The Orphans of Raspay

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  And then practice, because chances were that enemies wouldn’t agreeably hold still while he felt their heads, one by one. More likely he’d find himself facing a whole gang of rowdies trying to murder him, and, thus, jumping about erratically. …The alternative of never leaving his house and Nikys again seemed ever-more-attractive.

  Meanwhile, he supposed he had better go back to his proven standby of roughing up the big sciatic or axillary nerves, inducing pain so excruciating that the victim could not move. And if he misjudged the force and snapped a nerve, at least it would only cripple, not kill.

  The whisper—and not from Des—that some men deserved death, he did his best to ignore. Even as a learned divine, it was not his place to judge men’s souls. The gods in Their time would do so without fail, and with much fuller knowledge.

  Lencia, whose face had been tight since they’d left the ransom house, finally asked, “What did you do to those men?”

  “Drugged their olives,” Pen offered. He added after a fraught silence, “Not ours, of course.” He trusted that questions like how? and when? would take further reflection that no one would have time for. You didn’t witness magic, no, of course not.

  “Oh.”

  The bulk of the slave prison loomed at last. Pen led the girls into the nearest side street till he found a niche between two houses, and tucked them into it.

  “Lie up here and wait till I come back,” he murmured. “I’m not sure how long this is going to take. But if it works, you’ll see some activity starting on the pier.”

  “What if you don’t come back?” whispered Seuka.

  “If I haven’t returned for you by daylight… sneak back to the ransom house. At least they’ll feed you there.”

  Doubtful silence greeted this. He ruffled each of their heads, mute goodwill in lieu of lies, and slipped away into the darkness.

  Now it grew tricky, as he’d need to scout and act in the same pass. He began by circling the building, one hand tracing the scabrous stucco, all Des’s senses extended. Old ghosts were common in old buildings, sundered souls drifting down into oblivion, but this place seemed to harbor more than its share. He brushed his hand, pointlessly, at one vague shape that pulsed in front of his face like some smoky jellyfish. It had dwindled far past the point of being able to assent to any god; Pen had no means canny or uncanny to affect it. And vice versa, he supposed. Yes, agreed Des, so best attend to what we can do something about.

  On the prison wall above, a few high, iron-barred windows would be susceptible to rusting the rods. At the back, steps led down in shadows to a heavy door with a sturdy lock and a wooden bar, which likely gave onto whatever holding cells lay within. Pen silently unlocked it, unshipped the bar from its clamps, and set it aside, just in case. A higher section of the building, jutting out parallel to the shore, might house administrative offices, unpeopled now. Pen edged around it to the main front door facing the sea and the pier a hundred paces off, where the prize ship creaked sleepily in the lapping of the harbor waves.

  Rather more than the thirty sailors Pen had seen enter earlier lay inside; perhaps forty? Residue of an earlier catch? Most dozing, some awake and in pain, none happy. The front doors, also reached by a few steps down, were double, of iron-bound oak so old it might have been iron itself. All susceptible to the three kinds of fire at Pen’s command: rot, rust, and flame. But the ornate iron lock was presently unlatched. Pen lifted the handle quietly and slipped inside.

  No vestibule; the door opened directly onto a wide front room. To his right was an archway and stairs up to the record-keeping section. Directedly ahead lay a locked, barred door to the prison proper. To his left, four men sat around a table under the light of an oil lantern suspended from a roof beam. Passing the dull night playing cards, plainly. Pen blinked his dark-accustomed eyes at the yellow glare.

  They twisted around on their stools at his entry, curious but unalarmed when they saw he was alone. The wine carafe seemed mainly there to make their water safer to drink, because they did not look in the least inebriated. One fellow was older, stringy and grizzled. Two were big rowdies. A fourth was a skinny youth. Sergeant, muscle, and runner, Pen pegged them.

  Without the girls to safeguard from sudden violence, this time Pen wasn’t stopping to chat.

