Masquerade in Lodi Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Frontnote

  Masquerade in Lodi

  Author’s Note: A Bujold Reading-Order Guide

  About the Author

  Books by Lois McMaster Bujold

  MASQUERADE IN LODI

  A Penric and Desdemona novella

  in the World of the Five Gods

  Lois McMaster Bujold

  www.goodreads.com

  www.spectrumliteraryagency.com/bujold.htm

  www.dendarii.com

  Copyright 2020 © by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Frontnote: This novella falls between “Penric’s Fox” and “Penric’s Mission” in the internal chronology of the Penric & Desdemona tales.

  The order of the nine current stories is:

  “Penric’s Demon”

  “Penric and the Shaman”

  “Penric’s Fox”

  “Masquerade in Lodi”

  “Penric’s Mission”

  “Mira’s Last Dance”

  “The Prisoner of Limnos”

  “The Orphans of Raspay”

  “The Physicians of Vilnoc”

  Masquerade in Lodi

  The curia clerk wiped the sweat drop from the tip of his nose before it could fall and blot his page. “What could be worse,” he moaned, “than copying out letters in the Lodi midsummer?”

  “Cutting up corpses in a Martensbridge midwinter,” Penric replied unthinkingly, then pressed his lips closed.

  The diligent if overheated clerk paused to stare. “What? You did that? ...Was it for your magics?” He leaned slightly away, as if suspecting Penric and his resident demon of arcane midnight grave-robbery.

  “Anatomy classes for the apprentices at the Mother’s hospice,” Pen clarified quickly. “Our material was donated by the pious, mainly.” Plus the occasional unidentified, unclaimed body passed on by the city guard. The ones fished up from the thawing lake each spring had been the worst, if instructive.

  “Oh. I did not know you’d been a medical student, too, Learned Penric.”

  I was teaching. Pen waved the comment away. This wasn’t a topic he wished to pursue. Or a calling, but that conversation had been firmly concluded back in Martensbridge. The bulwark of a large mountain range now stood between him and his former failings, and he was grateful for it. The dead had not distressed him; the dying had. “It proved one task too many for my hands, and I gave it up.”

  A silent growl from Desdemona reminded him that self-castigation on this matter had also been firmly forbidden to him, under pain of demonic chiding. Since the bodiless demon that gave him the powers of a Temple sorcerer had been the successive possession of ten different women over two centuries before she’d fallen to Penric, she had chiding down to an art form.

  Now, now.

  Also nagging, he added.

  Behave, or I’ll blot your page as well.

  Which, as a bored creature of chaos, she was well qualified to effect, in so many ways. His lip twitched, and, oddly cheered, he turned back to the last lines of his translation.

  The clerk had a point. Six months ago back in Martensbridge, Pen would have had to burn expensive wood to warm his chambers this much, but the humid reek drifting in through the windows overlooking the canal made Lodi heat more oppressive, when no sea breeze relieved it. His own quill scratched as he converted the last lines of the letter from its original Wealdean into Adriac for the archdivine’s eyes, and files, and handed it across to the clerk for copying.

  This finished the morning’s stack. Which contained nothing, it had proved, too sensitive or urgent. Done for the day, he trusted.

  Busy work, sniffed Des. Make-work. A waste of our talents.

  Speak for yourself. I find it soothing. Although he looked forward to an afternoon to devote to his own personal projects, including free run of the Temple library, far from fully explored in the four months of his residence in the curial palace. Penric cleaned his quill and stretched.

  Tomorrow is the famous Lodi Bastard’s Day festival, Des grumbled, and you want to spend it shut up indoors? The preparations and parties are in full swing!

  So, people will all go out and leave me alone, Pen envisioned in hope. Although tomorrow night, he had social duties in the archdivine’s entourage; the ceremonies dedicated to the fifth god were supposed to include a feast and a comic masque, and singing by the Temple-sworn castrati choir that was said to be ethereal. He anticipated that more warmly.

