They followed the boy out to the streets of Vilnoc, where the sea-softened light was slanting toward evening. Adelis dropped back beside Penric to murmur, “I thought you were done here?”
“So did I, but I was told I was invited. Which, from a ruling duke, means commanded. I have some small reputation as a Temple scholar, and it seems the duke collects such men. Scholars, writers, theologians, artists, musicians. A cheaper way to ornament his court than masons, I suppose.”
Nikys had seen the famous buildings and fabulous temples of Thasalon, some of which had come close to bankrupting an empire; Penric was right about that.
“For display like a menagerie?” Adelis said dryly.
Penric’s lips twitched. “As the duke neither rides them nor eats them nor puts them to the plow, very like, I expect.”
They walked some four or five blocks following the page, turning twice, before they came to a broader avenue that ran from the top of the town nearly to the harbor. The ducal seat here was neither castle nor palace, but a row of three older mansions run together. Echoes wafted from one scaffolded end: hammering and sawing, the clink of chisels, and men’s cries. The page led them through the middle door, unimpeded by a flanking pair of guardsmen who granted him familiar nods. They did stare openly at Adelis’s face—and covertly at Penric’s shoulder.
Nikys had barely taken her bearings in the marble-lined vestibule when a delighted voice cried out: “Oh, it is him! Most excellent chance!”
“Master Stobrek, the duke’s secretary,” murmured the page helpfully, as the man strode towards them, his arms out in greeting. His sweeping garments were a cut above those of the usual palace functionary, and he wore a badge of office on a gold chain around his neck.
Adelis took a breath and stood straighter, but the man walked right past him and seized on Penric. “Learned Penric of Martensbridge! It is such an honor to have you in Vilnoc!”
Penric smiled in a slightly panicked fashion, but allowed the fellow to capture and shake both his hands. “Learned Penric of Adria, for the past year,” he put in. “I exchanged archdivineships. We have met, ah…?”
“At that extraordinary Temple conclave in Carpagamo. Five years ago, now, so I don’t wonder you don’t remember me—I was just a clerk in the Archdivine of Orbas’s train at the time, and your talents were only beginning to be recognized. But I certainly remember you! I am instructed to tell you, on Duke Jurgo’s behalf and my own, you are most warmly welcomed at the duke’s table tonight.”
Stobrek turned around and added, as a palpable afterthought, “And you too, General Arisaydia.”
Adelis’s return smile was rather fixed. Stuffed, in fact. “Thank you, Master Stobrek.” He rolled his eye at Penric in new question; Penric just opened his hands and shrugged.
Nikys bit her lip. Really hard. Even though she was probably the only person present who could get away with laughing at Adelis. And even though her doubts about Penric still ran as deep as a well. She supposed she could now be sure Penric was Penric. Among other beings. But I knew that already, didn’t I?
As an afterthought to the afterthought, Stobrek continued, “And you too, Madame Khatai.”
She offered up her sweetest smile in return, and murmured, “Thank the duke for me-too, then, Master Stobrek.” She was fairly sure only Pen caught the acid edge; in any case, his lids lowered in what might have been acknowledgement.
A woman arrived—no, a lady, Nikys placed her by the fine details of her dress and discreet jewelry. Dark hair bound up, no gray but not young. Stobrek looked up and said, “Ah,” in a gratified manner. “May I present Madame Dassia. First lady-in-waiting to Her Grace the duchess.”
She nodded graciously to him, acknowledged the two men with only the barest gasp at Adelis’s disfigurement, instantly stifled, and turned to Nikys. “The Duchess of Orbas invites you to make her acquaintance, Madame Khatai. Please, come this way.”
The woman led Nikys toward the marble staircase, heading up to whatever maze of courts and galleries this improvised palace had acquired.
Master Stobrek added, “And the duke awaits you, General, Learned Penric. By your leave, follow me.” They trailed him through a ground-floor archway and out of her sight.
