The Prisoner of Limnos

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “In a set of rooms?”

  “Mm. Tanar could spend the day brewing medicines, and Bosha could, I don’t know, assassinate the customers. They’d be happy.”

  Nikys caught a black laugh in her hand too late to stuff it back into her mouth.

  And then the cart was turning onto the street, and other peoples’ troubles had to make way for her own. The last leg of this mortal relay.

  Maybe.

  IX

  Pen craned his neck as they rattled into the small port village of Guza, on the Cedonian shore opposite Limnos. Dusk muffled its streets in shadows. The sea remained luminous; four miles out, the island bulked as a mysterious silhouette against the horizon. Guza earned much of its living serving Limnos, its Order, and the steady stream of pilgrims making their way to its sacred well. Spring was the busy season for such travelers, but the clear skies and calm waters of summer drew a second wave. In the grimmer winds of winter, Bosha had told them, such traffic shut down.

  A hospice of the Daughter’s Order in Guza was devoted to housing pilgrims, with a reputation for being the cleanest, cheapest, and safest place to stay overnight. Pen was not willing to test his disguise in the close confines of a women’s dormitory, however, where the goddess might not be the sole one to take vigorous offense if he slipped up. Bosha dropped them instead at the inn that was not the mainstay of the sailors, and went off to find secure stabling for Lady Xarre’s horse and cart.

  Pen had hoped to find separate rooms for all three of them, but was lucky to get even one. The chamber in the eaves held a bed and a straw-stuffed pallet brought-in which, between them, filled the floor. Ruchia advised him to take the offer of plain cold food and drink carried up by a maid in place of a trip to the taproom, and Nikys seemed relieved to go along with this. When Bosha arrived, they made a picnic of it. Pen suspected the retainer dined at home as finely as his mistresses and often with them, but he made no comment on the simplicity of this meal.

  Then came the problem of apportioning beds, which brought back memories of the flight to Orbas with Adelis. Nikys, both practiced at the arguments and plainly very, very tired of them, took over, bluntly assigning herself to the pallet and the two men to the bed.

  “And don’t stare at me like a pair of five-year-olds told to eat their vegetables,” she added tartly, blocking protest. Fortunately, Bosha seemed used to following the orders of irate women. It would have made for the most awkward night’s sleep imaginable, if Pen hadn’t been so fatigued he dropped like a log within moments of hitting the sheets.

  He’d no idea of how Bosha had fared, come dawn. The man’s eyes were always red.

  * * *

  The small boats that ferried travelers out to the island left Guza as early as they could make up a passenger list. Several of the captains and crews were themselves women, much favored by some of the pilgrims. Bosha directed them aboard one of these not because he knew it, he said, but because he didn’t, and vice versa. As soon as the craft cast off, he clambered over the barrels and crates to crouch in the shadow of the sail, augmented by a wide-brimmed hat that he pulled down over his flushed face.

  The little fleet sailed out in the morning and back at dusk, giving their supercargo as long a day as possible to visit ashore. Some pilgrims stayed over, either at the fishing village that served the Order, or at the upper hamlet that lay outside its precincts, and a very few, by arrangement, within the walls, most of the latter being themselves Temple functionaries. Pen kept peeking over the green spectacles to take in as much of the glorious sea light as he could, until Nikys appeared with a straw hat she’d found somewhere, jammed it over his head declaring he was going to fry like an egg, and made him join Bosha in the shade.

  They had each supplied themselves with a thin blue scarf, conveniently for sale at a booth on the Guza wharf, marking them as supplicants. Bosha had draped his over his head, secured by his hat and pulled down over his face. He raised this curtain to frown briefly at Pen, then let it drop back. With every inch of skin covered with, mostly, dark cloth, including gloves, he looked hot and very uncomfortable.

  “Would you like your spectacles for a while?” murmured Pen.

  “No,” he muttered back. “If you’re going to carry out this play, stay in your character.”

  He’s right about that, said Des.

  “I didn’t realize this would be such an ordeal for you.” The brilliant morning sun reflecting off the sea would have bathed the man in burns, uncovered. Pen wasn’t sure how well Tanar’s dye would protect him, either.