  The sergeant had barely laid his cards face-down upon the table and opened his mouth as Pen began to methodically disable the squad. The muscle-men appeared the most alarming, but Pen thought the runner, who could race for reinforcements, was his greatest hazard. One, two, three, four around the table Pen blasted each sciatic nerve with strong chaos, barely short of a severing. He was halfway around again for the work on the opposite legs before the sergeant, rising with a frown, yelped and stumbled to his knees. While the rest attempted to leap up but instead discovered the sabotage coming from their own limbs, Pen made a third pass, stinging the big nerves to their tongues. It wouldn’t silence them altogether, but it would certainly muffle their pained noises.

  On a ledge above the corner fireplace, unlit in this heat, sat a box of tallow candles. Pen snatched it up. One of the burly guards, now trying to crawl across the floor, made a valiant but futile lunge at Pen’s ankles as he skipped past. A couple of key rings strung with iron keys hung from pegs beside the inner door. Pen grabbed them down, hanging the rings on his left arm like clanking bracelets. He boosted the door bar out of its brackets, scowled at the overabundant choice of keys, shrugged, and popped the lock without the mechanical aid.

  Stepping down into the deeper darkness beyond, Pen found a central corridor with stone walls, a couple of locked doors on each side. Two chambers on the right, unoccupied. A longer chamber on the left housed the present prisoners. Pen picked a candle out of the box, lit it with a thought, unlocked the nearest door with another—fire and unlocking were among his and Des’s oldest magics, and he half-smiled in memory—and nudged it open with his knee. He rocked back at the stench that rolled out.

  This is an old Cedonian prison. Doesn’t it have drains?

  Aye, Des reported after a moment. There’s one down at the end. Meant to be kept rinsed with buckets of seawater. Blocked, unfortunately. I doubt it’s been cleaned out since the pirates took over.

  Or since the Cedonians left. Pen took a shallow breath and stepped through.

  He raised his smoking candle high, less to see than to illuminate himself for his soon-to-be audience. A few gleams reflected back out of the shadows from widened eyes or bits of metal. Men lay scattered up the length of the chamber on the bare stone floor. They were secured by a miscellany of means, some manacled together at the wrists, some in leg irons, some with hands thrust through locked boards. A brief recoil rippled through them, then a slight, threatening surge forward as they realized the intruder was alone.

  To prevent unfortunate misunderstandings, Pen quickly shouted in trade Adriac, “I’ve come to get you out of here! Your ship is still tied at the pier, and there’s only a night watch. You’ll be able to retake it together!”

  Men stirred, neighbors waking others. Pen bent quickly to the nearest manacled pair and slipped their chains loose. He handed them the keys and the candles. “Start freeing the rest.” He stood and shouted again, “Who are the ship’s officers?”

  A thickset man with a nasty green bruise on his forehead climbed to his feet and staggered forward, holding out his hands trapped in a plank. Before the light redoubled as the first pair shared flame from one candle to another, Pen passed his hand discreetly over the lock and let the man drop the device from his wrists.

  “I’m the first mate of the Autumn’s Heart,” he said in a strained voice. “Captain’s killed. Who in the Bastard’s hell are you?”

  “Out of it, I assure you,” said, well, maybe Des. Pen cleared his throat and continued, “Was yours the ship taken on its way to Lodi last week, carrying the two young Jokonan girls?”

  “Aye…” The man hesitated, squinting with increasing bewilderment at Pen. “Do you know what happened
to them?”

  “They were… given into my care.” Pen didn’t venture to say by whom. Or Whom. “I’ll explain it all later. Right now, there are four guards in the front room who need to be tied up before they, uh, start moving again. You’ll find a supply of things you can use for weapons out there as well—at least, there was a pile of gleanings in the corner that looked promising.”

  A number of men interned here were injured, mostly roughed up like the mate, but some cut or with broken bones. Don’t get distracted by them now, growled Des. You can fool with them later, once we’re at sea.

  Right. But Pen added to the chamber, “Let the hale help the halt!”

  Movement rumbled through the candle-shot shadows as the men began sorting themselves out. If they were mostly one ship’s crew, they must already be used to working together under dangerous conditions, or so Pen hoped. He turned to back to the first mate.

  “Once I get you to your vessel, I want you to take me and my nieces—uh, that is, those Jokonan girls—to Vilnoc. There will be some reward for delivering us there. After that, you’ll be free to go where you will.”

