“Word will reach the mainland by nightfall, then,” said Ikos.
“Yes. Although word of what is an open question. It looks as though they bit on my suicide lure, at least in part.” But not conclusively. Still, the pursuers would have to search everywhere, and Idrene and Nikys were in just one place. Would they imagine Idrene had fled inland, or realize that she sought a ship?
“If m’mother had been aboard with me just now,” Ikos observed after a distant minute, “that would not have gone well.”
“Quite,” agreed Pen. “I plan to dedicate a hymn to the white god, when I get a chance to breathe.”
Ikos cocked his head. “The Bastard your god, too?” And answered his own question, “Yes, of course, must be. If you’re His divine. So, having His ear, so to speak, can you ask Him to bless this voyage?”
Pen gestured the tally of the gods, and tapped his lips twice with this thumb. “By every sign,” he said, “He already has.”
“…Aye.”
They sat together in reflective silence as the boat tacked south.
XVI
Nikys snapped awake at a rap on the chamber door, her sleep-slurry washed away by alarm. Thankfully, it was Bosha. She snared a quick look out the window to check the time as Idrene sat up on the edge of the bed, yawning, and Bosha took off his hat and settled on a stool. Late afternoon; they’d slept a good stretch. Perhaps two more hours till sunset?
“What did you find?” asked Idrene.
Bosha grimaced. “Nothing good yet. Of the ships now at dock, three are headed the wrong way, one is not suitable for unescorted women, and the last is a Xarre-owned vessel. You will understand if I’d prefer not to place you there, but in any case, its next port of call is Thasalon, which you’d best avoid.”
Idrene nodded. Nikys couldn’t decide whether to be worried or relieved. Sooner away was better, but a delay might allow Penric to catch up with them. …If nothing awful had befallen him.
“How long, do you think,” said Idrene, “should we wait for a better chance before giving up and heading east overland? Could you drive us to a coach road?”
“Maybe,” said Bosha, obviously not liking this much better than putting them on a Xarre ship. “But your description will certainly reach any border before you. This whole scheme depends on speed.”
Indeed, outrunning pursuit was all their hope. Resisting it, should it catch them, was out of the question without Penric, and even more terrifying to contemplate with him.
“Three ships are putting out on this tide,” said Bosha. “I’m told Akylaxio gets half-a-dozen seagoing merchanters a day docking to load or offload. A couple of day-coasters call regularly”—local ships that passed to and from the smaller towns and islands—“but that’s not a first choice.”
Not a good choice at all. They would repeat the same risks at every port, and accumulate delays.
Idrene rubbed her sleep-creased cheeks. “Let’s give it till tomorrow morning to see what else arrives. Then take counsel and decide.” She rose to splash her face at the basin, and went to peer out the window. “I confess, I’m growing mortally tired of being trapped in small rooms.”
Bosha gave her a sympathetic nod, and with the women’s collaboration turned to filling out as much of their documents as he could. It seemed he could alter his handwriting at will, Nikys noticed. He put down his quill and looked up at a fresh tap on the chamber door. “That may be dinner.” He rose to open it, though his other hand hovered on the hilt at his belt.
But it wasn’t the maidservant who stumbled through. It was Penric. And…
“Ikos!” Idrene shrieked, dashing across the room and falling upon him.
He seized her back, huffing relief. “So it was all true…!”
“Keep your voices down,” Penric and Bosha chorused.
Bosha glanced at this new man and opened his hand in pressing query to Penric, who shrugged and closed the door firmly behind them. “Brother,” he muttered. “The other brother.”
“Oh. The bridgebuilder? But what…?”
“He was a surprise to me, too.”
Penric was altered in coloration yet again, his hair now a sandy brown, sticky with salt, and his head and arms and feet paler, but mottled, like a peculiar tan or a mild skin disorder. He was back in his tunic and trousers, noticeably grubbier.
Ikos looked, and smelled, as if he were home from a very bad, very long day at work, stubbled and sunburned, clothes crusty with dried sweat. Nikys hugged him anyway. Pen looked on as if… envious? Breaking away from Ikos because Idrene was elbowing in again, Nikys’s fingers stretched and closed. She didn’t need her hands to assure herself of Pen’s reality; her eyes were enough, in this company. For a moment she wished her company anywhere but here.
Idrene’s anxious questions tumbled over one another. “What are you doing here, you shouldn’t be within a hundred miles of me, whatever are you two doing together, how did you get here?”
“Fishing boat,” said Ikos, choosing the simplest from this spate. “From Limnos.”
“I was worried how we’d get into Akylaxio discreetly,” Penric put in, “but it turns out that a brace of those big tuna fish make an excuse to dock at any harbor, no questions asked. We picked them up along the way. Ye gods, they’re huge in a small boat. For a moment I thought they’d sink us. I’d only seen them laid out flat in the markets at Lodi, before.”
“You stopped to go fishing?” said Idrene, sounding bewildered.
“No,” said Ikos distantly, “we didn’t stop. They leaped into the boat all on their own, and died at our feet. Smiling. Apparently.”
That… ah, that wasn’t a joke. Or sarcasm. Nikys had seen that round-eyed look on people before, and what did it say that she recognized it? He wasn’t poleaxed, just Penric’d. Her lips stretched up unwilled.
“We left the lads to sell the fish,” Ikos went on, “and strolled around at random till he found you.”
“It wasn’t random,” Pen protested, “it was logic. Mostly. But tell me everything that’s happened to you!”
They ended up with Idrene and Nikys seated on the edge of the bed, Penric on the stool, and Ikos at Idrene’s feet, her hand fondling his hair, urgently swapping tales. Bosha leaned silently against the wall with his arms folded, taking in, Nikys thought, everything, although even his set face screwed up with consternation at parts. He did not look best pleased when he learned about the encounter with his sister Hekat, nor Pen’s promise that her brother would tell her all about it on his next visit. “All that seems safe,” Pen temporized, which did not improve matters.
Bosha broke off to answer the door and receive the dinner tray from the maid, and order more food, very necessary as the two men fell upon the offering like starved wolves.
The second round of dinner was delivered and consumed before they came to the end of Penric’s and Ikos’s intertwined and often clashing explanations, frequently dislocated by Idrene’s many questions. “You do make me wish I’d been able to ride in your machine,” Idrene told Ikos. “It sounds splendid. Perhaps, at some happier time, you might get a chance to demonstrate it for me.” Ikos smiled. Penric rubbed his jaw, squeezing some remark to unintelligibility.
Nikys left out from her account only her strange experience in the court of the sacred well, and Pen did not press her on it, to her silent gratitude. She turned at last to Ikos.
“But you say you have a boat?”
He shook his head. “Not my boat, and nothing that could take you to Orbas.”
Pen scratched his scalp and grimaced. “I’m thinking I want to find a bathhouse before I board anything. I’ll circle back through the harbor and see what’s come in since the last check, after.”