Penric's Fox

Hamo sat back, startled. “What would be the point of that? They cannot use her demon-spirit for the basis of a Great Beast; the two magics are incompatible. And the longer we wait, the worse the demon’s condition may grow. The more of Mags and Svedra to be lost.”

“Or what was lost, was lost at the first. Like pouring water into a cup until it overflows, which then remains as full as it can hold. The point is to study a rare situation, at least for a little. The point is, there is time to think about it. The vixen is probably not going anywhere till the cubs are weaned, some weeks at least.” Unless the ascendant demon was directly threatened with annihilation. When it surely would try to save itself, and then they’d have a real problem. Well… another real problem.

Hamo hesitated. “Did you sense it to be so?”

“I’ve only observed the vixen briefly. It would take more time than that to perceive ongoing changes.” He carefully did not say deterioration. Not that he had to.

“Fine if she’s stabilized. Not if she hasn’t.”

Pen shrugged in provisional concession. “You should certainly come out to the Fellowship’s menagerie and examine her carefully, before making any irrevocable decisions.”

Lips twisting in bemusement, Hamo said, “Penric—are you trying to preserve the life of a fox?”

“Magal’s demon seems to be doing so,” Pen defended this. Weakly, he feared.

Hamo rubbed his eyes. “Feh. I can’t… Let us take this up again out there, then. Tomorrow.”

“Good idea, sir.” At least the man was not dismissing Penric’s words outright. Time for a tactful withdrawal, before he fell off this chair onto that lovely, inviting floor.

Hamo stood up to see him out, another hopeful sign. At the door, he lowered his head and murmured, “I would never have compromised my demon, you know. …I’d have used my bare hands. Or a knife.”

Pen couldn’t very well feign being appalled when he’d run through similar thought-chains himself. “Not needed now.” He mustered a sympathetic smile and signed himself, tapping his lips twice with his thumb in farewell.

It was midnight by the time Pen made his weary way back to the Temple guest house. He was trying to mentally compose a note to slip under the princess-archdivine’s door, excusing himself from appearing due to the lateness of the hour, when he discovered a paper pinned to his own. It was in her secretary’s fine hand, and charged him to call on her before he retired regardless of the time.

He threaded the halls to her chambers and tapped tentatively, waited, and knocked again. He was just turning away when the door swung open, and the secretary beckoned him inside the sitting room. “Ah, Learned Penric, at last. Wait here.”

He stood dumbly in his day dirt, feeling every bruise and muscle-pull. At length, Llewyn emerged from an inner door, wrapped in a brocade night robe and with her hair in a gray braid down her back. Not an ensemble he’d seen before.

She looked him over. “My, my, my.”

Three mys tonight, goodness. He usually rated only two. He wondered what he’d have to do to win four.

“My apologies, Archdivine, for waking you at this hour. It’s been a long day.”

“At my age, I’m never asleep at this hour.” She made a dismissive gesture, charitably fending his apology. Her secretary settled her in a cushioned chair, and her wave directed Pen to another.

Fine blue-and-white silk stripes. He stared at it in dismay, considered his reek, and then settled himself cross-legged on the floor at her feet, instead. Her gray brows rose ironically as she looked down at him.

“So, how was your day in the country this time?”

He was grateful for the practice he’d had recounting it already. He didn’t have to think as much. She pressed her fingers to her lips a few times, but did not interrupt him apart from a few shrewd, uncomfortably clarifying questions.

“I thought… I thought I might receive some spiritual guidance from Learned Hamo, as we both share the burden and gift of a demon, but it turned out to be more the other way around,” sighed Pen. “Though I don’t think he’s going to bolt off in the night to try to commit murder on Learned Magal’s behalf.”

“Was that a risk?”

“Mm… not now.”

Her lips twitched. “Then your counsel must have been good enough.”

He turned his hands out, smiling ruefully. He really wanted to lie across her silk-slippered feet like a tired dog. “But who will counsel me?”

“Your own Temple superior, of course. That’s her job.”

“Ah.” His head tipped over, and he found himself resting it upon her knee. Her beringed hand petted his hair. Dog indeed.

