Penric's Demon (6 page)

Tigney then asked an intent string of questions ascertaining that there was no way Pen or anyone else at Jurald Court could ever have met Ruchia before, or known about her in any way, before the chance meeting on the road. The divine compressed his lips and turned to Pen once more.

“Since you awoke from that long swoon, have you felt or experienced anything unusual? Anything at all.”

“I had a very bad headache, but it wore off by the time we left Greenwell.”
And no one will touch me, I have been summarily unbetrothed, and I have been made a prisoner even though I have committed no crime
. Best leave that out. Tigney was just beginning to relax when Pen added, “Also, night before last the demon woke up and began talking to me.”

Tigney went still. “How?”

“Er . . . through my mouth?”

“Are you sure of this?”

Pen couldn’t tell what to make of that question. Did Tigney suppose him to be delirious or hallucinating? Was that common among the newly bedemoned? “I know it wasn’t me. I don’t speak Ibran. Or Roknari, Adriac, or Cedonian. She was really chatty once she got started. Also argumentative.” Ten women all stuck together, no wonder. Or their ghosts, disturbing thought.
Images of their ghosts
was scarcely better.

Tigney took this in, then rose and went to shout down the staircase for the porter, whose name was apparently Cosso. Or perhaps,
Cosso!
“See that these three men are fed,” he ordered the fellow, shepherding Gans and the guards out. “Find a place in the house for Lord Penric’s groom, tonight.” He reassured the guards, “We’ll send you two to lodge with your own Order at the palace temple, but don’t leave before I have a chance to speak to you again.”

He closed the door on them all, then turned and studied Pen. Pen looked hopefully back. At length he placed a hand on Pen’s brow and intoned loudly, “Demon, speak!”

Silence. It went on until Pen stirred in discomfort. “I’m not stopping her,” he offered. “She may sleep during the day. So far, she’s only talked to me before bed.” The only times he’d been alone?

Tigney scowled and deployed that commanding voice once more. “Speak!”

“Should I try?” said Pen brightly, growing nervous. He softened his tone. “Desdemona, could you please say something to Learned Tigney, here, so he doesn’t think I’ve gone mad or, or that I’m lying? Please?”

After a long moment, his mouth said mulishly, “We don’t see why we should. Cowardly demon-destroyer. Ruchia may have thought him diligent, but
we
always thought him a prig.”

Pen’s hands sprang to his flushing face as if to dam this alarming spate; he lowered them cautiously. “Sorry, sir. She seems to be a bit opinionated. Er . . . had you two met before?”

“I’ve known—knew”—he made a pained hand-wave at the correction—“Ruchia these twenty years. Though only after she acquired her mount.”

Pen said hesitantly, “I’m sorry for your loss. Were you friends, then?”

“Say
colleagues
. She had the training of me when I first contracted
my
demon.”

“You’re a sorcerer, too?” said Pen in surprise.

“I was. Not anymore.”

Pen swallowed. “You didn’t end it by dying.”

“No. There is another way.” The man could certainly put the
grim
in grimace. “Wasteful, but sometimes necessary.”

Pen wanted to follow this up, but instead Tigney began asking him all about his childhood and youth at Jurald Court. It seemed to Pen to make a short and boring biography.

“Why did you stop on the road?” he asked at last.

“How could I not? The lady appeared to be in grave distress.” Which had turned out to be all too true. “I wanted to help.”

“You might have volunteered to ride for the town.”

Pen blinked. “I didn’t think of that. It all happened so fast. Wilrom was already galloping off by the time I dismounted to see what was going on.”

Tigney rubbed his forehead, and muttered, “And so all is in disarray.” He looked up and added, “We had expected to house Learned Ruchia at the palace temple, but I think you’d best stay here, for now. We’ll find you a room.” He went again to shout for Cosso; when the man arrived, he gave more orders as a master might. Was Tigney very senior, here? This was plainly a house for functionaries, for the practical business of the Temple, not for worship or prayer.

“What do you do in the Bastard’s Order, sir?”