  He sorted out those letters and their translations that actually required his superior’s personal eyes, and with a cordial nod rose to leave the disposition of the rest to the very senior clerk, who wouldn’t have wanted a demon of disorder anywhere near his files anyway. Pen wound his way through halls decorated with fine pious paintings and tapestries—or mostly pious; the previous generations of prelates had possessed a variety of tastes—and down a marble staircase to Archdivine Ogial’s private cabinet.

  The doorway was open to catch the nonexistent draft. Pen took it as invitation to rap on the jamb and put his head in. Gray-haired Ogial had surrendered his five-colored robes to the heat and hung them on a wall peg, and sat at his writing table in shirtsleeves. A lay dedicat in a grubby green tabard of the Mother’s Order hovered anxiously at his elbow. The lad looked up and gulped as Ogial waved Penric inside.

  “The Wealdean letters, Your Grace,” Penric murmured, and laid them on the table.

  “Ah. Thank you.” The archdivine gave them a brief survey, then leaned back and looked at Pen with narrowing eyes. “What were your plans for the day, Learned Penric?”

  Note past tense, Pen thought glumly, but mustered, “Any duties you assign, a bit more translation on Learned Ruchia’s book, and then the library.”

  “Hah, I suspected as much.” Ogial smiled with a paternal air, legacy of his early training in the Father’s Order before he’d risen through the hierarchy to broader duties. “This is your first Bastard’s Eve in Lodi, and you are a divine of His Order. You shouldn’t miss it. Take the rest of the day off, get out of this musty curia, and see how our city honors your chosen god. But first…”

  Saw that coming, murmured Des.

  “Dedicat Tebi here brings me a request from the chief physician of the Gift of the Sea—the charity hospice for the sailors near the northwest harbor, you know—to send over a Temple sensitive to look at a poor mad fellow who was lately trawled up by some Lodi fishermen. One would think that being lost in the sea for, apparently, several days would be enough to turn anyone’s brain, but Master Linatas says he finds something more than medically strange about this one.”

  Ogial picked up a note and twiddled it in his fingers in Penric’s direction. Penric took it gingerly. The crisp writing didn’t add much to the archdivine’s precis, beyond the nameless patient’s guessed age, early twenties, and coloration—caramel skin, curly dark hair, brown eyes—which described half the folk in Adria. The reported drooling, thrashing, and broken speech could denote, well, any number of conditions.

  “You are well-fitted to sort out the medical from any uncanny diagnosis, I expect”—the archdivine raised a hand to stem Pen’s opening protest—“in a purely advisory capacity, I promise. If the physician’s more lurid concerns are misplaced, as such usually are, you can reassure him and be on your way at once.”

  True, mused Des, unruffled.

  You just want the excuse to get out.

  Likewise true. So?

  Ogial turned to the dedicat. “Tebi, escort Learned Penric here back to your master, with my blessing upon your work. He’s new to Lodi, so don’t lose him in the back alleys or let him fall into a canal.” He added to Penric with a chuckle, “Although if those whites of yours don’t end u
p dunked at least once during the festival, you aren’t doing the Bastard’s Day right.”

  Pen managed an appropriate smile at the wit of his senior. And rescuer, he was reminded; the archdivine’s prompt offer of employment in his curia had hooked Pen out of Martensbridge the moment the passes had cleared of snow in the spring. His half-bow grew more sincerely grateful. “Very well, Your Grace.”

  Tebi, dutifully preceding Penric out the door, cast a glance over his shoulder with scarcely lessened alarm. It couldn’t be for Pen’s vestments, an Adriac design common enough in so large a city—a close linen-white coat, fabric thin for the season, buttoned up the front to a high round collar and skirts open to the calves, handy to don over ordinary clothes. So, presumably, the unease was for the triple loop of braid pinned over Pen’s left shoulder, the silver strand with the white and cream marking him as not just a regular divine, but a regulated sorcerer. If he did go out on the town tonight, Pen thought he might leave both items in his clothes chest, and not just for the hazard of the canals.