“Anyone who wishes to question my court sorcerer on his actions today must go through me,” she stated. And good luck to them stood implied, he thought. Heartening, but…

“So much for the realm, and the law. But what about my god? And my demon. My soul stands more naked in that court. Violence, it appears, grows easier with practice. Or so Halber demonstrates. I’ve seen it in the ruined mercenary soldiers come back to the cantons, too, sometimes. The pitfall of their trade. I don’t want it to become the pitfall of mine. And… and I see how it could. So very, very easily. Hamo was almost ready to slip tonight, and he’s had decades more experience than me.”

“And thus you seek my counsel?”

“Aye. Archdivine.”

Her slow strokes turned into more perfunctory pats, as she sat up and took thought, and then breath. “So. My counsel to you tonight—as your Temple superior, my oh-so-learned divine and demon-burdened boy—is to go downstairs to the guesthouse bathing chamber, wake the attendant, get a bath—wash your hair”—her fingers paused to rub together in mild revulsion—“get something to eat, and go to bed.” She added after a moment, “Desdemona shall like that, too.”

Pen glowered at her slippers. “That’s not my Temple superior, that’s my mother.”

“And if she were here, I have no doubt she would tell you the same thing,” she said briskly, pushing him upright off her knee despite himself. “Shoo.”

“That’s all?”

“Clean your teeth, I suppose. Though you usually do that without being told. Your soul will keep for one night, I promise you, and your body and mind will be better tomorrow.”

He and Des snorted in unison, this time: he at Llewyn, Des at him. “Agh.” He stretched, and clambered up; he had to balance on his hands and knees before he could rise to his feet. Des had made no interrupting comment throughout this interview. There weren’t many people his demon much respected, but Princess-Archdivine Llewyn kin Stagthorne was high on that short list. It seemed the feeling was growing mutual.

He commanded over his shoulder as he made for the door, “You go to sleep, too, Your Grace.”

She smiled wryly at him. “Oh, I shall be able to now.”

Pen heaved himself out of bed the next morning thinking the princess-archdivine might have been overly optimistic about how much recovery one night’s sleep would provide him. He contemplated the walk all the way down across town and out to the Fellowship, not to mention back up again, and ordered a horse brought around from the Temple mews, instead. It proved another slug, suiting his mood perfectly as he sat atop it in a daze while it ferried him to his destination. By the time he arrived at the palisade and gate of the shamanic menagerie, he had come awake, helped by a cool, moist wind up the valley of the Stork that promised rain.

He handed off his mount to a helpful groom, then found his way to the fox family’s stall in the shorter stable block that overlooked the menagerie yard. Lunet was in attendance, he was pleased to discover, sitting on a stool under the broad eaves and looking none the worse for yesterday’s wear. She greeted him with good cheer.

Pen asked anxiously, “Does the family seem well, after their forcible relocation?”

“Quite well; take a look.”

They both leaned on the lower door and peered into the straw-lined stall. The vixen was laid out looking placid enough, nursing two cubs while three slept curled in a furry mound, and the last tried to stir up trouble by gnawing on what parts of its siblings it could reach. The vixen lifted her head warily at Pen, but laid it back down with a tired maternal sigh. The shamaness, it seemed, worried her not at all.

“The cubs are happy enough, if rambunctious,” Lunet told him. “We’ll need to let them out for exercise, when we’re sure, ah, their mother is settled.”

Meaning the vixen, or the demon? The demon was ascendant, there could be no doubt, rider not ridden, if letting the vixen have her way with her family. It wasn’t the fox who was dealing so smoothly with their human captors.

Des, thought Pen, can you discern any change since yesterday in the demon?

The vixen—no, the demon lifted the vixen’s head again as she felt her fellow-demon’s uncanny regard, but she tolerated the inspection. That much of her Temple tameness lingered, at least. A hopeful sign?

No new loss since yesterday, Desdemona allowed, in her density. Calmer, which is good.

It could be too early to tell. Pen wanted to be able to declare her stabilized, and Des knew why, but he also needed the claim to be true.

Hamo and his lad will be able to judge for themselves, if he gives it some time.

His lad? Oh, Hamo’s own demon. Younger than you, is he?

Most demons are. Hamo is only his second human rider; he was a mere elemental not long before that. She added a bit grudgingly, Hamo seems to have been good for him. He has developed quite well. That one could be ready for a physician in one more well-chosen lifetime.

Always the golden prize, much the way a Great Beast suitable to make a shaman was the goal of the shamans’ own carefully reiterated sacrifices. That might make a career for the cubs. The shamans preferred long-lived beasts, to build up spiritual strength and wisdom, so they would certainly prosper better in such care than in the wild, where half the litter would not survive their first year.