Tigney’s brows rose. “Did you not know? I oversee all the Temple sorcerers of this region. Comings and goings, assignments and accounts. I’m a bailiff of sorcerers, if you like. And you know how much everyone loves bailiffs. Thankless task. But Bastard knows they do not organize
themselves
.”

“Must I stay in my room?” Pen asked as he was ushered into the hallway.

Tigney snorted. “If the demon is already awake, it is probably pointless to try to hold you, but I
request
that you not depart the house without my leave. Please.” That last seemed dragged out of him, but he did sound earnest.

Pen nodded. “Yes, sir.” One building seemed enough of Martensbridge for the moment. He didn’t think he could get lost in here.

“Thank you,” said Tigney, and added to the porter, “Send the two Daughter’s men to me again, then the servant Gans. And let Clee know that I will be needing him later, and not to go off.”

Pen followed the man out.

*
   
*
   
*

The porter led Pen to the top floor, given over to a series of tiny rooms for servants or lesser dedicats. The chamber to which he was gestured did have a window, with a battered table shoved up to it, holding a basin, mismatched ewer, a few grubby towels, a shaving mirror, and someone’s razor kit. It was flanked by two cots. There were other signs of occupation—pegs hung with clothing, a chest at the foot of one cot, boots scattered about, more possessions pushed under both beds. The second cot had been cleared, with Pen’s saddlebags dumped atop. A supper would be served below-stairs for the house’s denizens at dusk, Cosso told him before departing; Pen was pleased to be invited. Apparently, his exile from human contact was ended, if only for lack of space. He hoped the room’s resident would not be too dismayed by his imposed guest. At least he wouldn’t have to share a
bed
with a stranger, as sometimes happened in crowded inns.

Finding cold water still left in the ewer, Pen washed the road dirt from his hands and face, pulled a few things from his saddlebags for later, and sat on the edge of the cot, trying to overcome his disorientation.

“Desdemona? Are you there?” A stupid way to phrase it. Where, and how, would she go? “Are you awake?”

No answer. After few more minutes of sitting, bone-tired but not sleepy enough to nap, his mood shifted to frustration. Tigney had implied he had the run of the house, hadn’t he? If no one else was going to show him how to go on, he’d just have to figure it out for himself. He rose to explore.

Nothing else on this floor but more servants’ cells. The next floor down was mostly closed doors, if fewer of them; the one left open gave onto someone’s bedchamber. Pen let only his glance stray within. The next floor down from that had more open doors, to workrooms like Tigney’s, with people about, though what tasks they performed therein were not at all obvious to Pen. He poked his head into the large, quiet room that he gauged was above Tigney’s, and stopped short.

It was the house’s library, and Pen had never seen so many books and scrolls in one room in his life. Even the Greenwell Lady-school had only boasted one bookcase, the entire contents of which Pen had read up by his second year. There was no tradition of scholarship among his ancestors, either; Jurald Court had account books, records of hunts and harvests, a few books of tales shared around till the pages had worked loose, a couple of tomes of theology left to gather dust. Pen stepped within, marveling.

A pair of long writing tables stood endways to the two windows overlooking the street, sharing the light as fairly as possible. One was taken by a fellow who looked not much older than Pen—heartening—his head bent over his work, quill carefully scratching. His dark hair was cut soldier-fashion, as if to pad a helmet, though it showed no sign of a helmet ever having rested there. By the stack of cut and scored blank sheets to his left, the smaller stack of filled ones to his right, and the book propped open on a wooden stand in front of him, he was working as a copyist.

He glanced up at Pen and frowned, not welcoming interruption. Pen tried smiling, with a silent little wave to indicate his friendliness and harmlessness and general willingness to be greeted, but the man merely grunted and returned his eyes to his page-in-progress. Taking the rebuff in good part, Pen shifted his attention to the shelves.

