The Orphans of Raspay: A Penric and Desdemona novella in the World of the Five Gods (Penric & Desdemona Book 7)

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Any time. Her curiosity seemed equal to his own; her alarm, now their captors were out of hammer range and the soul-harvesting gods had decamped, less.

  Grunting, Pen heaved himself upright and rested one shoulder against the bulkhead. In the corner of the space, as far from him as they could creep—which was only about six feet—two small figures cowered.

  Oh. Children. Pen started to ease to the opposite corner, realized it was the designated chamber pot, and stayed where he was. Des, at his wisp of thought, unloosed the straps around his wrists, and he retrieved and redonned his belt. He propped his back against the wall more comfortably, stretching out his long legs, and took stock.

  Two girls. Perhaps ten and eight? Sisters, possibly, though resemblances were hard to gauge from youth-rounded features. Their clothing was ordinary, calf-length tunics with dyed braided belt ties, simple but carefully sewn; little jackets, leather sandals. His summation of their medical state was reflexive, still hard to resist for all that he had disavowed the calling of physician. They were parched, bruised, tense, hungry; but without broken bones, cuts, or deeper hurts. It could be worse.

  It still could.

  Pen licked his own dry lips, gentled his voice. Tried Adriac. “Well, hello there, you two.”

  They flinched and clamped each other tighter, staring wildly at him.

  Cedonian. “I won’t hurt you.” Still no help. He repeated his greeting in Darthacan, and then Ibran, which won a twitch. All right, one more…

  “Hello, there.” Adding the endings in high Roknari that suggested teacher to student, he continued, “My name is Master Penric. My rank is scribe. What are your names?”

  Their frozen grips upon each other scarcely slackened, though as the silence stretched the older proffered, a bit convulsively, “I can write. A little.”

  A social effort? Claiming value for herself? In any case, the brave venture into speech should be rewarded. “That’s very good.”

  Not to be outdone, the smaller one put in, “I can draw.”

  Sisters, no doubt of it. Pen’s lips twitched up in a smile that wasn’t even false. “So what should I call you?”

  The older swallowed and said, “My name is Lencia Corva.”

  “I’m Seuka,” said the younger, frowned, and added, “Corva.”

  Seuka was a Roknari name, Lencia was Ibran, and Corva… Corva was interesting. Their accents were revealing; not the pure Roknari of the Archipelago, but the melodious variant of the Roknari princedoms that capped the great peninsula of Ibra on its northern shore. The girls did manage the polite endings that placed Pen’s claimed rank as higher than their own. A Roknari princeling would have addressed a scribe as a servant. Or, Pen was grimly reminded, as a slave.

  In the growing light from the grating, Pen noted cropped brown curls on the older one’s head; tighter, redder curls on the other’s, their springy unruliness prisoned by a grubby ribbon at her nape. Lightish eyes on each, though he could not make out the color quite yet. Both skinny, but not starved despite recent hunger.

  “Did the pirates get you, too?” asked Lencia.

  “I’m afraid so.” Pen leaned his head, which unsurprisingly ached, back against the wooden bulkhead. “I was sick from the storm, and then I was asleep. I was supposed to be sailing to Vilnoc in Orbas.” He wondered if it would reassure them to mention the wife who awaited him there, with luck not-yet-anxiously. No. He would keep Nikys, and every other vulnerability, clutched tight to his chest for now. Though tossing out these little verbal breadcrumbs as though trying to attract birds seemed to be fruitful.

  “We were going to find Papa in Lodi,” said Lencia. “But then everything went wrong.”

  “He was supposed to be in Agenno, but he wasn’t,” said Seuka, sounding peeved.

  Agenno was a major port on the coast of Carpagamo, near the border of Saone; about the halfway point in the eight hundred east-west miles that separated the Ibran peninsula and Lodi. These girls were farther from their birthplace than Pen was from his.

  Hm, said Des. A hundred years ago, ‘Corva’ was an Ibran nickname for a whore. Crow-girl. Not wholly rude. Doesn’t exactly square with a papa. I suppose it could have become a surname since then…

  “Master Corva of Lodi, then?” Pen led on.

