Penric's Demon

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “Rogaska, a serving-woman in the court of the Duke of Orbas. He made a gift of her to Mira. Before her, Vasia of Patos in Cedonia, our first rider who could read and write—a widow, then something of a courtesan as well, after the manner of that city. Which was how she came to die in luxury at the court of Orbas. Roundaboutly.”

  Pen blinked. Cedonia? That seemed a country of fable to him, a place for tales to be set far enough away that none could gainsay their wonders. Also said to be warm. He was impressed. And envious. This creature had seen places and peoples that Pen could scarcely dream of.

  “Before her, Litikone, a goodwife of the Cedonian northern provinces; before her, Sugane, a village woman in the mountains. She slew the aging lioness when it attacked her goats, all by herself with a rusty spear. She was a proper rider, despite her ignorance! Before that, the wild mare of the hills, that the lioness killed and ate, and before that . . . we know not. Perhaps the white god.”

  “Do you, did you, er . . .” Pen was not sure how to put it. “Did you experience all these deaths?”

  The voice was dry as dust. “Up to a point.”

  But not any balancing births. Not that he remembered his own, either.

  As long as he hosted this entity, Pen realized, he need never lack for bedtime stories, though he might lack for the ability to sleep, after.

  But not tonight. Helplessly, he yawned, settling back in his warm and flea-less bedding. His voice whispered on for a while in unknown words, like a mountain rivulet, as he drifted off.

  * * *

  Pen woke aroused, rolled over sleepily, and reached for himself. The room seemed warm and dim and safe and quiet.

  His hand had barely touched its target when his mouth commented, “Ooh, I’ve not felt it from this angle before. This should be interesting.”

  Pen’s hand froze.

  “Don’t stop on our account,” said Desdemona. “Physicians, remember?”

  “Yes, don’t be shy. I’ve seen a thousand of ’em.”

  “Speak for yourself!”

  “Well, I’ve certainly diapered them a thousand times.”

  Pen had no idea what the next comment was, and it might just have been the language, but it certainly sounded obscene.

  He rolled from the bed and dressed as fast as possible. He couldn’t be out on the road soon enough.

  * * *

  The Linnet ran green and swift in the spring melt, and surprisingly wide. A few merchants’ boats dared the flood. The road coursed alongside it, with more pack trains going upstream than down. Its valley was hedged by what were, by Pen’s standards, low hills. As they passed the third broken fortification glowering down from these modest crags, he was moved to ask, “What happened to the castles?”

  Wilrom and Gans shrugged, but Trinker, craning his neck, said, “Martensbridge did, I heard. Some local lords had taken to robbing merchants outright, though they’d started by calling it tolls. The guilds of the city combined with the princess-archdivine’s troops to destroy the nests that they couldn’t buy out, and made the road safe for all from the lake to the Crow. And all the tolls go to Martensbridge, now.”

  Not, Pen reflected sadly, a method of gain Jurald Court might have mimicked; the roads in its reach were more likely to hold herds of cows than rich caravans.

  Villages clustered around weirs and mills and, once, a wooden bridge. Then they rounded a curve in the valley and Martensbridge came into view. Pen stared, fascinated.

  The place was easily ten times the size of Greenwell. The river bisected it, twice crossed by stone bridges and once by one of timber; buildings of stone as well as wood rose up the slopes, packed behind its walls. Trinker stood in his stirrups, and guessed that the substantial edifice crowning one hill might be the palace of the famous princess-archdivine, and heart, therefore, of his Order in this region. Beyond the city, the wide vista of lake opened out to the north, bordered with farms and fields and vineyards on the lower slopes, dark woods on the steeps. Covered merchants’ boats and open fishing skiffs dotted the ruffled surface. Then more hills, and then, dreamlike on the far horizon, a line of familiar white peaks, briefly making a bow from the curtain of the clouds.

  It was not possible to get lost in Greenwell. After they had made their way through the south gate, they discovered that this was not the case for Martensbridge. They rode up and down several streets, all of them paved with cobbles, while Pen gaped at the high houses, the well-dressed men and women, the bright markets, stately merchants and hurrying servants, fine fountains in squares crowded with laundresses, elegant or clever wrought-iron signs for artisans’ shops and guildhalls, windows of stained glass with pictures. Trinker referred again to the scrap of paper holding his directions, looking hot and frustrated.

