Bosha addressed the air between Nikys and Penric: “So what is your plan for freeing her?”
Nicks scrubbed her fingers through her curls, in disarray after the day’s travel. “All my mind has been fixed on just getting here. We get out to the island somehow, get her out somehow. Penric thinks we should make the return journey by sea, being already there.”
“By choice not on a Cedonian ship,” Pen put in. “Adriac, with luck”—Nikys shot him a sharp look—“but it will depend on what we can find most swiftly to hand.”
“Will that be the safest course?” said Tanar doubtfully. “I mean… storms. Pirates.”
“Storms I can do nothing about,” Penric granted. “Pirates are no problem.” Once they drew close enough, anyway. Letting a chaos demon loose to do her worst in some other ship’s rigging than the one they were on ought to have remarkable results.
Oh, yes, murmured Des, in gleeful anticipation; Pen gathered she’d be disappointed if pirates didn’t show up.
Nikys nodded untroubled understanding at this last. Tanar and Bosha stared, startled.
After a moment, Bosha went on, “So, you arrive, you leave, and in between, what? A miracle occurs? Your plan seems to be missing its middle.”
“I have never been to Thasalon before,” said Pen, carefully not saying, You are its middle. He suspected Bosha suspected this. “I must rely on Nikys and local knowledge for this part, but I’ll do all I can in support of her.”
“Penric smuggled Adelis and me out of Cedonia to Orbas the first time,” Nikys put in, “and he’d never been there before either. He is not without skills.” Of course, not saying what kind rather left this assertion dangling in air.
Tanar nodded, accepting this without question. Bosha as plainly did not.
Tanar rubbed her delicate neck. Her girlish figure could not compete with Nikys’s lush build, but her shining hair, braided up on her head in a complex weave with a glimmer of pearls, had reddish highlights in the candle-glow that Pen thought might show auburn in daylight, and her eyes were a clear hazel tending to the gold side. Fine skin, good teeth. It seemed it was not just her fortune that had attracted Adelis to her, and besides, at the time of his late courtship, his wealth had matched hers. Penric had more trouble imagining what had attracted Tanar to Adelis.
Oh, come, Pen, Des scoffed. Adelis is a very compelling man. Profoundly irritating at moments, I’ll give you that, but when not being an ass, and you must allow he’s had a great deal to throw him off-balance of late, ladies might find him quite magnetic.
Even disfigured as he is now? Stripped of his Cedonian properties?
Of course. Really, after eleven years with us, I should think you would understand women better.
Lady Tanar still seemed to care about him, anyway, which was entirely to their benefit.
More interestingly, in two years no other suitor has nipped in and carried her off, Des pointed out. I can’t imagine it’s for lack of trying, not with her purse.
Tanar placed a small, decisive fist upon the table. “It’s plain we can do nothing more tonight. I think it’s best if you stay right in here with us, Nikys, concealed. You can sleep with me. Sura can find a place for your, um, traveling companion.” She eyed Pen more doubtfully, but gestured at them both. “Is this all you came with?”
Pen thought of the duke’s coins, sewn in hems or otherwise concealed about both their persons, but said only, “We left our luggage in the outer garden.”
“Won’t there be servants about?” asked Nikys. “Can they be trusted?”
“Sura will keep them out from underfoot,” said Tanar, with an assured nod. “He generally does anyway.” She rose, and the rest of them perforce followed.
“Best not to involve them yet,” said Bosha. “That being the case, do show me to your belongings, Master Penric.”
“Certainly, Master Bosha.”
Bosha lit and took up a small glass candle lantern, and guided Pen out into the darkened gallery. His footfalls moved soft across the boards, and Pen tried to match the quiet as he followed the eunuch down the end stairs, through a crooked passage, and to a door in the outer end wall, locked and barred for the night. Pen wondered if Nikys had guided them in this way, might he not have come so close to being knifed? He studied Bosha’s pale braid, swinging down his back as they followed through what was no dark to Des, and gave it no better than even odds.
