Idrene’s voice had been a warm alto. Pen lightened his baritone and shoved his face into his pillow. “Just leave it on the table. I’ll get to it.” And, after a calculatedly reluctant moment, “Thank you.”
Rattling and bustle, as they took the old meal tray and left the new one, refilled the pitcher of drinking water, refreshed the ewer on the washstand, swapped out the chamber pot in the discreet commode chair in the corner. Herded back to the doorway. The dedicat’s voice, tentatively: “Is there anything else you need tonight, Madame?”
Pen shook his head into his pillow.
“Goddess bless,” said the dedicat, and withdrew with her silent outriders.
Oh, She does! thought Pen as the lock clicked over once more. It was the one thing he’d wanted most from this dangerous masquerade: a clear half-day’s start for Idrene and Nikys. The attendants would not return till dawn, barring some random bed-check. Should that occur, Des could rust the lock to slow their entry, and he could… well, no. That would trap him on the wrong side of the door. Hiding under the bed was bound to fail, being the first place to search. Cabinets and chests would be as bad, had they existed.
Pen went to the deep window and looked out. In the last level light, a few golden sails hurried toward the harbor of Guza. He wondered if Nikys was aboard one, or if they’d already landed. The specks were much too far away to make out figures aboard.
The window had wooden shutters on this side to close against the drafts. Would parchment or glass be substituted in winter? If not, it would make for a gloomy chamber. The opening was taller than wide. He could not fit in his shoulders square-on, but turning sideways he might slip through easily. Lying along the grainy sill, he put his head out for a survey.
He looked into a wide gulf of air, across the darkening blue strait, and down a dizzying slide of stone to a distant necklace of rocks with the white lace of surf foaming over them. Mountaineer or no, the drop was as appalling as it was awe-inspiring. A thin crinkle might be the lower reaches of the penitential steps. An upper course, hacked into bare rock, still lay sixty feet below his window. He shuddered, and determinedly found another direction to study.
Left and right, he could just make out the apertures of the fourteen other windows cut on this level. No ledges, no handholds to even begin to entice him out. He was secretly relieved. Twisting his neck, he studied the jutting joists and braces of the balconies twenty feet up. A man with a grappling hook and a death wish might make something of that, but he had brought neither.
His escape, when it came, would have to be through the corridor. Somewhere to his left, the precipitous stairway must rise to the level of the buildings and climax at a gate other than the closely guarded, and presently raised, drawbridge. Such a postern was doubtless locked and barred for the night, which was fine from this side even without magic.
That exit would leave him to make his way down all two thousand steps in the moonless night. Never had he been more grateful for Des’s dark vision. At least it seemed unlikely he’d have to crawl over any other climbers on the curves.
Feeling heartened to have a clear plan, he washed his hands, sat, and consumed Madame Gardiki’s dinner. It was a cut above the seminary food in his old student refectory; probably the same as the ladies of the Order were sitting down to eat together somewhere. The portions could have stood to be a little more generous. A search of the room after he’d cleaned his plate turned up only a small bag of almonds, which he methodically cracked and ate by way of dessert.
There would still be too many women abroad in the precincts to venture out yet. He emptied his own clothes out of his sack and gratefully put them on, then used Madame Gardiki’s hairbrush to tidy his still-black hair and tie it into a proper queue. Gathering up her few belongings, he put them in the sack by way of trade. He might have a chance to give them back to her. Her dress he would put back on over his tunic and trousers, to give the proper silhouette to any watchers he might encounter in the darkened halls, later.
That left her shawl. He eyed the window, and thought he might put the wrap to best use by pitching it out to be found on the rocks below. Leaving her gaolers to wonder if they were searching for an escapee, or the body of a suicide carried off by the tide, a theory supported by her still-locked door. That should be good for some splendid misdirection.
Satisfied, Pen drank a couple of glasses of water to assure he wouldn’t oversleep past dawn, then lay down on the cot for a restoring nap.
Someone was calling him. Ake…p…ake…up…wake…up!
Des…?
A heavy hand gripped his shoulder, and Pen froze, mentally scrambling to prepare some burst of action. Or magic. Or both.
About time! cried Des.
And then an anxious male voice murmured, “Mother…?”
…Oh, said Des. Dear.
It was not a voice Pen recognized. Certainly not Adelis’s. Pen let his snatched-up chaos carefully leak away. Sighed. And said to the wall, “By which I’d guess you must be Ikos Rodoa.”
The figure, a black hulk in the darkness, gasped and recoiled. The faint starlight and sea-light glimmering in from the window barely allowed eyes to distinguish shadow from substance, though Pen thought he might have sensed him by the smell, a long workday’s worth of dried sweat. Des, light.
The colorless clarity of Pen’s night-sight sprang forth, revealing a sturdy man with broad shoulders, Cedonian-dark hair, and rounded features that might be pleasant were they not clenched in dismay. The man whipped a blade from his belt, but did not at once attack, possibly because he could not tell Pen’s head from his tail in the gloom.
Not quite sure what was going to happen when he remedied that, Pen said, “I’m a friend. Don’t cry out,” and allowed the pair of candles on the washstand to flare to life. The sudden yellow glare seemed searing to dark-adapted eyes, and they both blinked and scrunched their lids against it. The wavering knife blade winked flame.
Why did every Cedonian he met start by trying to stab him? Slowly, Pen rolled over and sat up on the edge of the bed, holding his hands open and still.
“You’re not my mother!”
Pen suppressed an acerb reply in favor of efficiency. “Madame Gardiki escaped earlier. Your effort is admirable but a bit late.” Wait. The door… the door was still locked. The rush of shock at last cleared the sleep fog from his brain, and he added sharply, “How in five gods’ names did you get in here?”
The man pointed mutely at the window.
Pen jerked up and strode to stare out, to be confronted with a confusing mess of cables, pulleys, and a couple of dangling loops that resembled, and may have been, canvas saddle girths. He followed four long ropes upward to where they were apparently hooked to some balcony joists. He didn’t look down again, because that would be too unsettling. “Ah,” he said, a little thickly. “That’s right. You’re the bridgebuilder.” He drew back inside.
“Who in the Bastard’s hell are you?” Ikos demanded.
Or out of it, murmured Des, as intent and perplexed as Pen.
“My name is Penric. I’m… helping Nikys rescue her mother.”
The dark eyes flickered at his half-sister’s familiar name, if Pen was guessing this right. “Why?”
The simple answer had worked before, and had the advantage of being true. “I’m courting Nikys.”
“Oh.” Ikos sheathed his knife and raised a large hand to scratch through his mop of short-cut hair. “Time someone did that.” His eyes narrowed. “D’you know what’s going on? I’d stopped in at Mother’s house a few weeks ago. Neighbor said she was arrested, and General Arisaydia blinded in Patos. Why they’d take her if he’d already been blinded made no sense to me, but I followed on and tracked her here. Took me another week to figure how to get her out.”