by Lynn Abbey
Cauvin’s tongue remained thick and lifeless.
“Thirty, then? As Ils watches, I don’t have it all! Not before midwinter. How about forty? Will forty shaboozh suffice to keep you warm on Pyrtanis Street?”
With some effort, Cauvin dipped his chin and raised it again.
“Wait here. Brevis?”
The rich man and his bodyguard exchanged glances before Mioklas left the room. Cauvin found himself face-to-face with a man fondling the hilt of his sword. He had his long knife, and one steelfighting lesson from Soldt. That wasn’t going to help Cauvin, not if Brevis had been given orders to skewer him.
When moments had passed and the sword hadn’t moved, Cauvin allowed himself a question: What in the froggin’ frozen hells of Hecath had just happened? Had his ears heard Lord Mioklas admitting to the murder of Lord Torchholder? Had he—the sheep-shite stone-smasher of Pyrtanis Street—glimpsed Lord Mioklas’s secret guilt? Did Lord Mioklas believe Cauvin had guessed that secret? Was Mioklas offering Cauvin forty shaboozh in payment for his work on the garden wall? Was Mioklas in his privy chamber gathering coins from his strongbox, or was he summoning more bodyguards?
Brevis grinned when Cauvin dared a glance at the doorway. Cauvin quickly lowered his eyes. He looked at the worktable and several sheets of parchment. Without trying he could make out the Ilsigi words, even though they were reversed, as the S’danzo’s cards Lance of Flames and Archway had been.
TO MY ESTEEMED LORD. THE MATTER WHICH CONCERNED YOU HAS BEEN RESOLVED. THE CAPTAIN WHO BRINGS YOU THIS MESSAGE WILL ACCEPT …
Words could mean anything, especially an unfinished message. Cauvin turned away from the parchment, toward a round, oddly bright and blurry painting. Moments later he realized that it wasn’t a painting at all but a silvered mirror.
Leorin owned a palm-sized square of polished brass she called a mirror. She used it to guide her hand as she drew a black, cosmetic line around her golden eyes. Whenever Cauvin had tried the mirror’s sorcery, he saw blobs and scratches, nothing at all like a face, let alone his face. Mioklas’s froggin’ mirror was better than Leorin’s; good enough that Cauvin believed he was looking at sorcery.
The silver mirror reflected images Cauvin couldn’t see with his own eyes: Brevis leaning against the doorjamb, still grinning. Cauvin scowled and jumped when his reflection scowled back. Brevis laughed aloud. Cauvin shook his head; the reflection did likewise, but backward. Warily, Cauvin raised his right hand to his cheek; the reflection raised its left. He closed his left eye; the reflection closed its right. He closed his right eye—
That was froggin’ stupid.
He strode closer to the mirror. The reflection got larger, clearer. If it was him, only backward, Cauvin didn’t like the view. His shirt—the better of the two he owned—was stained and shabby. Raw threads sprouted around his neck, and the thong holding his bronze slug looked like a noose tightened around his neck. Cauvin knew the color of his hair—Mina told him often enough that it was the color of the yard after a rain. He lopped it off with a knife whenever it got in his eyes. The result, according to the mirror, was a dirty brown fringe around his face, longer on top, and noticeably longer over the reflection’s right ear—his left. Cauvin’s beard was almost as ragged as his hair. He shaved once or twice a month during the warmer seasons and not at all now that the weather was cooler.
Cauvin’s nose pulled toward the right because the punch that had broken it had been a right-handed punch; the reflection’s nose pulled to the left. Cauvin couldn’t see the reflection’s eyes; they were too dark and set too deep in its head. He didn’t trust people if he couldn’t see their froggin’ eyes. If his eyes were truly as dark and deep as the reflection’s and set that close together, then he could almost understand why Mina didn’t trust him.
Worst was the reflection’s mouth—his mouth. It was small compared to the rest of his face, thin-lipped and so pale it almost wasn’t there. Leorin joked that he had a maiden girl’s mouth. Hers was womanly: wide, lush, and soft. When Cauvin tightened his lips and lowered his eyebrows, the reflection looked mean and ready for a fight. Truly, Cauvin looked no friendlier when he relaxed or smiled.
