“Furzy feathers! Dog! Stop pulling!”
Bec put both hands on the leather strap binding him to the huge brindle dog. The dog looked over its shoulder but, rather than give Bec another chance to loosen the strap that bound them together, the dog lowered its head and pulled harder.
Bec had had a chance to get free at the bottom of a pit that turned out to be inside the old Temple of Ils on the Promise of Heaven. The dog hadn’t wanted to climb the shaky, rope ladder hanging in the pit. With nowhere to go, Bec could have sat in the dirt and worked the knot loose, climbed out, and left Soldt’s dog behind. But there at the bottom of the pit, when he hadn’t been certain whether the Hand was chasing him, Bec hadn’t wasted time on the knot, he’d gotten behind the dog and pushed it up the ladder.
Truth to tell—Bec didn’t really want to loosen the knot. He’d welcomed the dog’s strength and its confidence underground. He’d been living a nightmare—caught in a sack, dumped in a cage, yelled at, threatened, dragged in front of a horrible statue that was halfman and half-woman. Then—when he’d thought the nightmare couldn’t get worse—there was Cauvin side by side with Leorin (who was Hand, through and through), saying things that couldn’t be true, knocking him down, and telling him to get out … or else.
Bec had run for his life. He hadn’t wanted to leave Cauvin, but Cauvin was so different, and he was so scared. He’d even forgotten which hand Cauvin had told him to keep on the wall by the time Soldt found him.
Follow Vex. Soldt had said, tying the strap around Bec’s wrist. He’ll take you to the stoneyard.
Bec tried to tell Soldt what had happened, but Soldt whispered a few foreign words to the dog. It started pulling, and it hadn’t stopped.
“Dog! Slow down!”
Bec pulled back on the strap again. It was morning—maybe a couple hours past dawn—and they were charging toward Pyrtanis Street—which was good. Except people were coming out of their houses with night jars and there’d be trouble if a boy and a dog tripped someone carrying a night jar. Especially a big, ugly dog and a filthy boy who’d lost his shirt. Momma always said that the safest children were the cleanest children, the quietest children, the children who didn’t race about or get in the way of adults. Bec couldn’t control the dog, replace his missing shirt, or wash away the soot he’d picked up in the underground, but he could keep quiet.
He did more than keep quiet, he prayed to Shipri because She was supposed to take care of children.
Shipri must have been listening because none of the scowling mothers or fathers along the Split tried to stop him or the dog. Better still, the stoneyard dog sensed them coming along Pyrtanis Street. It barked up a challenge which Soldt’s dog answered with bone-chilling howls. That led to best of all, Momma and Poppa coming out the gate to meet him!
Bec didn’t recognize the stout woman who opened the gate, but the dog did. When she said, “Vex!” and another word Bec didn’t catch, the dog planted its tail on the ground and sat like a statue until Poppa cut through the knot at Bec’s wrist. Momma was crying. Her eyes were so red, it was a wonder that her tears weren’t red. Because she would touch him, then pull her hands away as though he was steaming hot, Bec feared she was more angry that he’d run off than glad to see him home.
He shouted, “I’m sorry!” and promised that he’d never run away, but that only made her cry harder.
Then Poppa scooped him up, and all the fear and pain, the cold, and even the hunger Bec had kept hidden from himself since Grandfather told him to hide in the bushes escaped. He forgot that he was too old for hugs and clung to his father with arms and legs together.
All of upper Pyrtanis Street must have known he was missing and must have heard the dogs announce his return. Batty Dol; Honald—the potter, not the rooster; Teera; Cauvin’s friend, Swift; Bilibot, Eprazian and the rest of the early-morning regulars at the Lucky Well, they all crowded into the stoneyard. Questions flew like summertime flies: What had happened? Where had he been? Had he been lost or stolen? How did he get away? Did he have help? Who … ? How … ? Where … ?
Bec tried to answer, but he couldn’t string three words together before there was another question. Momma noticed that the cut on his forehead was bleeding again. She called for cloth and water and latched on to her son’s ear—not gently at all—to get a better look. He told her that the cut didn’t hurt nearly as much as the welts on his chest where the man they called Strangle had struck him with a long, nasty whip.
