Penric's Mission

V

Penric gauged his distance in the dark from the neighbor’s roof to the garden wall, leapt lightly, and settled himself down atop it for some composing meditation. The sleepy provincial guards, it appeared, had been instructed to attend to the villa’s entrance and the postern gate in the rear wall, and that was just what they were doing. The one at the back had curled himself up against his assigned door and was currently napping, combining two tasks.

A bat fluttered by against the stars, but Pen let this one go, since his body had finally cooled. This neighborhood outside the city walls had lacked the swarm of big, aggressive rats like the harbor’s, but he wasn’t going back down there tonight. Des had left a trail of destruction through all the small vermin within her range, but with this much chaos to divest, insects had scarcely repaid even the moment’s attention they took. Private middens had yielded more red-blooded prey, including a few slinking suburban rats, and what he thought might have been some kind of hedgehog. Pen regretted the mangy, worm-riddled street cat, but they’d been desperately hot and at least the poor beast no longer suffered.

“Eyes,” muttered Pen. “They’re so small. Why should this engender so much more chaos than making several times my weight in ice?”

His demon couldn’t wheeze, exactly, so maybe it was just him as Des replied, “It may be the most subtle uphill magic you’ve yet attempted. The ice was big but simple. This mad healing you’ve thrown us into is complex.”

Penric’s initial plan, more selfish than charitable, had been simply to assure Arisaydia would survive his blinding, to evade the burden of yet another unwanted death in the pack Pen carried. It was only when he’d examined the man with all of Des’s perceptions focused to their greatest intensity that he’d realized that the backs of his eyes, in all their impossible delicacy, were undamaged. And, suddenly, the hopeless had become merely the very, very tricky.

His first task had been the finicky release of beginning adhesions as Arisaydia’s injured eyelids tried to grow themselves onto his steam-lashed eyeballs; then, rapid reduction of the ocular swelling, his skills and refined belladonna tincture working together. Pen had poured all the uphill magic he could into Arisaydia’s own body’s powers to heal, but that was a narrow channel that could only accept so much help at a time before it burst in a destructive back-blow. It was like trying to relieve a man dying of thirst using a teaspoon, but at least he’d kept the sips coming all the long day.

Arisaydia’s survival was no longer in question, perhaps never had been. Pen had discovered the man in the bed to be above middle height, muscular and fit, obviously healthy before this catastrophe had struck him down. His face and arms and legs were that attractive reddish-brick tan common to the men of this region, though the parts of his body routinely covered by clothes more matched his sister’s lighter, indoor version. His aquiline features, rough-cut in granite, were in her echoed in fine round marble; both shared the same midnight-black hair, his cut short, hers drawn back from her face and curling over her shoulders. Pen wondered what color his eyes had been. He could ask Madame Khatai, but it might distress her.

Speaking of which… “Do try to be more sensitive around the sister, Des. She’s quite upset already.”

Des snorted. You have more than enough sensitivity for us all. To excess, as I have pointed out before.

Bloody-minded chaos demon, Pen thought back.

The impression of an amused purr. I do sometimes wonder how you ever survived, Pen, before you were us.

Whereas I more often wonder how I am to survive after…

He stared down into the shadows beneath the pergola, where he had first seen and studied Madame Khatai from just about this vantage at dawn. She’d borne something of her brother’s air of sturdy health, after a delightfully plump female fashion, but Pen didn’t think he’d ever seen a woman’s posture so expressive of utter despair. I imagine she’d be quite pretty if she smiled.

Des’s response was sardonic: So what is she when she isn’t smiling?

Penric contemplated the conundrum. “Heartbreaking. I think.”

Was Des taken aback? Oh, Pen, no. This isn’t the time or place for one of your futile infatuations. This isn’t a place we should be in at all. We should be making our way back to Adria.

“…I know.” Pen sighed. He pictured the man in the upstairs bedchamber whose life his fumbled packet of papers had somehow destroyed. No—he eyed the pergola—two lives, it seemed.

You hardly destroyed Arisaydia all by yourself. You had some expert help.

Aye to that. The increasing suspicion that he’d been used was a growing itch in Penric’s mind. But by whom, and where, in this tangle of events? “Who around here would know who Arisaydia’s enemies are?” He answered his own question before Des, this time: “Arisaydia would. For a start. If I could get him talking instead of just groaning.” And, he was now sure, not if but when he did, who might a man trust more than his physician?

Des’s silence would be tight-lipped, if she’d had lips. After a while she remarked, I know you have no Temple orders for this. And I’ve felt no god move. You have embarked on this entirely on your own, Pen. How great a step from independent to renegade?

Or how many little slippery ones, more probably. And Des could not, would not, stop him, though she wasn’t beyond making him stop to think. “Shall I pray to my god for guidance, then?”

They both fell silent, considering the fifth god each in their own way.

What would you do if you got it, and it wasn’t what you wanted to hear?

“…Maybe I’ll wait for Him to call on me.”

Des shuddered. I suppose you think that is an amusing joke.

Pen’s lips stretched in something almost a real smile as he dropped over the wall.