It was becoming apparent already that she and Adelis had reached a safe harbor. So, she no longer had to be afraid every hour, terrified in anticipation of whatever new threat it might bring. Wasn’t that enough?
VIII
Duke Jurgo’s table rivaled that of the duke of Adria’s, though Penric had put his feet under the latter enough times to not be intimidated by ducal splendor. But it meant the meal was prolonged, and there were obligatory musicians, after, and so it was not until late that he finally had a chance to catch Nikys alone. He had to intercept her coming back from the ladies’ retiring room—not going to, no, and he hadn’t needed Des to tell him that, thank you. He gestured, well, herded her out onto a gallery overlooking a small courtyard opposite the one where the duke dined. It featured mainly builder’s scaffolding, shadows, and, he hoped, a scrap of privacy.
They leaned on the gallery railing side-by-side, frowning into the gloom.
“So, Adelis has his post,” Penric began. That, at least, had gone quickly. Jurgo’s eldest daughter had lately married the head of the polity to Orbas’s west, a man with the peculiar title of the High Oban; his far border was presently suffering Rusylli incursions. Jurgo had been anxious to obtain General Arisaydia’s experience with that foe. An expedition in support of the new son-in-law was being readied to march.
“Yes, Adelis seems very… I suppose pleased is not quite the word, since he’s not so war-mad as to be delighted by an invasion. Engaged, perhaps. Already. He’s not a man built for idleness.” Nikys turned and rested her elbow on the balustrade, watching Pen in the half-light leaking from the rooms behind them. “What about you? Has the duke offered you a stall in his menagerie yet?”
“Mm, there were hints. He can’t conscript me, nor could I accept on my own word. He would have to get the archdivine of Orbas to extract me from the archdivine of Adria. Who, since he only just extracted me from the princess-archdivine of Martensbridge last year, at some expense, might not think he’s yet had his money’s worth of me.” Penric rubbed his forehead. “I certainly did him no good on my first mission to Cedonia.” He looked up. “I asked you this once before. Have you taken any thought for yourself? Because I trust Adelis has better sense than to drag you after him to a war camp.”
“Happily, yes. Madame Dassia hints that a place might be found for me as a lady-in-waiting in the duke’s household. Not to the duchess herself, but to one of her daughters.”
“Oh.” Penric was taken aback. “That sounds… quite honorable. Safe enough.”
“Yes, Adelis was very gratified by the notion, too. Although since the daughter in question is seven, what it actually translates to is the work of a nursemaid or governess, except with a better grade of cast-offs. The servitor’s tabard is invisible”—she sketched a rectangle over her torso—“but one wears it nonetheless. Still, it gives me a breathing space. It’s a relief not to have to make any more hasty decisions.”
A more alarming thought occurred to Penric then. “Don’t ladies-in-waiting rather risk being preyed upon by lords-in-ambush?”
“If they’re twenty, maybe. I’m thirty. I’ve been defending my virtue by myself perfectly well since I was widowed.” She made a hard-to-interpret grimace. “It wasn’t as challenging as I’d thought it would be.”
“Oh.” He gathered his courage, and his breath, and turned to take Nikys’s hand. “Nikys, is there hope for me here, with you?”
Dishearteningly, she took it back. “You will have to be more clear, if you expect me to understand you. Hope for what?”
“I’m told it’s bad strategy to open with one’s high bid, but I’m going to. Marriage?”
A long, unwelcome silence greeted this declaration. Nervously, he called up his dark-sight to try to read her exp
ression. Every familiar line and curve and dip of that face remained lovely, but it didn’t bear a look of love. Nor was it a look of loathing, which would at least be some strong emotion. It was more the look of a woman confronted with a monstrous pile of chores that she didn’t have the endurance to face right now.
Well, of course, Des put in, uninvited. In fact, he’d specifically dis-invited her to this dialogue.
Dialogue: two sides. Not three. Nor fourteen, Des.
Penric, the poor woman is exhausted. I swear, your timing is as bad as Chadro’s.
