by Lynn Abbey
“You’re Lord Torchholder’s heir, Cauvin. You can’t leave Sanctuary.”
“froggin’ watch me. I don’t care how much gold and silver he’s got hidden away. I can’t be bought, Soldt. I’m not his froggin’ heir.”
“You won’t get away, lad.”
“What, are you going to stop me?” Cauvin reached inside the cloak and withdrew the Ilbarsi knife.
“Put that away. I’m trying to help you.”
“Froggin’ hells of Hecath you are. You’re his man—”
“Put it away, Cauvin. You’ve been chosen.”
“froggin’ forget ’chosen.’ The old pud can choose any sheep-shite fool he wants but, shite for sure, I’m not choosing back.”
“Lord Torchholder didn’t choose you! He wouldn’t wish his curse on his worst enemy—not that he hasn’t considered it.”
“Curse? Damn him to Hecath’s coldest hell—What curse?” Frog all, a curse could explain everything: the dreams, the veil of sparks in the old Unicorn’s basement, even the sudden ability to read languages he couldn’t speak. “I should’ve left him there. I should’ve let that froggin’ damn Hiller kick his froggin’ brains out his froggin’ nose.”
“A figure of speech, only. I don’t mean a true curse … no drinking blood or turning into a wyre. Only Lord Torchholder considers it a curse—the curse that keeps him tied to Sanctuary. He speaks of the city as though it were a living creature that can’t be mastered or taught; it requires a keeper—for its secrets, if nothing more. Lord Torchholder would say that Sanctuary chose him, and now that he’s dying, it’s chosen you to replace him.”
“froggin’ sure, the Torch and froggin’ Sanctuary can just forget about me replacing him. Sanctuary can keep its own froggin’ secrets …”
Cauvin’s voice trailed as he recalled the dreams and visions of the last week. Had the Torch gone through similar turmoil? Were they adversaries or kindred victims? Hard to believe—Impossible to believe that anyone or anything—including Sanctuary—could make a victim of the Torch. The old pud was pulling the strings. He had to be.
“I can read,” Cauvin declared.
“The city’s not going to offer you a written—”
“No, that’s not what I meant. Yesterday, when you handed me that map of the bazaar, I could read it. I never learned letters, never needed them. Before I was supposed to meet you, the Torch sent me after that froggin’ blue-leather mask. To get it, I went digging in the Maze—digging in the froggin’ cellar of what used to be the Vulgar Unicorn. I tripped something—”
“Defensive wards—Sanctuary’s a desert where sorcery’s concerned. Takes a lot of pull to set them. Not so in other cities. You’d have them at your stoneyard, in addition to a dog.”
Cauvin disagreed. “Not defensive. The froggin’ Torch wanted me to touch that froggin’ brick before I went into the cellar. It wasn’t enough that I got the froggin’ mask; I froggin’ had to meet the froggin’ black ghost who’d worn it. Then, yesterday, you handed me that map. Soldt—” Cauvin met the assassin’s eyes—“Soldt, I can read a language I can’t froggin’ speak except for cursing.”
He hadn’t considered what reaction he’d get for his confession, but it wasn’t the dead-stop, slack-jawed concern plastered on Soldt’s moonlit face.
“What?” he demanded. “What’s going through your mind, Soldt?”
“Nothing.”
“froggin’ sure that’s not ’nothing’ on your face. Shalpa’s mercy, if you know something, tell me.”
“I said to him once, ‘How do you keep all that treasure safe?’ He said it was in caches throughout the city and warded. The wards were tough enough to turn an unlucky rat into a turnip, subtle enough to pass him through, him—Lord Torchholder—alone.”
“So, if these wards were so tough, how did I get through? It felt like there were froggin’ fireflies inside my skin, but no froggin’ turnips.”
“It recognized you, Cauvin. Lord Torchholder’s warding recognized you, which means in some essential way you and Lord Torchholder are one and the same. I wonder if you can read Caronni or the northern script, Nisi.”
“Froggin’ shite. I’ll kill that old pud. If he’s not dead already, I swear I’m going to froggin tear him limb from bony limb.”
“I couldn’t let you do that, lad.”
They’d come to Sendakis Street, where Tobus the dyer had a redbrick house and wanted another beside it; and where a man headed for the Inn of Six Ravens had to turn south.