  “My sister’s birthday is in late fall. It’s not usually this bad, then.”

  Nikys sat down on Pen’s other side. She seemed to be growing tenser the closer they drew to their goal. Pen nudged her in an attempt at silent reassurance, barely acknowledged by a lip-twitch that did not linger.

  With a few barked orders, the boat came about. The sail slid aside like a screen, giving their first view of the Daughter’s retreat on Limnos.

  Pen looked up. And up. And up. His jaw unhinged. “Five gods preserve me,” he breathed.

  From the sea, a nearly sheer rock face soared so high into the air that the gray stone buildings atop, roofed with faded blue tile, looked like architect’s models. The precipice stood out from the island like the column of a giant’s temple.

  “That has to be a thousand feet up,” Pen marveled.

  “Just about that,” said Bosha, raising his scarf again to follow Pen’s gaze.

  “How do people get up there?”

  “There is a stairway cut into the cliff that winds up it in switchbacks. You’ll be able to make it out when we get closer. Over two thousand steps, and every step a prayer.”

  “A curse, surely, by the end!” said Pen, appalled.

  Bosha let him dwell in his horror for a long moment, then added airily, “Or you could pay a coin to the donkey drivers to take you up the road from the village.”

  Pen, well taken-in, shot him a glare.

  The smirk curled back on teeth. “Some rare persons on a pilgrimage of atonement do climb the stairs, I’m told. On their hands and knees. This is less an act of humility than terror, as there are no railings. There are places so narrow that people coming up and people coming down have to crawl over each other.”

  “I believe we will take the donkeys,” said Nikys primly.

  “Good decision.”

  “I’m not sure how such wild feats are supposed to impress the gods,” mused Pen, squinting upward, “who are present everywhere the same. Though my subtler seminary teachers advised me that any useful effect is upon the supplicant, not some holy audience. It’s all in whether the given action fills a person or empties them, leaving room for a god to enter. You could sit by yourself in a quiet room and have as good a chance at it. A man could walk up those two thousand steps on his hands singing hymns the whole way and have none.”

  Bosha eyed him curiously. “Could you have such a chance? Learned divine as you apparently are.”

  “No. Sorcerers are always too full.” Pen sighed. “It’s all indirection, for my god and me. Maddeningly so, sometimes.”

  So far up, trees looked like bits of parsley set around a roast. It took study, counting the rows of windows and filigree of wooden balconies, to realize how large the buildings actually were, rising six or eight floors high above the rock base on this side.

  “I’m surprised it hasn’t been seized for an imperial fortress,” said Pen.

  “It was, once,” said Bosha. “Although not by Cedonia. By one of its enemies. Two hundred years ago. A long tapestry tells the story, up in the halls, that all the pilgrims to Limnos go view.”

  “So what is the tale?” asked Pen.

  “Ah. The ravine was bridged by ladders, and the Daughter’s women suffered the usual rapine, slaughter, and carrying-off into slavery. About a week after, the entire garrison was felled by plague. Of a thousand men, there were only thirteen survivors. It was considered a miracle of the Daughter, in venge
ance for the affront. The Order has never been attacked since.”

  Nikys hummed. “Or a very, very angry woman poisoning the sacred well.”

  The lip-scar stretched. “So I would make it.”

  “No reason it can’t be both,” said Pen, judiciously. “And every reason it could. The gods have no hands but ours, they say.” He held up his fingers and wiggled them.

  “Not mine,” growled Bosha, and retreated back under his blue curtain.

  X

  As their boat took its turn at the Limnos dock and the passengers wobbled their way to shore, Nikys wasn’t sure if she was heartsick, homesick, or seasick. Or all of them. The tension in her shoulders made her feel like a plaster statue whose head could crack away at a careless knock. As her feet found the grainy cobblestones, she took a deep breath.

  Penric-as-Ruchia captured her hand and gripped it. “Hey,” he murmured. “It will be very well.”

  There was no rational reason at all to believe that. Sorcerers, as far as she knew, didn’t possess the powers of seers. But she stretched her neck a little without her head coming off.