There is no alternate timing that would have worked for Chadro, Pen objected.
He was only out by a century, murmured Mira. Pen chose to ignore that.
“Is it the demon?’ Pen asked Nikys, bluntly. It had been so before. More than one woman, attracted at first by his looks and whatever glamour she imagined hung about a sorcerer, had decided upon closer acquaintance that he was a walking quagmire, and wallowed away like a panicked pony escaping a bog.
After a little silence, Nikys said, “Not… exactly.” It sounded as if her own answer puzzled her. “I suppose I had begun to think of Desdemona as like what my father’s first wife was to my mother. Arrived first, can’t be dislodged, supposed to be a bitter rival, in truth her best ally. That may be wrong, here.”
“No, it’s not!” said Pen. Des purred in amusement, unhelpfully.
“But it’s not just Desdemona inside your head, is it? There’s Mira, whom I did not expect.” By her expression, she might still be getting over Mira. Or not. “And then I realized… that’s not all. Well, I suppose I’ve had glimpses of the two physicians. And Ruchia—you’ve implied more than once that she was a clever spy. How much of our twisting escape do we owe to her? That’s just what I’ve seen. What haven’t I seen yet? Is there not one first wife, but ten? And I can’t even imagine what the lioness and the mare might be doing to you.”
“Not that much,” Pen protested. “They’re very old and muted.”
She declared, “It is plain madness to fall in love with a man who has more personalities than I have fingers.” She wriggled hers, as if in demonstration.
Is. She said is. Not would be. Dared he hope Nikys was as much of a grammarian as he was?
Unlikely, murmured Des.
“Also, I don’t want to go to Adria,” added Nikys.
Pen, wrenched by this sideways jink, tried for a neutral-encouraging sort of noise. It was all very confusing, but if he could keep her talking…
She straightened up, tilting her head back against a supporting post, and sighed. “It’s not that I have a special aversion to Adria, although I would dread not being able to speak the language. You have to understand. I spent half my life trailing after my father or my husband or my brother to assorted military camps or postings. There are reasons some military wives cling like limpets to their homes when they are finally allowed to stop. I feel like a plant that’s constantly been uprooted and transplanted, and never allowed to grow, never allowed time to recover enough to flower or fruit. Ready to wilt in despair, denied its nature.”
“Some people relish the road,” Pen offered, feeling his way forward. “Youthful adventure and all that.”
“I’m thirty,” said Nikys, flatly. “The desire to escape a home where one will never be more than the child is not the same thing as volunteering to be dragged through every ditch in Cedonia. I’m too old for either of those to be attractive.” Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully at him. “You, I suspect, are a bird. Even roads won’t hold you.”
“Only because of the way we first met. You’ve never seen me at home, with my books,” Pen protested. “I’m really quite sessile by nature. The only bird-like thing about me is my quill, flapping away. There are weeks at a time when my greatest danger is a paper cut.”
“And the other weeks?”
You just saw some was maybe not the best answer. “It varies, depending on what problems land in my superiors’ laps, that they think they can tip into mine.”
“Something I did not know at twenty,” said Nikys slowly, “that I do know at thirty, is that when a woman marries a man, she marries his life. And it had better be the life she wants to lead. Your life seems very… unsettled, to me. Very…” She seemed at a loss for the next word. “Anyway, it’s plain I’m safe for now. No longer in need of your escort, or protection. You have finished your task, Penric. Perhaps you can find another woman to rescue.”
“You could be in need of my… something else,” Pen suggested desperately. “My merry wit. My vermin-extermination skills. My kisses?” Hesitantly, he raised a finger to touch the side of her mouth; she dodged it. “A person can have many different kinds of needs, all as real as rescue.”
She shook her head and backed a step. “I wish you fair flight. But I want to put roots in the ground.”
“You are not a plant. And I am not a bird. We are both human beings.”
Her lips quirked, helplessly. “Well… one of us is.”
A pleasant voice from behind them said, “Ah, there you are, Madame Khatai. Your brother is looking for you.”
