Penric’s smile had grown oddly fixed. “Can you cook, too?”
“Oh, yes. Mother agrees I should learn every skill I can. Because even when supervising servants, one needs to understand their tasks. And who knows what all an officer’s wife might be called upon to do?”
“A general’s wife,” stated Bosha, as if repeating himself from some prior and fruitless protest, “would surely have proper help.”
Nikys laughed. “So people imagine. I think Tanar has a better grip on the possibilities.”
“Mother made it a bargain,” explained Tanar. “She would trade me a tutor in whatever I fancied in exchange for me studying her bookkeeping, which I do not love. It all worked out. Except for the horseshoeing, that time.”
“Horseshoeing?” said Nikys. Even she hadn’t heard this tale. Bosha, who evidently had, hid his mouth behind his hand.
“We had a very patient old pony, and a very patient old farrier. Who both grew much less patient as the day wore on. I still don’t think I could shoe a horse, but if ever my horse threw a shoe, I wager I could nail it back on without laming the poor beast, so there’s that much.” She looked around. “But I like the stillroom best.”
Nikys directed Pen to light the stove. The two women donned aprons and set about mixing up an array of samples. They then made him sit on a stool and remove his shirt, testing the colors on his skin until they achieved a tolerable match for Nikys. While Tanar expanded the recipe, Nikys, who had done the task before, combed an inky black dye through Penric’s unbound hair.
“Such a shame,” Tanar murmured over her shoulder, watching this eclipse.
“My hair has been recolored so many times since I came to Cedonia I’m surprised it hasn’t all fallen out,” sighed Penric. “I’m tempted to shave my head to defend myself.”
“Don’t you dare,” said Nikys, giving a lock a sharp tug, forgetting that she wasn’t supposed to care. Pen, the rat, noticed, because he pressed down a smile.
“With the fixative I’m using these dyes should stand up to water and washing for a few days,” said Tanar. “Be careful not to let them rub off on anything where someone might notice.”
Once the skin treatment was satisfactorily started, Tanar and Bosha vanished out the gallery door together. Nikys, trying not to think too much about this excuse for so pleasurably touching him, ended up coloring Pen’s face, neck, hands, arms and shoulders, then started at his feet, working up his long legs to his knees.
Pen swallowed. She braced herself for who-knew-what—whatever had possessed him to tell the world he was courting her?—but he said, unexpectedly, “Did you know Bosha carries poisoned blades?”
“I knew he went armed. I mean, he needs to. I didn’t know about the other.” Although it made sense to Nikys. The eunuch was not a man who could expect mercy if he lost a fight, and Tanar was not a charge he dared fail.
“Do you think Tanar brews his poisons?”
Nikys tilted her head, considering this. “Very possibly. She’d love to think she was doing something for him, in exchange for all he does for her.”
“That doesn’t bother you?”
“It seems a very good skill for a woman who, by marriage or some other ill-chance, could well be tossed into the imperial court at Thasalon. Which is the most poisonous place I’ve ever been, even without the aid of apothecaries.”
“Could be hard on an unsatisfactory husband. Doesn’t it make you worry for Adelis?”
Nikys’s lips twitched. “Not really. Adelis is not the sort of man who inspires poisoning. He’s the sort of man who inspires hitting on the head with a skillet.”
Penric muffled a too-agreeing snort. “So speaks his loving sister. Have you ever done so?”
“Not since we were twelve, I admit.” She added after a moment, “Then he grew too tall to reach. Bad angle for the swing.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“You’re safe. You’re even taller.”
A snicker. But then, annoyingly, he rose, leaving her with dye dripping through her fingers, and began tapping his way around the cabinets. A pause, a familiar click, and he drew one door wide and stuck his head in.
“Hey! I imagine that was locked for a reason!”
“Oh,” he breathed, “indeed it was.” He sounded a little too delighted. “What do you make of it all, Des? …Really? …Huh.”
“Stop snooping,” she said, undercutting her indignation by adding, “Someone might come back.”
After a long look he closed it up again, to her relief, and troubled to relock it, too.
“You can’t go about piebald. Come back here.”
Dutifully, he returned, sat, and gave her back his leg. “Interesting.”
And left it at that, till she gave in and growled, “All right, what? You’re obviously itching to tell.”
“Fast-acting paralytics, mostly, according to Des. The death is in the dose, as they say. Even packed in a grooved blade, I don’t think such low amounts would kill. Clever bastard.”
Nikys reflected. “Right. All Bosha’d have to do is land one nick to slow his opponent down. Then kill him with his steel, if he had to. No question of poisoning would ever arise, after. And if someone got his blade away from him, they couldn’t kill him with it. Not with the venom, at least.”
Penric, who had opened his mouth, said plaintively, “I was going to explain that.”
“No need. Have you ever listened to a crowd of drunken army louts bragging about their exploits to each other? One learns a lot.” Not that the men noticed.
“Since escaping my brother Drovo-the-aspiring-mercenary at a fairly early age, I’ve mostly managed to avoid such experiences.”
“Lucky you.”
Pen was sitting drying, and Nikys was fanning him to speed the process, when Tanar and Bosha came back with piles of clothing in their arms. They proved to be borrowings from some senior female servants, sober and sedate. The key factor in selection, once Nikys and Tanar bound Pen’s dye-damp hair in a cloth and marshaled him through a try-on, turned out to be length, but he only needed the one change. Pen seemed much more adept outfitting the persona he’d dubbed Learned Ruchia than the first time, when trying to dress, and perhaps evoke, the courtesan Mira. Was he a fast learner—well, Nikys knew he was—or was Ruchia simply closer to himself? Or were all his internal ladies equally present to him?
Partway into this process, Bosha, who had kept his amusement almost under control, though Pen had certainly noticed the voiceless sniggers, inclined his head in a shadow-bow and withdrew through the gallery door. After some fussing about and much debate, they finished the transformation. Pen took a turn around the small stillroom practicing the management of his draperies and a very convincing feminine walk.
“I really do believe you will be able to slip into the Order’s precincts,” said Tanar, admiring her handiwork. “But will you be able to get out again safely? By yourself?”
Bosha reentered through his own chamber door in time to hear this, and leaned against the jamb. “I expect so. As Madame Khatai says, he has skills.” Nikys looked up to see him twirling Pen’s Temple braids around one long index finger. “And now we know what kind.”
Pen went rigid, and so, for a moment, did Nikys, chilled with a sudden realization of how very, very dangerous an act it might be to bait Pen. But Pen only licked his lips and said, flatly, “Give those back.”
“Certainly.” Bosha handed them across at arm’s length. Two arms’ lengths, counting Pen’s side.
Tanar, goggling, said, “Are those sorcerer’s braids?”
“Yes,” said Pen shortly.
“Are they real?” A reasonable question, given all the exercises in disguise.
“Yes.”