The Prisoner of Limnos

II

They tracked the duke, eventually, not to his cabinet but to the east end of the palace, where he was examining some renovations in progress. The work-crew foreman sent Nikys an unsolicited look of gratitude when she drew Jurgo off to a quieter courtyard.

Jurgo was a pleasantly ugly, mostly-affable man in his early forties, duke for some fifteen years and as solid in his position as possible for lord of such a beleaguered realm. Shrewd, or he wouldn’t be so solid. If Nikys could present her needs as lying in line with his, she thought she might have a chance of gaining his support. At cross-purposes, she’d be weak indeed.

Jurgo settled on a shaded bench under the colonnade, Nikys standing stiff before him as he read her note. She strove to organize her thoughts through a head throbbing with more tension than since Adelis had been arrested back in Patos. And to shove aside, for the moment, a thousand thronging visions of what dire things might be happening to her mother right now. Women prisoners were almost never blinded, for example. Castration did not apply. The cutting-off of breasts, promising not only agony to the woman but starvation to her infant, was not usually threatened to women past childbearing. Retreats of the Daughter’s Order did not feature dungeons.

Is she very frightened? Has she been cruelly treated? Nikys swallowed hard to keep control of her voice.

Penric leaned against a post and listened soberly as she again explained the strange message’s import.

Jurgo tapped the paper in his hand, and asked, “Do you trust this? How certain are you of its senders?”

“Master Bosha’s handwriting I know well, from other correspondence with Lady Tanar. Along with the roses, it’s full of private things that Adelis would be expected to understand at once, just as I do.”

“Not very full. It’s quite short.”

“The shorter, the better, for this sort of thing,” Penric put in from the side. “Every unneeded sentence is another chance for betrayal, should it fall into the wrong hands on its journey.”

Jurgo gave a conceding nod. “Could its writing have been bribed, or suborned?” His hand circled. “Compelled?”

“Lady Tanar Xarre is rich, and Master Bosha very loyal to her,” said Nikys. “So not the first two. And I have trouble imagining any compulsion that would force him to write such a thing against her will.”

Penric shrugged. “If he’s a scribe, an offer to break his fingers might suffice. Or to blind him.” While this was delivered in Penric’s voice, the casual bloody-mindedness hinted it might be Desdemona talking.

It wasn’t as if Nikys had spoken that much with Surakos Bosha, despite him being an ironic, watchful presence wherever Tanar went. So she couldn’t support the conviction with which she said, “No.” She added after a reluctant moment, “Although if someone threatened to break Tanar’s fingers, it’s hard to tell what might happen.” Since someone wouldn’t live long wasn’t a thing she could say out loud. “But I can’t picture how such an event might come about. Tanar is well-protected in her lady mother’s household.” Largely by Bosha himself, Nikys gathered.

“Even metaphorically?” asked Penric. “Pressure put on this Lady Tanar, her secretary writing to her dictation?”

Unhappily, Nikys turned out her hands. “To what end?” And hoped everyone else wasn’t thinking the obvious, Entrapment.

The duke’s canny eyes studied Nikys. “If General Arisaydia received this, as he apparently was intended to, what do you think he would do?”

Nikys hesitated.

Jurgo prodded, “Desert his post and attempt a rescue?”

“No.”

“Lead his troops in some illicit sortie?”

“Never.”

“How much would this impede his duties?”

“Not at all,” said Nikys, both in simple honesty, and in aid of the duke’s trust in his new general, “because he is Adelis. But he would be distracted and disturbed, as any man would.”

“So no good could come from forwarding this to him.”

“Except that he may find out from some less friendly source, at a worse time. Must, or what’s the point of taking a hostage?”

“Hm.”

“Unless,” Nikys drew breath, “our mother was rescued already, and the report of that could come with it.”

“I cannot lend troops for such a move, not against Cedonia.”

“I know. I have a less costly and risky plan.” At least, less costly or risky to Jurgo. “Allow me and Learned Penric to cross the border in secret and bring her out.”

