The Prisoner of Limnos

III

It was noon the following day when Penric and Nikys boarded a small private coach in Vilnoc to make their way west. In this region it was less than three hundred miles in a straight line from one coast of the peninsula to the other, but even the Old Cedonian military roads up through its former province of Orbas were neither straight nor level. The team was reduced from a smart trot to a laboring pull on the upward slopes, and an even more careful descent, wooden brakes screeching and smoking. It was still vastly faster than walking, and more comfortable than mule-back. Much as tertiary fever was better than plague, Pen reflected as the coach bumped and rocked.

Pen shoved with his foot at his restocked medical case that had slid across the floor. Bringing it along had seemed prudent, even if the last thing he wished to do was practice medicine again.

Oh, you’re beyond the need for practice by now, lad, murmured Des, in her acerb version of encouragement, and Pen let his tired lips twitch in thanks.

Nikys fussed with the few belongings they’d thought they could carry over the more rugged mountains when they made the turn north to slip over the border. Their boots and riding clothes for that part of the trek were packed away. For the coach, Nikys wore a belted dress, with a sort of loose surcoat flung over it for protection from the road dirt, which would have made a more convincing apron without its fine court embroidery. Pen had obtained a man’s tunic and loose trousers of this country, the latter cuffed and buttoned at the ankle to hastily alter for his height. The simple cut left his status ambiguous, and told nothing of his calling.

Nikys was still strained in his presence, a tension seemingly made worse, not better, by her sudden need for him. He’d not seen her look so fraught since his first sight of her in the villa garden in Patos, despairing over her unjustly blinded brother. She let the noise of the coach be an excuse for not attempting to talk, and Pen allowed it. He didn’t think she’d slept at all last night, for after the first change of horses she leaned over in her seat and dozed despite the rattling.

Pen studied the horribly awkward angle of her neck, and slipped across to supply himself as a human pillow. She turned over and curled up with her head on his thigh, with a wheeze that he was pleased to take as gratitude. He let his hand slide over her torso to hold her secure, rewarded when she slipped into a deeper sleep. He alternated between staring out the window at the bony countryside, and regarding the unbony woman in his lap. Profoundly loyal she was, to those few she took as her own; her brother, her mother. Pen had no idea how he was ever to get himself on that short roster. By an effort doomed to be unappreciated, he kept his free hand from playing with her tumbled hair, black and shining as the best fresh ink.

When the coach halted at the next change and the sharp voices of the ostlers echoed outside, she stirred at last, with a sinuous stretch and an enchanting purring noise. She lay a moment in muddled relaxation, fingers clutching him like a real pillow; then, alas, her disordered world crashed back in upon her. She jerked upright with a yelp, clipping Pen’s chin with her head in passing, and flinched to the other side of the seat.

“Ow,” Pen complained mildly, rubbing his jaw. She stared at him a little wildly for a moment, and he added, “You fell asleep. Looked like you needed it.”

“Oh,” she said, partly regaining her composure. She rubbed her head in turn and managed an “Oh, sorry. Strange dream.”

“No matter.”

They both descended for the usual visit to the coaching inn’s privy, a turn about the yard, and hastily quaffed purchased drinks, in this place beakers of over-watered wine. By the time they reboarded the vehicle, she’d put herself to rights again, seeming better for her nap.

“We’ve hardly had time to talk about how we are to explain ourselves to people,” she said as they settled to endure the next stage. “I don’t think we can pass as brother and sister.” She glanced doubtfully across at his pale cool blondness, back to her own terracotta Cedonian warmth, and pulled straight a stray black lock, glancing up at it before letting it curl back. “Not even half-siblings. And I’d rather we weren’t husband and wife.”

“Yes,” said Pen wryly, “you told me that once before.”

She bit her lip, flushing. “You know what I mean.”

“I do,” he sighed. Teasing Nikys had its charms, but now was so clearly not the time. “Keep it simple, I expect. Don’t say anything. People will make up their own explanations.”

“So I fear,” she murmured ruefully.

“You don’t have to care, and they don’t either. We’re just passing through. While being your husband would give me an unassailable right to protect you, being your courier will serve in most cases.” He hesitated. “As always, it’s best not to mention my calling. To anyone. Not even to your friends, unless some urgent need arises.” His sorcerer’s Temple braids were hidden in the very bottom of his medical case, though he had brought no white robes. If it ever came to the valise being violently turned out, it was likely the assailant would be discovering Pen’s abilities in more direct ways.

Penric contemplated the unknowns ahead of them. He’d studied the duke’s maps last night, planning their route much more logically than their prior lurching flight, but what of all the human hazards?

