Nikys hesitated.
Jurgo prodded, “Desert his post and attempt a rescue?”
“No.”
“Lead his troops in some illicit sortie?”
“Never.”
“How much would this impede his duties?”
“Not at all,” said Nikys, both in simple honesty, and in aid of the duke’s trust in his new general, “because he is Adelis. But he would be distracted and disturbed, as any man would.”
“So no good could come from forwarding this to him.”
“Except that he may find out from some less friendly source, at a worse time. Must, or what’s the point of taking a hostage?”
“Hm.”
“Unless,” Nikys drew breath, “our mother was rescued already, and the report of that could come with it.”
“I cannot lend troops for such a move, not against Cedonia.”
“I know. I have a less costly and risky plan.” At least, less costly or risky to Jurgo. “Allow me and Learned Penric to cross the border in secret and bring her out.”
The duke glanced aside at Penric, whose mouth was set in a grim line, and did not scoff. “Wouldn’t that just risk giving Adelis’s enemies two hostages instead of one?”
Nikys demurred, “Given the weight of the first to him—to us—adding a second scarcely tilts the scale more.”
“That risk could be averted,” Penric said in a neutral tone, “by just sending me.”
Nikys shook her head. “You don’t know the country or the people, but I do. More to the point, they do not know you. This is too dangerous a business to expect them to trust some complete stranger.” Of which Penric was one of the strangest. Although he could be convincing at need—she remembered that from Patos.
To Nikys’s intense relief, neither man tried to gainsay this.
“So what is your scheme?” asked Jurgo, glancing between them.
“As far as I’ve come in an hour’s thought,” said Nikys, “Learned Penric and I could make our way much as we did before, passing ourselves off in whatever way seems best, to Lady Tanar’s estate outside Thasalon. Take shelter and guidance there for the next step, that of getting on and then off the island with my mother. Repeat the stages in the opposite direction.”
“Preferably better-funded this time,” Penric put in. “Including a purse adequate for bribes. Still much cheaper than sending troops.”
“Troops,” Jurgo depressed this ploy, “were never an option. But the risk you’d bring to your proposed hosts seems beyond that invited by a mere friendly warning.” He rattled the letter by way of emphasis.
“Yes,” said Nikys, “and no. If Tanar is still considering my mother as her prospective mother-in-law.”
“Was your brother’s courtship prospering so much?”
“We’d hoped so. Before it was so brutally cut short.”
“Mm, yes, that. The barriers between the general and the lady would seem insurmountable now.” He touched his temple, and Nikys wondered if he was thinking of Adelis’s disfigurement from the burn-scarring, as well as the new political divide.
“Now, certainly. But who knows what the future may bring?”
Jurgo didn’t answer, and considering all the awful possibilities that might be a poor direction to bend his thoughts. He twisted in his seat to stare at Penric. “So are you volunteering, sorcerer? I thought you meant to go back to Adria.”
“I must certainly report my actions to my Temple superiors,” said Penric, glancing skyward as if to find those worthies there, “upon my return from Thasalon.”
Jurgo smirked. “I see.” He looked down at his sandals, looked up. “And here I thought you might have sought me out to report some happy news. That you had found reason to petition the Temple to allow you to stay in Orbas, for example.” It was no secret that Jurgo had been wooing Learned Penric to join his ducal menagerie of scholars, writers, and artists, famous living ornaments to his court.
“That gift is not in my hands,” said Penric, with a grave glance at Nikys. Implying that it was in hers?
Jurgo drummed his thick fingers upon his knee. “How soon would you imagine departing?”
“As soon as sensible preparation allows,” said Nikys. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my brother’s military trade, it’s that swift is better than slow.” At once true, and another reminder of how valuable Adelis was to Jurgo.
Jurgo rubbed his lips, and Nikys hung suspended in the hot sunlight, watching his decision forming but unable to predict its direction. “Very well,” said Jurgo at last. “Find my secretary Stobrek and work out the purse needed for the undertaking.”
“Thank you, my lord,” gasped Nikys, and would have fallen to her knees to kiss his ducal ring in wild relief, except he was already grunting to his feet, looking abstracted.
His look refocused on Penric. “Do you really think this can be done?”
“I…” Penric’s teeth closed, fencing his reply.
“Let me rephrase that,” said the duke. “Does Desdemona think it can be done?”
Penric’s expression flickered from dismay to tranquility. “Yes, my lord. Or Ruchia does.”
“…Ruchia? And which one was she, again?”
“The Temple divine who held Desdemona just before me. She was a scholar in her own right. And, er, an agent of my Order who completed many varied tasks, in the forty years of her career as a sorceress.” Pen grimaced, and added, “Oh, just spit it out, Pen. She was a spy, and a good one, too.”
That was Desdemona, without question.
Even Jurgo caught it, by the wry smile that turned his mouth. “Let us all hope so.”
III
It was noon the following day when Penric and Nikys boarded a small private coach in Vilnoc to make their way west. In this region it was less than three hundred miles in a straight line from one coast of the peninsula to the other, but even the Old Cedonian military roads up through its former province of Orbas were neither straight nor level. The team was reduced from a smart trot to a laboring pull on the upward slopes, and an even more careful descent, wooden brakes screeching and smoking. It was still vastly faster than walking, and more comfortable than mule-back. Much as tertiary fever was better than plague, Pen reflected as the coach bumped and rocked.
Pen shoved with his foot at his restocked medical case that had slid across the floor. Bringing it along had seemed prudent, even if the last thing he wished to do was practice medicine again.
Oh, you’re beyond the need for practice by now, lad, murmured Des, in her acerb version of encouragement, and Pen let his tired lips twitch in thanks.
Nikys fussed with the few belongings they’d thought they could carry over the more rugged mountains when they made the turn north to slip over the border. Their boots and riding clothes for that part of the trek were packed away. For the coach, Nikys wore a belted dress, with a sort of loose surcoat flung over it for protection from the road dirt, which would have made a more convincing apron without its fine court embroidery. Pen had obtained a man’s tunic and loose trousers of this country, the latter cuffed and buttoned at the ankle to hastily alter for his height. The simple cut left his status ambiguous, and told nothing of his calling.
Nikys was still strained in his presence, a tension seemingly made worse, not better, by her sudden need for him. He’d not seen her look so fraught since his first sight of her in the villa garden in Patos, despairing over her unjustly blinded brother. She let the noise of the coach be an excuse for not attempting to talk, and Pen allowed it. He didn’t think she’d slept at all last night, for after the first change of horses she leaned over in her seat and dozed despite the rattling.