No matter how Cauvin stretched or shaped his face, his reflection remained sullen, angry, and sheep-shite stupid. Nothing added Bec’s charm to his reflection, and Grabar’s weathered honesty was every froggin’ bit as elusive.
“Enjoying yourself?”
Lord Mioklas’s voice caught Cauvin unaware. He blinked hard and saw the rich man’s reflection before spinning around to face him.
“Sorcery?” he asked about the mirror.
“A bit of magic, but not where it counts. The face you see there is the face you wear on the street at noontime, no more or less. Have you never seen your own reflection clearly? Were you surprised? Disappointed?”
Cauvin tried another silent answer.
“Don’t be,” Mioklas continued. “Not everyone can be handsome. A face like yours has its uses. Master Grabar saw that from the start. I hear you’re plenty good with your fists and not reluctant to use them. He’s wise to send you to collect the stoneyard’s debts.”
“I suppose,” Cauvin replied. Froggin’ sure, the rich man knew too much about him.
“I could find a place for you where you wouldn’t be looking at stone all day.”
“I like looking at stone.”
Mioklas went to his table. He untied a cloth and spilled a mass of silvery shaboozh onto the polished wood. The silver wasn’t the best Cauvin had seen—that froggin’ honor went to the Torch’s soldats—but a sea captain wouldn’t ask questions.
“Forty,” Mioklas said. “And two extras. Forty-two, in total. Don’t take my word for it—count them.”
With a grimace, Cauvin complied. In his slow, sheep-shite way—the only way he knew: The Torch’s magic had taught him reading, not arithmetic—he made piles of five until there were two single coins left over. Then he counted the piles on his fingers until there were two fingers left over. Forty-two.
He unslung his coin pouch. No way would it hold forty-two shaboozh, even if he threw away every chipped padpol.
“Keep the cloth,” Mioklas offered, pushing it across the table.
For reasons Cauvin couldn’t untangle, taking the cloth was worse than taking the shaboozh, but he needed something to carry the coins. He knotted them securely, creating an extra loop in the cloth to feed his belt through. The pouch was secure from a casual dip, should he bump into one on his way home—
Home. Cauvin had never felt so frog-all far from home. He threaded the knotted sack onto his belt. Looking up, he realized that Mioklas had been watching him like a hawk.
“Not taking chances, eh?”
“No, my lord.”
“An interesting combination: quick fists and a cautious nature. Very interesting. Don’t forget what I’ve told you. I could find you a place where you’d do what you do best.”
Cauvin had heard that before from the Hand. “I’m grateful, my lord, but no thanks, I do my best with stone and a hammer.”
Mioklas shook his head with exaggerated sadness. “Think about it, Cauvin—talents like yours, they don’t last forever. You don’t want to waste them building walls, do you?”
“No, my lord—I mean, yes, my lord.” Omen or daydream, Cauvin imagined himself in the Ilsigi capital, hungry and looking for work—looking for a stoneyard but finding only a man who needed an obedient man with a mean face and hard fists.
“Think about it … and come back when you’re ready. I see great things on Sanctuary’s horizon. You could be a part of them. I’ve watched you become a man, Cauvin, working for the stoneyard. Why, you’re almost as much like family here as you are on Pyrtanis Street. There’s not a wall in this house that doesn’t have a bit of your sweat, maybe even a bit of your flesh and blood worked into it.”
“If you need another wall, my lord, or anything built from stone—”
“I’ll come looking for you, Cauvin. I kn
ow where to find you, don’t I? Now, I have work to do before the tide changes and my ship sails. Brevis will show you out. Brevis?”
The bodyguard led Cauvin to the high door.
“Mind where you’re walking,” Brevis advised as Cauvin descended the steps to the Processional. “You might step in something that clings.”
Cauvin nodded. He walked toward the harbor, paying no attention to where he put his feet. When the water was in front of him, he sat down on a piling. His breathing steadied, but not his mind. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees and head between his hands, trying to make sense of the forty-two shaboozh hanging heavy at his waist.
