Mira's Last Dance

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Taking this in, Nikys discovered a new curiosity. “How did you rid yourself of all that chaos back when you were working for the Mother’s Order in Martensbridge?”

  A faint snort from the bed. “I struck a bargain with a Martensbridge butcher. I’d once treated his daughter. He let me do his slaughtering. It bore a double benefit; I was able to unload an enormous amount of disorder on a regular schedule, and the animals died painlessly, without fear or distress. It seemed to be theologically allowable, or at least no god chided me. Thankfully. My superiors were delighted with the scheme. It allowed them to use me to my uttermost limits.”

  And beyond, until he’d broken, as Nikys understood another night-confession, back in the temple in Skyrose. Which Adelis had not witnessed, and she had not relayed, she was reminded. She was not moved to explain it to him now.

  “It worked well,” Penric’s reminiscence went on. “Although I stopped eating meat for a while. Odd. I never had that trouble with animals we hunted, or butchered on the farm.” His head fell back on his pillow, and he signed himself. His voice seemed to come more from underneath the bed than atop it. “Tomorrow, we need a new plan. This one is growing overcomplicated.”

  “You think so?” growled Adelis, sardonic.

  Penric did not attempt a reply.

  * * *

  The next morning, when they were all still sodden with sleep after the late night, they were awakened by a knock at their door. Nikys dragged herself from her pallet and went to answer it, drawing her role as maidservant around her like a rumpled robe. But it was Madame Zihre, alone. Nikys let her in and closed the door firmly in her wake, as Penric, sitting up blearily in the bed, was still very much Penric, flat-chested and stubble-chinned.

  Zihre strode to the bedside and planted her fists on her hips, staring at him. “What did you do to poor General Chadro last night, Learned?”

  Penric rubbed his face, and visibly choked back a first defensive protest of Nothing! as plainly untrue. “Why do you ask? Did he have a complaint?” He went still, swallowing. “Did he realize what I really was?”

  “I have no idea what you really are,” said Zihre, sounding exasperated. “But no, he had no complaints. He did send this, by special messenger just now.” She thrust out a small coin-bag.

  “Oh!” said Penric, surprised. “An honest man, five gods pour blessings upon his boot-faced head!” He took it, fingers jingling the contents through the cloth. “If this is silver, and not copper, which would be a bit of an insult, we may be able to hire a coach to continue our journey after all.” He straightened the counterpane across his lap for a tray, and upended the bag upon it. Zihre, Nikys, and Adelis with his hat pulled down again, though it was futile for disguise at this range, all crowded around the bed to see.

  A chiming stream of metal the real color of Penric’s hair poured out into a little pile.

  Everyone fell silent for a long moment, staring at the glowing gold.

  “That,” said Nikys, shaken, “could buy us a coach.”

  “And a team,” added Adelis. “Matched.”

  “Well,” Penric took a breath, “that was certainly the style in which Mira always traveled.”

  Nikys gulped for her scattering wits. “Except that would be wasteful.”

  Penric’s lips twitched back in a swift, short grin, though she wasn’t sure how she’d amused him.

  * * *

  Learned Penric pointedly declined to entrust the new purse to Adelis, or to Nikys who might yield it to Adelis—Adelis’s cheeks darkened slightly at the reminder of his duplicity against Penric back at Skyrose, before they’d fled over the hills. So by the time they had broken their fast, and done Penric up again as Mira, and he and Nikys, prudently escorted by a manservant borrowed from Zihre, made their way to a livery to arrange matters, it was nearly noon before they left the gates of Sosie in the hired coach. The postilion swung his team east down the river road at a smart trot.

  Penric had delayed their departure yet more by going aside with Zihre for a change of her compress and one last treatment of her tumor. Trying not to admit anything, he’d talked all around cautioning her to say nothing of what she’d really learned of her guests. But Nikys thought the woman received the warning well enough. Her good-byes were ambiguous, though polite. Although she did remark that if Learned Jurald ever found himself interdicted by the Temple, she might find work for him in her house. At least she didn’t ask for restoration of her loaned garments.

