“Politics change.” Her soft mouth set mulishly. “I can afford to wait.”
“Do you want him to wait? Should I tell him so?” Nikys hesitated, though her hands kept moving. “Do you love him that much?”
Tanar, after a moment, returned candor for candor. “I’m not sure. Setting all the pretty poetry aside as beguiling blither, because I’ve never met anyone who seems to actually think like that, I don’t know what love is supposed to be. I care that he should be well. The thought of him being injured or killed distresses me. When we had the news of his blinding”—a shudder passed through her—“I cried and carried on till poor Sura was quite alarmed. Of course I knew enough to compose myself before I left our chambers.” She tossed her head in some remembered irritation.
After a few more strokes, she added in a lower voice, “I thought for a while, before Patos, that I might use waiting for Adelis as a stick to fend off the others, but not if it could call down more danger on his head. Because assassins can cross borders where armies cannot.”
Nikys sighed, unable to gainsay this, but pointed out, “Given the hazards of his profession, I think that should be one of your lesser worries.” And, more thoughtfully: “It might be better for a soldier’s wife not to love too much.”
Tanar’s gaze sought hers in the mirror, just obliquely enough to ask: “Do you still miss your husband Kymis?”
Nikys drew a cool breath through her nostrils. So many memories, and the good ones, in a strange way, almost more painful than the bad, so that she preferred to put them all away in the same locked box. “Not so much now. The present drives out the past, a little more each day.”
A knock sounded at the chamber door, and Tanar went to receive Nikys’s valise from the hands of her servant, whom she bade a fond goodnight. Both women broke off to share out the washstand and don nightgowns. Tanar’s spacious bed seemed the most inviting road-weary Nikys had ever seen, and she fell into it gratefully as Tanar blew out the candles.
In the darkness, Tanar remarked, “Your courier fellow, Penric—Daughter’s blessings, what a fetching young man. I’ve not seen that color of hair or eyes except among the emperor’s southern-island guard, and nothing like so bright.”
“Not so young,” said Nikys. “He’s thirty.” And it’s the Bastard’s blessings. Theologically speaking. Maybe that explains it all…
“Really? The same age as you?” Tanar seemed to mull this. In a tone of sly humor, she murmured, “Do you fancy him?”
Nikys made a neutral noise.
“Because you’re a widow, as free as a woman can be. I don’t suppose there’s any insurmountable barrier of rank between you.” An envious sigh. “And he looked as if he liked you. I quite think you could have him, if you wanted him,” she rippled on in cheerful, grating speculation. “Do you know very much about his background?”
“I’m beginning to.”
Tanar nudged her with her elbow. “Do tell?”
“Not my tale.” Starting with, He’s the agent who carried the fatal letter from the duke of Adria, descending through He’s a Temple sorcerer with ten other women’s ghosts living inside his head, and going on to He could knock a dozen soldiers to the ground with a twitch of his eyebrow, and Master Bosha really wouldn’t like that news. Not to mention being a physician of near-miraculous powers too broken to practice his craft, a scholar in half-a-dozen languages with enough reputation to be coveted by the duke of Orbas, and a man so very, very far away from home. “It’s complicated.”
Tanar made a noise of disappointment, but pressed no further.
After a little, Tanar added, “I was so sorry I hadn’t had a chance to meet Madame Gardiki. Adelis spoke of inviting your mother to Thasalon for the purpose, but then the Rusylli interrupted. And all the rest followed.”
“Well. I can’t say he’s ever mentioned wanting to do so for any other woman. I think she would like you.”
A hopeful sort of “Mm?”
“Do you really think we will be able to get her out?” All the worrisome unknowns still ahead of them made Nikys’s head throb to contemplate. Bosha had placed his elegant thumb square upon the problem. And then a miracle occurs.
No. As they gained more information, they would find a route through. Somehow. Step by step. She couldn’t work miracles, but she knew she could work work.
Tanar, Nikys thought, also hesitated between kindness and candor. Nikys could not tell which side Tanar imagined she was coming down on when she at last stated confidently, “Sura will know how.”
Nikys let that lay unchallenged. She had put hope before prudence, or why else had she come this far? A few more breaths, in the dark. Hope or prayer, she offered up: “I always wanted to have a sister, too.”
“Let us try to make that happen, then,” said Tanar softly.
VII
Pen woke to early morning light filtering through the shutters, and low voices from the sitting room. He snapped awake and went to check through the adjoining door, to see Bosha, barefoot and wearing his trousers but no shirt, turning away from the gallery door having received a large tray from some servant, which he set on the round table.
Bosha also sported a long, old scar running diagonally across his back, crooked from some crude sewing-up. Like the one on his lip? Pen didn’t even need to say Sight, Des, to be given a deeper view. Sword cut, surely. As Bosha turned, raising his face sharply to Pen, Pen also marked a set of scars of the same age on his arms. Defensive wounds, would you say, Des?
Oh, aye.
Even inured by his anatomical training, it seemed rude to Pen to glance below the man’s waistband, but Des had no such inhibitions. The significant scar there seemed older, surgical and clean. No signs, as Pen had for an instant feared, of being relict of some brutal battlefield mutilation, as sometimes happened. Bosha was otherwise intact, not always the case either, the more ruthless and complete cuttings leading to incontinence and those ugly jokes about stinking court eunuchs. Of which Des, partly through Mira but largely through Vasia, one of Des’s old Cedonian riders, knew many, and I don’t want to hear them, Des.
Suit yourself, Des sniffed. But all that we know, you’ll know in the end.
Not while I have to look the man in the face. He added no softening courtesies to that one, and trusted Des took the hint.
Bosha, unaware of this uncanny inspection, gave Pen a nod by way of greeting, which Pen returned. He pulled on a long-sleeved linen shirt, gathered at the wrists into ruffles, and added as his somewhat bed-rumpled head emerged, “Let the ladies know the tea is here. I’ll be back shortly. Don’t answer the door.” He padded out barefoot, face tight with thought.
Pen went back to Bosha’s bedchamber-that-wasn’t and quickly dressed himself, before going to tap on the sitting room’s opposite door. Tanar poked her head out, received the news about the tea with sunny pleasure, and went back in. Light feminine voices and mysterious rattling-about preceded, eventually, the emergence of the women. Nikys, Pen noted, looked very fine first thing in the morning. And less tense and tired today than on most of the other mornings of their journey, good.
Nikys wore her day garb, Tanar a pink concoction that Pen, or rather, Des, decoded as a dressing-gown, not some fanciful court wear. Only two teacups had arrived with the pot and covered plates and basket, and Pen adroitly evaded sitting lest Lady Tanar feel compelled to try to give up her cup to her other guest.