The Prisoner of Limnos

by Lois McMaster Bujold

After a little, Tanar added, “I was so sorry I hadn’t had a chance to meet Madame Gardiki. Adelis spoke of inviting your mother to Thasalon for the purpose, but then the Rusylli interrupted. And all the rest followed.”

  “Well. I can’t say he’s ever mentioned wanting to do so for any other woman. I think she would like you.”

  A hopeful sort of “Mm?”

  “Do you really think we will be able to get her out?” All the worrisome unknowns still ahead of them made Nikys’s head throb to contemplate. Bosha had placed his elegant thumb square upon the problem. And then a miracle occurs.

  No. As they gained more information, they would find a route through. Somehow. Step by step. She couldn’t work miracles, but she knew she could work work.

  Tanar, Nikys thought, also hesitated between kindness and candor. Nikys could not tell which side Tanar imagined she was coming down on when she at last stated confidently, “Sura will know how.”

  Nikys let that lay unchallenged. She had put hope before prudence, or why else had she come this far? A few more breaths, in the dark. Hope or prayer, she offered up: “I always wanted to have a sister, too.”

  “Let us try to make that happen, then,” said Tanar softly.

  VII

  Pen woke to early morning light filtering through the shutters, and low voices from the sitting room. He snapped awake and went to check through the adjoining door, to see Bosha, barefoot and wearing his trousers but no shirt, turning away from the gallery door having received a large tray from some servant, which he set on the round table.

  Bosha also sported a long, old scar running diagonally across his back, crooked from some crude sewing-up. Like the one on his lip? Pen didn’t even need to say Sight, Des, to be given a deeper view. Sword cut, surely. As Bosha turned, raising his face sharply to Pen, Pen also marked a set of scars of the same age on his arms. Defensive wounds, would you say, Des?

  Oh, aye.

  Even inured by his anatomical training, it seemed rude to Pen to glance below the man’s waistband, but Des had no such inhibitions. The significant scar there seemed older, surgical and clean. No signs, as Pen had for an instant feared, of being relict of some brutal battlefield mutilation, as sometimes happened. Bosha was otherwise intact, not always the case either, the more ruthless and complete cuttings leading to incontinence and those ugly jokes about stinking court eunuchs. Of which Des, partly through Mira but largely through Vasia, one of Des’s old Cedonian riders, knew many, and I don’t want to hear them, Des.

  Suit yourself, Des sniffed. But all that we know, you’ll know in the end.

  Not while I have to look the man in the face. He added no softening courtesies to that one, and trusted Des took the hint.

  Bosha, unaware of this uncanny inspection, gave Pen a nod by way of greeting, which Pen returned. He pulled on a long-sleeved linen shirt, gathered at the wrists into ruffles, and added as his somewhat bed-rumpled head emerged, “Let the ladies know the tea is here. I’ll be back shortly. Don’t answer the door.” He padded out barefoot, face tight with thought.

  Pen went back to Bosha’s bedchamber-that-wasn’t and quickly dressed himself, before going to tap on the sitting room’s opposite door. Tanar poked her head out, received the news about the tea with sunny pleasure, and went back in. Light feminine voices and mysterious rattling-about preceded, eventually, the emergence of the women. Nikys, Pen noted, looked very fine first thing in the morning. And less tense and tired today than on most of the other mornings of their journey, good.

  Nikys wore her day garb, Tanar a pink concoction that Pen, or rather, Des, decoded as a dressing-gown, not some fanciful court wear. Only two teacups had arrived with the pot and covered plates and basket, and Pen adroitly evaded sitting lest Lady Tanar feel compelled to try to give up her cup to her other guest.

  The social dilemma was solved in a few minutes when Bosha returned with spare cups hooked on the fingers of one hand and a larger pot in the other. Three cups, not two, Pen noted as they were dealt out. The plates and basket proved to contain new-baked rolls, slices of soft white cheese, boiled eggs, olives, and fresh grapes, in sufficient abundance to share around without constraint. Also some of those ghastly dried fish blocks, which Pen avoided and everyone else seemed to think were food. Practical munching replaced conversation for a little.

