“That explains a lot,” murmured Bosha, folding his arms, and himself back to the doorjamb.
“Oh my goodness!” said Tanar. “I’ve never met a sorcerer to talk to. Nikys, did you know? Yes, of course you do.” Tanar looked thrilled. Bosha did not.
“Do you normally rifle through your guests’ luggage?” said Pen testily.
“Do you normally light a fire without using a taper or spill?” Bosha inquired in turn.
“…Oh.”
“Yes, he does,” said Nikys. And when had she, and Pen, become so used to this simple domestic convenience that she asked, and he complied, routinely? “Oh, Pen, I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”
“It’s all right,” he said, though his voice was still a little choked. “Neither did I. Though I didn’t realize he was watching.”
“It answers so many questions,” said Bosha, “and yet raises so many more. Given where I found them in your case. Temple physician, as well?”
“Not… exactly.”
“In all but final oath,” Nikys put in on Pen’s behalf.
“Because the cadre of physicians, I am given to understand, are the very most adept of Temple sorcerers.”
“You understand correctly,” said Pen. His mouth reset in a thin line, and only Nikys knew how deep a scar that was for him. Bosha would blunder around and never know why the conversation had turned so sour. That wasn’t even touching on the disaster that could ensue should Bosha learn Pen had come to Patos as an agent of the duke of Adria. And still might be one.
She cut in ruthlessly. “Your many questions may be answered in full—should we meet again for Tanar and Adelis’s wedding. Here, now, it’s better not to know.”
Nikys wondered what it said for Bosha’s mind that, with a slow nod, he accepted this.
Nikys said farewell to Tanar in her bedchamber. They exchanged fierce hugs.
“Take care,” said Tanar, releasing her. “I’m happier now I know more about your courier. A Temple sorcerer, really? And a physician?”
“He healed Adelis’s eyes,” Nikys confirmed. “It wasn’t a matter of the executioner doing a poor job. I swear they were half boiled-away.”
Tanar gasped.
“It was awful beyond belief. I saw. Pen practically rebuilt them, with his sorcery.” She felt strangely glad she was able to finally tell someone. Justice? Bragging? She hardly knew.
“But Adelis’s eyes are all right now?”
“He sees perfectly. He just looks different.”
Tanar nodded, accepting this with a practical air. “And your fetching physician—has he asked you to marry him yet?”
Nikys thought back to that exhausted, difficult conversation she and Pen had scraped through upon arriving safely in Orbas. “I suppose so.”
“You suppose? How can you not know?”
“Well, I do know. Yes.”
“What, and you didn’t seize him with both hands? Sorcerer, physician, that astonishing sunburst of hair? So tall. And those eyes. Is it true sorcerers can do amazing things in bed?”
“I… don’t know. Probably.” And did not say, General Chadro certainly seemed to think so.
“I’d think you’d at least be more curious.” Tanar huffed a disappointed sigh.
“As you are?” Nikys muffled a laugh, and Tanar smiled sheepishly. Nikys went on, “But it’s never just Penric. He comes as a set. His chaos demon isn’t only a power, she’s a person. He’s even named her. Desdemona.”
Tanar pressed her fingers to her lips, stifling a giggle. “Clever!”
“But there are two people living in his head, not just one. All the time.” Well, twelve… thirteen, but there was no way now to go into the full roster. “She’s been riding along with him in secret all this visit, your third guest.”
Tanar’s head tilted. “But not secret to you.”
“…No.”
“And, clearly, not dangerous enough to warn us.” Tanar raised her face, and her eyebrows, in something not quite a question.
“That’s a point,” Nikys conceded, in not quite an answer. “But I wouldn’t just be marrying him. I’d be marrying her. The chaos demon. Do you see?”
“I… oh.” If this did not take Tanar aback, it at least slowed her down. “Well, you are a careful woman, and the gods attest you have suffered much. I suppose you know your own mind.” Her tone hooked a lingering doubt onto the end of this statement.
Nikys shrugged rueful agreement with the unspoken codicil. Who could foresee regrets? Her marriage to Kymis had seemed fine, had been fine, until its ghastly truncation. To give one’s heart to any living being, even a simple cat, was to risk such loss. Which brought her around once again: “So what would you have me tell Adelis?”
Tanar bit her lip and looked down. “Tell him…” She looked up to meet Nikys’s eyes. “Tell him I will wait.”
“Are you so sure? It could be a long time. Or never. I’ve seldom met a young woman who wasn’t wild to escape her mother’s household and become mistress of her own.”
“No matter what she had to marry to do so?” Tanar inquired, amused. “That road is not for me. Daughter and Mother be thanked. My mother and I don’t exactly have to live atop each other, here. And she indulges all my interests. Or at least, she praises my successes, and says nothing of all my false starts. Which have been many and sometimes embarrassing, but she claims it’s all learning.”
Nikys captured and gripped her waving hands. “I’ll pass your message along, then, when I get the chance.”
Nikys picked up her repacked valise and followed Tanar out to the sitting room, where Penric, all fitted out as Ruchia, and Bosha awaited. To curtail the number of Xarre servants to see them, it had been decided that Bosha himself would drive them to the village on the coast where they could take ship to Limnos, and play male escort to the two lady pilgrims. Nikys trusted that Penric’s god—and hers, and possibly Bosha’s as well, she’d never asked—appreciated the ironies in that, and would protect them along their way in exchange for, if nothing else, the amusement. When they took the channel boat in the morning, Bosha would travel not with their party, but merely at the same time, as discreetly as he’d ever guarded Tanar.
Bosha had traded his more flamboyant robes for a trim sleeveless tunic and matching trousers in dark dyes, with a long-sleeved linen shirt despite the heat. The somber servant’s garb somehow managed to make him an even more striking figure. Tanar evidently thought so, too, for she picked an imaginary speck of lint off his tunic and said, “You look very fine.”
He placed his hands on her shoulders in turn. “Take care while I’m gone. Sleep in Lady Xarre’s chambers. Obey her.”
“I always do.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I will this time. Just for you, Mother Hen.” She tapped his nose. “You take care of yourself as well. Don’t drag back all bloody again. And I absolutely forbid you to get yourself killed. That’s an order!”
That hand-to-heart bow was all the answer he gave. As Tanar turned away, his habitual smirk slipped into a smile of such surpassing tenderness that Nikys’s breath caught.
It was gone in a moment, the sardonic mask back in place. She might have thought she’d imagined it, except that she doubted she could ever forget it.
Oh.
I think I need to think about this.
It was then time to be smuggled back through the garden to the postern gate, and on out to the side street.
“Wait here,” Bosha instructed them. “I’ll bring the cart around.” He locked the gate after them with a firm clack.
Penric set down his case and satchel, passed the fold of his dress’s draperies over his coiled black hair, and leaned against the garden wall. Nikys did the same. At length, she rested her head back upon the day-warmed stone and sighed, “That may be the most forlorn hope I have ever witnessed.”