  “It’s not even my ship. I suppose it belongs to the captain’s widow, now. And I’ve lost all our lading!”

  Upset people tended to get tangled in the most useless details, sometimes. “You might be able to make a new start on trade goods in Vilnoc, before returning the ship to the widow. She’ll want the news as soon as may be—better saddened than endlessly uncertain. Main thing is you have this one chance to get you and your shipmates off of Lantihera. Because I’ve met the Rathnattan here who is buying galley slaves, and trust me, you don’t want to fall into his hands.”

  That seemed to focus the man. He nodded grimly.

  While this was going on, another sailor had come up: rangy, skin a sun-darkened bronze, ragged and stubbled. An equally bronzed and scruffy younger man followed him. Everyone in here smelled like a privy, there was no helping that, but they seemed to have been soaking up the fumes for longer.

  “What are they saying?” Rangy asked his partner in Roknari.

  “Something about Vilnoc. Or Rathnatta, I’m not sure.”

  “We don’t want to go to Vilnoc!”

  Penric turned and shifted smoothly to low Roknari. “And who might you be, sir?”

  The man grabbed his tunic sleeve. “You can speak!”

  “And listen. How did you come here?”

  “I’m just a poor fisherman of Astwyk.” Another island up the Carpagamon chain, Pen dimly recalled. “They took my boat! It was all I had!” Remembered distress pushed him close to weeping. “Why us? It was just a poor boat! And some fish!”

  Pen wondered if he’d be less outraged over richer targets. “The prizes were your persons. Pirates will raid anywhere for those, poor boats or poor villages, as long as they are ill-defended and easy. Like plucking the fruit that hangs lowest on the tree.”

  “But what’s this about Vilnoc?”

  “I’ve come to free you, and we are going to flee to Vilnoc.” Assuming his conclusion, but if Pen assumed it firmly enough, he hoped it would stick. “Once we’re all protected there, everything else can be sorted out.”

  “What am I to do in Vilnoc without my boat, without a single coin? We’d just be sold into debt-bondage!”

  Debt-bondage was considerably easier to escape than slavery; indeed, most people who fell into it expected it to be temporary. Some were wrong, of course, either death overtaking them before they repurchased or outlived their contracts, or, if they found themselves in a comfortable situation, just settling down reconciled to their reduced status. But Pen could entirely understand the lack of allure.

  “If it will reassure you, I can give you my personal guarantee that will not happen.” A certainty beyond Pen’s own purse; at that point he might have to start calling in favors.

  “Who are you to promise that?”

  “A man who would make a very bad galley slave.”

  Which was certainly a believable assertion. The fisherman fell back to confer in his own tongue with the rest of his stolen ship’s crew.

  Some of the sailors reappeared, dragging in the half-paralyzed and disarmed guards from the front room. One of them took the chance to get in a few retaliatory kicks. Pen’s hand landed on his shoulder. “That’s not necessary. You can tie them up. Or just lock them in here when we leave.”

  The man swore and turned on him, brows lowered, beginning to snap something; but then fell silent, stepping uneasily away.

  A sailor pulled one his comrades, clanking, up to the first mate. “None of these keys work!”

  Pen sighed and bent to the leg irons. “Let me try. Ah, there.” The bolts fell into his hand. The comrade shook the shackles free. All three men goggled at him as he rose.

  “How did you do that?” asked the sailor.

  “There’s a trick to it,” Pen said vaguely. “It’s a puzzle. Like that one with the bent nails.” Which had repeatedly defeated him as a child, as he recalled. Not anymore. He smirked to himself.

  The three said nothing, instead hurrying away to join their fellows who were filing out to marshal their foray in the corridor and the front room. But the first mate frowned back at Pen, and from somewhere in the chamber echoed an unwanted whisper of Sorcery! He’s a sorcerer!

  The mob of them were too noisy to fit Pen’s notion of a night raid, but with luck things would go swiftly. The most able-bodied shouldered up to the front ranks, with the injured, mostly helping each other, trailing after. The nervous but determined first mate took the natural lead, or was thrust into it. He had surrendered rather than die before, Pen recalled, but perhaps his unpleasant experiences since had stiffened his backbone.

