Godino brought food and drink faithfully, yes, and bits of news which suggested Pen and his charges were not suspected to still be on this island. But he was inventively elusive about his failure to secure some trusted boatman to ferry them to Vilnoc, or—Pen was getting less fussy—anywhere on the opposite coast from which they could at least walk to Vilnoc. Pen began to wonder if Godino was trying to wait them out, induce them to leave on their own from sheer frustration without him ever having to stand up to the menacing sorcerer. Or the menacing pirates. That Pen could perfectly understand his point of view did not make it any less maddening.
The girls, too, grew restive in the enforced quiet, slowly recovering at least physically from their ordeal. Which, really, had begun with their mother’s last illness and hadn’t let up yet.
On the fourth night, Pen gritted his teeth and slipped out to make a new survey of the harbor.
* * *
In the deep dark, the crooked streets of Lanti were deserted by its timid or sober residents, which left only the other sort abroad. Pen had picked out tunic and trousers in a muddled green dye from Godino’s stores, and let the girls knot his hair at his nape and tie a black headcloth over it, so at least he didn’t glow like the moon in the shadows. As he neared the shore, both Des’s Sight and dark-sight allowed him to avoid the late carousers reeling home, and more disturbing sullen shapes curled up in passageways. Not appearing weak to their hungry eyes would fend off the latter, but not being seen at all was better.
He dodged around the warehouses and the customs shed. A cargo-loading crane on heavy wooden wheels was drawn up near the pier by the prison, and Pen quietly climbed it for a better vantage.
Two new ships had arrived and tied up, though whether they were pirates, prizes, or merchants was unclear. The prison was already repopulated, though, and there were a few more guards around it, so at least one vessel must be a prize. In addition to the fire-watch patrolling the shore, crew lingered on board, keeping night-lanterns glimmering orange by the gangplanks. Falun’s galley still rode at anchor out in the harbor, so the Rathnattan slaver evidently hadn’t filled his quota yet.
I would dearly love to sink that thing, Pen sighed.
I’m for it, Des agreed cheerfully. Now?
Tempting. But there might be prisoners chained belowdecks, so it wasn’t simply a matter of deploying his favorite sabotages from here. He’d have to swim out, climb aboard, and somehow free them first, multiplying his risks. Not least that of revealing the continuing presence of a sorcerer in Lanti, triggering a serious hunt for him. One ship mysteriously sinking in perfect calm could be put down to any number of causes. Two would start to look decidedly odd.
And the escaping prisoners would still be trapped on this island with their angry captors. Pen was disinclined to sacrifice them for a diversion he did not need.
You’re no fun, said Des. If amiably.
He slid down from his perch and slunk off among the piles of fishing gear, nets, and rowboats scattered along the curving strand. Most of the rowboats were meant to ferry crews out to the larger boats at anchor, or fish in the harbor on calm days, and many of them would need at least two strong men to shove them off the sand when the tide was low. A handful of the vessels now moored to buoys out on the lapping water were single-masted craft meant for small crews, so, not impossible; although the smallest craft Pen had ever sailed in on Cedonian seas had carried a crew of three. Hauling up a heavy sail by himself would be a challenge, even with the aid of two wiry girls, though there was a chance there might be some sort of crank for the task.
Could the Corva sisters swim? Most people couldn’t, not even, to Pen’s surprise, many sailors. The girls would not be very buoyant to tow, though Pen thought he could do it in a pinch.
A splash out on the harbor waters made him flinch, and he peered with both Sight and dark-sight. The inky surface rippled in repeated waves, a faint satin gleam flicking above it. Ah. Dolphins. A pod of four or five, it looked like, rolling after one another in pursuit of fish.
Pen wondered if his shamanic persuasion skills, which worked on other animals, would work on dolphins. Or would the blood he would shed in the water as the price of that style of magic just attract sharks? …Would the persuasion work on sharks? It would be awkward to find out the hard way that it didn’t.