“This Master Bosha you keep mentioning,” he said slowly. “The castrate secretary. Is he a slave, then?” Both those Cedonian customs were alien to Pen’s mountainous home country, a land of obstreperous small freeholders scraping out their livings from soil almost as rocky, though damper and colder, than Cedonia’s.

“Very much not!” said Nikys, sounding surprised by the question. “Although he has been a servant of the Xarre family for a long time. Since Tanar was six, she once told me, and she’s now twenty, so over fourteen years.”

Pen did a little historical arithmetic. “That would have been about the year the present emperor took power.” Bloodily, although that was the way in Thasalon as often as not. “Any connection?”

“I know nothing about Surakos Bosha’s family background. It was a very disrupted year in the capital.” Nikys frowned in thought. “I don’t think he’s low-born. He had a good education somewhere. There are hints he was once one of those men of good family who are cut by choice, to improve their chances of rising very high in the imperial bureaucracy.”

Pen made an effort not to cross his legs. “That’s more dedication to a career than I would have. Although there is a group of Temple singers in Lodi who have also freely chosen to be made castrates, consecrated to their craft and their god. Male sopranos. I’ve heard them sing twice, at festivals there. Hauntingly beautiful. I admit, I would not argue their calling with them.” Because song, being a gift of the spirit, was considered a most acceptable offering to the gods.

Nikys nodded. “Some do that in Thasalon as well. I don’t think that’s what he came from, though. He’s no soprano.” She stared across at Pen in an unsettling manner. “I thought he was the strangest man I ever met, until I met you.”

Pen cleared his throat, restraining himself from pursuing that comparison.

But Nikys went on unprompted. “He’s still the palest, not even excepting you. He’s a true albino. Like a white rabbit, or white horse.”

A gelding, perhaps, murmured Des, all fake innocence. I wonder who rides him?

Tasteless, Des. Or had that been Mira? Hush, I need to hear this.

“His hair is pure white. At night his skin seems bleached like the moon, although it’s rather pink in bright light. Which he avoids—he burns in the sun worse than you do.” She frowned in speculation at Pen. “Do you suppose the people in your home country could be part albino?”

“Not as far as I know,” said Pen. “Because real albinos do turn up, as rarities, I have heard, and they are considered just as odd there. If not as sunburned.”

Pen tried to picture a man who would take up a tender trade as a wealthy young lady’s private secretary. Plump, probably—he’d heard cut men were prone to run to fat as they aged—rabbity, maybe timid and twitchy. Odd. Well, he’d deal with the fellow when he came to him.

“What more can you tell me of Lady Tanar?” he went on. Because they would be wagering their lives, as well as their cause, upon her goodwill and power to aid them. “Should we be looking to her mother for command of resources? Did Lady Xarre favor Adelis’s suit? Or would she thwart her daughter’s dangerous charity, if she finds out?” This was no girls’ prank they were engaged in, but something perilously close to treason. With all the gruesome Cedonian penalties that applied, if discovered.

Nikys pressed her lips together in disturbing doubt. “That’s a decision I’d leave to Tanar. I’ve only met Lady Xarre the once. She’s long widowed, and lives retired now, seldom leaving her estate. Doesn’t dabble in the Thasalon court, even though she has the rank for it. I understand she’s very active in ordering her financial affairs, through a troop of trusted retainers. She makes Tanar her apprentice in all her doings, since Tanar is her only heir, which seems to me very much more to the point than making her learn embroidery.” Nikys paused as if to consider this. “Tanar thinks so, too.”

“And did Adelis?”

“I don’t think Adelis was quite aware of it, never having been a soldier’s wife.” As widowed Nikys once had been, aye? “But she would have been very well fitted for managing all the tasks of his own wide holdings.” She scowled. “Before he was stripped of them.” And then, “Our other mother—Adelis’s lady mother—did such for our father.”

Since all of Penric’s worldly goods could fit on six mules, and had, this was not work he knew. He supposed it was much like his older brother Rolsch’s duties back at Jurald Court, multiplied by several. Or several dozen, it sounded like.

Pen wondered if it would be better to route around these untrusted allies, and proceed directly to the island. Somehow.

Local knowledge is never to be scorned, murmured Des, or with luck Ruchia. If not to be relied upon blindly, either.

That was assuming Nikys’s mother was actually on Limnos, and the whole thing not a trap from the beginning.

If it is a trap, said Des serenely, it was made to fit Adelis. Not us.

Des, it seemed, was much less terrified by this return to Cedonia than he was. Of course, a demon could not be killed, exactly. Are you saying I would be a surprise?

Oh, Pen. You have been a surprise from the beginning.