Penric's Demon Read online

  Very quietly, Pen turned on his back and began paddling in the opposite direction.

  * * *

  The moon was rising over the eastern hills by the time Pen pulled himself up over the rocks, crawled a few paces, and flopped down in some lovely soft mud. He was chilled through and wheezing. He never wanted to move again.

  At length, curiosity overcame his torpor, and he made the effort to roll onto his side and peer back across the lake. The sparks and orange glow that had been soaring from the castle like a chimney fire had finally stopped, ah. That was a nice castle, he thought sadly. Too bad.

  Rough justice, murmured Desdemona, sounding nearly as exhausted as Pen. If you want the other kind, you shouldn’t draw the attention of the white god.

  “Did Ruchia do things like this?”

  Not often. She was too astute to let herself be cornered. Desdemona seemed to consider. After the first few lessons.

  She added after a little, If you lie here longer, you will perish of the cold, and all my night’s work will be wasted. Also, I do not wish to be stuck in a cow.

  Pen pulled himself to a sitting position. “You could have had Clee.”

  I’d rather the cow.

  “Or Lord Rusillin.” Why had she not chosen Rusillin?

  Get up, Pen. Walking us out of here is your work.

  Pen climbed to his knees, then to his feet. Then, skirting around a few incurious cattle, to what passed for a road on this steeper eastern shore, more of a rutted farm track. He stared north up the length of the lake, south down it. He bore no risk of getting lost, exactly.

  We could go north, Desdemona observed. We could go anywhere. A pause. Except Idau.

  “I can’t say that I’ve ever longed to see Idau.” Or even thought about its name on the map, where it appeared as a dot no bigger than Greenwell, some fifty miles west of Martensbridge and just over the border to the lands of the earl palatine. “But all my things are back in Martensbridge. And I never finished the book. And Tigney must be wondering where I am by now. Do you think he really gave Clee leave to take me to the castle?” Could Tigney even have been a conspirator? Uncomfortable thought.

  Hah. Tigney might have given you leave to go beyond the town walls—never us.

  “You suspected something? Even then?”

  Mm. A very noncommittal . . . non-noise. We were sure something interesting must be afoot. We didn’t know what. We could not speak aloud in front of Clee, nor yet silently to you.

  “Are all demons this curious? Or did you get that from Ruchia?”

  Ruchia and we . . . were a very good match. Unsurprising, since we chose her. Desdemona feigned a yawn. You walk. We’ll nap. Wake us when we arrive.

  Pen sighed and started south, boots squelching as he stumbled over the ruts. This night was going to be interminable.

  * * *

  The sky had turned steely, though the sun had not yet chased the moon over the eastern hills, when Pen came again to the Martensbridge town gates. Early market traffic already made them lively. The gate guard scowled at Pen, and began to recite the restrictive town rules about vagabonds.

  “I bear a message for Learned Tigney at the Bastard’s Order,” Pen said, picking the not-quite-lie most likely to explain both his appearance and his urgency. “The boat had a mishap. I have traveled all through the night.”

  The name of Tigney and the Order seemed to be the master key. Pen found himself trudging again up the steep street as the sky melted to bronze, then muted gold.

  The surprisingly awake-looking porter answered his pounding at the door, and gaped at him in amazement. “Lord Penric!”

  “Good morning, Cosso. I need to see Learned Tigney. At once.” He’d had plenty of time to think, while he’d stumbled through the dark, of how to explain the night’s doings, and why a powerful local lord had tried to murder him. Indignation had given way a while back to unease. Now that he was here, all his fine furious speeches seemed to run through his numb fingers like water.

  “I believe,” said the porter, “that he wishes to see you. Though I can’t say you are expected. Come up.”

  Cosso ushered him straight to Tigney’s work chamber, where candles burned low and guttering in their sockets.

  “Learned, Lord Penric is here.” Cosso gave way, pushing Pen before him, then took up a guardsman’s stance by the door, his face quite wooden.

  Tigney sat at his desk, his quill molting in his fingers as he fiddled with it. Pen was alarmed to see Ruchia’s book laid out on the writing table, but much more alarmed to find Clee there before him. Both Temple men looked up at him in shock.

