by Lynn Abbey
“My head’s sore … sorer than it was. I’ve got a lump.”
Cauvin hauled Bec closer. He probed the lump gently and turned the boy so his face caught what was left of the moonlight. There were shadows where shadows shouldn’t be.
“You’re raising bruises—Mina. Shite. Froggin’ sheep-shite—your mother’s going to take one look at you come morning and start asking questions—”
“Don’t worry, Cauvin.”
“Don’t worry!” he sputtered. “What am I going to tell her? Can’t be the truth … but it’s got to cover the froggin’ bruises—”
Bec extracted himself from Cauvin’s embrace and pulled himself up to his full height near the middle of Cauvin’s breastbone. “I’ll think of something.”
“What can you say to your mother—”
“I don’t know yet, but I’ve got until after dawn, don’t I … ? Wait! Furzy feathers—I know what I’ll tell her! I’ll wake myself up before she does, and get myself out of bed—but I’ll fall. Get it …? I’ll make like I get tangled in my blankets, then I’ll pretend to trip, then I’ll pretend to fall and—furzy feathers—I’ve got bruises! You watch—I won’t have to tell Momma a word about what’s really happened—”
Cauvin saw holes in that froggin’ bucket. It wouldn’t hold water if he were the sheep-shite carrying it, but with Bec. When it came to telling stories, only a froggin’ fool would bet against Bec.
“Can I have my picture?”
They were near the empty lot at the head of Pyrtanis Street. If the sun were shining, they could have seen the stoneyard.
“You did a sheep-shite stupid thing, Bec, going to the palace like that. If the Torch isn’t froggin’ dead when I go out there later, he’s going to wish he was. I’m taking the cart and putting him in it. He can interrupt his own froggin’ funeral. We’re done with him, Bec; I froggin’ sure swear it. Say your prayers before you fall out of bed. Pray that once the Hand knows that froggin’ Lord Molin Torchholder’s back in the palace, they’ll look for him there and they’ll forget they ever saw your face or mine.”
Bec said nothing until they were inside the stoneyard. “I’m sorry, Cauvin. I wanted to help Grandfather—I wanted him to be my grandfather. I’d be in real trouble now, wouldn’t I, if you hadn’t followed me.”
Never mind that Cauvin hadn’t actually followed his brother or that “real trouble” didn’t begin to describe the danger Bec had gotten himself into. “You want ‘real trouble,’ sprout, you try sneaking out of here again. Now—off with you. Get back to your bed!”
Cauvin sped the boy on with a swat across the rump. The eastern sky was brightening, but it was too early to smash stone. Up in the loft, Cauvin lit an oil lamp. Bec’s stolen parchment was grimy on the outside and stiffer than the sheepskin they’d bought at the scriptorium—not the stuff an important man like the Torch would use for writing an important message.
Cauvin unfolded the parchment, even though he couldn’t read more than a few Wrigglie words, just to see what words worth dying for looked like.
“Gods!” he swore softly. “Froggin’ gods,” because that’s what the parchment revealed: an unfinished drawing of Father Ils and All-mother Shipri holding court in some black-ink garden behind a tavern that could have been the Lucky Well.
The artist had drawn a stout Lord Anen, a goblet dangling between his fingers. A broad and drunken grin slit the wine-god’s face as he watched a barely gowned and not particularly beautiful Lady Eshi dance. Lord Shalpa skulked in the garden shadows, young, sullen, easy to recognize, even without His telltale shadowcloak. The other figures were probably Ilsigi gods, too, though Cauvin couldn’t put names to Their incomplete faces.
He’d had his fill of religion in the palace. The froggin’ gods were real; Cauvin didn’t doubt that for a heartbeat. Life in the pits wouldn’t have been half so oppressive if he hadn’t been sheep-shite sure that the Mother of Chaos was real and was watching. And if one goddess was real, then so, probably, were the rest, but neither Father Ils nor any of his froggin’ family had lifted a froggin’ immortal finger to help the orphans.
In Cauvin’s mind, no god was worth dying for and dying for a froggin’ drawing of feckless gods was an outrage. Cauvin had already made up his mind what he’d do with Molin Torchholder, the gods-all-be-damned drawing only hardened his resolve. He refolded the thick parchment, rasping his thick, blunt fingernails along the creases, and blew out the lamp. The faintest dawnlight seeped through the loose boards around the loft’s solitary window. Cauvin pulled the blanket over his head.
