“So you are why I’m here,” the man sighed, sounding not best pleased to be missing the holiday eve, if resigned. But there were no messages yet. It was too soon to mutter frustrated curses in Wealdean, though Pen was tempted. Chio seized the chance to leave her sack with this trustworthy guardian.
They came back out on the Temple square after a short detour for the saint to inspect the sculptures that graced the main entry, not a little of it war booty. Pen wondered at a world that hanged poor men for thievery, but celebrated great ones.
“Now what?” said Chio, looking around at the growing shadows muted by a still-luminous sky.
Pen rubbed his face, mulling. “Go back to the beginning and start over, I think. To the Gift of the Sea. It would at least put one certain end of the trail in my hand. And Master Linatas might have heard something more.” After the threat from Penric and Des had cleared out, could the demon even have slipped back to the place it had been fed and cared for? It seemed unlikely straw-clutching.
Pen chose a different way back to the farther shore of town, which involved seven bridges, not five, and took them down a few darkened alleys that would have been more daunting were Des not the most dangerous thing in them. The paths alongside the canals were better lit, partly by lanterns bobbing along raised up on the sterns of the oarboats busy with transporting holiday-goers in fancy dresses and masks. Laughter as well as light rippled in their wake across the night-silk waters.
With full dark, the more restrained parties had withdrawn indoors to the wealthier houses. Also the more randy ones, Des put in. Mira did so enjoy those, in her day. Music drifted down from radiant upper windows overlooking the canal paths. But a few canal-side markets had been given over to neighborhood celebrations, young and old combining to set up trestle tables for foodstuffs and booths from local taverns. It was still early enough in the evening that most of the shrieking came from running, overexcited children, but several tables sent up volunteer choruses of hymns, drinking songs, and at the more inebriated, parodic combinations of the two. The cleverest made Pen grin.
“Oh, gorgeous, grant me a godly kiss from that mouth,” came a drunken cry from offside. Pen wheeled, preparing to fend off a happy-sounding assault on the saint. Which was how the fellow managed to fall on him. Pen dodged fruity wine-breath—this one must have started celebrating well before sundown, the official start of the Bastard’s Eve. He gritted his teeth and used the fellow’s stumbling momentum to forward him into the nearby canal, where he fell with a mighty splash. His companions, equally drunk but not so amorous, laughed uproariously and lurched to fish him back out.
“Good work, Learned!” one cried in passing, attempting to congratulate him with a shoulder-bump. Pen dodged that, too. He grasped Chio’s elbow and drew her back through the crowded square to the less hazardous building-side, sparing a glance to be sure the idiot was retrieved. Some Lodi canals could be waded across, but others were ten, twenty, or more feet deep, and swallowed the careless with tragic consequences. It looked like this was going to remain a comedy.
Chio, at least, was amused, her amber eyes glinting in the lantern light. “Does that happen to you often, Learned Penric?”
“All the bloody time,” Pen answered, goaded. He brushed down his coat, which was growing too warm as the humid night failed to cool, and tamped his temper. “It’s not worth my effort to get offended. Although I am sometimes put to it when some, er, suitor takes his rejection in bad part. That can get dangerous.”
“For you?”
“For him.” Or her, but peeved females did not usually resort to physical violence. Poisonous words he could endure.
It was her turn to murmur, “I see,” concealing private thoughts. One escaped: “Do your suitors ever succeed?”
“Not that sort.” Pen sighed. “And the quiet, bookish types I might actually enjoy talking with are too shy to ask, leaving me only with the others.”
She looked around, straightened brightly, and dragged him to a nearby booth. “Here’s a solution. Because we wouldn’t want more delay tonight. Buy yourself one.”
It boasted a display of holiday masks in a multitude of designs, from cheap and plain to much less cheap. Had that been a saintly order? Or did the girl just want her escort to look more the part of half a couple?
Under the benign gaze of the booth’s proprietress, Pen reached for the plainest linen half-mask on the rack. Chio’s hand caught his wrist.
“No,” she said in a thoughtful tone, “I think this one would suit you better.” She handed him a mask molded in the shape of a stern white lion, subtly made and convincing, its price reflecting its art.
Pen knew he’d not told her about the lioness that made up that long-buried layer of his demon. Was this coincidence, or something more unsettling?
In any case he dutifully acquired the mask, to Chio’s obvious approval. “Good,” she said. “You look more imposing now. There’s still the unfair jaw and mouth, but this should deter all but your worst admirers.”
He did not escape the square before also purchasing at her demand a posy of fresh white flowers shaped in a bracelet for her slim wrist, stewed meat wrapped in thin pancakes, and candied fruit on sticks. At least they could eat the latter as they walked.
He kept his senses extended as they continued along the canal, sieving the flux of passing souls: on the path, on the waterway, tucked up in the surrounding houses. So many, so heaped. So not-demonic. Searching, walking, eating, and talking all together was very distracting. He kept as far from the bank as he could while still sheltering Chio on his other side.
“Do you have any money?” he thought to ask Chio in turn. “On you, I mean.” Should they get separated, she should at least have the price of an oarboat back to the Isle of Gulls. Though if any oarsman would accept her promise, he supposed someone at the chapterhouse would settle up on her arrival.
“Of course not,” she said. “The chapterhouse covers all my keep. And my travels, should I have any.”
“Doesn’t the Temple pay you a stipend?”
“Me?”
“It should. Blessed Broylin of Idau is paid one, I know.” Through a different realm’s Temple administration, but still.
“Really!” A glance up, then a thoughtful hum. “Do you know how much?”
“Not offhand. He’s a retired baker, I believe, so has some money of his own. Any chapterhouse that wants him to travel pays his way, of course, but the stipend is separate. I don’t know if it’s his age or his calling that makes him uninterested in riches, but he’s kept decently.”
“I had no idea saints could be paid.”
“You are, in your way, Temple functionaries, the same as divines or sorcerers.” Well… not quite the same, murmured Des. “Your soul may belong to our god, but your body is owed any body’s wage.”
“No one has ever suggested that before.” Her lips pursed in, Pen feared, calculation.
Are we creating chaos, Des?
This one is all your doing, Pen. A pause. I approve, of course.
Chio’s mask tilted toward him in new curiosity. “Have you had your demon long, Learned Penric?”
“Since age nineteen.”
“Huh! That’s just a year older than I am now.”
“So it was.” Had he really been that young?