Mira's Last Dance Read online

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  They laid up at the valley farm for two days. Adelis kept out of sight in the loft, growing bored and restless. Penric only descended to vent chaos when the farm folk were abed, though he evidently was able to vent quite a lot. On the bright side, he seemed to be recovering his strength and wind, but Desdemona’s labors were creating a growing reek of dead rodent about the place.

  Sitting up cross-legged on his blanket in the warmth of the afternoon, Penric sniffed apprehensively at a particularly pungent waft. “Huh. I don’t normally leave such an obvious swathe in one place. People are going to notice, I’m afraid.”

  “I should think they’d be grateful,” said Nikys. Although it would be better if people didn’t learn he was a sorcerer, since their pursuers must by now be looking for one.

  “You’d be surprised. Once, when I was a young student, I freed a man of his body lice without asking. He nearly had a fit. I hadn’t realized he’d thought of them as pets. He was certain it indicated some terrible loss of health, like rats deserting a sinking ship. I wasn’t in a place where I could explain my calling, so I ended up tiptoeing away.”

  “Why couldn’t you explain what you’d done?” asked Nikys.

  “We were in a gambling hall. I wasn’t cheating, but proving it would have been a challenge.”

  Adelis snorted. “You’d have been beaten up, more likely.”

  Nikys tilted her head, trying to picture a young Penric so cornered. “Would you have let yourself be?”

  He shrugged. “There was nothing at stake but an evening’s entertainment. Heroic measures were not called for. Hence the tiptoeing. We should do likewise, soon.”

  It was left this time for Nikys to arrange it. Asking among the farm women turned up word of a neighbor taking a wain load of grain to Sosie, which they caught in the gray of the next dawn in exchange for their last coins and the promise of Adelis’s shoulder should the wheels bog. It was a long day’s ride at the oxen’s steady pace, but they entered the city gates before dark. Passing their bedraggled selves off to the gate guards as rustic laborers was no trouble at all. They dropped down from the wagon near the temple and waved farewell to the grain man.

  Penric had promised them a night of secret shelter in the temple atrium, once he’d slipped them all inside and relocked the doors. Nikys looked forward to the safety, if not to the discomfort. It seemed to her their bedding as well as their endurance was steadily deteriorating as this flight staggered on. And the refuge of Orbas, so close, still hovered maddeningly out of reach.

  II

  In the dwindling daylight, Penric threaded the narrow streets of Sosie to the temple square. Leading his flock of two, though Arisaydia and his sister were anything but lamb-like. The space boasted a small fountain, and some stone benches scattered about, gifts of some pious rich benefactor according to the inscriptions chiseled upon them in the elegant lettering of Old Cedonian. Penric selected the most shadowed bench and settled them all down to wait for the square to clear as full night fell.

  Nikys brought out the last of their bread from the farm and shared it among them. Adelis eased up his lowered hat brim, squinting around in a tactical survey as he chewed.

  “I doubt the city watch will let us linger here much after curfew,” he observed. “If Sosie is like other garrison towns, they’ll be in perpetual feud with young soldiers from the barracks, and so be more active than the usual sleepy companies.”

  “Then perhaps they’ll be too busy elsewhere to bother us,” Nikys suggested in a tone of bracing hope.

  Penric considered the picture they presented, huddled here like skulking vagrants. Just the sort of vagabonds to be suspected of potential thievery in the night. Perfectly correctly, in their case. While being arrested would give them a free place to stay, its other costs were likely to be much too high.

  A small throng of townsfolk was assembling under the portico sheltering the temple entry. They spilled down the steps as a pair of acolytes came out and swung the doors wide, hooking them open and lighting cressets high on the stone walls to either side. Soon after, what was obviously a funeral procession emerged from one of the side streets: a pair of liveried servants bearing lanterns up on poles, six grim-faced men carrying a bier with a shrouded figure, kin dressed in hasty mourning following in a gaggle. Instead of entering the temple atrium, they paused. A faint golden glow of a sacred fire not banked for the night, but fed to flames, wavered through to the square. In a few more minutes, another procession emerged from another street. Its shrouded bier was piled about with flower garlands. The two processions came together in a sort of wary truce, then, carefully, both biers were lined up and carried within exactly side-by-side.

