The Prisoner of Limnos

XII

As she guided her mother into the dim blue corridor, the goddess’s blessing still seemed to bubble in Nikys’s veins like some fizzy wine. The elated confidence in which it cloaked her should not become overconfidence, she reminded herself sternly, because that would be to take more than was offered. She still had to control an irrational urge to smile.

Idrene pulled the green spectacles down her nose and peered over them. “How does he see in these things?”

“They will be better outside, which is where they are intended to be used,” Nikys whispered back. “Although Pen can also see in the dark. One of his handier skills.”

Idrene glanced back to her door at the click of its lock latching, apparently by itself. “I must hear more about that strange young man.”

“You shall,” Nikys promised with certainty, “when we get to a place we can talk. For now, don’t speak to anyone if you can avoid it. Don’t rush and don’t linger. Pen said—or maybe it was Ruchia—we should move as though we had bespoken dinner in the village tavern, and didn’t want to be late.”

Idrene nodded. “Who’s Ruch—never mind. Later.”

Nikys led back the way they had come in, minus the wrong turns. In the court of the sacred well, a last few pilgrims had arrived and were occupying the attendant’s attention. The only signs of the woman with the four daughters were the puddles left around the trough, drying more slowly as the afternoon shadows moved across the tiles. They sped past the tapestry in reverse order. Idrene eyed it sideways, reaching out for a bare touch. “Hm. Maybe it’s as well it wasn’t Adelis to come to my rescue.”

In the forecourt, while Nikys signed them out in the ledger, the silky dogs sniffed Idrene indifferently. Nikys received many tickling licks on her sandaled feet. She wasn’t sure if it was for Pen’s lingering geas or some scent of the goddess, but the dogs whined in disappointment as she left.

Then across the drawbridge, under the benign eyes of the armed male dedicats guarding it. This wasn’t the end of their escape, Nikys reminded herself, just the first stage, though Idrene vented a long exhalation as they stepped onto the gravel.

Nikys made straight for the top depot of the donkey livery. As they were led down the winding road once more, Idrene adjusted her spectacles and stared around, concealing tension. The time it took to descend the hill seemed unnaturally longer than it had taken to ascend. Doubtless an illusion. The whole east side of the island lay in its own shadow by the time they found Bosha, sitting with their luggage in the lee of the same house as before.

He rose as they approached and gave them a polite bow, though his hand did not touch his heart. Apparently that enigmatic gesture was reserved for Tanar and Lady Xarre.

As Idrene stopped warily, blinking, as one tended to do at first sight of the albino’s singular features, Nikys hurried to introduce them. “Mother, this is Master Surakos Bosha, Lady Tanar’s secretary. He’s been helping us, by the kind courtesy of Lady Xarre.”

“Madame Gardiki. A pleasure.” The light voice was smoothly cultured, and Nikys wondered again at his origins.

“Oh.” Her mother relaxed, returning a nod. “Yes, I see! A few of Adelis’s letters from Thasalon mentioned you, Master Bosha.” She added aside to Nikys, “Not that he wrote that often. I’m sure his fingers weren’t broken, though in that case he could still have dictated something to a scribe.”

“I know he wrote you from Patos. I made him.”

“Ah, that accounts for it. Thank you, dear.”

Bosha glanced up the hill toward the just-visible blue roofs of the Order, reflecting the last gleams of sun. How soon would the gaolers be bringing the prisoner’s supper? “I suggest we get off Limnos first. All else can follow.”

“Yes,” agreed Idrene, fervently.

Bosha took charge of their luggage servant-fashion, and they followed him to the dock.

As the boat heeled in the soft evening breeze, they were again surrounded by strangers within earshot. Still no chance to talk. The late afternoon light was warmer in color, but not much of an improvement for Bosha, who pulled down his hat and sought what shade the deck provided. While the crew moved about them, exchanging cheerful calls, and the rigging creaked and the waves slapped, Nikys and Idrene held hands in silence.

Nikys wondered how far the blessing of the goddess extended. Her Order? The island? Or, as Penric had claimed, the width of the world?

With the sea light in her eyes that he so plainly loved, Nikys meditated on Penric. After that overwhelming moment of prayer in the well court, the validation and valediction he had so casually bestowed on her had stunned her almost as much. It was the most outrageous claim she had ever made in her life: to be, however briefly, god-touched.

He believed me.

If he had not… she still would have known. But he believed me. It seemed an intimacy strangely deeper than a kiss.