  The Astwyk fisherman meanwhile gathered up his own crew at the far end of the corridor, preparing to escape out the back way, presumably to search for his own beloved boat. Pen didn’t think that the surest bet, but provided they didn’t impede his own escape he wasn’t going to argue with the man. Chaos worked in any direction.

  The sailors from the Autumn’s Heart poured out of the prison and moved off in the dark like a big mumbling caterpillar, more shuffling than charging. But the distance to the pier was short and downslope, and they picked up momentum despite themselves.

  Pen hung back till he was sure they’d reached their ship. The wharf guards seemed fire-watch rather than soldiers, and were swiftly overborne by numbers. Pen heard muffled cries and a couple of splashes as bodies hit the water, then the reassuring thump of feet upon a deck, followed by more confidently nautical barked orders.

  Pen turned and ran for the side street.

  The girls were still where he’d concealed them, thankfully. They hadn’t wandered off or even fallen asleep again, but instead waited in a worried huddle. Their breaths hitched as he dashed up, but they didn’t recoil or yelp, so presumably they could at least recognize his height and pale hair in the gloom. They rose at his panted, “Come on. Time to go! Run.”

  They did their best, but Pen’s legs were undeniably longer. He tugged them down the street in little leaps, like young deer. “Where are we going, Master Penric?” gasped Seuka.

  “I’ve secured us a ship. It will take us to my home in Vilnoc.” If it got away from the dock swiftly enough to outrun pirate reinforcements from shore that would surely be coming along soon, when the noises from the prison and pier were finally noticed.

  The sailors already had one jib-sail up, stretching out to catch the gentle land breeze and bestow the first steering-way. A couple of figures scurried along the edge of the pier, casting off lines. “Hurry!” called someone from the thwart, peering landward toward the prison and Pen. “I can see him coming back!” Leaving the lines to trail in the water, the figures pelted from the dock and galloped up the gangplank, which swung and scraped as the ship started moving.

  “Hey!” yowled Pen. “Hold! We’re here!”

  A pair of sailors looked right at him and yanked the gangplank inboard. The ship
eased away from the pier, the black water below widening. Already it was farther than Pen could jump, and certainly farther than he could toss the sisters, even one at time. Crow-girls don’t fly… And neither could sorcerers.

  “What are you idiots doing?” Pen screamed after them.

  The first mate hung over the rail, looking unconvincingly apologetic. “I’m sorry! But we cannot be having with a sorcerer aboard. You’d bring us bad luck for sure!”

  I’ll show you bad luck. I could still sink you from here, you know! Pen, gasping in breathlessness and outrage, barely kept the threat from escaping his tongue. Or, more effectively, from his seething mind.

  A couple of seamen stood at the rail beside their leader and made averting holy signs at him.

  Pen’s return signs were a lot less holy. “You ignorant, ungrateful, selfish sons-of-bitches!” As he stamped along the pier in parallel to their retreat, a torrent of long-unused Wealdean broke from his lips. It was a wonderful language for obscenities, guttural, blunt, and inventively coarse. Wealdean invective had weight. It blew his audience back from their rail in brief alarm, but, alas, had no other effect. Even that was lost as the mate cuffed his comrades and sent them to help raise more canvas. At the bow, a spinnaker was haled upward and bellied out, sliding the ship silently away into the night waters.

  Pen, halted by the pier’s end, bellowed after it, “Bastard’s teeth I hate sailors!”

  * * *

  He was overheated and dripping with sweat, partly from the run but mostly from using too much magic, too fast. Too carelessly. Too obviously. Obviously.

  The Corva girls, Pen discovered as he wheeled, were hunched together staring at him in deep dismay.

  He hardly needed his dark-sight, raking the shoreline, to spot more trouble on its way. The wavering torches were clue enough. He switched to Roknari. “We have to get off this pier and hide. If they don’t see us, chances are they’ll think we escaped on that ship, which will buy us time. There’s no going back to the ransom house now.”