Nikys gasped. “Truly?”
“Truly. He’s a sturdy man; I think he’d have got that far on his own. If not, perhaps, quite so soon.”
That far as compared to what? But he continued, gesturing with his fork, “So eat, Madame.” He followed his own advice, munching with evident relish. For all his spare frame, he had an excellent appetite, of the sort that suggested starving student days were not long behind him. “You have a good cook. Shame to waste her art.”
Nikys was about to protest that she was the cook, then realized Almost-Master Penric had certainly observed this. She smiled a little despite everything, and copied his example. After a few bites and a swallow of watered wine, she said, “That was what Adelis brought me to Patos for. To try to help me to a second marriage with another officer, if older and richer this time. I was happy to be here, but I hadn’t the heart to tell him his efforts were a waste, that I would never again marry a military man. When we were talking last night, he apologized, the idiot. He seemed to think if he’d wedded me away to the protection of another, I would have been out from under all”—she waved a hand about—“this. Never mind the feelings of the poor hypothetical husband, to find himself suddenly kin to an accused traitor. Or what if he’d refused to admit Adelis to his household, when I brought him back blinded? I couldn’t suggest that to Adelis, but it felt like how he describes ducking a crossbow bolt—you don’t even know what you’ve escaped till it’s over.”
Penric scratched his head and smiled. “I quite see that. You do?”
“What?”
He coughed. “Nothing.”
She grew graver. “I hate all this madness. But I can’t help thinking about what it might have been like for Adelis if there had been no one loyal to him here, in this extremity.” Would his tormentors have just cast him blinded into the street? The like had happened to other traitors. “I’m frightened all the time, yet I can’t wish myself elsewhere.”
“Frightened?” His brows flicked up. “Surely the worst is done, over.”
It was her turn to shrug, mute with the weight of her dread. “Dying is easy. Surviving is hard. I learned that with Kymis.” And no wonder she’d been thinking about her late husband so much these past few days, like a healed scar broken open again. “What will we do in the after?”
“That…” Penric sank back, sobered. “That is actually a very good question, Madame Khatai.” And, mumbled under his breath: “About time somebody asked that one, Pen.” He shook his head as if to clear it, and went on, “I am reminded. If Arisaydia is to be up and moving about, I want to devise some sort of protective mask for his upper face that we can easily take on and off. Line the back with gauze that I can soak with healing ointment, or change out and keep dry and clean, as needed.”
“I think I might have something that would do. I’ll look for it and bring it to you.”
He nodded.
Somehow, while they were talking, she had emptied her plate. She drained the last of her beaker and studied the young physician. Abruptly, she decided he deserved to be warned. “I suspect there is a spy in my household.”
He choked on his wine, coughed, mopped his lips. “Oh?” he squeaked, then finally cleared his throat and dropped his voice to its normal timbre. “What makes you say that?”
“The night before Adelis was blinded, I had devised an escape. I had mounts and a groom secreted near the prison. It was all for nothing, because Adelis refused to come with me. Which was also for nothing, as it proved, but anyway, my horses and servant were taken even before I left Adelis’s cell, and soldiers were waiting in ambush for us at the entrance. They didn’t even bother to arrest me. But someone had known my arrangements, and passed the news along, and it wasn’t the jailer I’d bribed. I’ve not seen the groom since, so it could have been him, or any of the other servants who fled. Or it could have been one who stayed. I don’t know.”
“I see. How very uncomfortable for you.”
“It’s maddening, but it seemed the least of my worries at first.” She frowned at him. “I don’t know if any of this could follow you home, Master Penric. Perhaps, like me, you are too small a mouse for their appetites. But I should not wish to see you suffer for helping us. So, I don’t know… be discreet?”
“I did know what I was getting into before I came,” he pointed out kindly. “More or less.”
“But still.”
He waved a conceding hand. “As you say, still. I will undertake to be a very demure mouse.”
She stared at him, thinking, There’s a hopeless plan. But at least she’d tried.
VII
Arisaydia wasn’t easy to coax out of bed. Penric fancied the man knew it was the first slippery step in undertaking to stay alive, instead of holding on to his imagined—begged-for—death like a starving child clutching food. But his dizziness, once he was upright, was no worse than anyone abed for a week might experience, and as he inhaled and straightened, it was plain that his body’s native strength had been little impaired by his ordeal. He was still in pain, but Pen had found himself able to reduce the opiates more quickly than he’d anticipated, Arisaydia’s slurred and muzzy mumbling giving way to crisper speech. Even if it was mostly swearing, so far.
Pen guided him out to the second-floor gallery circling the dual atriums, front and central, that admitted so much light and air into the villa, unlike the tightly boarded houses of the far-off mountain cantons. Did they ever get snow in this country? Arisaydia’s hand trailed along the walls; Pen took the balcony side. Pen was almost sure the man wouldn’t lunge for the rail and over, trying to finish the job that his enemies had started. Almost. It would make a dreadful mess on the mosaic floor of his sister’s nice house, for one thing; for another, so short a drop was uncertain of outcome. So they strolled along arm-in-arm, like two friends out for a postprandial airing.
To distract Arisaydia from his surliness, Penric essayed, “Is it true that you and your sister are twins?”
It worked; Arisaydia’s lips puffed in almost-a-laugh. “It was something of a joke among our mothers and us, when we grew old enough to realize we were unusual. If a woman could give birth to children of two different fathers on the same day, no one would hesitate to dub them twins. Why not the same for two mothers and one father?”
They came to a corner where the wall fell away; Arisaydia’s free hand hesitated, clenched, then fell firmly controlled to his side. Only his slightly tighter grip on Pen’s arm, as quickly reduced, betrayed his refusal to show whatever fear he must feel.
“A wife and a concubine are often bitter rivals in a man’s house, but our mothers always seemed more like comrades-in-arms to us. Our father was flanked and outnumbered, but at least he had the wit to surrender. After he died, they continued to share their household—goods and grief and tasks portioned out all the same.”
I wonder if they shared a bed, too? Des put in brightly. Pen set his teeth to be sure that didn’t slip out, and asked instead, “Were they close in age, or by blood, or some such ties?”
“Not at all. Nikys’s mother was twenty years younger than mine. My mother and father had evidently tried for children for years with no luck—it was long after he died that my mother ever mentioned her miscarriages in my hearing. So a child to share was certainly hoped for. And then, by whatever joke of the gods, there were two at once. We never knew whether to blame the Mother or the Bastard.” Another turn brought a wall back within reach; Arisaydia barely traced it this time.