by Lynn Abbey
“I’m leaving. I better not have any froggin’ trouble getting out,” Cauvin said with his hand on the latch.
Sinjon watched Cauvin. His left eye was wandering again, but they both stared. The effect was unnerving.
“He must have been desperate,” the captain said, still staring.
“Who?”
“The Torch, boy—Lord Torchholder—if he’s made you his heir.”
“I’m not his froggin’, sheep-shite heir. I’m just collecting a debt.”
The captain shook his head the same way Mina did when she thought he was too sheep-shite stupid to understand her insults. It was a look that got under Cauvin’s skin in an instant.
He lifted the latch, and snarled, “Have a froggin’ good life,” as he opened the door.
Sinjon said something that Cauvin’s ears couldn’t untangle. He didn’t want a second hearing. Anst, the ghost, was waiting at the top of the stairs—out of earshot, if he’d been there the whole time. And if he hadn’t? Well, Cauvin didn’t give a froggin’ damn. The Torch’s box was safe inside his shirt, and he could take any one-handed ghost who disagreed.
The fog had gotten heavier while Cauvin was inside the Broken Mast, the blackfish stench, too. He still didn’t know what a hagfish looked like, but he imagined they stared. The air on the Processional was almost clean-smelling by the time Cauvin reached the street called Lizard’s Way, which was the best—though far from the only—path into the warren known to one and all as the Maze. The Maze had its own smells, stronger and older than dead fish.
Cauvin didn’t know the Maze well. As a child he’d lived with his mother on the Hill until she ran afoul of the Hand, for what, he’d never known. Maybe for nothing. The Hand didn’t need a reason to make a sacrifice out of someone, and the Hillers were too poor, too weary to fight back.
Moments of flames, screams, and sheer horror exploded in Cauvin’s mind when he thought of the last time he’d seen his mother, like bumping a sore he’d had so long he’d forgotten it was there, forgotten how froggin’ much it could still hurt. She’d been stripped of her clothes and tied to a post on the Promise of Heaven before the Hand bled her out by stripping away her skin—
Cauvin hadn’t loved his mother, not the way Bec loved Mina—all trust and devotion. She hadn’t loved him, either, but it could have been froggin’ worse. Everything except the pits could have been froggin’ worse. He didn’t truly remember her death. Just as the Hand put their knives to her face, some man Cauvin had never seen before spun him around and conked him cold. When he thought about her dying, Cauvin filled in the empty moments with the sights and sounds of the uncounted sacrifices he witnessed later.
When Cauvin had come back to consciousness, he’d been in a dark, sweat-smelling room with a naked, snoring man pressed up against him. He had lit out of there like a greased cat. He knew what went on in rooms like that. Whenever she got angry with him, Cauvin’s mother had threatened to sell him to dark, sweaty men who collected unruly, sheep-shite boys. He’d run to the Maze …
After all the years, Cauvin still couldn’t decide if he’d made the biggest mistake of his sheep-shite life that night. Not that it mattered. The Hand followed him into the Maze. They caught him in an alley more than a month—caught Leorin, too—less than a year after they’d caught his mother. The years of his childhood were blurred in Cauvin’s head—he couldn’t have been more than eight when they’d ended.
A whole froggin’ lifetime had passed since then, and the Maze changed every storm or season. Unless he were there every day, a man stuck to the Serpentine, the oldest and widest of the quarter’s streets.
Cauvin passed a knot of Irrune betting shells-and-nuts with a smooth-talking Mazer. Waste of time on both sides: the Maze-rat wouldn’t let the Irrune win; the Irrune wouldn’t pay if they lost. In the right-side shadows, someone puked his guts. Another sheep-shite drunk was doing the same across the Unicorn’s threshold. Cauvin stepped over the mess.
Inside, the Unicorn was brighter than the Broken Mast had been and untainted by the sweet-rotting tang of krrf. Newcomers—including Cauvin when he’d begun meeting Leorin here—expected a darker, far-more-menacing lair but, as Leorin had explained, the Unicorn wasn’t a place where solitary patrons came to swill themselves into a stupor. Drunks were rare, brawls, rarer, because the Vulgar Unicorn truly was a covered market where services were bought and sold, no different than the stone in Grabar’s froggin’ yard.
