THE PRISONER OF LIMNOS
A Penric & Desdemona novella
in the World of the Five Gods
Lois McMaster Bujold
I
The bookroom in the duke of Orbas’s palace at Vilnoc was a lovely chamber. The spacious octagon, lined with shelves for scrolls and codices, was capped by a glassed roof. A well of good light for reading fell upon the central table where Penric sat. The quietude smelled of ink and paper, time and thought. It was his own failing that he couldn’t concentrate upon a single word of the rare scroll rolled open in front of him.
He sighed and pulled the letter from the inner pocket of his white tunic, unfolded and read it once more. It had been handed to him this morning by the superior of the Bastard’s Order here in Vilnoc. So, did he hope its contents might have changed since then? The lines penned by his own master the Archdivine of Adria, across the sea in Lodi, were quite short. And tart. And ordered him, for the third time—given that his mission to secure General Arisaydia for Adria had plainly failed—to stop loitering in Orbas and remove himself forthwith back to Lodi and his Temple duties waiting there.
Penric had written three temporizing missives to this high prelate, suggesting variously plausible reasons why he might linger in Vilnoc or even be assigned some ongoing diplomatic duty in the court of Orbas. All had fallen flat. At no point had he let slip his real reason for delaying, as that, he was sure, would have been even less well-received.
Nikys.
Or, more formally, the widowed Madame Khatai, sister to the young general and presently taking up new duties as lady-in-waiting to the duke of Orbas’s daughter. Duties, she had repeatedly made clear to Penric, that left her no time for dallying. Nor dalliance. Or at least none with him.
Who knew what other courtiers about the palace might catch her eye? Or vice versa, definitely that. The widow had only her plump beauty for dowry right now, making her more a target for idle flirtation than courtship, though either vision was equally maddening. Even the dubious protection of poverty wouldn’t last. The refugee siblings had arrived at the duke’s court with no more than the clothes they stood in, but the general, already dispatched in the duke’s service, would not long remain penniless.
Oh, she’s still interested in you, Desdemona countered these glum thoughts.
So you claim, he thought back. But I can’t see it.
The two-hundred-year-old Temple demon who lived inside of Penric and gave him the powers of a sorcerer was deeply imprinted by the lives of the ten women who had held her before him. He usually imagined this gave him a hidden advantage when dealing with females, but it seemed to be failing in this case.
You’re too impatient, Des chided him.
You’re too old, he thought back, grumpily. And not very prudently, but there was no concealing his thoughts from Des. You don’t remember what it’s like.
I promise I remember far more than you do, she shot back. It was all too likely. Grant you, we’ve not seen this dance from inside the fellow’s angle of view before. Though it appears to be equally absurd.
Patient, impatient, hopeful or hopeless, certainly absurd, his pining scarcely mattered if he was going to have to bundle it all up and throw it overboard from some departing ship tomorrow. He might as well throw himself into the sea as well, and be done with it.
Now you’re just being melodramatic.
Bah, leave me to brood in peace. He tried once more to bring his mind to bear upon the antique Cedonian prose laid out before him.
He should probably be packing. Not that the task would take long, since he, too, had arrived in Orbas with little more than what he wore—apart from his medical case and the folded-up costume of an auburn-tressed courtesan named Mira. Sora Mira, whose cleverness and professional skills had slid them all through the final set of dangers before they’d reached the safety of the border. Mira had been his demon’s fifth possessor, a century past. He touched his hair. The last of the henna was almost out of his pale blond queue by now, but Nikys was not yet over Mira.
Not yet? Or not ever?
Desdemona, in all her complexity, was going to be a part of him until the day he died. As a Temple divine, he had a duty to care for his chaos demon; it had been made very clear in his seminary training that all their actions had to be ultimately his responsibility. But he was now beneficiary of two centuries of experience accumulated from ten wildly varied lives. (Twelve, counting the lioness and the mare.) To deny it all was beginning to feel like denying himself.
Which was not the same thing as keeping the direst bits private, true. Any man did that.
Agh. He gritted his teeth and reset the weights that held the scroll open.
At the scuff of sandals and a soft knock at the doorjamb, Penric looked up from his manuscript. As if summoned from his own thoughts like an apparition, although magic only worked that way in tales, Nikys stood in the entry to the bookroom. Penric kept his breathing level with an effort.
She was dressed for her day’s duties in the Cedonian version of a sober summer gown, a loose linen dress belted at the waist, sleeves gathered in folds. It was dyed a widow’s dark green that had lost its saturation to wear and washings and faded to an ambiguous sea-color. All hasty hand-me-downs from other ladies of the court, just as Penric’s own white tunic and trousers were borrowings from the chapterhouse of the Bastard’s Order, where he was also lent a room.
Her black curls were gathered by embroidered bands, holding them off her neck. Her dark eyes were as sober as her garb. She clutched a paper in her hand.
“Learned Penric.”
His formal title that she’d used since their arrival in Orbas had replaced the Pen! she’d come to call him in their flight across half of Cedonia, and it felt like a slap. Rising politely to his feet, he retaliated in kind: “Madame Khatai. How may I help you?”
She cast him a distraught look, as if his question were not a rhetorical pleasantry, but some toweringly difficult puzzle. His heart perked up in curiosity.
“I just received this letter.” She waved the paper and hurried across the bookroom to his side. “Really it was addressed to Adelis, but before he left he made me his executor for all his interests in his absence.”
Those were duties she’d held before for her military brother. Given the hazards of his trade, it could all too easily turn into an executorship in fact, and it was a sign of his trust in his twin.
“It concerns me as much or more,” she went on, “even though it’s plain he’s the real target.” She bit her lip and thrust the single page at him, obviously meaning him to read it, too. By its cleanliness, it must have arrived wrapped in some outer protecting envelope.
He took it, readily suppressing any faint qualm that perhaps he should not be reading General Adelis Arisaydia’s personal correspondence. Or his official correspondence, either.
It was in a spidery but clear handwriting, unsigned and unaddressed unless that salutation, To the one of the yellow roses meant more to Nikys than to Pen. It went on: You need to know that on the second night of the full moon—a scant week ago—the dam of your cradle-mate was brought to the spring on Limnos by the order of the one who served you pickles. She is guarded there by his servants. The purpose being plain enough, it is hoped this may reach you in advance of any surprise, if the rumors of your destination prove true.
We will try to find out more. Yours in haste and hope.