Voices carrying through the damp air pulled Pen from his meditations, and he turned to discover Learned Hamo rounding the stable block, accompanied, a bit to his surprise, by Oswyl and his shadow Thala. Oswyl must have gone to exchange reports as promised with Hamo this morning, though Pen rather thought it was curiosity, not duty, that brought him along here.

Oswyl nodded at the shamaness Lunet, who waved back in her usual friendly manner, and punctiliously introduced her to the bailiff of sorcerers.

“I thank you for your hard work yesterday,” said Hamo to Lunet, trying to return the civility, but his gaze was drawn inexorably to the stall. “Can I… may I go in?”

Lunet pursed her lips. “Of course, Learned, though we are trying not to disturb the mother fox too much.” The hint being that Hamo should withdraw promptly if he did. He nodded understanding, and Lunet drew open the lower door, closing it after him.

The vixen looked up abruptly, then rose and shook off her cubs, who complained and retreated from the human. But her posture did not speak of defense. Hamo fell to his knees before her, then sat cross-legged in the straw. She came to him without fear. Hamo was, Pen realized belatedly, the first person the demon-vixen could recognize.

They stared at each other for a long moment. Without speech, but not without understanding, because Hamo placed his hand out flat to the floor and whispered, “I am so sorry for your loss.”

Oh. Of course. Of course. Because Learned Magal had lost her demon, but the demon had also lost her Mags. Did demons mourn?

Oh, yes, breathed Des. It is not something we come into the world knowing, as elementals. But we learn. Oh, how we learn.

Pen’s stomach fluttered in a flash of formless, unanchored grief. Not his own. He had to inhale and exhale carefully.

The vixen placed one black paw atop the man’s outstretched hand. Pen needed neither hearing nor Sight to interpret this language: I am sorry for your loss as well.

Hamo turned his head to his watchers only long enough to murmur, “She’s in there. Something of her is definitely still in there.” Then all his attention returned to the animal.

Lunet jerked her chin, and muttered, “They’ll be all right. Let’s leave them for a little.” She, too, felt the sense of intrusion on some painfully private communion, Pen fancied.

In the gray morning light, the four of them went over to the mounting blocks where Pen had first seen the shamans… only yesterday? He, for one, sat with a grunt of relief.

Oswyl looked down at his hands clasped between his knees, and asked, “Do you think he loved her? Hamo and Magal.”

Pen made a releasing gesture. “Clearly so, but if you mean a love of the bedchamber, likely not. It would be vanishingly rare for two sorcerers to be so physically intimate. But there are other loves just as profound. Delighting in her as a protégé, hoping for her bright future, all of that. And the future of her demon. Think of two rival artists, perhaps, admiring each other’s work. The survivor mourning not just what was, but what could have been.”

“Hm.”

Thala listened with a thoughtful frown, but for once jotted no notes.

“How of yourselves?” asked Pen. “Did all go well last night, delivering Halber to his fate?” Now doubly earned, and Pen was not above hoping it would prove doubly ill.

Oswyl nodded. “He’s in a cell, and in the hands of the justiciars. I doubt he’ll be escaping on a fast horse this time around.”

“Reports to your superiors go smoothly?” asked Pen, thinking of his own fraught night.

Oswyl actually grinned. Slyly, but still. Pen’s brows rose in question.

“I arrived to find them anxious to tell me that my case was to be taken from me and given to a much more senior inquirer, on account of the kin Pikepool connections cropping up. I had to tell them they were too late off the mark.”

“Alas,” murmured Thala, in the most unrepentant lilt imaginable. She shared the smirk with her senior.

Pen had enough experience with bureaucratic hierarchies by now to have no trouble reading that one, either. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” said Oswyl. “Thank you several times over. Not least that I don’t have poor Baron Wegae’s corpse on my plate today. That would not have proved nearly so palatable a dish to present.” Oswyl’s grin turned to grimace with the vision. “He wants to see you again, by the by.”

Pen nodded. “I’m sure I can make a chance, before I have to leave Easthome.”

Thala asked the air generally, “So, are shamans like sorcerers? Not able to live or work together much?”

“Not at all,” said Lunet. “We work together all the time. I have a group singing-practice this afternoon, in fact.”

Thala didn’t look entirely elated at this news, but asked, “Like a Temple choir?”