Those words were no sooner out of Bec’s mouth than everyone wanted to see the marks, and Momma was trying to pull him out of Poppa’s arms. It was Momma tugging on Bec’s arms and he did know everyone in the yard—except for the stout woman holding on to Soldt’s dog. Still, the tugging hurt, and all those voices, hands, and faces getting too close were frightening; and Bec had used up all his bravery. He did what he hadn’t dared do underground: He closed his eyes and screamed.
Suddenly, Poppa was shaking sideways, like a baited bear, shouting at Momma and everyone else to back off. That only panicked Bec more. He couldn’t think outside his terror until, after many long, black moments, he heard Poppa’s voice saying:
“Easy. You’re safe. No one’s going to hurt you. No one.”
Bec stopped screaming. He opened his eyes and found himself in Poppa’s lap, in the kitchen, with Momma on her knees beside the chair and nobody—absolutely nobody else nearby. Momma had a mug of cider in one hand and a strip of linen in the other. She’d stopped crying, but her cheeks remained shiny wet. Bec took the mug when Momma offered it. He flinched when she touched his forehead with the damp linen.
“Patience, wife! Let the boy breathe. Do you want to start him off again?”
Momma started to cry again. Between sobs, she said, “My baby’s hurt … my baby’s hurt …” and neither Bec nor Poppa could stop her from daubing away the soot on his arms.
The water was cold because the hearth was cold. In all his life Bec had never known his mother to let the kitchen hearth go stone cold. He knew then that Momma had been as scared as he and gave her a hug, before wiggling out of Poppa’s lap. Standing on his own two feet, Bec told them that he had to get to the ruins straightaway.
“Cauvin said Grandfather’s dead. I’ve got to know—” Bec couldn’t finish his thought. “I’ve got to go out there.”
Momma said, “Cauvin. Cauvin! Lying again!” in her angriest voice, but fell quiet when Poppa snarled at her.
“Cauvin’s been gone since yesterday, Bec, but Lord Torchholder’s up in the loft. After the storm, when you hadn’t come home, Cauvin took me out to the ruins. We were looking for you, but I brought Lord Torchholder here—”
Bec lunged for the door. Poppa caught him by the belt. Bec struggled, but there was no getting away from Poppa.
“Lord Torchholder’s at death’s doorstep. He didn’t wake up when I looked in on him at sunrise and, son, it’s not likely that he will wake up again. Cauvin told you the truth—”
“No-o-o-o,” Bec wailed and stopped struggling. “He lied. He lied about everything. He had to.”
“The Torch was a very old man, Bec—he was an old man when I was your age.”
Bec slipped toward blind fear again. If Grandfather was dead, then Grandfather had lied when he’d promised that “Nothing’s wrong. There’s nothing to fear” right before Bec sneaked off to find a hiding place. Bec had known, of course, that something was wrong when he was hauled out of his bramble-bush hiding place, but Momma and Poppa both said that sometimes a thing had to get worse before it got better, so he’d held on to his belief in Grandfather’s words. Until now.
“It’s not fair!”
“Not many things are, Bec,” Poppa said, and relaxed his grip on Bec’s belt.
That was all the wriggle room Bec needed. He was out the kitchen door in a flash, running past Batty Dol, the stout woman, and Soldt’s dog; past a horse he’d never seen before and up the ladder to Cauvin’s loft shouting, “Grandfather!” at every step.
A thousand spiders, at least, had spun their webs over the loft hole. Bec couldn’t see the spiders, but he felt the webs—sticky strands that stung wherever they touched his skin. When he opened his mouth to shout “Grandfather!” they stuck to his tongue, where they tasted gagging awful. He started crying again—twice in one day!—but he drove himself through the webs, shouting, “Grandfather!” between sobs.
Four rungs from the top of the ladder, Bec got his head into the loft where the air smelled of thunderstorms. Cauvin’s pallet was in the center of the loft, and there was something shaped like a sleeping man stretched across it.
“Grandfather? Grandfather, are you awake? Are you alive?”
A faint voice came from the pallet. “Boy? Is that you, boy?”
“I’m not ‘boy,’ I’m Bec—!”
“Fetch my staff, boy. It’s on the floor between there and here.”
