Penric's Fox: Penric and Desdemona Book 3

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Hamo shook his head. “She was widowed a few years ago. Earlier in her career she served as the divine of a temple in Oxmeade”—a large town a half-day’s ride from Easthome, Pen recalled—“and he was the long-time choirmaster there. A very devoted couple, from all I’ve been able to gather. But her single state was one of her many qualities that made her a good candidate to become a sorceress.”

  “Did the widow have any new suitors? Or, pardon but I must ask, lovers?”

  Hamo blinked, perhaps realizing for the first time that the locator was collecting a list of suspects. “None that I know. She did not seem to wish for one.”

  “Would you know?” asked Oswyl. By sorcerous means, Pen gathered he meant.

  “Yes,” said Hamo, more certainly. Oswyl cast a look at Pen, who gave him a brief nod.

  Penric then offered a question he wasn’t sure would occur to Oswyl: “How long ago did she receive her demon?”

  “Not long. Just three months. I thought they were settling in so well together.” He rubbed his forehead and burst out, “This makes no sense. She was level-headed, amiable, experienced—a decade serving all sorts of people as a temple divine will certainly disclose one’s character—are you sure it couldn’t have been some terrible accident or mistake?”

  “I haven’t ruled out anything yet. Not even that.”

  Penric could almost see Oswyl struggling not to say aloud, But it just doesn’t smell right. The locator had earned Pen’s respect last winter. Only now was he beginning to garner Pen’s pity as well. Pen was increasingly glad this grim task was Oswyl’s calling, and not his own.

  Oswyl went on, “Any other kin? Or in-laws?”

  “Not here in town. Mags has—had none living, and her late husband’s family are all back in Oxmeade.”

  “Friends and colleagues here in Easthome?”

  “Many of both. She was well-liked.”

  “Any of special note?”

  Hamo tossed off a few names, which the assistant dutifully jotted down.

  “Were any of these colleagues rival candidates to receive a demon?”

  Was Oswyl imagining professional jealousy, to add to jealousy in love? Pen supposed he had to cover every aspect.

  “Well, Learned Basum is also waiting for the next opportunity, but I wouldn’t call him a rival.”

  “Why not?”

  Pen put in, “Temple demons are almost always handed down to riders of the same sex.” At Oswyl’s questioning glance, he added, “My case was unusual, as Learned Ruchia had her fatal seizure of the heart unexpectedly, on the road near Greenwell as I was passing by. Her demon was supposed to have been handed off to a female physician-aspirant, waiting at her deathbed.”

  “And that’s another thing,” Hamo burst out. “I thought Mags might become my successor, in some few years, and at the end of her life have a demon tamed enough to grant to a physician. It’s… the waste goes on and on. Utter waste.” Hamo increasingly had the look of a man who needed to go apart to cry, or rave, or both, as the enormity of the loss to both himself and the Temple sunk in.

  Oswyl, with a list of people to tax growing longer than his arm, looked as though he wanted to let him. But Hamo himself turned to Penric.

  “And you found no sign at all of where her demon went?”

  The missing demon was as much Hamo’s task to manage and regulate as the late woman; in its own way, it, too, had a Temple career. Pen wasn’t sure if Oswyl quite grasped this yet, though Inglis, with his experience of Great Beasts cultivated over decades, surely did. Inglis had been very silent throughout this interview, possibly daunted by glimpsing what his own disastrous misadventure must have been like for the people trying to follow after him.

  “None, sir,” said Pen. “It was very disquieting.”

  “It could not have got far on its own without seizing on some being of matter to sustain it,” said Hamo.

  “Yes. A person, either accidently or on purpose, or an animal, likewise—”

  “An animal,” faltered Hamo, “would have its own dire consequences to such a developed demon.”

  “Yes, sir, I am very aware. Or the third possibility.” They both grimaced.

  “Which is what?” prodded Oswyl.

  Hamo answered, “If there is no creature whatsoever in range capable of absorbing a demon when its host-creature dies, even a small bird, it… I suppose you could say dissipates. Returns to its elemental chaos, losing all the knowledge it used to hold. Even the ability to be an elemental capable of starting over with the next animal along. Just… gone.”

