“Should I try?” said Pen brightly, growing nervous. He softened his tone. “Desdemona, could you please say something to Learned Tigney, here, so he doesn’t think I’ve gone mad or, or that I’m lying? Please?”
After a long moment, his mouth said mulishly, “We don’t see why we should. Cowardly demon-destroyer. Ruchia may have thought him diligent, but we always thought him a prig.”
Pen’s hands sprang to his flushing face as if to dam this alarming spate; he lowered them cautiously. “Sorry, sir. She seems to be a bit opinionated. Er . . . had you two met before?”
“I’ve known—knew”—he made a pained hand-wave at the correction—“Ruchia these twenty years. Though only after she acquired her mount.”
Pen said hesitantly, “I’m sorry for your loss. Were you friends, then?”
“Say colleagues. She had the training of me when I first contracted my demon.”
“You’re a sorcerer, too?” said Pen in surprise.
“I was. Not anymore.”
Pen swallowed. “You didn’t end it by dying.”
“No. There is another way.” The man could certainly put the grim in grimace. “Wasteful, but sometimes necessary.”
Pen wanted to follow this up, but instead Tigney began asking him all about his childhood and youth at Jurald Court. It seemed to Pen to make a short and boring biography.
“Why did you stop on the road?” he asked at last.
“How could I not? The lady appeared to be in grave distress.” Which had turned out to be all too true. “I wanted to help.”
“You might have volunteered to ride for the town.”
Pen blinked. “I didn’t think of that. It all happened so fast. Wilrom was already galloping off by the time I dismounted to see what was going on.”
Tigney rubbed his forehead, and muttered, “And so all is in disarray.” He looked up and added, “We had expected to house Learned Ruchia at the palace temple, but I think you’d best stay here, for now. We’ll find you a room.” He went again to shout for Cosso; when the man arrived, he gave more orders as a master might. Was Tigney very senior, here? This was plainly a house for functionaries, for the practical business of the Temple, not for worship or prayer.
“What do you do in the Bastard’s Order, sir?”
Tigney’s brows rose. “Did you not know? I oversee all the Temple sorcerers of this region. Comings and goings, assignments and accounts. I’m a bailiff of sorcerers, if you like. And you know how much everyone loves bailiffs. Thankless task. But Bastard knows they do not organize themselves.”
“Must I stay in my room?” Pen asked as he was ushered into the hallway.
Tigney snorted. “If the demon is already awake, it is probably pointless to try to hold you, but I request that you not depart the house without my leave. Please.” That last seemed dragged out of him, but he did sound earnest.
Pen nodded. “Yes, sir.” One building seemed enough of Martensbridge for the moment. He didn’t think he could get lost in here.
“Thank you,” said Tigney, and added to the porter, “Send the two Daughter’s men to me again, then the servant Gans. And let Clee know that I will be needing him later, and not to go off.”
Pen followed the man out.
The porter led Pen to the top floor, given over to a series of tiny rooms for servants or lesser dedicats. The chamber to which he was gestured did have a window, with a battered table shoved up to it, holding a basin, mismatched ewer, a few grubby towels, a shaving mirror, and someone’s razor kit. It was flanked by two cots. There were other signs of occupation—pegs hung with clothing, a chest at the foot of one cot, boots scattered about, more possessions pushed under both beds. The second cot had been cleared, with Pen’s saddlebags dumped atop. A supper would be served below-stairs for the house’s denizens at dusk, Cosso told him before departing; Pen was pleased to be invited. Apparently, his exile from human contact was ended, if only for lack of space. He hoped the room’s resident would not be too dismayed by his imposed guest. At least he wouldn’t have to share a bed with a stranger, as sometimes happened in crowded inns.
Finding cold water still left in the ewer, Pen washed the road dirt from his hands and face, pulled a few things from his saddlebags for later, and sat on the edge of the cot, trying to overcome his disorientation.
“Desdemona? Are you there?” A stupid way to phrase it. Where, and how, would she go? “Are you awake?”
No answer. After few more minutes of sitting, bone-tired but not sleepy enough to nap, his mood shifted to frustration. Tigney had implied he had the run of the house, hadn’t he? If no one else was going to show him how to go on, he’d just have to figure it out for himself. He rose to explore.
Nothing else on this floor but more servants’ cells. The next floor down was mostly closed doors, if fewer of them; the one left open gave onto someone’s bedchamber. Pen let only his glance stray within. The next floor down from that had more open doors, to workrooms like Tigney’s, with people about, though what tasks they performed therein were not at all obvious to Pen. He poked his head into the large, quiet room that he gauged was above Tigney’s, and stopped short.
It was the house’s library, and Pen had never seen so many books and scrolls in one room in his life. Even the Greenwell Lady-school had only boasted one bookcase, the entire contents of which Pen had read up by his second year. There was no tradition of scholarship among his ancestors, either; Jurald Court had account books, records of hunts and harvests, a few books of tales shared around till the pages had worked loose, a couple of tomes of theology left to gather dust. Pen stepped within, marveling.
A pair of long writing tables stood endways to the two windows overlooking the street, sharing the light as fairly as possible. One was taken by a fellow who looked not much older than Pen—heartening—his head bent over his work, quill carefully scratching. His dark hair was cut soldier-fashion, as if to pad a helmet, though it showed no sign of a helmet ever having rested there. By the stack of cut and scored blank sheets to his left, the smaller stack of filled ones to his right, and the book propped open on a wooden stand in front of him, he was working as a copyist.
He glanced up at Pen and frowned, not welcoming interruption. Pen tried smiling, with a silent little wave to indicate his friendliness and harmlessness and general willingness to be greeted, but the man merely grunted and returned his eyes to his page-in-progress. Taking the rebuff in good part, Pen shifted his attention to the shelves.
One whole floor-to-ceiling case appeared to be theology, no surprise in this place. Another was devoted to chronicles, mostly of other times and realms; Pen’s own land was more noted for producing cheese than history, he feared. Some ancient, fragile scrolls resided on a set of shelves all to themselves, with corded silk tassels hanging down holding slips of wood inked with titles for each, which he dared not touch. He was thrilled to spot a collection of what appeared to be books of tales, looking well thumbed. Then a tall case of works in Darthacan, of which Pen had a grasp his Lady-school teachers had grudgingly pronounced adequate; a couple of shelves of works in unreadable Ibran; and then another entire shelf in the ancient tongue of Cedonia, with its exotic letters.
Pen had only seen fragments of the mysterious language before, on old coins or carved on the fallen temple ruins above the road to Greenwell, lone legacy in his hinterland of an empire that had, over a millennium ago, stretched two thousand miles from the warm Cedonian peninsula to the cold Darthacan coast. Scholars described it as fleetingly glorious, like some shooting star, but three hundred years of such ascendency did not seem so fleeting to Pen. In any case, after those swift generations it had fallen apart again, split and re-split among revolts and generals just as Great Audar’s empire out of Darthaca was to do hundreds of years later, when his heirs failed.