  Bosha rose immediately at a firm rap on the chamber door, seeming unsurprised, though Tanar jerked around in alarm. He opened the door only wide enough to admit the visitor, favoring her with that hand-over-the-heart bow—Pen could not decide if the gesture was ironic or sincere—and closed it with a click in her wake. Nikys and Tanar stood up respectfully, and Pen copied them.

  Lady Xarre, without doubt. Tanar, Nikys had told Pen, was the child of the lady’s later age much as Adelis had been for Lady Florina. It had been a second marriage for both her and Lord Xarre, who had died when Tanar was four or five. Something of a love match, Nikys had implied. No mention of non-surviving older siblings.

  Pen’s first impression of elderly was not quite correct, he judged. Lady Xarre was a finely dressed, slightly built older woman, to be sure, her graying hair wound up in jewel-pinned braids. The carved wooden cane upon which she leaned was not an affectation, but a needed prop, for Bosha took her other arm and supported her to his chair with no demur on her part.

  Des’s quick glance by Sight reported, Very bad hip joints. Back when he was training and practicing in Martensbridge, Pen had enjoyed some luck persuading such deteriorations to rebuild themselves from within by repeated small applications of uphill magic over weeks or months. Which wasn’t time he was going to have, here, so there was no point thinking about it, right? He arranged his lips into a wary smile as she settled herself and looked up at him, and across at Nikys who, following Tanar, had sat again.

  “My lady,” murmured Bosha. “Madame Khatai you know; may I present to you Master Penric, her courier.”

  “Lady Xarre,” Pen managed.

  “Master Penric.” At Lady Xarre’s wave Pen, too, ducked a bow and reseated himself.

  Bosha poured tea for his senior mistress and took a pose leaning against the wall with his arms folded. Pen had seen servants who could fade into the furniture doing that; Bosha really wasn’t one of them.

  “Surakos told me we had unexpected visitors,” Lady Xarre began mildly.

  Nikys lifted her chin. “Uninvited, I am afraid. You have my apologies, but under the circumstances I cannot offer regrets.”

  “Not entirely uninvited. It appears.” She cast a pointed glance at Tanar, who squirmed, thus answering the question of whether that note to Nikys had been authorized by Lady Xarre or not. “But not unwelcome, I promise you.” Hard to tell how sincere that was. “Given the circumstances. But we are truly in want of first-hand news of the events in Patos, and after.” No mistaking the sincerity of that. “You know court rumors. What are not lies outright are invariably so muddled as to be almost worse.”

  Nikys nodded. She took a deep breath, and launched into a clipped description of the disaster in Patos starting from Adelis’s arrest through to his return to Nikys’s house, blinded and scalded. She left out the screaming and begging-for-death parts. Pen thought Lady Xarre and Bosha could fill in the lacunae.

  “And where do you come into this tale, Master Penric?” Lady Xarre inquired of him.

  Nikys bit her lip, caught between her promises to Pen and her unwillingness to lie to her hostess. Pen took up the banner: “Madame Khatai hired me on as a sort of male attendant to her injured brother. I was able to assist her in the sickroom, and later, when General Arisaydia’s sight came back, on their flight to Orbas.” Which wasn’t even untrue.

  “That must have been a difficult journey,” said Lady Xarre.

  “Yes,” said Nikys. Pen was a little disappointed that she did not add, We wouldn’t have made it without Penric, but he had after all asked her not to draw undue attention to him. No one to blame but himself.

  Lady Xarre accepted this uni
nviting monosyllable with a purse of her lips, and did not press for details. She turned to Pen instead. “So much for Orbas. But why were you willing to come here to Thasalon, Master Penric?”

  Pen thought over the impossible chaos his life had become ever since he’d first set foot in Cedonia, and decided to try a shorter truth. “I’m courting Madame Khatai.”

  Pen wished Nikys looked half so delighted with this statement as Tanar did. Lady Xarre smiled dryly. Pen couldn’t tell if Bosha’s expression was a smirk or just his lip scar.

  “Have you known each other long, then?” asked Lady Xarre.

  Nikys answered, “No. We just met in Patos.”

  Her voice still as pleasantly level, Lady Xarre said, “Do you trust him?”

  Nikys’s eyes squeezed closed, opened. “With my life, yes,” she said, with gratifying firmness. “With my future… I’m still thinking.”

