Cauvin’s thoughts were behind him on the Paddling Duck’s rickety stairs, expecting the S’danzo to burst out her door and hurl the box at his back. He’d forgotten about the watchdog until it lunged up the stairway, teeth bared and snarling.
“Down,” he commanded it, and, “Go away!”
The second was a sheep-shite stupid mistake. He’d been the one to teach the stoneyard dog to attack when it heard those words. Cauvin found himself trapped on the stairs long enough to conjure up another handful of questions for the S’danzo. But she’d been right about answers: The more answers he had, the less freedom, too. He made his choices based on the answers he had and, as the dog went back to its shaded den beneath the stairs, Cauvin resolved to get Leorin out of Sanctuary, even if it meant confronting the Hand, or the Bloody Mother of Chaos Herself.
Stinking Street marked the west-side border between the Shambles and the Maze, and though Cauvin knew his way to the Unicorn best from the east, midmorning was a fairly safe time of day for wanderers, even in the Maze.
He was tempted to revisit the Torch’s atrium armory. If he and Leorin were leaving Sanctuary, they’d need money, particularly if they followed another decision he’d made while waiting out the watchdog. Rather than walk out of the city—which committed them to a long, footsore journey and left open the possibility that they could always turn around, and walk back—they would buy passage on the next ship to Ilsig. There’d be no turning around once a ship left the harbor and, from what Cauvin had heard, they’d be in the kingdom’s capital a week later.
The cost of an Ilsig passage was measured in shaboozh, not padpols. Cauvin had three gold coronations from Captain Sinjon’s box. Three coronations was a fortune on Pyrtanis Street, but was it enough to get one person to the kingdom’s capital, let alone two? He’d feel better with a purse filled with heavy Ilsigi silver to go with his Imperial coins, and the best source of shaboozh lay in the cellar of a ruined Vulgar Unicorn. The preserved armor of Tempus Thales should get him and Leorin to Ilsig and keep them on their feet until they found livelihoods. Cauvin had gotten as far as imagining to whom he could trade the armor, when the voice of his conscience shouted—
For the love of Shipri—talk to Leorin first! Tell her what’s happened— all of what’s happened—and get her advice. She’s no sheep-shite fool; she’s made for thinking—
A shiver ran down Cauvin’s back. The people who’d said that Leorin was made for thinking were the same as said he’d never be more than a sheep-shite fool. Cauvin knew what the Hand had taught him; he didn’t know what they’d taught Leorin after they’d taken her behind the walls …
Cauvin caught himself on the verge of suspicion. She loves me. The S’danzo said that Leorin loves me and nothing, nothing at all, changes that. Love is enough … It’s got to be.
He turned toward the Unicorn—the new Unicorn.
The tavern looked smaller by daylight, just one more warped doorway, framed with unfinished wood, opening onto an alley with a slippery gutter running down its middle. The door stood open; anyone could wander inside where, without its lamps and candles, the common room was darker by daylight than it was at night. Abandoned mugs scattered across the tables scented the air with stale beer and sour wine.
A solitary wench—an unbudded girl with long, braided brown hair—collected the mugs. She looked Cauvin up and down once he’d cleared the threshold and, judging him no concern of hers, went back to work. A fresh keg had been rolled up to the bar; the tools to tap it lay on the floor, as though the keeper had gone off in search of an assistant.
The upper-room stairs beckoned, but Cauvin resisted their invitation. No matter that Cauvin knew exactly which room was Leorin’s or his determination to get his beloved out of Sanctuary, he wasn’t about to knock unexpected on her door. He sat at a table, waiting for the keeper or a familiar wench to appear, and was still waiting when the girl headed out of the commons with the last of the dirty mugs.
Realizing that he could be sitting alone until midafternoon, he called: “Have you seen Leorin this morning?”
The girl set her mug-filled bowl down with a clanking thud. “Who’s asking?” She might be too young to serve customers, but she knew how the Unicorn worked.
“A friend,” Cauvin replied; he didn’t give his name to Unicorn strangers either.
“She’s gone.”
Cauvin’s heart skipped a beat. “Gone? Gone where?”
