Sanctuary
Page 55
Bec’s jaw dropped, and so did his arm. Cauvin kept a straight face until Grabar started laughing. Mina scolded them both, but even that sounded good to Cauvin—a sign that some things wouldn’t ever change.
Cauvin went up the loft ladder first, pausing to clear out a gods-all-be-damned infestation of spiderwebs that had sprung up overnight. His shoulders hadn’t cleared the floor hole when the Torch whispered his name. The lamp was lit and sitting in the sandbox near the Torch’s head. Shite for sure, the old pud didn’t look that much worse than he’d looked eight days before in the Temple of Ils. His breathing sounded odd, though, and the fire was gone from his eyes when he opened them.
“Come here, Cauvin.” The Torch’s skeletal arm rose a handspan above the straw.
Cauvin knelt. He took the old pud’s hand, but didn’t say anything. His mind was crammed with memories of a life he hadn’t lived and, despite its moments of heroism and sacrifice, Cauvin wasn’t tempted to say “thank you” for the rest.
“Do well, Cauvin. Do better than I did.”
Cauvin squeezed the hand he held. He still had nothing to say, but breathed in the Torch’s slowing rhythm until the old pud’s chest no longer moved. Cauvin let his held breath out with a sigh and swept his hand over the sightless eyes to close them.
“Is he … ?” Bec asked from the ladder.
Cauvin nodded. “It’s over for him.”
With a rending wail, Bec fell across the Torch’s body, but for Cauvin, it was just beginning.
Epilog
Winter had settled into Sanctuary. A raw wind blew off the sea, and snowflakes swirled through the air, never touching the ground. Two months had passed since Cauvin’s first visit to the Torch’s rooms. Most of the furnishings had been claimed by those who lived fulltime in the palace. Only camp stools, scroll-filled racks, and a herd of locked chests remained.
Cauvin stood back from the open window, avoiding the worst of the wind and beyond the sight of anyone in the forecourt who might be looking his way. His hands were cold and the finger that bore the Torch’s black-onyx ring was coldest of all. He wasn’t used to the ring. It got in the way when he laid red brick for the front of Tobus’s new house. Most days he left the ring buried in the lampbox sand in the loft.
Cauvin wore the ring when he went about on the Torch’s business or when he wore “good” clothes. This day he was doing both: honoring the old pud’s memory and wearing the soft suede breeches and linen shirt that Mina—not Galya—had stitched up for him. They’d come to an understanding, he and Mina—or she’d come to an understanding once she’d realized that Cauvin had the power to do more for her and Bec than she could possibly hope to do to him. Mina called him “son” now, and divvied the bacon equally among her three men.
A blare of trumpets commanded Cauvin’s attention. He abandoned a daydream—less a daydream than another voyage through the Torch’s memories—to watch four carts rumble under an archway on the far side of the courtyard. There were twenty-three men and woman in the carts—the survivors of Arizak’s campaign to purge Sanctuary of Dyareela’s reborn influence. The wet-wood smoke and subsequent searches flushed out forty-one disciples of the Bloody Hand, but when it came to interrogations the Irrune needed no lessons from their prisoners.
And when it came to executions, Cauvin couldn’t help but think that Leorin had been right: There was nothing wrong with a little terror, infrequently applied against those who everyone agreed deserved it.
The twenty-three prisoners had been bound hand and foot before they entered the forecourt. They were clothed in bruises and rags and fully aware of what awaited them. Of the twenty-three, Cauvin counted three who loudly maintained their faith in the Mother of Chaos and two who’d experienced a conversion and were invoking the entire Ilsigi pantheon. The rest were silent, resigned to their fates. One by one they were pulled down from the carts and sewn into lengths of bright Irrune tent carpeting. Then the rolled carpets were dragged in the center of the forecourt where they were arranged in a pattern that Arizak’s shaman brother, Zarzakhan, had divined from the entrails of a snow-white goat.
Directly beneath Cauvin’s window, the Dragon and his cohort kept their horses on short reins as Arizak’s shaman brother, Zarzakhan, walked among them exhorting their god, Irrunega, to keep them safe as they administered the tribe’s justice by riding their horses back and forth through the forecourt until every traitor was dead and their blood had soaked through the carpets into the sand. Zarzakhan and the Dragon had reason to be worried. Treason was a rare and usually solitary crime among the Irrune. They’d never had to ride their horses over so many lumpish carpets, nor in the close quarters of a palace forecourt.
