Nikys fought her way back to her points. “I want a house.” Though she temporized, “Someday, at least. I realize it might not be possible right away.”
“Well, so do I.”
“Oh. …Huh.”
“I haven’t spent the past decade perching in other people’s palaces by choice, exactly. It was just easiest. Convenient to my work.”
She supposed that was so. “I think you live mostly inside your own head. It hardly matters where you’ve put your body.”
“So a house will do just fine, then.” Another maddening smile.
She swallowed. “Children…”
“Those, too.” He nodded. “They will go with the house. Like a cat.”
“What?”
“That was Pen, not me,” Des put in. “I don’t know what he’s thinking, either. Yes, you do.”
Nikys drew breath and faced her darkest fear. Head-on, because it was time. “I may be barren. Kymis and I were never able to get a child.” She didn’t want to add, And we tried, though she supposed it was implied. She had never met a man before Pen so able to toss her like a coin between shyness and exasperation.
“Could be many different reasons for that.” He glanced her up and down. Wait, why did it feel as though those blue eyes had just knifed through her? Sorcerers, agh. “There’s nothing obviously amiss on your side, at least.” Was that all it took? The eyes crinkled. “It might require some experimenting to be sure. I could help you with that.”
Why did he sound just like Drema? If she’d been sitting next to him, she would have hit him. Perhaps she should shift across there, so she could.
She rubbed her forehead. “If I married Penric, he would be my husband. But what would you be, Desdemona? Now you are a person. Not my husband. Not my wife, either. My… my big sister?” There was a new thought, oddly warming.
“For you, sweetling,” said the demon, with impressive confidence, “I can be anything you like.”
She couldn’t help what popped out. “Even silent in bed?”
“Yes, please,” Pen interjected fervently.
Des grinned. “Yes. Although I predict you’ll get over even that need in due course.”
“I daresay,” sighed Nikys. Considering all she’d become accustomed to so far. Ultimately, he would just become Pen. Or, Pen! (Or, maybe sometimes, Des!) He was nearly so already. “Spouses do rub each other smooth at the joints, given enough time.”
Time. It did not wait for any human want, or grief, or plan. Or careful list. Nearly half her life might be behind her already. It was time to get started on the next half.
“Marry the sorcerer, dear,” Des urged, “and put me out of his misery. He’ll be glad you did. If he is happy, I can be happy. And so can you.”
And that was just how it worked, wasn’t it? Happiness handed around and around, never stopping. It wasn’t something one could hoard tight like a miser. That would be like trying to hold one’s breath for later.
Nikys looked up, and said firmly, “You can’t shave your head.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Pen returned instantly. “Although… I can’t promise I won’t go bald, when I get old. Des, could you do something about that?”
“I’ve never tried. Not an issue that ever came up with my prior riders.”
“By the time you grow bald,” said Nikys, “I shall doubtless be fat and wrinkled.”
“And sweet. Like a winter apple.”
“More likely cranky.”
“Sweetly cranky.”
“Optimist.”
“I think people must be, to do this.” He’d slid across beside her. Just the sort of thing he would do, if she didn’t keep her eye on him.
Not that keeping an eye on all that male elegance was a burden. What had been her first impression of him, back in the garden in Patos? Ethereal, that was it. He seemed very human to her now, flesh and blood and long, long bones. Mistakes and miracles, awkwardness and profound grace, sorrow and joy. Beautiful hands, slim-fingered and sensitive and so very skilled at so many things. A woman would have to be a witless fool to let those hands get away.
“It’s still a long way home,” she pointed out. By this time, her faintly breathed objections must be pure habit, because she was falling toward him all in air.
“Or maybe home is right here in arm’s reach,” he said. The arm in question curled around her, hugged tight. Like drawing a woman to shore.
She reached back.
Author’s Note:
A Bujold Reading-Order Guide
My fantasy novels are not hard to order. Easiest of all is The Spirit Ring, which is a stand-alone, or aquel, as some wag once dubbed books that for some obscure reason failed to spawn a subsequent series. Next easiest are the four volumes of The Sharing Knife—in order, Beguilement, Legacy, Passage, and Horizon—which I broke down and actually numbered, as this was one continuous tale divided into non-wrist-breaking chunks.
What were called the Chalion books after the setting of its first two volumes, but which now that the geographic scope has widened I’m dubbing the World of the Five Gods, were written to be stand-alones as part of a larger whole, and can in theory be read in any order. Some readers think the world-building is easier to assimilate when the books are read in publication order, and the second volume certainly contains spoilers for the first (but not the third.) In any case, the publication order is:
The Curse of Chalion
Paladin of Souls
The Hallowed Hunt
In terms of internal world chronology, The Hallowed Hunt would fall first, the Penric novellas perhaps a hundred and fifty years later, and The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls would follow a century or so after that.
The internal chronology of the Penric novellas is presently
“Penric’s Demon”
“Penric and the Shaman”
“Penric’s Fox”
“Penric’s Mission”
“Mira’s Last Dance”
“The Prisoner of Limnos”
The short story collection Proto Zoa contains five very early tales—three (1980s) contemporary fantasy, two science fiction—all previously published but not in this handy format. The novelette “Dreamweaver’s Dilemma” may be of interest to Vorkosigan completists, as it is the first story in which that proto-universe began, mentioning Beta Colony but before Barrayar was even thought of.
Sidelines: Talks and Essays is just what it says on the tin—a collection of three decades of my nonfiction writings, including convention speeches, essays, travelogues, introductions, and some less formal pieces. I hope it will prove an interesting companion piece to my fiction.
Many pixels have been expended debating the ‘best’ order in which to read what have come to be known as the Vorkosigan Books (or Saga), the Vorkosiverse, the Miles books, and other names. The debate mainly revolves around publication order versus internal-chronological order. I favor internal chronological, with a few adjustments.
It was always my intention to write each book as a stand-alone, so that the reader could theoretically jump in anywhere. While still somewhat true, as the series developed it acquired a number of sub-arcs, closely related tales that were richer for each other. I will list the sub-arcs, and then the books, and then the duplication warnings. (My publishing history has been complex.) And then the publication order, for those who want it.