The Prisoner of Limnos

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “This is as well-stocked as any apothecary shop,” said Penric, gazing around. Nikys expected he was qualified to judge.

  “Yes,” said Tanar cheerfully. “I first became interested in the art when I made Sura teach me how he concocted his, hm, medicines. Then I followed Karaji around and had her show me how she made all the dyes for the household’s spinning and weaving. Then Mama permitted me a real apothecary as a tutor—she came out once a week for, oh, almost three years. So I can make all the household’s remedies. I’m better at it than Sura, now.”

  The retainer gifted her with a conceding eyebrow-lift—proud teacher?—and she tossed her head in pleased reply.

  Penric’s smile had grown oddly fixed. “Can you cook, too?”

  “Oh, yes. Mother agrees I should learn every skill I can. Because even when supervising servants, one needs to understand their tasks. And who knows what all an officer’s wife might be called upon to do?”

  “A general’s wife,” stated Bosha, as if repeating himself from some prior and fruitless protest, “would surely have proper help.”

  Nikys laughed. “So people imagine. I think Tanar has a better grip on the possibilities.”

  “Mother made it a bargain,” explained Tanar. “She would trade me a tutor in whatever I fancied in exchange for me studying her bookkeeping, which I do not love. It all worked out. Except for the horseshoeing, that time.”

  “Horseshoeing?” said Nikys. Even she hadn’t heard this tale. Bosha, who evidently had, hid his mouth behind his hand.

  “We had a very patient old pony, and a very patient old farrier. Who both grew much less patient as the day wore on. I still don’t think I could shoe a horse, but if ever my horse threw a shoe, I wager I could nail it back on without laming the poor beast, so there’s that much.” She looked around. “But I like the stillroom best.”

  Nikys directed Pen to light the stove. The two women donned aprons and set about mixing up an array of samples. They then made him sit on a stool and remove his shirt, testing the colors on his skin until they achieved a tolerable match for Nikys. While Tanar expanded the recipe, Nikys, who had done the task before, combed an inky black dye through Penric’s unbound hair.

  “Such a shame,” Tanar murmured over her shoulder, watching this eclipse.

  “My hair has been recolored so many times since I came to Cedonia I’m surprised it hasn’t all fallen out,” sighed Penric. “I’m tempted to shave my head to defend myself.”

  “Don’t you dare,” said Nikys, giving a lock a sharp tug, forgetting that she wasn’t supposed to care. Pen, the rat, noticed, because he pressed down a smile.

  “With the fixative I’m using these dyes should stand up to water and washing for a few days,” said Tanar. “Be careful not to let them rub off on anything where someone might notice.”

  Once the skin treatment was satisfactorily started, Tanar and Bosha vanished out the gallery door together. Nikys, trying not to think too much about this excuse for so pleasurably touching him, ended up coloring Pen’s face, neck, hands, arms and shoulders, then started at his feet, working up his long legs to his knees.

  Pen swallowed. She braced herself for who-knew-what—whatever had possessed him to tell the world he was courting her?—but he said, unexpectedly, “Did you know Bosha carries poisoned blades?”

  “I knew he went armed. I mean, he needs to. I didn’t know about the other.” Although it made sense to Nikys. The eunuch was not a man who could expect mercy if he lost a fight, and Tanar was not a charge he dared fail.

  “Do you think Tanar brews his poisons?”

  Nikys tilted her head, considering this. “Very possibly. She’d love to think she was doing something for him, in exchange for all he does for her.”

  “That doesn’t bother you?”

  “It seems a very good skill for a woman who, by marriage or some other ill-chance, could well be tossed into the imperial court at Thasalon. Which is the most poisonous place I’ve ever been, even without the aid of apothecaries.”

  “Could be hard on an unsatisfactory husband. Doesn’t it make you worry for Adelis?”

  Nikys’s lips twitched. “Not really. Adelis is not the sort of man who inspires poisoning. He’s the sort of man who inspires hitting on the head with a skillet.”

  Penric muffled a too-agreeing snort. “So speaks his loving sister. Have you ever done so?”

