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V

Nikys returned reluctantly to their room. Adelis, last left dozing on his pallet, was up and pacing from wall to wall. He’d had the least to do, hiding all day in here, and the forced delay in their flight was making him tenser and tenser.

“Finally!” he said to her. “What’s happening out there? Where’s Penric? Is he still flouncing around in that bloody dress?”

“I have no idea what he thinks he’s doing. Adelis, did you ever know a General Chadro?”

Adelis halted. “Egin Chadro?”

“I didn’t catch his given name. He apparently commands the Fourteenth, here in Sosie.”

“He’s out there? In this house?”

“Yes. Is he someone who would recognize you?”

“Yes, very likely.”

“How well do you know him?”

“We served together a few years ago. Very level-headed officer, but lacking a rich or well-connected family to foster his career. If he’s been promoted to the Fourteenth, someone is finally doing something right.”

“Does he have a short temper?’

“He doesn’t suffer fools gladly. Or at all. Why do you ask?”

“He was very taken with Mira.”

Adelis grumbled something unintelligible. And grudgingly granted, “Penric was very convincing.”

“And I think Mira was very taken with him. She’s taken him off to Zihre’s bedchamber, anyway. I can’t imagine what she’s up to in there with him.” Rather, Nikys could imagine quite a lot, but most of it ended in bloodshed.

“Is he insane?” Adelis sputtered, and Nikys had no doubt which he was meant.

She contemplated the question. By the standards of anyone not a Temple sorcerer, was Penric mad? Or should she only be asking if he was mad by the standards of sorcerers? She was beginning to wonder about sorcerers in ways that had never crossed her mind when they were just a distant rumor or a rare glimpse of white robes.

“I don’t suppose General Chadro likes lads?” she tried, in a weak sort of hopefulness. “Do you know?”

“Not that I’d ever heard. I can guarantee he wouldn’t like being made a game of.”

“Oh.”

Adelis eyed her. “I think we had better pack up. We may have to run.”

She nodded shortly, feeling sick. “How long should we give it?”

“No idea. Although Chadro does not suffer fools quietly, either. If there’s an uproar, we’ll hear it.”

“All the way across the house?” Zihre’s bedchamber was in the far corner of the inner atrium.

“Maybe. Bastard’s teeth grind us all.” And never had the oath seemed more apt. “If Penric’s unmasked and arrested, we’ll have to leave him to get himself out.”

He’s never abandoned us. Not once. The cry teetered on a see-saw with What does that long lunatic expect to happen? trapping Nikys voiceless between her offense and her dread.

They fell into a quick collaboration, bundling their possessions into two parcels. Nikys stacked Penric’s scant clothing ready on the bed. Penric’s medical case she set apart, though she made sure it was all neatly packed. Adelis kept his sword out. It didn’t take long, and then they had little to do but sit side-by-side on the bed and listen to the occasional voices or footsteps crossing the gallery, more muted and infrequent as the night grew old. Nikys rose and pushed the door ajar, tilting her head intently, but heard nothing more than a household settling down. Adelis finally stretched himself on his pallet, fully dressed with his sword by his hand, and dozed, so Nikys forbore pacing. She jittered in place, instead, flexing her feet and knees.

It must have been two hours before she heard footfalls approaching on the gallery—barefoot padding, not the clunk of clogs. And since when could she recognize those steps unseen? She jumped up. The door swung open, and Penric appeared, still entirely Mira from copper-gilt top to lacquered toe, although he held the clogs in one hand. His dress did not seem disarrayed. No blood. He shut the door and leaned against it with a tired whoosh of breath. His eyes were dark and a bit wild, reminding her for some reason of a clumsy cat they had once fished out of a cistern.

“Well,” he said, his voice dropping from Mira’s through its normal register to something that also could have come out of the cistern. “That was an experience.”

Adelis was on his feet. “Where’s Chadro?”

“I left him sleeping like the dead. I’m not sure if Zihre will let him occupy her bed till morning, or wake him up and toss him out.”

“What did you do to him?” asked Nikys. “Something magic?” Magic, illusion . . . surely Penric if anyone could manage something like that. Maybe he hadn’t had to do anything . . . real. She glanced at Adelis’s half-healed scars, and his wholly-healed eyes. But sorcery is real.

Penric was silent for a long moment. He finally said, “Mira does not gossip about her clients. Very rigid rule, I gather. The highest rank of Lodi courtesans don’t; that’s part of how they become the highest rank.”

Adelis was giving him a very sideways look, his lips flat, but he did not choose to press for details. At least not in front of Nikys. It was maddening.

She said urgently, “You weren’t hurt? You took no . . . no insult?”

