“Thank the gods.”
Thank the white god, technically. But maybe not too soon.
“I’ll help you search,” Merin volunteered. He grimaced in guilt. “In exchange for the search I did not insist upon a week ago, at sea.”
“I as well,” said Iserne, her chin rising in determination.
Penric did not need the parade. Or even a linkboy. He temporized, “I think it would better serve if you were to return home, in case your son finds his way there.”
Her head went back; her face lit. “Do you think he might?”
“By no means impossible. Ah…” The caution was painful but necessary. “There is a chance his ascended demon might feign to be him. If he does turn up, you should do nothing to alarm him, but secretly send for me at once.”
She didn’t like that one bit, but he thought she understood.
“Merin here can escort you home. Which is where, by the way?”
“It’s not too far. We have a house on the Wealdmen’s Canal, which empties out to the harbor between here and the state shipyard.”
A decent address; not so elevated as the palaces of the merchant princes lining the main canal of the city, but an abode of hardworking men on the way up, or sometimes down.
“I really want to go with you,” Merin told Penric, unhappily.
“Why don’t we all escort Learned Iserne home,” suggested Chio. “Then we’ll know where it is for later.”
This sensible compromise was adopted. With strongly worded instructions to the porter to send a message to the curia, regardless of the time, if anything new materialized here at the hospice, Pen led his enlarged party back out into the night.
Iserne’s house lipped its canal. They had to circle past it to find a bridge, and then the narrower street that ran up to—Pen wasn’t sure whether to think of it as the front or the back door. The dry door. They mounted steps behind Iserne to a second-story entry. The ground-or-canal floor presumably held the merchant husband’s goods, with the living spaces above. She had a big iron key in her hand, but the door opened at her pull. “I don’t suppose I thought to lock up when I ran out.” She grimaced at this carelessness. She must have been going nearly as mad as Madboy in that moment, caught between the shock of grief and the greater shock of lunatic hope.
The entered the hallway to find it lit by dim wall sconces, and the brighter glow of a walking-lantern in the hand of a startled maidservant. Two young women clustered behind her looked equally disconcerted. “Mama,” the elder or at least taller, who looked to be about Chio’s age, said faintly. “We didn’t know where you’d gone out to, or why…”
Best dresses, fetching white bows tied around their necks, and masks in their hands suggested this was not an incipient search party, but the other sort. Iserne had no trouble figuring it out either.
“I leave the house for an hour, and this is what you get up to?” Her voice was sharp, grating with real anger that seemed to take all three aback. These girls, clearly, had not yet been given the news about their brother, either version, before Iserne had rushed back out with her unhappy herald Merin.
“We were only just walking over to the party at the Stork Island chapterhouse,” the younger protested. “Taking Bikka, and staying together! The divines of the white god will be there, giving blessings! It’s safe!”
“Not that safe,” said Iserne between gritted teeth. “And not now. I can’t deal with any more chaos tonight…” She gripped her disarrayed hair and took a deep breath.
The elder looked up, discovering that there was a divine of the white god standing right in their hallway. She gaped only briefly at Pen and then Chio before her gaze went to Merin. “Ser Merin, you’re back!” And more eagerly, “Is Ree with you? Is he still dealing with Father’s cargo, or is he coming?”
Merin winced and gestured helplessly, tossing these unanswerable questions back to Iserne. He did produce a pained smile for the sisters.
“Lonniel, Lepia. Listen.” Iserne’s serious, strained voice caught both their attentions, their naughty excitement beginning to be quelled by unease. “Your brother is…” She faltered on the complexities, retreating to, “Very ill.”
The elder—Lonniel?—gasped. “Where is he? Isn’t someone bringing him home?” As all pleasure fled from her face, Pen could mark her wondering if very ill was a euphemism for dead.
Merin, with a glance at their hostess, cut in before Pen could. “He took a blow to the head from, from a crane as we were starting to unload. It seems to have scattered his wits. I think he might have been hallucinating, because he grew very frightened and didn’t seem to recognize us. He ran off into the town, and now we’re looking for him.”
That’s impressively glib, murmured Des.
Merchant. I suppose he had to learn to think on his feet. The tale did cover the essentials of the situation, erased of the uncanny and softened for the ears of the innocent.
True, but their mother should have been the one to make that choice, said Des.
He did take his cue from her lead-in.
Iserne’s hands closed and opened in frustrated acceptance of this unasked-for aid. “I’ll be waiting up for news, or in case he comes back here,” she told the girls. “You two go to your beds and stay there.” A scowl at the maid Bikka promised there would be another follow-up in her direction later.
With the perilousness of their brother’s condition and their mother’s upset impressed upon them, the sisters’ mouths closed on mutiny, their shoulders slumping.
“I’m going out to search for him,” Merin told both sisters, though his tense smile seemed aimed especially at Lonniel. “Even the Temple is lending us its aid, with Learned Penric here.” He nodded in Pen’s direction.
Lonniel touched her mouth, forming an oh at this explanation of their more baffling visitors. Looking over Pen and Chio, she said, “I’m sorry we have interrupted your holy eve with our affairs, Learned, and um—” Pen watched her trying to place Chio, and coming up with the notion they must be a couple out on the town, though uncertain whether the young lady’s affections for the evening were paid or gratis. She settled on, “Miss. But please help Ser Merin all you may.”
An attempt to straighten out this misconception of Pen’s chain of command was not worth the delay, given the saint was merely smiling below her mask. She granted the other girls a friendly nod, returned with slight confusion.
Lepia put in, “But where could he have gone, hurt like that?”
“Not far, we hope,” Merin told her. “With luck, we should have word by the time you wake in the morning.”
Her face scrunched in her effort to imagine where her injured brother might try to den up. Pen would have liked to tax both sisters for ideas, given they’d probably know, hm, not more but different things of their sibling than even their mother did. Merin, since he was colleague, peer, and apparently family friend of Ree’s, would possess yet another set.
But Iserne, reaching the limits of what Pen suspected was long patience, sternly drove the sisters up the stairs under the questionable supervision of their maid. Chio watched them ascend, her expression curiously covetous. A mother’s chiding was still caring of a sort. Surely a saint was not subject to… envy?