  “Turn left here,” said Pen suddenly, when Trinker made to lead them right. Pen had no idea where the certainty in his voice came from, but everyone followed. “Right here,” he said at the next street. “And up,” at the next intersection. “And here we are.”

  Pen sat in his saddle and peered at the stone building, crowded in a row along the steep street with its neighbors. Though narrow, it stood some five floors tall, looking like a lesser guildhall of some sort. It boasted no stained glass. The only marker was a discreet wooden sign over the door showing two hands painted white, loosely closed, one thumb pointing up and the other down. The thumb was the sign and signifier of the Bastard, the one finger on the hand that touched all the others. Aside from that, the place did not look in the least temple-like. Trinker cast Pen a disquieted look, dismounted, and knocked on the door.

  It was answered by a porter wearing a tabard with the same two-hand design stitched on it, otherwise in common dress. His glance took in the official badge of the Daughter’s Order and blue and white feathers on Trinker’s hat. “Yes, sir?”

  Trinker cleared his throat, awkwardly. “We are the escort of the Learned Ruchia, ridden from Liest. We were told that someone awaited her in this house. We need to see him.”

  The porter looked over their party. “Where is the divine?”

  “That’s what we need to see somebody about.”

  The porter’s brow wrinkled. “Wait here, sir. If you please.” The door closed again.

  Pen had to give Trinker credit, he stood his ground, back straight, and did not suggest they all run off. Half of why Pen had not made his escape through his window last night had been the reflection that it would be a cruel trick to play on his guards, who were only carrying out their duties and who had done him no harm. The other half was pure curiosity over what the Bastard’s Order here was supposed to do for him in his predicament, for surely he wouldn’t have been sent all this way unless there was something?

  He wondered if the gruesome Roknari ploy with the cushion would work out on that lake. Probably, and swiftly, given the spring chill of the water. He tried to stop thinking.

  In a few minutes, the door opened again, the porter escorting an anxious-looking man of middle years, height, and girth, his neatly trimmed beard and hair a graying brown. He wore an ordinary townsman’s gown, belted and soberly hemmed at his knees, over trousers of some dark stuff. The unbleached wool of the tunic only hinted at his allegiance, but the divine’s braid in white, cream and silver pinned to his shoulder made it plain. Easy to remove and pocket if he wished to walk about incognito, Pen wondered?

  “I am Learned Tigney,” he said, his glance summing the party. Gans was clearly a groom, the two Temple guards were easy to place; Penric less so, and the gaze caught on him for a moment before going back to Trinker, waiting to speak with his hat in his hands. “I’m told you have news of Learned Ruchia? We were expecting her anytime this week.”

  Trinker cleared his throat. “News, sir, but not good. Learned Ruchia was overtaken on the road with a seizure of the heart, some five miles short of Greenwell Town. She passed away before Wilrom”—he nodded at his comrade—“could return with help. The Temple of Greenwell saw her buried there with her due rites�
�their white dove signed her for her god, all proper. Not knowing what else to do, and being more than halfway here already, we brought on all her clothes and cases, to give to those who should have them.”

  Tigney cast him a sharp look. “Not opened, I trust?”

  “No, sir,” said Trinker fervently. “She was a sorceress, after all. We didn’t dare.”

  Tigney’s posture of relief was short-lived; he tensed again. “But—what happened to her demon? Did it go to her god with her, then?”

  “Uh, no.” He nodded toward Pen.

  Tigney’s head whipped around. Pen offered a weak smile and a little wave of his fingers. “Here, sir. I’m afraid.”

  “Who . . . ?” Tigney gave him a long, pole-axed stare. “You had better come inside.”

  He told off the porter to take Ruchia’s things to his chambers, which resulted in a bustle of unloading from the packsaddle into the hall, then sent him off with Gans and Wilrom to deliver the horses to some nearby mews that kept a place for Temple beasts.