  “Not since we were twelve, I admit.” She added after a moment, “Then he grew too tall to reach. Bad angle for the swing.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “You’re safe. You’re even taller.”

  A snicker. But then, annoyingly, he rose, leaving her with dye dripping through her fingers, and began tapping his way around the cabinets. A pause, a familiar click, and he drew one door wide and stuck his head in.

  “Hey! I imagine that was locked for a reason!”

  “Oh,” he breathed, “indeed it was.” He sounded a little too delighted. “What do you make of it all, Des? …Really? …Huh.”

  “Stop snooping,” she said, undercutting her indignation by adding, “Someone might come back.”

  After a long look he closed it up again, to her relief, and troubled to relock it, too.

  “You can’t go about piebald. Come back here.”

  Dutifully, he returned, sat, and gave her back his leg. “Interesting.”

  And left it at that, till she gave in and growled, “All right, what? You’re obviously itching to tell.”

  “Fast-acting paralytics, mostly, according to Des. The death is in the dose, as they say. Even packed in a grooved blade, I don’t think such low amounts would kill. Clever bastard.”

  Nikys reflected. “Right. All Bosha’d have to do is land one nick to slow his opponent down. Then kill him with his steel, if he had to. No question of poisoning would ever arise, after. And if someone got his blade away from him, they couldn’t kill him with it. Not with the venom, at least.”

  Penric, who had opened his mouth, said plaintively, “I was going to explain that.”

  “No need. Have you ever listened to a crowd of drunken army louts bragging about their exploits to each other? One learns a lot.” Not that the men noticed.

  “Since escaping my brother Drovo-the-aspiring-mercenary at a fairly early age, I’ve mostly managed to avoid such experiences.”

  “Lucky you.”

  Pen was sitting drying, and Nikys was fanning him to speed the process, when Tanar and Bosha came back with piles of clothing in their arms. They proved to be borrowings from some senior female servants, sober and sedate. The key factor in selection, once Nikys and Tanar bound Pen’s dye-damp hair in a cloth and marshaled him through a try-on, turned out to be length, but he only needed the one change. Pen seemed much more adept outfitting the persona he’d dubbed Learned Ruchia than the first time, when trying to dress, and perhaps evoke, the courtesan Mira. Was he a fast learner—well, Nikys knew he was—or was Ruchia simply closer to himself? Or were all his internal ladies equally present to him?

  Partway into this process, Bosha, who had kept his amusement almost under control, though Pen had certainly noticed the voiceless sniggers, inclined his head in a shadow-bow and withdrew through the gallery door. After some fussing about and much debate, they finished the transformation. Pen took a turn around the small stillroom practicing the management of his draperies and a very convincing feminine walk.

  “I really do believe you will be able to slip into the Order’s precincts,” said Tanar, admiring her handiwork. “But will you be able to get out again safely? By yourself?”

  Bosha reentered through his own chamber door in time to hear this, and leaned against the jamb. “I expect so. As Madame Khatai says, he has skills.” Nikys looked up to see him twirling Pen’s Temple braids around one long index finger. “And now we know what kind.”

  Pen went rigid, and so, for a moment, did Nikys, chilled with a sudden realization of how very, very dangerous an act it might be to bait Pe
n. But Pen only licked his lips and said, flatly, “Give those back.”

  “Certainly.” Bosha handed them across at arm’s length. Two arms’ lengths, counting Pen’s side.

  Tanar, goggling, said, “Are those sorcerer’s braids?”

  “Yes,” said Pen shortly.

  “Are they real?” A reasonable question, given all the exercises in disguise.

  “Yes.”

  “That explains a lot,” murmured Bosha, folding his arms, and himself back to the doorjamb.

  “Oh my goodness!” said Tanar. “I’ve never met a sorcerer to talk to. Nikys, did you know? Yes, of course you do.” Tanar looked thrilled. Bosha did not.

  “Do you normally rifle through your guests’ luggage?” said Pen testily.

  “Do you normally light a fire without using a taper or spill?” Bosha inquired in turn.

  “…Oh.”