Most of the light came from an old wheel—once part of a wagon or a froggin’ ship, Cauvin couldn’t tell which through the soot—suspended from the massive center beam. The wheel supported a half score of oil lamps, each of them hooded with polished copper to cast the light downward. The rest of the light came from clay lamps centered on most tables.
If he wanted to, a man could find a shadow deep enough to hide him and a few friends in the corners or beneath the stairs, but most patrons preferred to keep an eye on their closest drinking companions. Or, they saw no reason to pay extra for shadows. Whoever owned the Unicorn these days—and it wasn’t the lean, surly Stick who minded the coin box whenever Cauvin dropped in—had decreed that the drinks cost more at the tucked-away tables. Never one to pay a padpol more than necessary, Cauvin found himself a stool at one of the long tables beneath the wheel. The Torch’s box pinched Cauvin’s gut when he leaned forward. He set it, still wrapped in Sinjon’s ratty cloth, on the table between his elbows.
His nearest neighbor was an arm’s length away: a greasy-haired fellow who drank with his eyes closed. Farther along on the other side, a quartet of men younger than Cauvin were arguing about the Dragon, his father, and the Irrune in general. It was the same froggin’ bitterness Cauvin could hear anywhere on Pyrtanis Street, and he ignored it until one of them mentioned Molin Torchholder’s murder.
—“Shalpa’s cloak—it was the Dragon who did it,” another voice insisted. “The froggin’ Dragon or someone close to him.”
Cauvin didn’t try to connect the voice with a face. He might be sheep-shite stupid, but he knew better to look where he listened.
“Or a score of others,” a third, slightly softer and soberer, voice suggested. “That Torch—he’s been collecting enemies since Grandpa was a pup. Enemies, secrets, and gold. My pa says it’s a froggin’ wonder no one got him before this.”
“’Cause the Torch’s a frog-rotting sorcerer, that’s why,” the quartet’s fourth and loudest voice weighed in.
“He’s a froggin’ priest!”
“Of a froggin’ dead god,” Loudmouth added. “And he’d’ve died, too, right with the Stormbringer, if he wasn’t a frog-rotting sorcerer. He says the Torch’s been sucking souls for years. About time somebody got rid of him.”
“Someone paid by Ilsig,” the soft-voiced man suggested.
“No …” two men chorused, and Cauvin, in silence, was inclined to agree—not merely because the Torch wasn’t dead, but because if there was one thing the Wrigglies of Sanctuary could take pride in it was that their ancestors had refused to remain slaves and prisoners of the Ilsigi kings. Froggin’ sure the Ilsigi kings were on the rise. It was their armies, and not the Rankan emperor’s, that broke the backs of the Nisibisi, the northern witches. And it was their warships that kept the sea-lanes clear between Sanctuary and Inception Island. But a royal assassin stalking the Torch near Pyrtanis Street? A royal assassin with an Imperial knife? That was froggin’ impossible.
Cauvin had no sooner reached his judgment than he began to have doubts. If King Sepheris the Fourth of Ilsig had offered him a chest of golden royals to kill the Torch—not that Cauvin would have taken the money—but wouldn’t it have made sense to kill the froggin’ geezer with an Imperial knife, a knife that wouldn’t ever be associated with an Ilsigi assassin or with a Wrigglie, either …?
The Torch had admitted he had enemies, but that was all. The froggin’ geezer hadn’t said a word about the man who’d attacked him, the man he’d killed. Of course, Cauvin hadn’t actually
asked any questions. He’d thought about it. Sitting in the common room at the Vulgar Unicorn, Cauvin clearly remembered questions forming, but each time the froggin’ geezer opened his mouth first and Cauvin’s questions—questions that needed answering—went unasked.
He’d have to do better tomorrow … somehow.
As if a sheep-shite stupid stone-smasher could outwit the froggin’ Hero of Sanctuary!
“You’ve come at a bad time—”
Cauvin leapt off the stool, fists at the ready, startling the woman who’d startled him. “Mimise! Sorry,” he sputtered, realizing his mistake. Every head in the room had turned toward them. Cauvin felt like a froggin’ fool and wished the floor would melt beneath his feet.
Mimise closed her eyes with a sigh. “Reenie’s already gone upstairs.”