The girl shrugged. “How should I know? I heard Mimise say she left last night.” She put one arm on her hip and cocked her body around it, imitating the wenches at work. “Why’re you looking for Leorin?”
“I was in the quarter and wanted to see her. We’re friends.”
“She left with a man,” the girl said with a voice both childish and seductive.
A bad taste rose in Cauvin’s mouth. Once they were gone, he’d froggin’ sure find a way to earn enough money that his wife didn’t go off with other men. “I’ll come back later … She’ll be working tonight?”
“Maybe … maybe not.” The girl twirled the tip of one braid against her lips, then caught it with her teeth.
“I’ll take my chances.” Cauvin made a hasty retreat into the clear light of morning.
There was another way to gather up enough money for passage out of Sanctuary, an easier way than trading the Torch’s treasures, at least for Cauvin’s mood as he stalked out of the Maze. It would mean keeping money that was owed to the stoneyard, something he’d never considered doing before, but the moment Cauvin began to think of abandoning Grabar, Mina, and Bec—the only true family he’d known—other previously unthinkable thoughts became possible.
Jerbrah Mioklas—Lord Mioklas to the likes of Cauvin—owed the stoneyard a froggin’ pile of money because Mioklas’s father had been one of the first sheep-shite stupid Wrigglies to invite the Servants of Dyareela into his home on the Processional. The old patriarch had met the same flayed fate as Cauvin’s mother. The family would have fled to Land’s End, had they been golden-eyed Imperials, but being Wrigglies, they’d gone to ground in a farm village north of Sanctuary.
Lord Mioklas had reclaimed the family mansion at about the same time as Grabar claimed a foster son from the palace. A reasonable man would have realized that his childhood home was beyond salvage. A reasonable man would have torn the whole place down and maybe moved to another froggin’ city.
Lord Mioklas wasn’t a reasonable man. He was determined to have his home back, better than memory, if it was the last thing he or Grabar did. Grabar or Cauvin. Half of what Cauvin knew about stone he’d learned at the Mioklas mansion. Last spring, when Mioklas was ready to repair the perfume garden, Cauvin had done the work himself, shaping hundreds of stones by hand, then fitting them into a swirling wall that stood sturdy without a dollop of mortar between its stones and whispered gently when rain trickled between its stones. It was the best stonework Cauvin had done—his masterpiece, if he’d been a proper apprentice or if Sanctuary needed two stone masters.
Come high summer when the wall was finished, Mioklas had hosted a feast to celebrate the rebirth of his perfume garden. He’d invited every Wrigglie who mattered, the Irrune from the palace, and all the froggin’ Imperials from Land’s End. Mina complained the markets were empty for a week. Then Mioklas sent his housekeeper to Pyrtanis Street, pleading poverty and saying it would be autumn before he could even begin to pay his debt for the wall.
Grabar hadn’t argued. Shite for sure, they knew the man’s ways, and there would always be more stonework to be done at his mansion. When Mioklas decided what he wanted done next—and not one day sooner—his housekeeper would show up with enough silver to soothe even Mina’s easily ruffled feathers. Until then, they’d let it ride. It wasn’t as though Grabar had money tied up in the stone Cauvin had used—they’d scavenged the rock from another ruined garden. The debt in Mina’s eyes was labor only—Cauvin’s sheep-shite labor, day after froggin’ day.
Promises were promises. They were well into Esharia, the second full month of autumn and past time for Lord Mioklas to lay down his debts—or as much would buy two passages to Ilsig.
One block from the Processional, Cauvin came to an alley that led, even here in the wealthiest quarter of Sanctuary, to a courtyard where the scars of fire, storm, and the Bloody Hand of Dyareela were still clear on the abandoned buildings. Cauvin scaled a naked wall and picked his way carefully across a balcony that was more gap than wood. Next autumn, it might be gone altogether, but this year it still provided the best view of Mioklas’s perfume garden and Cauvin’s winding wall within it.
Cauvin stood in silence a moment, admiring his own craft. The mansion bustled with the servants a rich man needed to keep himself happy. One was a grizzle-bearded bodyguard with whom Cauvin had tangled before. He carried a sword and knew how to use it, but his presence assured Cauvin that Mioklas was at home and working as rich men worked: clean clothes, clean hands, and seated on cushions before a polished table.
