At his expectant look, Pen said, “Adelis’s sight recovered, and he and Nikys escaped to Orbas.”
“Huh! That’s a miracle. But that explains. Those idiots at Thasalon court have sure made themselves an enemy now.” He nodded shortly.
Pen was rather fascinated by just how fast Ikos connected the political gaps in this complicated tale. But then, he was a Cedonian born and bred.
Ikos frowned around. “Is that water?” He strode to the washstand and drank directly from the pitcher, long gulps, then paused to stare, puzzled, at the candles.
Pen quickly redirected his attention. “When you got Madame Gardiki out”—had he planned to transport her on that terrible contraption, like a timber being raised into place?—“what were you going to do with her?”
“Couldn’t take her home, they’d look there. Eventually. Same problem hiding her in my work crew. I figured to send her to some friends in Trigonie. I built a bridge there two years ago.”
All right, that was reasonable, although there was a bit of a gap between dangling from a balcony on Limnos to surprising some host in the duchy of Trigonie. It didn’t sound much more tenuous than any of Pen’s plans. Each of their schemes, it seemed, were sound in their ways. Until they’d run headlong into each other…
And now there was a problem. Two problems.
Ikos evidently felt it, too. Propping his fists on his hips, he looked Pen up and down. “Brother-in-law, eh?”
Pen mentally fitted the term on Ikos in turn, and felt disoriented. “If she’ll have me.”
“Then I suppose she’d be upset with me if I left you here. Mother’d likely have words, too.” He sighed in a very traditional male-put-upon-by-women manner. Possibly not completely sincere. Given the amount of trouble he’d put himself to, unasked, to arrive in this spot.
Pen had one dress between them, and he didn’t think it would fit Ikos, shorter and squarer than Penric anyway. Pen would have to use his dark-sight to guide the two of them through the precincts as quickly and quietly as possible, and take a chance on encounters with the residents. Maybe Ikos would have a clue where the stair-postern lay.
“We had better go out together,” said Pen.
“Aye,” Ikos reluctantly agreed.
Pen started for the door. Ikos started for the window.
They both stopped. “Where’re you going?” asked Ikos. He pointed seaward. “Way out’s that way.”
“You… propose to take us both in your, uh, device?” Des actually screeched: He’s not getting me up in that thing! Pen winced.
“Why not? I was going to take my mother. It’s perfectly safe to twice her weight and mine. I tested it.” He rubbed his stubbled jaw. “What’s the matter? Got no head for heights?”
“I do reasonably well at them,” said Pen, while Des gibbered, No, no, no! “But that’s a lot of height out there.” If it was true a dying man saw his life flash before his eyes, Pen thought that fall might give enough time for all thirteen of his and Des’s.
Ikos shrugged. “Way I figure, once a drop is enough to kill you, any more you add makes no difference.”
“A reasonable argument.”
No it’s not, it’s insane!
Pen went to take another look at the contraption, and check the clock of the stars. The two girths, he judged, must be intended as seats like bosun’s chairs. The succession of pulleys was more complex, the logic of their sequencing not immediately obvious to his untrained eyes. It was certainly an ingenious device.
Des radiated something like murderousness at his open intrigue.
Pen raised his eyes to the horizon to check for any recognizable constellations, and drew a harsh breath. The stars to the east were melting away into the steel gray of dawn. He turned back to the room. “It’s much later than I’d thought.”
Ikos tilted one hand back and forth. “The stairs were about what I’d calculated, but walking my way across under the balconies took longer than I’d planned. May be faster going back for the practice.” He hesitated. “Slower for the added weight.”
“I think we’d better try my way.”
“Which is what?”
“Sneaking.”
Ikos’s mouth screwed up in misgiving. “How’re you getting out the door?” He paused. “How’d you get in here, for that matter?”
“I’m good with locks.”
“Well, so would I be, if I had my tool belt with me. Left it behind for the weight, though.” His eyes narrowed at Penric. “How do I know there aren’t half-a-dozen guardsmen the other side of that door, waiting for me?”
“There aren’t. Yet. Besides, if this were that sort of trap, better to have them on this side of the door. You’d be trussed like a chicken already.”
A long, thoughtful silence. “I like my way better.”
How was he to persuade Ikos to trust him in three minutes, when three months had not sufficed for his sister Nikys? Pen sucked breath through his teeth. Threw up his hands. “Fine. Your way. So long as it’s now.”
No! cried Des as he crossed the room, wadded up the shawl, and pitched it out, to Ikos’s evident bafflement. He reconsidered his sack. If he was staging a convincing suicide, the personal effects would need to be left in place, right. He grabbed it up and circled the room again, putting things back. Shoved the sack and dress under the mattress. “Right, ready—”
The lock rattled. Pen whipped his head around and rusted it stuck before Des could even voice an objection. “We just ran out of time,” he whispered. “Go.” He held a finger to his lips as thumps sounded on the door.
Ikos oozed sideways through the window. Penric glanced back. On the other side of the door, the sturdier attendant was trying her hand turning the big iron key. Pen ran a hair-thin line of rust through its barrel and grinned as it snapped off in the lock. He was fairly sure the sharp words that resulted, muffled by the door, weren’t ones a lady was supposed to say in the Daughter’s Order. Or anywhere else.
He added an extra burst of corrosion to guarantee the half-key would stay jammed in the face of anything short of a hammer and chisel, drill, and crowbar. Or an ax.
Ikos’s feet kicked and disappeared. Pen eased his torso through, and watched the man, one arm wrapped around a rope or vice versa, bend up and thread his legs through the loop of a girth. He wriggled it under his hips, straightened his spine and shoulders, and braced the other arm over the suspending eye and swivel, and across his chest. He rotated dizzyingly, snaked his hand around the second suspension rope, and swung the girth toward Pen. “Just like that,” he whispered. “Then hold still and leave the rest to me. You can’t help, and I don’t need interference.”
Des wailed as Pen copied the procedure. The girth closed up tight around his narrow hips as it took his weight. He clamped both arms around the suspending lines, gripping each other.
It wasn’t often that he spoke sharply to his demon, but he did now. Des, we’re committed. Settle down and keep your chaos strictly to yourself until I say otherwise!
A sense of a whimper, and a tight, unhappy ball within him. She would be surly for days, unless he made it up to her somehow. A process she would probably seek to stretch out to the maximum benefit to herself, once she regained her tone of mind. Minds. Apology-gifts to a nonmaterial person took some ingenuity.
Assuming they survived. Well… assuming he survived.