“You’d kill me?” Cauvin asked before they separated.
“I’d stop you. While Lord Torchholder lives, I’ll protect him.”
“You weren’t there last week.”
Soldt shrugged. “I didn’t expect to be here now.” He hesitated, choosing his words, or his lies. “My work in Caronne finished sooner than I’d expected, and the winds were highly favorable.”
“Not highly. If the winds had been highly favorable, you’d have taken care of the Hand, or died trying, like any good bodyguard.”
“I’m not Lord Torchholder’s bodyguard. I’m not beholden to him, nor he to me. I’m not Rankan, either. I don’t attend Lord Serripines’ Foundation Day festivities.”
“What are you and he, then?”
“Say we’ve become useful friends.”
Cauvin asked a question with his eyes alone.
“Ten years ago—No, more nearly fifteen. Time flies. I accepted a goodly number of coronations from nameless faces, with the promise of more later—much more—if I’d pay a short visit to Sanctuary and put an end to the life of a most troublesome man. Lord Torchholder was an old man even then and I—I was no older than you. A newly made master of my craft and far too confident to wonder why they’d come to me when more experienced duelists could have been found.
“Needless to say, I stalked and plotted myself straightaway into Lord Torchholder’s trap. He offered two choices; I negotiated a third. We’ve done well by each other, and Sanctuary’s become the place where I am when I’m not somewhere else. The city’s been good to me, whatever it’s been to Lord Torchholder. Most of those who think they want to hire my services hesitate before venturing into a city where the stuff of sorcery’s scarce as hen’s teeth. But messengers do come. I might leave tomorrow, or the next day, for Ranke or the kingdom, or wherever else vengeance calls. I was born on a ship, Cauvin; I have no roots. I’m not the man to serve the soul of this city.”
“Neither am I,” Cauvin agreed. “Maybe we’ll be on the same froggin’ ship. You wouldn’t get in my way, would you?”
Soldt shook his head. “Far from it, lad—but I’d try to be on a different ship. Any captain who takes money from you is likely to watch his ship founder before it casts its last mooring rope.”
“Thanks for the warning.” Cauvin took a backward stride toward Pyrtanis Street. A stray thought crossed his mind. He dug into the broker’s purse and flipped a shaboozh at Soldt. “For Galya. Tell her, thanks, but I won’t be needing that shirt she’s making for me. And, thanks, too, for passing my message to you. Maybe Mioklas is Sanctuary’s man. He’s got the wealth and the ambition … and he’ll be looking for vengeance once he finds out the Hand’s back. You can work for him.”
“Not a chance. A man’s got to have someplace where he can be seen by his neighbors. For me, that’s Sanctuary. I don’t work here— except to teach a few youngsters how to stay alive: you, Raith at the palace—”
“I’m not the Torch’s heir,” Cauvin insisted. “I appreciate the lesson you gave me, and the advice, even about changing my shirt. But this is good-bye. Leorin and I are leaving Sanctuary.”
He held out his hand. Soldt’s remained at his side.
“I’ll wish you good luck, Cauvin; you’ll need it, but I’ll hold my good-byes until I see you standing on a ship’s deck.”
“Suit yourself,” Cauvin said and walked away.
Chapter Sixteen
The gate was barred when Cauvin arrived at the stoneyard.
He could have put his shoulder against the planks, raised a racket, roused the dog, and awakened his foster parents—not to mention everyone else on Pyrtanis Street. He’d done that once, about a month after Grabar led him out of the palace. Once had been enough. After that, Cauvin had hammered out a set of footholds near the east corner.
He hauled himself to the top of the wall, waited for the dog to recognize his scent, then dropped onto a heap of broken bricks and scree. A few stones rolled and clattered, but not enough to awaken the lightest sleeper—and considering the way Grabar snored, a light sleeper would never rest at the stoneyard.
Flower whickered when Cauvin passed her stall. He bribed her with oats and clambered up the ladder to his loft. The roof had leaked, the way roofs did when the thatch was starting to rot and gale-force winds drove rain deep into the straw. Cauvin’s pallet was against the northern wall, the coldest wall in winter, the hottest in summer, but leeward during sea storms. His blankets were dry.