After just one of Soldt’s lessons, Cauvin wasn’t sheep-shite stupid enough to think he’d win any challenge with a rich man’s bodyguard, but the guard had removed his sword belt, the better to hide under the gold-and-amber trees with a woman. Cauvin could have had his hands on Lord Mioklas’s neck before the guard knew there was an extra man in the garden, if that had been what Cauvin had wanted to do. It wasn’t. The only reason he’d climbed to the balcony was to see his stonework. If he got what he wanted, he’d never see it again.
There were two doors to a rich man’s home—the high door where his family and peers made their entrances and the low door near the storerooms for servants and tradesmen. When Cauvin worked on the wall, he’d come and gone without complaint through the low door, but when he came to settle debts he climbed the stone steps to the brightly painted high door and let the bronze ring strike hard against the plate beneath it. Within moments a woman’s face appeared at a barred round window and quickly vanished.
He could imagine the messages whispered from one servant to the next: He’s here again—That sheep-shite stone-smasher from Pyrtanis Street—You tell the master—No, you tell him—
Just when Cauvin was about to hammer the door a second time, it creaked and cracked open.
“We receive tradesmen below,” the housekeeper snarled, as though he’d never laid a sheepshite eye on Cauvin before.
“Tell Lord Mioklas that Cauvin, Grabar’s son, is here on business.”
“Lord Mioklas is not at home—”
The housekeeper tried to shut the door. He wasn’t quick enough, or strong enough. Cauvin slapped his palm against the wood and effortlessly held the door open against the housekeeper’s best efforts.
“I know the pud’s here, in his workroom, counting his coins.”
“He’s not expecting you—”
“That’s his froggin’ problem, not mine and not yours either, unless you don’t take me to see him.”
Though the housekeeper sported a tuft of black beard on his chin, the rest of his face bore the soft, unfinished features of a lifelong eunuch—not someone who was likely to stand his ground against a stone-smasher. In fact, he hadn’t on the other occasions when Cauvin had come to collect a debt. Cauvin put his strength into his arm and, straightening his elbow, moved the door—and the housekeeper with it—far enough to get across the threshold.
“You won’t cause trouble, will you?” the housekeeper pleaded.
“Not if you get your ass turned around and take me to Mioklas. Or, I could take myself. I know the froggin’ way. I’ve been here how many times before? Your froggin’ lord doesn’t pay his debts. He’s froggin’ greedy, and he’s froggin’ cheap. I’ll wager he doesn’t pay you on time, either; does he?”
The housekeeper shot Cauvin a look sharp enough to draw blood but didn’t deny the accusation. He led Cauvin down a corridor and stairway each painted with murals of Ilsig’s gods and Ilsig’s glory. Cauvin counted three braziers, each piled high with charcoal and ready for the flame, ready to heat the froggin’ corridor.
Mioklas’s bodyguard, his sword now properly belted below his waist, blocked the workroom door. “You’re here to make trouble?”
“Lord Mioklas said autumn. It’s been froggin’ autumn for weeks now. We were expecting him at the yard. He should’ve been expecting me.”
“Let him in, Brevis,” the froggin’ lord himself called from behind Brevis’s back.
Brevis—Cauvin had forgotten the man’s name until he’d heard it again—stepped back, putting himself inside the workroom before Cauvin entered it. They exchanged keep-your-froggin’-hands-to-your-froggin’ -self glances as Mioklas rose from his chair. He was a few years younger than Grabar and in better shape than either Grabar or most rich men nearing the end of their prime. His eyes were sharp, his handshake firm and freely given—even to a man who might make trouble.
“How’s the garden?” Cauvin asked, freeing his hand.
“A delight. Would you care to see it?” Mioklas beckoned Cauvin toward the door behind his table, the door through which Cauvin had watched him moments earlier. “I’ve planted evergreens and gathered driftwood ornaments for the winter—”
Cauvin stayed put. “Up on Pyrtanis Street, we’re gathering driftwood for the froggin’ hearth. You know what I’m here for, Lord Mioklas.” He hadn’t meant to swear, not this early in the conversation, but oaths and curses were part of him, like breathing.
