Bosha was seated on the floor, his back to a crate, bare feet tightly roped together, bent over his bound hands in his lap. He still wore his dark trousers and tunic of last night, though the fine brocade coat was gone. He looked up at Pen with a weird grin of recognition, panting. His features were unmarked, but his eyes were wide and wild, his long hair escaping its braid. Stray white strands stuck to his sweating face in the hot, close, musty air of the storehouse.
Any more detailed medical survey was interrupted by Tronio, stepping forward to demand, “Who are you?” He perceived Des directly—Pen could tell by the way his demon cringed within him. Not, by any means, a weak or young one, but…
Two lives old, would you say, Des?
About that. She regarded it with the air of an old sword-master presented with a gawky young challenger, amused and a little pitying. Ugly muddle. Muzzled, too. Tronio has not used his gift well.
Or wisely, Pen agreed. But we knew that already.
“Learned Tronio, I presume?” said Pen lightly. “The white god wants a word with you. I was sent to deliver it.”
Whatever Tronio had been expecting him to say, that wasn’t it. He stared at Pen in disbelief of several kinds. “What are you?” Pen wasn’t sure if that was addressed to himself or Des.
Oh, me, I should imagine, preened Des. She was getting dangerously excited.
Pen thought what he had to say next bore no chance of working, but he was obliged to try. “We are Learned Penric of Martensbridge, Lodi, and Vilnoc, and my Temple demon Desdemona, and we are sent to arrest you by order of the Bastard, for sins of sacrilege in the misuse of His gifts. The crimes for which you abused them are a matter for other authorities.” Pen’s wording was precise—by order of the Bastard, not by order of the Bastard’s Order—but Tronio misheard. Willfully?
Tronio kept his face straight and stern, but consternation was washing through him as he realized that Pen somehow knew his lethal secrets. Buying time with misdirection, he said, “None of those polities have authority in Cedonia or its Temple, and two are our enemies. Are you a spy?” He stared at the Wealdean Temple robes, which he certainly recognized, mismatched to Pen’s native Cedonian accent, northern peninsula hillman overlaid with a high Thasalon education.
“I shouldn’t think so,” said Pen, a little doubtfully. “In any case, I’ve brought a signed order from lord regent Nao requiring the custody of the prisoner Bosha. So I’ll trouble you to turn him over to us and come along peacefully.”
The presence of Nao’s uniformed guardsmen upheld the truth of this. The bravo looked alarmed, but Tronio’s eyes narrowed. “Lord regent Nao has no more say than lord regent Bordane in this matter. You’ll have to take your demand before Lord Bordane. And he’s gone out.”
“That’s being attended to right now at the front entrance,” said Pen, wondering if that last tidbit of news was in their favor or not. But really, he didn’t believe more time to think was going to help Tronio much. Rather the reverse. The man’s bodily tension and heart rate were soaring. His demon, with its own reasons for fear, was reaching a frenzy that must be immensely distracting.
Aye, said Des. Tronio might not have understood you aright about where our marching orders came from, but I promise you his demon did.
With a passing glance, Pen chopped through the cords binding Bosha’s ankles and wrists. A whimper of relief escaped the eunuch as he pulled his hands apart, but he did not, as Pen would have expected of him, roll to his feet, remaining in his huddle. His body bore no bruises, no blood pooled on the floor—here, at least—but his hands were a swollen, purpling mess, several fingers bent till they’d disjointed. All of that still should not have pushed such a fit man so close to serious shock. Pen, getting some unpleasant notions about that, scowled at Tronio.
The inevitable moment when Tronio broke that Pen had been anticipating joylessly and Des eagerly happened in that instant—did Tronio think he was taking advantage of Pen’s momentary distraction? Des wasn’t distracted a bit, and fended the bolus of chaos, aimed at Pen’s knees not his head, into the floor almost as it left Tronio’s hands. Tronio learned faster than Alixtra had back on Jurgo’s steps, because he didn’t try again, instead grabbing the bravo and shoving him stumbling against Pen.
