Idrene was clearly torn between sending Ikos with him, or keeping her son at her side for every possible moment before they had to part. But Ikos stretched, his joints making disturbing muffled crunching noises, sniffed his armpit without prompting, and chose to depart with Penric.
Nikys fell backward on the bed, floating between elation and new terror. The latter hardly seemed fair. Given how she’d fretted at Penric’s absence, surely his presence should be the cure? Perhaps this was what a gambler felt when he laid his whole stake on one last throw of the dice. Not a thrill she relished, it seemed.
It was nearly dark, Nikys was anxious, Idrene was pacing from wall to wall, and Bosha was staying out of her way, when the two men returned, much cleaner.
And triumphant. Penric barely closed the door behind him before he blurted, “Two more ships have docked. One is Roknari—”
A general flinch.
“—but the other is Saonese. Heading homeward, near full-laden. It’s not going to Orbas, but it is planning a stop at the Carpagamon islands, and from there it should be no challenge to double back to the duchy.”
“Do you speak Saonese?” asked Nikys. A difficult dialect of Darthacan; she had a working command of the latter.
“Oh, yes, it’s practically my father-tongue. Jurald is a Saonese name, you know. And there was Learned Amberein, one of Des’s riders before me. The purser thought I was an expatriate fellow-countryman. I didn’t correct him. Time for that later. Anyway, they keep a few cabins aboard for independent merchants transshipping cargo. Only one free, but I booked it. More space than a coach, at least. Another may open up later in the voyage. They sail on the morning tide.”
“Should we go there now?” asked Idrene, looking ready to dive for their baggage.
Pen shook his head. “The Customs shed closes at dark. We’re supposed to board in the morning.”
Bosha drummed his pale fingers on his thigh. “That could be cutting things fine.”
“Yes.” Pen bit his lip. “Though it would be the usual course for passengers.”
“Mm,” said Bosha. There seemed no choice but to accept this delay. Nikys wondered if she’d sleep at all tonight.
Pen had secured a chamber across the hall for the two men and Bosha, though Ikos lingered with Idrene and Nikys. He’d been supposed to be at his next worksite two weeks ago, although he claimed his crew could begin surveying without him. They would say their goodbyes indoors in private tomorrow; he planned to watch over their departure from a distance with Bosha till they were safely away.
They talked in low tones until his head was nodding, and his mother sent him to bed with a kiss the like of which he’d probably not had from her since he was four. It seemed to please them both. It often felt to Nikys that her elder brother’s relationship with their mother was less, not more, complicated than her own for its long gap, but she could not begrudge it.
XVII
Pen followed his fellows into the women’s chamber at dawn, for breakfast and for Bosha to put the finishing touches on their papers. There was nothing more to pack, but Nikys pulled Pen’s Temple braids from his medical case and held them up in doubt.
“The customs officers may search our baggage. Is there some better way to hide these, Pen?”
Pen sighed and took them from her. “I suppose I’d better abandon them. They can be replaced when we get home.” And when had he started thinking of Orbas, of all places, as home? “It’s more imperative just now to hide that I’m a Temple sorcerer than to prove I am.”
The other side of Bosha’s lip curled. “Give them to me for a moment.” A bit reluctantly, Pen handed them over, and Bosha examined the knot holding the loops. A few moves of those deft, pale fingers, and the cord fell into one long length. “Madame Khatai, might you sit here?” He gestured to the stool.
Her eyes rolling in curiosity, Nikys sat as instructed. Bosha plucked her hairbrush from her valise and busied himself about her head. Idrene drifted over to watch. Within a few minutes, he had somehow turned her hair into a raised confection with the braids visible as no more than a few fashionable glints holding the black curls.
“Oh, that’s charming!” exclaimed Idrene. Pen had to agree.
Nikys smiled, reaching up for an uncertain prod. The arrangement held firm. “Very clever, Master Bosha. Thank you!”
“Do encourage General Arisaydia in his quest for Lady Tanar’s hand, Madame Khatai.”
“Do you favor him for her, then?” Nikys’s smile didn’t alter, but Pen thought she was listening for every nuance in the answer. Because Bosha would have them. And Bosha’s opinion in this affair mattered far more than was obvious.
“She’s had much worse, sniffing about her.” He rubbed his neck beneath his white braid. “You know, her latest interest is in going up onto the roof to learn celestial navigation. She conscripts one of Lady Xarre’s captains for her lessons, when he stops in to give his reports. If she’s not married to your brother, or some man of like merit, with her vast vitality diverted to children, I’m afraid she will insist on apprenticing as an officer on one of Lady Xarre’s ships. And if denied, would run off to become a pirate queen.”
This was probably a joke, Pen thought. Probably. Hard to tell with Bosha. Or with Tanar, for that matter.
Nikys dimpled. “Do pirate queens keep secretaries?”
“I dread finding out.” His smile faded altogether. “Although childbed is the one place even I cannot go to defend her. Perhaps the high seas would be better after all.”
Idrene said gently, “We cannot protect anyone from being alive, Master Bosha. No matter how much we might wish to.” Her eyes fell on her own children.
His lips stretched in an expression Pen would hesitate to call amused. “I can try.”
And then it was time for final farewells, teary when Idrene and Nikys embraced the sheepish, but gratified, Ikos. Pen stifled his jealousy. He, after all, would be the one getting to keep the women.
If I can. He hoisted the baggage and shuffled after them to the stairs.
The blue Cedonian sky was hazier this morning as they walked down to the harbor. If this heralded some change in the fine weather, Pen thought, eyeing it, it wasn’t going to be soon enough to impede their departure.
The squawks of white gulls played over the clatter of men and equipment on the two piers readying ships for sea. Crates of goods from last night’s unlading were piled up ashore, waiting for their carriers to come take them to their inland destinations. A crew of men unpacked an arriving wagon, lifting long ceramic flasks of wine from their straw bed and carting them off to a dock. Another crew wrestled with ingots of copper, distinctive with their green patina and red scratches, stacking them on a handcart. Ikos watched it all with great professional interest, as he and the behatted Bosha, mismatched sightseers, veered off to loiter on a low wall as if enjoying the maritime spectacle.
“All this way,” mourned Pen, “and I never saw great Thasalon.”
“Since any view we’re like to get would be from inside an imperial prison,” said Idrene, “best not to make that wish.”
“Aye,” Pen sighed.
Idrene clutched the packet with their papers as they approached the Customs shed. Nikys raised her chin and inhaled.
At a clatter of hooves on the cobblestones behind them, Penric wheeled around. And froze.
A man in the uniform of an imperial courier dismounted from his sweating horse and tied its reins to a bollard, looking over the docks and ships with sharp, flashing eyes. Turning to his saddlebags, he withdrew a leather dispatch case. He began to walk purposefully toward the Customs shed.