Pen wondered if it would be better to route around these untrusted allies, and proceed directly to the island. Somehow.
Local knowledge is never to be scorned, murmured Des, or with luck Ruchia. If not to be relied upon blindly, either.
That was assuming Nikys’s mother was actually on Limnos, and the whole thing not a trap from the beginning.
If it is a trap, said Des serenely, it was made to fit Adelis. Not us.
Des, it seemed, was much less terrified by this return to Cedonia than he was. Of course, a demon could not be killed, exactly. Are you saying I would be a surprise?
Oh, Pen. You have been a surprise from the beginning.
IV
The dwindling late-summer light ended their first day of travel much too soon, Nikys thought. Pushing on through the darkness on Orbas’s difficult hill roads would be so slow as to not be worth it, Penric persuaded her, and they should not arrive at their hardest stretch over the border mountains already exhausted. What passed for coaching inns in Orbas were more primitive than those they’d encountered in Cedonia, and Penric in his role of her courier was hard-pressed to get her a private chamber, but Nikys scarcely cared. She’d have slept in the stable if she’d had to. They took the road again in the damp gray of dawn.
Even Penric was slow to come awake in the initial hour, but he soon glued himself to the window like the foreign sightseer he wasn’t, asking questions about the passing countryside Nikys mostly couldn’t answer. But when they’d resettled themselves in the coach after the first change, his boundless curiosity took another turn.
“Were both your mothers called Madame Arisaydia? Because I’d think that would be confusing.” At her stare, he added, “In my country men only have one wife at a time. Officially, anyway. Although I suppose my mother and my sister-in-law shared out their name for some while before my mother died, and you were always having to clarify which one you meant.”
“No,” said Nikys. “Adelis’s mother was Lady Arisaydia, or Lady Florina. Or Florie, to my father. Concubines keep their patronymics. So my mother was always Idrene Gardiki.” Is, Nikys fiercely vowed. “Though my surname was Arisaydia, of course, before I was married.” She frowned out the other window at the vexingly endless rocky hillsides. “My other brother was Gardiki for just a brief time before he was adopted by his grandmother’s family, and after that he was Rodoa. Ikos Rodoa.” She prayed he was well out of this. With luck, he’d be working somewhere on the far northern peninsula, and would not even have heard of their mother’s arrest. This dangerous mess was much too far over his head for him to mix into.
A startled silence, then Pen said, “Who? What? I thought you and Adelis were the old general’s only children.”
“That’s right.” She glanced across at him, trying to decide if his expression was dismay or just surprise. “To be fair, I didn’t know he existed either, till he came to my father’s funeral. My mother never spoke of him because the separation had made her sad, she said, but when he reached his majority he could come on his own, and did. He visited us a few times after that, when his travels took him nearby. He’s a master bridgebuilder, now, and goes to work all over Cedonia. For various towns, usually.”
“Uh… older brother? Surely not younger. Was your mother a young widow, too?”
Nikys smiled. “Not exactly. Although only by ill-chance. She was actually the daughter of one of my father’s senior officers. She fell in love with a junior officer. The way one does, I suppose.” Nikys tried to remember if she’d ever been so smitten by the army lads at that age. She’d never been that carried away, to be sure. Firmly, she kept herself from glancing at Penric’s long, blond, and entirely unmilitary elegance. “They meant to marry, or so she said. It likely would not have been opposed even though her family thought her too young, but he was ordered out suddenly to, gods, I don’t even remember which clash she told me, and killed in the battle. He was the Rodoa family’s only son—only surviving child, I believe—so when my mother turned out to be pregnant, they took her in. Except, although the grandmother desperately wanted the boy, she didn’t really want my mother—they didn’t even offer to make her a ghost bride.”
“I don’t know what that is.” A short hesitation. “Oh, thank you Des. They really do that?” He turned to Nikys. “Marry people to dead people?”
“Not often. It’s a sort of adoption, as much as anything. If they’d had the ceremony—it’s sometimes held at the graveside, but more often with a memori tablet—my mother would have become a daughter-in-law of the house. With certain rights of support and inheritance, among other things. Without that, she was used more as an unpaid servant. It was a very uncomfortable time for her, I gather. So after Ikos was weaned, and my father sent Lady Florina to convey his offer—really, their offer—my mother let herself be persuaded, even though it meant giving up her firstborn. Grandmother Rodoa was all for it, naturally.”
Penric’s face scrunched up as he wrapped his mind around this bit of family history. “It sounds complicated.”
Nikys shrugged. “I suppose. But Ikos was why my father and Lady Florina became so interested in my mother—proof that she could bear children, which was what they both wanted. It all seemed to work out for everyone in the end, somehow. Certainly for me.”
He smiled crookedly, giving a conceding nod. “An excellent result.”
She tried not to be warmed by the compliment. She was using this man, this sorcerer, she reminded herself. She couldn’t remember, in the chaos of the past two days, if she’d ever offered him any payment or reward for risking his life in this frightening venture. Even soldiers were paid, after all—quite insistent upon it if the army payroll was in arrears, as it so often was.
She dismissed her conscience, ruthlessly. She was ready to use anything and anyone to hand, if it would help her to carry out this rescue.
And thus what, exactly, was her ground for scorning his lewd use of Mira, or Mira’s lewd use of him, to get them all past the border before?
The courtesan hadn’t just been a costume, or a ploy. She was in some strange sense still alive, inside his crowded head. And always would be, along with the rest of her barely understood sisterhood. To convert Nikys’s I fear they know too much to I hope they know enough had only taken one cryptic note.
She settled back with a sigh, willing the team to trot faster.
At the western end of the main road from Vilnoc, service for coaches terminated at the grubby garrison town that guarded the three-way border between Orbas, Cedonia, and Grabyat to the southwest. Adelis had passed through here just a few weeks ago with Jurgo’s troop, in aid of the ally in that next realm. Nikys did not dare ask after him. Finding the army post and its commander, Nikys and Penric presented the sealed letter from the duke commanding all aid be given to them, which proved to be a sergeant, a muleteer, and four sturdy animals.
Another dawn start brought them, by dusk, to the broken spine of the last ridge between Orbas and Cedonia, where they camped for the night. Neither the sergeant nor his assistant asked any questions; Nikys gathered they were used often as guides to slip spies over the border.
“It’s likely a regular business,” murmured Penric. “You wonder if the empire uses the same route, or if they have their own favorite backdoor for their agents.”