  “Yes, he does,” said Nikys. And when had she, and Pen, become so used to this simple domestic convenience that she asked, and he complied, routinely? “Oh, Pen, I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”

  “It’s all right,” he said, though his voice was still a little choked. “Neither did I. Though I didn’t realize he was watching.”

  “It answers so many questions,” said Bosha, “and yet raises so many more. Given where I found them in your case. Temple physician, as well?”

  “Not… exactly.”

  “In all but final oath,” Nikys put in on Pen’s behalf.

  “Because the cadre of physicians, I am given to understand, are the very most adept of Temple sorcerers.”

  “You understand correctly,” said Pen. His mouth reset in a thin line, and only Nikys knew how deep a scar that was for him. Bosha would blunder around and never know why the conversation had turned so sour. That wasn’t even touching on the disaster that could ensue should Bosha learn Pen had come to Patos as an agent of the duke of Adria. And still might be one.

  She cut in ruthlessly. “Your many questions may be answered in full—should we meet again for Tanar and Adelis’s wedding. Here, now, it’s better not to know.”

  Nikys wondered what it said for Bosha’s mind that, with a slow nod, he accepted this.

  * * *

  Nikys said farewell to Tanar in her bedchamber. They exchanged fierce hugs.

  “Take care,” said Tanar, releasing her. “I’m happier now I know more about your courier. A Temple sorcerer, really? And a physician?”

  “He healed Adelis’s eyes,” Nikys confirmed. “It wasn’t a matter of the executioner doing a poor job. I swear they were half boiled-away.”

  Tanar gasped.

  “It was awful beyond belief. I saw. Pen practically rebuilt them, with his sorcery.” She felt strangely glad she was able to finally tell someone. Justice? Bragging? She hardly knew.

  “But Adelis’s eyes are all right now?”

  “He sees perfectly. He just looks different.”

  Tanar nodded, accepting this with a practical air. “And your fetching physician—has he asked you to marry him yet?”

  Nikys thought back to that exhausted, difficult conversation she and Pen had scraped through upon arriving safely in Orbas. “I suppose so.”

  “You suppose? How can you not know?”

  “Well, I do know. Yes.”

  “What, and you didn’t seize him with both hands? Sorcerer, physician, that astonishing sunburst of hair? So tall. And those eyes. Is it true sorcerers can do amazing things in bed?”

  “I… don’t know. Probably.” And did not say, General Chadro certainly seemed to think so.

  “I’d think you’d at least be more curious.” Tanar huffed a disappointed sigh.

  “As you are?” Nikys muffled a laugh, and Tanar smiled sheepishly. Nikys went on, “But it’s never just Penric. He comes as a set. His chaos demon isn’t only a power, she’s a person. He’s even named her. Desdemona.”

  Tanar pressed her fingers to her lips, stifling a giggle. “Clever!”

  “But there are two people living in his head, not just one. All the time.” Well, twelve… thirteen, but there was no way now to go into the full roster. “She’s been riding along with him in secret all this visit, your third guest.”

  Tanar’s head tilted. “But not secret to you.”

  “…No.”

  “And, clearly, not dangerous enough to warn us.” Tanar raised her face, and her eyebrows, in something not quite a question.

  “That’s a point,” Nikys conceded, in not quite an answer. “But I wouldn’t just be marrying him. I’d be marrying her. The chaos demon. Do you see?”

  “I… oh.” If this did not take Tanar aback, it at least slowed her down. “Well, you are a careful woman, and the gods attest you have suffered much. I suppose you know your own mind.” Her tone hooked a lingering doubt onto the end of this statement.

  Nikys shrugged rueful agreement with the unspoken codicil. Who could foresee regrets? Her marriage to Kymis had seemed fine, had been fine, until its ghastly truncation. To give one’s heart to any living being, even a simple cat, was to risk such loss. Which brought her around once again: “So what would you have me tell Adelis?”

  Tanar bit her lip and looked down. “Tell him…” She looked up to meet Nikys’s eyes. “Tell him I will wait.”

  “Are you so sure? It could be a long time. Or never. I’ve seldom met a young woman who wasn’t wild to escape her mother’s household and become mistress of her own.”