  A squad of city watchmen followed. Half of them went inside, and the other half took up posts around the portico as the doors were swung shut. From the sacred atrium, the music of a threnody sung in five voices sounded, echoing eerily from the stones. Song, Penric was reminded, was considered an especially acceptable offering to the gods, being a gift of pure spirit. The people in the portico did not disperse, but rather, settled as if preparing for a long wait. Penric couldn’t guess if this was good, giving a crowd to blend into, or bad, the extra watchmen having leisure to survey the scene and decide the strangers on the far bench didn’t belong here.

  After a long, frustrating silence, Nikys finally said, “I’m going to find out what’s going on.” She unfolded and donned her respectable dark green widow’s cloak, and made for the portico. Adelis and Penric both twitched, but really, the gathering remained tame enough, and Nikys was the least memorable intelligencer among them. She spent what seemed to Penric quite a long time chatting with other women on the periphery of the spectators. Finally, she trod back, a dark discreet shape in the fire-limned shadows. At her gesture, the two men slid apart, and she sat down between them with a sigh.

  “They’re going to be at this all night,” she reported. “It’s a double funeral for a double suicide. Rather a tragedy. Two young people from a pair of feuding families fell in love and, not allowed to be together in life, decided to be together in death.”

  “Seems idiotic,” said Adelis. Penric, tactfully, did not bring up how recently Adelis had been considering such an exit from his own dark woes.

  Nikys shrugged, not disagreeing. “It appears they were very young. Anyway, the magistrates and the Sosie divines ordered both families to pray all night for their souls, and for atonement for their strife. By morning, people expect there to be either a reconciliation, or blood on the temple floor and no survivors, and it didn’t sound as if the magistrates much cared which by this time.”

  “Well.” Adelis rubbed his neck. “We can’t sleep in there, then.” He frowned. “And I won’t have Nikys sleep on the street.”

  Penric agreed with that. His own preference was to scout out a high place to hole up. Desdemona lent him the ability to see in the dark, so that wasn’t going to be much worse for him than such a search by daylight, but getting the other two up after him, and in stealthy silence, was going to be tricky. The night was moonless, making the narrow lanes pitch black in most places. All the good citizens would be indoors by this time, leaving mainly the other sort abroad. Granted, any villain unwittingly tackling a Temple-trained sorcerer could be in for a horrible surprise, and he doubted Adelis would make easy prey, either. But it would be far better to slip in and out of Sosie without any incident at all.

  Thank you, murmured Desdemona, within him.

  Aye. Cedonia was a beautiful country, Pen thought, but it kept trying to kill him. At some point, his demon might not be able to keep up, and then they… no, she would be in real trouble. His troubles would be over, presumably.

  But they weren’t over yet. He hoisted himself up and led his charges into the dark and winding passages, the paving stones usually dry underfoot but sometimes unpleasantly not. He held Nikys’s hand, and she held Adelis’s, so he was able to guide them safely around the worst of the hazards. The houses her
e were in the Cedonian style of high blank walls around inner courtyards, the few street-facing windows or balconies confined to upper stories. No handy stairs, or ladders, or even climbing vines rewarded his investigations.

  You shouldn’t be trying to climb yet anyway, Des muttered in disapproval. You might get dizzy again. No sprinting, either.

  I’m feeling stronger now. Chest’s stopped hurting. You do excellent work.

  Flattery will not avail you, she responded not entirely truthfully, part placated, part still stern.

  Orange light flickered at the next corner. Penric poked his head cautiously around. The light had two sources: a simple candle lantern hanging on a bracket above a doorway, and a brighter oil lantern held by one of a pair of soldiers. Young officers, Penric guessed by their dress and demeanor, captains or lieutenants of hundreds; Adelis would be able to tell at a glance. The other soldier pounded impatiently on the stout wooden door.

  “Hoy! Open up, Zihre! Don’t leave your best customers standing in the street!”

