up passage on some local vessel, we could as soon reach the ports of Orbas as the island of Corfara. Which must surely be easier on Madame Khatai than an overland flight through these hills.” And it would give Penric several more days to argue for Adria, if he could evolve some better lever to shift this human boulder. A frown from Nikys indicated that this slight on her endurance was not entirely appreciated, but an appeal to Arisaydia’s own convalescent state would have been worse received.

Arisaydia appeared not totally unmoved by the argument, or at least his scowl grew more thoughtful. He glanced at Nikys and seemed to consider. “Our funds might purchase one maybe-sound horse. Not three,” he said at last. “Give the purse to Nikys, and we’ll go dicker for hired horses. You go and buy us food to last for a two-day ride. We’ll meet back here and decide on our direction then.”

It wasn’t a yes, but it wasn’t as firm a no as usual. Penric elected not to push, or push his luck, just yet, and went off to find whatever passed for a day-market in this town. And marshal his next set of points. Debate had never been his best skill, back in seminary.

He returned with a sack of variously preserved foods, including more leathery olives, and settled on a bench in the inn’s entry atrium, tilting his straw hat down over his face, to await the siblings’ return with horses.

And waited.

Growing restless, he went up to check their chamber. No notes. Arisaydia and Nikys had taken their scant belongings with them to pack in the hoped-for saddlebags, and Pen’s case stood ready to go. Arisaydia was not a man to waste time.

Indeed, not.

A weight settled in Pen’s stomach that had nothing to do with porridge and olives, and he hastened downstairs and around to the main street that hosted the livery and coaching inn serving the military road. A quick survey of the ostlers came up only with no, no sir, a man and a woman had not tried to hire three riding horses in the last couple of hours, nor even two horses. Was there any other livery in town? Oh, aye, sir, there was a little place just off the west road, but it only offered local hires, not good coach teams like ours, twelve miles an hour on the flats! Reflecting that this country was not oversupplied with flats, Penric lengthened his stride as he found his way to the west road.

The stable on the west road was small but tidy, featuring a dozen stalls, mostly empty. Oh, aye, sir; a man and his wife had hired two horses, together with the requisite groom-guide, and left upwards of two hours gone. Which way? The south road. Something about visiting relatives in a village up the far head of the valleys.

Arisaydia, you son of a bitch, Penric swore, internally. For the stable owner he managed a thin smile. What was left in Pen’s pockets wouldn’t hire a pony for a ride up and down the street.

He waited till he was out of earshot, stamping back up the road, to curse aloud. It didn’t relieve his feelings much. The blasted man hadn’t won wars, Pen supposed, by sitting around waiting for the battle to be brought to him. He should have remembered that.

He was smooth, agreed Des, unhelpfully. If he’d demanded that purse for his own hands, you wouldn’t have been near so quick to hand it across.

Pen growled.

And had Nikys agreed, or argued and been overridden? Gone along eagerly, or regretfully? Pen supposed the clench to his heart made no practical difference either way.

Returning to the inn, Pen cleared his case and sack from a room he could no longer afford, and tried to come up with his next scheme. Walking after his quarry in an attempt to overtake them would be futile. More futile, he suspected, would be catching them. Horse theft, even if a temporary borrowing, would be tricky. Not impossible, though. But if that was his plan, he needed to carry it out quickly.

He’d have to wait for nightfall to revisit the moneylenders of the gods in the temple, although raiding the same place twice in a row seemed imprudent. If anyone had noticed the sudden shortfall, they might set a watch tonight. Alternatively, he could give up and start walking to the coast. His worn Cedonian sandals were not his idea of marching gear, but he could replace them at the next town. Where there would be another temple, likely, although perhaps more impoverished. He gnawed a piece of dried fruit from his sack, and fumed.

Mulling feasibility, he hoisted his case and sack and returned to the first livery. It harbored more horses to choose from, but also more people about. Sneaking an animal out in broad daylight would certainly pose a challenge, even for a sorcerer. Waiting for the cover of darkness would be pointless, if the entire purpose was to catch Arisaydia and Nikys. If he were going east afoot, better to start now.

He stood concealed across the street in a niche between two whitewashed houses and, slowly, tore his own hopes in half. He’d done all he could. East it was.

A pair of coaches rolled up, noisy and dusty, each pulled by a lathered team of six. Someone had been paying for speed, to be sure. The ostlers and servants, interpreting the signs of impending largess, swarmed out to take charge. About to step forward, Pen instead jerked back, as the vehicles disgorged a troop of ten soldiers and a sergeant, a man in the loose white robes of the Bastard’s Order in Cedonia, and the all-too-familiar figure of Velka.

Heart hammering, Pen scrambled up the side of the house, fingers and toes scraping raw on stonework and sills, to take a concealed vantage on the flat roof, peering down into the street and a bit of the inn yard. Of course coaches. If Velka had tried to march a troop after Arisaydia, they wouldn’t be more than forty miles from Patos by now.