Maybe he could convince himself that a whole night’s sleeping still lay before him.
Maybe, with the Torch’s funeral occupying Sanctuary for a day, Grabar would let him sleep away the morning.
Maybe the froggin’ Torch would get worried, thinking his servant wasn’t coming out to the redwall ruins, and have second thoughts about the sheep-shite errand he’d sent them on.
It would serve the old pud right well if he worried himself to death.
On the cusp between dreams and thoughts, Cauvin imagined himself walking into the redwall ruins. The Torch hadn’t died, but he’d stopped moving. His forehead was all twisted up and his mouth wide-open, with no sounds coming out. Cauvin could have taken the old man to the palace and added him, like a log, to his funeral pyre, but anger had him and he decided to leave the Torch where he lay, for vermin to devour. He imagined leaving …
The door was gone, the red walls, too. White marble walls rose in their place while, behind Cauvin, men and women engaged in lively conversations. He turned again, knowing in a small way that he’d begun dreaming, yet caught up all the same and unsurprised to find that the voices belonged to the gods he’d seen on the parchment painting.
Lady Shipri beckoned Cauvin closer. She was a large woman, strong and soft, together with arms that could hold a baby or swing a hammer with equal ease. Cauvin drifted toward Her, but stopped when She offered him an apple so bright and perfect that it glowed. He knew better than to eat anything in a dream, especially if it rested in the palm of a goddess.
“What brings you here?” She asked.
What good were gods if They had questions, not answers?
“You’re troubled.” The goddess measured Cauvin with eyes he couldn’t meet. “You’re looking for someone. Something.”
Cauvin shook his head. His feet, which were all he could see, weren’t his feet—not the feet under his blankets. They were the feet he’d had the winter after the Hand got his mother—dirty, wrapped in rags, aching from cold. He’d prayed for boots, for a cloak, for someplace warm and safe. Lady Shipri hadn’t listened.
“It’s never too late,” the goddess whispered.
Cauvin found the strength to raise his head. Froggin’ hell it wasn’t too late. Cauvin didn’t need boots anymore. He was a grown man with a past he couldn’t quite forget. There wasn’t anything Lady Shipri could do. The goddess disappeared, taking the other gods with Her. He should have been alone in his bed in the stoneyard, or at the very least returned to his own dream in the redwall ruins. But the white marble walls remained and instead of gods or an old man’s withered corpse, Cauvin found himself drifting toward a little man with sparse ginger-colored hair and the stained fingers of an artist.
The little man was hard a-work on a drawing. The drawing was the one Cauvin had folded and tucked beneath the boots beside his bed. He was still dreaming.
“You’ve got work to do, pud,” the artist said without looking up from his work. “You’re not finished. You’ve scarcely begun.”
Against his will, Cauvin thought of red walls and bloody hands.
A voice that belonged to neither Cauvin’s nor the ginger-haired artist echoed among the marble walls. “You’re a disappointment, pud, no doubt you are. I prayed for better, but you’re what I got. Rise to it, pud. Surprise us all.”
Molin Torchholder had said some of those very words moments after Cauvin had rescued him. Who wouldn’t ha
ve prayed for a rescuer … and who wouldn’t have been disappointed by the sight of froggin’ Cauvin not-quite-Grabar’s son, whose fists were so much quicker than his wits? But had Molin been praying for a rescuer … just a simple rescuer?
“Go now,” the little artist suggested. “There’s only so much a man can give to Sanctuary. Do what I did—find another life, another city. The door’s open.”
It was, along with the walls. Cauvin had fallen out of paradise during the ginger man’s speech. He’d returned to his own dream, to the redwall ruins and the corpse of Molin Torchholder which shone with a gentle, golden light.
“Run away, Cauvin. I did.” The artist rose from the rubble. Cauvin saw his face for the first time: a froggin’ plain face, except for its sadness. “You’re a free man. No one will blame you. No one blamed me.”
Darkness as black as the pits on a moonless night surrounded the ruins. Cauvin could run … but he’d be lost in the froggin’ dark if he did. Then the Torch’s light-shrouded corpse began to move. It sat up, stood up, extended its arms, and began walking toward them.