  Pen attempted a friendly return nod, which didn’t seem to reassure Tebi much. Pen wasn’t averse to his garb buying him easy respect from adults, but he’d never expected it to frighten children. Or at least children schooled in the meanings of Temple trimmings.

  We don’t need the guide, Des opined as they exited a side door of the curia onto a non-liquid street. I remember my way around Lodi well enough.

  From near a hundred years ago? Des’s previous riders, the courtesan Mira and, come to think, her servant Umelan, had both been long-time residents of the town—then.

  Islands don’t move that much. Granted bridges rise and fall, and new buildings sprout—they detoured around just such a collection of scaffolding, stone, and shouting workmen—but I could have landed us at the sailors’ hospice all the same. I wonder if they still dub the place Sea Sick? Also, Learned Ruchia visited here more than once, on her assorted missions. Des’s immediate prior possessor, from whom Pen had so unexpectedly inherited the demon and her powers. And knowledge and skills. And opinions. And, yes, memories not his own. Pen wondered if that would ever stop feeling strange.

  They angled through narrow shadowed streets and alongside translucent green canals, the margins of their enclosing pale stone walls stained dark by the rise and fall of tides. Their warm green scent permeated the air, distinctive but not unpleasant. The route led over five bridges, and through a couple of lively squares colorful with market hawkers, before the opening light and screeching of gulls marked them as coming out by the seaside.

  Threading past bollards, quays, docks, a private shipyard—Pen could just glimpse the walls of the big state shipyard beyond, source of Lodi’s famous war galleys—they turned into another street and square. A four-story building in warm gray stone flanked a whole side, and the lad led them through the thick wooden doors, one leaf propped open for the day. A porter rose from his stool, identified Tebi at a glance, and waved them on, though his gaze lingered curiously on Penric, who cast him a polite blessing in passing.

  On the second floor, past the lair of an apothecary, Tebi knocked on the doorjamb of another writing cabinet: smaller, more cluttered, and less elegantly appointed than that of an archdivine. “Master Linatas?”

  The man within turned in his chair, his leathery face animating at the sight of his messenger. He was a thick-bodied, muscular fellow, salt-and-pepper hair cut in an untidy crop, wearing a practical green smock shabby with wear and washings. The braids of a master physician hung not from his shoulder, but from a brass stand on his desk. “Good, you’re back.” A glance at Pen, and he lumbered to his feet. He still had to look up, his eyes widening slightly. “Goddess bless us.”

  Linatas could certainly read braids, so Pen merely said, “I’m Learned Penric. The curia sent me in answer to your request for a sensitive.” Pen proffered the note by way of authentication.

  Linatas took it back, still staring. “Huh! Are you, hm, Wealdean?”

  A deduction from Pen’s excessively blond queue and excessively blue eyes, Pen supposed, and his milk-pale scholar’s skin. “No, I’m from the cantons.”

  “Ah, that would account for it. I’ve met merchants from those mountains, if not quite so, hm. Light. You speak Adriac very well!”

  “I’ve a talent for languages, hence my employment in the curia.”

  The physician shrugged off Pen’s appearance without further comment, thankfully, turning to his more pressing matter. “I suppose it would be fastest to just take you to the poor fellow. I’ve seen my share of men brought in with exposure, injuries, near-drownings, bad drink, or just too much horror, but this… ngh. Come this way. Ah, Tebi, thank you, well done. You can go back to Matron now.” The boy nodded and scampered out. Pen followed Linatas up an end staircase to the next floor.

  “Has anyone identified the man yet?” Pen asked.

  “Not so far. Part of the time he talks like a Lodi man, but the rest is gibberish, crying, and these strange squeakings. He falls out of bed, staggers, writhes on the floor… we put him in a private chamber because he disturbed the other men in the ward so. Though since the fever from his parching has eased, it doesn’t seem he’s infected.”

  Pen bit his tongue on the impulse to run down the list of symptoms for strokes. He had only one task here, to assure the physician that his patient wasn’t suffering from some unlikely curse, vastly more common in tale than in fact. And then he could escape. The familiar smell of a hospice, clean enough but distinctive, was making him just a little belly-sick.