One whole floor-to-ceiling case appeared to be theology, no surprise in this place. Another was devoted to chronicles, mostly of other times and realms; Pen’s own land was more noted for producing cheese than history, he feared. Some ancient, fragile scrolls resided on a set of shelves all to themselves, with corded silk tassels hanging down holding slips of wood inked with titles for each, which he dared not touch. He was thrilled to spot a collection of what appeared to be books of tales, looking well thumbed. Then a tall case of works in Darthacan, of which Pen had a grasp his Lady-school teachers had grudgingly pronounced adequate; a couple of shelves of works in unreadable Ibran; and then another entire shelf in the ancient tongue of Cedonia, with its exotic letters.

Pen had only seen fragments of the mysterious language before, on old coins or carved on the fallen temple ruins above the road to Greenwell, lone legacy in his hinterland of an empire that had, over a millennium ago, stretched two thousand miles from the warm Cedonian peninsula to the cold Darthacan coast. Scholars described it as fleetingly glorious, like some shooting star, but three hundred years of such ascendency did not seem so fleeting to Pen. In any case, after those swift generations it had fallen apart again, split and re-split among revolts and generals just as Great Audar’s empire out of Darthaca was to do hundreds of years later, when his heirs failed.

Pen’s hand went out to a work bound in waxed cloth, a modern copy and so not too daunting, with its title inked enigmatically on its spine in the beautiful letters. Wondering who had copied it out, he let it fall open in his hand just to see the calligraphy, as lovely as scrollwork or interlace and about as informative.

Instead, his eye picked out a paragraph: “In the sixth year of the reign of Emperor Letus dubbed The Engineer, for so he had served in his youth in the armies of his uncle, undermining the fortifications of his enemies, before the second plague made him heir, he caused to be built the first aqueduct of the city, nine miles from the springs of the Epalia, watering the gardens of his Empress and piped to new fountains throughout the town, for the health and pleasure of its inhabitants . . .”

Pen gasped and squeezed his eyes shut. After a few moments, he peeked again, very cautiously. Still the same elegant, alien lettering. But now they had become
words
, their meanings flowing into his mind as effortlessly as any Wealdean text.

“I can read this!” he whispered aloud in astonishment.

“Oh, good,” said Desdemona. “We’d hoped you’d be a quick study.”

“But I
can’t
read this!”

“In time,” she replied, “you will come to know most of what we know.” A pause. “That runs both ways.”

Pen snapped his jaw shut, trying to master his sudden unsteadiness. He could only think that he would have the better part of that exchange.

A bored voice remarked from behind him, “The librarian should be back soon, if you need help.”

“Thank you,” Pen managed, turning and smiling. “Just, um, talking to myself, here. Bad habit. I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”

The man shrugged, but did not return at once to his page.

“What are you working on?” asked Pen, nodding to the papers.

“Just a collection of tales.” He ticked at the volume with his fingernail, dismissively. “Stupid stuff. The important books go to the senior dedicats.”

“Still, I’d think you’d learn a lot, doing that. Do you ever make up the blocks of wood to print many copies? I’ve heard they do that in Martensbridge.”

“Do I look like a woodcarver?” He wriggled his inky hand. “Though that work, and the pay for it, also goes to the seniors.”

“You are a dedicat?” Pen hazarded. The scribe wore no braids or badges, just ordinary town dress of tunic and trousers. “Lay, or Temple-sworn?”

He stretched his shoulders and grimaced. “Sworn. I mean to make acolyte soon, if all the places don’t go to those who brought richer dowries.”

One of the several routes into the Bastard’s Order, Pen had heard, was for the families of children born out of wedlock to dedicate them to the Temple, together with a portion for their keep. That is, if the families were well-off. Poor foundlings were left more anonymously, and cheaply, at the orphanages. Not liking to ask for clarification, lest this be a sore issue for the fellow, Pen said instead, “At least it’s indoor work. Not like herding cows.”

The man smiled sourly. “You a cowherd, country boy?”

“At need,” Pen confessed. The scribe’s tone made it sound a low task, rather than the occasional outdoor holiday Pen had found it, but then, it hadn’t been Pen’s daily portion without relief. “And haying,” he added. “Everyone turns out for the harvest, high or low.”