Riesta listened to this with a rather fixed smile.
Chio brightened. “I did get to go to the mainland one time, for a woman who’d caught an elemental from one of her chickens. And once for a horse.”
Pen tried not to let his mind be diverted by the picture of a demonic chicken. Des’s sojourn in the world had begun with a wild hill mare and a lioness, after all.
I wonder if that woman ate the chicken, as the lioness did the mare? Des mused.
She’d no doubt started out to slaughter it for her table. It would have been a short and enticing, if ultimately unlucky, jump for the demon. Also, how would you tell with a cat…? Never mind.
Pen was reminded of the old saw about the recipe for rabbit stew. First we catch the demon. “It’s my belief that the ascendant demon is still hiding somewhere in Lodi. My next task is to find him. When I accomplish that, I’ll wrestle him out here to you.” Against the demon’s uttermost resistance, no doubt, but Pen would cross that bridge, or boat ride, later. “But I thought I’d best meet and warn you, first. I’m, um, not actually sure how long this retrieval will take, but I trust you will be here?”
She studied him back with disquieting intensity. “No…” she said slowly. “I think it will be better if I go with you.” Her eyes glinted as she straightened. “Yesss… perfect.”
Riesta choked. “Blessed, surely not. Town will be riotous tonight. You know you are safer here.”
“I’d think the archdivine’s own court sorcerer would be worth a dozen guardsmen, don’t you?” Her smile seemed a sly challenge: Deny that, if you dare.
Pen wondered why Des was suddenly amused.
Chio bounced to her feet. “There, that’s settled. I’ll just go get my things.”
There had been no discussion at all. For one thing, no one had asked him if he wanted to take on the escort of this young woman. Saint. God-vessel. On the other hand… if she were with him when he found Madboy, the god’s demon-removal could be performed at once, saving a great many hazardous steps. Hm…
Riesta, watching her swiftly receding back, sank to the bench with an oof. Pen perched beside him.
“Did the god just speak through her?” Riesta asked Pen plaintively.
No? Yes? “Our god speaks in mysterious ways. Usually maddening riddles, to be frank. So I’d hesitate to say no.”
“She knows that, you realize.” Riesta vented a sigh. “It’s not that she’s not god-touched. It’s not even that she’s not all there, but that she’s not all… here. Sometimes. And at others she’s a trammeled and difficult young woman much like any other her age. The trouble is, I’m never sure which one I’m talking to, or is talking to me. When she figured that out, I was never in control again, yet I remained in responsibility.”
Pen offered a sympathetic nod. “Did she grow up here in your orphanage?”
“Yes, she was a foundling. Probably bestowed at our gate by one of Lodi’s prostitutes. We get a steady supply of such. She seemed an ordinary enough girl, on the quiet side, just fair in her studies—she was supposed to have been apprenticed to a dressmaker, was about to leave us, but then this other thing happened.”
“Not the apprenticeship you expected, I take it?”
“Nor anyone else. After the archdivine inspected her, we were ordered to keep her here and give her theological instruction, and hold her at the disposal of the Temple. This… has not always gone well.”
It finally dawned on Pen that the man’s anxiety was not for Chio, but for him. Trying to delicately warn that this girl would lead her escort by the nose if she could, without actually saying anything rude about his saint? Penric considered Des’s two centuries of female experience. Think you can handle her, Des?
The girl, yes. The saint… At least, unlike Riesta here, I will be able to tell which one is talking.
“I think it will be all right,” said Pen, more out of hope than experience. “The god wants his demon back. Through her, He may even be able to help speed my search.”
“No doubt the god will protect her.” Riesta didn’t sound all that confident.
With reason. However god-touched, saints were ultimately human beings, frail flesh like any other person. Without which, Pen was reminded, the gods could not reach into the world at all. The gods do not save us from death. They only catch us when we fall from life. Pen also translated that as, Don’t lose my saint in a canal! Fair enough.
A tabarded dedicat ventured up, ostensibly to ask her superior some question about arrangements for tomorrow’s festivities; more, Pen suspected, to get a closer peek at the mysterious visitor from the curia. Riesta sent her off for tea. It was served cool and sweetened with honey, along with a plate of grapes, cheese, and bread, for which Pen realized he was ravenously grateful—lunch had been mislaid somewhere in his day’s travels.
By the time this refreshment was consumed, they were still waiting for Chio. Pen hoped his boatman was faithful. Although if the fellow had given up and poled off, Pen supposed there would be another one along. The basin was busy this time of day.
At last the saint tripped back, looking suspiciously satisfied with herself. Her braid had been wound up and secured on the back of her head with some fetching hair sticks, cut-glass balls on their ends glittering as she moved. Her white coat was buttoned up to her throat, though a different skirt hem fluttered at her ankles. A lumpy linen bag swung from her hand. Pen eyed it in some bafflement.
“Let’s go, then!” she declared.
Pen was willing, though beginning to wonder what they would do when they reached the city shore. He needed a better plan than randomly, or even systematically, continuing to quarter Lodi with his uncanny sense being battered by every soul in it but the one he sought. With old Idau in his mind as the model for a saint, he supposed he’d been vaguely counting on some sage, avuncular advice here at the chapterhouse to direct his steps further. Though if he’d wanted to be led, he now had it—Chio grabbed Pen’s hand to drag him off. She walked backward a moment to wave a cheerful farewell to the glum Riesta, who called parental-sounding cautions after her as they made their way around the old mansion.
They were delayed at the gate by an ambush from the children, who demanded Chio inspect and approve their boat-decorating. Pen, taking his cue from her, strove to come up with a few admiring comments as well. It was plain Chio’s words were more treasured.
She smiled over her shoulder as they left the walls of the chapterhouse compound. “I used to do that, help decorate the boats every Bastard’s Day.”
“To be part of the ceremonies tomorrow, I take it?” At her puzzled glance up at him, he added, “I only just arrived in Lodi a few months ago.”
“Oh. Yes. All the chapterhouses and orphanages have a boat parade around the canals in honor of the god. Isn’t your chapterhouse…?”
“I work directly for the curia, so no.”
“The archdivine does come out and bless us at the start.”