“I believe that was Secretary Prygos’s purse, but yes. Getting it away from the sorcerer could be tricky.”
“I wasn’t actually suggesting we repay his bounty by robbing the man,” Nikys said a little tartly. “He could be an extraordinary resource.” The fact that he’d served princesses, archdivines and dukes hinted at a high level of standing that the man himself concealed. “You don’t wish to be conscripted by Adria…”
His laugh was short and humorless. “My Adriac is poor, I get sick on ships, and I have no desire to let those sea rats use me against Cedonia, which I don’t doubt they’d try to do sooner or later, Carpagamo be hanged. No.” He added in a lower tone, as if embarrassed by the hope, “From Orbas, I might have some chance of eventually reinstating myself with Thasalon. From Adria I’d have none.”
Nikys considered this. “Something dire would have to happen to Minister Methani and his hangers-on, to allow you that.”
Adelis’s teeth glinted, feral below the wreck of his face. “Probably.”
She took a steadying breath. “So what do you say we turn it around and try to conscript Penric to Orbas?” Or to ourselves?
“I’m still trying to figure out how to safely shed him. As I’ve refused to make myself his duke’s man, he has no reason not to betray us.”
“I think that’s about as likely as an artist setting fire to his master-painting. For all that he mumbles around it, he seems wildly proud of what he’s done for your eyes.” As well he should be, she suspected. If she hadn’t known it was magic, she’d have dubbed it miracle.
“Nikys, he’s an Adriac agent. Self-confessed!”
“He’s a lot more than that.”
Adelis snorted. “Are you sure it’s Orbas you desire him for?”
Her lips twitched up; she hoped she wasn’t flushing. “It’s true I’ve come to like him. He’s just… different. Strange, but not unkind.”
“That was a jest.” Adelis’s eyes narrowed in new suspicion. “Has he offered you any offense? He’s not been… trying to seduce you in some sorcerous way, has he?”
She had to laugh at this. “I don’t think he’d need sorcery for that, but no.” Alas was probably not the best thing to add.
Adelis being Adelis, he heard it anyway. “Of all the—! I introduced you to any number of honest officers, yet you want to make cow’s eyes at some foreign little, little…”
“He’s taller than you,” Nikys pointed out, as he groped for a word to sum Penric. She thought he’d need an oration at the least.
“Skinny then, twitchy, lying… he has a chaos demon inside him! If he were doing something to you, could you tell? I can’t!”
“Then maybe he’s not. Wasn’t. Whichever.” Was that alarm the root of his antipathy? Or was the antipathy his alarm’s disguise? She took a breath to tame her temper. “We can certainly both see what he has done for you. That ought to give you a comparison.” She could grant that the very invisibility of Penric’s magic was disturbing—how could a man defend against an attack he could not see? But she didn’t usually need to squeeze fair judgment out of Adelis like oil from an olive press. “I’d think Thasalon just gave you a sharp lesson in the hazards of imagining threats where there are none.”
He did flinch at that one, and backed down a tiny Adelis-inch, worth a yard from any other man. “I just believe he could be dangerous. To you.”
She folded her arms, her head tilting at this blatant hypocrisy. “Then you shouldn’t have taught me not to be afraid of dangerous men, hm?”
He knew enough not to step into this quagmire, but he soon found another, saying grumpily, “I’d think you’d be jealous of a fellow who’s prettier than you.”
“Why, are you? Really, Adelis!” She spotted the man in question emerging around the side of the stable, and had to admit that last fraternal jape was part-right. Not about the jealousy, though, which would be as futile as envying the sunlight. “Hush, here he comes back.”
They climbed once more into the close confines of the coach and were off, rumbling and bumping along at a smart, steady trot.
A few miles farther on, they were passed by a galloping provincial courier. Penric glanced out the window and frowned. Minutes later, the horse came cantering back down the track, bucking and kicking at its saddle turned under its belly, followed at length by the panting, swearing courier. Adelis craned his neck to look after them as they fell behind.
“Did you do that?” he asked Penric.
“Yes,” he sighed. “I’m not sure it will actually help anything.”
Adelis drummed his fingers on the window rim. “I don’t like being trapped on this road.”
Penric shrugged. “We can count on a one-day start at least. I guarantee Velka won’t be recovered enough to ride yet. And then, if he means to pursue me, he’ll be put to requisitioning a sorcerer from the Patos Temple, or wherever one might be obtained. If the Temple in Cedonia is anything like the ones I know, the delays will be maddening. Although if they think I’m a hedge sorcerer, they’ll take the request seriously. Controlling hedge sorcery is in their mandate regardless of the politics.”
“If we could find a coach, so could Velka,” said Adelis. “With or without his own pet sorcerer.”
“Hm.”
“You didn’t cripple him permanently.” The least Penric might have done, Adelis seemed to imply, even if his status as a learned Temple divine finally explained why he would not kill.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I suppose the simplest answer is… to avoid accumulating theological damage to ourselves?” Penric frowned. “I understand the drift of your questions, Arisaydia. Every realm’s army tries to tap the Temple for destructive sorcerers, even as rare as we are. I won’t say my superiors never give in, but someone is always sorry later. Generally the sorcerer. It’s a known hazard.”
Adelis accepted this with a provisional “Hm,” of his own. Nikys was increasingly sensible that there was disciplined thought behind what the sorcerer would or would not do, even if the hidden rules of it escaped her. To the point where she was starting to wonder if his claimed age of thirty might be a lie in the other direction.
Though there was Desdemona, at two-hundred-and-something. It was deceptively easy, but wrong, to overlook Penric’s permanent passenger. And then Nikys wondered what all this looked like from the demon’s point of view.
At the third change they downed a hot meal at the tavern associated with the livery, then fitted themselves into the coach for the next stage. It really wasn’t possible to keep up the morning’s tension when Nikys wanted no part of it and Penric folded himself in a boneless slouch, vaguely amiable once more. When he offered to fill the time with another healing session, Adelis wavered.
“What if I pledge to stick to restoring your eyebrows?” Penric said.
“How can I tell what in the Bastard’s hell you’re doing anyway?” asked Adelis, though his aversion was plainly flagging.
“What does it feel like?” asked Nikys, curious.
Adelis shrugged and admitted, “Strangely soothing, usually.”
“This is going to be a long ride,” Nikys pointed out, and Adelis allowed himself to be persuaded. They switched seats, and the two men worked themselves awkwardly around to give Penric’s hands access to Adelis’s head. This left rather a lot of sorcerous leg to be disposed of somehow; his feet ended up nearly on Nikys’s lap.
At length, Adelis’s eyelids drifted closed.