Lunet’s smile was suddenly all fox. “Not exactly, no.”

Combining weirding voices? Oh my, as the princess-archdivine might say. Or even, My, my, my. Pen really wanted to see that.

Lunet stared off at some point over Oswyl’s shoulder, and remarked, “Although shamans share some of the problems I suspect sorcerers may have. Ordinary people are afraid to get close to us, afraid of the powers in our blood that they do not understand. As if because we possess strange beasts, we are them.”

“That sounds… foolish,” said Oswyl in a tentative tone. “If you don’t understand something, you should just try to learn more, that’s all.”

Lunet’s gray eyes glinted at him from under her ruddy lashes. Pen could not parse her expression, although Des murmured, Heh. Not too hopelessly thick, that boy.

Thala looked curiously at Pen, and said, “Then it would seem sorcerers have a doubly lonely time of it. If ordinary people fear them, and other sorcerers cannot be too near them.”

That girl saw too much, and said too little, but when she did… ouch. “We always have our demons,” Pen offered. He thought Des would have patted his head in approval if she could.

“Ah, you’re all here!” came a voice, and Pen turned in some relief to wave at Inglis.

He strolled near and looked them over, almost smiling. “All well this morning with our new foxes?” he asked Lunet.

“Aye. Penric’s Learned Hamo came to see them. He’s in there now.” She gestured toward the stall. “Private conclave.”

Inglis paused, extending what shamanic perception Pen did not know, but he nodded. “Right.” He looked at Pen. “Will it be all right?”

A comprehensive question, that. “I’ll know in a little.”

Inglis tapped his fingers on his trouser seam, nodded again at the Grayjays. No, at Thala. “Would you like to look around the menagerie while we wait? I could show you our wolves.”

“I’d be quite interested in that,” said Thala, rising at once to her feet and almost-smiling back at him.

Lunet’s eyes narrowed in merriment, watching this play. She leaned over and said to Oswyl, “And I could show you our other foxes.”

“Oh! Ah, you have more?”

“And the lynxes. They’re really fine.”

Oswyl mustered an actual smile at her, and rose as well, suddenly all amiable cooperation. On Oswyl, it looked very odd.

Rather than departing as a group, the two shamans started to draw the two Grayjays off in opposite directions, though Lunet paused to politely ask over her shoulder, in a most unpressing tone, “And you, Learned Penric?”

He waved her off. “Inglis showed me around the other day. I’ll wait here for Hamo.”

“Oh, all right.”

How very tactful of you, Pen.

As they rounded the corner, Pen could hear Oswyl asking, in an almost-convincing simulation of his habitual inquirer’s style, “And how long have you been a member of the Royal Fellowship, Shaman Lunet? How did you become interested in the calling…?”

Hah, murmured Des. Shamans really do work together.

Pen watched them out of sight, then sighed, “Don’t mind me. I’ll just sit here and talk to myself.”

Now, now, boy.

Pen’s lips twitched.

His smile faded as he studied the silent stall door. This must be what it was like waiting for a judge to return from his chambers and deliver a verdict. He considered extending his Sight, but thought it might be felt as intrusive; it would certainly be felt. Going over and leaning on the stall door would scarcely be better, putting three chaos demons in such close proximity.

At length, his careful patience was rewarded when Hamo emerged, brushing a few straws off his trousers and closing the lower door behind him. He looked around a trifle blindly, then walked over and sat on the mounting block farthest from Pen.

“So?” said Pen quietly. “What do you think?”

“Stable,” said Hamo slowly, “for an ascendant demon. Magal’s and Svedra’s influences lingering, I think. Safe enough for the moment. But I must be careful not to thoughtlessly take this fox for the same thing as a new elemental, ignorant of the uses of its powers. The same marred imprints that make it tamer make it more dangerous. It will require much more shrewd and mindful care.”

Pen rubbed his booted toe across the cobblestones. “I was thinking about how the Order sometimes pairs a trained aspirant with an aged sorcerer, to acquaint the demon with its proposed new home in advance.” A gruesome deathwatch Pen had been spared by Ruchia’s sudden roadside accident, or at any rate, the experience had been compressed to minutes and not weeks or months. “What if, once the vixen has weaned her cubs, she might be given into the care of such an aspirant? It might make for a more gentle transition. And a kinder surveillance.”

