“You see, the Order’s idea of conserving me was to save me for only the worst cases. I never got to treat, I don’t know, a hangnail, or even worms anymore, I never was allowed any easy victories. Always and only the direst injuries and illnesses, over and over. Far more died than not. When I found myself walking to the hospice each day devising… well, it doesn’t matter now.”
“It matters to me,” Nikys dared.
His moon-silvered brows flicked up. “Whyever? Whatever. I did promise a full confession, didn’t I. As I sit—lie down—speak before my god. Not that He doesn’t already know.” A snow-smile, barely bending. “So, when I spent my walk to work each day thinking up methods for a sorcerer to kill himself—which is not an easy thing to do, it turns out, when his demon opposes the idea—I realized perhaps it might be time to stop. I made application to the archdivine of Adria for work in translation, and other Temple scholarship, and ended my career as sorcerer-physician in Martensbridge. It was good, traveling north over the mountains. It felt like a narrow escape.”
Nikys tried for a friendly silence. Because the alternative was to cry out in horror and protest, and that would certainly not be helpful. Just how far had that devising gone? I’d bet Desdemona could tell me.
Penric continued, “And thus I learned the difference between a skill and a calling. To have a calling with no skill is a tragedy anyone can understand. The other way around… less so.”
“Oh. I… see.” She took a breath and cast her own challenge. “You know, I should really like to hear Desdemona’s version of this.”
She’d startled him; his eyes went wide. In an uncertain voice he said, “I suppose… we could do that.”
She could catch, now, when that inner twin shifted the tensions in his face. The demon spoke: “Hah. We blame his superiors entirely. Amberein and Helvia both trained up in the greatest centers of the medical arts in Saone and Darthaca, in their days, where their skills and limits were properly understood, together with the reticence needed to sustain them. Backwards Martensbridge saw only that a magical boon had fallen to them, and wanted to milk it for all it could give. Like a greedy trainer putting a high-blooded colt to race too soon, to its ruin. And Penric, the fool, wouldn’t say no and wouldn’t quit, till we both ended up on a hillside at dawn seeing if I could heal his arms faster than he could slice them open, which was not my idea of how we should part ways.”
“It wasn’t serious.” His voice shifted to a tone of dissent. “There was a precipice near enough if I’d been serious. As you have several times pointed out, you can’t make us fly.”
“Fortunately, he passed out before he could win the contest. A small landslide and an unlucky elk paid for the rest, and when he woke up, we had a talk.”
Penric may have been confessing; this sounded more like ranting.
“And he still won’t say no and he won’t quit, which is how we ended up in a bottle dungeon in Patos instead of a nice, comfortable study in Lodi overlooking the canal. What he needs is a superior with the backbone to say no for him.” His voice went sly, and his eyes shifted toward her. “A woman with experience keeping fool men alive might do the trick.”
“Des!” He convulsed to a sitting position.
“What, you’re the one who’s been mooning after her hips for the past fortnight. So do something about it.”
His jaw snapped shut. In this light, it was impossible to tell if he blushed, but his cheeks darkened a little.
Nikys gulped, not doubting she’d caught the demon’s drift. Though not the first, it certainly ranked as the strangest proposition she’d ever received. Also, curiously, the least insulting. “Experience I have,” she said quietly. “Success, very little.”
“Worth asking,” came the mutter, and she wasn’t sure which of the people in his head said it.
His spine straightened. “It is worth asking.” Now his voice was his own. He turned his head toward her, eyes silver in the shadows, and unreadable. “I have a counter-proposal for you. What if you came to Adria with me? Let Adelis make his own way to Orbas, which I think he now might do.”
She rocked back. “I couldn’t do that, I couldn’t leave…”
“He left you, to go off to his wars how many times? He might even travel more safely alone, and certainly faster.”
“Your duke doesn’t want me.” Her heart was thumping, uselessly.
“I didn’t say it was for the duke.” He’d gone a little breathless.
“It would make me a hostage against Adelis.”
His lips parted, closed. His voice went small. “Wasn’t what I had in mind.”
“But it would follow. Inevitably. Things being as they are.”
“Oh.” He slumped back supine on the floor again, staring up at the advancing moon. “I might protect…”
“When one’s own liege-lords turn on one, we have all lately seen how hard protection is to come by.”
“I suppose that’s so.”
His was the cruelest kind offer she’d ever received, hopelessly misaimed, like pressing gloves on a handless thief, or flowers on a starving woman. She returned the favor. “There’s still Orbas.”
His face jerked away, as if dodging a dart. “All my books are back in Adria. I hope.”
“Beloved hostages?”
“After a fashion. Which says something sad about me, I’m sure.”
She considered this oblique evasion. “There are books in Orbas. The duke has a fine library, I’ve heard. Books you haven’t read. Maybe some you’ve never heard of.” He had not, she recollected, said No to Orbas, not in the unyielding way Adelis had refused Adria. Even slippery fish jumped into nets sometimes…
His mouth curled up. “Wisdom bird. Madame Owl. Your brother dubbed you aright.”
Yes, and what if Adelis woke up and found them both gone? “We should get back. If you are done here.”
He looked pensively around. “No one talking here but us, so I would seem to be.” He clambered colt-like to his feet, and offered her a hand to heave herself up.
XIII
Penric took Nikys’s… Madame Khatai’s arm in escort as they walked back through the shadows to the inn. He suppressed a wince at the thought of her having trailed him to the temple alone this late at night, in a strange town.
It was no great distance, observed Des.
Des, just don’t… embarrass me with this woman.
Rather do it yourself, would you? An impression of a huff. If I have to listen to you pine after her, so can she. And rather more usefully.
It was bad enough that he’d made Nikys listen to his fractured confession. There are impediments. Starting with my Temple oath to the archdivine of Adria.
Your god is the same everywhere, Adria, Cedonia… or Orbas.
My god was just now silent on the subject of my direction, you will note. As ever. And everywhere. A sameness of sorts, I suppose.
What, you prayed for guidance and in the very next moment that nice child came and sat down beside you. I thought she was going to pat you on the head. I could have told her a board would work better. What do you expect from Him, a letter signed and sealed and hand-delivered? A parade with trumpets?
Penric said hesitantly, You like her? You don’t always like the women I, er, meet.