The name of Tigney and the Order seemed to be the master key. Pen found himself trudging again up the steep street as the sky melted to bronze, then muted gold.
The surprisingly awake-looking porter answered his pounding at the door, and gaped at him in amazement. “Lord Penric!”
“Good morning, Cosso. I need to see Learned Tigney. At once.” He’d had plenty of time to think, while he’d stumbled through the dark, of how to explain the night’s doings, and why a powerful local lord had tried to murder him. Indignation had given way a while back to unease. Now that he was here, all his fine furious speeches seemed to run through his numb fingers like water.
“I believe,” said the porter, “that he wishes to see you. Though I can’t say you are expected. Come up.”
Cosso ushered him straight to Tigney’s work chamber, where candles burned low and guttering in their sockets.
“Learned, Lord Penric is here.” Cosso gave way, pushing Pen before him, then took up a guardsman’s stance by the door, his face quite wooden.
Tigney sat at his desk, his quill molting in his fingers as he fiddled with it. Pen was alarmed to see Ruchia’s book laid out on the writing table, but much more alarmed to find Clee there before him. Both Temple men looked up at him in shock.
Tigney was dressed for the day—no, for yesterday. Clee wore a close cap over his remaining hair; howsoever he had put himself to rights after a night of attempted murder and, presumably, firefighting, he was rumpled up again by a ten-mile ride in the dawn. Still, he had to look better than Pen. At least I’ve stopped dripping. Pen would be enraged at the sight of him, but he was just too tired to muster the emotion.
“Well, well,” said Tigney, putting down the quill and steepling his fingers. “Has the committee for the defense arrived?”
Verbal sparring was beyond Pen by this point. He said simply, “Good morning, Learned. Yesterday afternoon, Clee told me you had approved an invitation by his brother for me to dine at Castle Martenden. They gave me a drugged cordial, and took me down to the storeroom and tried to murder me. They wanted to steal Desdemona. I broke away, and swam the lake, and now I’m back.” He squinted. That seemed to cover most of it. “Oh, and I’m afraid we may have set the castle on fire, but they shouldn’t have tried to spit me on those pikes.” He squeezed his eyes shut, and open. “And I’m sorry about the boat. But not very.”
Tigney, canny and cautious, raised his chin and regarded Pen. “Whereas the tale Clee has just told me was that your demon ascended and beguiled him to take you to the castle, where you went on an arsonous rampage, stole a boat, and either escaped or drowned. You are supposed to be halfway to the border of Adria by now.”
Pen considered this. “Much too far to walk.”
“It is two men’s word again one’s,” said Clee, who had overcome his first horrified paralysis. “And him a stranger in this place.”
Stranger than you can imagine. Pen raised a finger. “Two against two. Me and Desdemona. Unless you count her as twelve, in which case I can make up a jury right here.”
Tigney rubbed his forehead, doubtless aching, and glowered at them both. “That one of you is lying is self-evident. Fortunately, I have another witness. In a sense.” He motioned to the porter. “Cosso, please fetch our other guest. Apologize, but make him understand it is urgent. Ah—tell him Lord Penric has come back.”
The porter nodded and went out.
Clee, heated, said, “Learned, you cannot be thinking of taking testimony from the demon! It is utterly unreliable!”
Tigney stared dryly at him. “I do know demons, Clee.”
Clee either had the sense to shut up, or was temporarily out of arguments. Pen was pretty sure this was not the scene Clee had been picturing when he’d hurried to lay his tale before Tigney. If he had really thought Pen drowned, a not-unlikely outcome, why had he come to make these accusations, rather than holing up with his brother? Maybe Rusillin had thrown him out? Clee certainly had been the one to pass along the gossip about Pen’s arrival in town. Which of the brothers had been the first to broach the demon-stealing scheme?
Minutes passed. Pen sat down on the floor. Tigney started to say something, then made a never-mind gesture, and left him there.
Finally, a bustle sounded from the hall; the porter’s voice soothing, a new one querulous. A short, stout old man wearing a stained white dressing gown and stumping along with a stick entered the room. Tigney, who had left Clee and Pen standing, hurried to set him out a cushioned chair. His hair was white and receding and combed back to a thin queue; his face was as round and wrinkled as a winter-stored apple, but not nearly as sweet. He might have been a retired baker with bad digestion. He thumped down in the proffered seat with a grunt, and stacked his hands on his cane.
Inside Pen, Desdemona screamed. And wailed a heartbroken, Ah! Ah! We are undone! It is the Saint of Idau! Pen felt a desperate flush of heat through his body, and then she curled into so tight and despairing a ball within him as to nearly implode.
“Blessed Broylin.” Tigney bowed before him. Then, after a moment, he thumped Clee on the back of the head and shoved it down as well. Coming up wincing, Clee crouched and backed away, signing himself and mumbling, “Blessed One . . .” Clee seemed nearly as surprised as Desdemona, if more frozen. No one could be as frantic.
Tigney glowered down at the boggled, bedraggled Pen, but then just shook his head.
So was this to be the second lethal ambush Penric and Desdemona had faced in the space of less than a day? Ambush it clearly was meant to be, crafted by the cunning Tigney no doubt. No wonder he hadn’t troubled to tutor Pen. He must have been planning it for a week, to get this creaky old man transported here from Idau in secret. How else could he corner and arrest such a powerful demon, except by surprise? And Pen had walked her right into it. Should he get up and try to run? Could he get up, let alone run? We should have gone north after all. Oh, Desdemona, I am so sorry . . .
“So, Blessed.” Tigney gestured to Pen. “Is his demon ascended?”
The old man frowned unfavorably at Pen, who looked up at him in dismay, but said, “No. Not a bit. All your panic seems unfounded, Tig. Entirely not worth what that vile cart did to my back, rushing me here.”
As the gray eyes squinted down, Pen was abruptly caught in that gaze, as if he were looking through two pinholes at a blinding sun, as if something huge and ancient and present lay just around some corner of perception. He couldn’t look away. He couldn’t run away. He thought he might even want to crawl toward. That elderly and unprepossessing body seemed worn like a stage costume, insubstantial and deceptive as gauze, over, yes, only a man, but also a channel to something that was . . . not a man. Not anything Pen had ever expected to meet face-to-face alive, even through such a screen.
It came to him that every prayer he’d ever said or mumbled or yawned around before had been by rote. And that he’d never be able to pray like that again.
“Can you compel his demon to speech?” Tigney asked the saint.
“If I can persuade it to stop howling in fear, perhaps.”
Clee, unwisely, tried, “But can you compel it to speak the truth?”
The old man eyed him. “Don’t know. D’you think I could compel you?”
Clee wilted. But, driven by whatever desperation, he essayed: “If the demon is not ascended, then Lord Penric’s behavior is his own, mad or criminal to repay begged hospitality with arson and destruction. And he should be brought before the judges for it.”