The Torch had been so certain that he’d been attacked by a Bloody Hand survivor. Whatever else Mioklas might do, he wouldn’t go near the Hand, not after what the Hand had done to his father. People didn’t forgive things like that, not even rich people. Yet when Cauvin had spoken the Torch’s name, Mioklas betrayed all the signs of a man with something to hide. What? Could the Torch have been wrong about the attack? Could Mioklas truly have plotted murder but not known the would-be murderer?
Froggin’ gods all be damned—Cauvin knew the Hand and its way better than any Imperial lord or Wrigglie magnate, but could he have misread the Copper Corner ambush?
Confusion became a throbbing pain behind Cauvin’s eyes. A sheep-shite stone-smasher wasn’t half clever enough to put these pieces together. He needed to talk to someone older and wiser—
No, he put that thought out of his mind. The Torch was the source of his misery.
Soldt? Frog all, Soldt was the Torch’s man, the Torch’s assassin. Bilibot’s winter tales were froggin’ full of assassins who betrayed the men who’d hired them. Froggin’ sure Soldt had had ample opportunity to correct any mistakes he might have made six nights ago, but—what was it that the S’danzo had said: Cauvin could trust Leorin because she was predictable. Shite for sure, Cauvin couldn’t predict Soldt.
Leorin herself? Because Cauvin had already given her his love and his trust and because, from the moment Mioklas had spread those forty-two shaboozh across the table, broadening his suspicions, Cauvin had seen Leorin in a brighter light. If it weren’t for the S’danzo’s cards—
No, Cauvin’s worries about his betrothed went deeper than paintings on stiffened parchment, deeper than the attack on the Torch. The seeds had been planted when she’d reappeared in his life two years earlier, and they grew—damn every god and goddess—each time she disappeared with another man. Shite for sure, Cauvin wanted to talk to Leorin. He wanted to get her out of the Unicorn, out of Sanctuary … Then, and only then, he’d tell her about the last few days. He wouldn’t—couldn’t—turn to her for advice while his own mind was a sucking mire.
“Move it, pud!”
A harsh voice and a sharp pain above his right ankle jolted Cauvin out of his thoughts. He blinked up at a burly man whose face was obscured by the sun. Before Cauvin could determine if this was a threat to be taken seriously, different hands clamped on his neck and shoulders. With a jerk, some unseen stranger tried to drag Cauvin off the piling.
He was Wrigglie; he endured insults, but once Cauvin had gotten away from the Hand, he’d sworn that he would not suffer manhandling. The oath had gotten him into more brawls than all his other bad habits combined. This time, after Cauvin swung wide, it not only got him clouted hard above his ear, it cost him his best shirt. The cloth tore when two men contested for the privilege of slamming him to his knees on the wharf planks. His left sleeve dangled around his wrist.
With an animal growl, Cauvin surged to his feet and renewed the fight. He grabbed one tormentor by his shirt, yanked the man close, and locked an arm around his head. Then Cauvin pounded the man’s face a few times before they were pulled apart. He wound up breaking a fall on the knee he’d bruised fighting Soldt the previous day. The pain cleared his mind; he stayed put, sniffing and panting.
“Azyuna’s mercy! I know this one. Pork all, Cauvin. What are you doing down here? Drunk out of your mind at this hour? Spiked on krrf or kleetel?”
Cauvin recognized Gorge, who usually prowled the Stairs, the Tween, and Pyrtanis Street, with two other guards whom he didn’t recognize, one with a very bloody nose. There was a bit of satisfaction in knowing he’d bloodied a city guard when there’d been three of them against one. “I wasn’t doing anything I shouldn’t. What are you doing down here? Couldn’t find anyone to roust up in the Tween?”
“We got visitors”—Gorge hooked a thumb toward the Ilsigi galley—“and they don’t like garbage around their property, or sitting on it, either—if you catch my meaning.”
“Froggin’ shite,” Cauvin replied, and tasted the blood dribbling down from his nose. He lifted his left arm to wipe his face with his dangling sleeve—
One of Gorge’s companions didn’t approve. They’d have been into it again if Gorge and the third guard hadn’t scrambled to keep them apart. Cauvin’s shirtsleeve lay on the ground. He reached for the cloth and thought better of it. The way his luck ran and with his shirt coming apart, it was a froggin’ miracle the guards hadn’t spotted the pouch on his belt or the Ilbarsi knife.
