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

  “Oh, good, we were waiting for those.” His bony hands darted for them. A pause, while he sifted through in some preliminary assessment.

  The woman, evidently feeling her mission discharged, eased back and eyed Pen in mild curiosity. “You are Learned Penric, are you not? Ogial’s new sorcerer?”

  Pen ducked his head. “Yes, Learned. I believe we have passed each other in the library?” He remembered her, dark-eyed and rather handsome for her age, hurrying in and out of the curial archives. Her glances at him had been neither impolite nor friendly; perhaps just distracted.

  “Yes, I’ve noticed you.” People typically did, with his height and eyes and hair. And braids. “Is it true you were court sorcerer to the princess-archdivine of Martensbridge?”

  And now the subject of whispered curial gossip, Pen was dryly aware. “Formerly, till she sadly passed last year. The new royal appointee brought her own sorceress from Easthome, and I was encouraged to seek other employment.”

  Meaning, pressed hard to take formal oath at the Martensbridge Mother’s Order as a full physician-sorcerer, in place of his unofficial service doing, actually, the same thing. But he wasn’t discussing that. His sideways escape to Lodi had been unexpected even to him.

  Pish, said Des. Ogial leapt at your first note of inquiry. He considers you quite the ornament, you know. The sense of a smirk. Ornamental, too.

  The stack of documents was looking as if it might take some time. Shifting from foot to foot, Pen blurted, “I’m sorry to interrupt, Master Bizond, but I have a bit of an emergency.”

  Bizond’s face twitched from annoyance at this disruption of his concentration, to vague alarm at what a full-braid sorcerer of Pen’s standing could possibly dub a bit of an emergency. His voice took a startled edge. “What?”

  Swiftly, Pen gave the gist of his outing to the Gift of the Sea, minus the fine points. “The upshot is, if he hasn’t made it across the causeway already, there is an ascendant demon loose in Lodi, riding, in effect, this kidnapped young man.”

  “This… is bad?”

  “For the young man, yes. For whoever encounters him, I’m not clear yet. I will of course be going back out to look for him. Meanwhile, I need to know who and where is the saint of Lodi.”

  “Which one?”

  “There’s more than one?”

  “Three petty saints that I know of in the Father’s Order, and six scattered around the Mother’s Order. I believe the Daughter’s Order has a few as well. The Son’s Order does not much run to saints.”

  “Er, I meant the one of my Order.”

  Bizond’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “You don’t know?”

  Pen declined to explain how Lodi’s demon-eating agent of the white god was someone Des would have preferred not to meet ever, settling on, “I’m new here…?”

  “Ah, I suppose. Well, Blessed Chio may likely be found at the chapterhouse and orphanage on the Isle of Gulls. Do you know where that is?”

  “Yes,” Des replied for both of them.

  Pen explained his plan to conscript Bizond’s office for his message drop. Bizond, who had grown increasingly nonplussed through all this, didn’t protest, though whether due to Pen’s logic or his looming Pen wasn’t sure. Pen hurried back out, trailed by Iserne’s dazed stare and Bizond’s mutter of “Five gods preserve us…!”

  From the bedemoned boy? Pen wondered. There is only one god for that task.

  I think he meant from you, said Des, too amused as usual.

  As he left the curial palace again, Pen wondered whether it would be faster to walk or hail an oarboat. Des sketched a crude map in his head, and advised, It will have to be a boat. Gulls is too far out for a bridge.

  Right. Pen switched directions to the boat-hire closest to the Temple square, at the edge of the city’s central basin. Half-a-dozen narrow boats were pulled up at the dock, loading or offloading passengers: merchants and Temple folk and city officials. All the craft were painted and ornamented according to their owner-boatmen’s tastes and notions of what might attract customers. The collective effect was clashingly gaudy: reds, oranges, yellows, greens, blues, some fresh, some weather-faded; stripes, swirls, solids, or carved animal motifs; polished tin or copper inlays glinting.

  At the sight of his pale vestments and raised hand, a couple of the boatmen pretended to be looking the other way, but one aging fellow pushed back his hat, grinned, and waved Pen on. Pen stepped down carefully and centrally onto the damp, rocking planks and sank back on the worn cushion provided, which would have been more thoughtful for his lean haunches were it less compacted. He was still grateful to be off his feet for a bit.