No, better… he knew, as she had. She thought she’d plumbed his depths—she could, after all, list every one of his demon’s former sorcerous riders by name, in order, and was slowly gathering their biographies, but… What other mysteries did that packed blond head hold? If you let him sail back to Adria, you’ll never find out, now will you? She sighed.

Aside from one slightly seasick passenger who almost tottered over the gangplank, saved by the conducting sailor-girl, they landed without incident. Nikys looked back at the distant hump of Limnos, dark against the glowing sunset. Had Pen brought off his plan of passing for her mother at dinner, or were the Order’s residents just now starting to search for their missing prisoner? And if so, had Pen escaped arrest or not? Firmly, she reminded herself of his victory over the bottle dungeon. The memory didn’t help that much.

“Should we take some of that?” asked Idrene, as Bosha hoisted their belongings once more.

“No, Madame. I’m going to fetch the cart. You’ll best serve by picking up some food and drink we can eat on the road. Meet me where the south shore road leaves the village.” He glanced west. “I’m loath to lose any light we have left.” Though full dark would still overtake them long before they reached Akylaxio, and the new moon would be no help. That town was walled, thus the gates would be shut at dark and require some negotiation for admittance, or else a wait till dawn.

The Guza street markets were deserted at this hour, so Nikys returned to the same inn where they’d stayed before. She was made to pay a gallingly stiff price for the basket that she would not be returning. Idrene stayed outside on the bench. But the two women wearing the blue scarves and weary demeanors of pilgrims returning after their long day’s outing drew few glances.

Bosha arrived at almost the same time as they did where the houses straggled off along the south road. He jumped down and handed them up into the cart. It was a small, light, open vehicle, with an oiled sailcloth hood that might be raised to protect passengers from the elements, and well-sprung. Bosha, hat now not shielding him from the sun so much as concealing his memorable white hair, played driver with bland assurance, clicking Lady Xarre’s well-bred horse into a trot. Nikys and Idrene settled back into the padded rear seat with near-matching huffs of relief.

“I can’t believe we’re really doing this,” said Idrene.

“I’ve done it before, with Adelis and Penric. I can’t say I’ve become used to it.”

Idrene turned to her, the public mask dropping from her urgent face. “Tell me everything that befell you!”

“You first.”

“Hah. I imagine that will take less time.” Her hand clenched on her knee. “I had no warning, just a troop of imperial soldiers pounding on our door, shouting for admittance. They told me they had an order for my arrest, but didn’t even say where I was going. They may not have known. I’d barely time to pack a few necessities and tell off the servants. The boys were reasonably restrained—perhaps your father’s shadow daunted them—but they ransacked the house for papers and correspondence. Thank goodness there are copies of my most important documents at the notary’s.”

“It was the same when the governor’s men came to our villa in Patos, after Adelis was arrested at the barracks,” said Nikys. “They seized every paper they could find, including all my old letters from Kymis. I was so furious about that. But they didn’t steal much, and no one was raped, not even the maidservants. Although most of them quit right after. I couldn’t blame them.”

Idrene nodded. “I have no idea what’s left at home by now. It’s been three weeks.” She blew out her breath. “Such a bother. I believe if they’d burned the place to the ground, it would be less a burden on my mind.”

Nikys, who’d thought her mother would be as hard to extract from the house she’d shared with Florina as a whelk from its shell, was startled at this assertion.

“I wonder if I’ll ever get anything back,” Idrene went on. “If we’re in Orbas for long, the house will surely be stripped, confiscated, and sold.” She scowled. “After that, they hauled me out to that island, and then it was three weeks of pacing the cell staring at that sea-moat, and to think I used to like sea views, and no one telling me anything. Mend that, I beg you.”

Bosha’s back was very straight, but Nikys fancied that if he could swivel his ears like the horse, they’d be pointed their way. He had a very good memory, she recalled Tanar bragging.

Nikys began to recount the tale from Adelis’s arrest to their arrival in Orbas, in much greater detail than she’d confided to Tanar. It ended up more scrambled than she’d hoped, as her mother kept interrupting with muddling questions that made her lose the thread. She began to have more sympathy for Tanar when she realized that every other name out of her own mouth wasn’t Adelis either. She glided very lightly over their interlude in Sosie, which had revealed some truly unexpected skills on Penric’s part. She dwelt more on the frightening injury he had taken in the uncanny fight with that other sorcerer. Less on how frightening it had been when his magics had brought down half a hillside.