Arizak and Zarzakhan had considered other punishments. They could have tied the traitors limb by limb to the tails of horses who were then driven in four directions of paradise, but that would have been just as dangerous in the forecourt. Nadalya had suggested impalement over burning straw, but that was reserved for women who committed adultery and men who raped virgins.
Shite for sure, Leorin had had a valid point.
Cauvin’s hands were clammy as he waited, and he wished he’d skipped breakfast. Froggin’ sure, he wished he was laying bricks or smashing stone somewhere, but when a man didn’t kill his own snakes, he at least had to watch those who did.
“Odd,” Soldt said. The duelist stood a half step behind Cauvin. “Once they’re rolled up like meat pies, they stop struggling.”
“That’s because they’re dead.”
Soldt and Cauvin spun together, both reaching for weapons, though only Soldt had his drawn before recognizing Arizak’s youngest son, Raith, who looked the way Cauvin’s stomach felt.
Cauvin asked, “You were able to persuade your father?”
“No, but I’ve paid the men with the needles and thread to strangle the prisoners as they finish. There’s no reason to prolong suffering, even for the Hand. Besides, there are more traitors than my brother has riders. The horses will balk before the punishment’s complete.”
“Strangle,” Soldt mused. “How appropriate. Ah—they’ve rolled the last one: Twenty-three rugs in a row.”
Raith sat on one of the stools. “There’d be twenty-four, if Mother had gotten her way.”
“Your father and uncle agreed that wouldn’t accomplish anything,” Cauvin said gently. “Better to leave Naimun alive—a baited trap attracting all manner of vermin.”
“I hope you’re right. You don’t know Naimun.”
Raith was right that Cauvin didn’t know Naimun. He’d successfully resisted that honor and would have done the same with Raith himself, but Arizak had insisted. The Torch had made Cauvin the heir of his secrets, his wisdom, his wealth, and—above all else—his headaches.
Arizak wasn’t so bad, and Raith was already a friend, but his mother, Nadalya, was Mina with real power. And then there was Vashanka. The Torch’s exiled god had started appearing in Cauvin’s dreams. Cauvin couldn’t say which was worse: the god’s visits or the mere fact that he was dreaming regularly, vividly, and that sometimes, in his dreams, he did things that resembled witchcraft.
Cauvin marveled that no one had suspected the Torch of witchcraft. froggin’ sure, there was no way the Torch’s luck could be explained by prayer, especially prayer to a banished god. Cauvin wasn’t a witch; at least he didn’t think he was. Vashanka said, in Vashanka’s nightmare way, that the Torch’s witchblood hadn’t kindied until he was older than Cauvin and that Cauvin knew as much about his ancestors as the Torch had known, which was to say froggin’ nothing. Vashanka had also reminded Cauvin that the mortal world was very small and very young. Everybody was related to everybody else; everybody had a drop or two of witchblood hiding in the pit of his heart.
How many drops did it take to steal a soul?
The trumpets blared again. The Dragon raised his war cry and led his cohort in a gallop across the forecourt. One of the horses balked on the first pass. In the press and confusion, it went d
own with its rider. Their screams echoed in the Torch’s bedchamber. Raith bolted from the room, and Cauvin turned away. Soldt was unperturbed.
“Raith was right. There should have been twenty-four carpets out there, not counting Prince Naimun.”
“She escaped,” Cauvin replied, icily.
“You’re a fool, Cauvin, if you think she’s not coming back, and coming back for you.”
“I might be wrong, but I’m not a sheep-shite fool. I’ll be ready for her, whatever she decides to do.”
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
SANCTUARY: AN EPIC NOVEL OF THIEVES’ WORLD
Copyright © 2002 by Lynn Abbey
Thieves’ World and Sanctuary are registered trademarks belonging to Lynn Abbey and are used with permission.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
eISBN 9781429969987
First eBook Edition : May 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Abbey, Lynn.
Sanctuary : an epic novel of Thieves’ world / Lynn Abbey.—1st ed.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
ISBN 0-312-87491-X (acid-free paper)
I. Title.
PS3551.B23 S26 2002
813’.54—dc21
2001059660
First Edition: June 2002
Table of Contents
Title Page
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Epilog
Copyright Page