  Tigney was dressed for the day—no, for yesterday. Clee wore a close cap over his remaining hair; howsoever he had put himself to rights after a night of attempted murder and, presumably, firefighting, he was rumpled up again by a ten-mile ride in the dawn. Still, he had to look better than Pen. At least I’ve stopped dripping. Pen would be enraged at the sight of him, but he was just too tired to muster the emotion.

  “Well, well,” said Tigney, putting down the quill and steepling his fingers. “Has the committee for the defense arrived?”

  Verbal sparring was beyond Pen by this point. He said simply, “Good morning, Learned. Yesterday afternoon, Clee told me you had approved an invitation by his brother for me to dine at Castle Martenden. They gave me a drugged cordial, and took me down to the storeroom and tried to murder me. They wanted to steal Desdemona. I broke away, and swam the lake, and now I’m back.” He squinted. That seemed to cover most of it. “Oh, and I’m afraid we may have set the castle on fire, but they shouldn’t have tried to spit me on those pikes.” He squeezed his eyes shut, and open. “And I’m sorry about the boat. But not very.”

  Tigney, canny and cautious, raised his chin and regarded Pen. “Whereas the tale Clee has just told me was that your demon ascended and beguiled him to take you to the castle, where you went on an arsonous rampage, stole a boat, and either escaped or drowned. You are supposed to be halfway to the border of Adria by now.”

  Pen considered this. “Much too far to walk.”

  “It is two men’s word again one’s,” said Clee, who had overcome his first horrified paralysis. “And him a stranger in this place.”

  Stranger than you can imagine. Pen raised a finger. “Two against two. Me and Desdemona. Unless you count her as twelve, in which case I can make up a jury right here.”

  Tigney rubbed his forehead, doubtless aching, and glowered at them both. “That one of you is lying is self-evident. Fortunately, I have another witness. In a sense.” He motioned to the porter. “Cosso, please fetch our other guest. Apologize, but make him understand it is urgent. Ah—tell him Lord Penric has come back.”

  The porter nodded and went out.

  Clee, heated, said, “Learned, you cannot be thinking of taking testimony from the demon! It is utterly unreliable!”

  Tigney stared dryly at him. “I do know demons, Clee.”

  Clee either had the sense to shut up, or was temporarily out of arguments. Pen was pretty sure this was not the scene Clee had been picturing when he’d hurried to lay his tale before Tigney. If he had really thought Pen drowned, a not-unlikely outcome, why had he come to make these accusations, rather than holing up with his brother? Maybe Rusillin had thrown him out? Clee certainly had been the one to pass along the gossip about Pen’s arrival in town. Which of the brothers had been the first to broach the demon-stealing scheme?

  Minutes passed. Pen sat down on the floor. Tigney started to say something, then made a never-mind gesture, and left him there.

  Finally, a bustle sounded from the hall; the porter’s voice soothing, a new one querulous. A short, stout old man wearing a stained white dressing gown and stumping along with a stick entered the room. Tigney, who had left Clee and Pen standing, hurried to set him out a cushioned chair. His hair was white and receding and combed back to a thin queue; his face was as round and wrinkled as a winter-stored apple, but not nearly as sweet. He might have b
een a retired baker with bad digestion. He thumped down in the proffered seat with a grunt, and stacked his hands on his cane.

  Inside Pen, Desdemona screamed. And wailed a heartbroken, Ah! Ah! We are undone! It is the Saint of Idau! Pen felt a desperate flush of heat through his body, and then she curled into so tight and despairing a ball within him as to nearly implode.

  “Blessed Broylin.” Tigney bowed before him. Then, after a moment, he thumped Clee on the back of the head and shoved it down as well. Coming up wincing, Clee crouched and backed away, signing himself and mumbling, “Blessed One . . .” Clee seemed nearly as surprised as Desdemona, if more frozen. No one could be as frantic.

  Tigney glowered down at the boggled, bedraggled Pen, but then just shook his head.

  So was this to be the second lethal ambush Penric and Desdemona had faced in the space of less than a day? Ambush it clearly was meant to be, crafted by the cunning Tigney no doubt. No wonder he hadn’t troubled to tutor Pen. He must have been planning it for a week, to get this creaky old man transported here from Idau in secret. How else could he corner and arrest such a powerful demon, except by surprise? And Pen had walked her right into it. Should he get up and try to run? Could he get up, let alone run? We should have gone north after all. Oh, Desdemona, I am so sorry . . .