  “No matter what she had to marry to do so?” Tanar inquired, amused. “That road is not for me. Daughter and Mother be thanked. My mother and I don’t exactly have to live atop each other, here. And she indulges all my interests. Or at least, she praises my successes, and says nothing of all my false starts. Which have been many and sometimes embarrassing, but she claims it’s all learning.”

  Nikys captured and gripped her waving hands. “I’ll pass your message along, then, when I get the chance.”

  Nikys picked up her repacked valise and followed Tanar out to the sitting room, where Penric, all fitted out as Ruchia, and Bosha awaited. To curtail the number of Xarre servants to see them, it had been decided that Bosha himself would drive them to the village on the coast where they could take ship to Limnos, and play male escort to the two lady pilgrims. Nikys trusted that Penric’s god—and hers, and possibly Bosha’s as well, she’d never asked—appreciated the ironies in that, and would protect them along their way in exchange for, if nothing else, the amusement. When they took the channel boat in the morning, Bosha would travel not with their party, but merely at the same time, as discreetly as he’d ever guarded Tanar.

  Bosha had traded his more flamboyant robes for a trim sleeveless tunic and matching trousers in dark dyes, with a long-sleeved linen shirt despite the heat. The somber servant’s garb somehow managed to make him an even more striking figure. Tanar evidently thought so, too, for she picked an imaginary speck of lint off his tunic and said, “You look very fine.”

  He placed his hands on her shoulders in turn. “Take care while I’m gone. Sleep in Lady Xarre’s chambers. Obey her.”

  “I always do.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “I will this time. Just for you, Mother Hen.” She tapped his nose. “You take care of yourself as well. Don’t drag back all bloody again. And I absolutely forbid you to get yourself killed. That’s an order!”

  That hand-to-heart bow was all the answer he gave. As Tanar turned away, his habitual smirk slipped into a smile of such surpassing tenderness that Nikys’s breath caught.

  It was gone in a moment, the sardonic mask back in place. She might have thought she’d imagined it, except that she doubted she could ever forget it.

  Oh.

  I think I need to think about this.

  It was then time to be smuggled back through the garden to the postern gate, and on out to the side street.

  “Wait here,” Bosha instructed them. “I’ll bring the cart around.” He locked the gate after them with a firm
clack.

  Penric set down his case and satchel, passed the fold of his dress’s draperies over his coiled black hair, and leaned against the garden wall. Nikys did the same. At length, she rested her head back upon the day-warmed stone and sighed, “That may be the most forlorn hope I have ever witnessed.”

  “Hm?” said Pen.

  “Bosha and Tanar. He is in love with her, I believe. And he knows it.”

  Pen’s grunt was neither surprised nor disagreeing. “A highborn heiress and a cut servant twice her age? Forlorn indeed. Surely he knows that, too.”

  “Oh, yes.” Nikys went on thoughtfully, “I’m not so sure she knows she’s in love with him.”

  In a distant tone, Pen remarked, “A person might observe that every other name out of her mouth was not ‘Adelis’. Is this a cause for concern?”

  “Mm, of a sort. I’ll have to think of some non-misleading way of letting my brother know they come as a pair or not at all.” She added after a moment, “Rather like you and Des.”

  A convulsive snort. “Bosha and Tanar are nothing at all like me and Des!”

  She cocked an eyebrow up at his indignation. “And what does Des have to say to that?”

  A little silence. “Des says you’re a very shrewd girl and she likes you.” A short pause. “And if I would just get my eyes off your, Des, that’s rude! I am not that shallow. Yes, he is.” Pen clamped his teeth.

  Nikys let that one go by, though the corners of her mouth inched up.

  He cleared his throat, and resumed, “I think it would be unwise to make assumptions. Bosha seemed very loyal to Lady Xarre, as well. You might note he went to her without telling Tanar, this morning.”

  “As was his clear duty and, as it turned out, astute. Good for all of us. Was that a point?”

  “More of a line. But it’s best not to meddle with things half understood,” said Pen. Nikys wasn’t sure whether it was Pen or Des who then added, “Or else I would recommend they run off somewhere far away and set up an apothecary shop. They could just live over it, together.”