Masquerade in Lodi (Penric & Desdemona Book 4) Read online

  The sense of a snort from Des, which he prudently ignored.

  It occurred to Pen, watching Chio trail a meditative hand in the water, that there was one aspect of her night’s saintly labors she had entirely talked around at the Richelons’ table. And that his duty to her as a divine of their shared Order extended beyond merely acting as her guardsman. Even if she’d handed him back as much defending as he’d given to her, which was a trifle embarrassing.

  She has the god’s guidance, Pen. Why would she need yours?

  Cogent question, but… Let’s find out.

  It took him a moment or two to decide how to start.

  “When I was nineteen, and feckless, and knew almost nothing yet about my new calling as a sorcerer, it never even crossed my mind to wonder what distress disposing of Des would have caused old Broylin. He was presented to me as already an authority, an immovable fixture in the world, like a mountain. He seemed surprised when the god refused my demon, but not… not unhappy. I just assumed he’d seen many and worse. I know of one for certain—a renegade Temple demon, which must have become a full person by the time it was recalled and destroyed by the god.” Des’s memories of Tigney’s ascendant demon were fraught enough, shared only reluctantly with Pen.

  Chio shook the droplets off her hand and turned toward him. “You’re a noticing sort of man, Learned Penric. In ways Riesta can’t be, I guess.”

  Pen opened a conceding palm. “Yes.”

  A little silence. Then, “In a way,” Chio said, “I’m glad this one was such an awful mess. At least there wasn’t doubt, atop the other ugliness of my task. If that was a birthday gift to me from the god, well… it’s not as if I can give it back.”

  “Good is not always the same thing as nice, they say.” He studied her tired young face in the light of the sun, now topping the city and piercing the watery silver air with rose-gold. It would be a fine fair day, and hot. “Are you going to be all right?”

  “I… will be.” She puffed a faint laugh, adding, “You’re the first to ever ask me that, at one of these duties. Everyone asked it of that chicken-woman, after I freed her, but not of me. Not even me. Her elemental hadn’t been in her long enough to pick up more than a trace of humanity. It was like erasing a shadow. This… wasn’t like that. Full person, yes. Very full.” Her eyes sought the passing shoreline. “The god grieved for the fate of his creature.”

  Did her hands feel stained with that fate? “It was seven lives deep, by my count, however short some were, and had grown dark and twisted. I don’t think any other rider could have healed it by that stage. Not even by all our god’s contriving.”

  “This, I saw.” She turned back to him. “Your demon is much, much deeper, but not dark. She glows, like colored lanterns in a vast winding cavern.”

  Des had been seeing nothing in that moment of demon-destruction, like a child hiding its head under a blanket from night terrors. But if Chio had been watching over the white god’s shoulder, nothing would have been hidden from her. It was probably well such moments were short, so that the gods could return their saints to the world still sane. Mostly.

  Chio’s curious look across at Pen grew grave, unblinking. “What do you grieve for so hard, Learned?”

  Oh. So it wasn’t just Des that she’d seen into, or Merin and Ree.

  He shrugged in discomfort. “In time, most of us become orphans, it turns out. The princess-archdivine had been like a second mother to me. And as great a loss, last year.” As that bereavement had fallen bare months before the death of his first mother, Pen supposed he had an exact-enough standard of comparison, though he wasn’t sure such a balance-scale made any sense, really.

  Chio rocked back, absorbing this. Then leaned forward. “That wasn’t all, I think?”

  Pen made a face, starting to pass this off as nothing more, nothing much. But Chio seemed not the person for lies this morning, neither as saint nor as young woman. Not when he’d just been demanding truths from her.

  He took a breath, for resolution. “I had been working hard to make a new career as a Temple physician-sorcerer, to please all who had cared for me. It wasn’t that I was not good at it. That would have made it so much easier to quit. Not a failure of skills, but of… character, perhaps.” He averted Des’s beginning fulmination with a hasty, “Or maybe just a mismatch between soul and calling. Serious mismatch. It broke something.”

  Your heart, I thought, said Des. Her dry tone robbed the comment of mawkishness. And I was there. So don’t try to tell me lies, either. It was your error in the first place, for imagining you had to save every patient brought before you. …Not that you didn’t try.

  The failed physician, and the uncanny executioner… Chio, he thought, might understand that futile feeling of lives, and deaths, slipping through a grasp oddly well. Oh.

  Pen rubbed at his forearms, nervously. “I really don’t care to speak of it.”

  “I see that,” said Chio. Her head tilted in a concentration upon him that Pen found unnerving. “…I believe your demon isn’t the only creature our god wishes to keep in this world.”

  “This… I… already know. Received that message very clear. On a hillside above Martensbridge, one morning last fall. Which is why I never made it to my investiture ceremony in the Mother’s Order that noon.”

  If you had succeeded in cutting your bloody arms off, you’d have taken me with you, you know, Des grumped. As I pointed out at the time, but you weren’t listening to much of anything by then. Certainly not reason.