  “Bless us to avert your god’s eye on His Eve, Learned, and where to?” the boatman inquired genially.

  Pen dutifully returned a full tally of the gods, touching forehead, mouth, navel, groin, and heart, with a double tap of the back of his thumb to his lips. “The Isle of Gulls, please.”

  “Visiting the orphans?” The boat wobbled as the boatman pushed them off and out into the waters of the basin.

  “The chapterhouse.”

  The boatman took up his stand at the square stern, and began to sweep his oar rhythmically back and forth in the squeaking oarlock. Progress was slow but steady, to the musical slapping of the choppy salt waves against the hull. Pen eyed the creaking seams beside his feet, but the tow and tar seemed to be holding, their sun-warmed odor evocative of marine livelihoods. Keep your chaos to yourself, please, Des.

  Hah.

  He gazed out across the basin, sparkling in this bright afternoon, sprinkled with other vessels of all sizes and sorts, moving or moored. A returning convoy of three big-bellied merchant cogs was the most impressive, as their happily shouting crews warped them in to their anchorages, canvas thumping down. Pen would have enjoyed the sight more if he’d been less distracted. Des felt uneasy within him as they bobbed across the waves, like incipient seasickness.

  You’ve been involved in such demon-retrievals more than once before, haven’t you, in your career as a Temple demon? Part inquiry, part reassurance. Poor Learned Tigney, I know about. His affair wasn’t that much before my time.

  Agh, yes. That idiot. He preened so when he was first gifted with his demon by the Order, certain he would soon surpass Ruchia and me. We weren’t in Martensbridge when his demon ascended and absconded, but we were saddled with the task of tracking them down when we got home. He led us a vile chase across Trigonie. We only caught up with him because he’d stopped too long in a town just over the border of Orbas to pursue an excessive course of carnal pleasures.

  The way demons do, Pen put in slyly. When they had the chance, in their stolen, or shared, carnal bodies. Though after ten years together, he was over his embarrassment by Des’s enjoyment of his. Mostly.

  And men do, Des shot back. When both surrender to one desire, there are no brakes. If I were not much more balanced, she continued primly, I could not have lasted this long. Howsoever, Tigney’s demon seemed more addicted to gluttony and sloth than, say, lust and wrath, which fortunately slowed them. Though the pride and envy by which he first fell was all Tigney.

  Pen mused on her list. So where does greed fit in all this?

  Just middling. Greed is an appetite that looks largely to some imagined or feared future. Ascendant demons are not much known for foresight.

  Hm. Pen frowned as they approached the boat landing on the island shore. So did you bring the saint to Tigney, or him to the saint? It was still old Blessed Broylin of Idau back then, wasn’t it? A creaky and cranky old man when Pen had so memorably met him, until the god had shone through his eyes like a dive into infinite space.

  Fifteen years ago, so not as creaky. Though just as cranky. We dragged Tigney back to him.

  We need to discuss the mechanics of that.

  Less mechanics than force and threat. Ruchia’s guards supplied the force; she and I supplied the threat.

  Will you be able to overawe this wild demon?

  �
�Probably.

  Only probably? Pen didn’t quite like that hint of doubt. It must surely be less powerful than Tigney’s was.

  Lack of foresight, remember. Fear can be the opposite of greed, that way, shortening one’s horizon.

  I’d have thought Tigney’s demon would have been utterly terrified, knowing exactly what was in store for it.

  When terror surpasses all bearing, it can tip over into despair. And a sort of docile lassitude.

  A relief of sorts?

  Not really.

  “You’re a quiet one,” remarked the boatman as he steered them to their island docking.

  Not on the inside of my head. “Sorry. I’ve a few things on my mind.”

  The boatman’s eyebrows twitched up at the apology. “Busy night coming up for you folks of the fifth god, with the festival and all?”

  “I expect so.” Though not, in his case, due to the festival.

  The boatman chortled. “Don’t celebrate so good you dunk that white dress in a canal.”

