Adelis might have known.
Nikys could see why they’d waited for daylight for the next leg, emphasis on the leg as they were forced to dismount and lead the mules over the worst ledges. There was no breath left for conversation. They really couldn’t have taken this route the other way three months ago, when Penric was still recovering from the injury to his heart; another point, Nikys grudgingly conceded, to Mira.
In the late afternoon, they paused in their equally rugged descent for the sergeant and the muleteer to scout ahead and be sure the military road, along which Imperial soldiers ran regular patrols, was temporarily unpeopled. It proved a bare cart-track. They skittered across, the muleteer coming behind to blot out their prints, and worked their way as quickly as possible down out of sight.
Nightfall brought them to a village where they could hire horses from an incurious farmer, whom Nikys thought likely a retired soldier, anyone’s guess from which army. After the briefest introduction, with names notably absent, and the purchase of some grain, the sergeant, the muleteer, and their animals faded away into the darkness, not lingering to be seen and reported by less indifferent eyes. This time Nikys and Penric really slept the night in the stable, and were grateful for it.
Another long day’s ride downhill brought them to the first good coach road north of the border, which ran on west to Thasalon. They dismissed their guide and his horses with a double fee, half for the mounts and half for the silence. A larger town and a busier inn allowed them to take two adjoining rooms, wash, and change into their next set of clothes and new personas.
After their late supper, Penric bade Nikys a polite goodnight and left her to lock the connecting door behind him. She sat staring numbly at it for a while, too exhausted to stand up after three solid days of grueling riding. This was, she realized, the first and possibly last time she would be alone with the sorcerer. With the man. The most wasted opportunity ever…
The coach-hire the next morning seemed to care only that their coin was good, which thanks to Jurgo’s generous purse it was, and to get them on their way as efficiently and lucratively as possible. They would reach the hinterlands of Thasalon by sundown. Still unremarked.
While not having to stop and let Penric steal them funds from local temples was certainly a boon, this round, Nikys suspected the return journey might not run so smoothly.
V
In the moonless shadows, Penric looked up and down the long wall that surrounded what Nikys claimed was the Xarre estate a few miles east of Thasalon. He hoped she was right in her identification; all the walls in this suburban area had looked alike to him. They’d dismissed their coach half a mile back, to conceal their destination from the curious postilion, and it had made a long, nervous trudge in the gloom.
He extended his hand to the lock on the postern gate, and thought, Des.
The heavy iron mechanism fell open to this well-practiced magic. Pen held the thick plank door ajar for Nikys, and she hoisted their luggage and slipped inside. Pen closed it as silently as possible after them.
Pen concealed their cases behind a healthy flowering bush, outlier of the extensive garden. “Can you see well enough not to trip?” he whispered.
“Not really,” Nikys murmured back. He reached for her hand and led her off down the winding paths that were not dark to him.
There were supposed to be guards, she’d told him, if more like caretakers than soldiers, and dogs let loose at night. No sign of the first, but within minutes a pair of the second came bounding up, snarling. A quick tap of nerve-tweak stopped their alarm-barks, followed up barely soon enough by a brief shamanic geas to persuade them that these intruders were not enemies, but the best of friends. So they were slammed into not by an attack, but by an attack of sociability. Tails wagged like cudgels, thumping into Pen’s thighs as the beasts swirled around them. A couple of haunches of beef might have worked as well as pacifiers, Pen thought, had he possessed them.
“These aren’t dogs, they’re ponies,” gasped Pen, fighting for his balance.
“Mastiffs,” nodded Nikys. “Ew, stop licking me, you huge thing!”
Pen fended off tongues the size of washing cloths, and a miasma of slime and dog-breath. With this unwanted, but at least silent, honor guard panting around them, they made their way to another long, blank wall, the exterior of the residence proper. In the usual Cedonian style, the manse was built around an inner court, giving a cold stone shoulder to the outside. But it was three floors high, and a lot larger than Pen was used to seeing. There were neither windows nor entries on this side of the ground floor, locked or no, but the stories above were pierced with a number of long doors opening onto wooden balconies. Golden candlelight filtered through a few of the delicate carved lattices.
Nikys squinted into the shadows and counted down the doors. “That one,” she whispered, pointing up to one of the glowing screens. “Second floor.”
The wall was entirely without handy ladders or climbing vines. “You do know my powers don’t extend to flying, right?”
“You were a mountaineer. You said?” Her look up at him was far too expectant.
“I was younger. And lighter. And stupider.” Nonetheless, he approached and studied the problem, mapping out the slight cracks and irregularities in the stuccoed surface. Maybe. Although a stone tossed up against the shutters might do to draw attention, he’d be happier to assure himself first it was the right attention.
“Could you stand on my shoulders to get a start up? You’re not that heavy a man…”
Pen disliked this picture, but there seemed no other way. He had her brace against the wall, planning his leap to linger on this prop as briefly as possible. He took a deep breath and bounded, one, two—he could feel her straining body dip beneath his feet—and just caught one hand-grip on the balcony’s edge. Then another. A foot-shove against the wall, alarming when a bit of old stucco gave way. Then heave up and over the balustrade.
He landed crouching as quietly as he could, then unfolded to tiptoe over and try to peek through the lattice. A well-appointed sitting room, it looked like, the scent of expensive beeswax candles, but he saw no identifiable figures.
He tapped cautiously on the carving. “Hello?”
Only Des allowed him to evade, narrowly, the silent thrust of a thin knife blade through the lattice.
He yelped, and yelped again as the door slammed open, bashing him hard in the nose. A swift figure, a swirl of fabrics, and he was spun about. A wiry arm snaked up through one of his own, yanking back and immobilizing it, and the blade snapped to his neck.
And stopped, although pressing alarmingly into his skin. A hot huff of breath puffed against his ear.
Don’t move! said Des, redundantly. That blade is poisoned!
All of Penric’s carefully rehearsed introductions flew wide into the night, and he gasped out only, “I’m with Nikys!”
A hesitation, thank the Bastard, though the grip didn’t slacken. “On your knees,” came an edgy tenor voice, sounding as sharp and dangerous as the blade. “Face the light.”
Pen descended at once, free hand going up palm-out in surrender. Or prayer, either one just now. The steel grasp released him. Quick steps circled him, and Pen looked up past fine linen trousers and a fall of an embroidered silk outer robe to a beardless, scowling face as pale as the absent moon. Thick white hair was drawn back from the brow in some queue or braid.
A female voice sounded from within the chamber: “Sura, what is it?”
“An intruder. It seems.”
“Visitors, I assure you!” protested Pen.