They don’t always like me. But she seems willing to learn. Not so sure about the brother.
I thought you all found him quite scenic to look upon.
Yes, till he opened his mouth and was so rude to us.
We’ve met worse. I thought him teachable. Give him time.
The time you aren’t planning to allow? Contradictory, Pen.
He smiled tightly. If consistency is what you want, I’ve taken oath to the wrong god.
They made their way as quietly as possible through the inn’s front door, Penric turning the key again behind them. The place afforded no night-porter, fortunately. They creaked up the dark stairs and made their way to their chamber, marked by a faint orange glow under the door. He was therefore not too surprised to enter after Nikys and find Arisaydia sitting up in the room’s one chair, glaring at them by the light of a tallow candle, his eyes red sparks. His unsheathed sword lay across his lap.
He kept his voice low, but fierce. “Where have you been?”
It must have been alarming for him to wake up to the empty room. Or at least to the absence of his sister; Pen hadn’t planned on that. Good that he hadn’t gone charging out into the town in some wrong direction and repaid them the jolt. “The temple,” he answered, equally quietly.
“At this time of night?”
“The gods will hear prayers any time.”
“Actually,” said Nikys, doffing her cloak and hanging it on a peg, “I found him robbing the offering boxes.”
At Arisaydia’s stare, Penric said, “You want to hire horses tomorrow, don’t you?”
“I was afraid we would be pressed to forage for mounts like an army in enemy territory,” he admitted reluctantly. “But buying would be better still, to leave no witnesses to our direction.”
“You were thinking of stealing them?” said Nikys, her brows rising. She glanced sidelong at Pen. “It’s hard to imagine Cedonia as an enemy country.”
Arisaydia’s hand touched his temple, as if to say, Not so hard for me now. But he clearly still mourned this hostile transformation, even as he set his face to the wind. “No horses for sale in this crossroads village at this time of night anyway.” He sighed out his tension and rose. “Try to sleep.”
At least he sheathed his sword before he lay down again, but he did pass Penric a special brotherly glower as he blew out the candle.
Pen lay on his pallet and sorted out his options.
There weren’t that many. From Skirose, a lesser military road ran east to the sea, and west over the spine of Cedonia to link up with the net of roads around Thasalon. A minor local road ran south into the hills, branching into tracks unfit for wheeled vehicles over the stony passes to the neighboring province. It was another hundred or so miles across that province to the next range of mountains. Beyond them lay the lands of Orbas, Cedonia’s sometimes-client-state, sometimes-ally, sometimes-enemy, presently attempting a neutral independence. Thasalon would be happy to forcibly reconvert it to a tax-paying province, if the emperor didn’t have a compass-turn of other pressures to attend to: Adria to the east, the Roknari to the north coast and islands, the Rusylli to the southwest.
Penric’s most direct route home was east to the sea and across it to Adria. Overland, it would be a longer journey, south around the arc of the coast through Orbas and Trigonie, before he came to Adriac lands once more. Although once to Orbas, he would no longer be running as an outlaw of sorts, and could presumably report to the Temple and seek aid from a local chapter of the Bastard’s Order. So heading south with Arisaydia and his sister—all right, with Nikys and her brother—wouldn’t be deciding anything, necessarily. An alternate course would be to find a coastal ship to take them to one of the few ports of Orbas, although Pen doubted his ability to persuade Arisaydia aboard a form of transport he could neither control nor abandon at will.
Nikys would, of course, follow her twin. Not some possibly-lunatic stranger she’d just met a fortnight ago. Arisaydia was correct, if not right, to take that for granted. Did he realize how much he assumed of her?
Not that oh-so-Learned Penric was in a position to offer her anything better than a different dangerous flight and uncertain welcome, now was he?
Pen, said Des, exasperated, what you are in a position to do is to stop fretting and go to sleep, so we aren’t all worthless for any action in the morning.
She wasn’t wrong. He grumbled and rolled over.
They ate breakfast soon after dawn in the inn’s common room, as apart from its other patrons as they could arrange, and silently. Fare included porridge, unexceptional, dried figs and apricots, decent, a small ration of white cheese, horrifyingly familiar squares of dried fish which Nikys and Arisaydia consumed without comment, and an excessively generous bowl of tough half-dried black olives, which Penric sampled suspiciously and passed along to his companions. After, they returned to their room to count out Pen’s coins on the washstand, and plan.
“If we make for the coast,” Pen reasoned, “and then pick up passage on some local vessel, we could as soon reach the ports of Orbas as the island of Corfara. Which must surely be easier on Madame Khatai than an overland flight through these hills.” And it would give Penric several more days to argue for Adria, if he could evolve some better lever to shift this human boulder. A frown from Nikys indicated that this slight on her endurance was not entirely appreciated, but an appeal to Arisaydia’s own convalescent state would have been worse received.
Arisaydia appeared not totally unmoved by the argument, or at least his scowl grew more thoughtful. He glanced at Nikys and seemed to consider. “Our funds might purchase one maybe-sound horse. Not three,” he said at last. “Give the purse to Nikys, and we’ll go dicker for hired horses. You go and buy us food to last for a two-day ride. We’ll meet back here and decide on our direction then.”
It wasn’t a yes, but it wasn’t as firm a no as usual. Penric elected not to push, or push his luck, just yet, and went off to find whatever passed for a day-market in this town. And marshal his next set of points. Debate had never been his best skill, back in seminary.
He returned with a sack of variously preserved foods, including more leathery olives, and settled on a bench in the inn’s entry atrium, tilting his straw hat down over his face, to await the siblings’ return with horses.
And waited.
Growing restless, he went up to check their chamber. No notes. Arisaydia and Nikys had taken their scant belongings with them to pack in the hoped-for saddlebags, and Pen’s case stood ready to go. Arisaydia was not a man to waste time.
Indeed, not.
A weight settled in Pen’s stomach that had nothing to do with porridge and olives, and he hastened downstairs and around to the main street that hosted the livery and coaching inn serving the military road. A quick survey of the ostlers came up only with no, no sir, a man and a woman had not tried to hire three riding horses in the last couple of hours, nor even two horses. Was there any other livery in town? Oh, aye, sir, there was a little place just off the west road, but it only offered local hires, not good coach teams like ours, twelve miles an hour on the flats! Reflecting that this country was not oversupplied with flats, Penric lengthened his stride as he found his way to the west road.
The stable on the west road was small but tidy, featuring a dozen stalls, mostly empty. Oh, aye, sir; a man and his wife had hired two horses, together with the requisite groom-guide, and left upwards of two hours gone. Which way? The south road. Something about visiting relatives in a village up the far head of the valleys.