by Lynn Abbey
If a man lived long enough, he’d get the chance to relearn all his lessons from the back side.
Tempus and Chenaya were with Vashanka on the far side of legend, and Ischade had followed her deadly little curse into oblivion. Vashanka was there for His priest when Molin prayed, but there was a long, long way from Land’s End. He was on his own when he went down the Ridge Road to spy on the city he’d always hoped to leave behind.
Collecting a lifetime of debts, Molin made his way through Sanctuary’s grim streets. He saw no evidence of Lord Serripines’ monsters and demons, but more than enough guilt and shame. Of course, once brothers betrayed their sisters or parents betrayed their children to save themselves, they became monsters in the eyes of those around them, and in their own eyes, too. The only people who looked straight ahead when they walked were those who’d willingly surrendered what was left of their souls to the Bloody Hands of the palace.
Still, Sanctuary was a city of survivors, and Molin knew where in the Maze to look to find a handful of resilient optimists willing to risk their lives unbarring the eastern gate that very night, assuming Molin could deliver a fog dense enough to blind the Hands to the Irrune riding down from Land’s End.
Vashanka, god of storms, warmed Molin’s heart: He could do that much for His old priest. There was a chill in the air and clouds seeping off the harbor waters before Molin got back to Land’s End to make the final preparations.
“The gates were open when we got there,” Grandfather droned. “We were halfway to the palace before the Hands knew we were inside the city. They prayed Dyareela against us. If one of our men went down, the mob tore him apart, flesh from bone. We hung tight. I feared we’d have to kill them all, and even that might not be enough. She’s a soul-stealer, the Mother of Chaos. Our deaths strengthened Her. We dismounted and drove the horses ahead of us—O Vashanka, may His name be praised, the noise and the stench! It was pure butchery until we got to the palace. We lost every man on the ram, twice, and twenty more when we cracked the gate. Then the Hand lifted our fog; I thought for sure we were finished …” He shook his head. “Dyareela, She feeds on death and chaos, but She’s no battle goddess. Doesn’t have the belly for it. Her chanters couldn’t hold Her, and She fled with the fog. We fed on chaos—”
“Furzy feathers!” Bec interrupted. “All that, and you don’t know! You froggin’ don’t know what happened. You weren’t there. I know what happened after the Irrune got to the palace. That’s no secret. What I want to know is what happened before they got there!”
Grandfather got that owl-y look grown-ups got when Bec caught them cheating. “I’ve spent all afternoon telling you what happened before we swept out the palace.”
“Says you. I say you weren’t there and you don’t know what hell was like, no more than me. Momma and Pa were there and Cauvin was in the palace, in the palace for years, in that orphanage you talked about. But he won’t talk about it. No one will. Not one word, except by accident, kind of, or craziness, like Batty Dol. You said you’d tell me what really happened. You lied, Grandfather. You lied.”
Grandfather reached for his black staff again, and Bec scrambled for dear life. The crockery inkpot and the parchment both went flying.
“You didn’t write down a word I said!” Grandfather complained, as the parchment floated in a late-afternoon breeze. He lowered the staff and rubbed his wrinkly forehead.
“You were answering me. You didn’t say I should write down what you said when you were answering me.” Bec retrieved the crockery. The ink had dried. He spat on the thick stain and reached for the quill. “All right. You can start over; I’m ready. But who’s going to care if you don’t know what really happened that winter?”
“Your brother—”
“Cauvin can’t read … and he was there. He already knows.”
“What do I already froggin’ know?” a familiar voice asked from the doorway at Bec’s back.
Grandfather might be old and dying, but his tongue was quicker than Bec’s. “He says you already know what it was like in the palace that last winter. He wasn’t satisfied with my version.”
“Shalpa’s froggin’ shite!” Cauvin snarled.
For Cauvin, cursing was as natural as breathing and about as serious, but sometimes he meant it, and this was one of those times. His eyes fairly disappeared as his face got red in spots, pale in others. He charged across the rubble and kicked Bec’s improvised inkpot into a wall. The crockery shattered to dust. Then he ground the parchment beneath his boot. Through it all, Cauvin never took his eyes off Grandfather.