  Yes. I apologize. There won’t be a repeat.

  Best not be. The sense of a peeved Harumph! concealing… much. Love, Pen suspected.

  “And so I’m here,” Pen concluded. Whether in Lodi or the world he left unsaid.

  “And so you are.” A determined nod, as if Chio might share her very considerable spine with him—another birthday gift that could not be turned down. “I’m glad of it.”

  At the mouth of the main canal, across the basin, the holy procession was assembling. Chio exclaimed, pointing out the archdivine’s fancy barge being brought out for the blessing: two stacked rows of oarsmen, bunting and flags, the tiny, glittering figures of prelates and functionaries all in their best finery. Sweet sounds from musicians and a choir on an upper deck carried clearly across the water. Pen wagered he could have elbowed his way to a place aboard if he’d been over there this morning, although by now he thought he’d rather elbow into his bed. Gull Island’s orphan floats had presumably already rowed off to join in. He was so fascinated by the shining spectacle, he only turned around when the oarboat swung in for their landing.

  Where he discovered that Iserne had not been the only parent up all night waiting for the return of a lost one. Learned Riesta, his back bowed and elbows propped on his knees, sat on the edge of the jetty with his legs dangling over, head nodding.

  His face jerked up as their hull scraped against the stone. “Chio!” He scrambled to his feet to march down the water-stairs, hands reaching to help her out of the boat. Pen was left to fend for his own balance, not to mention pay the oarsman.

  It was that last addition of the damp flower crown, listing drunkenly atop her head, that pushed Chio’s appearance over the line from disheveled to debauched, Pen decided as he turned and climbed the steps to join them. And her muted grin. His own bleary, squinting eyes and numb face probably just looked wine-sick. In neither case a reassuring sight for an anxious guardian.

  “Where have you two been all night?” Riesta demanded. His tone was more strangled than thundering.

  “Oh, Learned Penric brought me the most splendid Bastard’s Eve ever!” Chio told him cheerily. “We walked all over town to the market parties, ate festival food, tracked down the ascendant demon, rescued its rider, and captured a murderer. And I hear Learned Penric revived a robbery victim and reformed a cutpurse, though even the god wasn’t entirely sure that last was going to stick.” Her sly grin widened as she capped this with, “Also I met a very nice boy, to
gether with his family.”

  Was she teasing the poor man? And not for the first time, judging by his exasperated sigh. “Chio…”

  Pen was acquiring new insight into the relationship between the stodgy Temple functionary and his saint, to be sure. He might have to reclassify Riesta from forbidding to beleaguered. It was revealing that he didn’t even bother to tax Penric on the alarming progression of the night’s events. Nor to generate the sorts of wild accusations of him that a girl missing all night might be expected to foster in a paternal mind, which Pen had been braced to counter.

  Nor did he offer the least hint that he deemed she could be lying to him, despite her provoking summary. Interesting…

  Pen thought to add, “There will probably be a city magistrate’s inquiry about the murderer, but not until tomorrow. If they want more than the saint’s testimony, send them on to me at the curia.”

  Riesta did not look as if this news helped.

  Chio patted Riesta’s arm in a consolatory fashion. “I’ll give you a proper report on the demon for the Order’s files later, I promise. Right now I want a wash-up and a nap.”

  “Well,” he said, testiness overborne, “Well, see you do…”

  Penric walked beside them as they started up the path beside the access canal to the chapterhouse, feeling vaguely that as escort he was obliged to at least see the young lady to her door.

  Riesta eyed him sideways. “You survived, I see.”

  He meant the question ironically, but Pen thought of how close Merin’s knife had come. The nick on his arm had dried; the bloodstain on his sleeve could be treated later. He answered less ironically, “Barely. But it seems I had a good protector.”

  Chio smirked, fiddling with the feathered mask dangling from her hand.

  “It was a miracle my whites avoided the canals all night,” he added. Not that this had saved them—they would still require extensive laundry and repairs.

  Chio made a moue, and stopped, the two men perforce with her. “You sound so disappointed, Learned Penric. Is there no one to uphold the reputation of Lodi and our lord of chaos? We should give the god an offering on His day. Hand me your mask.”

  Pen did so, confused. Or stupid with fatigue, whichever.

  She turned him to face her, adjusting his stance. He was just opening his mouth to inquire her meaning when she placed both hands on his chest and gave him a vigorous shove. Over the cut-stone bank and into the waters, backward, with a vast splash. His surprised yelp cut off with a gargle.

  Spluttering up through clinging weeds, he found his feet, to discover the water here was only chest-deep.

  Des! Why didn’t you defend us?

  This has to be the cleanest canal we’ve passed all night. Besides, how is a mere demon to stand up to the will of a saint?

  You feign demure badly, you know. Or else she was still smug over that vast, lamplit cavern compliment, and had switched sides.

  Never, she promised him. Are you awake now? Invigorated? Cheered up…?