“It has been an unsettled season, Cauvin—I wouldn’t expect you to fully understand. With Arizak dwelling in the palace now, our Irrune are preoccupied with their own affairs. The customs we’d cobbled together—who does what, when, and how between them and us—have unraveled.” The man winced dramatically. “Not unraveled ; I wouldn’t want you to leave here thinking that the peace and security of Sanctuary are in any way jeopardized. It’s merely that Arizak is as much a stranger to Sanctuary today as he was the day he came through the gates we’d left open for him. More so, perhaps, because we’d come to so many arrangements with his wife and Lord Naimun, so many accommodations for their comfort and ours—”
Cauvin cut him off. “That the last thing you wanted was Lord Naimun’s froggin’ father back in Sanctuary, poking his nose into your accommodations and trailing his full-grown Dragon-son in behind him. Sorting out the palace is your problem, I just want my money—our money—so we can keep warm this winter.”
Another slip of the tongue. He wasn’t a good liar, especially when he was wrestling a guilty conscience.
Mioklas stood tall and silent, his hands folded calmly, intricately beneath his chin while his eyes all but disappeared. “The welfare of Sanctuary is not a shadow play with puppets dancing behind a sheet. Lives and livelihoods are at stake here—your own and your father’s. You’ll do a lot worse than shiver up on Pyrtanis Street if that wound kills Arizak this winter and the wrong son inherits.”
Cauvin considered saying something snide: When there’s no froggin’ wood in winter on Pyrtanis Street it doesn’t matter who’s in sheep-shite palace, or: Froggin’ sure, I’ve already done worse than shiver. Then he considered what the Torch might say, or black-cloaked Soldt. He kept his mouth shut, sensing that silence, along with quickly raised eyebrows, was more powerful than words.
“I’ve known you since your father pulled you out of the palace,” Mioklas informed Cauvin. “You’ve got a strong back, and you’re good with your hands, but you haven’t the least notion what’s good for you or Sanctuary—”
Cauvin pointed at Mioklas’s nose. “I know which one of Arizak’s sons is right for Sanctuary—” He folded his fingers into a brawny fist. “And his name isn’t Naimun per-Arizak.”
“Brevis!”
The bodyguard approached Cauvin’s back. The man could kill him, no questions asked: It was a crime to attack a nobleman, but neither the trial nor the punishment occurred in Hall of Justice at the palace. And if Brevis didn’t kill him, Grabar would likely toss Cauvin out the door when word got back to Pyrtanis Street. Cauvin lowered his arm, yet didn’t unmake his fist. Brevis stopped, waiting for his master’s next words—
“You and every other pigheaded Wrigglie in Sanctuary. The lot of you haven’t got the sense Great Ils gave a single ant. Young Arizak—the Dragon—do you think he’s going to build walls with stone from your precious stoneyard? The Dragon and his sikkintair of a mother won’t—”
“This pigheaded Wrigglie’s tired of listening to some other pigheaded Wrigglie tell me what I’m thinking. I wasn’t thinking about the froggin’ Dragon!” Cauvin wasn’t thinking at all. He’d burnt his bridges with Mioklas, with Grabar, with Sanctuary itself. He was free—and reeling, as though he’d drunk three mugs of beer without pausing to breathe. “There’s a better brother for Sanctuary!”
“Nonsense—”
“Raith,” Cauvin spat back.
“Raith? He’s a boy—” Mioklas paused with his mouth open. When he spoke again, it was with the slow, falsely patient tone strangers used with children or idiots. “Ah, you think the city would thrive best with an unbearded child for its prince? Do you think the city would govern itself? Good idea, Cauvin, but you’re not as clever as you think you are. What Sanctuary needs is a prince who relies on his advisors to govern for him.”
“And you’d be one of the advisors?” It was the obvious question for Cauvin to ask, though a sheep-shite stupid one, with a bodyguard standing behind him.
“Not alone, I assure you. I am neither so ambitious nor so bold as Lord Torchholder was.”