“You don’t go talking shite to my brother, you hear me? He’s got no need for it! No froggin’ need! That’s over. Over! Sooner it’s forgotten, the better.”
The parchment was holes and tatters. Cauvin advanced on Grandfather, who pulled his staff up, two-fisted across his chest.
“I haven’t told the boy what he wants to hear, Cauvin. I can’t. That’s for you; as he says, you were there, I wasn’t.”
Bec prayed to Mother Sabellia. She was the peacemaker among the gods his mother had taught him, and he needed a big dose of peace to come falling out of the sky. Cauvin wouldn’t back down for anything when he was blind angry, not even a staff topped with a stone that shone like fire. Bec closed his eyes. A whump of a breeze shot past his ears, then Grandfather said:
“You can’t make anything go away by hiding from it, Cauvin.”
“Shite if I can’t.”
Once again, Cauvin’s voice came from behind Bec, who turned toward the sound and opened his eyes. Cauvin was one stride out from the wall. There was dust in his hair and all over his back, but his face wasn’t all twisted up with anger anymore. Bec dared a glance in the other direction. Grandfather still gripped the staff crosswise. He didn’t look like he was an old man close to dying.
“If no one remembers, Cauvin, if everyone’s silent, then who’s going to stop them next time? They’re not gone, Cauvin. Not all of them. The man who murdered me, he had blood-red hands and red silk wound around his face.”
Bec swiveled in his brother’s direction.
“Froggin’ hell—You’re the one said they were gone. I heard you. Froggin’ sure you didn’t say anything about the Bloody Hand yesterday.”
“And I’m saying I’m wrong, Cauvin. I was wrong ten years ago, wrong two night ago, and yesterday, too. I’m dying of mistakes, Cauvin. The next move falls to you.”
Cauvin’s eyes got small, and for a heartbeat Bec thought his brother was going to fly off in another rage, but he didn’t get red or pale, just very still, like something had hurt him bad inside. When he talked again, his voice was soft.
“This has gone too froggin’ far. I’m not having any-damn-thing to do with the froggin’ Hand. I’m movin’ you to the palace. Let your high-and-mighty friends take care of you … of them.”
“Out of the question.”
“Don’t froggin’ think you can froggin’ stop me.”
Bec didn’t dare look Grandfather’s way. He had all he could do to keep his eyes open as Cauvin took a deep breath and held it a long time, then let it go.
“You froggin’ swear you won’t froggin’ tell my brother anything about the palace, or the Hand, or any other sheep-shite. He starts spouting off at home, his froggin’ mother’ll hang my froggin’ skin on the wall.”
“I wasn’t there, Cauvin,” Grandfather said, all sweet and nasty together.
“Swear, you sheep-shite pud!”
“In Vashanka’s sacred name and for the good of all, the boy’s ignorance is safe with me. What you won’t tell him, neither will I.”
The oath had to be a cheat. It sounded good, but Grandfather had used too many words for it to be simple-honest. Cauvin didn’t hear the holes. Bec could have warned him, but Bec wanted the holes, the tales his brother wouldn’t tell.
Cauvin was satisfied with Grandfather’s promise and ready to move on. “I’m ready to load the wagon, Bec. It’s not a full load. I’m tellin
g Grabar that the mortar’s hard as steel, and I’ve got to come back tomorrow. I’m counting on you to back me.” He looked at Grandfather. “One more day, that’s all, then—” He shrugged. “Think about it, pud—you can’t stay out here. You’ve got to go to the palace—”
Grandfather waved Cauvin off. “I have a plan.”
“For what?”
“For teaching your brother his letters, for saving Sanctuary from Dyareela’s Bloody Hand. What does it matter? I need papers from my chambers in the palace. There’s an ironbound chest beneath my bed—”
“Froggin’ shite, I’m no thief! You need something at the palace, I’ll take you there. You can sleep on your own froggin’ bed. That’s where you belong.”
“You’re not stealing anything, Cauvin—and you won’t get caught, even if you were. I can promise you that. I’ve often needed to meet with people who couldn’t walk through the palace gates. Listen—”
Cauvin didn’t listen, not until they’d had another argument and Grandfather had shaken that blackwood staff. Bec was sure the staff was a wizard’s weapon—or a priest’s—though it didn’t belch fire or lightning or anything like that. Grandfather just held it in front of him and, little by little, Cauvin backed down and listened to Grandfather’s instructions. It had to be sorcery; Cauvin never backed down.