After some milling about and a rush on the livery’s privy, and the successful sale of some tankards of ale swiftly quaffed, the sergeant rounded up his men, counted them off, and sent them spreading out in pairs through the town. “You know what questions to ask by now,” he shouted after them. Penric bet he knew, too. Bastard’s teeth.

Velka, who bore a thin white bandage around his brow, was stiff and limping. It might be the lingering effects of Pen’s rough treatment of him three days ago at the villa, but the gray-bearded man in the rumpled whites moved almost as stiffly, so maybe it was just the coach. The glint of silver from the man’s shoulder braid would have told Pen what he needed to know even without Desdemona’s tight, Well, Pen. We have a colleague.

Can you tell anything more without revealing yourself?

Not yet.

Velka began interrogating the ostlers and servants, who answered readily, pointing in various directions. A handing-out of coins reduced the directions by maybe half. Penric wanted to thump his own head—their memory of his recent queries must send Velka on to the other livery much sooner than he would have found it otherwise. Although he would certainly have arrived there in due course. Arisaydia and Nikys couldn’t be more than ten miles up the track by now. Maybe there were a lot of possible side trails? Penric hoped for dozens.

It would take Velka some time to collect intelligence, decide on a course, hire or conscript thirteen riding horses. Though the sergeant was already bargaining with the inn servants to get his men a hasty meal, which might well be accomplished while horses were found and saddled. Their demands would strip this stable of mounts, apart from the dozen spent coach horses, useless to Pen. The Temple sorcerer passed within, perhaps looking to his own sustenance.

Velka would shortly know that Pen had been seen separately from Nikys and Arisaydia, and more recently. Pen wondered briefly if he should show himself to get them to chase after him instead? They could well catch him, he recognized ruefully, although they would soon regret doing so. But Velka had enough soldiers to split his forces if he were forced to. He only needed the sorcerer and a couple of men to go after Pen. The rest could ride south, unsparing of their mounts.

Arisaydia would fight to the death before allowing himself to be captured again, Pen suspected, and where would that leave Nikys? Fallen into the hands of some remnant of enraged men, out for revenge for their dead and wounded? Unless the twins should decide to travel together one last time. It seemed a horribly plausible nightmare either way.

Pen swallowed, swung back down the side of the building, collected his case and sack, and slipped through to the next street, not that Skirose had many streets to choose from. He loped west, parallel to but out of sight from the military road. Sneaking up opposite the small livery through someone’s scanty grove of olive trees, he spotted two of Velka’s men coming back already, marching double-time with their news.

He swore under his breath, waited until they’d angled out of sight, and darted across the road to the stable.

The stable boy rose in far too much alarm to be greeting a potential customer. Pen made one futile attempt to motion him to hush, then, as he turned, yelling and starting to run, tweaked the nerves in his legs and, as soon as possible, his throat. The lad recoiled in terror as Pen rolled him to the side of the aisle, whispering, “Sorry—sorry! It will wear off in a bit.” He hoped. He hadn’t as much time to prepare his strike as with the soldiers in the villa.

Only one horse was left, a rangy bay gelding turning restlessly in a box stall. Looks good, said Des. Its legs are even longer than yours.

It also had a spine like a sawblade; ten minutes of bareback trotting would slice a rider up the fork. Pen searched feverishly for a saddle and bridle, and saddlebags, into which he stuffed his case and sack. Back in the stall, he discovered the reason for the beast’s lonely state was that it was a biter. And a kicker. And generally uncooperative. At its second yellow-teethed snap, Des gave it a good sting on the nose, mysterious to it since the human it was trying to savage hadn’t touched it, and again at the third. It stopped trying after that.

Fitting the bit into its mouth involved ear-wrestling and a near-loss of valuable sorcerous fingers. Pen rechecked the girth—aye, it was a blower, too—and prudently mounted while still in the stall. He let Des undo the latch and swing open the door, and concentrated on keeping the animal’s head up on a short rein, and his head down instead of smacked into the door lintel, as it pronged out into the light of the afternoon.

He fought it out onto the road, where it was at least pleased to convert vertical into horizontal motion. Only a sketchy illusion of wolves, a fragment of geas learned from his shaman friend, allowed Pen to force the turn—more of a shy—onto the south road. At that point, he could crouch in his stirrups and let the blighted beast run itself out of piss and vinegar.

It took five miles. Pen, gasping for breath, was impressed. Bastard’s blessing, are you?

The gallop fell to a bounding trot almost as hard to sit, then a blowing walk. The road followed the winding valley as it rose toward the hill passes. Between patches of tangled woodland, little farmsteads clung to the creek. At one, a woman was out working in a vegetable garden, and Pen dared to stop and beg a drink of water and word of any prior passers-by. She scowled at him in alarm but then, at her second glance, smiled unwilled. The water was forthcoming, but no news; she’d been working inside earlier. Pen cast her a blessing, which made her blink, but then wave back.

He watered the horse when the creek crossed the road, after an argument about whether it was going to try to flop down and roll him off among the rocks. He was only sorry he couldn’t give it to Arisaydia. The two deserved each other.