  “This way.” He led Penric and Trinker up one flight to a small, well-lit room overlooking the street. Seeming a cross between a scholar’s study and a counting house, it held a table cluttered with papers and writing tools, a scattering of chairs, and some jammed shelves. Pen eyed them and wondered why a divine of the Bastard should have twenty or so courier dispatch cases lined up.

  Tigney scrubbed his hand through his beard and gestured them to sit. “And you are . . . ?” he continued to Pen.

  “Penric kin Jurald of Jurald Court, near Greenwell Town, sir.” He wondered if he was obliged to introduce Desdemona. “My eldest brother Rolsch is lord of that valley.”

  “How came you to—no. Begin at the beginning, or there will be no making head nor tail of things.” He turned to Trinker, and efficiently extracted an account of his doings from the time he was assigned to escort the divine at Liest until the disaster at Greenwell. The party seemed to have traveled rather more slowly than with Pen.

  “But why were you on that road at all?” asked Tigney, a plaintive note in his voice. “It’s not the most direct route from Liest to Martensbridge.”

  Trinker shrugged. “I know, sir. The divine told us to go that way.”

  “Why?”

  “She said she’d shuttled back and forth from Liest to Martensbridge on the main road three dozen times in her life, and wanted a change of scene.”

  “Did she say anything else about why she chose that course? Or was it just caprice? Any hint or strange comment?”

  “No, sir . . . ?”

  Tigney’s lips twisted, taking this in, but then he blew out his breath and went on. “There was a woman servant, you say? But then why didn’t—where is she?”

  “Went back to Liest, sir. The Greenwell divine took her sworn deposition, first. Should it go to you?”

  “Yes, for my sins.”

  Trinker pulled out this document and handed it across; Tigney unsealed and read it, his frown deepening, then set it aside with an unsatisfied sigh.

  Pen ventured, “Learned, do you know of these things? Sorcerers, and demons and . . . things?”

  Tigney began to speak, but then turned his head at a knock on the door. It proved to be Wilrom and Gans, delivered back. With all the witnesses present, the divine turned to their accounts of Ruchia’s death, each offered with slightly different details but clearly congruent. Pen thought Gans’s description of him “flopped over as gray and limp as a dead eel,” was unduly blunt. Tigney collected Pen’s own testimony last: final words, purple flashes, and mysterious voices dutifully not left out, even though it made everyone stare at him in alarm except his interrogator, who seemed to take them as a matter of course.

  Tigney then asked an intent string of questions ascertaining that there was no way Pen or anyone else at Jurald Court could ever have met Ruchia before, or known about her in any way, before the chance meeting on the road. The divine compressed his lips and turned to Pen once more.

  “Since you awoke from that long swoon, have you felt or experienced anything unusual? Anything at all.”

  “I had a very bad headache, but it wore off by the time we left Greenwell.” And no one will touch me, I have been summarily unbetrothed, and I have been made a prisoner even though I have committed no crime. Best leave that out. Tigney was just beginning to relax when Pen added, “Also, night before last the demon woke up and began talking to me.”

  Tigney went still. “How?”

  “Er . . . through my mouth?”

  “Are you sure of this?”

  Pen couldn’t tell what to make of that question. Did Tigney suppose him to be delirious or hallucinating? Was that common among the newly bedemoned? “I know it wasn’t me. I don’t speak Ibran. Or Roknari, Adriac, or Cedonian. She was really chatty once she got started. Also argumentative.” Ten women all stuck together, no wonder. Or their ghosts, disturbing thought. Images of their ghosts was scarcely better.

  Tigney took this in, then rose and went to shout down the staircase for the porter, whose name was apparently Cosso. Or perhaps, Cosso! “See that these three men are fed,” he ordered the fellow, shepherding Gans and the guards out. “Find a place in the house for Lord Penric’s groom, tonight.” He reassured the guards, “We’ll send you two to lodge with your own Order at the palace temple, but don’t leave before I have a chance to speak to you again.”

  He closed the door on them all, then turned and studied Pen. Pen looked hopefully back. At length he placed a hand on Pen’s brow and intoned loudly, “Demon, speak!”