“Run away!” the artist urged, blocking Cauvin’s view of the Torch’s face. “You’ve been lost before. You’ve been lost all your life. Lost is your home.”
Cauvin decided to run, only to discover that his froggin’ body was nailed to the ground, frozen like stone. He couldn’t so much as close his damn eyes.
“Move it, Cauvin.”
He tried and felt a sharp pain in his side.
“Move it, Cauvin—There’s chores to be done no matter who’s laid on a pyre at the palace.”
Cauvin blinked awake. Grabar was in the froggin’ loft—never a good sign—and there was sunlight streaming through the shutter slats. With an angry sigh, Cauvin got his arms under his shoulders and pushed himself off the mattress. He was still half in his dream—his froggin’ dreams—and wondering what it all had meant. The pain in his side, though, that hadn’t been part of the dream. Cauvin ached from the punches he’d taken in the Silk Court atrium and from the toe of his foster father’s boot.
“Froggin’ hell,” Cauvin snarled. He swung his arm in Grabar’s direction.
“Been calling you for a donkey’s age and pounding on the floor. None of it was doing me any good, so I had to climb the ladder—and you know how I hate to climb that ladder, what with my knees and back and all.”
Cauvin started shivering before he was standing. He pulled a thick wool tunic over his head. That helped, or it would once his body warmed it. There was nothing he could do for his bare feet. If he touched his boots, Grabar would see the parchment. Better to froggin’ freeze than have that discussion.
“I’m awake, all right? I’ll be down. There’s no froggin’ need to stand here watching me.”
Grabar hesitated. He truly did move like an old man—older than the Torch—when the weather got cold: the price of a lifetime working stone. Cauvin watched him creak down the ladder and wondered how he’d feel in another twenty years. Wouldn’t be any froggin’ worse than he did this morning with bruises the size and shape of a froggin’ cat curled up on his flank.
Somewhere, though, three red-handed puds felt a froggin’ lot worse.
Cauvin stamped into his boots and slid the creased parchment between the leather and his shin. He shoved past Grabar, who crowded the foot of the ladder. This wasn’t like his foster father; the man usually knew better than to froggin’ hound him. The whole sheep-shite city knew Cauvin had a temper and woke up crossgrained.
“Where are you off to today?” Grabar asked while Cauvin put his fist through the ice in the trough and splashed frigid water on his face.
The question caught him off guard. He answered, “The froggin’ redwall ruins,” without thinking.
Grabar responded with another froggin’ question: “Why?”
Cauvin’s hands fell to the trough rim. “Why?” he muttered. Bec was the family storyteller. Words failed Cauvin when he had to answer a question with an excuse. He stood there a moment, sheep-shite foolish, with water dribbling off his beard onto his shirt.
“Yes, why? We’ve got enough brick until Tobus shows up for business. For all I know, he won’t show up until the spring.”
“‘Til spring.” Cauvin wracked his mind while he chafed feeling back into his cheeks. “’Til the froggin’ spring. Well, the mortar’s gone rotten in some of those walls out there. We get froggin’ freezes and heaves this winter and sure as shite if we wait until spring to smash the rest of the bricks out, the froggin’ walls’ll be down and everything’ll be froggin’ cracked to bits. Figured I’d smash all the bricks out now and cover them up with straw …”
It was a good plan … if the mortar were flaking away. And maybe the mortar was; Cauvin hadn’t paid much attention while he was smashing yesterday. He’d had other thoughts churning through his head.
Grabar clapped him soundly on the back. “Good. Good! You’re thinking ahead. That’s good. I’ve got half a mind to give you a hand myself. Not going to be anything worth doing here today.”
Cauvin’s sheep-shite gut turned over. He stood flat-footed and staring at the ice floating in the trough.
“Got plans, eh?” Grabar clapped him again. “A mite cold, but that doesn’t so matter much when you’re young and making your own fires.”
“What?”
“You and that woman of yours from the Unicorn—Leorin? How often does a young man get a chance to pass the time with his woman and no one’s in earshot, eh? Smash out a few bricks …”
Grabar let the rest go unsaid. Cauvin did the same.
“Never could have gotten out of here anyway,” Grabar said into the silence. “The wife’s beside herself. There’s no breakfast—we’ll all be going hungry ’til the funeral feast.”