They wound through the garden to the concealing bush. Pen collected his medical case himself, and his other satchel, leaving Bosha to take up Nikys’s valise. Bosha lifted it and gazed thoughtfully around.
“How did you gain entry through the outer wall?”
“Nikys knew of the postern door.”
“It should have been locked.”
“I’m good with locks.”
“Is that so.”
They’d just started back when the dogs came rushing up again. Still barkless, fortunately, although they managed a growl at Bosha, returned in kind. Enough of the geas lingered that they still fawned around Pen.
“Our dogs are not normally so useless, either,” said Bosha, wading through them after his uninvited guest.
“Animals like me. And I think they recognized Nikys,” Pen offered.
As the main house loomed before them, Bosha added in a cool tone, “You should not have been able to defeat that lock. Past the lock, you should not have slipped by the dogs. Past the dogs”—he turned his head—“you should not have been able to mount the balcony. On the balcony, you should not have been able to evade my knife. Yet you somehow did all of these things, Master Penric.”
“…Madame Khatai did not chose me for her courier for no reason, sir.”
“Hnh.” Bosha added after a moment, “I quite dislike being troubled to be the last man between the hazards of the world and Lady Tanar. It takes the maids so much effort to scrub the blood out of the floorboards.”
Was that a jest? Pen cleared his throat. “It’s a rich estate. Are thieves a common problem for you here?”
Bosha shrugged. “Ordinary thieves are a task for the other retainers. Lady Xarre’s mandate to me is more exclusive.”
“Is her daughter Tanar under some special threat?”
“Say constant, rather. One too-persistent rejected suitor, last year, actually tried a more direct abduction. Why he thought he would gain forgiveness, after, I cannot imagine. Or that his hirelings would keep his secrets. We left the bodies at his front gate to be found in the morning. I believe he took the hint.”
Not a jest, then, murmured Des. Pen would rather she didn’t sound so pleased.
“I see,” said Pen, wondering what hint he was supposed to be taking.
Oh, I think it’s quite clear, said Des. …You know, I’m beginning to like this fellow. If there are any markers for a child of the Bastard he has missed, I can’t picture them. Now I am curious about his birth.
We’re not asking, Des.
Back in the sitting chamber, Bosha knocked on an adjoining door, evidently to the lady’s bedchamber. Tanar opened it brightly, received Nikys’s case, and bade them both a cheery goodnight. Pen could hear her and Nikys’s voices, quietly speaking, as the door swung shut again. Bosha led to a matching door on the opposite inner wall, opening it to another bedchamber.
He lit a brace of candles, and Penric took in a carved writing table, shelves crammed with books and papers, chests and a wardrobe along the walls, a washstand, and a narrow bed piled with folded clothing. Bosha removed the garments perfunctorily to the tops of a couple of the chests, and gestured. “You can have my bed.”
“Where will you sleep?”
“Where I usually do.” He plucked nightclothes from a hook on the inside of the wardrobe and vanished back to the sitting room, shutting the door behind him.
Nonplussed, but mortally tired, Pen took advantage of the washstand, then changed into his own nightshirt. He poked briefly around the room. Bosha seemed to own a great deal more clothing than an average serv
ant, much more finely made. The books and papers were too many to take in, but seemed mostly of a utilitarian nature—apparently, he really was Tanar’s secretary. Among his other more disturbing duties. A number of drawers and chests were locked, which wouldn’t have slowed Pen down had he further reason to pry.
Curious, and concerned because while the eunuch had put himself between Pen and Tanar, fair enough, he had also put himself between Pen and Nikys, Pen cracked the door to the sitting room and checked. Bosha, wearing a nightshirt of fine lawn, was just unrolling a wool-stuffed linen mattress down before Lady Tanar’s door. An unsheathed short sword with a chased blade sat propped by the doorjamb.
Is that one tainted too, Des?
Seems to be. I long to ask him what he is using, and how he compounds it. You ought to find that professionally interesting as well.
Do you think he brews up his own drugs? Those locked chests were suddenly more interesting.
Do you imagine he doesn’t?
A faint sound of feminine voices penetrated from the closed door beyond. Pen bet Bosha wasn’t above putting his ear to it.