  “It sounds a lot like sundering,” said Oswyl, his eyes narrowing as he tried to picture this.

  “Very like,” agreed Pen. “Only faster.” Within him, Desdemona shuddered.

  Hamo regarded Pen intently. “Did you have any sense of that, in that clearing?”

  Pen hesitated. “It’s not something I’ve ever encountered before, so as to immediately recognize some trace.” Nor I, Des conceded. Such instances are, by their nature, never witnessed.

  “Our stray demon must be sought, and I can’t leave here with all the rites to arrange for Mags,” said Hamo, with an agitated swipe of his hand through his hair. “My own people are scattered, or unsuitable.” He glanced across at Oswyl, who held up his palms in a fending gesture, and Pen tried unsuccessfully to remember the name of that Easthome sorcerer Oswyl had so definitely clashed with last winter. He, too, must be one of Hamo’s flock. Hamo’s gaze circled back to Pen. “Learned Penric…”

  Penric, seizing the hint, nodded. “I’d be very pleased to assist you in this matter, if I can beg leave of my superior the princess-archdivine.” Which he likely could. Inglis shifted, but said nothing. Yet.

  Oswyl looked very relieved. “I’d be pleased to accept your assistance.” He glanced more hesitantly at Inglis. “And yours, Shaman…?”

  “I’d like to take another look at that clearing,” said Inglis slowly. “Before it has a chance to rain. There were—I’d just like some more time to cast a wider search.” For what, he did not say, but Pen recalled that mysterious third arrow, and the bit of fox-fluff it had caught. And wondered what tracking abilities Inglis’s wolf-within might lend him, even beyond the hunting skills of Pen’s canton-mountain youth.

  “Wherever Magal’s demon is now,” said Penric, “it had to have started out from that point. We should go together. Tomorrow morning.”

  “Early,” agreed Inglis, earning an approving nod from Oswyl.

  Oswyl went on to Hamo, “Does—did—Learned Magal keep a chamber here, or live elsewhere?”

  “Yes, she lived in.”

  “I’ll need to look through her things, if you can undertake to keep her room undisturbed till I get back. Probably also tomorrow morning. We must go to the next-of-kin tonight, before it gets any later.” He added a bit wearily, “And then report to my own superiors.”

  Everyone present having a hundred new chores pressing down upon them, Oswyl extracted his party with more condolences, assuring Hamo that this tragedy would have his inquiry office’s utmost attention.

  *

  By the time Pen had made it back to the Temple guest house reserved for the princess-archdivine and her train, hastily washed up, donned his best and cleanest white robes, and dashed down to the courtyard, he was running very late, as well as just running. Well, more of an awkward skipping, as he tried to blend the dignity due from a learned divine with his need for speed. But his superior was still being loaded into her sedan chair when he came puffing up.

  “Ah, Penric,” she greeted him. “And Desdemona, of course.” The smile on her aging lips was dry, but not actually annoyed. “At last. I was preparing to send you to bed without any supper at all, if you missed this one.” Llewyn kin Stagthorne was dressed tonight as princess and royal aunt, not Temple functionary, though her gown showed off silks of Martensbridge manufacture, one of the more lucrative enterprises of the Daughter’s Order that she oversaw there.

  “My apolo
gies for my tardiness, Your Grace,” he replied, bending to kiss her archdivine’s ring held forgivingly out to him. The hand went on to flick at her bearers, who hoisted up her chair and began to cart her along downhill towards Kingstown.

  “Walk beside me, then,” she said serenely, “and tell me all about your day off. I take it the fish were either very good or very bad?”

  “Neither, as it turned out. Locator Oswyl was called out on an inquiry in the early morning—”

  “Oh, that’s a pity. I know you were looking forward to a visit. I quite liked him, during his brief sojourn in Martensbridge last winter. And your shaman friend was… interesting.” She paused to consider this. “So good he wasn’t hanged.”

  “I must agree. It would have been a pointless waste. Among other things. But we spent the day with Oswyl despite all, because he came to ask us both to help with his inquiry. And so some innocent fish were spared.”