If Grandfather was giving orders, then Grandfather was himself, and Bec was reassured. He found the blackwood staff scarcely an arm’s length from the pallet. He nudged what he thought was a shoulder and leapt away when Grandfather opened strange, fiery eyes. Without thinking, he held the staff crosswise before him.
Grandfather groaned and his bones crackled as he sat up. “Where have you been?”
Bec opened his mouth, but he found himself unable to speak unless he admitted that he didn’t exactly know. “They tied a cloth over my eyes, but I was in a cave and in a temple on the Promise of Heaven when I got out.”
“Who were you with?”
He had to be truthful, perfectly truthful, or his tongue simply wouldn’t move. “A dog. A big dog. He pulled me through the cave tunnels, then he pulled me home.”
“Before that, boy—who tied the cloth over your eyes?”
“I think—” Bec’s tongue grew thick and clumsy but he slowly got the words out: “I think it was the Hand, the Bloody Hand of Dyareela. Leorin was there—Cauvin’s Leorin. She was with Cauvin …” Bec didn’t want to tell Grandfather what Cauvin had said and done, but he had to tell the truth. Had to. “Cauvin stayed with them, with her and the other bad people, but he made me leave. When I wouldn’t leave without him, he hit me—he hit me harder than all the Hands put together—and told me you were dead and the Hand had made a mistake taking me instead of him. I was scared, Grandfather—I didn’t know what to do except run away before he hit me again.”
“And the dog? Did Soldt give you the dog?”
“Yes,” Bec answered truthfully, but there was more. He didn’t know how he could have forgotten, but Grandfather’s questions were like keys unlocking doors in his memory. “I had help,” Bec whispered. “Cauvin told me to keep a hand on the wall, but I forgot which hand and I went the wrong way. I ran into a monster!”
Furzy feathers, Bec couldn’t describe the monster without using his arms to show Grandfather how big it had been. He put the staff down.
“Don’t let go of the staff!”
Bec snatched it up again.
“Now, tell me what you saw.”
“I didn’t see it.” Bec kept his hands tight around the wood. “I ran into it because it was as big as the whole tunnel. And it had arms! Lots of arms—well, maybe arms but maybe legs, too—like a crab’s? They were hard and sharp, kind of cold and wet. They made noise when they picked me up. It had strange eyes—” Bec clamped his teeth together, but the need to tell the truth was stronger than his jaw muscles. “Like yours, Grandfather, kind of. They were sunset-colored and they glowed in the dark and they moved—” Bec desperately wanted to show Grandfather how the glowing spots had drifted apart from each other, but Grandfather had told him to keep hold of the staff, and he was afraid to disobey.
“Did this monster say anything to you?”
Bec thought yes, but “Maybe” was the word that came out of his mouth. “I heard a voice, but—but it didn’t seem to come from the monster.”
“A man’s voice?”
Bec nodded confidently, “Deep, deeper than Poppa’s.”
“What did he tell you to do?”
“He said I was going the wrong way. He said I should turn around or I’d be back where I started.”
“And did you turn around?”
“Furzy feathers, Grandfather! It was a monster. It would have eaten me if I didn’t!”
Grandfather laughed—Grandfather hadn’t been there in the dark; it hadn’t been at all funny, even though the monster had told Bec the truth, and he’d found Soldt again shortly afterward. Then Grandfather coughed and started to choke. Bec dropped the staff. He knelt beside the pallet and pounded gently between Grandfather’s shoulder blades. The spasm slowly stopped.
“Are you better now, Grandfather?”
“Better? I’m alive, that’s better than death. Pick up the staff.” Bec did and offered it to Grandfather, who refused it. “What did you tell the Hand, Bec?”
Bec sprang to his feet and shouted, “Nothing!” but that was an outright lie, and immediately he felt his veins filling with fire. “All right! All right! When she saw me—when she recognized me—Leorin gave me something to drink. I wasn’t sure if I could trust her, so I took a baby sip and it was vile, so I spat it out. She made men hold my arms and pull my hair back ’til I couldn’t keep my mouth closed no matter how hard I tried, then she poured it into my mouth. I tried to spit it back at her—I tried, but the men, they held my nose and I swallowed. I had to swallow. I couldn’t not swallow. They didn’t care when I told them that my stomach hurt afterward, just asked lots of questions—like you’re asking now—only they wanted to know about you and Cauvin and what we did at the ruins.
