Yes, sighed Des.
“Ten years ago, now. Odd. It seems longer. A third of my life.” And four years a saint made almost a quarter of Chio’s short life. He asked in return interest, “Was it lonely for you in the orphanage? After your calling came upon you?”
Her mouth rounded in bemusement, as if no one had asked her that question before. “It was different. My old friends fell off, though everyone was scattering to their apprenticeships by then anyway. Except for Carpa, who is going to be five years old and there forever, poor girl. But the divines swarmed me. They made me read piles of theology, and I am not bookish. Teaching the orphans to sew or cook is far more fun.” She added politely, “No offense to you, Learned Penric.”
“None taken. I admit some of those tomes can get, er, turgid.”
“Yes, and that’s so wrong.” She made a face. “I could tell, after a while, which writers knew and which ones were reciting by rote. The divines didn’t like it when I told them so.”
Pen grinned. “I imagine not.”
“Do they have the saying in Wealdean about locking the stable door after the horse is stolen?”
“In just those words, yes.”
“It was like that. The divines and all those books.”
He sobered, remembering that visceral, direct experience of the unimaginably vast that defeated all words. Young, guarded from the world, not bookish, all these Chio might be, but in certain dimensions profoundly not ignorant. “I’ve told the tale of how I acquired Desdemona at the death of Learned Ruchia so many times, it might as well be a rote recital by now. But when I try to describe what happened with Blessed Broylin…”
She smiled into his lengthening silence. “Yes. Exactly that.”
They turned the next corner into a narrower street. No canal here, but Pen linked her arm through his to prevent stumbles in the dark. The lack of animal traffic made Lodi streets cleaner than those of inland towns, and the tide carried off most of the rest of the residents’ refuse, but not, alas, all.
“Is it lonely being a sorcerer?” she asked abruptly.
“No, because I’m never alone.” Reflecting on his past decade of nesting in narrow chambers in other people’s palaces, he rethought this. “Although I’m never sure if people are taking my braids as a mark of rank or a plague warning.”
She snickered. “I’ve not actually talked much to the sorcerers, despite my calling. They bring me the elementals and then leave as soon as possible.”
He thought of the city gibbet they’d lately passed. “Desdemona once told me it’s like watching an execution. For a demon. So I’m not greatly surprised.”
“Your demon seems calmer than most.”
“We’ve been through something like this before. Me once, Des two centuries’ worth.”
She nodded. “Dispatching elementals for the Order had started to feel more like killing chickens for the god’s kitchen than anything holy, even leaving out that real chicken. But then there was the horse. Speaking of horses.”
“Hypothetical absent horses. I take it this was a real one?”
She waved her free hand in sudden delight. “It was the first demon the god refused to take from me. It was a very good horse, so beloved, trained for parades and for children to ride. And beautiful! The glossiest beast I ever saw. The god sent it back to be raised as a Temple demon, to go to some learned sorcerer-candidate next. Its family was very relieved to be told it could live out its life with them.”
“That was remarkably kind of the Order. And wise.”
“Your demon must know of this. She’s stood at the gate of her riders’ deaths for such judgment and been told to go back, what, twelve times you said?”
Pen hadn’t said. “That’s right.” After so many passages, did it feel to Des as if that gate was narrowing upon her?
Yes, she muttered.
Pensive, Chio went on, “I’d always felt the god’s sorrow, before, when I did His work. Never His joy. I finally knew what I was here for. I keep hoping for another one like that lovely horse.”
“The Order does, too,” said Penric. “Though I’m afraid this mad boy’s demon isn’t going to be one.”
No, agreed Des grimly.
The vague scent of canal sewage gave way to a more estuarial tang as they came out at the big northwest harbor. Not many lights here; should he have acquired a linkboy’s lantern at the marketplace?
“Can you see in the dark, as sorcerers do?” he thought to ask Chio.
She shook her head. “I see the same as everyone else. Until the god is upon me, and then I see everything. Whether I want to or not.”
“Ah.”
Helpfully, a bright lamp over the main entry of the hospice guided them in.
The wooden door was half ajar. Raised voices leaked from within. Pen opened it to hand Chio into the spacious vestibule, well-lit by lamps and wall sconces for receiving night emergencies.
The person arguing with the night porter was not some injured or, more likely tonight, wine-sick poor seaman. To Pen’s astonishment, it was Learned Iserne. But a very different Iserne than the trim, brisk official he’d met this afternoon. Her black coat was hanging open over her dress, her sleek hair was escaping its pinned-up braids, and her face was drained and distraught. She near-vibrated with tension as she stood before the porter with all the air of a dog about to launch an attack.
She was accompanied by a young man apparently acting as her linkboy, for he held a walking-lantern in uneasy hands. He was dressed as a sober merchant, not a servant, though, in a gray jacket with pleated skirts to the mid-thigh, tight trousers, and a silver-studded leather belt for his knife. Lanky, typical Adriac coloration. His lips were pressed closed in distress, but he opened them to say, “Perhaps we should come back tomorrow, Learned Iserne.”
She shot him a scorching look that silenced him again, and returned to the porter: “If Master Linatas is not here, there must be someone who has seen him. Night staff. Anyone.”
Penric thought to pull his lion mask down, turning it to hang from the back of his neck. Chio kept her mask tied, pressing his arm and stepping half behind him. It seemed unlikely this was a sudden attack of shyness, but who knew. He gave her a reassuring nod and moved forward, interrupting the scene.
“Good evening. I’m Learned Penric, the Temple sensitive who was sent to Master Linatas to examine your mad castaway this afternoon, the one who ran off. I stopped in to see if he has been found or came back, or if you had any other word.”
Iserne spun and stared at him in surprise. “Learned Penric! I was just thinking I might try to find you next.”
“What’s this all about?”
Iserne waved her expressive hands, but hardly seemed to know where to begin. A lawyer, at loss for words?
Her companion gave her a pitying glance, and cut in, “My name is Aulie Merin. I was riding share on the spring convoy to Cedonia, shepherding a mixed cargo for my employer. Learned Iserne’s son Ree Richelon was aboard doing the same for his father. Our ship just returned home to Lodi this afternoon.”
He inhaled, as if steeling himself. “I was charged with the heavy task of bearing the news to his family that Ree had been lost overboard in the night. Nearly a week ago, when we were beating up to our last stop in Trigonie. It seems heartless to encourage hope at this point, but…” He made a frustrated gesture at Iserne. “The shock. His mother.”
“Did you search the water for him?” Pen asked.
Merin shook a regretful head. “Between the time he was last seen in the evening, and the time he was first missed in the morning, the convoy must have made fifty or sixty miles. There was no way.”