  As the road curved, Nikys looked back at the town on its height. “Do you think you will ever return there in the future, Penric? To see if what you tried to do for Madame Zihre succeeded?”

  Penric leaned his head against the worn leather squabs of the seatback, and closed his eyes. “No,” he said.

  Despite the dress, the hair, the makeup, he did not look very Mira in this moment, and Nikys wondered at the difference, and then at herself for finding it so readily discernable. She hesitated. “Why not?”

  “If it worked, I don’t need to know, and if it didn’t, I don’t want to know.” He turned aside, pretending to doze. The pose was not persuasive.

  Adelis, fingers drumming on his knees, stared out at the river. Sosie guarded the dwindling head of navigation for the stream, the craft that could reach it more skiffs than barges. “We should have caught or stolen one of those boats, day before yesterday,” he mused. “Or offered to work our passage like the grain wagon. We’d be nearly to the coast by now.”

  With none of the appalling risks their recent sojourn had occasioned, it went unsaid. Eyes still closed, Penric grimaced. It might be true. It also, Nikys thought, neatly undercut all that Penric had done for them in the past two days, pushing himself to his peculiar limits.

  Five gods, I cannot wait for this journey to be over.

  VI

  Their coach was three-fourths of the way to the border when darkness overtook them. After some debate, Penric ruled that they should stop at the next coaching inn to eat and sleep, rather than paying extra for night service. Mira would be rumpled and unattractive at the border post if they rode all night, such travel was rare and thus more likely to draw suspicion, and Adelis would do better to present his petition for refuge at the court of Orbas in daylight. Adelis was on edge at the delay. Penric couldn’t blame him.

  The inn proved modest and clean, but Mira was sulking, and left Pen to play her part by himself. Fortunately, it was brief, the traveling courtesan’s gold coins speaking for her, speeding the negotiation for a private chamber and dinner to be brought up. Desdemona as a whole was still talking to him, though she didn’t seem to have much to say.

  Nikys was scarcely talking to him either, plainly repelled by his last night’s—surprisingly successful—ploy. Really Mira’s ploy, but what was the point of him protesting? It would just make it sound as if his demon was in imminent danger of ascending, hardly an improvement. It must be enough just to get Nikys and her brother over the frontier safely, which, after all, was the task he’d started out to complete. Anything else, including gratitude, would be a boon that he couldn’t do anything about anyway, right? It was better that she was peeved with him. It would make parting less painful. Right?

  The reflection that their whole detour to Sosie might well have been the Bastard’s answer to prayers none of their own was too disturbing to dwell upon. As they blew out the candles and settled into their beds, Penric turned his mind to more practical matters.

  Vilnoc would be his first chance to report in at his own Order since news of his execution-or-escape from the bottle dungeon in Patos. There had been time by now for first words of the fate of their envoy to get back to Lodi, to the duke and to Pen’s archdivine, but Pen had no guess what stories they’d received, let alone believed. They might think him dead. Pen wondered morbidly if the archdivine would have claimed all his books, or yielded them to the duke, or broken them up for sale.

  And if his treasured volumes were gone beyond recall, what did he have to go ba
ck for, really? He toyed with the notion of staying dead. It would be a very clever, tidy escape from all his oaths and disciplines, to be sure. Except that he didn’t really want to. He’d no heart to abandon the reputation for learning that he’d spent the last ten years building, and a scholar needed a rich patron. It was not the sort of work ordinary men would understand or pay for, not seeing immediate benefit to themselves.

  Keep it in mind for your future self, then, murmured Des, slyly, enduring his fretting. As if she had a choice to do otherwise than endure him, any more than he did her.

  Des!

  But his outrage was weak.

  * * *

  They made a reasonably early start the next morning, despite delays for making up Mira to her most polished perfection that had Adelis’s hand clenching on his sword hilt with impatience. But at last, escorted by her matched pair of masked and tabarded servants, Mira swept aboard, and they were off again. Only twenty-five miles more. One more relay of horses would do it, although they would be compelled to exchange both horses and coach again at the border village, leaving their Cedonian transport behind and picking up men and beasts of Orbas. No doubt at a premium price, but at least that assured such services would be waiting. Skinning foreign travelers trapped by border laws was a happy tradition for such countrymen, in both directions.