Hamo tilted his head. “She would make an extraordinary pet,” he allowed.

Pen could not only picture it, he envied it. The vixen and her young sorceress-to-be, going about together. If he didn’t have a demon already…

You just think it would be madly stylish to have a clever pet fox, Des mocked him. He didn’t deny it.

“It would take some careful matchmaking,” said Hamo.

This man, Pen was reminded, made sorcerers for the Temple. “I expect you’re up to that.”

“Maybe,” said Hamo, his eyes narrowing as he considered Pen knew-not-what pertinent factors. “Maybe. I so want to salvage… I must take some thought who might… hm. Hm.”

Pen liked the tone of those hms. Very hopeful. By the time the cubs were weaned, Hamo would have had some weeks to scour, really, the whole Weald for suitable candidates, among all the aspirant-divines scattered across the Hallow King’s realm. The task, he had no doubt, would be done well, and shrewdly. Somewhere out there was a very lucky aspirant indeed.

Are you regretting the haste and disorder of our own pairing? Des’s query was soft, the faintest tint of hurt coloring her doubt. Not that it could be undone now. Save by a few arrows to his back or some like mischance.

Pen returned ruefully, Oh, I have for a while suspected we had a better Matchmaker than Hamo, conscientious though he is.

…That thought would be more flattering if it were more comforting.

Aye, Pen sighed.

The Easthome royal magistrates hanged Halber kin Pikepool a week after the Grayjays had returned him to their custody.

Penric did not attend. Hamo did, he heard.

Three days before they were to depart for Martensbridge, Penric made a formal request to call upon the princess-archdivine.

She received him in her private chambers, waving out the servants attempting to pack all that she had brought, topped by all that she had acquired in the royal capital, for the four-hundred-mile journey home. The Easthome hills were fine in their way, but they were not the austere white peaks fencing his horizon that Pen was used to. Though the mountains, he was sure, would wait for him, with the endless patience of stone. All the impatience of flesh and nerve drove him now.

He flashed his finest smile as he seated himself on blue-and-white silk, safe now against the trousers of his Order’s well-laundered whites. “I have a proposal for you, Your Grace. To enhance my abilities as your court sorcerer.”

“Shouldn’t there be more pleasantries before you leap in?”

“Oh. Er, do you want some?”

“Not particularly.” A quirk of her gray eyebrows indicated interest without commitment. “Do go on.”

“I’ve been speaking with my friend Shaman Inglis. And with his superior, Master Firthwyth, over at the Royal Fellowship. He is supervisor of the training of the young shamans. The Fellowship being part school, part farm, part a community of historical scholarship, and part, these days, hospice for injured or sick creatures.”

“It sounds a lively place,” she conceded.

He nodded vigorously. “Anyway, Master Firthwyth agrees that it would be of great interest for me to study awhile with the royal shamans. Learn what I can of their magics.”

“And what do my nephew’s shamans gain from this?”

“Well, they get to study me back, I expect.”

“How long do you imagine this study would take?”

“Hard to say. I mean, a shaman can spend a lifetime exploring his calling, but I already have a calling of my own, that, er, calls to me as well. But the Fellowship maintains a fine and growing library. I was allowed to see it, when I was over there visiting the other day.” Inglis had sternly forbade him to drool on the priceless volumes.

“And how long would it take you to read every book in it? A month?”

“Oh, longer than that!” He hesitated. “…A year?”

“A cap of sorts, I suppose.” A quizzical tilt of her elaborately braided head. “And what would my reimbursement be, for the loss of your services during all that time?”

“When I came back, I could do more kinds of things?”

“What things?”

“If I already knew—if anyone knew—I wouldn’t have to go study to find out, now would I?”

“That’s… actually a less specious argument than it sounds at first blush.”

They exchanged nods, like two swordsmen saluting.

She drummed her fingers on her silk-swathed knee. “When we returned home, I was going to tell you… Master Riedel of the Mother’s Order in Martensbridge was very impressed by your new edition of Learned Ruchia’s work on sorcery as applied to the arts of medicine. He wanted to extend you an invitation to study at the hospice. Part-time, as your other duties permitted.”

“Oh.” Pen sat up. He hadn’t realized his gift of the fresh-printed volumes to the hospice’s library, and his few meals at the princess-archdivine’s table with Master Riedel, had borne such excellent fruit. “Oh, yes, I’d like to do that! Too.”