The duke glanced aside at Penric, whose mouth was set in a grim line, and did not scoff. “Wouldn’t that just risk giving Adelis’s enemies two hostages instead of one?”

Nikys demurred, “Given the weight of the first to him—to us—adding a second scarcely tilts the scale more.”

“That risk could be averted,” Penric said in a neutral tone, “by just sending me.”

Nikys shook her head. “You don’t know the country or the people, but I do. More to the point, they do not know you. This is too dangerous a business to expect them to trust some complete stranger.” Of which Penric was one of the strangest. Although he could be convincing at need—she remembered that from Patos.

To Nikys’s intense relief, neither man tried to gainsay this.

“So what is your scheme?” asked Jurgo, glancing between them.

“As far as I’ve come in an hour’s thought,” said Nikys, “Learned Penric and I could make our way much as we did before, passing ourselves off in whatever way seems best, to Lady Tanar’s estate outside Thasalon. Take shelter and guidance there for the next step, that of getting on and then off the island with my mother. Repeat the stages in the opposite direction.”

“Preferably better-funded this time,” Penric put in. “Including a purse adequate for bribes. Still much cheaper than sending troops.”

“Troops,” Jurgo depressed this ploy, “were never an option. But the risk you’d bring to your proposed hosts seems beyond that invited by a mere friendly warning.” He rattled the letter by way of emphasis.

“Yes,” said Nikys, “and no. If Tanar is still considering my mother as her prospective mother-in-law.”

“Was your brother’s courtship prospering so much?”

“We’d hoped so. Before it was so brutally cut short.”

“Mm, yes, that. The barriers between the general and the lady would seem insurmountable now.” He touched his temple, and Nikys wondered if he was thinking of Adelis’s disfigurement from the burn-scarring, as well as the new political divide.

“Now, certainly. But who knows what the future may bring?”

Jurgo didn’t answer, and considering all the awful possibilities that might be a poor direction to bend his thoughts. He twisted in his seat to stare at Penric. “So are you volunteering, sorcerer? I thought you meant to go back to Adria.”

“I must certainly report my actions to my Temple superiors,” said Penric, glancing skyward as if to find those worthies there, “upon my return from Thasalon.”

Jurgo smirked. “I see.” He looked down at his sandals, looked up. “And here I thought you might have sought me out to report some happy news. That you had found reason to petition the Temple to allow you to stay in Orbas, for example.” It was no secret that Jurgo had been wooing Learned Penric to join his ducal menagerie of scholars, writers, and artists, famous living ornaments to his court.

“That gift is not in my hands,” said Penric, with a grave glance at Nikys. Implying that it was in hers?

Jurgo drummed his thick fingers upon his knee. “How soon would you imagine departing?”

“As soon as sensible preparation allows,” said Nikys. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my brother’s military trade, it’s that swift is better than slow.” At once true, and another reminder of how valuable Adelis was to Jurgo.

Jurgo rubbed his lips, and Nikys hung suspended in the hot sunlight, watching his decision forming but unable to predict its direction. “Very well,” said Jurgo at last. “Find my secretary Stobrek and work out the purse needed for the undertaking.”

“Thank you, my lord,” gasped Nikys, and would have fallen to her knees to kiss his ducal ring in wild relief, except he was already grunting to his feet, looking abstracted.

His look refocused on Penric. “Do you really think this can be done?”

“I…” Penric’s teeth closed, fencing his reply.

“Let me rephrase that,” said the duke. “Does Desdemona think it can be done?”

Penric’s expression flickered from dismay to tranquility. “Yes, my lord. Or Ruchia does.”

“…Ruchia? And which one was she, again?”

“The Temple divine who held Desdemona just before me. She was a scholar in her own right. And, er, an agent of my Order who completed many varied tasks, in the forty years of her career as a sorceress.” Pen grimaced, and added, “Oh, just spit it out, Pen. She was a spy, and a good one, too.”

That was Desdemona, without question.

Even Jurgo caught it, by the wry smile that turned his mouth. “Let us all hope so.”