Pen wasn’t sure which of them was more startled. The bravo snatched his poniard from its sheath. Pen didn’t wait to find out which target he had in mind for it, clapping his hand to the back of the man’s head and putting him out, uncomfortably fast for the precise aim required. The bravo slumped into Pen’s arms, and Pen staggered to his knees.
This won Tronio time to bolt through the storehouse door, bright daylight slicing in and flickering with his passage. Des was quick enough to divert the ill-aimed and ill-formed chaos he’d cast at the three guardsmen while running by, but not enough to trip Tronio himself—of course the man didn’t double his opportunities by permitting his demon to act on its own. The guard lieutenant took a few sprinting steps toward the door, before Pen’s bark of “Stop!” reminded him of Pen’s earlier order not to attempt this.
“Follow and see which way he goes,” amended Pen, “but don’t try to close with him. Then come back.”
Pen laid the bravo-retainer out on the floorboards. His first question to Bosha as he rose was none that he’d rehearsed in his mind. “Who is this unpleasant fellow, anyway?”
“Unpleasant indeed.” Bosha’s knife-grin flicked, but he was still breathing faster than he should have been. “That would be the elusive Rach, Methani’s errand-boy whom you have so longed to meet.”
“Really!” And, looping back to his initial concern, “How do you feel?”
Bosha appeared to consider this query with great seriousness. “Old,” he finally chose.
His wits and wit were still intact, anyway. Pen wished he could say as much for his hands, which told a horrifying tale of recent events here. Pen knelt and pulled one toward him by the wrist for closer examination, making Bosha flinch and shudder. “Sorry. Did Rach do this?”
“Yes, till Tronio stopped him.”
“Wouldn’t have thought he’d have such mercy.”
“Ah, no. Tronio just had more effective methods of supplying pain.” Bosha glanced down his shivering body. “Leaving no marks, either. I’d no idea sorcerers could do such extremely useful things.”
“Worked directly on your nerves, did he?”
“Was that it? It felt like I was being burned alive from the inside out.”
“I imagine it would.”
“I would have screamed more, but he stopped that, too. Unhelpfully, as it also made me unable to talk for a few minutes.”
“For a man who is not a trained sorcerer-physician, Tronio seems to have some very advanced skills.”
“You would know, would you?” Bosha eyed him in newly wary speculation.
“Yes. It’s a perversion of the gift, though. Not his only one. What did they want of you? Admitting to Methani’s murder?”
“Among other things. We had a wide-ranging discussion. Wonderfully informative. For me at least. I’m almost glad I came.”
Pen’s brows rose. “I’ll want to hear more about that, when we have you safe. What did they get out of you?”
“Well, not that. I confessed to many other things, though. Every famous crime in Thasalon more than forty years old that I could remember, for a start. Oddly, they were not pleased.”
“Didn’t anyone ever teach you not to mock your torturers?”
“Yes,” sighed Bosha, “just now.” He gave a rueful look at his mangled hands.
“I can treat those,” Pen assured him. “Um… but the first thing I’m going to have to do is pull the popped joints back into place. Which is going to hurt as much as the disjointing.”
“Maybe… not quite yet?” said Bosha faintly.
“Shouldn’t wait too long.”
“Understood.”
“What was Rach doing with Tronio, and the both of them here?” Pen asked, nudging
the bravo’s unconscious body with his toe.
“Feel free to kick him for me if you like,” encouraged Bosha. “Tronio I’d seen around, but I first met your Rach when I arrived here some hours ago. They were detailed by Bordane to question me, I’m guessing because none of them wanted anyone who didn’t already know about this demon-assassination plot witnessing, just in case. How they both decided to come here in the first place, you’ll need to ask him for the specifics.” A nod to Rach.
“We’ll take him along, then.”
Nao’s lieutenant returned, a little winded.
“Which way did he go, house or street?” Pen asked.
“Street. He fled east, not that that tells us much.”
