“A curse, surely, by the end!” said Pen, appalled.
Bosha let him dwell in his horror for a long moment, then added airily, “Or you could pay a coin to the donkey drivers to take you up the road from the village.”
Pen, well taken-in, shot him a glare.
The smirk curled back on teeth. “Some rare persons on a pilgrimage of atonement do climb the stairs, I’m told. On their hands and knees. This is less an act of humility than terror, as there are no railings. There are places so narrow that people coming up and people coming down have to crawl over each other.”
“I believe we will take the donkeys,” said Nikys primly.
“Good decision.”
“I’m not sure how such wild feats are supposed to impress the gods,” mused Pen, squinting upward, “who are present everywhere the same. Though my subtler seminary teachers advised me that any useful effect is upon the supplicant, not some holy audience. It’s all in whether the given action fills a person or empties them, leaving room for a god to enter. You could sit by yourself in a quiet room and have as good a chance at it. A man could walk up those two thousand steps on his hands singing hymns the whole way and have none.”
Bosha eyed him curiously. “Could you have such a chance? Learned divine as you apparently are.”
“No. Sorcerers are always too full.” Pen sighed. “It’s all indirection, for my god and me. Maddeningly so, sometimes.”
So far up, trees looked like bits of parsley set around a roast. It took study, counting the rows of windows and filigree of wooden balconies, to realize how large the buildings actually were, rising six or eight floors high above the rock base on this side.
“I’m surprised it hasn’t been seized for an imperial fortress,” said Pen.
“It was, once,” said Bosha. “Although not by Cedonia. By one of its enemies. Two hundred years ago. A long tapestry tells the story, up in the halls, that all the pilgrims to Limnos go view.”
“So what is the tale?” asked Pen.
“Ah. The ravine was bridged by ladders, and the Daughter’s women suffered the usual rapine, slaughter, and carrying-off into slavery. About a week after, the entire garrison was felled by plague. Of a thousand men, there were only thirteen survivors. It was considered a miracle of the Daughter, in vengeance for the affront. The Order has never been attacked since.”
Nikys hummed. “Or a very, very angry woman poisoning the sacred well.”
The lip-scar stretched. “So I would make it.”
“No reason it can’t be both,” said Pen, judiciously. “And every reason it could. The gods have no hands but ours, they say.” He held up his fingers and wiggled them.
“Not mine,” growled Bosha, and retreated back under his blue curtain.
X
As their boat took its turn at the Limnos dock and the passengers wobbled their way to shore, Nikys wasn’t sure if she was heartsick, homesick, or seasick. Or all of them. The tension in her shoulders made her feel like a plaster statue whose head could crack away at a careless knock. As her feet found the grainy cobblestones, she took a deep breath.
Penric-as-Ruchia captured her hand and gripped it. “Hey,” he murmured. “It will be very well.”
There was no rational reason at all to believe that. Sorcerers, as far as she knew, didn’t possess the powers of seers. But she stretched her neck a little without her head coming off.
Bosha took care to exit the boat apart from them, but it was easy enough to follow the handful of other pilgrims straggling up through the village to the donkey livery. They ducked around the side of the last whitewashed house and handed off their luggage to him, barring one sack containing Mira’s clogs, Pen’s tunic and trousers, and a packed lunch atop not just for concealment.
“Where will you wait for us?” asked Nikys. “I only saw the one tavern.”
“Not there,” said Bosha. “Too many people would notice me. A little way up there’s a path, and some crevices in the rocks. I’ll just evict the adders, and I’ll have a dark, cool place to wait out the sun. I should be able to mark you coming back down.”
“This island has adders?” said Nikys nervously. She might have taken this for more of Bosha’s sly humor, but he was the only one among them wearing boots.
“Not on the road.” He smirked, probably. It was hard to be sure. “Your sorcerer will doubtless protect you. …Animals like him, he tells me.”
Ignoring this edged dig, Pen drew her off.
“But who will protect him?” Nikys worried, glancing back over her shoulder. The man had already disappeared.
“From the adders? They’ll probably welcome him as a cousin. Given the inventory of tainted blades he’s carrying.”
“He drugs his belt-knife?”
“Oh, that one’s clean. But there’s one around his neck, one at his back, one in his boot, and that pouch at his belt is full of nasty little larding-needles.”
Nikys considered this. “Good.”
‘Livery’ was perhaps too grand a name for what proved to be a collection of animals tethered in the shade of some olive trees, together with a few rowdy boys for groom-guides, and an adult couple who collected the coins from the pilgrims and portioned out the mounts. The poorer or more fit travelers simply walked up the winding road, although there was also a cart for the aged or infirm. They endured a short delay while a longer-legged donkey was found for the very tall woman with the weak eyes, but soon both Pen and Nikys clambered aboard sidewise saddles like little wooden seats, arranged their skirts, and lurched off towed by a lad.
The road bent back and forth across the sparse hillside like a shuttle on a loom, covering what might have been two miles in a straight line, and a thousand vertical feet. The view across the strait to the mainland of Cedonia was superb, sky and sea a vibrant clear blue that reminded Nikys of Pen’s eyes, the land aglow with white light. It only seemed forever before they rounded the last turn and approached the hamlet outside the walls of the Daughter’s Order.
She searched for any signs of guards they would somehow have to circumvent, later. A few men in blue tunics of the Order were about, bearing weapons, and under a plane tree four bored soldiers in imperial uniforms played at dice. They paused to look over the latest arrivals to be unloaded, but, after the first flicker of attention, their interest seemed more lewd than suspicious.
Truly, even were he mad enough to do so, it was far too early for Adelis to be arriving with any sort of attack force. Which the sentinels could watch coming up the road long before it arrived.
Except Adelis wouldn’t march up the hill in broad daylight. He’d land his troop on the far side of the island in the dark and infiltrate by surprise. So perhaps the soldiers’ present relaxation was justified.
The long drawbridge lay down across a plunging cleft, cool and green in its shadowy depths. Nikys gripped Pen’s elbow as if assisting her friend while they waited for a blue-clad man to push a cart holding a barrel across, handing it off at the stone archway to a waiting woman. They exchanged brief Daughter’s salutes, a tap to the forehead, as well as the load. Nikys and Pen followed it inside.
The forecourt was sunny, paved with interlaced tiles in blue, white, and yellow. On the other side stood a podium womaned by an acolyte wearing a blue scarf, smiling welcome at the visitors and waiting to assist them in signing the guest book, a large ledger. The only hazard was the startling pack of perhaps a dozen guard dogs.
Nikys had vaguely expected something like the Xarre mastiffs, huge and threatening. Instead, these were small beasts, their long coats beautifully brushed, with bright black eyes and pink tongues. It was like being swarmed by a throng of white silk floor mops.