“I wouldn’t answer, so they brought another boy to sit beside me. He answered the questions. I yelled at him to be quiet, but my stomach was real sore, and I couldn’t stop him, no matter how hard I tried. Some of the things that other boy said were stupid lies, but he told the truth, too. I couldn’t make him stop.”
Grandfather shook his head. “You need not blame yourself that you answered their questions truthfully. They gave you a potion to separate your conscience from your knowledge. There was no other little boy—”
“There was!” Bec insisted, and his blood didn’t boil. “He didn’t even look like me. I wouldn’t talk to her. I wouldn’t talk to any of them!”
“Very well, there was another boy. Did that other boy make any promises? Did he promise to do something at another time or when he saw or heard some specific thing—a word, perhaps, or an image?”
“No!” Bec replied, still indignant. “They tried. They twisted my arm until it hurt real bad and the big, mean one—Strangle, I think, was his name—he lashed his whip across my chest and told me that there were bugs in the cave and they would burrow into the cuts he’d made and they’d eat me from the inside out. Then they heated an iron poker in the fire ’til it was red-hot and held it so close to my eyes that I could feel the heat coming off; and Strangle said he’d stick it in my eye if I didn’t promise to do what the other boy promised to do. But I scared that other boy away and told Strangle to sit on his froggin’ poker! That’s when she tied me up again and dumped me in a cage. Strangle said they’d come back; and they did. And I was afraid because … because I didn’t know if I could scare that other boy off again. Then I heard Cauvin and thought everything was going to be all right—
“But it’s not, Grandfather—it’s not. The questions they asked—it didn’t matter what the other boy said, because no matter what they did to me, I didn’t know what they wanted to know. I told them your stories—The other boy told them. But they weren’t what Strangle wanted. He asked questions in languages I didn’t know. Cauvin won’t know them either, but he told Strangle he was your heir. Grandfather—he lied to them … He’s made himself one of them, but he lied, too. And when Strangle asks those questions, he won’t be able to answer them. He doesn’t even understand Imperial. Strangle will hurt—” No, that wasn’t the truth. “Strangle will kill him. Strangle and Leorin will kill Cauvin!
“You lied to me! You lied! You said nothing was wrong, that everything would be all right. It’s not. It’s not—!”
“That’s enough!” Grandfather declared. “Give me my staff now.” He pulled the blackwood out of Bec’s hands. “You were in no danger of being eaten. That man you met in the tunnels—and he is a man, no monster. That man is the greatest mage in Sanctuary and, perhaps, the entire world. His name is Enas Yorl and, as Vashanka will be my judge, I thought he’d escaped this city years ago. But my loss—his loss—is Sanctuary’s gain. Do you know the empty corner between here and the Crossing?”
“Batty Dol says it’s haunted. Momma says it’s not, but she won’t let me play there.”
“I think both are right. That’s the corner where Enas Yorl’s house stood, and if he’s still in Sanctuary, then his house is, too—sometimes. And it would seem, as well, that he still pays heed to what happens to his neighbors—”
Bec saw hope. “Does that mean he’s killed Strangle and Leorin, crushed the Hand, and gotten Cauvin safe away?”
Grandfather took Bec’s hand in his own. Being touched by him was as bad as being touched by that monster-magician, but Bec held his breath and didn’t have to run away.
“I don’t know, Bec, but if I believe you—and I know I can—then Soldt and Enas Yorl were both watching out for you and Cauvin. They saved you, with Cauvin’s help—”
Bec pulled his hand away. “That’s not good enough, Grandfather. Can’t we do something?”
“A dying old man and a boy short of his full growth? No, Bec, there’s nothing we can do except wait … and pray. Have you prayed?”
“I prayed to Shipri on the way home.” Bec lowered his eyes, ashamed to be his mother’s son and admit that he prayed to a Wrigglie goddess.
“Then pray to Shipri again. Pray to them all. I prayed to my god when I knew I was dying. He sent me Cauvin. If he ever decides to claim it, your brother has everything that’s mine to give, including my luck. And except for leaving Sanctuary, I’ve been a very lucky man—though I was an old and dying man before I understood—”
“Bec!” The voice was Momma’s, and she was below the loft. “Becvar! I’m making breakfast. Fresh eggs and all the rashers of bacon you can eat!”