  What is this obsession by everyone we meet with my whites and canals?

  Des would have smirked if she could. As it was, Pen’s lips twitched. Hopeful anticipation, probably.

  They glided into perfect position at the algae-fringed stone quay. Heartened by his customer’s near-smile, the boatman added, “D’you want me to wait for you, Learned?” He named the fee for this restful service as Pen drew up his purse on the cord around his neck and fished out the right coin. He’d been relieved, like most Lodi visitors, that boatmen’s rates were set by law and posted on all public landings.

  “I’m not sure how long I’ll be here.” He considered Madboy, who-knew-where doing who-knew-what by now. “But I won’t be lingering. Yes, please.” He added the half-in-advance coin to the boatman’s outstretched leathery palm, and turned to climb the steps.

  More remote than its sister city wards, the Isle of Gulls was less built-up, the households scattered across it sparing space for gardens and orchards and useful domestic animals. It gave the place a restful, rural air that Pen discovered he’d missed in the scurry of the Temple precincts in Lodi’s heart. The chapterhouse of the Bastard’s Order was not hard to find, as a channel was dug from the shore near the landing right up to its walls, and through a water gate presently raised.

  When this place was a merchant’s mansion, Des reminisced, he passed his goods in and out that way. When he died childless, he left house and fortune to the Order to build on the orphanage. That was back in Mira’s day. We knew it well then, as we’d come out here for patrons on occasion. Mira had the most flamboyant boat, with an awning of silk and liveried oarsmen. A nostalgic sigh. It’s changed… A century had softened the raw brick; the walls were climbed now by no enemy more dangerous than ivy.

  A high wooden gate stood half open to the afternoon, cheery voices floating through it. Pen entered to find two boats pulled up from the terminating pool of the small channel. A motley assortment of children laughed and argued around them, engaged in decorating wherever decorations could be fitted on, ribbons and bannerets and garlands of miscellaneously colored cloth flowers clearly made by little hands. They were benignly supervised by a pair of adults in stained white dedicat’s tabards, who looked up in question at Pen’s arrival.

  “May I help you, sir?” said the man.

  Pen supposed he’d better go through proper channels. How did one gain audience with a saint? Should he have tried to send ahead for an appointment? “I’m Learned Penric of the archdivine’s curia. I need to speak with the head of the chapterhouse.”

  “Of course, Learned. Please come this way.” With a cautious and deeply curious glance at Pen’s left shoulder, the man led off across the trampled yard toward the stately house, two stories high and faced with fine creamy stone, window frames and doors painted russet. “Oh, there he is now.”

  A distracted-looking man in bleached vestments cut much like Pen’s, if more worn and less ink-spattered around the cuffs, and with the badge of his office hanging from a silver chain around his neck, exited the front door and looked around. He spotted Pen at once, his brows drawing together. Pen pegged him for another middle-aged functionary, more administrator than holy man, the backbone of every Order.

  They met at the foot of the shallow steps. The dedicat bobbed his head. “Learned Riesta, this is Learned Penric. He says he’s come from the curia.”

  “Oh,” said Riesta. His tone seemed more enlightenment than surprise.

  “Pardon me for arriving unheralded,” Pen began politely, “but I seek an urgent conference with the saint of Lodi, whom I was told resides here.”

  “Yes, that’s right.” He continued to peer perplexed at Penric. “Is there something the matter with your Temple demon, Learned Penric?”

  “Not at all,” Pen assured him hastily, while Des puffed in silent offense. “I was detailed by the archdivine”—yes, given Pen’s own deceptively unweathered features, it never hurt to prop his authority—“to deal with another matter, which is going to require the blessed one’s attention. Uh, I trust the saint is here?”

  “Yes. Blessed Chio awaits you in the garden. I was told to bring you around.” Waving his dedicat back to his orphan-supervising, Riesta led off along the flagstone walkway bordering the old mansion.

  “The saint knew I was coming?” Disturbingly possible, in the god-touched.

  “It seems so,” sighed the chapter head, in an oddly put-upon tone. “This was only announced to me a few minutes ago.”

