Pen managed an appropriate smile at the wit of his senior. And rescuer, he was reminded; the archdivine’s prompt offer of employment in his curia had hooked Pen out of Martensbridge the moment the passes had cleared of snow in the spring. His half-bow grew more sincerely grateful. “Very well, Your Grace.”
Tebi, dutifully preceding Penric out the door, cast a glance over his shoulder with scarcely lessened alarm. It couldn’t be for Pen’s vestments, an Adriac design common enough in so large a city—a close linen-white coat, fabric thin for the season, buttoned up the front to a high round collar and skirts open to the calves, handy to don over ordinary clothes. So, presumably, the unease was for the triple loop of braid pinned over Pen’s left shoulder, the silver strand with the white and cream marking him as not just a regular divine, but a regulated sorcerer. If he did go out on the town tonight, Pen thought he might leave both items in his clothes chest, and not just for the hazard of the canals.
Pen attempted a friendly return nod, which didn’t seem to reassure Tebi much. Pen wasn’t averse to his garb buying him easy respect from adults, but he’d never expected it to frighten children. Or at least children schooled in the meanings of Temple trimmings.
We don’t need the guide, Des opined as they exited a side door of the curia onto a non-liquid street. I remember my way around Lodi well enough.
From near a hundred years ago? Des’s previous riders, the courtesan Mira and, come to think, her servant Umelan, had both been long-time residents of the town—then.
Islands don’t move that much. Granted bridges rise and fall, and new buildings sprout—they detoured around just such a collection of scaffolding, stone, and shouting workmen—but I could have landed us at the sailors’ hospice all the same. I wonder if they still dub the place Sea Sick? Also, Learned Ruchia visited here more than once, on her assorted missions. Des’s immediate prior possessor, from whom Pen had so unexpectedly inherited the demon and her powers. And knowledge and skills. And opinions. And, yes, memories not his own. Pen wondered if that would ever stop feeling strange.
They angled through narrow shadowed streets and alongside translucent green canals, the margins of their enclosing pale stone walls stained dark by the rise and fall of tides. Their warm green scent permeated the air, distinctive but not unpleasant. The route led over five bridges, and through a couple of lively squares colorful with market hawkers, before the opening light and screeching of gulls marked them as coming out by the seaside.
Threading past bollards, quays, docks, a private shipyard—Pen could just glimpse the walls of the big state shipyard beyond, source of Lodi’s famous war galleys—they turned into another street and square. A four-story building in warm gray stone flanked a whole side, and the lad led them through the thick wooden doors, one leaf propped open for the day. A porter rose from his stool, identified Tebi at a glance, and waved them on, though his gaze lingered curiously on Penric, who cast him a polite blessing in passing.
On the second floor, past the lair of an apothecary, Tebi knocked on the doorjamb of another writing cabinet: smaller, more cluttered, and less elegantly appointed than that of an archdivine. “Master Linatas?”
The man within turned in his chair, his leathery face animating at the sight of his messenger. He was a thick-bodied, muscular fellow, salt-and-pepper hair cut in an untidy crop, wearing a practical green smock shabby with wear and washings. The braids of a master physician hung not from his shoulder, but from a brass stand on his desk. “Good, you’re back.” A glance at Pen, and he lumbered to his feet. He still had to look up, his eyes widening slightly. “Goddess bless us.”
Linatas could certainly read braids, so Pen merely said, “I’m Learned Penric. The curia sent me in answer to your request for a sensitive.” Pen proffered the note by way of authentication.
Linatas took it back, still staring. “Huh! Are you, hm, Wealdean?”
A deduction from Pen’s excessively blond queue and excessively blue eyes, Pen supposed, and his milk-pale scholar’s skin. “No, I’m from the cantons.”
“Ah, that would account for it. I’ve met merchants from those mountains, if not quite so, hm. Light. You speak Adriac very well!”
“I’ve a talent for languages, hence my employment in the curia.”
The physician shrugged off Pen’s appearance without further comment, thankfully, turning to his more pressing matter. “I suppose it would be fastest to just take you to the poor fellow. I’ve seen my share of men brought in with exposure, injuries, near-drownings, bad drink, or just too much horror, but this… ngh. Come this way. Ah, Tebi, thank you, well done. You can go back to Matron now.” The boy nodded and scampered out. Pen followed Linatas up an end staircase to the next floor.
“Has anyone identified the man yet?” Pen asked.
“Not so far. Part of the time he talks like a Lodi man, but the rest is gibberish, crying, and these strange squeakings. He falls out of bed, staggers, writhes on the floor… we put him in a private chamber because he disturbed the other men in the ward so. Though since the fever from his parching has eased, it doesn’t seem he’s infected.”
Pen bit his tongue on the impulse to run down the list of symptoms for strokes. He had only one task here, to assure the physician that his patient wasn’t suffering from some unlikely curse, vastly more common in tale than in fact. And then he could escape. The familiar smell of a hospice, clean enough but distinctive, was making him just a little belly-sick.
Steady on, soothed Des.
I’m all right.
Uh-huh...
Linatas opened the door to a small chamber with a single cot. A harried-looking orderly was just thrusting a sunburnt young man back into it, who batted clumsily at him and whined.
Des, Sight. Pen stepped within; stopped short. The mystic doubled vision of his demon’s view of the world filled his not-eyes. Mind, perhaps. Oh.
Bastard’s tears, breathed Des. There’s a mess and a half.
Within the sun-scorched fellow thrashed another demon. And not a new-hatched elemental, chaotic and weak, nor even one imprinted by some short-lived animal host. (And all animal hosts were short-lived, once an untutored demon of chaos infested them.) This was a demon of middling density, that had been human once, but then…
Des could read off its layers like the rings of a tree. Elemental. Bird. Bird again. Human—a boy. Murdered, cruelly, young demon riven from him. Human, of no good character, but he didn’t get away with his unholy theft for long. Roknari—they put him into the sea. For once, I can’t object. Dolphin, quickly sickened. Demon dismasted of its acquired humanity, splintered, left a stub. Another dolphin, grieving—I did not know they could. Sickened again, more slowly. Then it found this fellow. So confused. The dying comforting the drowning… He thought he had gone mad when the demon jumped to him, and no wonder. Nightmare hours more in the water, then hands drawing him out, yes-no-yes-no… Pen wasn’t sure which of them was shuddering. Well. Both, of course.
The young man stopped fighting, turned his head. Stared straight at Pen—and Des. He stiffened. Opened his mouth. And screamed and screamed. Because Sight cut both ways, when two sorcerers were thrown together.