  Pen looked up to find Chio’s laughing face, and Riesta’s resigned one, leaning over the bank. The hands that had pushed him in now extended to help him out. …And wasn’t that a fitting metaphor for their god.

  Helplessly, he laughed back, and took them.

  ~FIN~

  Author’s Note:

  A Bujold Reading-Order Guide

  The Fantasy Novels

  My fantasy novels are not hard to order. Easiest of all is The Spirit Ring, which is a stand-alone, or aquel, as some wag once dubbed books that for some obscure reason failed to spawn a subsequent series. Next easiest are the four volumes of The Sharing Knife—in order, Beguilement, Legacy, Passage, and Horizon—which I broke down and actually numbered, as this was one continuous tale divided into non-wrist-breaking chunks. The novella “Knife Children” is something of a codicil-tale to the tetralogy.

  What were called the Chalion books after the setting of its first two volumes, but which now that the geographic scope has widened I’m dubbing the World of the Five Gods, were written to be stand-alones as part of a larger whole, and can in theory be read in any order. Some readers think the world-building is easier to assimilate when the books are read in publication order, and the second volume certainly contains spoilers for the first (but not the third.) In any case, the publication order is:

  The Curse of Chalion

  Paladin of Souls

  The Hallowed Hunt

  In terms of internal world chronology, The Hallowed Hunt would fall first, the Penric novellas perhaps a hundred and fifty years later, and The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls would follow a century or so after that.

  The internal chronology of the Penric novellas is presently

  “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”

  Other Original E-books

  The short story collection Proto Zoa contains five very early tales—three (1980s) contemporary fantasy, two science fiction—all previously published but not in this handy format. The novelette “Dreamweaver’s Dilemma” may be of interest to Vorkosigan completists, as it is the first story in which that proto-universe began, mentioning Beta Colony but before Barrayar was even thought of.

  Sidelines: Talks and Essays is just what it says on the tin—a collection of three decades of my nonfiction writings, including convention speeches, essays, travelogues, introductions, and some less formal pieces. I hope it will prove an interesting companion piece to my fiction.

  The Vorkosigan Stories

  Many pixels have been expended debating the ‘best’ order in which to read what have come to be known as the Vorkosigan Books (or Saga), the Vorkosiverse, the Miles books, and other names. The debate mainly revolves around publication order versus internal-chronological order. I favor internal chronological, with a few adjustments.

  It was always my intention to write each book as a stand-alone, so that the reader could theoretically jump in anywhere. While still somewhat true, as the series developed it acquired a number of sub-arcs, closely related tales that were richer for each other. I will list the sub-arcs, and then the books, and then the duplication warnings. (My publishing history has been complex.) And then the publication order, for those who want it.

  Shards of Honor and Barrayar. The first two books in the series proper, they detail the adventures of Cordelia Naismith of Beta Colony and Aral Vorkosigan of Barrayar. Shards was my very first novel ever; Barrayar was actually my eighth, but continues the tale the next day after the end of Shards. For readers who want to be sure of beginning at the beginning, or who are very spoiler-sensitive, start with these two.

  The Warrior’s Apprentice and The Vor Game (with, perhaps, the novella “The Mountains of Mourning” tucked in between.) The Warrior’s Apprentice introduces the character who became the series’ linchpin, Miles Vorkosigan; the first book tells how he created a space mercenary fleet by accident; the second how he fixed his mistakes from the first round. Space opera and military-esque adventure (and a number of other things one can best discover for oneself), The Warrior’s Apprentice makes another good place to jump into the series for readers who prefer a young male protagonist.

  After that: Brothers in Arms should be read before Mirror Dance, and both, ideally, before Memory.

  Komarr makes another alternate entry point for the series, picking up Miles’s second career at its start. It should be read before A Civil Campaign.

  Borders of Infinity, a collection of three of the five currently extant novellas, makes a good Miles Vorkosigan early-adventure sampler platter, I always thought, for readers who don’t want to commit themselves to length. (But it may make more sense if read after The Warrior’s Apprentice.) Take c
are not to confuse the collection-as-a-whole with its title story, “The Borders of Infinity”.

  Falling Free takes place 200 years earlier in the timeline and does not share settings or characters with the main body of the series. Most readers recommend picking up this story later. It should likely be read before Diplomatic Immunity, however, which revisits the “quaddies”, a bioengineered race of free-fall dwellers, in Miles’s time.

  The novels in the internal-chronological list below appear in italics; the novellas (officially defined as a story between 17,500 words and 40,000 words) in quote marks.

  Falling Free

  Shards of Honor

  Barrayar

  The Warrior’s Apprentice

  “The Mountains of Mourning”

  “Weatherman”

  The Vor Game

  Cetaganda

  Ethan of Athos

  Borders of Infinity

  “Labyrinth”

  “The Borders of Infinity”

  Brothers in Arms

  Mirror Dance

  Memory

  Komarr

  A Civil Campaign

  “Winterfair Gifts”

  Diplomatic Immunity

  Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance

  “The Flowers of Vashnoi”

  CryoBurn