Bec’s mouth watered. He glanced longingly at the hole in the floor. The ladder creaked—
“Furzy feathers! Momma! Don’t!”
Momma didn’t like spiders. If she got caught by the webs Bec had battled, she’d fall for sure. But her head and shoulders grew through the hole, no trouble at all.
“Come down from here. It’s all—” Momma said, then she noticed Grandfather sitting up with his staff raised beside him. In her best Imperial, she said, “Lord Torchholder. You’re—You’re—What can I do for you, Lord Torchholder?”
“You can bring your son’s breakfast to him when it’s ready. He will be eating it here with me.”
“Yes, my lord. The eggs are fresh, my lord, and the bacon’s the best we can afford, but our bread’s gone stale, and we have no wine that’s worthy of a lord.”
“Don’t worry yourself, mistress; I shall not be eating. I’ve eaten enough for one lifetime. Now, hurry, mistress, he’s a boy, and he’s hungry!”
Bec had never seen his mother overwhelmed before. She begged Grandfather to taste her eggs and bacon, or maybe her porridge. It was Momma’s life wish, she said—her late father’s life wish—to serve a great lord a meal from her table. Grandfather relented and asked for a single egg, boiled in water.
“An honor, my lord. The honor of my life,” Momma said on her way down the ladder. “I shall be forever grateful.”
Once she was gone, Bec scampered over to the hole, looking for spiderwebs.
“What are you doing?” Grandfather asked.
“There were spiderwebs when I came up the ladder.” He stirred his arm in the empty gap. “Sticky, stinging spiderwebs. Momma hates spiders. She’s afraid of them. Where’d they go?”
“Your Momma hadn’t been consorting with the Bloody Hand of Dyareela.”
Bec stiffened. “I did not. I’m not old enough to consort!”
“But you had been within their sphere, and they had both tried and tempted you. The warding detected that.”
“Warding?” Bec folded his arm close against his belly. Bilibot told tales about warding in winter, and Eprazian claimed he could cast a warding spell, though he never had. “Would I … ?”
Grandfather nodded.
“Why can’t I feel it anymore?”
“Because you are a very brave young man. We wouldn’t be here right now if I’d had the wit to set wards like that before the storm.”
“Is it still there?”
“Very definitely. When Soldt and your brother return, we shall likely hear some very rude language.”
Bec stared at the floor below. “Unless he succumbed.” Grandfather didn’t reply. Bec waited a few moments before asking: “Are you dying, Grandfather?”
“I’m past dying, boy. I should have died yesterday. I would have—if your brother had listened to my directions and gone to the palace instead of visiting his ladylove. Now, I could say that was bad luck all around, or I can count myself fortunate to have one last breakfast with you, because, sitting here, I realize that I’ve forgotten to tell you a story. It’s a very important story, especially if our prayers aren’t answered.
“I need to tell you the story of a man who waited—”
Bec wasn’t interested in a story. “If you die, what happens to the warding?”
“It will last a little while.”
“And then? What happens to Momma and Poppa and me if our prayers aren’t answered?”
“They will be—You must have faith if you expect the gods to answer your prayers. Cauvin will know how to set wards. He’ll struggle at first. The knowledge won’t come naturally to him—He’ll need your help. Imagine I showed you a letter written in Old High Yenized. Could you copy it? Not read it or write a reply, only copy it, letter for letter, word for word?”
Bec nodded. “Can you teach me how to copy wards, Grandfather?”
“No, but I tell you what—when I’m gone, you can have my staff.”
“What if Cauvin doesn’t come back?”
Grandfather closed his eyes. He rubbed the wrinkles between his eyebrows and groaned a little. When he reopened his eyes they were noticeably dimmer. Patting the straw beside him, Grandfather said, “Come, Bec. Sit beside me. Let me tell you the story—we haven’t much time.”
With a groan of his own, Bec dragged his feet to the pallet. “If you say so, Grandfather.”
“If only your brother felt the same way. The man I’m going to tell you about was named Hakiem—”
“Was? He’s dead?”
