“Keep smiling, don’t panic, and play along,” Pen muttered through his teeth to Nikys and Idrene as they paused to see what had distracted him, and stiffened in turn. “I can take care of this.”
Nikys gripped Idrene’s hand. In caution? In reassurance?
This one is going to be costly, warned Des, fully alert. It wasn’t an attempt to dissuade him.
Not nearly as costly as failing, Pen thought grimly back.
Aye.
Sight, Des.
Pen set down their baggage and moved to intercept the courier, plastering a smile on his features. That strange, compelling, colorful interior view of a soul’s essence, hidden within the outer material form, flickered into focus in Pen’s mind’s eye. “Oh, officer!” he called, the reverberations of the shamanic weirding voice entering his tones even as he pushed the words out. They touched the man like tendrils, barely catching on that firm sense of duty. His head jerked toward Pen, and he frowned, but stopped.
“Good morning,” Pen continued. “Have you ridden from Guza?”
Pen felt the assent swirling within the man even as he returned in a quelling growl, “What is it to you?”
“I think you want to let me see that paper,” Pen purred, holding out his hand as though such an exchange were the most natural thing in the world. The fellow shook his head as if throwing off an insect, but, slowly, opened his case. “You need to deliver that paper to me.”
The courier extracted a document, stood at some echo of attention, and held it out. Pen took it and ran his eyes hastily through what he guessed was some standard Cedonian bureaucratic preamble—Bosha would know—to the critical paragraph, a description of Idrene in much the same terms as the sailor had given them yesterday afternoon. The official detainment order for the customs inspectors, clearly.
Pen twitched it behind him and set it alight. It was a puff of ash before it reached the cobbles.
“You have delivered your urgent message to the Customs-shed officer,” Pen continued, driving the words, and the geas of persuasion, as deep into his target as possible. The tendrils set like hooks, like sucking mouths, into the officer’s spirit, and Pen winced. Geases could be nasty almost-organisms, at times, parasitizing the life of their victim for their own prolongation. A true shaman could create one that would last for weeks. Pen hoped for a day. “You have done your duty. Now you need to take care of your loyal horse.” A geas worked best when laid in alignment with the subject’s natural inclinations. “And then go drink a flagon of wine. You’ve earned it. You delivered your message in Akylaxio just as ordered.” Pen simulated a Cedonian military salute, which the man, his eyes slightly dazed, returned.
Blinking, the man returned to his horse, untied it, and led it off. By the time he reached the street, his steps were a firm stride again. He didn’t look back. He might bear other copies of the circular to deliver further along the coast, but their existence did not concern Pen.
Still sitting on the wall overlooking it all, both Bosha and Ikos swiveled their heads in worry to watch the officer. Not looking back at them, Pen managed an it’s all right, stand down wave, which he hoped they interpreted correctly.
It wasn’t entirely all right. Memory alteration fiddled not only with free will but with the very essence of a soul, and thus bordered on sacrilege. Good intentions and even good results were valid theological defenses only up to a point. Pen could hope he’d not transgressed beyond it. He wouldn’t say pray, as he’d decided long ago not to bother the gods with questions when he didn’t really want to hear the answers.
The blood was already starting to trickle. Pen snorted and sucked it back to send down his throat. “Now I need to get out of sight for a few minutes,” he told the women. “Quickly.”
Nikys, who had watched him with the sacred dogs, understood at once. She dropped Idrene’s hand and grabbed Pen’s, towing him back toward the stacks of crates as the trickle turned into a flood and Pen choked, gasped, and choked again. His eyes watered wildly. He clapped his other hand to his mouth as he coughed out blood. It stained his palm in quick stripes as he reached the shelter and dropped to his knees, then his hands and knees, coughing wetly. The scarlet splattered onto the stones, spreading.
And kept coming. Struggling for breath between spasms, Pen wondered if he could actually drown himself. There was a new hazard for the list…
“Mother’s tears, Pen!” gasped Nikys, holding his quaking shoulders. “This is much worse than before.”
And Idrene’s startled voice, “Is he dying?”
It must look as if he were hacking out his lungs in gobbets. Which, admittedly, sounded much more dramatic than It’s a nosebleed. Pen wheezed and shook his head. “Ugly magic,” he got out between coughs. “High cost. Des hates it.” Shamanic magics did not come naturally to a chaos demon, and Pen suspected his body paid a premium price for his use of them at all. It was as if chaos and blood were coins of two different realms, and the moneylender charged an extortionate fee for their exchange.
Should I do something? Des asked, anxious. There are harbor rats lurking about…
Don’t. Trying to divert or delay his somatic payment for this magic with some uphill healing had unpleasant side-effects, afterward. Better than dying, to be sure, but still better was to pay off the debt at once. It just looked alarming.
He studied the cup or so of blood splashed on the ground under his face. All right, was alarming. But his desperate coughing ceased, his lungs stopped pulsing, and the blood issuing from his stinging nose dwindled to mere drips, then tailed off altogether. He let Nikys roll him into her arms, smiling weakly up at her distraught face.
He should explain about the nosebleed, but her lap was such a lovely soft cushion…
Malingerer, scoffed Des.
Are you going to tell on me?
Never. He knew he was going to be all right when his demon’s temporary fright faded back into amusement. Enjoy your treat. After all, so do I.
Not thinking about that, Des. It throws me off my stride.
As you wish.
“Bastard’s teeth, is all that red gush his?” asked Ikos’s voice, much too close to Pen’s ear.
“You were supposed to steer clear of us.” Pen cracked open his eyes. “You two.” Bosha had taken up a guard stance at the entry of the space between the crate stacks. Pen added to Ikos, “This, by the way, is what happens to me when I force a geas on an unwilling person. So you see I didn’t cast one on Acolyte Hekat yesterday.”
“Huh.” His face retreated out of Pen’s sight.
“Should I follow that courier and do anything about him?” Bosha asked over his shoulder in a neutral tone.
Was he offering to assassinate the man? Dear me, he is! crowed Des. What a handy fellow to have around. Pen hastened to explain that his geas made further intervention unnecessary, which Bosha, after a considering moment, accepted.
Ikos returned with what proved to be his shirt, wetted with seawater, and handed it to Pen without comment.
“Do I look a fright?”
Nikys nodded, her clutch not slackening.
“I’d best tidy up. I don’t want to be kept from boarding because they fear I have some sort of plague. Aside from being a sorcerer.” Deciding, since it was Ikos’s shirt, that he couldn’t make it much worse, Pen wiped the gore from his face and hands—he’d managed to keep most of the splash off his tunic—then let Nikys have it to finish the job to her satisfaction.