  More pounding. At last the door creaked, and a woman thrust her head out. “We’re not open, gentlemen. Come back another night.”

  “Oh, you can let us in, surely,” wheedled the officer. A bit drunk, Pen guessed.

  “We’re closed for washing. Unless you want to scrub laundry, be off with you.”

  “All that hot steam could be exciting,” the drunken officer allowed, attempting to grab and kiss her. She evaded him without effort or apparent offense.

  “Yes, we could hold your head under the suds till you grow smarter,” she returned. “Or cleaner. Whichever happens first.” His companion guffawed. “If you’re not the laundresses”—she leaned out and looked up and down the street—“I can’t accommodate you tonight.”

  A bit more whining left the woman unmoved, and the pair gave up and left. Their voices sounded again at the next corner, a lewd joke and a sharp rejoinder. An older woman, trailed by two others carrying sacks, rejected their inebriated attentions and made for the light, under which the lady of the house, seeing them approach, had paused.

  “Ah, good.” The woman in the entryway waved and beckoned. “At last.”

  The presumed-laundress held out her hand to halt her companions. “Yes, we’re here, at this unholy hour. But I’m telling you straight out, Zihre, it’s double pay tonight or we’re not coming in. And your girls can boil their own crawly sheets.” She mimed an exaggerated shudder.

  Zihre sighed. “Yes, yes, whatever it takes. We can’t do business at all till this Bastard-sent plague is eradicated.” She tapped her lips with her thumb in a quick averting half-prayer, as if the god himself might be listening, offended at this scorning of His ambiguous gifts.

  Penric, rapidly figuring out the situation, grinned to himself. Bastard be praised indeed. He whispered to Adelis and Nikys, “Wait here. I may be able to win us shelter for the night.” He raised his chin and strode forward, ignoring Nikys’s What? and Adelis’s We can’t take Nikys in there!

  “Madame Zihre?” he called in his most dulcet tones, as she made to pull the door closed again behind the party of stumping, grumping laundresses.

  “I’m sorry, sir, we’re closed tonight,” she began perfunctorily as Penric stepped forward into the light of her door lantern. She looked up into his face, and her eyes widened. “So very, very sorry!”

  He smiled back with all his heart. Prostitutes, after all, were numbered among the Bastard’s own flock. Along with pirates, Pen supposed, but he didn’t think he’d deal well with the latter, oath-sworn divine or not. “Ah. I didn’t come to employ, but to seek employment. May I come in and speak further?”

  She blinked. “We’ve not kept lads for the loves of the Bastard before, but that’s not to say we might not start. Are you experienced? Not that you’d need to be, necessarily. I could train you.” The corners of her mouth crept up.

  Penric cleared his throat, to block Desdemona’s knowing snicker. “Ah, ha, not that sort of employment. I am given to understand you are troubled with an unfortunate outbreak of personal parasites. I’ve had experience eradicating such pests before, at houses such as this. I am a Temple sorcerer, Learned… Jurald.” He signed himself, forehead-lips-navel-groin-heart for the tally of the five gods, and tapped his lips again for the Bastard’s special blessing.

  Her dark eyes grew shrewd. She was a decidedly handsome older woman, Pen saw at this closer range. Her dress was more dignified than provocative, aside from a wide green belt at her waist, glimmering with sewn pearls, that supported her bodice in an attractive manner. “You are too pretty to be Learned Anybody,” she protested.

  “I could make you a scholarly argument, but really, I think it would be faster for me to simply demonstrate my skills. And you can judge for yourself.” He kept up the blinding smile. “If I cannot perform to your satisfaction, you will owe me nothing.”

  “And what would I owe you if you did?”

  “No great price, merely shelter for myself and my two”—he made a rapid recalculation—“servants for the night. We’ve found ourselves unexpectedly benighted in Sosie without the, er, resources we expected to receive here, and must make do.”

  Her eyes narrowed back down. “Why not go to the Temple, then, oh learned divine?” Unkempt on her doorstep, dressed and probably also smelling like a farm laborer, there was certainly nothing of the divine about him.