Dolphins would be slippery creatures to try to cling to, hard for him, maybe impossible for the girls. So would it be feasible to hitch a dolphin or dolphins to a small boat? How would one devise such a harness? Some sort of yoke or padded ring that would be comfortable for the animal and efficient to get on and off…?
Only you, Pen, said Des, exasperated.
Regretfully, Pen laid the alluring picture of a team of dolphins towing them home to Vilnoc aside for later experimentation, along with his narcoleptic rats. Or only for some dire emergency.
Very unlikely emergency. You are supposed to be selecting a ship to steal, remember?
He hunkered down and studied the inventory. He imagined that the three smallest boats put in and out irregularly about their tasks, but they seemed day-vessels, so likely they were always here at night. One way or another, there should be a boat for him.
He would give Godino one more day to produce better help. If nothing was forthcoming, tomorrow night might be time to take his chances on the unforgiving sea. …Their chances. He grimaced and rose to slither back to the temple.
* * *
The next afternoon, the skies clouded and the wind blew up. Pen found the ladder to the roof and crept around the ledge beneath the clerestory to the top of the portico, lying prone to look out. The height gave him a wide view of both town and harbor. Small boats were hurrying back to their moorings, men rowing ashore with their half-day’s catch. Graying wind-waves grew white tops, spume flying from them.
All right, dead calm likely wouldn’t be helpful for escape either, however much Pen fancied it, but this was too much of a good thing. Pen hissed through his teeth much like the wind, and returned to their hiding-chamber.
He took care to avoid being seen by the temple’s few servants, which Godino had described as a groom, a cook-scullion, and a local lad who played acolyte to his divine, equally untutored but valiant in assisting him. Neighborhood women, Pen understood, took it in turns to come to clean and arrange what few flowers or other graces the altars received, before and after ceremonies. Pen and the girls were instructed to lay very low and quiet during these.
That night, the rain rattled the window lattice in gusts. Pen cursed in Wealdean, rolled over, and went back to sleep.
* * *
The delay was repaid to him the next day when Godino slipped in to announce he had secured a willing ferryman.
“Safe and secret?” asked Pen.
Godino shrugged. “Jato, I trust. He vouches for his crew.”
“You did let him know there will be some reward to compensate them for their risks when we reach Vilnoc?” And, with luck, something to send back to Godino.
“Of course. They aren’t fellows who can afford charity. Or defiance, so if the risks come down on them, the reward won’t be much use. Keep that in mind, Learned.”
True enough, so Pen didn’t quibble. “How soon can we leave?”
“On tomorrow afternoon’s tide.”
“In broad daylight?” Pen frowned.
“It will be the busiest time. And look less suspicious than putting out at night.”
“Hm, I suppose.” However uncertain Godino’s selection was, it still had to be better than Pen trying to find a boatman blind, with no local knowledge. “I trust you have not told him I’m a sorcerer.”
“He wouldn’t have agreed to take you if I had.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That you were a man who wanted to go in secret to Vilnoc.”
“Not that we were escaped captives?”
“No, not that either, for the same reason, though I don’t doubt he figures something smells. But if you t
hink that him pleading he didn’t know would save him from Guild reprisals, you’re more optimistic than either of us.”
Godino offloaded their lunch and swapped out their chamber pot. Pen wondered how private the man had really managed to keep his unwanted guests from the other temple servants. The non-arrival of some gang of rowdies to recapture them—well, try to—was the only clue Pen had, though it did suggest the temple people were either very loyal, or still in ignorance.
I approve of ignorance, Des commented. It cannot fuel betrayal.
“What did Brother Godino say?” Lencia asked anxiously when the door had closed behind the man.
“He was talking about boats, wasn’t he?” said tense Seuka, sitting up. “Did he get us a boat to go on?”