  “No, our papa is Master Ubi Getaf,” said Lencia, with earnest precision. “He’s a merchant from Zagosur.”

  Which was the royal capital of Ibra, and its main entrepot.

  “Taspeig wrote to him after Mama died, but the letter just came back saying he’d gone trading to Agenno. So Taspeig tried to take us there, but at the factor’s post they said he’d gone on to Lodi, and she wouldn’t go any farther.”

  Taspeig was another Roknari name, by derivation at least. “Was she a relative?”

  Seuka shook her head, the wad of curls moving with it. “No, she was Mama’s servant. We don’t have any relatives. Mama said that’s ‘cause she was an orphan.”

  Pen had a distinct sense of his boots sinking into a bog, deeper and deeper.

  “Papa gave Mama a little house in Raspay,” Seuka went on. “I liked it there. We slept out on the porch above the back garden when it was hot. But the landlord said we couldn’t stay there by ourselves without Mama.”

  Raspay was a modest port town in the princedom of Jokona, on the western side of the peninsula, right. A merchant based in Zagosur might easily make it the terminus of some personal coastal trade route. “Did your papa have no family in Zagosur?”

  Lencia scowled. “Too much. He has a wife and children there. He wouldn’t ever take us to meet them, and Mama said she didn’t know, and we weren’t to pester.”

  She being, presumably, the legitimate wife. Some such women were tolerant of husbandly by-blows. Most were not. So if not orphans outright, the sisters were half-orphans for certain; bastards by Ibran law, and by Jokonan as well if the second wife wasn’t official.

  And, of course, they were here. As he was. Was propinquity a theological hazard?

  “So, Jokona,” sighed Pen. “Are you Quadrenes or Quintarians?”

  They tensed, looking anxiously at each other. “Which are you?” said Lencia after a cautious moment.

  “Quintarian,” said Pen firmly. “Very common in my country.” Countries, he supposed. He had traveled far from the cold cantons in late years.

  Two sets of narrow shoulders relaxed. “Papa is Quintarian,” Lencia offered. “Mama said we could be Quintarian at home, but had to be Quadrene outside. So… I don’t know… partly?”

  Pen spared a moment of fresh loathing for the sectarian idiocy that made even children afraid.

  Well. A trained divine and sorcerer seemed a generous gift to fellow wards of the white god, here in this hold. Though surely any other decent adult would have taken up responsibility for the helpless…

  The gods are parsimonious, murmured Des, slyly quoting his own text back at him. A slight sense of preening.

  So it seems. Just once, Pen thought glumly, he’d like to get an answer to prayers, instead of being delivered as one.

  And where are we going now? If his bodiless demon had possessed any eyes but his own, Pen thought they’d be crinkled in amusement.

  Lodi. Evidently. He could feel the new weight dropping onto his shoulders like baggage onto a packhorse. Somehow.

  * * *

  Clunks and clanks vibrated through the bulkhead, and the thumps of footfalls. Calls in Adriac and Roknari filtered down through the grating—bellowed orders and acknowledgements, not screams. The ship surged sideways, evidently unmooring from the cargo coaster. Flapping canvas snapped taut, and the ship heeled in response.

  Des, what can you make out? It was past time to take a wider survey of his situation and what resources he had.

  They seem to have split their crew. Taking the coaster whole as a prize, I daresay. I imagine they will travel in convoy to whatever port they use to sell off their captives and goods.

  Which port was an important question.
In times of war, combatants on all sides would haul captured enemies home to be ransomed or enslaved, depending on their rank. But though conflict among the realms bounding this sea was endemic, Pen hadn’t heard rumor of any open warfare this season. Their pirates seemed to be strictly a venture of commerce, homegrown.

  The blend of languages in the crew was telling. Adriac-speaking Carpagamo wrestled with the Roknari for hegemony over the long chain of mountainous islands that ran north and swung around to the east, with a gap of open sea before the Archipelago proper. The islands closest to the mainland were held firmly by Carpagamo, though sometimes Adria or Darthaca muscled in. The islands at the looping tip were usually held by some Roknari prince. In between was a debatable stretch that went back and forth, or was left as a neutral buffer if times were peaceful. This mixed lot of sailors had to be from one of the often-brutalized buffer islands, and Pen could only wish Quadrenes and Quintarians could be so cooperative for better ends.