  Her glance aside was sharp. “Really. And thereby hangs a tale?”

  “Yes, Your Grace, but not one for the street.” The bearers allowed the honor of transporting her, sturdy dedicats in the blue and white of their goddess and hers, were not the only prick-eared listeners within range.

  Her eyelids lowered in understanding. “After, then. I am too old to stay out late, even for the sake of my Stagthorne kin.”

  “And I’ve undertaken to go out early tomorrow, so our steps will match on that.”

  “Hm.” She digested this, then set aside her curiosity for dessert. “In any case, you will gratify me tonight by introducing yourself as Learned Lord Penric kin Jurald of Martensbridge, instead of your usual contraction.”

  “Too wordy, Your Grace. It offends my sense of literary economy.”

  She sniffed. “There are places where a pious humility is a suitable thing. Tonight’s venue is not one of them. You are my sorcerer; your status reflects on my own.”

  His conceding nod was undercut by his grimace. “Jurald Court is little more than a fortified farmhouse in an obscure mountain valley, and I am its portionless younger son, as you and I both know.”

  “But no one else here will, and you are in no wise obliged to inform them. The world is not always so friendly a place that you can afford to squander your advantages on a pointless conceit.”

  “I much prefer the meaningful title I earned to the empty one I inherited.”

  “So, not modesty at all, but sly pride? Your scholarship is a delight to me, Penric, but of the many things you learned in seminary, I doubt court polish was one.”

  “Recalling our meals in the student refectory, I’m afraid you’re right,” he granted ruefully.

  “Think of this visit as an opportunity for a different kind of learning, then. Another day will put some other plate on your table, more to your taste, but do not waste the food in front of you.”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” he said meekly.

  Their conversation broke off as her guards and bearers, and the second sedan chair porting her inseparable secretary, negotiated the long flights of steps crisscrossing down the bluff. Pen fell behind as the lanes narrowed and twisted, then strode up beside Llewyn again as they came to the wider street fronted by the mansion of the royal relative hosting tonight’s festivities. When the chair grounded beside the entrance, he was granted the privilege of raising her to her silk-slippered feet and offering her his arm, which she took with a rather smug smile.

  The official naming ceremony for the blobby scrap of humanity Penric had been assured was a prince had gone off smoothly, the gods be thanked, three days ago. So he supposed the worst was over. Since the Archdivine of Easthome had officiated, Penric was not sure what his own superior’s Temple task had been, besides swelling an already impressive procession. Good fairy, perhaps? Penric’s function had seemed to be to stand around, look decorative, and try desperately to guard his best white robes against the detritus of a busy city. Tonight was shaping to be a reprise.

  He even spotted some of the same faces, here in the hall of the elderly lord who was husband to Llewyn’s even-more-aged sister Princess Llewanna—Llewyn released her hold on Pen to embrace this sibling. Really, it didn’t seem all that different from some of the princess-archdivine’s god’s-day banquets back in Martensbridge. Well, more lords, fewer merchants. Fewer Temple folk, for that matter; Pen didn’t spot that many other robes. More highborn relatives, though the influx of the aristocracy into town was already starting to thin. More expensive clothes and jewels. Ambassadors from far countries, not near counties, all right, that was a novelty—perhaps he’d have a chance to practice his languages before the evening was over. Men whose mistakes could kill more people, faster; but still, just men.

  The candlelit banquet chamber was excessively warm in the summer evening. Pen sat by Llewyn’s left hand and was painfully polite to the few people who spoke to him and not her, smiling but not too much, since she’d once chided him for the latter. Was court polish a euphemism for being very bored while being stuffed very full?

  It wasn’t until the tables were being cleared away for the doubtless sedate dancing that he spotted an object of interest, or at least another person under fifty years old. The young fellow was even skinnier than Pen, managing to look less like a lord and more like a very well-dressed scarecrow. His most prominent feature was a pair of the thickest glass spectacles Pen had ever seen on a person’s face.

  They drifted together next to a wall wainscoted in gilded leather. “Is that not Martensbridge lens-craft?” Pen inquired, as pleased as if he’d run across an unexpected old acquaintance from his home village.