“For the night?”
Whatever the Vulgar Unicorn had been in the past—and it had been around longer than even Lord Molin Torchholder—these days it was more than a tavern. The wenches who wandered among the tables were freelancers who bought every drink before they served it and picked up extra soldats and shaboozh in upstairs rooms.
Mimise wrinkled her nose. “Don’t think so. Except for his silver, he wasn’t her type. Want I should send a boy up to scratch her door?”
Cauvin shook his head. “I’ll take a chance and wait.”
“Gotta drink, if you’re planning to wait.”
“Which is better tonight, the wine or the ale?”
“Wouldn’t touch the wine ’til the Stick taps a new barrel.”
“Get me a mug of ale, then.” He scooped the silver coin out of his boot.
Mimise dug a fistful of blackened padpols from the crack between her less-than-plump breasts. She took Cauvin’s uncut coin and offered him five irregularly shaped bits in exchange. Three of Mimise’s padpols were larger than the others. They could have been split once, but not twice.
Cauvin grimaced. “You’re rooking me.”
He took the padpols Mimise offered and kept his hand out for more. She laid three more of the smaller bits in his hand. Cauvin dug his fingernail into each padpol. None crumbled—meaning they were at least metal, not charred bone or pottery. He slapped them onto the table.
“A full mug,” he reminded Mimise’s back.
Leorin herself brought Cauvin an overflowing pewter tankard. With the scent of another man hanging heavily around her, Leorin kissed Cauvin chastely on the forehead. Her golden hair fell loose about her face; her cheeks were flushed; and the bodice of her gown was twisted around her waist.
“I wasn’t expecting you until Anensday.” She spun onto the stool on the opposite side of the table.
Cauvin patted the rag-covered box. “I’ve had some luck.”
“What kind?” Leorin attacked the knotted cords without further invitation. “What’s inside?”
“Not here.” Cauvin pulled the still-tied cords out of her hands. “Let’s go upstairs.”
Leorin pouted—not the seductive pout she flashed at paying customers, but a sharp-eyed scowl. “Can’t. That bastard shorted me. He promised me three shaboozh, then tried to give me soldats instead—as if I wouldn’t know the difference!” She stared into the distance. Cauvin then pulled into a faint, but satisfied smile; Cauvin could feel the air grow cold behind him. “He won’t be climbing anyone’s stairs anytime soon.” He wouldn’t have asked what his beloved had done, even had she given him the chance. “That doesn’t help me with the Stick. I’ve got room rent to pay. Nothing’s free tonight, love, not even for you.” She stroked Cauvin’s hands, then caught sight of the padpols on the table. “You can’t call a box of them luck, Cauv.”
“That’s not my luck, love.” He peeled back the cloth just enough to give her a peek at the carved wood. A pawnbroker would offer a few decent shaboozh for the box once Cauvin got the coins out—assuming he didn’t have to break it open. “I met a man today. I think he’s going to change my life.”
“How much did he give you?”
“I’ll tell you that when we’re alone upstairs.”
Cauvin couldn’t answer that until he opened the box, and he wouldn’t do that with strangers around. He trusted Leorin utterly, but no one else in the taproom. Instead, he told her where he’d gotten the box.
“The Broken Mast!” she exclaimed. “That’s a bugger’s haven! You never—You didn’t, did you?”
“Not froggin’ close,” Cauvin assured her. Never mind what the infamous vulgar unicorn was doing to itself on the weatherworn signboard above the front door—Leorin would have nothing to do with men who shunned women. “I collected a debt for an old pud outside the walls, that’s all. There’s bound to be something left off after the quills and parchment. And this is just the beginning. The old pud’s got more stashed away; he’s said as much. He won’t begrudge me; wouldn’t dare. He’s old and he’s dying—got a froggin’ evil wound atop his leg. I’m all he’s got.”
Leorin sat back. Gods knew how she’d come by it, but Leorin had all the fragile Imperial beauty Mina lacked. Her eyes were the color of warm, golden honey. Her complexion glowed like the finest porcelain, even beneath the Unicorn’s froggin’ soot-covered wheel. Her hands were delicate, her waist, willowy, and her breasts were perfect. When Leorin swept across the taproom, a bouquet of beer mugs clutched in her hands, conversations had been known to stop between words. She could have commanded the best rooms, the highest prices on the Street of Red Lanterns—she might even have found a Land’s End sparker who’d marry her—but Leorin had lived inside the palace, the same as Cauvin. She chose the sort of freedom that couldn’t be found behind walls—the kind of freedom—and risks—that the Unicorn offered night after night.