This time Cauvin’s silence wasn’t deliberate.
“Don’t get me wrong—Lord Torchholder was a great man,” Mioklas went on. “Absolutely fearless. Never a thought for his own safety. That’s why we sent him out to negotiate with the Irrune; they respect that sort of courage. Afterward, in the palace—he was beyond control. I’ll tell you, now that he’s dead, the Torch had something on everyone. Almost everyone. Nothing on me. Lord Torchholder was ever my friend. But there were a few men—more than a few—who breathed easier through their tears as the word went round—”
Their eyes locked by chance. Cauvin’s mind was spinning like a dog in pursuit of its flea-bitten tail. He needed to say something, but only one word came out of his mouth: “You … you … you …” He’d never felt so slow or sheep-shite stupid.
“Ah—forgive me. The Torch was your personal hero, no doubt. Leading the charge into the palace, returning you to your family. Yes. That’s why you mentioned Raith. You’d heard that Lord Torchholder favored him. You saw the lad at the funeral? I’m sorry, Cauvin—but Lord Torchholder was an old man, a very old man. One might say unnaturally old. There were rumors—no need sharing them now. Young Raith’s grieving, but he’s better off without Lord Torchholder whispering in his ear, putting dangerous thoughts in his head. There’ll be a place for Raith—a place for you, Cauvin. A city needs its master stone-workers. Indeed. How much do you need? Did you say twenty shaboozh now, the rest—oh, say after midwinter?”
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 know 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.
More to the froggin’ point, the six black birds huddled on a single branch signboard were visible from where Cauvin stood.
The Inn of Six Ravens was a quiet place where a rich man could lodge his wife, daughter, or favorite mistress. It had its own stable, a fountain courtyard, and a closed iron gate. A man in green livery sat inside the gate. He wasn’t drunk, and he wasn’t going to let Cauvin inside. He wasn’t even going to stand up until Cauvin mentioned Soldt’s name.
“Master Soldt told you to come here?” the guard asked on his way to the gate.
“He told me the laundress named Galya lives here … works here. He said she’d make me a shirt—” Cauvin shrugged a naked shoulder. “I need a shirt.”
“She’s around back. Follow the path around the stable.”
As easy as that, Cauvin was through the gate and on his way to meet a laundress whose visitors were admitted if they mentioned an assassin’s name. He tried to be ready for anything at the back end of the stone-paved path but he wasn’t ready for the inn’s cramped, rear courtyard: A huge wooden tub dominated the yard with a short, stocky woman standing on a stool beside it.
The laundress sang up a storm as she pounded the tub’s contents with a beater that looked a lot like the shaft of a stone-smashing mallet. Galya’s face was smooth and pale for a Wrigglie. Wisps of coppery hair stuck out from her kerchief. Cauvin guessed she was Mina’s age, but might be wrong either way.
Galya’s senses were sharp. She spotted Cauvin before he’d cleared the shadows between the path and the yard. An instant later, the loudest sounds were birds chirping in the eaves.
“Galya—” Cauvin began, then remembered his manners. “Mistress Galya? I’m Cauvin. Soldt said I should come here. He said you could fit me with a white-linen shirt. I need a shirt.”
“I can see that, lad.” She beckoned him closer. “You could do with a bath, too, a haircut, and some bitter-root paste before that nose swells. Looks like you lost a fight, lad. Against whom, if you don’t mind my asking?”
Anyone else had asked that question and there’d have been another fight, but Galya disarmed Cauvin before with a grin.
He grinned back as he answered: “The city guard—but it took three of them.”
“You bloody any of them?”
“Mashed a man’s nose and split his upper lip.”
“Well then, you’re a mighty brawler, aren’t you. No wonder that shirt’s done for. You’ve given it a hard life.” The laundress climbed down from her stool. “Follow me.”
The top of Galya’s head didn’t clear the paps on Cauvin’s chest, but her arms, after a lifetime of pounding dirt out of cloth, were nearly as thick as his. Cauvin followed her into a room where jugladen shelves hid the walls, and every beam or rafter was hung with damp linens. Ignoring the linen maze, Galya pointed Cauvin toward the wooden box, while she rummaged among the shelves.