“So, can I go with you to the palace?” Bec asked when he was in the cart and the cart was headed back to Pyrtanis Street.
“Who said anything about going to the froggin’ palace?”
“You did—you told Grandfather you’d get his papers: the scrolls, the picture of gods—the one used to be painted on the temple walls—”
“He’s not your froggin’ grandfather, Bec, and I’m not risking my neck breaking into the froggin’, sheep-shite palace!”
“But you said—”
“I froggin’ lied, all right? Same as he froggin’ lied when he gave me that froggin’ worthless oath of his. Forget it, Bec. I’m coming out here alone tomorrow and I’m hauling that pud’s froggin’ ass down to the palace—where it belongs—unless I’m froggin’ burying it instead.”
Bec protested until Cauvin knuckled him across the back of his head. Not hard—but hard enough that Bec sidled around the piledup bricks in the cart and stayed out of reach until they got home.
Chapter Eight
Supper at Grabar’s stoneyard was fish soup thickened with all the leftovers on Mina’s sideboard, including last night’s mutton stew, because, as she announced with the ladle in her hand—
“Hearth’s going to be cold tomorrow.”
Arizak was sending his friend Molin Torchholder to his god with full Irrune ceremony: pitch-soaked shroud wrapped around him, wagon beneath him, wood piled high above him, wailing women, pounding drums, and enough animals sacrificed to serve a feast to the whole city. The Irrune didn’t care who came—they didn’t let outsiders worship their god, Irrunega—but the residents of Sanctuary had never been known to pass up a free meal, no matter who was serving it or why.
“There was a cart came down the street this afternoon, collecting wood for his pyre,” Mina explained as she handed Cauvin his bowl. “I gave up the slats from an old wine barrel—that’ll please the gods—for the good he did for all of us. But you, Cauvin, you owe him more. I set that aside—” She pointed at a length of ornately carved wood propped by the door. “’Twas the top of the stairs outside my grandmother’s room. Can’t get wood like that these days. Can’t find a carver, even if you found the wood. Show some respect for your good fortune. Take it down to the palace and put it on the pyre. Shove it in deep, where it’ll burn hot.”
Cauvin agreed without saying a word. He didn’t want a froggin’ fight with Mina, not where it might concern the froggin’ Lord Molin Torchholder and especially not with Bec sitting at the froggin’ table, big sheep-shite grin across his face. He didn’t want to talk about Molin Torchholder at all, but Grabar had already paid a visit to the Lucky Well and gotten a leg up on tomorrow’s holiday.
“Damn shame,” Grabar decided, then repeated his judgment: “Damn shame a man like that couldn’t die in his bed—”
“Mind your language,” Mina hissed.
“Well it is, and damn the man or woman who says otherwise. He was a hard and proper bastard, but he always came in right-side up after a storm. Never raised a finger or did a favor except there was something in it for him. But a fair bastard just the same—”
“Husband!”
Grabar wasn’t listening. “Waste o’ wood,” he continued, “building that pyre. The gods won’t need smoke and flame to find the Torch; he’s drinking with them already, I’ll wager. Better to put men in the streets to find the bastards who murdered him.”
“There’s a reward—ten gold coronations from the reign of Abakithis,” Mina added. There was, after all, no offense in calling a murderer a bastard and money was money.
Bec whistled through his teeth. “Furzy feathers! Ten coronations! Everybody’s going to be looking everywhere for ten coronations. I’m going to look.”
Cauvin caught his brother’s eye and made a dire face. Ten coronations, though, gold coronations from the days when there was froggin’ silver in a soldat—that was enough to set a man up for life if he weren’t too particular about his work. Bec was right: There’d be folks poking into every froggin’ corner of the city and outside it, too. Somebody was sure to march through the old redwall ruins. No one would mistake the wounded old man for a murderer, but it would be one shite-sure mess—
Or, maybe not.