“She said she wasn’t going to light the fire,” Cauvin said, eager to talk about something else.
“Oh, she never meant that, but this morning, the boy ups and trips over himself getting out of bed—must’ve been growing while he slept. Me—I didn’t hear a sound, and more’s the pity: Somehow that makes me to blame for the boy’s bruises. Sweet Shipri! You’d think he’d lost a fight with his own fists by the look of him. And the wailing when the wife tries to tend to them! Not since he was cutting his first tooth. The wife’s got him back in bed. She’s talking apothecary—if there’s one willing to work on the Torch’s holiday—and you know that’s going to cost.”
Cauvin tucked his chin against his breastbone. Bec had done it; he’d covered their froggin’ tracks and then some. The boy had clever to spare. A sheep-shite stone-smasher could only bite his tongue to keep from grinning. He had to stay out of the froggin’ house—no way he could have faced Bec without undoing the boy’s good work—but Cauvin’s heart was still laughing when he led Flower out of the stoneyard.
The Torch had propped himself up against the wall. He had parchment strewn across his lap and a white-feather quill dangling loosely from a motionless hand. Cauvin thought—hoped—the old pud had died, but his eyelids fluttered and he coughed himself awake as Cauvin crossed the threshold to his refuge.
“Did you get it?”
Not good morning nor it’s good to see you nor did all go well last night? but the froggin’ greeting of a gods-all-be-damned sparker to the least of his froggin’ servants. Any reluctance Cauvin might have felt about arguing with a man on his deathbed was gone in a heart-beat.
“Shite for sure we got it.” Cauvin removed the parchment from his boot and brandished it beyond the Torch’s reach. “We damn near died, too. Your friends were waiting for us. Your friends with red hands and faces,” he snarled and went on to describe the skirmish in Silk Corner, leaving out only one froggin’ detail: that Bec had done the deed alone.
The Torch—gods rot his sheep-shite soul—wasn’t fooled.
“Send a boy on a man’s errand, and what else would you expect? He’d have stayed snug in his bed if you hadn’t shirked your obligations.”
“My froggin�
�� obligations? I saved your froggin’ damned life, you old pud—I don’t owe you sheep-shite. What about your obligations? Go here. Go there. Get me this and that. You froggin’ well knew the Hand would be watching—”
“I know precious little about what the Bloody Hand of Dyareela knows right now, pud. Until three days ago, I thought they were dead. Stop waving that parchment about. Give it here.”
The Torch held out his hand. Cauvin hesitated, then slapped it into the old man’s palm.
“There—it’s yours, if Bec snatched the right one. It’s a froggin’ picture! A froggin’ picture of the froggin’ Wrigglie gods in a froggin’ tavern garden.”
“Then it’s the right one,” the Torch said mildly, and began unfolding it.
“A picture, you damned pud—you risked our lives for a froggin’ picture!”
The mildness vanished, replaced by a hiss of contempt that rocked Cauvin back a pace.
“Pay attention, pud, and you might learn something. It’s not what’s on the parchment—though I could tell you a tale or two about the man who drew it: Laylo … no, Lalo … Lalo the Limner he called himself. He had the gift of his gods whenever he picked up a brush or pen—”
Cauvin watched with gape-jawed astonishment as the Torch held the drawing at one corner and began to carefully split it into two thinner sheepskin sheets. He started to ask a foolish question, but clamped his mouth shut before it escaped.
“Lalo painted the truth of a thing …or a person. Damnably inconvenient for a portraitist who’d hoped to support himself painting the nobility, as you can imagine. He painted a picture of my wife … no surprises; I’d known her for what she was from the start—but frightening all the same—the features of a pig draped in pearls …”
“What happened when this Lalo painted your portrait?”
“I’ve been many things in my life, pud, and none of them a fool. I never sat for our little ginger-haired artist, and if he ever sketched me, he had the wit to keep the lines to himself. Painting the truth wasn’t enough; his gods gave him the gift of life. Those brightly colored flies the women catch with honey and grind up for dyes …? They’re his. Them and less savory beasts, but we got rid of those … or they followed him when he cut his strings. Damn shame. Sanctuary was his city, and he ran away when it needed him most. Ran from his family, too—damned if I can remember her name, but she posed for Shipri—Eshi, too, as I recall.”