“How do you know Soldt?” she asked with her back to Cauvin.
He sat on the box and thought a moment before answering. “An old, old man sent me to him to learn how to fight.”
“Looks to me as though you’d be better served learning how not to fight!” The laundress found what she was looking for and advanced on Cauvin clutching lengths of frayed, knotted string. “Stand up, lad. Stand tall and strip off what’s left. You can’t expect me to measure you with you slumped over and hung with rags.”
Cauvin went shirtless when he worked, and he’d long since discovered that a few women enjoyed watching him build a wall or smash it down, but they didn’t look at him the way Galya did. She circled him like a cat hunting mice, then hopped up on the box. Her stubby fingers pressed one string end into the base of his neck. She ran her thumb and the string down Cauvin’s spine, clicking her tongue as she went past his waist. He was too surprised to dodge or protest when she knotted in another piece of string and circled it around his hips.
“If your arms were just a little shorter,” Galya said when she was finished knotting, “or your shoulders narrower, then we could do the job simply with four ells of cloth, but you see where skimping’s gotten you.” She lifted the knotwork over Cauvin’s head and pointed at his discarded shirt. “No, you’ll need five lengths, at least. I’ve got the cloth and nothing better to do with my time. I’ll have a shirt for you this time tomorrow, but—sorry, lad—I’ll have to charge you a whole soldat.”
“I hoped—I need—”
“Ah! You’ve somewhere to go before then,” Galya guessed with a grin. “Someone to see? Someone important? Someone beautiful? Well, you might be in luck.” She beckoned Cauvin to follow her through the linen maze at the center of the drying room. “All manner of things get left behind at an inn, you know. Most of ’em wind up down here. I bundle it up now and again and send it down to the Shambles, but it’s been a while—”
They came to a doorway and dim room cluttered with waisthigh—for Galya—heaps of cloth. Cauvin took it for a storage room until he spotted a neatly made bed in one corner. The bed, Cauvin noted, was a marriage bed, big enough for two. His mind began to wander, and he looked for traces of a husband—or maybe a lover—who favored black clothing while Galya attacked the heaps.
“Here,” she said, flinging a wad of pale cloth his way without looking up. “And here.” A wad of dark cloth followed. “Let’s see how you look in those.”
Cauvin shook out the linen shirt and pulled it on. He had no intention of stripping off his breeches in Galya’s bedchamber.
He thought he’d put an end to conversation by asking, “Does Soldt send a lot a of men here?”
Galya laughed as she said: “Not at all, Cauvin. You’re the first. The Sweet Mother knows what he was thinking. Now, put on those breeches. They might be short; and I’m not sending a man out with his knees showing.”
She left the room, and Cauvin did as he’d been told. Far from being too short, the finely woven breeches were long enough to tuck into the tops of his boots. Cauvin thought himself quite improved until he caught sight of Galya scowling.
“It’s a start, but starting’s never enough, is it? You’ll be wanting new boots—I can’t help you there—but you’re wanting that hair neatened more. Who’s been cutting it for you, lad? Not Nerisis on the Wideway?”
“I cut it myself, when it gets in my eyes.”
“Take off that shirt and sit,” Galya ordered, and went to the shelves. She returned with a set of shears. “If you don’t tell, I won’t either.”
Cauvin grimaced. He didn’t care that there was a law against women cutting men’s hair. What worried him was sharp metal close to his head but not in his hands. He flinched each time the blades ground against each other. Clumps of hair as long as his thumb lay in his lap and on the floor. Shorter wisps clung to his skin. They itched mercilessly and worse after Galya flicked at them with a rag.
“Go, jump in the tub and scrub yourself off.”
He met Galya’s eyes and realized she was serious.
“I’ve raised two sons to manhood, lad, and buried their fathers along the way.”
“But—”
“Go on with you. I’ll stay in here folding linen.”
After exchanging his boots and belt for a knot of soapweed, Cauvin carefully closed the drying room door on the laundress, stripped, and climbed into the laundry tub.