Maybe the froggin’ smartest thing Cauvin could do was hope that someone did stumble into the redwall ruins. Then someone else could tote and haul for the old man, or haul him back to the palace—
A wad of meat stuck in the back of Cauvin’s throat when he tried to imagine telling the palace Irrune that the froggin’ Torch was still alive. He tried to swallow the meat and the image, but neither budged. Tears streamed down his face by the time Grabar pounded him between the shoulders.
“You’ve got the graces of a dog,” Mina complained.
“It’s a shock to him, Mina.” Grabar pounded Cauvin again. “The Torch saved his life. Hadn’t’ve been for him separating a few lads from the rest, the Hand would’ve killed our Cauvin.”
Cauvin took shelter where he could find it, but his appetite was gone. He pushed the bowl away. “I’m done.”
Mina sniped, “Finish your food!” and Cauvin felt his temper starting to fray, then Bec came to his rescue.
“‘Hadn’t’ve been.’ That means something that would have happened—could have and should have happened, but didn’t. Tell me, Momma, how would I say hadn’t’ve been in Imperial?”
Mina couldn’t resist an appeal like that. She started singing away in Imperial, shutting Cauvin and Grabar out. Grabar went back to his eating, but Cauvin’s appetite was truly gone. He poured his soup dregs into Grabar’s bowl and started for the door. Grabar caught his wrist.
“Stay atop the Stairs,” Grabar advised his foster son. “Word at the Well was that the Dragon’s fired up about the honors his father means to heap on the Torch. They say he’s taking his men and that hell-spawned mother of his out of town tonight, before they light the fire, but your friend Swift says he heard from the palace smiths that they’ve been grinding swords all day—for the Dragon. I’m not thinking the Dragon’s fool enough to fight in his father’s forecourt, but the rest of Sanctuary’s fair for mischief, especially the Maze. Tonight’s no night to go visiting your lady friend.”
Cauvin hadn’t intended to visit the Vulgar Unicorn. He hadn’t intended to leave the stoneyard at all. A piece of Flower’s harness had come loose on the way home from the ruins. It needed mending, and the rest of the harness needed close inspection. When one strap worked loose others would soon follow, and they couldn’t risk injury to the mule. But Grabar had put the notion in his head where it clung like a barnacle. He gave his word that he’d stay on Pyrtanis Street and made his
way to the Lucky Well, where the wine was as cheap as it was sour.
His friend Swift held down one end of the center table along with the potter whose daughter he hoped to marry. Swift spotted Cauvin before Cauvin’s eyes had adjusted to the smoke-shadow light and made room for him on the bench. A good man, Swift was; and damned well aware that he was froggin’ lucky to have avoided the Hand and their pits while he was growing up. They’d been closer years ago, when Swift’s father was still alive to work the forge day in, day out and Cauvin struggled to change the habits he’d learned in the pits and on the streets.
The smith repeated the tale he’d heard from his metal-pounding peers at the palace. “The Dragon’s fit to set the world alight. Him an’ his mother, they thought it was the Torch pulling strings and that once he was gone, Arizak would go back to the old ways, their ways. Now Arizak’s giving the Torch an Irrune send-off, and they’re talking abomination. You know where that can lead.”
Cauvin did. There wasn’t enough wine in froggin’ Sanctuary to blot those memories from his mind. He poured dark liquid from Swift’s pitcher and lost himself in those memories. Grabar came in after a while. They acknowledged each other, but sat with different men at different tables until the keeper’s boy, Dinnas, shouted last call. Grabar wasn’t interested in a final mug of wine and took his leave, but Cauvin held on until a drudge cleared the table. He wasn’t nearly drunk—It took a braver man than Cauvin to get drunk on the Well’s wine—but Swift walked him to the stoneyard.
“See you at the feast tomorrow?” Swift asked when they reached the stoneyard gate.
Cauvin hesitated, then nodded. No reason not to go, even if the man in the pyre wasn’t Molin Torchholder. He bid Swift a good night, then closed the gate. One of the iron straps that held the bar in place against the door was loose. It pulled out of the wood planks entirely when Cauvin tried to tighten it. There were two other straps; the bar wasn’t going anyplace tonight, but he’d have another froggin’ chore tomorrow morning, along with Flower’s harness.