  Umelan, Desdemona’s—eventual—sixth human possessor, had been a war victim, kidnapped from her Archipelago island home by a Darthacan military raid and sold south to Lodi. Continentals captured by the Roknari were sold north to the Archipelago. In both directions, the scheme worked the same way to tame captives, separating them from families, communities, languages and religions, dropping them down off-balance in strange friendless places. There they would have no choice but to cooperate in the theft of their labor, while working to scrape together what funds they could to buy their way out, or hope to be granted freedom as an act of charity by their bond-holders. Umelan had received such a boon in the will of Des’s fifth possessor, the courtesan Mira of Lodi. The receipt of Mira’s demon at her death had been less planned.

  Umelan’s experiences were a century out of date, and in general Pen did not enjoy dipping into her unhappy memories, or, worse, having them invade his dreams, but she was a resource of information better than any scroll. Place her in the plus column.

  (A sour snort, he thought, from that one-twelfth layer of Desdemona that was Umelan. He mentally offered her a humble salute in return. She had, after all, gifted him with her language, for all that he had refined his command subsequently by his own studies.)

  A buffer-island port would host small merchants and traders from all over, so captives might be sold either north or south. The coaster’s men and Penric would be earmarked for north. It was a coin toss whether being enslaved on the galleys or in the mines was more lethal, but either was to be vigorously avoided. Female captives commonly were given over to the same domestic duties they would have been performing at home: spinning, weaving, gardening, cleaning, cooking, childcare. Childbearing. What fate was planned for these Jokonan girls was a puzzle, though the fact that they were being kept separate and relatively unharmed was probably not due to kindness.

  In any case, the need to rid themselves quickly of their perishable prizes, plus the division of their crew, meant that the islander pirates would be heading straight for port. Pen could not hope for some new clash to turn out the other way and lead to his rescue.

  “Is your papa a rich merchant?” he asked the Corva sisters. “Do you think he would ransom you, if word were taken to him in Lodi?” If Master Getaf was still in Lodi, among other uncertainties. But promise of a ransom greater than their sale price as slaves could be a major protection for them. Possibly safer than hooking up with a displaced sorcerer on the run.

  They looked at each other in surprise, so this wasn’t a thought they’d already had. Hm.

  “I… maybe not very rich,” said Lencia.

  “He brought us presents,” Seuka offered, in an equally hesitant tone.

  And had housed a long-time mistress, but unless Master Getaf kept a family in every port, maybe just the one. Hold the ransom notion aside for now.

  Trying to offload our baggage already? murmured Des.

  Trying to think sensibly. This hasn’t been a good morning.

  I could sink this ship in five minutes.

  I know you could. Please refrain, at least till we’re on dry land. Pen considered this. I might let you have it then.

  For a present? Des was amused, contemplating this chance at chaos.

  You are not my mistress. Thankfully. For all that she was the permanent extra party in his marriage bed, and any other. Thank all the gods for tolerant, wise Nikys. He tried not to think too much about Nikys, because the worry would make him frantic and stupid.

  There were enough other distractions. He cast a “Pardon me, please,” over his shoulder at the girls, and turned to hunch over the latrine corner. Some seepage at the hold’s seams had reduced the liquid level, which was why the pitching of the ship hadn’t spread it all over the floor, but still, ugh. Let’s do something about this mess. What’s underneath?

  …Bilges and ballast.

  Too bad it wasn’t pirate hammocks. Open us some drainage. Quietly.

  Des applied some chaos, Penric supplied some order, or at least aim, and a ragged hole in the deck dropped out. Aware of his audience, he relieved himself as discreetly as he could.

  Sanitation improved, he supposed the next problem he could actually address was clean drinking water. Which was a trivial task, except for the lack of a cup. With the air so damp he could spin water off his fingers, catching the trickle in his mouth or other receptacle, but that created the problem of concealing his magic from his hold-mates. He had no idea what wild tales they had imbibed about sorcerers in Quadrene lands, when Quintarians weren’t much better informed, but there was a decided possibility that their first response to his gifts would be panic.