Nor are you, Pen dear, but it seems the position is taken.
Pen was too exhausted to fret further tonight. Judging that they were both about as sincere as two strange cats, he exchanged polite nods with Bosha and withdrew.
VI
While waiting for the men to return with their baggage, Tanar drew Nikys into her bedchamber. She sat before her dressing table and began, a bit awkwardly, to take down her braids for the night.
“Shall I help you?” asked Nikys, moving behind her.
“Oh, would you please? Sura usually does it, but with you here he won’t intrude.”
“My pleasure.” Nikys began to withdraw the pearl pins and drop them into the enameled bowl that Tanar shifted closer.
To watch Nikys, Tanar angled the glass mirror in its wooden arms, and sat straight. “It’s so good to see you well, though I’m sorry it took such a terrifying errand to bring you to me again. Adelis was the only one of my suitors with the wit to offer me a sister.”
Nikys smiled, flattered. In their early acquaintance Tanar had looked up to her—ten years older and once married—as a fount of female wisdom on how men and women dealt with each other in the bedchamber. Nikys had eventually determined that this was not because Tanar had been left untutored, but rather that she was collecting intelligence from as many sources as possible. Preparing for her life’s journey, like Penric studying Duke Jurgo’s maps before they’d left Vilnoc. That Nikys had elected to be frank and clear, just as she would have wished for herself, had been much valued.
“Adelis…” Tanar began again more tentatively. “Do you know how he still feels about me? I wrote him a few times while he was on campaign, but received no reply.”
“That’s just Adelis,” Nikys reassured her, beginning to unwind auburn braids. “He doesn’t reply to me either when he’s in the field, but I know he saves my letters.” Now lost with the rest of their possessions. “He was hurried off to Patos so swiftly after the Rusylli campaign, with no triumphal celebration even offered in the capital. And then he had to master his new command. I think he was already starting to be wary. If he suspected trouble was coming down on him, he wouldn’t have wanted to involve you.”
Tanar’s face set in a grave grimace. “I’m very afraid I might have been involved despite myself. Did you know Minister Methani’s nephew, Lord Bordane, has been one of my more persistent suitors?”
Adelis had suspected that Methani’s cabal, close around the emperor at court, had engineered his downfall by the subtle half-forged correspondence with the Duke of Adria. That was to say, Adelis’s letter to Adria had been forged; the return reply had been condemningly real, and guided forthwith into his enemies’ outstretched hands.
“It’s a hideous thought,” continued Tanar, “but as soon as I had heard what had happened to Adelis in Patos, I wondered how much might have been a ploy to get him permanently out of Lord Bordane’s way.” She raised quietly stricken eyes to Nikys’s, in the mirror.
Nikys considered this, watching the guilty fear fleeting in Tanar’s face. “That might have been a factor,” she said hesitantly, “but it certainly wasn’t that alone. Adelis and Methani had been clashing at court for years before this. Adelis’s recent success against the Rusylli, and so his rising popularity with his troops, are far more likely to have set this off. I can’t speak for Lord Bordane, but I guarantee Methani’s more worried about threats to the emperor from a potential usurper than about his nephew’s love-life.” Imagined threats, curse him—all of this horror done for fears made of vapor and slander. “The latter might simply have been a bonus, from their point of view.” Granted Methani would not be immune to the appeal of bringing Tanar’s wealth into his clan.
Tanar took this in, and slowly nodded. More relieved by this honesty than by some airy denial, and no wonder Nikys liked her. Had Adelis appreciated her character, as well as her lively beauty?
“Is Lord Bordane still persistent?” Nikys took up the hairbrush from the table and began untangling Tanar’s tresses.
Tanar made a moue. “Among others. Up until my last birthday Mother held them all off for me, playing the rigid guardian, but now I’m at my legal majority, they know I could consent on my own. They try all kinds of tricks to get me alone to hear their pleas. Sura is most annoyed.” Her puff of disdain transmuted to a purr of pleasure as Nikys changed to longer, more soothing strokes. “Oh, that’s almost as good as Sura.”