There was a bathhouse in the Tween, not far from the stoneyard. For three padpols a man could scrub himself with soapweed, then rinse down beneath a hand-cranked waterwheel. The cost went down to two padpols if he took a turn or two cranking the wheel before he soaped up. If he forked over ten padpols, he could stand neck deep in a steaming pool next to anyone else who’d paid for the privilege—provided he was male. Women had their own bathhouses, run by the Sisters of Eshi and absolutely forbidden to men.
Come winter, Grabar would pay for the pool a couple times a week; he said it was cheaper than an apothecary’s powder for his aching joints and just as soothing. Cauvin’s first few winters on Pyrtanis Street, he’d gone to the bathhouse with his foster father, even earned a few padpols cranking the wheel. But once Bec was old enough to walk that had changed. Bec went with his father, and Cauvin kept himself clean at the stoneyard trough.
It had been years since he’d sunk himself into water—even the shallow, lukewarm water of a tub filled with unfinished laundry. He’d forgotten how good it felt to be clean everywhere at once and lingered until his fingertips were wrinkled like raisins. By then gray clouds had spread across the last patch of blue sky over the Inn of Six Ravens. Cauvin wrapped a strip of linen around his waist and returned to the drying room carrying his new clothes.
“We’re headed for a storm,” he explained. “I’d better wear my own clothes out of here. I wouldn’t want to ruin these.”
“Is that the way you ask if I’ve got a woolen cloak stashed away?”
“No—”
Before Cauvin could finish, Galya offered him folded layers of wool.
“I can’t afford that,” he whispered, though it was likely that Galya knew how much money he was carrying—he’d left Mioklas’s cloth-bound payment looped around his belt and laid across the box.
“And I’m not selling it. The man who last wore it, didn’t take it with him when he left the Ravens. I told you, lad, what guests leave, comes to me.”
Cauvin set the shirt and breeches down. He shook out the cloak. It wasn’t new; close up he could see several places where the cloth had been rewoven. There was a generous hood attached to the collar and a leather martingale dangling from the back seam. A loop for holding an assassin’s sword? Cauvin could imagine Soldt wearing this cloak—if the black-leather one were unavailable.
“Why me?” he asked, scarcely aware he’d spoken aloud.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t have answers. Because I don’t even know where to look for answers. Because the—” Cauvin caught himself before he slipped and mentioned the Torch by name. “Because if I’m what they’re looking for, then it can’t be very important, or they don’t really care.”
“Who are they?”
Cauvin hesitated, then said, “Soldt.”
The laundress blinked but said nothing.
“Tell me, Mistress Galya—what does Soldt want with me?”
“Get dressed, Cauvin.”
He did, quickly and relying on the maze of drying linen to shield him. The laundress was pouring thick blue liquid from one of the jars into one of the basins when he confronted her again.
“Do I get an answer?”
Galya corked the jug. “Why ask me what Soldt wants? Ask him yourself. He’ll tell you—if it suits him.”
“He must have told you something. You said I was the first he’d sent here. What does an assassin want with a sheep-shite stone-smasher like me?”
“Duelist,” Galya corrected.
“Assassin. Duelist. No froggin’ difference.” Cauvin shot back—though there was some difference, if the tavern stories were true and not that one was a villain and the other a hero. An assassin killed without warning and not necessarily with a sword. A duelist made his intentions known and gave his victims a chance—whatever chance an ordinary man could manage against a master like Soldt. “What does a froggin’ duelist want from me?”
“Your attention, I imagine.” Galya folded her arms beneath her breasts. “He’s been hired to do a job: teach you to fight, that’s what you said, isn’t it? He won’t be happy to hear that you tangled with the guards … and lost.”
“Will you tell him?”
“No, you will—if you’re clever. Aren’t you going to ask me who hired him?”
“Do you know?”
She shook her head. “But whoever it was didn’t tell him to send you to the Ravens, lad. That’s what I meant when I said you’re the first. You must be very important—to Soldt, and not only the man who hired him.”
A twinge of guilt crawled down Cauvin’s back. “You can give Soldt a message?”
The laundress didn’t answer.