  “So, Blessed.” Tigney gestured to Pen. “Is his demon ascended?”

  The old man frowned unfavorably at Pen, who looked up at him in dismay, but said, “No. Not a bit. All your panic seems unfounded, Tig. Entirely not worth what that vile cart did to my back, rushing me here.”

  As the gray eyes squinted down, Pen was abruptly caught in that gaze, as if he were looking through two pinholes at a blinding sun, as if something huge and ancient and present lay just around some corner of perception. He couldn’t look away. He couldn’t run away. He thought he might even want to crawl toward. That elderly and unprepossessing body seemed worn like a stage costume, insubstantial and deceptive as gauze, over, yes, only a man, but also a channel to something that was . . . not a man. Not anything Pen had ever expected to meet face-to-face alive, even through such a screen.

  It came to him that every prayer he’d ever said or mumbled or yawned around before had been by rote. And that he’d never be able to pray like that again.

  “Can you compel his demon to speech?” Tigney asked the saint.

  “If I can persuade it to stop howling in fear, perhaps.”

  Clee, unwisely, tried, “But can you compel it to speak the truth?”

  The old man eyed him. “Don’t know. D’you think I could compel you?”

  Clee wilted. But, driven by whatever desperation, he essayed: “If the demon is not ascended, then Lord Penric’s behavior is his own, mad or criminal to repay begged hospitality with arson and destruction. And he should be brought before the judges for it.”

  The old man snorted. “And how do you imagine the magistrates of Martensbridge could arraign a sorcerer against his will?”

  Tigney cleared his throat. “Even if it is not yet ascended, I fear that it’s only a matter of time. Learned Ruchia’s was the most formidable demon in the whole of my experience. Much too powerful for this raw young man, however well-intentioned he may be. Blessed, I take full responsibility for my Temple-sworn duties, and I must ask you, as a matter of prudence, to take this danger out of this boy and the world.”

  Pen, listening intently, his stomach curling, tried pointing out, “But I’m not Temple-sworn. I’m really only a guest here.”

  Clee said poisonously, “In your case, that’s hardly a recommendation.”

  Tigney just shook his head.

  It came to Pen that for all the talk of accusations and magistrates, arguing like a lawyer was not what was called for now. If there was truly a god immanent in this chamber, it wanted another mode of speech altogether.

  Pen climbed up on his knees and shuffled over to face the saint. Inside him, he thought Desdemona wept, despairing as a woman mounting a scaffold. Tigney made an abortive motion as if to restrain Pen, but the old man merely regarded him curiously, without fear.

  Pen opened both hands and raised them, as he might have done before a temple altar, with less cause. It occurred to him that the attitude of supplication was identical to that of surrender on a battlefield.

  “Blessed, if I speak, will the god hear?”

  The sheep’s-wool eyebrows twitched. “The gods hear you at all times, speaking or silent. You hearing the god . . . that is more rare.”

  Pen decided to take that for a typical obscure Bastard’s Yes. He swallowed, thought of bowing his head, but then decided to look up. At, or through, those terrifying gray eyes.

  “Lord God Bastard, Mother’s Son, Fifth and White. Please spare Desdemona. She’s a good demon.” Pen considered that descriptor, in all its ambiguity—good for what?—and decided to let it stand. “She has no life save through me, and, by your leave, please . . . please let me serve her in her need.” And, in what was surely the most foolhardy impulse of his life, even beating out Drovo’s drunken oath to the military recruiter, added, “And Yours.”

  Tigney shook his head, back and forth, once, slowly.

  The Saint of Idau raised his hand and laid it on Pen’s forehead, in some beginning malediction. His lips parted. Stopped. His look grew inward for an instant more deep than long. Fathoms deep. The eyebrows climbed in surprise. “Huh! There’s a first.” His hand dropped back.

  “What?” said Tigney, nearly squirming with anxiety. “The white god takes the demon, yes?”

  “No. Spits her back. Says He doesn’t want her. At least not yet.”

  Tigney blinked, stunned. Pen’s breath caught. What, what, what . . . ?