That a eunuch servant acted sometimes as a lady’s maid was no very unusual thing. Tanar’s morning habit of brushing and braiding Bosha’s white hair in turn had been more startling, when Nikys had glimpsed it on her last overnight visit. It was evidently a custom lingering from when Tanar had been a tyrannical six-year-old princess of the house, treating her new guardian, to his bemusement, as something between a playmate, a large doll, and a compliant slave. Most other innocent intimacies from that era had fallen away with Tanar’s more conscious maturity, to Bosha’s silent regret, Nikys gathered.
“Do none of your other suitors tempt you?”
Tanar shrugged. “I confess, your brother was the first man to really do so.”
“It’s become rather hopeless,” Nikys observed, reluctantly conscientious. “It will be long before he can rebuild his fortune, if ever. You are anchored to Cedonia by your own possessions, and he cannot cross the border.”
“Politics change.” Her soft mouth set mulishly. “I can afford to wait.”
“Do you want him to wait? Should I tell him so?” Nikys hesitated, though her hands kept moving. “Do you love him that much?”
Tanar, after a moment, returned candor for candor. “I’m not sure. Setting all the pretty poetry aside as beguiling blither, because I’ve never met anyone who seems to actually think like that, I don’t know what love is supposed to be. I care that he should be well. The thought of him being injured or killed distresses me. When we had the news of his blinding”—a shudder passed through her—“I cried and carried on till poor Sura was quite alarmed. Of course I knew enough to compose myself before I left our chambers.” She tossed her head in some remembered irritation.
After a few more strokes, she added in a lower voice, “I thought for a while, before Patos, that I might use waiting for Adelis as a stick to fend off the others, but not if it could call down more danger on his head. Because assassins can cross borders where armies cannot.”
Nikys sighed, unable to gainsay this, but pointed out, “Given the hazards of his profession, I think that should be one of your lesser worries.” And, more thoughtfully: “It might be better for a soldier’s wife not to love too much.”
Tanar’s gaze sought hers in the mirror, just obliquely enough to ask: “Do you still miss your husband Kymis?”
Nikys drew a cool breath through her nostrils. So many memories, and the good ones, in a strange way, almost more painful than the bad, so that she pref
erred to put them all away in the same locked box. “Not so much now. The present drives out the past, a little more each day.”
A knock sounded at the chamber door, and Tanar went to receive Nikys’s valise from the hands of her servant, whom she bade a fond goodnight. Both women broke off to share out the washstand and don nightgowns. Tanar’s spacious bed seemed the most inviting road-weary Nikys had ever seen, and she fell into it gratefully as Tanar blew out the candles.
In the darkness, Tanar remarked, “Your courier fellow, Penric—Daughter’s blessings, what a fetching young man. I’ve not seen that color of hair or eyes except among the emperor’s southern-island guard, and nothing like so bright.”
“Not so young,” said Nikys. “He’s thirty.” And it’s the Bastard’s blessings. Theologically speaking. Maybe that explains it all…
“Really? The same age as you?” Tanar seemed to mull this. In a tone of sly humor, she murmured, “Do you fancy him?”
Nikys made a neutral noise.
“Because you’re a widow, as free as a woman can be. I don’t suppose there’s any insurmountable barrier of rank between you.” An envious sigh. “And he looked as if he liked you. I quite think you could have him, if you wanted him,” she rippled on in cheerful, grating speculation. “Do you know very much about his background?”
“I’m beginning to.”
Tanar nudged her with her elbow. “Do tell?”
“Not my tale.” Starting with, He’s the agent who carried the fatal letter from the duke of Adria, descending through He’s a Temple sorcerer with ten other women’s ghosts living inside his head, and going on to He could knock a dozen soldiers to the ground with a twitch of his eyebrow, and Master Bosha really wouldn’t like that news. Not to mention being a physician of near-miraculous powers too broken to practice his craft, a scholar in half-a-dozen languages with enough reputation to be coveted by the duke of Orbas, and a man so very, very far away from home. “It’s complicated.”
Tanar made a noise of disappointment, but pressed no further.