“The poor fellow, what a welcome to Cedonia!” Idrene commented. “First he gets his skull cracked, then tossed into a bottle dungeon, then this!”

“He can turn his healing on himself,” said Nikys. “Fortunately. Or his demon does. She seems to favor him greatly.” Her frequent backtrackings trying to explain Desdemona to her mother were responsible for much of the muddle. Appropriate for a chaos demon, Nikys supposed.

Gleaming reflections from the sea, glimpsed to their right, were keeping the road visible well into the long twilight. Bosha pulled the cart off at a sheltered spot, tended to the horse, then climbed in to sit backward on his seat as Nikys shared out the food and drink from the basket. Idrene made polite inquiries into the healths of Lady Tanar and Lady Xarre, about which Bosha as politely assured her, as though they were sitting down in some gracious dining room.

“I hope I may yet get a chance to meet them, someday,” Idrene sighed.

“You would quite like Lady Tanar,” said Nikys. “And she, you. I should write when we reach Orbas, to tell her of our safe arrival.”

Bosha sat bolt-up. “I would beseech you not to, Madame Khatai! This has all been dangerous enough. Vile suitors I can fend off. I did as much for Lady Xarre, when she first employed me in her early widowhood. The imperial government outmatches me.”

Nikys took in the well-hidden implications of that, and slowly swallowed her mouthful of dried apricot. “Surely Lady Xarre’s wealth buys some protection?” Or was Bosha the protection that it bought? No… She didn’t imagine he was underpaid, yet that sort of loyalty wasn’t bought with coin, but rather, kind.

Bosha, a trifle self-consciously, eased back. “But it draws down greater dangers. Men may strive to marry a fortune if they can, but are willing to try less pleasing methods to secure it if they can’t. A charge of treason, no matter how contrived, makes a fine shield for stripping the accused of his property. Or hers.”

“As even my son lately found,” Idrene agreed grimly. “And him a general.”

“I once thought his rank might be enough to make him safe,” said Bosha, “and safe for Lady Tanar, but the events in Patos proved otherwise, if they blinded the man on the basis of one forged letter.”

“Learned Penric says he’s very sorry about that,” Nikys put in. She had been forced to reveal Penric’s Adriac origins to her mother, and therefore to the listening Bosha, or there would have been no explaining him at all. “The reply he carried from Adria was in good faith, he claims, but Adelis’s enemies had it off him within half an hour of his setting foot in the country. He thinks their agent was watching him the whole time.”

“No doubt,” said Bosha. “Events have overturned nearly everything, but with the amount of paper they seized from both your houses, they could have manufactured something just as lethal. When I worked in the Thasalon chancellery, we could have done it with six lines.” He chased a bite of cheese with a bite of bread.

Nikys’s eyebrows rose. “I didn’t know you had served in the imperial bureaucracy.”

He shrugged. “Almost eight years. It’s not a secret. Although my career was under the reign of the prior emperor, and was truncated when he was.”

“And as violently?” inquired Idrene, much interested.

“Only because my father chose to throw in our family’s lot with one of the losing pretenders. I might have been able to weather the storm otherwise.” He grimaced. “Or had I not let him draw me home when the wrong soldiers arrived. Bad day. I barely escaped with my life.” He took a swallow of barley-water. “Cured me of ambition.”

Idrene looked as though she had no trouble filling in the horrors he’d left out. Nikys did some mental calculations.

“Was that when you went into Lady Xarre’s service?”

“Indirectly. I’d fled the debacle—”

Nikys translated that as slaughter.

“—at my family’s estate, and ended up taking shelter that night in the Xarre garden. In what turned out to be Lady Tanar’s tree house, which was not at all what a boy would have imagined as a tree house. I thought the reason all the furnishings seemed so small was because I was delirious. Which I did become, later on.”

He eyed his appreciative female audience hanging on his tale, and unfolded a trifle more. “When Lady Tanar found me there the next day, I begged her to hide me. I’d some dim notion of making it seem like a game to her. She entered into it with more enthusiasm than I quite… quite knew what to do with. Smuggled me food and drink and bandages.” He touched the left side of his mouth, which quirked up. “My physician was six, and had never sewn anything but a hem before, but she did her best. I can still picture the charmingly intense look of concentration on her face as she bent over me. Stabbing me repeatedly.” His amusement slipped to a grimace. “And my blood up to her wrists. That was disturbing. In retrospect. At the time I had other things on my mind.

“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.