Better awkward questions than screaming and running, Pen supposed.
“Only cursing in the ordinary way. In Wealdean. Which is an entirely unmagical language, I assure you. Magic doesn’t work like that.” Grabbing and dragging them wasn’t a good choice just now. Pen waved his hands attempting to herd them instead. “Move, move! The pirates are coming.” Beleaguered, he added, “I’ll explain all about it once we get somewhere safe.” Temporarily safe.
It appeared they were marginally more afraid of pirates than of sorcerers, or else wildly curious about him, because they turned to stumble off the pier at last. Pen led right, angling away from the shore. As they plunged into the deeper shadows of the narrow streets, the sisters reluctantly took Pen’s hands again. It wasn’t as if they had anyone else’s hands to take.
Where are you guiding us now? inquired Des.
To that Quintarian temple we saw from the crow’s nest. It should be somewhere on this side of town, uphill. Help me navigate.
To be sure, but if you are thinking of taking refuge there, you may be optimistic. For all we know it’s been reconsecrated as Quadrene. Or turned into a warehouse.
If the latter, so much the better. I just need a place to think. Again. Two good plans, ransom and mass escape, had turned to wet paper in his hands because other people wouldn’t be sensible. Maybe he needed a plan that didn’t rely on other people. Or being sensible.
They only had to backtrack from blind alleys twice before they came out on the narrow square fronting the temple. It featured a fountain serving the nearby streets, running feebly. Dawn nipped their heels, the sky above the eastern hills growing steely, as Pen led the way under the temple’s front portico. A lantern hook dangled, but no lantern hung on it. Brought in at night for fear of theft? Pen snorted at the irony and tested the lock on the double doors. It did not give way easily, though more due to corrosion than complexity. No people inside right now. He slid through, motioned the girls after him, and eased the door shut.
Not a warehouse, at least. Pen counted five altars, one against each wall, and breathed relief, laced with stale incense, for Des’s other pessimism disproved. A modest clerestory between the shallow dome and the walls, an oculus above, and narrow arched windows over each altar would shed light—in the daytime. The fire on the holy plinth in the center had burned to cold ash, overdue for raking and relighting. Someone was slipshod, or else firewood was excessively dear, here. Or both.
“Is this a safe place?” said Lencia, her voice tinged with doubt.
“For the next hour or so, probably. Until they open up for the day.”
Musty prayer rugs and cushions were stacked beside each altar, ready for use by supplicants. Pen pulled some from the Bastard’s niche and piled them three high on the stone floor before it, placing the cushions for pillows. “Here. You can at least lie down and rest for a bit while I look around.”
“Is that all right with the god?” said Seuka. “I’ve never been in a Quintarian temple before…”
“It’s not so very different,” said Pen, then realized he’d never been in a Quadrene temple, either. Four-fifths true, Des assured him. “As for the white god, I have something of an arrangement with Him.” A sometimes-dubious arrangement, but certainly intimate enough to share bedding. Whether this temple’s keepers would agree was yet to be explored.
The girls settled, but did not lie down, frowning at him though the shadows. Pen didn’t think they could make out much more than a smudge of his face and gleam of eyes and hair. Well, and his smell, drying sweat and filthy clothes, but everyone shared that. Maybe they should have taken yesterday afternoon for laundry instead of language lessons.
“So, um,” began Lencia. “How long have you been a sorcerer?” A very grownup conversation opener, apart from the slight quaver in her voice. A ten-year-old terrified orphan, trying to be the grownup, right. Pen bit his lip and simplified.
“Since age nineteen. I was riding down the road near my home and chanced upon a traveling Temple sorceress, elderly, who had suffered heart failure. I stopped to help, but she was dying. A creature of spirit, like a demon—or a human soul, for that matter—cannot exist in the world of matter without a body of matter to support it. Finding me agreeable, the demon jumped to me.” And my future was wholly changed.
Improved, I trust, murmured Des.
Don’t fish for praise. But Pen had to suppress a smile.
“You were possessed by a demon?” whispered Seuka in shock.
“Are you still?” added Lencia, a little swifter at the implications. She edged back on her rug, though not as far as the hard stone.
“No, I took possession of the demon. And consequently its magic. That made me a sorcerer. Who’s in charge is a very important distinction. We call it the demon ascending when it’s the other way around. And then actual Temple sorcerers and saints have to go iron things out.” This was not the time or place to go into those messy details, Pen sensed. “After that I trained to be a divine. It’s usually the reverse order, a person trains before the Temple gifts them a demon, but our case was an emergency. She’s like a voice in my head.” Who argues with me. Best leave out the twelve-fold complications of that, too.
“Your demon’s a girl?” gasped Seuka.
“Mm, in a sense. Her name is Desdemona.”
Given the tight lips and wide eyes of his audience, this wasn’t helping.
“She gets along very well with my wife,” Pen offered in his demon’s support. “Which is good, because it can be a bit like being married to two different people living in the same body.”
Lencia’s mouth fell open. “You’re married?” By her tone, his possessing a wife was even more startling than his possessing a demon. Well, in this case perhaps he was the one possessed, and delighted to be so. Keep simplifying.
“Yes, we live in a little house in Orbas, together with her mother. Some men don’t get along with their mothers-in-law, but we’re quite taken with each other. It’s nice there.” Or was, before he was sent off on a fool’s errand and captured by pirates. And the sooner he remedied that, the better. He wasn’t sure if the girls were actually finding this spate of domestic detail comforting. “I really do serve the archdivine of Orbas. Who lends me to Duke Jurgo, if there’s a problem he wishes to set me to. I can get on with my own studies in between, so that works out. But under it all, always, I work for the white god.” Will or nil. “Who is the protector of orphans, in Quintarian theology.” He waited a few moments for this broad hint to sink in.
The wariness did not ease. Pen soldiered on. “So, I’ve told you all about me. Tell me something more about your mother.” Jedula Corva, they had let slip her name during those long hours in the pirate-ship hold. “Was she a secret Quintarian? Which god signed her at her funeral?” Both the girls’ parents had prayed for their safety, he had no doubt, but only one had certainly met a god face-to-face. Once.
A jerk, a flinch; an increase, not a decrease, in tension. Lencia swallowed and said, “The demon god isn’t allowed to sign at a Quadrene funeral.”
“A fifth of the time, that ought to be a problem. How do the Quadrene divines in Jokona prevent the white god’s sign from being received?”
“He doesn’t have a fish,” said Seuka, with an everybody-knows-that shrug.
Aye, said Des cheerily. Fiddle the actions of the funeral animals, which granted is easier when it’s four fish swimming in a tub and the divine calling interpretations. Or, if they can’t do that, feign the soul is sundered. They’ll only admit the truth if they are very annoyed with the deceased or their family.