“Was there a storm?”
“No, the night was clear, though the wind was brisk. No moon, so the deck was very dark.”
Demanding a physical description of Merin’s lost companion was going to be unhelpful, given Madboy’s common looks. Pen had decanted the basics in front of his—maybe mother?—Iserne this afternoon without triggering recognition or alarm. Some hours before this news had arrived, to be sure, shattering her calm belief that her son was safely on his way home to her. Pen doubted the Bastard’s Day was strongly celebrated in Iserne’s household, as she had taken oath to a very different god, but likely any of her domestic thoughts had been pleasantly bent on a welcome-back dinner or some such thing. Pen had barely noticed Madboy’s exterior, although he would recognize his demon-splintered soul at a hundred paces through a stone wall.
Pen turned back to the night porter. “Master Linatas has gone home for the day, you say? He left no messages for me, I take it?”
“That’s right, Learned,” he replied, relieved to face a less frantic interrogator.
“There must be others who worked directly with the shiplost patient you took in.” The other men in the ward he’d so disrupted yesterday could also bear witness, but staff were more likely to handle distraught relatives smoothly. “Is Orderly Gnade still about?”
“I can send upstairs and see.” The porter rose to call through one of the archways leading from the entry, to be answered by a young dedicat interrupted swallowing down a snack of bread. The lad scampered off up the stairs willingly enough.
Chio watched, quiet and attentive—aware?—as Pen extended his senses. Through the opposite archway, past closed doors, a few souls moved in a treatment room: a physician, hurting patient, assistant, and some anxious companion. No demons of any kind, so not Pen’s affair.
Footsteps scuffing, plural; Pen looked up to find, thankfully, the page leading Gnade down to them.
“Oh,” said Gnade, recognizing Penric. “You’re the sorcerer fellow who came this afternoon and scared that poor mad boy into running off.”
Pen ignored the second half of this, and hoped Iserne would, too. “I gather you’ve had no further word of him here?”
Gnade shook his head. “We did look, sir.”
Pen turned to Iserne, whose slim hands were working in an anxious urge to interject, barely suppressed. “Did your son Ree have any particular identifying scars or tattoos, Learned?”
“Not—not when he left home.” She looked to Merin. “Unless he acquired something on the voyage?”
“None I know of.”
“What about clothing?” asked Chio, winning a curious glance from Merin, who had barely given notice to her till now.
Madboy had been dressed in, hm, a clean but worn shirt and trews with the look of the charity castoffs hospices reused for their patients. Pen asked, “He must have been wearing something when the fishermen brought him in, yes?”
“Not much,” said Gnade, “but what the sea left you’re welcome to examine, to be sure.”
He was looking in puzzlement at Iserne, so Pen put in, “Learned Iserne here may be your patient’s mother. She should see them.” Although if Madboy had been wearing newer garments when he went overboard, that wasn’t going to help either.
Gnade extracted a key from the porter, picked up a lamp, and motioned them through the left archway. The four visitors shuffled awkwardly after him, Chio again hanging back. Her silence masked a close listening, Pen thought.
Down the corridor, Gnade unlocked a door to what proved a small storage room, lined with shelving of plain sanded boards holding a miscellany of clothing and other possessions parted from their original owners. He set the lamp on the plank table in the middle and counted down the shelves. “I think we put them… ah, here.”
He turned back with a scant pile of cloth and leather smelling of sea damp, and dumped them out. Iserne’s companion stood back looking sick, but she dove upon them, hands rapidly sorting. She bit her lip, scowling in disappointment at an anonymous torn pair of trousers, a plain leather belt, the shreds of a shirt, and one stiff, rank sock. Her hand stopped short holding a salt-crusted embroidered handkerchief, and she bent to shove it into the pool of light and spread it out. “This was his. This was Ree’s.”
“Are you sure, ma’am?” asked the orderly. His even tone spoke of due care stemming from experience with upset relatives, rather than disbelief.
“I embroidered it myself. Then he’s alive!” If Madboy—Ree, Pen corrected his thought—had been raised from the dead in front of them, her eyes could not have glittered more brightly with jubilant tears unshed. Her parted lips caught breath like a woman surfacing from drowning. “Saved from the sea, oh it is a miracle! One I didn’t even know to pray for!”
If it was, it came with the kind of ambiguous catches for which Pen’s god was noted. He cleared his throat. “This puts us very much further forward, but we still need to find him.”
Merin looked up from the handkerchief and said plaintively, “I don’t understand any of this! I thought the news I’d brought had turned her wits, and I shouldn’t let her run off into the night here alone, but what’s all this babble of demons and madness?”
“My wits are fine,” snapped Iserne. “It’s my world that’s turned upside down.”
The god of chaos and mischance, Pen reminded himself. He should know. “The man you lost overboard was found by a bedemoned dolphin, whose demon jumped to him. This is the one part of all this that was probably not an accident. Though you’ll have to take my word for that. Ree would have experienced this invasion of his mind as a kind of madness. Maybe his exhaustion from trying to swim made him more susceptible, but in any case, the demon has ascended—possessed him. Long story, but while Temple demons are a benefit to their recipients, this wild one is effectively insane. When the fishermen picked Ree up, I’m sure it seemed he’d lost his reason altogether.”
“Five gods.” Merin signed himself, looking unnerved. “That’s bizarre.” He turned to Gnade. “Could he even talk?”
“Aye,” said Gnade, “but there was no getting any sense out of him. Not even his name.”
Merin huffed in horror. “Can he be cured?”
Pen glanced at Iserne, hanging on his words. He returned a firm “Yes,” and concealed his gulp. We’ll make it so. Somehow. “When he’s found.” He motioned Chio forward. She pushed up her feathered mask, baring her sobered face, and made a curtsey to Iserne, regarding the older woman intently. Less daunted by all these surging maternal emotions than Pen was? Orodd perception—fascinated by them? Orphan, after all. “This is Blessed Chio, saint of the Bastard’s chapterhouse on the Isle of Gulls, and my, er, colleague. When we find Ree, she will”—eat the demon maybe didn’t sound reassuring.
No lie, muttered Des.
“Draw the demon from him,” Pen continued smoothly, “by the grace of the white god. It may take him a while to recover from his physical ordeal and the shock to his mind, but with rest and quiet at home I’m sure he’ll be all right in time.” He nodded encouragement at Iserne.
Iserne stared at Chio in a surprise that turned to ferocious hope. “Really…?”
“Yes, Learned Iserne,” said Chio with earnest politeness—rising to the occasion, or previously schooled by experience in dealing with distraught, confused… clients? Supplicants? Her usual guardians had likely handled the details. “I’ll do all I can to help your son.”