  Bosha took care to exit the boat apart from them, but it was easy enough to follow the handful of other pilgrims straggling up through the village to the donkey livery. They ducked around the side of the last whitewashed house and handed off their luggage to him, barring one sack containing Mira’s clogs, Pen’s tunic and trousers, and a packed lunch atop not just for concealment.

  “Where will you wait for us?” asked Nikys. “I only saw the one tavern.”

  “Not there,” said Bosha. “Too many people would notice me. A little way up there’s a path, and some crevices in the rocks. I’ll just evict the adders, and I’ll have a dark, cool place to wait out the sun. I should be able to mark you coming back down.”

  “This island has adders?” said Nikys nervously. She might have taken this for more of Bosha’s sly humor, but he was the only one among them wearing boots.

  “Not on the road.” He smirked, probably. It was hard to be sure. “Your sorcerer will doubtless protect you. …Animals like him, he tells me.”

  Ignoring this edged dig, Pen drew her off.

  “But who will protect him?” Nikys worried, glancing back over her shoulder. The man had already disappeared.

  “From the adders? They’ll probably welcome him as a cousin. Given the inventory of tainted blades he’s carrying.”

  “He drugs his belt-knife?”

  “Oh, that one’s clean. But there’s one around his neck, one at his back, one in his boot, and that pouch at his belt is full of nasty little larding-needles.”

  Nikys considered this. “Good.”

  ‘Livery’ was perhaps too grand a name for what proved to be a collection of animals tethered in the shade of some olive trees, together with a few rowdy boys for groom-guides, and an adult couple who collected the coins from the pilgrims and portioned out the mounts. The poorer or more fit travelers simply walked up the winding road, although there was also a cart for the aged or infirm. They endured a short delay while a longer-legged donkey was found for the very tall woman with the weak eyes, but soon both Pen and Nikys clambered aboard sidewise saddles like little wooden seats, arranged their skirts, and lurched off towed by a lad.

  The road bent back and forth across the sparse hillside like a shuttle on a loom, covering what might have been two miles in a straight line, and a thousand vertical feet. The view across the strait to the mainland of Cedonia was superb, sky and sea a vibrant clear blue that reminded Nikys of Pen’s eyes, the land aglow with white light. It only seemed forever before they rounded the last turn and approached the hamlet outside the walls of the Daughter’s Order.

  She searched for any signs of guards they would somehow have to circumvent, later. A few men in blue tunics of the Order were about, bearing weapons, and under a plane tree four bored soldiers in imperial uniforms played at dice. They paused to look over the latest arrivals to be unloaded, but, after the first flicker of attention, their interest seemed more lewd than suspicious.

  Truly, even were he mad enough to do so, it was far too early for Adelis to be arriving with any sort of attack force. Which the sentinels could watch coming up the road long before it arrived.

  Except Adelis wouldn’t march up the hill in broad daylight. He’d land his troop on the far side of the island in the dark and infiltrate by surprise. So perhaps the soldiers’ present relaxation was justified.

  The long drawbridge lay down across a plunging cleft, cool and green in its shadowy depths. Nikys gripped Pen’s elbow as if assisting her friend while they waited for a blue-clad man to push a cart holding a barrel across, handing it off at the stone archway to a waiting woman. They exchanged brief Daughter’s salutes, a tap to the forehead, as well as the load. Nikys and Pen followed it inside.

  The forecourt was sunny, paved with interlaced tiles in blue, white, and yellow. On the other side stood a podium womaned by an acolyte wearing a blue scarf, smiling welcome at the visitors and waiting to assist them in signing the guest book, a large ledger. The only hazard was the startling pack of perhaps a dozen guard dogs.

  Nikys had vaguely expected something like the Xarre mastiffs, huge and threatening. Instead, these were small beasts, their long coats beautifully brushed, with bright black eyes and pink tongues. It was like being swarmed by a throng of white silk floor mops.