  They had made their first change, with but ten miles left to go, when Adelis, painfully tense, turned his head. “Hoofbeats. Horses. Galloping behind us.”

  “Put your mask back on before you stick your head out, sunder it,” Pen demanded. Adelis glared but complied. Nikys gave him a glance for this rare black profanity, and took to the other window.

  “Cavalrymen. Half a dozen of them,” she reported.

  Adelis swore. “Bastard’s teeth and Mother’s blood. It’s Egin Chadro. Come for his revenge on you, Penric?”

  “Can the coach outrun them to the border? If you offer the postilion gold?” asked Nikys.

  “Not a chance,” said Adelis. “Still too far. They’re bound to overtake us in another mile. We’ll have to fight.” He readied his knife in his belt sheath, and set the sword beside him. Extracted the bow from the wrapped bundle, strung it, and retrieved their scant handful of arrows. Frowned at Penric. “We’ve taken down that many men before, between us. Can you do your magic tricks again, Penric? Pull the bow, or should I give it to Nikys? Or will you be afraid to muss your dress?”

  Penric ignored the trailing insult. He wanted to think fast, but he mostly thought of his quiet study above the canal, suddenly missed. “It would only take one survivor to warn the border against us, and bring back a swarm of reinforcements. He wouldn’t have far to ride.”

  Adelis’s teeth set. “Then we had better make sure none get away, eh?”

  Penric contemplated the potential chaos. Was this a gift of his god? If so, I don’t want it, Sir. “It’s a busy road. A single passing witness could get away and do the same. Or a coach-load. I don’t think we can count on privacy for such a bloody brawl.” He slid over beside Nikys and risked a glance himself. The horsemen were close enough now for a deep bellow to be faintly heard over their own team’s hoofbeats and harness-jingle, and the creaking of the coach. “Wait.”

  “What?” said Adelis, outraged. “Have you lost your wits?” His mouth thinned. “Or are you betraying us at the last? What were you really talking about with Chadro all those hours night before last?”

  “Not that,” said Penric, fervently. “Listen.”

  The bellow became words: “Sora Mira! Stop! Please!”

  “Don’t you think,” said Penric slowly, “that if he’d learned of my disguise, he would be yelling something more like Stop so I can kill you, Jurald, you lying son-of-a-bitch?”

  Nikys’s eyebrows climbed. “Would he?”

  “…Unless he’s being clever. Is he that clever, Adelis?”

  “Maybe.” Adelis’s hand worked on his hilt. “Maybe.”

  “Because if he still believes I’m Mira, I think I could talk our way out of this.” Whatever this was. “Give him his remaining gold back, something.” Right, Mira? Right?

  The return silence was palpable, and pointed.

  Pen scrambled to persuade her. Lovely Mira, if I was insufficiently admiring of all your hard work, I apologize, and I promise to make it up later—but only if there is a later. Besides, if we get slaughtered here on this road, where would you all jump? I mean, I know you liked Chadro, but surely not in that way?

  Desdemona-as-a-whole snorted. An admirable man, but he does not have a swift and malleable mind. Not like you, young Penric.

  “We can still fight after we talk,” Nikys gulped, “but we can’t still talk after we fight. I think we’d better let Penric try first.”

  Adelis set his jaw on fulmination, but choked out, “Perhaps so.”

  Pen managed a short nod. “Stay in the coach, out of sight, Adelis. Those masks are enough to mislead anyone who hasn’t met you, but not someone who has. If things go badly, I’ll try to send a couple of horses your way. Or cut loose the leaders, or anything I can. Ride and don’t look back.”

  “Don’t try to explain my trade to me,” growled Adelis, “and I’ll not try to explain yours to you.”

