He figured he’d be glad of having taken it himself, come midnight.
The rest of the day passed quietly, with another dinner, and the captives left to putter around the building but not, of course, leave. Under the guise of checking his bandages, Penric managed to slip the feverish Aloro another general boost of uphill magic against infection, leaving the merchant feeling mysteriously eased. “I’m told I have gentle hands,” Pen misdirected this attention.
Unlike everyone else in the chamber later that night, the Corva sisters slept the enviably solid sleep of youth. Lencia, Pen was able to wake in the deep dark with a shake to her shoulder and a whispered, “Follow me.” Seuka he had to carry out to the hallway, easing the door shut behind them.
“What?” said Seuka drowsily, as he poured her onto her feet.
“Here, hold your sandals and be very quiet. We’re leaving.”
“I can’t even see where I’m stepping,” complained Lencia. “How can you?”
The hallway was indeed black, although not to Pen. “I have very good night vision. It’s, um, the blue eyes.”
“Oh.”
“Just take my hands.”
They followed him to the stairs in blurry obedience, yawning. Pen had been of two minds about this. Leaving them more-or-less safely here while he scouted the situation risked problems in coming back to collect them, if events went well and fast, not to mention having to get out of the building unobserved twice. Taking them along would expose them to unknown dangers along his route. Neither choice seemed good.
He padded barefoot down the stairs and stopped short, getting his hips bumped by his followers.
There was not one guard as there had been earlier in the day, posted outside the closed front door on a stool, but two, sitting cross-legged on the floor inside the entry. In the light of a candlestick, they were passing the time dicing with each other for, apparently, olive pits, judging by the little arrays before each. They both looked up with unalarmed interest at Pen and the girls.
“Why are you folks stirring?” the elder inquired.
“Cook said she’d leave a bite for my nieces,” Pen blurted the first plausible tale that came to mind. He half-raised his hands, each gripped by a sister, to exhibit the supporting nieces. “They’ve had a hungry time of it.”
“Huh!” said the younger guard. “She never leaves us anything! How do you get the love?”
The older guard snorted. “Look at him. You need to ask? Women!”
Pen turned toward the kitchen. To his intense dismay, the guards rose and followed them.
The pantry was locked, but fell open quietly to Pen’s hand. The older guard set his candlestick down on the scarred kitchen table and went to check the back door. It was firmly bolted, to his evident satisfaction. He returned to thump down on a stool, amiably gesturing the girls to the bench, where they were joined by the younger guard.
Pen rummaged in the pantry, bringing back a bag of figs, a pot of olives, and half of a small wheel of cheese wrapped in cloth. Inviting themselves to the impromptu repast, the guards passed the food around; the younger pulled his wicked belt knife and sliced cheese for his tablemates, kindly handing chunks across to the girls first. The girls both watched Pen big-eyed.
“Oh, look,” said Pen hollowly. “Here’s the wine.” He lifted the jug and plunked it in front of the men. Could he get them drunk enough to pass out?
The younger waved it away. “We don’t drink on duty.” The elder nodded, though he looked regretful. And possibly a touch resentful of his partner’s rectitude. The ban did not seem to apply to the food, each saving their olive pits aside.
The guards then proceeded to chat, asking Pen and the girls leading questions about their travels and lives somewhere other than this island. Pen diverted attention from his immediate background by repeating some of his childhood stories about snowy mountains that had fascinated the cook, and which also engrossed the Corva girls. Lencia produced a pared version of their own misadventures, remembering to claim Pen as their mother’s long-lost half-brother, so miraculously found. Pen didn’t think the bemused guards believed it either.
Evidently, talking to their prisoners in the night watch was a better entertainment for these islanders than dicing for olive pits, and one they’d diverted themselves with before, because they traded back some striking tales from other captives. Rather slyly, the older guard threw in a few descriptions of prior ill-fated escape attempts, variously and sometimes violently thwarted.
Pen was learning a lot about the lives of night-guards in Lanti, but valuable darkness was slipping past outside. He suspected the pair would cheerfully gossip till dawn and the arrival of the kitchen crew, along with all the other hazards of a new day. If Captain Falun decided, tomorrow, that the captured sailors would fill his hold and thus he could sail at once, Pen didn’t want to still be here having to navigate twisty new challenges.
Maybe he should have devised some way to lower them all down from the roof despite the height.
Really, said Des, sharing his growing exasperation with this sociable delay. Those girls are light and young, they would have bounced…
Pen found himself actually missing his distant eunuch friend, Surakos, and whatever dozen subtle poisons and drugs he would doubtless have successfully concealed about his person. Not to mention that his sale price would probably have topped Pen’s own by half. Pen wasn’t sure if wishing pirates on Surakos was any more evil than wishing the eunuch on pirates. But the memory of those apothecarial skills did allow him to settle on a course of action at last.
About time, growled Des.
Pen would have preferred to have been touching the guards’ heads for this delicate work, but didn’t expect they would let him get so near without some violent fending-off. If they continued to sit still, he might manage it safely enough from across the table. He held himself in a moment of unbreathing concentration, called up his full Sight, and ghosted his magic deep into each one’s ears, there to gently stroke the interior surfaces of the tiny looping labyrinths in their encasements of bone that seemed to control balance. When he’d been studying medicine back in Martensbridge, injuries and infections in that mysterious organ and their ghastly vertiginous effects had been fascinating problems brought to him for magical healing. It worked just as well in reverse.
Both men’s eyes widened, then squinched in nausea. They swayed in their seats, reaching out for support from the table and missing. The aborted motions made it all worse, and they tumbled from their perches onto the kitchen floor. The elder opened his mouth to bellow, but vomited instead. The girls, startled, jumped to their feet.
“Hurry, help me find things to tie them up,” Pen diverted them before they could panic.
The younger guard managed to get up as far as his knees before flopping helplessly down again. His cry came out a heartbreaking moan.
“Sorry, sorry,” said Pen under his breath, as he hastened around the kitchen looking for strong bindings. A washing line coiled at the bottom of the pantry would do. Hands tied behind backs, feet bound together and hitched to hands, snapping of cords to the right lengths with a touch of chaos. It was a bit redundant—Pen didn’t think either man would be walking again for a while—but convincing, which was what he needed. A major value of his magic as a defense lay in its continued secrecy. Once his enemies knew what they were dealing with, they would be much more effectively on guard.