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MASQUERADE IN LODI

A Penric and Desdemona novella

in the World of the Five Gods

Lois McMaster Bujold

Frontnote:  This novella falls between “Penric’s Fox” and “Penric’s Mission” in the internal chronology of the Penric & Desdemona tales.

The order of the nine current stories is:

“Penric’s Demon”

“Penric and the Shaman”

“Penric’s Fox”

“Masquerade in Lodi”

“Penric’s Mission”

“Mira’s Last Dance”

“The Prisoner of Limnos”

“The Orphans of Raspay”

“The Physicians of Vilnoc”

Masquerade in Lodi

The curia clerk wiped the sweat drop from the tip of his nose before it could fall and blot his page.  “What could be worse,” he moaned, “than copying out letters in the Lodi midsummer?”

“Cutting up corpses in a Martensbridge midwinter,” Penric replied unthinkingly, then pressed his lips closed.

The diligent if overheated clerk paused to stare.  “What?  You did that?  ...Was it for your magics?”  He leaned slightly away, as if suspecting Penric and his resident demon of arcane midnight grave-robbery.

“Anatomy classes for the apprentices at the Mother’s hospice,” Pen clarified quickly.  “Our material was donated by the pious, mainly.”  Plus the occasional unidentified, unclaimed body passed on by the city guard.  The ones fished up from the thawing lake each spring had been the worst, if instructive.

“Oh.  I did not know you’d been a medical student, too, Learned Penric.”

I was teaching.  Pen waved the comment away.  This wasn’t a topic he wished to pursue.  Or a calling, but that conversation had been firmly concluded back in Martensbridge.  The bulwark of a large mountain range now stood between him and his former failings, and he was grateful for it.  The dead had not distressed him; the dying had.  “It proved one task too many for my hands, and I gave it up.”

A silent growl from Desdemona reminded him that self-castigation on this matter had also been firmly forbidden to him, under pain of demonic chiding.  Since the bodiless demon that gave him the powers of a Temple sorcerer had been the successive possession of ten different women over two centuries before she’d fallen to Penric, she had chiding down to an art form.

Now, now.

Also nagging, he added.

Behave, or I’ll blot your page as well.

Which, as a bored creature of chaos, she was well qualified to effect, in so many ways.  His lip twitched, and, oddly cheered, he turned back to the last lines of his translation.

The clerk had a point.  Six months ago back in Martensbridge, Pen would have had to burn expensive wood to warm his chambers this much, but the humid reek drifting in through the windows overlooking the canal made Lodi heat more oppressive, when no sea breeze relieved it.  His own quill scratched as he converted the last lines of the letter from its original Wealdean into Adriac for the archdivine’s eyes, and files, and handed it across to the clerk for copying.

This finished the morning’s stack.  Which contained nothing, it had proved, too sensitive or urgent.  Done for the day, he trusted.

Busy work, sniffed Des.  Make-work.  A waste of our talents.

Speak for yourself.  I find it soothing.  Although he looked forward to an afternoon to devote to his own personal projects, including free run of the Temple library, far from fully explored in the four months of his residence in the curial palace.  Penric cleaned his quill and stretched.

Tomorrow is the famous Lodi Bastard’s Day festival, Des grumbled, and you want to spend it shut up indoors?  The preparations and parties are in full swing!

So, people will all go out and leave me alone, Pen envisioned in hope.  Although tomorrow night, he had social duties in the archdivine’s entourage; the ceremonies dedicated to the fifth god were supposed to include a feast and a comic masque, and singing by the Temple-sworn castrati choir that was said to be ethereal.  He anticipated that more warmly.

He sorted out those letters and their translations that actually required his superior’s personal eyes, and with a cordial nod rose to leave the disposition of the rest to the very senior clerk, who wouldn’t have wanted a demon of disorder anywhere near his files anyway.  Pen wound his way through halls decorated with fine pious paintings and tapestries—or mostly pious; the previous generations of prelates had possessed a variety of tastes—and down a marble staircase to Archdivine Ogial’s private cabinet.

The doorway was open to catch the nonexistent draft.  Pen took it as invitation to rap on the jamb and put his head in.  Gray-haired Ogial had surrendered his five-colored robes to the heat and hung them on a wall peg, and sat at his writing table in shirtsleeves.  A lay dedicat in a grubby green tabard of the Mother’s Order hovered anxiously at his elbow.  The lad looked up and gulped as Ogial waved Penric inside.

“The Wealdean letters, Your Grace,” Penric murmured, and laid them on the table.

“Ah.  Thank you.”  The archdivine gave them a brief survey, then leaned back and looked at Pen with narrowing eyes.  “What were your plans for the day, Learned Penric?”

Note past tense, Pen thought glumly, but mustered, “Any duties you assign, a bit more translation on Learned Ruchia’s book, and then the library.”

“Hah, I suspected as much.” Ogial smiled with a paternal air, legacy of his early training in the Father’s Order before he’d risen through the hierarchy to broader duties.  “This is your first Bastard’s Eve in Lodi, and you are a divine of His Order.  You shouldn’t miss it.  Take the rest of the day off, get out of this musty curia, and see how our city honors your chosen god.  But first…”

Saw that coming, murmured Des.

“Dedicat Tebi here brings me a request from the chief physician of the Gift of the Sea—the charity hospice for the sailors near the northwest harbor, you know—to send over a Temple sensitive to look at a poor mad fellow who was lately trawled up by some Lodi fishermen.  One would think that being lost in the sea for, apparently, several days would be enough to turn anyone’s brain, but Master Linatas says he finds something more than medically strange about this one.”

Ogial picked up a note and twiddled it in his fingers in Penric’s direction.  Penric took it gingerly.  The crisp writing didn’t add much to the archdivine’s precis, beyond the nameless patient’s guessed age, early twenties, and coloration—caramel skin, curly dark hair, brown eyes—which described half the folk in Adria.  The reported drooling, thrashing, and broken speech could denote, well, any number of conditions.

“You are well-fitted to sort out the medical from any uncanny diagnosis, I expect”—the archdivine raised a hand to stem Pen’s opening protest—“in a purely advisory capacity, I promise.  If the physician’s more lurid concerns are misplaced, as such usually are, you can reassure him and be on your way at once.”

True, mused Des, unruffled.

You just want the excuse to get out.

Likewise true.  So?

Ogial turned to the dedicat.  “Tebi, escort Learned Penric here back to your master, with my blessing upon your work.  He’s new to Lodi, so don’t lose him in the back alleys or let him fall into a canal.”  He added to Penric with a chuckle, “Although if those whites of yours don’t end up dunked at least once during the festival, you aren’t doing the Bastard’s Day right.”