Considering how hard Alixtra had been to find in much smaller Vilnoc, this was going to present Pen an intractable problem. Although one less likely to delay them here than if Tronio had fled into the house, raising whatever alarm. Pen was almost as anxious to be gone as Bosha had to be.
“One of you”—Pen waved at the by-now-riveted guardsmen—“go out the gate and around to the front, and fetch back my wickerman. The other two, wrap this fellow in a sheet or roll him in a carpet or something, and carry him out to the cart. I’ll help Master Bosha. If anyone stops us on the way out, let me do the talking.”
This program was adopted, with a dust cover stolen from some stacked furniture.
A male servant approached them as they trudged through the compound, staring at them in nervous suspicion. Talking, in this case, might need to be with added powers. Pen readied the weirding voice in his mouth, trying to think of the least noticeable wording—You need to see these visitors out the gate, probably—and not looking forward to the sacrificial nosebleed to pay for the shamanic compulsion, but the man only asked, “Are you done in there, sirs? May we go back into our storehouse now?”
Someone had told the staff to ignore any sounds or other strangeness issuing from the building, apparently, and possibly not for the first time. Pen let the unvoiced spell out on a breath of relief, and told him brightly, “Yes, it’s all yours.”
His little procession skittered out the gate before anyone thought to ask how it came to be unlocked, though the servant followed to dutifully lock it again after them, saving Pen the trouble. The advantage of a large household—right hands used to not knowing what the left ones were about.
Bosha wasn’t best pleased to be loaded onto the cart with the unconscious Rach and having to prop him up, looking like a man out for a ride with his good friend the shrouded corpse. Pen paced alongside, ready to catch either if they started to fall out. It said something about Thasalon that they drew only brief stares from passersby, or maybe their uniformed guards daunted questioners. Rach’s color was better than his seatmate’s gray tinge, though the escape seemed to ease Bosha’s lingering shock a trifle. First thing when they got back to Laris and Nao’s, Pen decided, even before addressing the finger joints, was to get some fresh water down the shaken man.
As soon as they were a few streets away from Bordane’s palace, the lieutenant sent a man back to let their captain know he could stop arguing with Bordane’s porters and household officers and follow on. They arrived back at the princess’s palace at about the same time Pen’s party did, the captain still clutching Nao’s order and looking harassed.
The captain left to report to his lady and lord, the Xarre wickerman was sent off to the servants’ quarters for rest and refreshment, and the lieutenant guided Pen, Bosha hanging on his shoulder, to the palace infirmary, along with his men carrying the still-unconscious Rach. They found the place to themselves in the quiet of the late afternoon, though the palace physician hurried in shortly. Pen made use of the man in finding the water and a dose of syrup of poppies for Bosha, and helping with the physical work of straightening the several dislocated joints.
Bosha, still too nerve-strained to relinquish what control remained to him, declined more than a half-dose of syrup and also, more charily, Pen’s offer to knock him out like Rach for the treatment. In recompense Bosha did not, as he’d threatened, scream like a peacock as he claimed to have done at their breaking, but he did make distressing wheezing noises at the cartilaginous crunching of the joints realigning, his gray face going green.
Pen followed this with a general infusion of uphill magic to each hand to speed healing, which would help but not, alas, immediately, a process the hovering physician found baffling but intriguing. Pen tried to keep his explanatory lecture short, not easy with such an appreciative audience who asked such informed questions. He got rid of his helper at last by assuring him that he’d watch over this new patient as long as necessary, and no, the physician didn’t need to do anything for the unconscious Rach, the man was uninjured and would wake on his own.
The lieutenant and one guard had stayed to watch, in part because both patients were, technically, prisoners; in part, Pen was fairly sure, from sheer curiosity. He had them help settle Bosha on an infirmary cot, making him as comfortable as possible against a bank of pillows.
Bosha stared down at his swollen, discolored hands in fascinated dismay. “I’d managed to keep one last blade hidden on my person through it all, a little razor in my trouser cuff hem. I was thinking that if I ended up sewn into a weighted canvas sack and thrown into the harbor in the night, I could use it to slice my way out. I expect I really couldn’t have, after this.”