“Yes, and boatmen,” replied Pen. “I was preparing to steal one two nights ago, but this is safer. Bigger.” And without a novice at the tiller. “Plus I won’t have to deprive some poor honest fisherman of his livelihood. There are few enough honest men on Lantihera.”
He wondered if he should try to arm the sisters. Knives of a size they could handle wouldn’t be much use against a war hammer, even in trained hands. Their thin safety lay in their sale value, which was not high. It wouldn’t take much resistance for an assailant to decide they weren’t worth the aggravation and move on to easy murders. Pirates quite preferred weak opponents. Still… “Shall I try to get you some belt knives from Godino?”
“Yes!” said Seuka.
But Lencia looked at him more coolly. “You don’t have one.”
“It was taken from me the first day. I usually used it for shaping quills.”
“Knives would be better than nothing,” she conceded.
Pen was by no means sure. But it might make them feel better, and so just that hair less likely to panic in a tight moment. “I’ll see what I can get.”
Pen continued to think out loud while sharing around the flatbread and goat cheese. “Packing won’t be a problem. Nor water, though we’d best keep that trick out of sight of our crew. It might be well to persuade Godino to give us a little food for the voyage. Which should be short.” His heart clenched in the hope he’d been strangling since his capture as too distracting. “We could be home in as little as three days.”
He’d only lived a year in Vilnoc, so he wasn’t really homesick for the town. It was their narrow house, or rather, its occupants—Nikys, her mother Idrene, yes, even her brother Adelis. He wasn’t sure if he’d made them his family, or they’d made him theirs, but either way, they were the new and unanticipated anchor for his life’s wandering vessel.
The girls were giving him their wary looks again, reminding him that this proposed destination wasn’t home to them, but rather, another alien waystation in their uprooted existences. Just another strange place where strange grownups would be disposing of their lives, more benevolently than slavers but giving them as little choice.
Pen launched into a description of his house, and its back courtyard common with its row, his quiet, book-rich study, and of Nikys and Idrene, with the notion of giving the sisters a share of his hope. Though their questions led promptly away, through his account of Nikys’s charge who was just Seuka’s age, to a description of the high ducal household. This seemed to fascinate them more, as if it were a wonder-tale like the ones they’d been sharing the other day. Pen could remember feeling that way as a lad, reading stories of brave nobles in faraway places, though any lingering wonder had been stripped out of him by close service to three successive courts. He did not hurry to disillusion them.
* * *
Soon after noon the next day, Godino sent his servants on errands and conducted Pen and the girls to the side entry by the stable. His friend—or so Pen hoped—Jato was leaning against the gatepost with his burly arms crossed, scuffing his sandal in the dirt. The red-brick tone of his sunburn suggested Cedonian ancestry, set off by black hair and beard trimmed short. He wore the common garb of a common sailor, sleeveless shirt and calf-length trousers, sash and belt and knife. He glanced up frowning as they approached.
Pen had attempted to reduce his excessive recognizability by tying his queue in a knot again, and topping his pale head with a worn and stained straw hat. And slouching. He wore the local muddled greens, for whatever use that was. The girls, after a long debate over Godino’s proffered cast-offs, had dressed themselves as boys. Lencia’s dark curls barely went into a queue, and Seuka’s ruddy tangle had needed to be forcibly restrained, but altogether they made a passable pair of street rats, hardly worth anyone’s second glance. Certainly they little resembled an escaped Lodi scribe and his two nieces.
Jato looked them over. “Vilnoc, eh?”
Pen touched his hat brim. “If you will. You’ll be paid as soon after our safe arrival as I can arrange it.”
“Huh.” Without further comment, Jato pushed off from the gatepost and motioned them after him. Godino closed his gate with a noisy sigh of relief. Under Jato’s eyes Pen couldn’t sign a grateful formal blessing as befit a learned divine, but he thought it, tapping his fingers and hoping the gods would know.