“I should think so. He was some years older than I, and I’ve become the oldest man I know not cursed with eternal life. But perhaps he still sits comfortably in a Beysib garden. The last time I saw him—which I did not know would be the last time—he said the climate there was better suited to a man’s declining years.”
“Beysib? Hakiem was a fish?”
“Not at all. Hakiem was born in Sanctuary, just like you. We were very much alike, Hakiem and I, though I did not realize that for many years, each men of fixed desires whose lives wandered far from the courses we’d charted in our youths. Of course, my desire was to build a great temple for my god atop Graystorm Mountain overlooking the Imperial city. Hakiem’s desire was to get drunk as often as mortally possible and as cheaply …”
Some men could command respect dressed in nothing but fishnet and rags. Other men might dress themselves in the finest silks, visit the most skilled barbers, but wind up looking no better than a man dressed in fishnet and rags. Hakiem was one of the latter such men.
He was short of spine, of legs, and of arms; paunchy and swaybacked, cursed with a fickle beard and a head of hair that was neither bald nor full, straight nor curled, black nor gray. The gods had cheated him out of a second eyebrow; he suffered beneath a single bushy ridge that spanned his entire face and kept his eyes forever in shadow. His lower lip was pendulous, his teeth were crooked and the color of ancient ivory. His feet were splayed like a duck’s and he waddled when he walked.
Not surprisingly, Hakiem pursued a sedentary life, preferably in the corner chair at a corner table with a good view of the commons—and all the doors—of a lively tavern where the wine was sweet enough to drink on an empty stomach. His favorite tavern, an establishment which met each of his demands with room to spare, was the Vulgar Unicorn, deep in the Maze. Unfortunately for Hakiem, the Unicorn’s keepers would not let him sit in his favorite chair unless he bought a mug of wine to sip while he sat.
This uncompromising policy meant that before Hakiem could settle in for the day’s main activity—getting drunk on no more than two mugs of wine—he needed to procure a small handful of copper padpols, or padpools as the little copper coins were known in those days. He could have gone to work for any number of merchants or artisans; Hakiem was literate in Sanctuary’s two main tongues; Rankan and Ilsigi, and had a keen head for numbers, especially the numbers of profit. But, as he would explain to anyone who asked, working for someone else’s establishment inevitably led to expectations and disappointment; and working for himself would have been worse.
Hakiem could have gone begging, except begging in Sanctuary meant giving away two coins for every three collected: one to whoever owned the spot where the beggar begged and the second to Moruth, the self-styled beggar king from Downwind. Hakiem knew the cut of Moruth’s sails well enough to steer clear of him. Besides, though less than handsome, Hakiem wasn’t disfigured, deformed, or simpleminded; and he had too much pride, too little patience for sitting behind an empty cup begging strangers to drop a coin in.
He chose a more active path to his daily encounter with the Unicorn’s wine. Each morning, well after dawn, Hakiem would hie himself to wherever the largest crowds of Sanctuary were apt to congregate, settle his rump on the cushion he invariably carried under the folds of his wrinkled robe, and proclaim:
“Stories for the day. Stories of lovers. Stories of heroes. Stories for children, for women, and men. Histories and fantasies. Epical or poetical. Pay what you please—satisfaction guaranteed!”
Standing in the shadows of a rope-maker’s stall, Molin Torchholder watched and listened as Sanctuary’s only successful storyteller gathered his small crowd. Hakiem baited his audience with snippets from his best-known tales: the wedding of Ils and Shipri or the wedding of Savankala and Sabellia; the history of the world and the history of Sanctuary; the rise and fall of Jubal and his hawkmasks, the rise and devoutly hoped for fall of Tempus and the Stepsons. The pudgy little man got his audience vying against itself—a padpol for my favorite story; no, two padpols for mine; three, then four, until, finally, when Hakiem stood to earn seven padpols—more than enough for his daily libations at the Unicorn—for whichever story he told, he began the tale of the old fisherman and the giant crab for six padpols, divvied among his audience.
The tale of the fisherman’s quest was a good story, a true one, and a short one. Molin had scarcely begun to sweat within his woolen robes when the audience dispersed. Hakiem collected his cushion and his coins. He began the waddle from the wharf where he’d told the story to the Unicorn.