  The garden might once have been formal, but was given over now to more practical vegetables and fruit trees, tidy as a stitched sampler. A dedicat and a couple of what were probably more orphans knelt weeding on the far side. The only other occupant sat on a bench under an old peach tree, its branches bending with still-green fruit. It was a young woman, barely more than a girl. Her thin white coat, unadorned by any sign of rank, was worn carelessly open over an ordinary faded blue dress. Pen blinked, startled.

  You shouldn’t be, said Des. A saint can be anyone at all, you know that. Anyone whose soul gives space for a god to reach into the world. …Not sorcerers, naturally.

  The god was not immanent now, or Des would be reacting more violently. As they trod up, Pen studied Chio’s exterior appearance.

  Dark hair in a simple braid down her back, finished with a white ribbon. Skin a typical Adriac honey. Amber-brown eyes, well-set in a long narrow face with rather a lot of chin and nose. In middle age, her features might still be dubbed handsome, if she were fortunate in her health; in sunken old age, possibly a little scary, but in the flower of youth they remained memorably pleasant. Pen wasn’t sure whether to revise her estimated age upward at her well-filled bodice.

  No telling, said Des. Some of us started early—Mira was one. Vasia was another. She left off, thankfully, without detailing ten different examples of female puberty.

  Chio looked up at him with equal attention. “Oh,” she said, in a voice of surprise. “You’re not quite what I was expecting.”

  The feeling is mutual. Pen didn’t think her narrowing eyes expressed disappointment, but what she was making of him was not obvious.

  Riesta performed a brief introduction, ending with, “What’s this all about, Learned Penric?”

  Pen scratched his ear, marshaled his story, again. Having explained it once already today helped, but Pen suspected Chio’s was a very different listening from Bizond’s. He didn’t need to recap basic demon lore here, but… she couldn’t possess Idau’s long years of experience, surely.

  It’s not the saint’s experience that matters. It’s the god’s, said Des. I don’t think we need worry about that part.

  Finishing his tale of the shiplost lad, Pen settled on a tentative, “Have you had to do yet with removing a dangerous demon from a person?”

  She shrugged one slim shoulder. “It’s mostly been fetching out young elementals from animals. That’s how the god first came to me, four years ago—one of the householders on the
island thought her cow was sick. Which it would have become, shortly. She was most pleased when I seemed to cure it. A Temple sensitive soon brought me an infested cat, my power was proved—I could have told them so, but who listens to a fourteen-year-old girl? A fuss followed, and then a further parade, well, trickle of elementals, and here I am. Still.”

  Riesta listened to this with a rather fixed smile.

  Chio brightened. “I did get to go to the mainland one time, for a woman who’d caught an elemental from one of her chickens. And once for a horse.”

  Pen tried not to let his mind be diverted by the picture of a demonic chicken. Des’s sojourn in the world had begun with a wild hill mare and a lioness, after all.

  I wonder if that woman ate the chicken, as the lioness did the mare? Des mused.

  She’d no doubt started out to slaughter it for her table. It would have been a short and enticing, if ultimately unlucky, jump for the demon. Also, how would you tell with a cat…? Never mind.

  Pen was reminded of the old saw about the recipe for rabbit stew. First we catch the demon. “It’s my belief that the ascendant demon is still hiding somewhere in Lodi. My next task is to find him. When I accomplish that, I’ll wrestle him out here to you.” Against the demon’s uttermost resistance, no doubt, but Pen would cross that bridge, or boat ride, later. “But I thought I’d best meet and warn you, first. I’m, um, not actually sure how long this retrieval will take, but I trust you will be here?”

  She studied him back with disquieting intensity. “No…” she said slowly. “I think it will be better if I go with you.” Her eyes glinted as she straightened. “Yesss… perfect.”

  Riesta choked. “Blessed, surely not. Town will be riotous tonight. You know you are safer here.”

  “I’d think the archdivine’s own court sorcerer would be worth a dozen guardsmen, don’t you?” Her smile seemed a sly challenge: Deny that, if you dare.

  Pen wondered why Des was suddenly amused.

  Chio bounced to her feet. “There, that’s settled. I’ll just go get my things.”