  Clee protested, “But you must!”

  The saint eyed him sourly. “If you want to argue with the god, go to the temple. Not that you’ll get much save sore knees, but it’ll spare my ears.” He made to lever himself up with his cane.

  Pen cried aloud, “Wait, wait, what . . . Blessed, what does that mean?”

  The old man eyed him glumly. “It means congratulations. You’re a sorcerer.” He pursed his lips, and added more judiciously, “The gods do not act for our ends, but for Theirs. Presumably, the god has some interesting future in mind for you—for you two. This is not a blessing. Good luck. You’ll need it.”

  Tigney, aghast, said, “But what should we do with him?”

  “No idea,” said the saint. He paused. “Though it would likely be prudent not to let him get killed on your doorstep.”

  His eyes still wide, Tigney said, “He’ll have to be sworn into the Order.”

  The saint’s lips quirked up. “Weren’t you listening? He just was.” He wrinkled his nose. “Though not, I suppose, to the Order as such . . .” He shuffled toward the hall, grumpily mumbling, “Ah, Lord Bastard, my back . . .”

  At the doorway, he turned around. “Oh.” He pointed to Penric. “That one tells the truth”—his finger swung to Clee—“that one lies. Have fun sorting out this tangle, Tig.” His cantankerous voice floated over his shoulder: “I’m going back to Idau.”

  * * *

  Clee was taken away by a couple of husky dedicats, Pen was not sure to where. With more painfully sincere politeness than heretofore, Tigney suggested Pen might like to rest in his room a while. Pen, swaying on his feet, did not demur, and neither did Desdemona, who had gone very silent indeed.

  All Pen’s meager possessions had been turned out and strewn across his bed, though nothing save Ruchia’s book appeared to be taken. Clee’s things were in no better form, and for the first time, realizing Tigney had known nothing, Pen wondered what the divine had first made of it all when both men had gone missing last night. He wasn’t quite able to muster sympathy.

  He cleared his bed without ceremony, stripped out of his clammy clothes, stole Clee’s blankets to throw atop his own, and climbed in, more exhausted than he’d ever been even after the most futile, sleet-soaked hunt. When he slept, he dreamed uneasily of
fathomless eyes.

  * * *

  He woke in the early afternoon, ravenous, and went to beg food in the kitchen, where dedicats or acolytes who had missed meals were, depending on the mood of the servants, sometimes allowed charity. His extended to dry bread, some pretty good beer, and a random but generous assortment of leftovers from lunch. Hunger makes the best sauce, he remembered his mother intoning to him, vexingly, but there was nothing left on his plate but a smear by the time he’d done.

  A dedicat found him there, drooping over his place. “Lord Penric,” she said. “Learned Tigney begs you will attend upon him upstairs.”

  She led him not to Tigney’s workroom, but to a larger chamber at the back of the house. Pen hesitated in the doorway, taking in the intimidating committee assembled around a long table. Tigney was present, and two older divines in the robes of the Bastard’s Order, but also one in the neat black gown of the Father’s, black and gray braid on the shoulder, with a notebook and quill before him. A bulky man whom Pen guessed by the chain of office around his neck was a city magistrate sat next to him. A middle-aged woman in a fine silk gown, protected by an over-robe of scarcely less elegant linen, tidied a stack of papers, and rearranged her own quills and ink. All stared back at Pen.

  The saint had apparently gone back not to Idau, but to bed, for he sat fully dressed in plain townsman’s garb on a cushioned chair in the corner, eyes half closed as if dozing. Pen did not feel the god within him now, to his relief. The immense absence did not seem to leave an empty space, precisely, so much as one reserved, freed of all life’s clutter and waiting for its Guest again.

  Tigney rose and ushered Pen to a chair at the foot of the table, facing the room’s window. He could see all the interested faces around the board, and they could see his even better.

  “Learneds, Your Honor, milady.” That last, by Tigney’s respectful nod, was directed to the woman in silk. “I present to you Lord Penric kin Jurald of the valley of Greenwell, as discussed.” Tigney did not present Desdemona. Pen thought she was awake, within him, but still very silent; exhausted, cautious—a mode, he was beginning to realize, not characteristic of demons—still afraid of the saint?