  The grinning cavalrymen were riding up around them, one of them grabbing for the surprised postilion, another for the coach horses’ checkreins. Their hoots for a halt sounded more cheery than murderous. The coach rumbled to a stop over the protests, but not the resistance, of the postilion. Chadro cantered up and swung his lathered horse to the door, blocking it. The animal’s nostrils were round and red and blowing. Chadro was in scarcely better shape, though as exultant as a successful runner at the end of a god’s-day race. His boot-face was damp with sweat as his chest rose and fell.

  Pen signed himself, tapped his thumb five times against his lips, took a deep breath, fixed a smile in place, and leaned out the window.

  “Dear Egin!” he cried, endeavoring to sound surprised. “What are you doing here?”

  “I thought you’d still be resting at Zihre’s place. I didn’t expect you to leave so soon. I came last night to speak to you, but you were already gone.”

  “I do have, as I mentioned, an obligation, and we were already much delayed.”

  Chadro dismounted, handed off his reins to an attentive soldier, and looked up at her. “Mira, would you walk a little apart with me? What I have to say is for no one’s ears but yours.”

  Pen’s lips parted in doubt, but Mira spoke up at last: Oh, for pity’s sake. It’s not like I haven’t acted in this playlet before, too many times to remember. Stand aside, Learned Fool. I couldn’t bear to watch you flounder.

  Relieved, Pen yielded the lead to her, though on guard to take it all back in an instant. She dismounted from the coach into Chadro’s helping arms rather more gracefully than Pen could have managed. Her smile was grateful and soft. Chadro’s grip was understandably hot, and Pen quickly captured his hands to keep them from straying anywhere near his underpadding. No convenient bedposts and bindings here, and his costume was only meant to fool the eye.

  Mira hooked her elbow through Chadro’s as they sauntered up the verge away from the straining ears and avidly curious eyes of both their escorts. An old plane tree stood near the road, and Chadro led her into its speckled shade, a few papery fallen leaves crackling underfoot, then turned to take both her hands in his. Pen looked down into his earnest, ugly features; he was a good half a head taller than the general even without the clogs. Chadro looked up like a man kneeling before an altar.

  “What would it take to make you stay with me, Mira?”

  “I cannot stay. I told you I was journeying, and why.”

  “Yes, you’ve been wholly honest with me…”

  Ouch, ouch, ouch.

  “Yet you plan to tarry for one man. Why not another?”

  “My course has already been laid.”

  He ducked his chin. “I expect the lucky fellow only thinks to give you some
private portion.” He took a breath. “How if I outbid him? Marry me, and all I have will be yours.”

  “Oh, Egin,” Mira sighed. “Do you think I haven’t received such proposals before, from other great men?”

  That’s laying it on with a trowel, isn’t it? thought Pen.

  No, it’s quite true. Mira tapped Chadro on his big hooked nose, in a friendly but distancing fashion. She continued to him, “When I get to Orbas, I must make a final choice of service between two dukes.”

  That, Pen realized, was also perfectly true. Although the duke of Adria had never shown any sign of wanting to bed him. Thankfully.

  Chadro swallowed, taken aback. But not for long, because he was, clearly, not a man who surrendered readily, or he would not have achieved his present rank. “But I daresay neither offers you marriage.”

  “No. That is their attraction.”

  “You don’t have to sail so isolate. I could be your harbor. Your rock.”

  “You’re a soldier, Egin. You must serve at your emperor’s pleasure, not mine. One unlucky moment in battle, and my rock turns to sand. Or grave dirt.”

  “A Cedonian general’s widow is not without resources.”

  “Exchanging my wedding garlands for bier wreaths? I like you well, but I am not drawn to such a ceremony.”

  You know, this man really is terrible at courting women, Pen observed in bemusement.

  Hush, chided Mira. I think he’s very sweet.

  Pen stared at that ugly boot-face, and tried to see what she was seeing. The horrible thing was, he could.

  “What do you want, in your heart of hearts, Mira? Anything I can command, I will lay at your feet.”

  Sadly, fondly, Mira smiled. “My freedom.”

  Chadro was silent for a good long time, taking this in. At length, he gave an infinitesimal nod. “I’m a man of my word. Shall I escort you to the border, then?”