She chose Cauvin, too, because he’d been there, and her memories couldn’t frighten him. The nights he stayed with his beloved in her cramped upstairs room weren’t filled with passion; they were filled with tears and shudders while his arms protected her from the horrors in her memory.
Possibilities and calculations narrowed Leorin’s eyes. She looked like a cat pretending not to notice the mouse that had wandered into her pouncing range. As well as he knew her, Cauvin couldn’t move fast enough to keep her from seizing the box and giving it a shake. The clinking rattle of coins brought a new smile to her face.
Clutching the box tight, she unwound from the stool. “There better be enough in here to buy off the Stick.”
Leorin led the way up the stairs past the day-or-night rooms and up again to the dormers where she rented a chamber little larger than a cot and three clothes baskets. It had a door, though, and a string latch that could be drawn up and knotted around the bolt. A determined intruder could get in, no trouble at all—just slice the string and pull it through. But honest folk would knock or go away altogether and—sure as sheep-shite on market day—most folk were honest most of the time.
Cauvin lit the oil lamp with a taper he’d carried up from the taproom while Leorin secured the door. He was stirring the embers in her tiny charcoal brazier, hoping to find a live one, when her arms circled him from behind. With their bodies close together there was no need for a brazier, nor even a lamp, though he liked to see his lover’s face when her eyes were closed and her mouth was open, searching for his.
It was time, he thought. His fortunes had changed today. There were coins in the carved box and more to follow. Grabar had sworn that the stoneyard would become his and Mina had made peace with his favorite stew on a night when they usually made do with beans, bread, and fatback.
After two years of waiting, of clenching his jaw until his teeth hurt, it was froggin’ sure time.
Cauvin freed a breast from its bodice and, caressing it, lifted his beloved off her feet. He took the short step toward her cot and was astonished beyond words when Leorin wriggled free.
“Open it. Open it now. I want to see what’s inside.”
Just then the coins inside of Molin Torchholder’s carved box were not the top thoughts in Cauvin’s mind. He reach
ed for Leorin, and though his arms were long enough to span the walls of her dormer, she eluded him. For a heartbeat, Cauvin’s fingers formed into fists.
“I can’t,” he whispered.
“Use this,” Leorin replied, offering him a whiplike bit of metal as long as a rat’s tail and supple as a green-willow branch.
Cauvin had no notion where she’d hidden it, though he was froggin’ sure that she had pulled it out of her garments. The Hands had taught sheep-shite fools like him to kill with their fists, but they taught other things to other children. Leorin had told him some of the lessons the Hands had taught her; she’d never mentioned the sharp little tail. He was careful as he took it from her. Its tip was sharp enough to pierce flesh, and it might well be envenomed. Without a froggin’ word Cauvin stabbed it into the wall.
He retrieved it, though, a little bit later when he’d found the catch—at least he thought he had. A swirling loop of scrollwork had shifted ever so slightly when Cauvin had nudged it with his thumb. If he could get the sharp end of the tail wedged beneath the carving, something useful might happen. Or it might not. The scrollwork was carved from a separate piece of wood, but it wasn’t the catch, and when he pushed a little too hard, it snapped, bounced once on the floor, and vanished beneath the cot.
“Damn the froggin’ gods.”
“Let me try,” Leorin demanded, and took the box from Cauvin’s hands.
She shook it and pinched it and shook it some more before hurling it onto the mattress. Patience had never been Leorin’s game. Cauvin could be patient when he needed to be, when he needed time for his wits to work.
“The old pud wants me to froggin’ buy parchment and quills for him,” he said, as if in listening to himself he might learn something he didn’t already know—which sometimes happened. “That’s why he told me about the Broken Mast, the password, and the sheep-shite box. So, I’m froggin’ supposed to use what’s in the froggin’ box to buy his froggin’ parchment and quills. But he didn’t give me a key, and he didn’t tell me a froggin’ trick for opening it—”
