Pen’s imagination, briefly stuck on the courtesan part, raced to catch up. “Which is what?” Not that he had any intention of going to those lands.
“Sometimes they are burned alive, but often, they are taken out to sea and put overboard with a cushion that slowly fills with water and sinks. By the time the sorcerer drowns, the boat will have got far enough away that the demon will have nowhere to jump but to the fishes.”
Both he and Desdemona shuddered at this picture, Pen fancied, if perhaps for different reasons.
Pen’s mouth emitted a spate in that strange language, the words unknown to him but the tone of grievance very clear. Umelan adding her views?
“After her executioners rowed off, but before she was quite drowned, she was spotted by a passing galley from Brajar. The rescue was not much better than the capture, but we were set ashore alive in Brajar and, at a loss for any other course, went supplicant to a house of the Bastard’s Order. It was . . . good, there.” A slight pause, and she added, “For the first time, we were understood.”
Pen counted up on his fingers. Not the whole tally even yet. “And before, uh, Mira of Adria?”
“Rogaska, a serving-woman in the court of the Duke of Orbas. He made a gift of her to Mira. Before her, Vasia of Patos in Cedonia, our first rider who could read and write—a widow, then something of a courtesan as well, after the manner of that city. Which was how she came to die in luxury at the court of Orbas. Roundaboutly.”
Pen blinked. Cedonia? That seemed a country of fable to him, a place for tales to be set far enough away that none could gainsay their wonders. Also said to be warm. He was impressed. And envious. This creature had seen places and peoples that Pen could scarcely dream of.
“Before her, Litikone, a goodwife of the Cedonian northern provinces; before her, Sugane, a village woman in the mountains. She slew the aging lioness when it attacked her goats, all by herself with a rusty spear. She was a proper rider, despite her ignorance! Before that, the wild mare of the hills, that the lioness killed and ate, and before that . . . we know not. Perhaps the white god.”
“Do you, did you, er . . .” Pen was not sure how to put it. “Did you experience all these deaths?”
The voice was dry as dust. “Up to a point.”
But not any balancing births. Not that he remembered his own, either.
As long as he hosted this entity, Pen realized, he need never lack for bedtime stories, though he might lack for the ability to sleep, after.
But not tonight. Helplessly, he yawned, settling back in his warm and flea-less bedding. His voice whispered on for a while in unknown words, like a mountain rivulet, as he drifted off.
Pen woke aroused, rolled over sleepily, and reached for himself. The room seemed warm and dim and safe and quiet.
His hand had barely touched its target when his mouth commented, “Ooh, I’ve not felt it from this angle before. This should be interesting.”
Pen’s hand froze.
“Don’t stop on our account,” said Desdemona. “Physicians, remember?”
“Yes, don’t be shy. I’ve seen a thousand of ’em.”
“Speak for yourself!”
“Well, I’ve certainly diapered them a thousand times.”
Pen had no idea what the next comment was, and it might just have been the language, but it certainly sounded obscene.
He rolled from the bed and dressed as fast as possible. He couldn’t be out on the road soon enough.
The Linnet ran green and swift in the spring melt, and surprisingly wide. A few merchants’ boats dared the flood. The road coursed alongside it, with more pack trains going upstream than down. Its valley was hedged by what were, by Pen’s standards, low hills. As they passed the third broken fortification glowering down from these modest crags, he was moved to ask, “What happened to the castles?”
Wilrom and Gans shrugged, but Trinker, craning his neck, said, “Martensbridge did, I heard. Some local lords had taken to robbing merchants outright, though they’d started by calling it tolls. The guilds of the city combined with the princess-archdivine’s troops to destroy the nests that they couldn’t buy out, and made the road safe for all from the lake to the Crow. And all the tolls go to Martensbridge, now.”
Not, Pen reflected sadly, a method of gain Jurald Court might have mimicked; the roads in its reach were more likely to hold herds of cows than rich caravans.
Villages clustered around weirs and mills and, once, a wooden bridge. Then they rounded a curve in the valley and Martensbridge came into view. Pen stared, fascinated.
The place was easily ten times the size of Greenwell. The river bisected it, twice crossed by stone bridges and once by one of timber; buildings of stone as well as wood rose up the slopes, packed behind its walls. Trinker stood in his stirrups, and guessed that the substantial edifice crowning one hill might be the palace of the famous princess-archdivine, and heart, therefore, of his Order in this region. Beyond the city, the wide vista of lake opened out to the north, bordered with farms and fields and vineyards on the lower slopes, dark woods on the steeps. Covered merchants’ boats and open fishing skiffs dotted the ruffled surface. Then more hills, and then, dreamlike on the far horizon, a line of familiar white peaks, briefly making a bow from the curtain of the clouds.
It was not possible to get lost in Greenwell. After they had made their way through the south gate, they discovered that this was not the case for Martensbridge. They rode up and down several streets, all of them paved with cobbles, while Pen gaped at the high houses, the well-dressed men and women, the bright markets, stately merchants and hurrying servants, fine fountains in squares crowded with laundresses, elegant or clever wrought-iron signs for artisans’ shops and guildhalls, windows of stained glass with pictures. Trinker referred again to the scrap of paper holding his directions, looking hot and frustrated.
“Turn left here,” said Pen suddenly, when Trinker made to lead them right. Pen had no idea where the certainty in his voice came from, but everyone followed. “Right here,” he said at the next street. “And up,” at the next intersection. “And here we are.”
Pen sat in his saddle and peered at the stone building, crowded in a row along the steep street with its neighbors. Though narrow, it stood some five floors tall, looking like a lesser guildhall of some sort. It boasted no stained glass. The only marker was a discreet wooden sign over the door showing two hands painted white, loosely closed, one thumb pointing up and the other down. The thumb was the sign and signifier of the Bastard, the one finger on the hand that touched all the others. Aside from that, the place did not look in the least temple-like. Trinker cast Pen a disquieted look, dismounted, and knocked on the door.
It was answered by a porter wearing a tabard with the same two-hand design stitched on it, otherwise in common dress. His glance took in the official badge of the Daughter’s Order and blue and white feathers on Trinker’s hat. “Yes, sir?”
Trinker cleared his throat, awkwardly. “We are the escort of the Learned Ruchia, ridden from Liest. We were told that someone awaited her in this house. We need to see him.”
The porter looked over their party. “Where is the divine?”
“That’s what we need to see somebody about.”
The porter’s brow wrinkled. “Wait here, sir. If you please.” The door closed again.