“Not instead?”

“Too,” he said, with more certainty. “Though I grant I can’t do both at once. Not even with sorcery.”

“Then you have a puzzle.” She sat back in some fascination, as if to watch him solve it. Or, possibly, as if to watch a man trying to eat a meal twice the size of his head, Pen wasn’t sure.

“Two of Des’s prior riders,” he said slowly, “had trained and practiced as physicians.”

“Master Riedel is aware. He thinks it would make you a very quick study.”

Pen nodded. “In my prior experiences with, with drawing on Des’s vast knowledge, it doesn’t exactly just appear on its own in my mind. I have to induce it, more or less. Like, I don’t know, digging a ditch from an irrigation channel to its water source. Then it flows on its own. Well, sometimes it’s more like raising it bucket by bucket, but in any case. It was so with the languages. What Master Riedel might teach me would allow me to know all Des knows, eventually.”

Pen wasn’t going to ask Des’s opinion on this one. She’d had her own reasons for jumping to not-yet-Learned Ruchia last time, rather than the physician-aspirant that the Temple had planned for her. Besides, having transcribed every word of Ruchia’s medical text for printing, not to mention translating it into two and a half languages so far, he’d gained more than a trickle of understanding already.

“The point is,” he slowly felt his way forward, “if I study the shamanic magic first, I will have a chance of bringing something new back to more formal medical studies. More than just a review of things already known.”

Llewyn pursed her lips. “That is an honestly compelling view.” She hesitated. “And how would you plan to support yourself, during this scholarly holiday?”

“I, er, was hoping you could grant me a stipend?”

“So I am to pay to be deprived of your services for some undefined amount of time?”

“…Yes?” Pen tried for a sop. “Although I am fairly sure Wegae and Yvaina kin Pikepool would feed me, from time to time. I’ve already enjoyed some very interesting dinners over there.”

“Set a savory table, do they?”

“I don’t remember the food. But Yvaina has had this terrific notion, if I can get Learned Hamo interested. She proposes to invest in a press, using the sort of printing plates I produce with sorcery. Except I had this idea, really from rusting out Treuch’s knife before he gutted me, well, anyway, explaining it over dinner, it occurred to me that a sorcerer could create steel plates as well as wooden ones. Which could last for thousands of copies, not just dozens or hundreds. So students wouldn’t ever have to stab each other over sharing expensive texts again. And then she asked if I couldn’t do woodcuts or engravings the same way, and I said no, never thought about it because I couldn’t draw, but then she said, maybe some sorcerer who could. And I said, Oh. Of course. I think I can get Hamo to let me teach the technique to some of his people. And then—”

Llewyn held up a hand to stem this tide. “Remind me to have my secretary explain the concept of a percentage recompense to you. Soon. Possibly tonight.”

“Er, yes, Archdivine.” Pen subsided.

“Certainly before you are turned loose in Easthome to cut whatever swathe seems inevitable.”

Pen’s heart rose in hope. In quite another tone, he said, “Yes, Archdivine.”

“Hah.” She rubbed her fine chin, regarding him thoughtfully. “There is a line from a poem that rises to my mind. I no longer remember from where, but that’s the hazard of my years—oh. Do you suppose Baroness kin Pikepool’s press would ever share out poetry?”

Pen sat nonplussed, then afire. “I was thinking of texts, but certainly, why not? Or maybe books of tales… Really, anything.” He paused, wanting to ask what she would offer for a stipend, but his curiosity was caught. “What was the verse?”

“Just a fragment, really. A call-and-response song. The bard was describing an itinerant scholar. ‘Joyfully he learned/joyously taught.’ Went about in rags, poor man, which I thought quite unfair.”

“Probably had spent all his money on copyists. One must make choices, after all.”

She snorted, delicately. But then asked, “And what does Desdemona think of all this?”

Pen started to open his mouth, then said, “Des?” yielding control of his speech to her.

“I’m for the shamans,” said Des without hesitation. “It will be something new. Also, Ruchia has some very fond memories of one.”

Pen shut his mouth again quickly, before she could go into the more ribald details. And then wondered what (possibly horrifying) conversations Des and Llewyn might get into if he wasn’t around, listening in.

Surely you must test that, Des quipped. He tightened his teeth.

Llewyn tapped his hand. “Just bring him back to me, Desdemona.”

“As you wish, Archdivine,” agreed the demon.