Bosha cast him a head-tilt, and said dryly, “That is correct.”
Pen gulped back an apology, in a dim notion that it would just make things worse. Likely so, murmured Des. He flushed slightly. Bosha seemed more grimly amused than offended at his discomfiture.
Bosha added to Nikys, “Your mother is still at the Order. Unharmed as far as we know. We haven’t followed up with further inquiries, because such are dangerous should they fall into the wrong hands.”
Penric wondered just whose hands those were, and what weapons they held. He supposed he’d find out in due course. Preferably not the hard way.
Bosha addressed the air between Nikys and Penric: “So what is your plan for freeing her?”
Nicks scrubbed her fingers through her curls, in disarray after the day’s travel. “All my mind has been fixed on just getting here. We get out to the island somehow, get her out somehow. Penric thinks we should make the return journey by sea, being already there.”
“By choice not on a Cedonian ship,” Pen put in. “Adriac, with luck”—Nikys shot him a sharp look—“but it will depend on what we can find most swiftly to hand.”
“Will that be the safest course?” said Tanar doubtfully. “I mean… storms. Pirates.”
“Storms I can do nothing about,” Penric granted. “Pirates are no problem.” Once they drew close enough, anyway. Letting a chaos demon loose to do her worst in some other ship’s rigging than the one they were on ought to have remarkable results.
Oh, yes, murmured Des, in gleeful anticipation; Pen gathered she’d be disappointed if pirates didn’t show up.
Nikys nodded untroubled understanding at this last. Tanar and Bosha stared, startled.
After a moment, Bosha went on, “So, you arrive, you leave, and in between, what? A miracle occurs? Your plan seems to be missing its middle.”
“I have never been to Thasalon before,” said Pen, carefully not saying, You are its middle. He suspected Bosha suspected this. “I must rely on Nikys and local knowledge for this part, but I’ll do all I can in support of her.”
“Penric smuggled Adelis and me out of Cedonia to Orbas the first time,” Nikys put in, “and he’d never been there before either. He is not without skills.” Of course, not saying what kind rather left this assertion dangling in air.
Tanar nodded, accepting this without question. Bosha as plainly did not.
Tanar rubbed her delicate neck. Her girlish figure could not compete with Nikys’s lush build, but her shining hair, braided up on her head in a complex weave with a glimmer of pearls, had reddish highlights in the candle-glow that Pen thought might show auburn in daylight, and her eyes were a clear hazel tending to the gold side. Fine skin, good teeth. It seemed it was not just her fortune that had attracted Adelis to her, and besides, at the time of his late courtship, his wealth had matched hers. Penric had more trouble imagining what had attracted Tanar to Adelis.
Oh, come, Pen, Des scoffed. Adelis is a very compelling man. Profoundly irritating at moments, I’ll give you that, but when not being an ass, and you must allow he’s had a great deal to throw him off-balance of late, ladies might find him quite magnetic.
Even disfigured as he is now? Stripped of his Cedonian properties?
Of course. Really, after eleven years with us, I should think you would understand women better.
Lady Tanar still seemed to care about him, anyway, which was entirely to their benefit.
More interestingly, in two years no other suitor has nipped in and carried her off, Des pointed out. I can’t imagine it’s for lack of trying, not with her purse.
Tanar placed a small, decisive fist upon the table. “It’s plain we can do nothing more tonight. I think it’s best if you stay right in here with us, Nikys, concealed. You can sleep with me. Sura can find a place for your, um, traveling companion.” She eyed Pen more doubtfully, but gestured at them both. “Is this all you came with?”
Pen thought of the duke’s coins, sewn in hems or otherwise concealed about both their persons, but said only, “We left our luggage in the outer garden.”
“Won’t there be servants about?” asked Nikys. “Can they be trusted?”
“Sura will keep them out from underfoot,” said Tanar, with an assured nod. “He generally does anyway.” She rose, and the rest of them perforce followed.
“Best not to involve them yet,” said Bosha. “That being the case, do show me to your belongings, Master Penric.”
“Certainly, Master Bosha.”
Bosha lit and took up a small glass candle lantern, and guided Pen out into the darkened gallery. His footfalls moved soft across the boards, and Pen tried to match the quiet as he followed the eunuch down the end stairs, through a crooked passage, and to a door in the outer end wall, locked and barred for the night. Pen wondered if Nikys had guided them in this way, might he not have come so close to being knifed? He studied Bosha’s pale braid, swinging down his back as they followed through what was no dark to Des, and gave it no better than even odds.
They wound through the garden to the concealing bush. Pen collected his medical case himself, and his other satchel, leaving Bosha to take up Nikys’s valise. Bosha lifted it and gazed thoughtfully around.
“How did you gain entry through the outer wall?”
“Nikys knew of the postern door.”
“It should have been locked.”
“I’m good with locks.”
“Is that so.”
They’d just started back when the dogs came rushing up again. Still barkless, fortunately, although they managed a growl at Bosha, returned in kind. Enough of the geas lingered that they still fawned around Pen.
“Our dogs are not normally so useless, either,” said Bosha, wading through them after his uninvited guest.
“Animals like me. And I think they recognized Nikys,” Pen offered.
As the main house loomed before them, Bosha added in a cool tone, “You should not have been able to defeat that lock. Past the lock, you should not have slipped by the dogs. Past the dogs”—he turned his head—“you should not have been able to mount the balcony. On the balcony, you should not have been able to evade my knife. Yet you somehow did all of these things, Master Penric.”
“…Madame Khatai did not chose me for her courier for no reason, sir.”
“Hnh.” Bosha added after a moment, “I quite dislike being troubled to be the last man between the hazards of the world and Lady Tanar. It takes the maids so much effort to scrub the blood out of the floorboards.”
Was that a jest? Pen cleared his throat. “It’s a rich estate. Are thieves a common problem for you here?”
Bosha shrugged. “Ordinary thieves are a task for the other retainers. Lady Xarre’s mandate to me is more exclusive.”
“Is her daughter Tanar under some special threat?”
“Say constant, rather. One too-persistent rejected suitor, last year, actually tried a more direct abduction. Why he thought he would gain forgiveness, after, I cannot imagine. Or that his hirelings would keep his secrets. We left the bodies at his front gate to be found in the morning. I believe he took the hint.”
Not a jest, then, murmured Des. Pen would rather she didn’t sound so pleased.
“I see,” said Pen, wondering what hint he was supposed to be taking.
Oh, I think it’s quite clear, said Des. …You know, I’m beginning to like this fellow. If there are any markers for a child of the Bastard he has missed, I can’t picture them. Now I am curious about his birth.