Cauvin shed his new clothes without lighting a lamp. He spread the cloak over the blankets for extra warmth and crawled between the lowest layers. He’d had a long and troubling day, but was satisfied with how talking to Soldt had ended it. His mind was drifting toward sleep before his eyes closed—
Swish! Bang!
The lower door opened and crashed against the wall. Cauvin cursed himself for forgetting to latch it. He’d have to climb down the ladder … butt naked. He could get dressed … At the very least he’d have to pull on his boots …
“Cauvin! Cauvin!”
That was Grabar shouting, and not from anger. There was an edge on the stone master’s voice that Cauvin had never heard before and couldn’t deny.
“Coming!” he called, and groped for the clothes he’d shed only a few moments before. His breeches were still warm when he grasped them.
Grabar couldn’t wait. “Where’s Bec?” The ladder creaked as he climbed. “Where’s the boy? We thought—prayed—he was with you.”
The fabric of Cauvin’s breeches fell through his fingers. “No. I haven’t seen Bec all day. He was—” Cauvin couldn’t finish.
“He was what?”
Cauvin found his breeches and cinched them tight. “He wasn’t with me.” Painfully tight.
“He’s gone—After you left, I thought he went to market with the wife; the wife thought he was with me, but he’d run off … run off without telling either of us.”
In his mind’s eye, Cauvin saw what must have happened: Soldt and Bec at the stoneyard gate after his day at the ruins. Bec saying farewell, going inside. Soldt believing Bec was where he belonged, where he’d be safe for the storm. And Bec slipping out again as soon as no one was watching.
Damn Bec’s puppy-dog eyes. His parents loved him so much, they couldn’t see that he was a practiced liar. Cauvin had to tell the truth even though—shite for sure—the blame for everything was going to twist around his neck, not Bec’s. Good thing he’d already planned to leave the stoneyard.
He stamped into one boot, and said, “The boy’s out at the ruins—where we’ve been smashing brick.”
“How … ?” Grabar snarled, but relief got the better of him. “Are you certain?”
“Fairly. Coming back from the Unicorn, I met a man who’d seen him. Thought he’d walked him home, too.”
There wasn’t enough light in the loft for Cauvin to see the boot he held in his hand if he held it in front of his face, but it didn’t take light to sense the change in Grabar’s mood.
“What man? Who? What was he doing out there? What was Bec doing? What’s going on, Cauvin? If something’s happened to the boy—” Grabar let the threat hang unfinished; it was more potent that way.
“Husband! Where are you?” Mina’s shrill question was followed by the wildly flickering light of a lamp held in a trembling hand. “Where have you gone?”
Cauvin and Grabar’s eyes met in the faint light. Cauvin saw his foster father standing halfway up the ladder, nightshirt loose on his shoulders, nightcap lopsided on his head. Worried shadows played across Grabar’s face. A moment ago Cauvin’s thoughts were about blame, injustice, and his own future. Those selfish thoughts disappeared, replaced by a single, burning need: Find Bec.
Grabbing his shirt on the way, he stamped into the second boot as he strode toward the ladder. Grabar retreated ahead of him.
“Has he got Becvar?” Mina demanded, then, when she saw Cauvin: “What have you done with our boy?”
Cauvin dropped down, barely touching the rungs. “Nothing—but I know where he went.”
If Cauvin hadn’t recognized Mina’s voice, he wouldn’t have recognized her. The tears streaming from her eyes had aged her face twenty years since morning.
“Where? Where did you take him?”
“I didn’t take him anywhere. I was in the city all day. Bec went by himself to the ruins to visit—”
Cauvin paused for breath before admitting who was holed up in the abandoned estate. Mina didn’t give him the chance to finish.
“The ruins? What ruins? Where? Did he go to Land’s End? We’ll go there—The good lord Serripines will help us.”
Cauvin was speechless: Trust Mina to find an Imperial opportunity in her beloved son’s disappearance. Thank the damn gods that Grabar could answer Mina.
“The ruined estate where Cauvin’s been collecting bricks for the front of Tobus’s new house.”