The girls started to reach for Penric’s hands, but then caught themselves and strode out at his sides more boy-like, fists clenched near their new-old belt knives. He gave them both approving nods and followed Jato in equal silence into the winding streets, not letting his stride lengthen unduly. He could hardly wait to get off this island.
Be on your guard now more than ever, came a murmuring in his head that Pen recognized as Umelan, and not just by her Archipelago idiom. There remains that very common way to slay a sorcerer by luring him into a boat with promises of succor or pleasure or transport, sailing out some miles, and then throwing him overboard and sailing off before he drowns and his demon jumps. It was how my clan tried to kill me, after Mira’s death in Lodi both released and bound me. The keening grief of that long-ago betrayal still resonated in her bodiless voice. I, too, had thought I was going home.
I am advised, Pen promised her. Almost the only way to kill a sorcerer of any experience was by subterfuge and surprise, really. But Jato, at least, didn’t flinch from him, bore no tension suggesting he planned such an ambush, showed no more caution than expected toward any chancy passenger.
The passers-by, at this hour, were largely women and servants going to or from the markets, or carrying water jars, who gave them only enough notice to gauge their harmlessness. At length, they debouched from the alleys about midway between the two piers.
Beside a heavy rowboat drawn up on the sand, four men waited, idly leaning against the thwart or crouching in its thin shade. They stood up, and one waved, as Jato and his tail trod down to them.
They shuffled to a halt, and Jato looked over his crew. “Where’re the other two?”
“They said they’d be along soon,” replied the man who’d waved. They looked a typical array of Lanti seamen, dressed like their captain, with a mixed range of skin and hair color, leathery rather than bulky, none as tall as Pen. The crewman looked off tensely up the shore. Too tensely.
Pen followed his glance and thought Wealdean words. Apparently, he wasn’t even going to have to wait till they were at sea for betrayal.
A dozen men trotted toward them. All but two wore the tabards of the port guards, and were erratically armed with short swords, long knives, a couple of pikes, two crossbows and two short bows. Had that wave been a signal? By Jato’s jerk and curse, this delegation was a surprise to him too, and to three of the four other men at his side.
It wasn’t hard to follow the logic. If his crewmen followed Jato, they might be rewarded later in Vilnoc, but if they betrayed him here, they would be rewarded right now, more certainly and with less effort. In addition to whatever bounty the Guild offered for the return of escaped slaves, if Jato came to a bad end because of this they might even expect to receive his ship as a prize.
“Stay behind me and stick tight,” Pen told the girls, who, watching in horror, hardly needed the instruction.
“Things are about to get messy.”
The port guards spread out, expecting sensible surrender in the face of the odds. Jato and two of his three loyalists drew together, although the other stepped back with his hands raised, glumly anticipating events.
One thing was plain. While clearly someone had figured out Pen’s party were fugitive captives, no one had yet realized he was also the sorcerer who had blasted through the prison the night the Autumn’s Hand had escaped. Or they would have brought a couple of hundred rowdies to try to take him, not just a dozen.
The guard leader stepped forward. “Give it up, Jato,” he advised genially. “You can’t fight us all. Besides, we know where you den up.”
By Jato’s flinch, Pen wondered if the man had a family.
Bastard’s teeth but Pen was getting tired of this. And tired in general, and homesick, and angry. You know… he thought to Des. Let’s just get started.
Something like a purr sounded in the back of his mind. Did lionesses purr?
No, smirked Des. But chaos demons might.
Almost perfunctorily, Pen snapped the four bowstrings. Distance weapons summarily disposed of, next most dangerous were the pikes and their bearers, then the swords and knives. And fists and boots. With enemies this numerous, efficiency was going to be required. No time for pretty tricks. The magic to destroy all those weapons would be an unaffordable drain. That left the wielders. But not for long.
The Orphans of Raspay: A Penric and Desdemona novella in the World of the Five Gods (Penric & Desdemona Book 7) Page 10