  Are there other prisoners aboard? he asked Des.

  The dizzying doubled vision of her demonic perceptions came to him as though they were his own, and Pen wondered if he would someday no longer be able tell them apart. The boundary between his will and her magic was already invisible whenever he was in too much of a hurry to take care to distinguish.

  Another hold, aft, held half-a-dozen distressed people, some injured. Not from Pen’s ship; aside from him, the captured crew had been kept aboard their own vessel. The pirate ship’s own crew was scarcely more numerous than their prisoners at this point, though they must have started out with a crowd of rowdies to be sure of outnumbering their targets. His coaster would appear to have been the second ship seized on this venture, stretching the brigands’ reserves.

  “How long have you two been in here?” Pen asked the Corva sisters. “What ship were you on, and where was it taken? It couldn’t have been a large one.” Lions might bring down great oxen, but feral dogs had to scrape a living from rabbits, mice, and carrion.

  Lencia shook her head. “Taspeig set us on a big ship at Agenno, that was supposed to go all the way to Lodi, but it had to put in at another port on account of woodworm. So we found a littler ship that was supposed to be going that way, that would take us on the promise that Papa would pay. Except some other passenger paid them to go north to some island first, and that’s where the pirates came.”

  Opportunistic chance, or might that rich-seeming passenger have been a stalking horse, selecting a bite-sized target and leading it into ambush? If so, that was one clever son of a bitch Pen might attend to later himself, if he could.

  “The captain fought, but he was killed”—Seuka shivered, looking sickened—“and the rest surrendered pretty quick.”

  “That was… six days ago?” said Lencia uncertainly, swallowing. “And then there was the storm. I don’t know where we are now.”

  “You two have been having quite an adventure,” said Pen, trying to sound friendly without encouraging the teary breakdown that evoking these memories threatened.

  Lencia scowled. “I don’t think I like adventure.”

  “I have to agree,” said Pen, offering a wry grin. He rubbed his nape under his queue, rose, and stepped into the stretched blocks of sunlight now angling through the grid. The clouds were clearing, or else they had sailed out of their cover. The sisters both
stared up at him, lips parting.

  The easterly slant of the light shafts was obvious at this hour; the ship was therefore heading roughly north, allowances made for tacking against the wind or currents. Not a surprise. Pen tried shouting upward in common Adriac, “Hoi! We need some drinking water down here! And food!” As long as he was at it. “Hoi!” He would rather drink the remarkably pure water Des produced than anything that came out of a ship’s cask, but it might come with a cup he could purloin, to share.

  Pen hastily tucked his hands behind his back, as if still bound, when a face loomed at the grating. Its stubble might be on either a Carpagamon with a recent beard-trim or a Roknari who’d missed his chance to shave. The conundrum wasn’t solved when the fellow merely grunted, but in a little while a stick of hard bread was dropped down through the grating, followed by a leather water bottle with, blessing, a wooden cup tied to it by a rawhide cord.

  This was evidently the routine method for sustaining the prisoners, for neither girl looked startled, but Lencia pounced on the bread as it bounced off the deck, then glared up at Pen in fright as if she imagined him snatching it from her. He secured the water bottle instead, to her clear dismay.

  “You two can share the bread,” he said with an easy smile. “I daresay I’ve eaten more recently than you.” This wouldn’t be a charity he could afford for long, given Des’s drain on his body, but it served to set the tone. He sat down across from them with the water bottle, freed the cup, popped the cork, and tested a taste. Every bit as murky and vile as he’d posited, ugh. Knees bent up for a shield, he set about some slight-of hand, concealing the trickle into the cup from the air. Seuka watched him, licking dry lips. Her eyes widened in surprise when he handed the first cupful across to her. She guzzled hastily, then hesitated partway down and glanced at Lencia.

  “You can drink up. There’s more,” said Pen, and she promptly did. He alternated handing the cup across to each sister till they stopped reaching, hoping that they wouldn’t notice they’d each drunk more than the bottle could hold. Overheating from the exertion, he finished with a cupful for himself and laid the leather skin aside. Maybe he could use its noxious contents later for flushing the latrine corner.