Merin’s expression hovered between impressed and appalled.
“Two directions, right or left,” Chio prodded. “Pick one.” She glanced back up the steps, her mouth pursing. “Needless delay seems much too cruel, right now.”
Aye, agreed Des, and Pen was reminded that six of her riders had been mothers. He wondered if any of them had lost children.
In two centuries? We outlived all of them. In a sense.
Oh. I’d never quite thought that through.
Even now, we do not speak of that.
I see.
“Any guidance from your side yet?” Pen asked the saint.
“Not so far.”
Of course not.
Pen tried to think what areas of these neighborhoods he’d already covered. He was losing track. Not that Madboy couldn’t move about, so maybe it hardly mattered.
Merin pointed. “Left.”
Pen shrugged and turned that way, leading them toward the middle of the muddled island neighborhood. Nothing in Lodi had a regular shape. Maybe he could find the center and spiral outward?
Scanning, walking, and talking at the same time risked stumbling over his own feet, but he asked Merin, “I take it you and Ree were thrown together as cabinmates. Had you known him and his family before?”
“Not as well as I got to know him shipboard. I used to work for one of his father’s cousins, before I was hired away as an agent for this voyage, so I had some acquaintance.” A longing sigh.
What’s he pining for?
What, wasn’t it obvious to you in Iserne’s entryway?
I was following a great many things back there.
“So you were rivals with Ree, not partners?” Pen asked.
“Friendly rivals this time, yes. We might expect to be partners on some future venture. I’d hoped to work for Ser Richelon, who has a good reputation, but this other opportunity came up first.”
Chio enquired slyly, “Does your current employer also have pretty daughters?”
Merin snorted, unoffended by the implication. “No, more’s the pity. Among his other defects. Four strapping sons. A hired agent has no chance of moving up in that clan, no matter how hard-working.”
Nor of marrying into it, obviously. Certain long-term relationships that came under the Bastard’s thumb could be economically similar, one type of close partnership cloaked by another, but Pen hadn’t noticed Merin’s eye being caught by anyone not female, so far. To his personal relief. Pen favored round girls, given his choice—though not, alas, the otherwise personable Chio. Her randomly channels a demon-eating god aspect was too daunting.
Thank you, murmured Des. One of your infatuations in that direction would have been supremely awkward. Pen’s lips twitched.
Chio observed to Merin, “I thought you fancied Sera Lonniel, just now.”
In the glow of the walking-lantern, Merin’s cheeks darkened in a sheepish blush. He ducked his head. “Who wouldn’t? Just on marriageable age, respectable house—her parents guard her very closely, though, so it makes her hard for a poor man to court. Ree was—is—will be again, I hope, good company, but on that point he’s just as stiff as his learned mother.”
Ah. Iserne’s distaste illuminated? Rich daughter, poor suitor, a common tale.
Merin’s jaw set. “A sufficient fortune of my own could overcome all those barriers, if I can ever gain it.”
“Your own family isn’t in trade?” said Pen.
“No. I’m from a farming village in the Adriac hinterland. The usual tale, too many siblings, and the younger turned out like stray cats to seek their own fates.”
As the seventh and lastborn in his own family, Pen could sympathize. Although his fate had sought him, as nearly as he could tell. Or perhaps his god’s left hand.
Pish, said Des. You would never have been happy in that narrow mountain valley, even as its shabby lord.
Less even than as its youngest scion, Pen reflected. I was entirely content to leave those dreary duties to my eldest brother. Who appeared to be content to have them, so a win all around.
“At least,” Chio remarked to Merin, “they didn’t drown you like a sack of kittens.”
Foundling, right. Unwanted bastards left on the white god’s doorstep were the lucky ones. The canals of Lodi swallowed many secrets, to be flushed out on the tides.
A flash of bitterness from Merin: “No, they send us to Lodi and let the city destroy us for them.”
Penric had read the man as an unhappy soul from the beginning, but this appeared to go deeper than the disaster to his cabinmate that had been dumped on his hands. Right now, though, Pen had other souls to attend to. Too many, everywhere, and all the wrong ones. Still. The trio—four, counting Des—fell silent for a time, pacing along the maze. Pen’s feet were starting to hurt.
The alleys grew quieter as people with duties tomorrow, religious or otherwise, drew in for the night. Though Lodi’s prostitutes did not seem to be taking their holiday off; they passed a few such squeezed into dark niches actively pursuing their trade. Pen shifted Chio to his other side, but she seemed neither shocked nor afraid.
“Of course not,” she murmured at his anxious query. “Those boys are too busy jumping their ladies to jump us. It’s the unattached bravos you have to watch out for.”
Shrewd girl, Des approved.
Chio glanced over her shoulder at the lewd noises fading in the shadows, and remarked, “Those poor street whores are not so valued by the city. They’re harder to squeeze taxes out of than their sisterhoods in the brothels and bordellos. It’s said that the levies paid by the ladies of Lodi fund the building of a state galley every year. I think those ships should be named for famous courtesans, but they keep naming them after boring old men instead.”
Pen was surprised into a bark of laughter, imagining an imposing warship named Mira of Lodi gliding over the waves.
It would overawe all rivals, Des assured him smugly.
He sobered, considering Chio’s insights. The denizens of the Bastard’s orphanages must have a rough view of the backside of the colorful tapestry that was Lodi. Chio might play a sheltered maiden most convincingly, when it suited her, but she was not one. Even without that hidden portal on infinite space she had tucked secretly about her.
They came to a halt at an alley mouth that gave onto another market, illuminated by what table lanterns hadn’t run out of oil and the dancing flames of a cresset, its iron basket held up on a post beside the canal landing. Sinuous yellow-orange lines reflecting in the dark water danced back.
The party hosted here had reached the latest stage of devolution: families gone, young and unattached older men getting drunk, drunker, or drunkest, throwing up or pissing into the canal, loud verbal fights with each other edging toward brawls. Those women yet present, some of them as drunk as their partners, were either plying their trade or else just being very bawdy.
Pen would have been content to edge around this mob, but Chio raised her chin and sniffed the lack of breeze. “Ooh. That fellow still has meat sticks for sale. Let’s get some. We can eat them as we walk on, and not need to stop.”
One of the last remaining vendors apart from the wine booth supervised an iron basin of coals on a tripod, topped with a grille where he turned sizzling skewers. Their smoke might be the only appetizing smell left curling through the damp midnight air. Pen’s suddenly watering mouth reminded him that they hadn’t eaten for hours, and they would both need their strength if—when—they caught up with Madboy. Feed the saint was certainly part of his Temple duties tonight, eh?