  Silence. It went on until Pen stirred in discomfort. “I’m not stopping her,” he offered. “She may sleep during the day. So far, she’s only talked to me before bed.” The only times he’d been alone?

  Tigney scowled and deployed that commanding voice once more. “Speak!”

  “Should I try?” said Pen brightly, growing nervous. He softened his tone. “Desdemona, could you please say something to Learned Tigney, here, so he doesn’t think I’ve gone mad or, or that I’m lying? Please?”

  After a long moment, his mouth said mulishly, “We don’t see why we should. Cowardly demon-destroyer. Ruchia may have thought him diligent, but we always thought him a prig.”

  Pen’s hands sprang to his flushing face as if to dam this alarming spate; he lowered them cautiously. “Sorry, sir. She seems to be a bit opinionated. Er . . . had you two met before?”

  “I’ve known—knew”—he made a pained hand-wave at the correction—“Ruchia these twenty years. Though only after she acquired her mount.”

  Pen said hesitantly, “I’m sorry for your loss. Were you friends, then?”

  “Say colleagues. She had the training of me when I first contracted my demon.”

  “You’re a sorcerer, too?” said Pen in surprise.

  “I was. Not anymore.”

  Pen swallowed. “You didn’t end it by dying.”

  “No. There is another way.” The man could certainly put the grim in grimace. “Wasteful, but sometimes necessary.”

  Pen wanted to follow this up, but instead Tigney began asking him all about his childhood and youth at Jurald Court. It seemed to Pen to make a short and boring biography.

  “Why did you stop on the road?” he asked at last.

  “How could I not? The lady appeared to be in grave distress.” Which had turned out to be all too true. “I wanted to help.”

  “You might have volunteered to ride for the town.”

  Pen blinked. “I didn’t think of that. It all happened so fast. Wilrom was already galloping off by the time I dismounted to see what was going on.”

  Tigney rubbed his forehead, and muttered, “And so all is in disarray.” He looked up and added, “We had expected to house Learned Ruchia at the palace temple, but I think you’d best stay here, for now. We’ll find you a room.” He went again to shout for Cosso; when the man arrived, he gave more orders as a master might. Was Tigney very senior, here? This was plainly a house for functionari
es, for the practical business of the Temple, not for worship or prayer.

  “What do you do in the Bastard’s Order, sir?”

  Tigney’s brows rose. “Did you not know? I oversee all the Temple sorcerers of this region. Comings and goings, assignments and accounts. I’m a bailiff of sorcerers, if you like. And you know how much everyone loves bailiffs. Thankless task. But Bastard knows they do not organize themselves.”

  “Must I stay in my room?” Pen asked as he was ushered into the hallway.

  Tigney snorted. “If the demon is already awake, it is probably pointless to try to hold you, but I request that you not depart the house without my leave. Please.” That last seemed dragged out of him, but he did sound earnest.

  Pen nodded. “Yes, sir.” One building seemed enough of Martensbridge for the moment. He didn’t think he could get lost in here.

  “Thank you,” said Tigney, and added to the porter, “Send the two Daughter’s men to me again, then the servant Gans. And let Clee know that I will be needing him later, and not to go off.”

  Pen followed the man out.

  * * *

  The porter led Pen to the top floor, given over to a series of tiny rooms for servants or lesser dedicats. The chamber to which he was gestured did have a window, with a battered table shoved up to it, holding a basin, mismatched ewer, a few grubby towels, a shaving mirror, and someone’s razor kit. It was flanked by two cots. There were other signs of occupation—pegs hung with clothing, a chest at the foot of one cot, boots scattered about, more possessions pushed under both beds. The second cot had been cleared, with Pen’s saddlebags dumped atop. A supper would be served below-stairs for the house’s denizens at dusk, Cosso told him before departing; Pen was pleased to be invited. Apparently, his exile from human contact was ended, if only for lack of space. He hoped the room’s resident would not be too dismayed by his imposed guest. At least he wouldn’t have to share a bed with a stranger, as sometimes happened in crowded inns.