Not on the inside of my head. “Sorry. I’ve a few things on my mind.”
The boatman’s eyebrows twitched up at the apology. “Busy night coming up for you folks of the fifth god, with the festival and all?”
“I expect so.” Though not, in his case, due to the festival.
The boatman chortled. “Don’t celebrate so good you dunk that white dress in a canal.”
What is this obsession by everyone we meet with my whites and canals?
Des would have smirked if she could. As it was, Pen’s lips twitched. Hopeful anticipation, probably.
They glided into perfect position at the algae-fringed stone quay. Heartened by his customer’s near-smile, the boatman added, “D’you want me to wait for you, Learned?” He named the fee for this restful service as Pen drew up his purse on the cord around his neck and fished out the right coin. He’d been relieved, like most Lodi visitors, that boatmen’s rates were set by law and posted on all public landings.
“I’m not sure how long I’ll be here.” He considered Madboy, who-knew-where doing who-knew-what by now. “But I won’t be lingering. Yes, please.” He added the half-in-advance coin to the boatman’s outstretched leathery palm, and turned to climb the steps.
More remote than its sister city wards, the Isle of Gulls was less built-up, the households scattered across it sparing space for gardens and orchards and useful domestic animals. It gave the place a restful, rural air that Pen discovered he’d missed in the scurry of the Temple precincts in Lodi’s heart. The chapterhouse of the Bastard’s Order was not hard to find, as a channel was dug from the shore near the landing right up to its walls, and through a water gate presently raised.
When this place was a merchant’s mansion, Des reminisced, he passed his goods in and out that way. When he died childless, he left house and fortune to the Order to build on the orphanage. That was back in Mira’s day. We knew it well then, as we’d come out here for patrons on occasion. Mira had the most flamboyant boat, with an awning of silk and liveried oarsmen. A nostalgic sigh. It’s changed… A century had softened the raw brick; the walls were climbed now by no enemy more dangerous than ivy.
A high wooden gate stood half open to the afternoon, cheery voices floating through it. Pen entered to find two boats pulled up from the terminating pool of the small channel. A motley assortment of children laughed and argued around them, engaged in decorating wherever decorations could be fitted on, ribbons and bannerets and garlands of miscellaneously colored cloth flowers clearly made by little hands. They were benignly supervised by a pair of adults in stained white dedicat’s tabards, who looked up in question at Pen’s arrival.
“May I help you, sir?” said the man.
Pen supposed he’d better go through proper channels. How did one gain audience with a saint? Should he have tried to send ahead for an appointment? “I’m Learned Penric of the archdivine’s curia. I need to speak with the head of the chapterhouse.”
“Of course, Learned. Please come this way.” With a cautious and deeply curious glance at Pen’s left shoulder, the man led off across the trampled yard toward the stately house, two stories high and faced with fine creamy stone, window frames and doors painted russet. “Oh, there he is now.”
A distracted-looking man in bleached vestments cut much like Pen’s, if more worn and less ink-spattered around the cuffs, and with the badge of his office hanging from a silver chain around his neck, exited the front door and looked around. He spotted Pen at once, his brows drawing together. Pen pegged him for another middle-aged functionary, more administrator than holy man, the backbone of every Order.
They met at the foot of the shallow steps. The dedicat bobbed his head. “Learned Riesta, this is Learned Penric. He says he’s come from the curia.”
“Oh,” said Riesta. His tone seemed more enlightenment than surprise.
“Pardon me for arriving unheralded,” Pen began politely, “but I seek an urgent conference with the saint of Lodi, whom I was told resides here.”
“Yes, that’s right.” He continued to peer perplexed at Penric. “Is there something the matter with your Temple demon, Learned Penric?”
“Not at all,” Pen assured him hastily, while Des puffed in silent offense. “I was detailed by the archdivine”—yes, given Pen’s own deceptively unweathered features, it never hurt to prop his authority—“to deal with another matter, which is going to require the blessed one’s attention. Uh, I trust the saint is here?”
“Yes. Blessed Chio awaits you in the garden. I was told to bring you around.” Waving his dedicat back to his orphan-supervising, Riesta led off along the flagstone walkway bordering the old mansion.
“The saint knew I was coming?” Disturbingly possible, in the god-touched.
“It seems so,” sighed the chapter head, in an oddly put-upon tone. “This was only announced to me a few minutes ago.”
The garden might once have been formal, but was given over now to more practical vegetables and fruit trees, tidy as a stitched sampler. A dedicat and a couple of what were probably more orphans knelt weeding on the far side. The only other occupant sat on a bench under an old peach tree, its branches bending with still-green fruit. It was a young woman, barely more than a girl. Her thin white coat, unadorned by any sign of rank, was worn carelessly open over an ordinary faded blue dress. Pen blinked, startled.
You shouldn’t be, said Des. A saint can be anyone at all, you know that. Anyone whose soul gives space for a god to reach into the world. …Not sorcerers, naturally.
The god was not immanent now, or Des would be reacting more violently. As they trod up, Pen studied Chio’s exterior appearance.
Dark hair in a simple braid down her back, finished with a white ribbon. Skin a typical Adriac honey. Amber-brown eyes, well-set in a long narrow face with rather a lot of chin and nose. In middle age, her features might still be dubbed handsome, if she were fortunate in her health; in sunken old age, possibly a little scary, but in the flower of youth they remained memorably pleasant. Pen wasn’t sure whether to revise her estimated age upward at her well-filled bodice.
No telling, said Des. Some of us started early—Mira was one. Vasia was another. She left off, thankfully, without detailing ten different examples of female puberty.
Chio looked up at him with equal attention. “Oh,” she said, in a voice of surprise. “You’re not quite what I was expecting.”
The feeling is mutual. Pen didn’t think her narrowing eyes expressed disappointment, but what she was making of him was not obvious.
Riesta performed a brief introduction, ending with, “What’s this all about, Learned Penric?”
Pen scratched his ear, marshaled his story, again. Having explained it once already today helped, but Pen suspected Chio’s was a very different listening from Bizond’s. He didn’t need to recap basic demon lore here, but… she couldn’t possess Idau’s long years of experience, surely.
It’s not the saint’s experience that matters. It’s the god’s, said Des. I don’t think we need worry about that part.
Finishing his tale of the shiplost lad, Pen settled on a tentative, “Have you had to do yet with removing a dangerous demon from a person?”
She shrugged one slim shoulder. “It’s mostly been fetching out young elementals from animals. That’s how the god first came to me, four years ago—one of the householders on the island thought her cow was sick. Which it would have become, shortly. She was most pleased when I seemed to cure it. A Temple sensitive soon brought me an infested cat, my power was proved—I could have told them so, but who listens to a fourteen-year-old girl? A fuss followed, and then a further parade, well, trickle of elementals, and here I am. Still.”