“Hm.”
Thala listened with a thoughtful frown, but for once jotted no notes.
“How of yourselves?” asked Pen. “Did all go well last night, delivering Halber to his fate?” Now doubly earned, and Pen was not above hoping it would prove doubly ill.
Oswyl nodded. “He’s in a cell, and in the hands of the justiciars. I doubt he’ll be escaping on a fast horse this time around.”
“Reports to your superiors go smoothly?” asked Pen, thinking of his own fraught night.
Oswyl actually grinned. Slyly, but still. Pen’s brows rose in question.
“I arrived to find them anxious to tell me that my case was to be taken from me and given to a much more senior inquirer, on account of the kin Pikepool connections cropping up. I had to tell them they were too late off the mark.”
“Alas,” murmured Thala, in the most unrepentant lilt imaginable. She shared the smirk with her senior.
Pen had enough experience with bureaucratic hierarchies by now to have no trouble reading that one, either. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” said Oswyl. “Thank you several times over. Not least that I don’t have poor Baron Wegae’s corpse on my plate today. That would not have proved nearly so palatable a dish to present.” Oswyl’s grin turned to grimace with the vision. “He wants to see you again, by the by.”
Pen nodded. “I’m sure I can make a chance, before I have to leave Easthome.”
Thala asked the air generally, “So, are shamans like sorcerers? Not able to live or work together much?”
“Not at all,” said Lunet. “We work together all the time. I have a group singing-practice this afternoon, in fact.”
Thala didn’t look entirely elated at this news, but asked, “Like a Temple choir?”
Lunet’s smile was suddenly all fox. “Not exactly, no.”
Combining weirding voices? Oh my, as the princess-archdivine might say. Or even, My, my, my. Pen really wanted to see that.
Lunet stared off at some point over Oswyl’s shoulder, and remarked, “Although shamans share some of the problems I suspect sorcerers may have. Ordinary people are afraid to get close to us, afraid of the powers in our blood that they do not understand. As if because we possess strange beasts, we are them.”
“That sounds… foolish,” said Oswyl in a tentative tone. “If you don’t understand something, you should just try to learn more, that’s all.”
Lunet’s gray eyes glinted at him from under her ruddy lashes. Pen could not parse her expression, although Des murmured, Heh. Not too hopelessly thick, that boy.
Thala looked curiously at Pen, and said, “Then it would seem sorcerers have a doubly lonely time of it. If ordinary people fear them, and other sorcerers cannot be too near them.”
That girl saw too much, and said too little, but when she did… ouch. “We always have our demons,” Pen offered. He thought Des would have patted his head in approval if she could.
“Ah, you’re all here!” came a voice, and Pen turned in some relief to wave at Inglis.
He strolled near and looked them over, almost smiling. “All well this morning with our new foxes?” he asked Lunet.
“Aye. Penric’s Learned Hamo came to see them. He’s in there now.” She gestured toward the stall. “Private conclave.”
Inglis paused, extending what shamanic perception Pen did not know, but he nodded. “Right.” He looked at Pen. “Will it be all right?”
A comprehensive question, that. “I’ll know in a little.”
Inglis tapped his fingers on his trouser seam, nodded again at the Grayjays. No, at Thala. “Would you like to look around the menagerie while we wait? I could show you our wolves.”
“I’d be quite interested in that,” said Thala, rising at once to her feet and almost-smiling back at him.
Lunet’s eyes narrowed in merriment, watching this play. She leaned over and said to Oswyl, “And I could show you our other foxes.”
“Oh! Ah, you have more?”
“And the lynxes. They’re really fine.”
Oswyl mustered an actual smile at her, and rose as well, suddenly all amiable cooperation. On Oswyl, it looked very odd.
Rather than departing as a group, the two shamans started to draw the two Grayjays off in opposite directions, though Lunet paused to politely ask over her shoulder, in a most unpressing tone, “And you, Learned Penric?”
He waved her off. “Inglis showed me around the other day. I’ll wait here for Hamo.”
“Oh, all right.”
How very tactful of you, Pen.
As they rounded the corner, Pen could hear Oswyl asking, in an almost-convincing simulation of his habitual inquirer’s style, “And how long have you been a member of the Royal Fellowship, Shaman Lunet? How did you become interested in the calling…?”
Hah, murmured Des. Shamans really do work together.
Pen watched them out of sight, then sighed, “Don’t mind me. I’ll just sit here and talk to myself.”
Now, now, boy.
Pen’s lips twitched.
His smile faded as he studied the silent stall door. This must be what it was like waiting for a judge to return from his chambers and deliver a verdict. He considered extending his Sight, but thought it might be felt as intrusive; it would certainly be felt. Going over and leaning on the stall door would scarcely be better, putting three chaos demons in such close proximity.
At length, his careful patience was rewarded when Hamo emerged, brushing a few straws off his trousers and closing the lower door behind him. He looked around a trifle blindly, then walked over and sat on the mounting block farthest from Pen.
“So?” said Pen quietly. “What do you think?”
“Stable,” said Hamo slowly, “for an ascendant demon. Magal’s and Svedra’s influences lingering, I think. Safe enough for the moment. But I must be careful not to thoughtlessly take this fox for the same thing as a new elemental, ignorant of the uses of its powers. The same marred imprints that make it tamer make it more dangerous. It will require much more shrewd and mindful care.”
Pen rubbed his booted toe across the cobblestones. “I was thinking about how the Order sometimes pairs a trained aspirant with an aged sorcerer, to acquaint the demon with its proposed new home in advance.” A gruesome deathwatch Pen had been spared by Ruchia’s sudden roadside accident, or at any rate, the experience had been compressed to minutes and not weeks or months. “What if, once the vixen has weaned her cubs, she might be given into the care of such an aspirant? It might make for a more gentle transition. And a kinder surveillance.”
Hamo tilted his head. “She would make an extraordinary pet,” he allowed.
Pen could not only picture it, he envied it. The vixen and her young sorceress-to-be, going about together. If he didn’t have a demon already…
You just think it would be madly stylish to have a clever pet fox, Des mocked him. He didn’t deny it.
“It would take some careful matchmaking,” said Hamo.
This man, Pen was reminded, made sorcerers for the Temple. “I expect you’re up to that.”
“Maybe,” said Hamo, his eyes narrowing as he considered Pen knew-not-what pertinent factors. “Maybe. I so want to salvage… I must take some thought who might… hm. Hm.”
Pen liked the tone of those hms. Very hopeful. By the time the cubs were weaned, Hamo would have had some weeks to scour, really, the whole Weald for suitable candidates, among all the aspirant-divines scattered across the Hallow King’s realm. The task, he had no doubt, would be done well, and shrewdly. Somewhere out there was a very lucky aspirant indeed.