Penric's Mission

XIV

Adelis, Nikys thought, was champing at the bit far more than their sluggish horses. Pressing their guide for more speed had only won them grudging brisk trots. He was excessively tender toward his employer’s beasts, she thought, till they arrived well-timed to stop at what proved a cousin’s farmhouse, and an offer of a purchased meal. Adelis whispered, in a furious undervoice more than half serious, that it would be faster to run the man through and steal his horses after all, but yielded to a chance for food that they only did not have thanks to leaving Master—Learned—whatever-he-was Penric behind.

The broad, smiling cousin set them out a lunch at a shady table by the stream, in what would have been an idyllic setting and interlude under any other circumstances. As it was, it gave Nikys her first private chance to pick up their argument from back at the livery.

“I still think we were wrong to leave Learned Penric behind. If not tactically, although that too, morally. What if something happens to him?”

Adelis made an exasperated noise through his chewing. “He’s a sorcerer. And a spy. He’ll land on his feet. Like a cat.”

“That’s not actually true of cats.” Or sorcerers? “And last time, he landed in a bottle dungeon.”

“If it’s true he was tossed into one, it’s also true he escaped. Which is… let’s just say unprecedented. He can make his way back to Adria faster and safer without us. That he’s an Adriac agent is the one part of his jumble of tales that I certainly believe to be real.”

Nikys swallowed watered wine and drummed her fingers on the boards. “I watched him, and talked to him a little, during those first days when you were too lost in pain and syrup of poppies to track much. Whatever else was going through his mind, he cared passionately about what he was trying to do for your eyes.”

“Which says only that the man had a conscience, which I will not argue about, and that it was guilty. Whether because what he told us was true, or for some other secret up his sleeve, I can’t guess. That he was still trying to the last to persuade me to Adria, after all our disasters, that he expended such heroic effort on healing me, suggests that his duke must want me far more than seems reasonable, and I have to wonder why. Nikys, we had only his word for his whole fantastical story. He only claimed to be a Temple sorcerer, and all the rest. We don’t know.”

“All his actions so far were not proof enough for you?”

Adelis shook his head. “I swear, you swallowed down everything the man said without choking because, what, you liked his blue eyes?”

“You don’t deny he’s a sorcerer, you can’t deny he’s an extraordinary physician—what he told me in the temple last night—”

“He told,” Adelis put in. “Again.”

She waved this off. “Well, that was in confidence anyway. As for the other… he thinks better of people than he should. Better than is safe for him. That says more learned divine than spy to me. He thinks differently.”

“He and his invisible twelve-headed demon, yes, very differently.” A wry grimace as he leaned back.

She still boggled trying to imagine what must be going on inside Learned Penric’s overcrowded head. All the time. Whatever else was happening, his mind had to be very, very full. The wonder was not that he was mad but that he wasn’t.

“Anyway, we can move faster now,” said Adelis.

“Not at present,” Nikys noted.

“Aye.” He shoved the rest of his bread in his mouth and rose, still chewing. “I’ll go prod that groom. And see if I can secure a water bottle. And some food. We’ll want them, going over these hills.” He went off into the old stone farmhouse.

Nikys thought her greatest want was going to be human, and demonic. Would she ever see the strange sorcerer again? Would he really be all right, as Adelis insisted? His last time—first time, she also gathered—wandering about Cedonia on his own had included some horrifying turns. She hadn’t felt this sick with helpless worry since, well, Kymis. And then Adelis, until Penric had appeared. And now Penric. Her chain of alarming men was getting longer, but no better.

Would there ever be any way to find out if he’d made it home safely? She didn’t know a soul in Lodi, had barely met a few Adriac merchants. She supposed one such might carry a letter, but to whom?

But wait, Learned Penric was a Temple-man. If he truly was all he’d said, an inquiry sent in care of the archdivine of Adria might well find him. The ill-fates of recent letters to and from Adria were daunting, but should she and Adelis arrive safely at last in Orbas, she abruptly determined to dare.

There, a plan. Better than crying limply under a persimmon tree any day. As Adelis emerged from the farmhouse, more-or-less strong-arming the groom, she rubbed her eyes and hurried to the horses.