Mina’s mouth worked but no sounds came out. When the dam of silence burst, her rage was directed equally at her husband and her foster son. “Fools! Both of you! Fools! Put the Savankh in my hands! Let it burn my soul to ashes, if I’m wrong. I’ve tried, Sweet Sabellia, I’ve tried to protect him from both of you. You wouldn’t be satisfied until he was out in the sun, breaking his back, ruining his hands? I can see him—I can see him in front of me—” She blinked and focused on Cauvin. “I can see my son struggling with that hammer, trying to do the work you were too lazy to do. In the city all day—In the city whoring with your Unicorn bitch while your poor brother worked himself to exhaustion. Too tired to come home, he was, I’m sure of it. Too tired, he lay down to rest and—Sweet Sabellia! The storm! He’s drowned! Blown away and drowned! You’ve killed him!”
Froggin’ sure, it was clear where Bec had gotten the gift for spinning tales.
“He wasn’t trying to smash stone—”
“Hecath’s hells!” Mina interrupted. “How would you know? You haven’t worked all week. You may have fooled my husband, but you haven’t fooled me. I’ve seen the cart. Empty! You’ve been idling. It’s gotten to be a habit. A bad habit—Sweet Sabellia—look at you! New breeches! And your hair cut like some Red Lantern fancy-boy. Where’d you get the money?” She gasped. “What have you done with my boy?”
Cauvin tried to dodge his foster mother’s lunge for his throat, but she wouldn’t be thrown off. In self-defense, he seized her wrists and shook her hard.
“Frog all, woman! Bec’s not smashing stone or bricks. He’s out at the ruins because the Torch is out there—Imperial Lord Molin Torchholder—and the old pud wouldn’t come inside the city, not even with a gale blown up.”
Mina was too wrought to listen, but Grabar heard and separated his wife and foster son with his hands. “What’s this you say, Cauvin? Don’t tell us lies, son. Bad as it may be, you’ll make it worse with lies. The gods all know Lord Torchholder’s dead. We saw his funeral three days past.”
“The Torch isn’t dead. I don’t know who roasted on the pyre the other day, but it wasn’t him because I found him, still alive, inside the Temple of Ils, on my way to the ruins the morning Batty said the guards found the bodies at the crossing—”
“The Temple of Ils?” Grabar sputtered, “The Torch was an Imperial pr—” He fell silent. “From the beginning, Cauvin—what leaves you thinking that the Torch isn’t dead?”
Mina wasn’t interested. “He lies, husband! Ask him what he’s done with our son! Make him answer!”
“Quiet, wife!”
Grabar rarely shouted. When he did, only a sheep-shite fool would fail to listen. Mina was many things, but not that foolish. She bit her lip white, but said nothing as Cauvin began with the guards at the Pyrtanis Street crossing. It was a long tale, too long and cold for a man and woman in the nightclothes to hear without shivering. Grabar led them all back to the house. Mina reluctantly kindled the hearth.
“Waste of wood,” she muttered. “He’s lying. All he does is lie. He’s killed our boy for money.” But even Mina realized that made no sense—who would pay Cauvin to kill Bec? So Mina found an accusation she, at least, found more believable. “He’s sold our boy … sold him to the brothels on Red Lantern Street.”
Cauvin had to defend himself against that. “Frog all—”
Grabar held up his hand. “That night, after the bodies were found, I went up to the Well. Teera told a tale—how the guard had caught a Hiller lighting out of the Thunderer’s old temple. Said he’d been sleeping off a drunk when he got attacked. The guard wouldn’t have that. They’d marked him for a thief, and soon enough he confessed he’d waylaid an old man but swore up, down, and sideways that it was a trap—the old man’s son showed up out of nowhere and pounded the Hiller, who had the bruises to show he’d lost a fight. The guard wouldn’t have that, either—except they couldn’t find the old man or his son and the Hiller had no swag—”
“Damn all liars,” Mina complained. “Our boy is missing, this one’s telling lies, and now you’re repeating lies about Hillers and ghosts.”
“Because, wife, I’m thinking that Cauvin did walk the Promise that morning, and the Torch, he’s an old man by anyone’s reckoning.”
“Lies. He tells lies!”
“Sometimes,” Grabar agreed, “but mostly he gets into fights.” He shot a sidelong glance Cauvin’s way.
“I marked the man for a Hiller. I’d’ve chased him home, except the Torch was wounded—wounded bad—but not dead. I wanted to take him to the palace, but he made me take him outside the walls instead.”