  Steady on, soothed Des.

  I’m all right.

  Uh-huh...

  Linatas opened the door to a small chamber with a single cot. A harried-looking orderly was just thrusting a sunburnt young man back into it, who batted clumsily at him and whined.

  Des, Sight. Pen stepped within; stopped short. The mystic doubled vision of his demon’s view of the world filled his not-eyes. Mind, perhaps. Oh.

  Bastard’s tears, breathed Des. There’s a mess and a half.

  Within the sun-scorched fellow thrashed another demon. And not a new-hatched elemental, chaotic and weak, nor even one imprinted by some short-lived animal host. (And all animal hosts were short-lived, once an untutored demon of chaos infested them.) This was a demon of middling density, that had been human once, but then…

  Des could read off its layers like the rings of a tree. Elemental. Bird. Bird again. Human—a boy. Murdered, cruelly, young demon riven from him. Human, of no good character, but he didn’t get away with his unholy theft for long. Roknari—they put him into the sea. For once, I can’t object. Dolphin, quickly sickened. Demon dismasted of its acquired humanity, splintered, left a stub. Another dolphin, grieving—I did not know they could. Sickened again, more slowly. Then it found this fellow. So confused. The dying comforting the drowning… He thought he had gone mad when the demon jumped to him, and no wonder. Nightmare hours more in the water, then hands drawing him out, yes-no-yes-no… Pen wasn’t sure which of them was shuddering. Well. Both, of course.

  The young man stopped fighting, turned his head. Stared straight at Pen—and Des. He stiffened. Opened his mouth. And screamed and screamed. Because Sight cut both ways, when two sorcerers were thrown together.

  Pen hastily backed out of the chamber and slammed the door. His shoulders found the opposite wall, and he fought for breath.

  Even other Temple demons, tamed and trained, found Des’s density frightening. Who knew what this wild thing made of her? Though as the screams trailed off Pen supposed he could imagine it. He was cursed with a much-too-vivid imagination, some days.

  Most days, panted Des. But now, I admit, it’s justified.

  Linatas exited after him, eyes round with alarm. “Learned Penric! What is going on? You’ve turned absolutely green.” He pursed his lips. “Which I’d always thought was a figure of speech—shock is more gray, usually. Must be an effect of your coloration.”

  Pen inhaled deeply. A couple of time
s. “You were right, Master Linatas. That’s not any normal madness.” Wait, was that a contradiction in terms? “Er, common madness. Your patient has contracted a demon. From a dolphin, or rather two dolphins. Who had it from a drowning Roknari, who stole it from a servant boy, who had it from, it seems, a couple of ordinary birds who’d scarcely altered the original formless elemental.”

  “You could tell all that from a glance?”

  “No, from experience. Quite a lot of experience. You know how that works. Don’t you.” Pen managed an ironic eyebrow-lift. “Or you wouldn’t have called me here, eh?” He straightened. “I don’t know about your patient, but that demon is definitely insane.”

  Linatas was briefly speechless, taking this in. Had he really not expected validation of his half-formed suspicions? He found his footing in practicality. “What… should we do for him?”

  “Certainly continue to keep him in isolation. That demon will be shedding disorder indiscriminately. Potentially dangerous to people and things around him. And to him.” Penric winced an apology in prospect to Des. “It will have to be extracted from him by a dedicated saint of the white god.”

  This time, thought Des grimly, no argument.

  Penric knew there was such a saint in Lodi, but not offhand at which of the scattered chapterhouses of his Order, or other domicile, said holy person might presently be found. It would seem easier to bring the saint here than the madman to the saint, but who knew. “I’ll have to ask the archdivine, and make arrangements.”

  With a few moments to compose himself, Pen’s mind was beginning to move again. Unfortunately into proliferating questions, like a dog scattering a flock of pigeons. “Did you speak to the men who brought him in? How long ago was that?”