There wasn’t a law against a free man carrying a weapon in Sanctuary, but froggin’ sure, it wasn’t against the law to sit on the froggin’ pilings, either, and look what that had gotten Cauvin. He stayed on his aching knees while Gorge berated him, then got slowly to his feet.
“Stay off the wharf, Cauvin,” Gorge advised. “The captain there”—he hooked his thumb again, this time in the direction of a black-bearded man, head-and-shoulders taller than his mates and dressed in the dark blue breeches and leathers of the Ilsig king—“says he doesn’t like the look of you so close to the king’s ship.”
Cauvin couldn’t help it—he rolled his eyes in froggin’ disbelief.
“Yeah. Must be he’s mistaken you for someone else, but I don’t argue with him, and you don’t argue with me—Clear your pork butt out off the Wideway.”
“Right,” Cauvin agreed, retreating a long stride away from the water.
Then he remembered his torn-off sleeve. He only owned two shirts and couldn’t afford to walk away from the cloth. Gorge guessed Cauvin’s intent. The guard tossed the ratty sleeve into Cauvin’s hands before either of his companions objected.
“Keep going, Cauv—”
Cauvin did, but there had to be some mistake. He’d recognize the captain again—a man that size wasn’t easy to forget—but there was no reason for a galley captain to know him, even less for a royal Ilsigi to be wary of a sheep-shite Wriggle stone-smasher. No reason at all—or none that Cauvin wanted to imagine. He added the sleeve to the clutter at his waist and kept going.
There was a second reason for leaving the Wideway. A cloud had swallowed the sun while the watch was hassling him. Not just any cloud, but the leading fingers of a horizon-covering ridge of dark gray clouds. The wind had picked up, and it was warm for Esharia. Cauvin didn’t know storms the way seamen did, but warm winds off the sea in autumn usually meant the city was in for heavy weather. The galley captain and his crew were stuck in Sanctuary for another night. Lord Mioklas could wait another day to finish writing his letter. And outside the city walls, a dying old man was going to have to choke down his pride: an abandoned root cellar was no place to ride out an Esharia gale.
That was Soldt’s problem; Cauvin wasn’t going out to the ruins. If the assassin solved it—if he dragged the Torch from the ruins, then Cauvin would be at a loss for finding the old pud again, no matter what—
Good riddance! I can leave this froggin’ city with a clear conscience—
But as soon as Cauvin had that self-congratulatory thought, it began to slip away. He’d never know if the Torch were truly responsible for his sudden literacy. He’d never know what the old pud thought of the forty-two shaboozh Lord Mioklas had given him or whether the rich Wrigglie could possibly be in league with the Bloody Hand. And if he were … ? Or if he weren’t … ? Or he was in league with
someone, but he didn’t know that someone was in league with the Bloody Hand?
I don’t care. He’s an old man—unnaturally old, just like Mioklas said—and I’m leaving Sanctuary forever. Leorin and I. Together. We’re getting out. Going to Ilsig and never looking back. If the Hand’s here—If Mioklas set the Torch up—It’s a lot of froggin’ nothing to me. I don’t care!
Cauvin did care. His conscience whispered that he cared in so many ways that his gut knew he’d never leave the city if he counted them. If Cauvin listened to his conscience, he’d make his way to the ruins. To quiet his conscience, Cauvin needed a middle course—and found it when two girls hurried past, their hands covering their mouths, as though their fingers could keep their shrill, giggling laughter from his ears.
No wonder they’d laughed. Children laughed at Bilibot when he passed out on the street, and, froggin’ sure, Cauvin looked worse than Bilibot. His face was bloody. His shirt was in tatters. A torn sleeve dangled from his belt. Cauvin had one other shirt … folded beside his pallet in the stoneyard loft. The odds that he could swap shirts without Bec or Grabar or Mina taking notice of him weren’t good.
He also had forty-two shaboozh beating against his thigh and the name of a laundress at the Inn of Six Ravens who, according to Soldt, would fit him with a white-linen shirt for a soldat or less, if she liked his smile. Cauvin couldn’t count on his smile for water on a rainy day, and he had no idea how long it took to make a white-linen shirt, but maybe the laundress could repair the one he was wearing if he tempted her with a shiny shaboozh.