Madame Dassia strolled forward, giving Penric the polite, repelling smile of good duennas everywhere. “We should say our farewells downstairs, and then it will be time for me to show you to your new room. The household is a little disordered at present because of the repairs, but this is actually one of the more spacious of the duke’s residences for us.” She laced Nikys’s arm through hers and drew her away.
“You see,” said Nikys over her shoulder, “I shall be well looked-after here, Learned.”
“So nice to see you again, Learned Penric.” Madame Dassia’s nod was a clear dismissal.
Penric gave them both a weak wave, and allowed himself to be dismissed. He made his correct and civil goodbyes downstairs, exited the palace-in-progress, and threaded the streets back toward the chapterhouse.
She didn’t say no, Pen, Des observed into his despondent silence.
It felt like no to me. She certainly didn’t say yes!
Two blighted proposals of marriage in one day for you, then. Poor Penric!
Pen definitely ignored that one.
The stars overhead were a bright wash in a vault still holding a faint sense of color, some purple or blue too deep to name. Orbas, it seemed, shared the beauty of its sky with Cedonia, even if reluctant to share anything else. Penric still loved this boundless exotic sky, in all its moods. Even though he could never, ever touch it. Grasp it. Bring it down into a bag and carry it home. There were so many splendid things here, it seemed, that he could not carry home.
He’d not taken time earlier to write the letter to Adria reporting himself alive. He’d wanted to include the final report of Adelis’s meeting with the duke, he’d told himself. Or had he been hoping, even then, that some last talk with Nikys would show him what he wanted to do?
He had to scribble something yet tonight, so it could go out with the earliest Temple courier tomorrow. Or, he supposed, he could just leave in the morning, and speed back to deliver his bad news in person. Writing home asking for instructions when he could already guess them was really nothing but a time-delaying ploy. A piece of diplomatic subterfuge. Or, to put it plainly, wretched foot-dragging.
In the small but private chamber that had been allotted to him in the chapterhouse, he carefully removed his borrowed whites, lit a brace of candles at the little writing table, lined up paper and inkpot and quills, and sat. The room was hot and close. The quill felt almost unfamiliar in his hand, after so many weeks without it.
He sat for a long time. Scribble or sail? For once, Des offered no opinion.
At length, Pen offered up a curse in the Bastard’s name upon the heads of all hapless men who made fools of themselves for women, bent forward, dipped his quill, and began to write.
~FIN~
Author’s Note:
A Bujold Reading-Order Guide
The Fantasy Novels
My fantasy novels are not
hard to order. Easiest of all is The Spirit Ring, which is a stand-alone, or aquel, as some wag once dubbed books that for some obscure reason failed to spawn a subsequent series. Next easiest are the four volumes of The Sharing Knife—in order, Beguilement, Legacy, Passage, and Horizon—which I broke down and actually numbered, as this was one continuous tale divided into non-wrist-breaking chunks.
What were called the Chalion books after the setting of its first two volumes, but which now that the geographic scope has widened I’m dubbing the World of the Five Gods, were written to be stand-alones as part of a larger whole, and can in theory be read in any order. Some readers think the world-building is easier to assimilate when the books are read in publication order, and the second volume certainly contains spoilers for the first (but not the third.) In any case, the publication order is:
The Curse of Chalion
Paladin of Souls
The Hallowed Hunt
“Penric’s Demon”
“Penric and the Shaman”
“Penric’s Mission”
“Mira’s Last Dance”
In terms of internal world chronology, The Hallowed Hunt would fall first, the Penric novellas perhaps a hundred and fifty years later, and The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls would follow a century or so after that.
Other Original E-books
The short story collection Proto Zoa contains five very early tales—three (1980s) contemporary fantasy, two science fiction—all previously published but not in this handy format. The novelette “Dreamweaver’s Dilemma” may be of interest to Vorkosigan completists, as it is the first story in which that proto-universe began, mentioning Beta Colony but before Barrayar was even thought of.
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