“I thought that was silk sacks,” said Pen, seating himself on the cot’s end for close hearing. Bosha’s voice, already raspy from its misuse, was losing volume to the syrup of poppies, though he still refused to surrender to what must be a sapping exhaustion.
“No, those are an honor for unfaithful imperial concubines.” Bosha considered. “Or unfaithful imperial bedchamber eunuchs, but fortunately such a task never came my way in my palace days.”
“I’m almost surprised.” As striking as the albino was now, he must have been stunning in his youth.
“I took care to make myself too useful in the chancellery. Also, the prior emperor’s tastes didn’t run in that direction.” He sighed. “At least Tronio and his dog didn’t work around to threatening my eyeballs. My other balls not being available. I tried to keep their thoughts from drifting to the notion, though they were getting increasingly frustrated when you showed up. Providentially.” His gaze flicked to Pen. “Was it?”
“I never quite know, with my god. He does have an interest here. More proximately, it was Lady Xarre’s idea to go to Laris and Nao for help.”
“Bless her, then.” He added after a reflective moment, “Always.”
“So what did you manage to glean from your interrogation? In between screaming like a peacock. Why were those two even there?”
“I gather they encountered each other at Methani’s palace while asking after last night’s excitements, which neither had been present for. Though the sorcerer saw the ghost still maundering around this morning. Whatever the pair concluded sent them hotfoot to Bordane. Whether it had something to do with your affair or they were just looking for a new protector, I’d not yet determined.” Bosha wrinkled his nose, mulling. “Rach seems to have arrived back in Thasalon only a day or so before you. His report was out of date—at the time he left Vilnoc, he thought the general was still recovering at his sister’s house, and Alixtra was in the bottle dungeon awaiting hanging. He’d no knowledge of what, if anything, she’d confessed or revealed. No hint of your journey. Nor, ah, of the general’s.” A glance across the room at the two guardsmen, who’d taken up flanking positions by the door, assiduously trying to look as if they weren’t drinking in and hoarding every word.
“Good so far…”
“Whatever they said to Bordane induced him to pull me from the prison for more private questioning. Much as he might have liked to sit in, he was compelled to go off for an urgent meeting with the archdivine of Thasalon on the pressing subject of his uncle’s funeral. Which, for a man of Methani’s high rank, would ordinarily be a major event, exce
pt for the disturbing matter of this sundering. If they don’t manage to lay the angry ghost before the ceremony—and by what Tronio let fall, his newly haunted palace was littered with Temple luminaries today, trying—”
“They won’t,” said Pen with certainty.
“His funeral rites represent their one last chance to do so. Which, if they fail, would be a highly public embarrassment for all concerned.” Bosha couldn’t help smirking.
“So—was Bordane privy to his uncle’s secret assassination schemes?”
Bosha’s lips twisted. “Tronio plainly thought so. Rach… seemed less certain. Which I thought curious. Granted, he was less central than Tronio, but he’s not stupid or unobservant, or Methani would never have employed him on such sensitive affairs. As much as I dislike Bordane, I’m not sure, hm, not sure I’d trust Tronio’s judgment of him. Tronio was fairly distraught, which seems to impair his thinking and comes out as, er, snappishness. I was trying to coax the interrogation in that direction when you arrived.”
“I shouldn’t have thought you’d have wanted to extend it.”
“Well, there was the picture of that canvas sack waiting for me at the end. Inspired my invention.”
Does this man even know how amazing he is? wondered Des, as engrossed by this oblique account as Pen.
I think Lady Xarre and Tanar do. It may be enough. Not that oblique misdirection wasn’t Bosha’s usual mode. Tronio and Rach must have had an utterly maddening few hours with him.
I notice, said Des, he doesn’t ask who you think poisoned Methani.
Yes, and I’ll bet he led Tronio away from the question, too. Any discussion on that head would have to wait until they were truly private.
The Assassins of Thasalon Page 20
