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, together 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.