  “It’s a long story.” Which he had better make up as soon as possible. “There was a shipwreck involved,” he essayed, and then realized he had a better one. “The Sosie Temple, as you may know, is much occupied tonight with settling a tragic feud between two local families.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Yes. That. Young fools. Although the old fools were the worse.” She snorted. “I won’t say they got what they deserved, because no one deserves to lose their child, but it it’s to be hoped they’ve learned a lesson from the gods that they refused from anyone else. Everyone in town was tired of their riot and rumpus.” She gave way and opened her door.

  Penric thanked her, and hurried back to collect Nikys and Adelis.

  “I’m a traveling sorcerer-divine, you two are my servants, and we were recently shipwrecked… somewhere,” he whispered in rapid tutorial. “Which is why we have no baggage or money. I’ve just undertaken to rid the house of an infestation of, er, insect pests, in exchange for a night’s lodging.”

  “What kind of pests?” asked Nikys.

  Adelis said, repressively, “Bedbugs.”

  “Oh? From the way she was talking with the laundress, I’d have guessed crab lice.”

  Penric choked down Desdemona’s laugh as Nikys sailed past him. “Could be both, but I can be the bane of either. Remember, you are servants. Tired, quiet servants. A guard and a maid. Who keep to themselves.”

  “You have the first part right,” Adelis growled, following her. “Shipwreck? You do know we’re eighty miles inland, yes?”

  “We had a long walk,” Pen returned, swallowing aggravation. Adelis might resent being cast again as an actor, but a guardsman should be less of a stretch for him than a widow. If he deigned to cooperate.

  Crossing the threshold, Penric signed himself again, and murmured, “Five gods bless and keep this house safe from all harm.” And us as well. Their hostess’s fine plucked eyebrows twitched up at the gesture, a tiny concession to belief in his self-proclaimed calling.

  She turned, took up a pole with a hook from its wall bracket, and used it to retrieve the lantern over the door before closing it again with a firm thud, setting the bar across. “That’s served its purpose,” she murmured. “Our porter’s job, but he’s busy hauling water just now.” She motioned her new guests after her.

  The house may well have belonged to a rich family, before falling to its present purpose. Spacious, but short of palatial. The arrangement, Penric saw as they followed Zihre inside, was typical of this country: stone-built, an entry atrium with a mosaic floor, then a larger atrium also with a second floor of rooms
built around it on a gallery. A small walled garden beyond held a separate outbuilding for the kitchen, laundry, and bathhouse. The garden boasted its own well, and a stream of activity as people carried water and wood for the boiling vats, under the stern direction of the laundresses. The general air was cranky and harried. And itchy. Not the sort of evening party that usually graced this garden, Penric imagined.

  Hopelessly the diagnostician, Penric asked, “When did your current troubles commence, do you know?”

  Zihre shrugged. “Perhaps a month ago. It was either a party of merchants, or some new soldiers from the barracks. Which means the boys will doubtless be gifting them back to us.”

  Adelis winced, no doubt able to picture the military side of the scene. Penric wondered if he should pass on some tips for diplomatically delousing her customers that he’d picked up back in Martensbridge, when he had been asked out as a physician-sorcerer to take care of a similar plague in certain establishments there. That had started an extraordinary education for him, to be sure, the like of which he could never have imagined back in his canton mountain boyhood. He’d made many new and interesting friends. And come to better know the courtesan Mira of Adria, the image of his demon’s long-dead fifth rider who lived, in a sense, along with the rest of her strange sisterhood inside his head. He suspected he’d be asking her for advice again soon.

  External parasites did not require nearly the delicacy to dispose of as internal ones. He and Des were so practiced by now he could likely do it with a simple stroll around the premises, but he supposed he’d better make enough of a show that their hostess would realize he’d done anything at all, and credit him for it. Rather the reverse of his usual preference for discretion. They were going to need the credit. Really, when he had time someday he needed to work out a way to make his magics visible at need to ungifted observers, some sort of sham light show perhaps. Maybe the marketplace jongleurs would have some tricks he could adapt.