Acolyte Hekat went to the gap between her balcony and the next—and last, thankfully—and hung her head over to watch their progress. “That’s the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen. What in the world is it in aid of?”
“Right now, removing two men from a place they should not be as expeditiously as possible. With our heartfelt apologies, I assure you.”
“Were you looking at that seagull?”
“What seagull?” Pen produced an innocent blink.
She sucked breath through her teeth and gave him a gimlet glower reminding him of how the Jurald Court cook used to successfully squeeze confessions out of him about the missing pastries. Followed by a cuff to his ear and, usually, another pastry to eat on his exit. “Is Sura going to explain that, too?”
“If I get another opportunity to see him, I’ll make sure he can,” Pen promised.
When they swayed out of her view, she was still sitting cross-legged rolling the feathers in her hand.
Pen discovered Ikos’s plan for descending from the balcony end to the stairs when they arrived, and it was even more horrifying than he would have guessed. It consisted of Ikos lengthening Pen’s suspension rope and setting him in motion like a pendulum, swinging some twenty or more feet over to where the rising steps curved out of sight to their pilgrim-gate. “It’s perfectly safe,” the bridgebuilder asserted in a whisper. “Just don’t get out of your girth till you’ve found your feet. If you slip before then, we just try again.”
Pen managed his landing on the third attempt. Desdemona, crying, insisted she wanted another seagull, but he held her off.
There followed a heart-stopping interlude watching Ikos twist himself around under the balcony, fiddle with ropes, and loosen all four hooks of his evil contraption. Pen had to detach his girth and clip its doubled line to a mysterious eye-bolt in the rock face, which held it taut for Ikos as he slid down with his machine in tow. An unclipping and undoing, a rapid winding-up of rope around the engineer’s arm, and the loosed end cleared its joist and fell, leaving nothing at all in its wake. Ikos somehow drew the eyebolt anchor out of its socket in three pieces, leaving only an anonymous square hole. Pen couldn’t quite see if there were any other such holes pocking the rockface.
Then another maddening delay while Ikos sat down and carefully wound and folded it all into a tight, heavy bundle, no trailing ends. Pen supposed it was how he’d packed the thing up here. In the dark, all last night. Pen really wanted to take it away from him and just heave it into the sea, but Ruchia, managing to get her one-twelfth voice heard through the general cacophony that was the upset Des, agreed it would be better to leave no evidences at all. As Ikos had already concluded, apparently.
Ikos made a final survey of the balconies, and frowned aside at Penric. “Wordy bastard, aren’t you?”
In so many ways. “It’s my stock-in-trade.”
“I’ll be wanting to hear more about that, later.”
“I hope you’ll get a chance.”
Pen reflected on all that the weary Ikos had done, starting last night at dusk. And for weeks beforehand, it seemed. All that patient labor, and no pleased mother to show for it at the end after all. He regarded the start of the two thousand steps, and murmured, “Would you like me to carry that pack?”
Ikos huffed, thick eyebrows rising in surprise at him. “Aye.”
Two pilgrims on the steps. It would be no unusual thing to see (and mock, probably) and their details would be indistinguishable from a distance. Pen felt very penitential indeed as he hoisted the contraption, which turned out to weigh about thirty pounds mostly in coiled rope, on his back. As he started down in front of Ikos, he could finally hear the faint crunch of ax-blows leaking from one far window.
A last look up before the rising stone eclipsed her found Acolyte Hekat still leaning on her railing, looking down studying them. He made the tally of the gods broadly over his chest at her, tapping his lips twice by way of farewell.
She touched her fingers to her forehead in return salute, and Pen thought her brother might not be the only member of her family with a strong ironic streak.
XIV
Close to Akylaxio, Master Bosha found another sheltered spot to conceal the cart, where they lay up to wait out the dawn. The stop afforded more an uncomfortable doze than a sleep; still, better than nothing. His timing was good, Nikys thought, for they entered the city gates at the dewy hour when the guards were busy overseeing the influx of country folk bringing food and goods to the day-markets. Their tense wait to pass within was recompensed by being cloaked in the crowd.
The guards did not yet seem to be scrutinizing middle-aged women. If things had gone as Penric had planned, Idrene might only just now have been discovered missing on Limnos.
It didn’t seem wise to assume all had gone as planned.
Still, there had to be a minimum and a maximum. If the escape was discovered at breakfast, a certain amount of time would first be spent searching the Order’s precincts, and then the island. Any alarm would have the same watery barrier to pass that they had. Minister Methani’s women gaolers might have to send to their master in Thasalon for instructions, though Nikys expected they’d delay that in the hopes that their report could include the prisoner being found. The period for any pursuit reaching Akylaxio could stretch out for days.
The minimum was all Nikys must worry about. If Pen had been seized last night, a military courier could have docked at Guza bare hours behind them. Although such a message couldn’t have overtaken them yet, or their reception at the city gates would have been very different. If Pen had been captured… she really wasn’t sure if she should be worrying for Pen, or for Limnos. But even sorcerers couldn’t fly out a window, or across a strait.
The cries of gulls and the smell of the shore announced the harbor, and Nikys stretched her neck to take it in. Bigger and busier than little Guza, smaller than Patos, much less than the maze of docks and warehouses and forests of masts that crowded great Thasalon’s entrepot. Two piers in deep-enough water allowed direct loading and unloading of vessels, and men and cranes were already noisily doing so for the handful of ships tied up. The port was active enough to rate full-time bureaucratic customs officers, although they inspected mainly for contraband and tax evaders. But they would also keep both provincial and imperial lists of wanted fugitives and criminals.
Bosha, Nikys gathered, was only slightly more familiar with Akylaxio than she was, but he found a clean-looking inn close to the harbor, and, playing servant, escorted both women inside to secure a room in which to rest and hide. He carried up their luggage, not speaking until the door closed behind them.
“I’ll find a place to put up the horse and cart,” he said, “then reconnoiter the harbor. I brought papers that we can finish filling out when I’ve found a ship.” He took a sheaf from his tunic and laid it on the washstand. “Think of what names and personas you want to travel under. Don’t leave the room till I get back. I’ll send up a maid to see about food and drink.”
“Thank you, Master Bosha,” said Idrene formally, by way of accepting this program, and he nodded and departed.
Nikys went over and peeked out the window, which gave onto the other roofs of the town, mostly flat and filled with drying laundry, pots of herbs, and other useful implements. She picked up and examined the papers, which already bore seals and signatures… some of Lady Xarre’s wealth was in shipping, yes, so these probably weren’t even forged, wholly. Although she didn’t doubt such skills were also in Bosha’s repertoire, at need.
Nikys and Idrene took the chance to wash, eat, and, both familiar with the challenges of the army baggage train, reorganize their meager belongings for a quick removal when the order came. A cat-nap would be due after, to make up for the prior night.