  Lady Xarre chuckled. “Wise girl.” She drained her cup—Bosha bent to refill it—and leaned back in her chair. “I confess,” she said, “I, too, would be happy to see Madame Gardiki safe with her son and daughter in Orbas. Could she somehow be magically transported there.”

  Pen flinched. Nikys coughed, and drank tea.

  “Surakos reports you seemed a trifle unclear about the intervening steps.”

  Pen suspected Surakos had been a lot more blunt than that. “We actually hope to borrow his knowledge, as neither Madame Khatai nor I have even been to Limnos, and he has. Everything has to start with understanding both the physical layout and the human defenses. The Order’s house cannot be as impenetrable as a prison or a fortress, if it hosts visitors and pilgrims. Not to mention the need for transporting food and supplies in and out for its inhabitants—how many?”

  Lady Xarre waved at Bosha, who dutifully replied, “About three hundred Temple-sworn divines, acolytes, and dedicats, and perhaps an equal number of lay dedicats in service to them. All women, within the precincts. The complex of buildings sits on a notable promontory. Beyond the single drawbridge there is a rambling villa for male dedicats of the goddess, and guards. No men ever set foot past the bridge.”

  That was more populated than Pen had been picturing. “Do men ever try? People being what they are. In disguise, perhaps.”

  Bosha really smirked, this time. “People being what they are, the Order has a cadre of sacred dogs that roam the entry courtyard, trained to sniff out males. All bitches.”

  In both senses, Pen gathered. “That actually works?”

  “Extremely well, I’m told.”

  Tanar looked up. “Do you confuse them, Sura dear?”

  “I admit, I once made some amusing experiments borrowing your perfume, but in any case I am known, there.”

  “Did the perfume work?” Pen asked, intent.

  “I couldn’t really tell.” Rose-colored eyes glanced from under lowered lids. “I suspect it would not work for you.”

  But I have other ways of controlling dogs. “Do you know, or have you a guess, where and how Madame Gardiki may be kept within the walls?”

  Bosha shrugged. “She may have the freedom of the precincts, and mix with the residents. Some long-term lady prisoners have in the past, if they were judged docile enough. More likely, being new and untried, she would be kept in a locked chamber. Possibly on the side overlooking the sea. The Order is mainly guarded by its, ah, geology. And the water, wind, and currents. The island is only five miles long.”

  At Pen’s prodding, Bosha went on to describe more details of the architecture and the residents’ daily rounds of work and prayer. He seemed a remarkably observant man. Pen was getting less and less surprised at this.

  “And how do the prelates of the Daughter’s Order feel about their goddess’s house being used as an imperial prison?”

  Bosha cocked his head. “Interesting question. But since the imperial court is one of the main financial supports of the retreat, I don’t suppose they can refuse the duty.”

  “The visitors who go in and out—are they counted?”

  “Yes. There is a visitor’s book, which gets marked off. And rechecked at sunset, when the drawbridge is raised for the night. The ladies do value their privacy.”

  Pen sat back and rubbed his knuckles across his lips. Des, do you see any possibilities?

  Do you even remember who you are talking to, lad? and that was, without question, Learned Ruchia’s voice that scoffed at him. I can see six offhand, but let’s start with the quietest. The one that involves setting the place afire being the very last resort.

  I should think so! Pen shuddered at this hypothetical offense to the Lady of Spring.

  Let me ask Nikys a few questions.

  Pen yielded control of his mouth to his demon, and turned. “Nikys, what does your mother look like? Is she tall, short, fat, thin? Skin color, eyes and hair?”

  “She’s a little taller than I am, and, um, not so round. Her coloring is much like mine.”

  “Is she very level-headed in emergencies?”

  “Well, she raised Adelis and me.” Nikys’s enchanting grin, too seldom seen of late, flickered. “Following my father around to various army camps, to boot. I’m too young to remember the one time we were all in the baggage train when it was attacked, though I’ve heard the stories. Drema was always the practical one, of our two mothers. Florma was the nervous one.” Their children’s old nicknames for Idrene and Lady Florina. “I think my mother would have liked to be more nervous, at times, but the role was taken. So she mostly ended up reassuring us and Florma all together.”

  “I see.” He glanced at Lady Xarre’s cane, propped against her chair. “How fit is she, physically? Can she walk, run, climb, ride?”