“Not at all.” Penric grimaced and spread his fingers. “It’s all right, Nikys. I kept my clothes on, and I didn’t have my hands anywhere they’d not been as a physician. Better, actually, since this body was still alive. There were good reasons we taught anatomy in the winter. And I washed them before and after, all the same.”

Since, as an anatomist, he’d taken bodies entirely apart, Nikys did not find this in the least reassuring. And how well was she growing to know him, that she could spot his misdirections so readily?

“More importantly,” Adelis cut in, “do you think Chadro saw through your disguise?”

Penric seemed to consider this question seriously, then replied, quite simply, “No.” He thumped his head back against the door, stretching his neck and rolling his shoulders. “Ah, gods, I’m tired. Well, no help for it. Nikys, aid me getting out of Mira and back into my own clothes. Carefully; we’re still going to need her in the morning.”

He took two steps forward, stopped, and slapped his hands against his torso in dismay. “Oh, shit!

Since Penric had to be the least foul-mouthed man she’d ever met, Nikys found this oath quite startling. She gasped, “What’s the matter?”

“I forgot to ask for money. Mira forgot, if you can believe it. I thought she seemed overexcited. All that for . . . shit, shit.” He took a deep, recovering breath. “Well. It may be possible to get into the Sosie temple now. And oh my dear bleached god, I need to dump some disorder on the way. It’s been building up in me all day. Like water behind a dam. Tiny insects are useless for this much chaos, and besides, there aren’t any left around here.”

If he noticed their possessions packed for flight, he made no remark on it. Perforce, she helped him out of his Mira-togs, laying them aside. Nikys had never believed that clothes made the man, but the lack of them certainly did; it was weirdly heartening to see the familiar Penric emerge again from the disguise . . . and, perhaps, from the domination of his demon? Because she was increasingly convinced that Mira had been something more than skin-deep. More than an act.

So . . . so Penric had evidently done some things tonight that would horrify her to have to do. Men did. Shoved swords into people, for example, or sacked towns. But she found herself drawing away from him despite the arguments of common sense. Would she be happier with him if he’d seemed more distraught? That at least would be a reaction she could understand.

Instead, she asked, “How will you get out of the house unseen?”

“There’s a tradesman’s door in the back wall by the laundry. I don’t need a lantern, so slipping out in the dark should be easy.”

And if it’s locked? she started to ask, then realized it was a foolish remark. She’d seen what he could do to locks. There were barriers that could thwart sorcerers, evidently, but ordinary locks weren’t one of them.

And then he was gone, flitting out as silently as a cat. But this time, she thought of those big wildcats in the northern mountains, the ones that took lambs and kids in the night. She’d long been aware that Penric was a strange man, but she’d somehow thought him safe.

What, as Adelis, or Kymis, or Chadro were safe? For all of Penric’s soft-voiced self-effacement, the ignore-me-I’m-harmless smiles, she was beginning to realize he might be the least safe man she’d ever met. Or, certainly, the least predictable . . . perhaps that was the root of it. Most men kept to their assigned parts in life. If you knew the part, you could reliably guess how they would behave. She had no script for demon-ridden sorcerer.

And nor did Adelis, she supposed. Penric had powers Adelis could neither see nor counter by any military skill. She wondered if Pen realized her brother’s stiffness toward him had its roots in well-stifled fear. Or if Adelis did, for that matter.

The next hour of fretting was a reprise of the first two, although her exhaustion was such that she lay down in her pallet beside Adelis’s. He slept; she couldn’t. At last, Penric ghosted back in, not heralded by any night-candle. The one on the washstand that barely kept the room from total darkness was guttering.

Adelis sat up with Nikys. “Any trouble?” he asked.

Penric waved a hand in the dimness. “Yes and no. I wasn’t seen. But the Sosie temple evidently clears its offering boxes when they lock up at night. Not a single coin to be found.”

Adelis frowned. “There might have been objects of value. Good candlesticks, plate . . . ”

“Yes, and all of it too recognizable to try to pawn in this town.” Penric’s voice took an unaccustomed edge. “Since the whole point of the exercise is to get out of this town, not a useful thought. Which I already had, believe me.” He paused only to strip himself of his jacket and trousers, and flop into the bed in his shirt and drawers. “Ah, gods.” He added after a moment, “I did manage to divest all today’s chaos. There was a sick street dog. Poor beast.”

Taking this in, Nikys discovered a new curiosity. “How did you rid yourself of all that chaos back when you were working for the Mother’s Order in Martensbridge?”

A faint snort from the bed. “I struck a bargain with a Martensbridge butcher. I’d once treated his daughter. He let me do his slaughtering. It bore a double benefit; I was able to unload an enormous amount of disorder on a regular schedule, and the animals died painlessly, without fear or distress. It seemed to be theologically allowable, or at least no god chided me. Thankfully. My superiors were delighted with the scheme. It allowed them to use me to my uttermost limits.”