  Pen made a faint urk sound, and acquired a look of concentration. The dogs’ suspicion turned to joy as they rioted around him, snuffling and panting. A couple of them darted in to lick his ankles. Producing a credible feminine eep, not wholly feigned, Pen shook his skirts and attempted to gently shove them away with a long sandaled foot. Which would have been all right had their pink tongues not come away with a distinct brown tint. Nikys swallowed horror and bent to them, waving her arms and hissing, “Shoo. Shoo!” They tried to lick her fingers.

  To Nikys’s intense relief, a woman came in behind them shepherding four young girls, who squealed at their canine reception. Girls and dogs fell upon each other with equal delight, exchanging petting and cooing for licks and wriggles, and Pen escaped.

  As planned, Nikys signed in for the both of them, her false name and his, so that there would be no discrepancy in handwriting when it came time to sign out. Assuming anyone actually compared such things. They will later on, when they discover Mother missing.

  “And what do you pray to our Lady for today?” the acolyte asked cheerfully.

  “Oh, nothing for myself. My friend Ruchia is praying for aid for her weak eyes. I’m just here to help her.”

  Pen nodded amiably, and, by whatever restraint—maybe Des—managed not to add any rambling comments. He pulled a handkerchief from his sleeve and pressed it to his nose just in time to dam the beginning trickle of blood.

  “Oh dear, are you all right?” said the acolyte. “Do you need to go sit down?”

  Pen shook his head, emitting a muffled negative noise. “S’tops in a mom’nt.”

  Reluctantly, the acolyte released them to the first stage of the pilgrims’ tour, pointing out the entry to the tapestry gallery. Nikys fished out her coin purse and withdrew an offering for the box set up next to the podium, turning her hand to make sure the acolyte caught the heavy gold glint. The acolyte was all smiles as she sent them on their way, though she added a recommendation to the tall girl to return if she felt unwell and someone would guide her to the infirmary.

  The famous tapestry was arranged on a long wall, with a series of arched windows opposite that illuminated without allowing direct sunlight to fade it. Penric actually took the time to look at it all, strolling slowly through thirty feet of closely embroidered narrative, murmuring interpretations under his breath. Nikys wasn’t sure if he was just doing an excellent job of playing a pilgrim, or if he was overcome with scholarly distraction, again.

  One could make out views of the soldiers landing in the fishing cove below, ravaging through something very like the present village. Sc
aling ladders and smoke. Women screaming, captured by the hair by what appeared to be brutal ogres. A picture of the sacred well, with the goddess looming over it crying in dismay. Her face was portrayed so vaguely as to be a near-blank, because the Nominalist Controversy had taken some vicious turns in Cedonia, but what could be seen of Her posture somehow conveyed profound emotion. Toward the end, many detailed little ogre figures writhed in visible agony and vomited red threads. Lots of red threads.

  “I didn’t know needlework could be so hostile,” murmured Pen, bending to examine these. “Definitely a sermon, there.” His licked his lips a touch nervously.

  The last image was of the goddess smiling benignly, presiding over billowing smoke from pyres and the restoration of Her refuge. Pen contemplated this and signed himself, hand passing over his forehead for the Daughter, lips for the Bastard, navel for the Mother, groin for the Father, and heart for the Son, bowing slightly and giving his forehead an extra tap.

  Then twice with the back of his thumb on his lips for the luck of his own god, however ambiguous. Because Penric never seemed to forget, though others did, that his powers were lent ultimately by the white god, to Whom he must someday render up an account.

  It was an unexpected insight, and Nikys eyed him sideways. She had met him first as physician, then as sorcerer, but he was equally, it seemed, a learned divine. Maybe she hadn’t given enough credence to this third pillar of his character.

  The gallery let them out down some bluish granite steps into the court of the sacred well, recognizable from the tapestry. But so much more stunning in reality. She and Pen both stopped short and gawped.

  From the middle of a white marble circle some eight feet in diameter bubbled up clear, bright waters. Welling indeed. Through five ports, it spilled over into an encircling basin. From there, channels led away variously into the surrounding precincts, doubtless including baths and laundries. One spout emptied into a sink with silver ladles hung around it. From there it trickled into something resembling a marble laundry trough, beautifully carved with emblems of the goddess, in which a pilgrim seeking more complete consolation could immerse her whole body.