Pen returned to the temple hall. His breath caught and his steps quickened as he heard a voice grumbling, “Who left this door unlocked? …Hey! You street rats can’t sleep in here!”
Dawn light leaked through the oculus, the arched windows, and, now, the front door, shoved wide. A fellow—townsman or peasant, hard to tell by his plain garb—stood beside the fire plinth with his hands on his hips. He bore a rack on his back holding a bundle of trimmed branches, which he doffed and swung down to the floor. He opened his mouth to shout again at the trespassers, but his jaw hung slack as Penric came up beside the girls, who were pushing themselves up from their rugs, sleepiness warring with fright.
The wood-carrier stepped back, his hand going to the knife at his belt. Pen could see the calculation on his face as he attempted to average the threat: tall strange man, danger; small children, not. And Pen bore no visible weapons; better. The firmness returned to his spine.
“You can’t sleep in here. Off with you quick, now, and I’ll say no more.” His strong island Adriac accent went with his sawed-off, sturdy island build.
Pen suppressed his frustrated curses and let the cultured tones of Lodi infuse his own voice. “But I have quite a lot to say. To begin with, who are you?” Temple servant, obviously, to be bringing in the morning’s firewood for the plinth. Or the kitchen, as might be.
The man’s face pinched in suspicion. “Brother Godino. I run this place, as much as it gets run.”
“I need to speak with the divine.”
“You already are. As much as there is one.”
Pen’s brows rose. “This temple has no trained divine? Or acolyte?”
“It did. Once.” Godino scowled at him, and as an afterthought extended the glare to the girls.
Pen hesitated. Would this work? “I am Learned Penric of Orbas. I claim sanctuary in this temple, by the gods’ sacred aspects and the rights of my vows, for myself and my wards.”
Godino clutched his hair and vented a horrible huff of a laugh. “Oh, gods. You’re escaped slaves, aren’t you.”
“Escaped I’ll grant you. Slaves, not yet.”
“And so they all say. D’you think you’re the first to try this? There is no sanctuary to be had here from the Guild. They go where they want and do what they want, and when they come to drag you back out, I might be lucky to only get a beating for having seen you and not cried ‘ware at once.”
“I don’t think it would go like that.” At first. Though if his enemies brought enough men, even a sorcerer would be overwhelmed, so that was a situation to avoid; he could agree with Godino there. “But the pirates believe we escaped on a ship last night. If you hid us, there would be no reason for them to come searching. We could evade notice for quite a long time.”
“And then what?”
“And then you could send a message for help by Temple courier, and someone would arrive to take us off your hands.”
“Aye, whisking you off on a magic bird, no doubt, and leaving me here to take the brunt of the Guild’s anger? Setting aside there’s no courier here either. If you’re that much of a somebody, you can ransom yourself and leave me out of it.”
“I”—Pen scratched his head—“may have peeved the pirates, a bit. I’d rather not count on ransom.”
Godino stepped back and pointed at the door, his hand shaking. “Out!”
Penric cleared his throat and said diffidently, “I, ah, hadn’t been going to mention this, but I also happen to be the court sorcerer of the Duke of Orbas.” Well, on occasion, but this did seem to be a moment to raise his repute. “I really do think you will find it in your best interests to help us.”
Godino choked on a laugh. “Good one, Lodi fancy-boy. You’re no more a sorcerer than you are a divine. Out!”
Des…?
Oh yes.
Pen held out his arm dramatically aimed at the plinth and snapped his fingers.
A gout of flame whooshed up seven feet in the air, with a brief roar like an angry lioness.
Godino leaped back uttering an oath. The girls scrambled onto the same mat and clutched each other in voiceless alarm, laced with bug-eyed fascination. The stagecraft was unnecessary for lighting the fire, except perhaps under Godino. With very little charcoal in the ashes to feed upon, the flames died down quickly, but Penric thought the point had been made.
“I am a Temple scholar and learned divine,” Penric intoned, “graduate of great Rosehall and chosen of the white god, and I am here to relight your holy fire. One way or another. By sorcery if necessary.” He gathered himself and a memory of one of the more daunting sermons of his experience, and thundered, “Do you understand?”
Penric thought Godino understood he’d been trapped between murderous pirates and a wrathful sorcerer, and the pirates might be more numerous but the sorcerer was right here.
“Yes,” he squeaked, wide-eyed. His glance shifted toward the door.
“And don’t try to flee, either,” said Penric. “You can’t outrun magic.” Well, he could, but Pen felt no obligation to explain how. He strolled forward, feeling something between gratified and mildly ill. Bullying a Temple servant was so much easier than bullying pirates. For real villains, mere threats would not suffice, and then things would grow ugly. Uglier. But he needed to get this man under control, and quickly, or their sole advantage left from last night’s debacle would be lost.
“Hide us now,” said Pen persuasively. “You can always betray us later. …Or try to.”
The edged smirk he sent with this made Godino flinch. Pen could see the moment the man gave in by the shrinking of his shoulders. Godino set his teeth on something that might have been a prayer or the reverse, and muttered, “Come this way, then. Keep quiet. The fewer who know of you here the better.”
The girls had been following this only with their gazes, shifting anxiously from one terse speaker to the other. Pen urged them to their feet, repeating the order for quiet in Roknari. Meek mice, he thought, had not been that lively pair’s role at home before their world had caved in, but they had surely learned it in the past weeks. Lencia grasping Seuka’s hand, they practically tiptoed in Godino’s wake, wary of yet another untrusted stranger in an unrelenting parade.
He led them up the gallery stairs and into what looked to be a disused temple guest room, containing two narrow beds, a washstand, an old chest, and tattered rugs. Some moth-eaten hangings were piled in one corner; a decent-enough commode chair with chamber pot was tucked in another. The thinness of the dust suggested months rather than years between cleanings, but it still made Lencia sneeze.
Pen stepped around their guide to examine the high window secured with a carved wooden lattice. Wide enough for Pen and, if necessary, his charges to slip through, and overlooking the stable roof; an acceptable escape route, good. Any attempt to lock them in would also be futile, not that Pen was going to point this out. Though Pen suspected Godino would actually be glad for them to bolt, as promptly as possible.
Godino closed the door softly before he spoke again. “You can stay here for the moment. People will be about soon, so don’t make noise. We have a funeral this morning.”
“Oh? Who for?” Pen hoped he hadn’t left any corpses in his wake last night attributable to his magic.
If there were, we’d have known it, said Des grimly.
True.
“Grandmother from down the street. There’ll be a lot of relatives.”
Life, and death, Pen was reminded, went on quite aside from pirates. “Do you conduct it?”