And beyond, until he’d broken, as Nikys understood another night-confession, back in the temple in Skirose. Which Adelis had not witnessed, and she had not relayed, she was reminded. She was not moved to explain it to him now.

“It worked well,” Penric’s reminiscence went on. “Although I stopped eating meat for a while. Odd. I never had that trouble with animals we hunted, or butchered on the farm.” His head fell back on his pillow, and he signed himself. His voice seemed to come more from underneath the bed than atop it. “Tomorrow, we need a new plan. This one is growing overcomplicated.”

“You think so?” growled Adelis, sardonic.

Penric did not attempt a reply.


The next morning, when they were all still sodden with sleep after the late night, they were awakened by a knock at their door. Nikys dragged herself from her pallet and went to answer it, drawing her role as maidservant around her like a rumpled robe. But it was Madame Zihre, alone. Nikys let her in and closed the door firmly in her wake, as Penric, sitting up blearily in the bed, was still very much Penric, flat-chested and stubble-chinned.

Zihre strode to the bedside and planted her fists on her hips, staring at him. “What did you do to poor General Chadro last night, Learned?”

Penric rubbed his face, visibly choking back a first defensive protest of Nothing! as plainly untrue. “Why do you ask? Did he have a complaint?” He went still, swallowing. “Did he realize what I really was?”

“I have no idea what you really are,” said Zihre, sounding exasperated. “But no, he had no complaints. He did send this, by special messenger just now.” She thrust out a small coin-bag.

“Oh!” said Penric, surprised. “An honest man, five gods pour blessings upon his boot-faced head!” He took it, fingers jingling the contents through the cloth. “If this is silver, and not copper, which would be a bit of an insult, we may be able to hire a coach to continue our journey after all.” He straightened the counterpane across his lap for a tray and upended the bag upon it. Zihre, Nikys, and Adelis with his hat pulled down again, though it was futile for disguise at this range, all crowded around the bed to see.

A chiming stream of metal the real color of Penric’s hair poured out into a little pile.

Everyone fell silent for a long moment, staring at the glowing gold.

“That,” said Nikys, shaken, “could buy us a coach.”

“And a team,” added Adelis. “Matched.”

“Well,” Penric took a breath, “that was certainly the style in which Mira always traveled.”

Nikys gulped for her scattering wits. “Except that would be wasteful.”

Penric’s lips twitched back in a swift, short grin, though she wasn’t sure how she’d amused him.


Learned Penric pointedly declined to entrust the new purse to Adelis, or to Nikys who might yield it to Adelis—Adelis’s cheeks darkened slightly at the reminder of his duplicity against Penric back at Skirose, before they’d fled over the hills. So by the time they had broken their fast, and done Penric up again as Mira, and he and Nikys, prudently escorted by a manservant borrowed from Zihre, made their way to a livery to arrange matters, it was nearly noon before they left the gates of Sosie in the hired coach. The postilion swung his team east down the river road at a smart trot.

Penric had delayed their departure yet more by going aside with Zihre for a change of her compress and one last treatment of her tumor. Trying not to admit anything, he’d talked all around cautioning her to say nothing of what she’d really learned of her guests. But Nikys thought the woman received the warning well enough. Her good-byes were ambiguous, though polite. Although she did remark that if Learned Jurald ever found himself interdicted by the Temple, she might find work for him in her house. At least she didn’t ask for restoration of her loaned garments.

As the road curved, Nikys looked back at the town on its height. “Do you think you will ever return there in the future, Penric? To see if what you tried to do for Madame Zihre succeeded?”

Penric leaned his head against the worn leather squabs of the seatback, and closed his eyes. “No,” he said.

Despite the dress, the hair, the makeup, he did not look very Mira in this moment, and Nikys wondered at the difference, and then at herself for finding it so readily discernible. She hesitated. “Why not?”

“If it worked, I don’t need to know, and if it didn’t, I don’t want to know.” He turned aside, pretending to doze. The pose was not persuasive.

Adelis, fingers drumming on his knees, stared out at the river. Sosie guarded the dwindling head of navigation for the stream, the craft that could reach it more skiffs than barges. “We should have caught or stolen one of those boats, day before yesterday,” he mused. “Or offered to work our passage like the grain wagon. We’d be nearly to the coast by now.”

With none of the appalling risks their recent sojourn had occasioned, it went unsaid. Eyes still closed, Penric grimaced. It might be true. It also, Nikys thought, neatly undercut all that Penric had done for them in the past two days, pushing himself to his peculiar limits.

Five gods, I cannot wait for this journey to be over.


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