Molin fell in step beside the storyteller.
“My Lord Archpriest! To what do I owe the honor of your august presence?” Hakiem bowed with a flourish that was more insolence than honor.
“Lord Molin will be sufficient. I would like to buy you a mug of the finest wine the Vulgar Unicorn can offer a thirsty man. I have a business proposition to discuss with you.”
“If you’re buying, then the finest wine can found on the Street of Red Lanterns—”
“But the houses are no place for men like ourselves to discuss business.”
“You wish to have business with me?” The storyteller’s mockery became concern. “At the Unicorn?”
“Stranger things have happened at the Unicorn. Will you accept my offer?”
“Depends on what it is, Lord Molin,” the storyteller said, but he led the way to the Maze tavern.
Molin ordered a table jug of the Unicorn’s best—and only—vintage. He paid for it with Imperial silver and left the change—a heap of Ilsigi padpools—on the table. He offered a toast—“May Anen see you home by starlight!” that brought a smile to the storyteller’s lips.
The wine was Ilsigi; no Rankan god would claim it, though it was not unpleasant: a bit harsh, a bit rebellious—a good match for salt-sea air or a raw, winter’s night. Molin topped off his mug before he began the discussion.
“I have been watching you, Hakiem, since I arrived in Sanctuary—”
The single eyebrow became a bushy, worried arch, which Molin ignored.
“I have seen how the tales you tell spread through the city until they become the truths that everyone believes. I’ve seen, too, how you never tell a fully tragic tale, but always leave a glimmer of hope and justice for the ending. That, too, spreads through Sanctuary.”
Hakiem fussed with his empty mug, “The storyteller’s art—”
“Is optimism.” Molin reached across the table to replenish the storyteller’s wine. “And you are a master.” He tipped his mug. “Of storytelling and performance. Though your listeners do not seem to realize it, they rarely hear the stories they request. They hear the stories you wish to tell. Do they not?”
“The art is more than telling, it’s listening. I hear what they want to hear; I tell them what needs to be told.”
“Exactly!” Molin crowed. This was going better than he’d dared hope. “What the denizens of this gods-forsaken city need to hear. And I propose to give you a stipend—two minted-in-Ranke soldats each week—and two more right now in earnest, if you will tell specific stories to Sanctuary’s denizens.” He pushed four soldats across the table.
Hakiem puffed up his plump, pigeon breast. His cheeks bulged, and his knuckles were white as he pushed himself away from the table—away from a scarcely touched mug of wine.
“Keep your Rankan money,” he snarled. “It can’t buy me.”
Molin’s personal instinct was to let the storyteller go, but it wasn’t personal need that brought him to the table. He pinched the tender spot on the bridge of his nose to lessen the throbbing pain that conversations in the local Ilsigi dialect so often produced. “I did not mean to insult you, Hakiem,” he said with more difficulty than the storyteller could imagine. “Please, sit down. Let me try again. I’ve come to you because, of all the men I’ve met in Sanctuary, you’re the only one who—I think—would choose to remain here, had you the opportunity to live somewhere else. You love this city. I’m not going to ask you to tell stories glorifying me, my prince, or my Empire.”
The storyteller scooted his chair close to the table and took a swig from his mug. “Very well, I’m listening. If you don’t want Imperial pandering—what stories, exactly, do you want me to tell?”
“I’ll leave that up to you, of course.”
Hakiem leapt to his feet. “I will not be made a fool of!”
“Then sit down,” Molin hissed.
He was a priest of Vashanka. He’d commanded armies in the north and he could command a simple storyteller without raising his voice or leaving his chair. Hakiem’s rump hit wood with an audible thump!
“I am not interested in the particulars of your stories—well told and entertaining though they may be. I’m interested in the effect of your stories over time. Let it also be said that when I commission a master, I do not waste his time or mine telling him how to apply his craft. I care only for the result: the propagation of needful stories throughout Sanctuary.”