  “Fit enough. She’s only just fifty now. She can do all those things, though not like a young man, of course.” She mulled. “Maybe not what you mean by climb. Not even when she was young. Me either. Stairs we can manage.”

  Des hummed aloud. “I think a substitution removal might just work, here.”

  “Beg pardon?” said Nikys.

  “Two women pilgrims enter the precincts to make prayer. A woman and her niece. Mm, cousin. Friend, anyway. We find Madame Gardiki and exchange clothes, and other things as needed. Later, two women sign out again, and make their way to their boat. Except the woman left in the cell is not Madame Gardiki. I escape at my leisure, and rejoin you.” Pen wasn’t sure whose voice was speaking, now.

  “What?” said Nikys. “You don’t look anything like my mother!”

  “It’s not as if we could leave you. That would be like trading a gold coin for a gold coin.”

  Tanar said tentatively, “Might I do?”

  Lady Xarre and Bosha both replied, instantly and in unison, “No!”

  Tanar ducked her chin, peeved. “I would like to do something. I could be the only person here with the right to drink from the goddess’s well, after all.”

  “No,” Bosha repeated. “There must be nothing whatsoever to connect this escapade with the Xarre household. Or with my sister Hekat at the Order, for that matter. She’s the only member of my family I could ever stand, and vice versa. I am wholly loth to risk her.” He frowned back at Tanar, and at Pen. “And if you are imagining involving me any further in this, may I point out that I am a line leading straight back to both.”

  “Yes, you are much too physically memorable,” agreed Pen. Although evidently an adept and ruthless bodyguard, which was an undoubted value.

  “So are you,” Nikys pointed out.

  “Appearances can be changed. In both directions. Sometimes by quite simple means. My hair and skin could be colored, or we might obtain a blond wig. I have Mira’s clogs in my luggage, which could boost your mother’s height to mimic mine. Eyes, well, who notices eyes?”

  “Yours?” said Nikys. “Everybody.”

  Pen was a little miffed when all in the room nodded solemn agreement.

  But Bosha pushed off from his wall. “I might have a solution for that.” He trod off to his bedchamber
, and returned with a small case in his hand. He opened it to display a pair of spectacles in fine brass frames, but the lenses were dark green glass.

  “Oh!” said Pen, bending to peer closely. “That’s very clever! I know a lens-grinder in Martensbridge who would like to know about that. Not that the sun is a great hazard in the cantons, although sometimes the sun on the snow is blinding.”

  “You have sun and snow at the same time?” said Nikys in some wonder. “What a strange country you come from, Pen.”

  Pen noted that slip of the tongue, Pen, and cut off a smile.

  “They were a gift from Lady Xarre,” said Bosha. “When I first became a retainer of the household. Because my eyes watered and hurt in the noonday light. In twenty-six years before that, no one had ever thought of offering me such an aid. I’ve no desire to give them to you, but if it will get you out of here faster, I will.”

  “They can be replaced, Surakos dear,” murmured Lady Xarre.

  A hand-on-heart silent nod of thanks. Ah, no, that wasn’t irony, was it.

  Pen picked them up with care and tried them on. The lenses were flat, thankfully, without any headache-inducing distortions. He blinked around at his viridescent audience.

  “If you want unmemorable,” said Nikys, “that’s not it either.”

  “So much the better. People will remember the spectacles but not the face behind them.”

  “Maybe… So would you be Mira again?”

  The other three people in the room stared at him curiously, and Bastard’s tears—or belly-laugh, whichever—that wasn’t a story he wanted told here. Or anywhere. “Not Mira, gods forfend, not at the Daughter’s Order. Learned Ruchia. She’ll know what to do, for one thing.”

  Nikys nodded, satisfied. Everyone else kept staring.

  “Dyes,” said Tanar after a moment. “Now that is something I might help with!”

  VIII

  Nikys had been in Tanar’s stillroom before. Penric had not, and looked surprised when he was shown past Bosha’s bedchamber through the next door down to find the workbench, the shelves crammed with neatly labeled jars and notebooks, the chests with dozens of tiny drawers, and the neat array of tools. The room even featured a little stove with a vent to the outside. Tanar opened the shutters to let in the light; only a window, here, no balcony.