Last line. He sat up, read the page down once and up from the bottom once, matching it almost line-by-line to the original—Darthacan was a fluffier, if more structurally logical, tongue than Wealdean—and rose to collect the next wooden printing plate from the stack.
He had devised this process while studying at the Bastard’s Seminary at Rosehall, adjunct to the great university in that Wealdean town. Poor scholars had to rent, and share, their frightfully expensive books, which had led to much brangling over turns, a couple of memorable fistfights, and one stabbing. Which Pen could never mix into because it would have been unfair, not to mention that few fellow students, once they learned of his sorcerous-if-untrained status, challenged him…
“…more than once,” Des murmured smugly.
Des was getting disturbingly good at reading his thoughts, these days. Practice, I suppose. He was a bit peeved that the process did not seem to be reciprocal, though he had certainly grown able to sense her moods—so many, many moods—and had become almost unthinkingly fluent in their silent speech. When they were alone, he tried to let her chatter on aloud with his mouth as much as she pleased, which seemed to help keep her in a good humor. Bad idea when not alone, since their conversations all took place in his voice. To the confusion, and a few times violent offense, of their auditors.
He pulled the next prepared wooden plate off the stack at the end of his worktable, and carefully arranged his new page face-down across it. As habitually as when sitting down to dinner, he blessed the work with the tally of the gods: touching his forehead for the Daughter of Spring, his lips for the Bastard, his navel for the Mother of Summer, his groin for the Father of Winter, and spreading his hand over his heart for the Son of Autumn. And then tapped his thumb twice more against his lips, for luck. Sitting up straight, he said, “Ready, Des?”
“You hardly need me for this, anymore,” she griped, but flowed into alignment with him nonetheless.
He passed his hand above the plate. A stink of wood rot and burning arose from it, along with a puff of steam mixed with smoke. His hand heated, pleasantly taming its cramping. His carefully calligraphed page grayed into ash.
He took up his brush and whisked away the ash and crumbs. Raised upon the surface was left a perfect mirror replica of his page, ready to turn over to the palace printer for making anything from a few dozen to hundreds of copies. The work would have taken an ordinary woodcarver the better part of a week, and wouldn’t be nearly so fine. He could produce ten plates a day, and it was only that slow because he’d not yet figured out how to perform it with anyone’s writing but his own.
The trick of it was in the destruction of the handwritten page, so that there was no net gain in order. Uphill, creative magic was costly; downhill, destructive magic was cheap. What happened to the plate afterward in the hands of ordinary men did not seem to impinge on this demonic summation. He could do this all day long.
The princess-archdivine had been delighted with his new skill, when he’d first shown it to her, and now used him regularly for her official pamphlets. In between those interrupting assignments, he was permitted to get on with the task of his heart, reproducing Learned Ruchia’s two-volume work on sorcery and medicine to be distributed to the Bastard’s Order throughout the Cantons and the Weald—and, soon, Darthaca and Ibra. (And after that, perhaps Adria and far Cedonia? Des moaned in prospect.) And to which he had added a short epilogue detailing his new technique—A Codicil by Learned Penric of Martensbridge, Sorcerer, he had proudly headed it—which should multiply its effect yet further. He owed Ruchia that living memorial, he thought, for death-gifting him with her demon, however inadvertently.
Well, inadvertent from his point of view, hers, and her demon’s. He was uneasily unsure about the intentions of the white god that she, and now he, served. Though so far, Penric seemed to have been let get on with his life free of holy molestation.
At a cautious knock at his workroom door, Pen called, “Enter.”
A palace page in the blue tabard of a dedicat of the Daughter’s Order poked her head in, though only a few wary inches. She jerked back and waved a hand before her nose, grimacing, as the smoky fug of Pen’s labors wafted out into the corridor. “Learned Penric, sir. The princess-archdivine bids you attend upon her in her private cabinet.”
“Now?”
“Yes, Learned.”
Penric waved amiable acknowledgment. “Very good. I’ll follow presently.”
The girl whisked away, and Pen rose and set his tools in order.
Hurrah! said Des. Something new? An outing? An airing…?
“More chores, more likely.” Pen closed his door and made his way down the corridor.
The princess-archdivines of the royal free town and hinterland of Martensbridge were, by law and long custom, appointees in the gift of the distant Hallow King of the Weald. The town’s charter from him, and fealty to him, were what made it royal; the distance was what made it free, Penric suspected. Save for one or two lapses that they had managed to repair by strategic marriages, bribes, and a few armed clashes, the high house of kin Stagthorne had held onto the throne through the past several generations of elections. The current holder of the Martensbridge benefice had thus been, by the turning furrows of time, first daughter, then sister, then aunt to the succeeding kings.
Princess-Archdivine Llewen kin Stagthorne was now a slight, shrewd woman of sixty, who had carried out her duties to the Temple in this pocket palatine realm with the firm hand of a frugal housewife for some thirty years. As Penric knocked at the door to her private cabinet, one floor down from his own and adjacent to her chancellery, and was bade to enter, he found her dressed in the five-colored holy robes of her Temple office. Presumably she’d been caught either on the way to or from some ceremonial task. She was flanked as usual by her secretary, a woman of like age—and shrewdness—in the silks and linen and fine woolens appropriate to the palace precincts.
A strange man was also present, not nearly so finely clad. Above middle height, broad-shouldered, fit; perhaps thirty years of age? Brown hair, gray eyes. Face and hands red and chapped with cold; recently shaved but not, given his road-reek, recently bathed; riding boots cursorily cleaned of mud. Pen might have taken him for some urgent courier, but for the distinctive gray doublet with the brass buttons peeking out from beneath his thrown-back black cloak.
What’s a Wealdean Grayjay doing here?
The man eyed him in turn, then palpably dismissed him. Penric advanced to kiss the archdivine’s ring, held out perfunctorily to his inky fingers, and murmured, “How may I serve you, Your Grace?”
“Well, let us find out. Pull up a chair, Penric.” She nodded to the wall, where a few stools for favored visitors or supplicants were lined up. Unfavored ones were kept standing. The Grayjay had already been granted one, and the secretary another; the princess-archdivine occupied her carved seat, perhaps not accidentally reminiscent of a throne, and the only one supplied with a cushion. Supplicants were not encouraged to linger, not out of any high-nosed pride on the princess’s part, but because there were always other supplicants waiting.