He’d only lived a year in Vilnoc, so he wasn’t really homesick for the town. It was their narrow house, or rather, its occupants—Nikys, her mother Idrene, yes, even her brother Adelis. He wasn’t sure if he’d made them his family, or they’d made him theirs, but either way, they were the new and unanticipated anchor for his life’s wandering vessel.
The girls were giving him their wary looks again, reminding him that this proposed destination wasn’t home to them, but rather, another alien waystation in their uprooted existences. Just another strange place where strange grownups would be disposing of their lives, more benevolently than slavers but giving them as little choice.
Pen launched into a description of his house, and its back courtyard common with its row, his quiet, book-rich study, and of Nikys and Idrene, with the notion of giving the sisters a share of his hope. Though their questions led promptly away, through his account of Nikys’s charge who was just Seuka’s age, to a description of the high ducal household. This seemed to fascinate them more, as if it were a wonder-tale like the ones they’d been sharing the other day. Pen could remember feeling that way as a lad, reading stories of brave nobles in faraway places, though any lingering wonder had been stripped out of him by close service to three successive courts. He did not hurry to disillusion them.
Soon after noon the next day, Godino sent his servants on errands and conducted Pen and the girls to the side entry by the stable. His friend—or so Pen hoped—Jato was leaning against the gatepost with his burly arms crossed, scuffing his sandal in the dirt. The red-brick tone of his sunburn suggested Cedonian ancestry, set off by black hair and beard trimmed short. He wore the common garb of a common sailor, sleeveless shirt and calf-length trousers, sash and belt and knife. He glanced up frowning as they approached.
Pen had attempted to reduce his excessive recognizability by tying his queue in a knot again, and topping his pale head with a worn and stained straw hat. And slouching. He wore the local muddled greens, for whatever use that was. The girls, after a long debate over Godino’s proffered cast-offs, had dressed themselves as boys. Lencia’s dark curls barely went into a queue, and Seuka’s ruddy tangle had needed to be forcibly restrained, but altogether they made a passable pair of street rats, hardly worth anyone’s second glance. Certainly they little resembled an escaped Lodi scribe and his two nieces.
Jato looked them over. “Vilnoc, eh?”
Pen touched his hat brim. “If you will. You’ll be paid as soon after our safe arrival as I can arrange it.”
“Huh.” Without further comment, Jato pushed off from the gatepost and motioned them after him. Godino closed his gate with a noisy sigh of relief. Under Jato’s eyes Pen couldn’t sign a grateful formal blessing as befit a learned divine, but he thought it, tapping his fingers and hoping the gods would know.
The girls started to reach for Penric’s hands, but then caught themselves and strode out at his sides more boy-like, fists clenched near their new-old belt knives. He gave them both approving nods and followed Jato in equal silence into the winding streets, not letting his stride lengthen unduly. He could hardly wait to get off this island.
Be on your guard now more than ever, came a murmuring in his head that Pen recognized as Umelan, and not just by her Archipelago idiom. There remains that very common way to slay a sorcerer by luring him into a boat with promises of succor or pleasure or transport, sailing out some miles, and then throwing him overboard and sailing off before he drowns and his demon jumps. It was how my clan tried to kill me, after Mira’s death in Lodi both released and bound me. The keening grief of that long-ago betrayal still resonated in her bodiless voice. I, too, had thought I was going home.
I am advised, Pen promised her. Almost the only way to kill a sorcerer of any experience was by subterfuge and surprise, really. But Jato, at least, didn’t flinch from him, bore no tension suggesting he planned such an ambush, showed no more caution than expected toward any chancy passenger.
The passers-by, at this hour, were largely women and servants going to or from the markets, or carrying water jars, who gave them only enough notice to gauge their harmlessness. At length, they debouched from the alleys about midway between the two piers.
Beside a heavy rowboat drawn up on the sand, four men waited, idly leaning against the thwart or crouching in its thin shade. They stood up, and one waved, as Jato and his tail trod down to them.
They shuffled to a halt, and Jato looked over his crew. “Where’re the other two?”
“They said they’d be along soon,” replied the man who’d waved. They looked a typical array of Lanti seamen, dressed like their captain, with a mixed range of skin and hair color, leathery rather than bulky, none as tall as Pen. The crewman looked off tensely up the shore. Too tensely.
Pen followed his glance and thought Wealdean words. Apparently, he wasn’t even going to have to wait till they were at sea for betrayal.
A dozen men trotted toward them. All but two wore the tabards of the port guards, and were erratically armed with short swords, long knives, a couple of pikes, two crossbows and two short bows. Had that wave been a signal? By Jato’s jerk and curse, this delegation was a surprise to him too, and to three of the four other men at his side.
It wasn’t hard to follow the logic. If his crewmen followed Jato, they might be rewarded later in Vilnoc, but if they betrayed him here, they would be rewarded right now, more certainly and with less effort. In addition to whatever bounty the Guild offered for the return of escaped slaves, if Jato came to a bad end because of this they might even expect to receive his ship as a prize.
“Stay behind me and stick tight,” Pen told the girls, who, watching in horror, hardly needed the instruction. “Things are about to get messy.”
The port guards spread out, expecting sensible surrender in the face of the odds. Jato and two of his three loyalists drew together, although the other stepped back with his hands raised, glumly anticipating events.
One thing was plain. While clearly someone had figured out Pen’s party were fugitive captives, no one had yet realized he was also the sorcerer who had blasted through the prison the night the Autumn’s Hand had escaped. Or they would have brought a couple of hundred rowdies to try to take him, not just a dozen.
The guard leader stepped forward. “Give it up, Jato,” he advised genially. “You can’t fight us all. Besides, we know where you den up.”
By Jato’s flinch, Pen wondered if the man had a family.
Bastard’s teeth but Pen was getting tired of this. And tired in general, and homesick, and angry. You know… he thought to Des. Let’s just get started.
Something like a purr sounded in the back of his mind. Did lionesses purr?
No, smirked Des. But chaos demons might.
Almost perfunctorily, Pen snapped the four bowstrings. Distance weapons summarily disposed of, next most dangerous were the pikes and their bearers, then the swords and knives. And fists and boots. With enemies this numerous, efficiency was going to be required. No time for pretty tricks. The magic to destroy all those weapons would be an unaffordable drain. That left the wielders. But not for long.
Pen began picking out and ruffling big sciatic nerves, hard, starting with the nearest men. His victims discovered this the first time they started to step forward, and instead fell or staggered, shrieking in surprise and pain. It took a minute of close concentration to work through the entire dozen.