“Tell him—Tell him I went to look at a wall today on the Processional—a perfume-garden wall. Tell him that while I was there the man who owns the garden seemed to know things he shouldn’t know about the death of a man who isn’t dead. He’ll understand.”
Galya closed her eyes as she nodded. “And should I tell him where you’re running off to?”
“I’m not running off.”
“Of course not. A what—a sheep-shite stone-smasher?—always carries a sackful of silver tied to his belt while he’s losing a fight with the guards on the Wideway.”
Cauvin studied the floor, feeling very much the sheep-shite stone-smasher.
“It’s no concern to me, but a knotted cloth’s no way to carry silver in Sanctuary. There’s a broker’s baldric there on the box. Wear it under your shirt.”
He picked it up. The leather was thick but supple, and there was a substantial pouch where the ends overlapped. Galya restrained Cauvin’s wrist as he reached for the flap.
“Let me show you how—”
The broker who had made or owned the baldric didn’t want to share his wealth accidentally. The flap was edged with quills that might not pierce a pickpocket’s fingertips but would almost certainly throw him off stride. They’d give an unwary owner a nasty surprise, too, until he learned where to grasp the leather safely. It would take some getting used to, but Galya was right: A knotted cloth was no way to carry forty-two shaboozh through Sanctuary. Less than forty-two shaboozh.
“How much do I owe you?” Cauvin paid his debts … at least he froggin’ tried to … usually.
“A soldat for the shirt tomorrow, when you come for it. The rest is mine to give.”
He didn’t argue, but left the small courtyard behind the Inn of Six Ravens under a cloud of guilt as vast and dark as the clouds over Sanctuary. If Galya passed the message along to Soldt, Cauvin told himself, that would be payment enough … in the long run … maybe.
Gusty winds were clearing the streets of Sanctuary. Half the shops and stalls had pulled their shutters, and the rest would be closed soon. Three decades after the first great storms tore through the city, the people of Sanctuary recognized a bad storm while it was still on the water. Nobody, though, not even the best of Sanctuary’s priests, regardless of their devotion, could accurately predict how bad “bad” would be. Cauvin went to the nearly empty Wideway to make his own prediction.
Every ship in the harbor was bobbing to its own rhythm. If there were oarsmen chained on board the Ilsigi galley, they were wishing their mothers had never screwed their fathers. The open waves were rough and whitecapped but they were breaking well below the wharf, and the tide was coming on high. Storms were worst on an incoming tide. The sky to the south and west was a horizon-to-horizon expanse of dirty, seething gray, but it was darkest to the south, while the wind blew mostly from the west. The worst storms were darkest on the east, and their winds came straight up from the south.
Cauvin’s prediction, with gusty winds lifting his new cloak aloft, was that “bad” would be miserable, but short of disastrous. He returned to the dilemma he’d dodged all day: go to the ruins or avoid them. The Torch had hired Soldt—that seemed a reasonable conclusion after meeting Galya. Soldt would take good care of the man who’d hired him. Cauvin could go to the Unicorn, maybe spend the whole night there. If they were going to leave with the first tide after the storm, then surely it was time to jump the broom with Leorin.
How much of the doubts eating his mind were true suspicion and how much the growth of willful frustration? Shite for sure, caution had been the right choice, but he wanted Leorin so much it hurt each time he left the Unicorn. Leorin wanted him just as bad, though she didn’t sleep alone in a drafty loft. The only reason the two of them hadn’t had each other in the pits was lack of opportunity. In a general way, the Hand encouraged screwing; the Mother of Chaos loved nothing better than newborn blood. The girls got better treatment, usually, until they delivered, and the lads got what lads had always wanted.
The worst fights in the pits had nothing to do with the Hand.
Leorin, though, had that Imperial beauty. No beardless kisses for her. The Hand fought amongst themselves for the privilege of taking Leorin to their beds. The wonder wasn’t that she was different from other women, the wonder was that Leorin had any use for men at all. Tonight all that would change. He and Leorin would make their vows, with or without a broom lying on the floor in front of them, and while the gale broke around them, they’d start a new life together.
Cauvin headed west down the Wideway, wind swirling the dark cloak around him as though he were Soldt, the duelist, the assassin.