  “Ah!” The young man’s hand flew to his gold-decked temple. “You know the work?”

  “Yes, very well. And the workman, I daresay. The artisan in Lower Linden Street, yes? I’ve heard several of my more aged colleagues pour blessings upon his head. And his hands.”

  The fellow’s chest swelled as much as it could. “You understand!” He peered more questioningly at Pen. “Do you?”

  “As I can think of no greater nightmare than to lose my ability to read, yes.”

  The bespectacled lordling smiled gratefully. “I was fourteen before I even found mine. Everyone just thought I was a clumsy fool when I was younger.”

  “Oh, that’s unfortunate.”

  He nodded. “Because I could see shapes and colors and light and movement just fine, I didn’t think myself blind, didn’t realize others saw so much more than me. And neither did they. It was a Temple divine who’d been trying to tutor me, and who wore them himself, who first suspected my malady, and took me to Martensbridge to have me fitted. It was a revelation. Trees had leaves. And letters were not elusive fur-bearing creatures hiding coyly behind each other. I wasn’t stupid, I just couldn’t see.” He was a little breathless, getting this all out at once to a rare sympathetic listener. “When I graduated Rosehall with second honors, it was the proudest day of my life, and no one understood why I was weeping till I nearly couldn’t see again. Except Yvaina.” He nodded sharply at this mysterious codicil.

  “I attended the white god’s seminary at Rosehall,” Pen returned, quite willing to be cheerful for a fellow bookman’s miracle. “I wonder if we could have been there at the same time?” Or not; Pen would certainly have remembered the spectacles, however unprepossessing their owner. Although the great university at Rosehall did host some six thousand students at a time. “I took my braids and oaths a year ago this spring.”

  “I left four years back,” the young man said. “So maybe?”

  “Mm, no. That would have been just about the time I arrived.”

  His brows crimped in puzzlement over the arithmetic; a divine’s training normally took six years, not three. But he shrugged this off.

  Pen asked, “What was your study?”

  “Mathematics, mostly. I’d hoped to find a place in the Father’s Order, perhaps rising to comptroller, at which point I thought I could afford to marry. I even began there as a lay dedicat. But, uh, other things
happened first.”

  A young woman approached them, nearly as lanky and scrawny as the man apart from the distinctive pregnant bulge about her middle, like a plum on a stick. Pen had thought Des had fallen asleep, as he’d wished he could do, but she put in, The word you are groping for, young Pen, is willowy. Far more flattering, thus safer. Trust me.

  Her clothes, though rich, hung on her almost as tentatively as the fellow’s, but at the sight of her his face lit as though the sun had come out behind his winking lenses.

  “Ah. Allow me to introduce my wife. Baroness Yvaina kin Pikepool. And, oh, you are, learned sir…?”

  Pikepool was not one of the major Wealdean kin houses, or Llewyn would have made Pen con it before now. Possibly not as obscure, however, as his own. Pen bowed. “Lord Penric kin Jurald, presently of Martensbridge.”

  “Ah, that’s why you were sitting with the Princess Llewyn at the high table. You looked a very daunting guardian.”

  Yvaina’s rather thick brows knotted. “Is that not a Darthacan name?”

  “Saonese, courtesy of a younger son with a short-lived dower and a last canton kin land-heiress. Then you would be Baron…?”

  The fellow opened his hands as if in embarrassment. “Wegae kin Pikepool. Though only lord for the last two years. The inheritance was quite unexpected.”

  The name might be obscure, but it was memorable. “You wouldn’t happen to own a large tract of wooded hills about ten miles east of here?”

  Wegae blinked in surprise. “It’s part of the old family seat. That and that dreadful falling-down fortress. It’s only good for a hunting lodge anymore, if I had the least interest in hunting.” He made an excusing gesture at his face. “That was another skill no one could beat into me as a lad, along with reading.”

  He had not betrayed the slightest flinch at the question. Possibly no one had informed him yet of what had been found this morning in his woods? Oswyl, with all those closer relatives and colleagues of Magal’s to work through, might not get to him till tomorrow. Pen decided he’d better not step on the locator’s lines, contenting himself with, “Very pretty countryside.”