Molin checked the two mugs on the table and found that his own was lower. He topped it off and continued—
“As an archpriest of Vashanka I am not only a priest of some stature, but also a commander of the Imperial army and a member of the Imperial court. Through my wife and by my own initiative I have acquired considerable property—none of which, I might add—lies in Sanctuary. As result of my far-flung interests, I stand at the confluence of communications flowing through the Empire and sometimes beyond its boundaries. In short, Hakiem: I hear things. I see things. I perceive patterns in events that others might consider unconnected. And of late the patterns I perceive have taken an ominous turn; throughout Ranke and beyond, the omens have been uncanny.”
The storyteller’s interest was piqued. “What does a man of your ‘far-flung interests’ consider uncanny?”
“The usual-two-headed roosters, hermaphrodite calves and lambs, a pig born without a heart, a boy-child born with its heart beating outside its ribs. I am, of course, able to conduct my own auguries here in Sanctuary. They’re less dramatic, but somewhat more precise, and reluctantly I have concluded that dire days are coming throughout the Empire, especially here in Sanctuary.”
“Worse than the hawkmasks?” Hakiem asked scornfully. “Worse than the damned Stepsons? Worse than a harbor filled with ships filled with people who don’t blink and whose women bleed poison?”
“Regrettably, yes. Though it is true that Vashanka’s priests are not generally known for their prognostications, I am convinced that we’re confronting nothing less than a collapse of all things proper. I have intimations of tears in the fabric of existence—inversions of life and death, sorcery everywhere, and the annihilation of gods themselves.”
Hakiem sipped his wine. “What can I possibly do to forestall the death of a god?”
“Nothing,” Molin admitted. If he’d performed the rites properly, then the god marked tor annihilation was his own god, Vashanka, and it would be regarded as a blessing by one and all, including—presumably—himself when it came. “There is an old Rankan proverb, older than the Empire: When two dragons fight, it does not matter which dragon wins, the grass will be scorched. I want you to fortify the grass.”
“Fortify the grass?” the storyteller’s eyebrow rose to a dangerous height.
“Yes, tell them stories about simple joys that cannot be taken away. Remind them that the genius of Sanctuary is its incorrigibility. If the city will not consent to be governed by tyranny or anarchy, then it must, in time, triumph over both. Make sure the people remember who they are—the children of slaves and pirates, yes, but survivors. Hakiem—so long as the people of Sanctuary do not forget who they are and what they can do simply by being themselves, then they will survive. That is what I expect for my two soldats a week—stories that will help Sanctuary survive the hard times I foresee.”
Hakiem scowled and squinted. He looked at the soldats, then at Molin, and back again. Molin was certain the storyteller would scoop the coins into his purse. Instead, he pushed them away.
“No deal.”
“What?” Molin sputtered. He knew Sanctuary’s insolence—he’d just praised that very quality—but he’d thought there was a limit to its self-destructive stubbornness, individual and collective. “I cannot believe what I’m hearing. Have you ever been offered two soldats a week for anything?”
“Never,” Hakiem admitted.
“Have you even the sense of an ant? Bad times are coming … horrid times. Sanctuary needs you, Hakiem. I’m offering you the means to serve your beloved city! Have you listened to a word I’ve said?”
Hakiem nodded. “Every word. Now, you listen to mine, Lord High-and-Mighty Molin Torchholder. I will not take your soldats because you’re right—Sanctuary is my home, and I do not need coins to serve her. I would do anything in my power to ‘fortify’ my neighbors if even half of your dire omens came to pass. But that is not the only reason; I won’t take your Rankan money because conscience cannot be bought.”
“I am appealing to your conscience, not trying to buy it!”
“And I am not speaking of my conscience, Lord Molin. I’m speaking of yours. I see it in your eyes, hear it in your voice. You believe you have been cursed by Sanctuary and you think that by giving me two soldats each week, you can free yourself from the curse. Have you listened to yourself? You say that you despise Sanctuary, but your passions betray you. Look at yourself—you’re not a golden-haired, golden-eyed Rankan. Your fellow priests resent you. The Imperial court suspects you. And your wife’s glorious family regards you as no better than … no—worse than a gutter-scum Wrigglie off the streets of Sanctuary.
“You’ve come home, Lord Molin. You love Sanctuary as I love it, but you can’t admit it, so you call your love a curse. More’s the pity, Lord Molin—you’ve blinded yourself to happiness, and I will have no part of it.”
“Not at all,” Molin protested. “You’re wrong. I’ll be gone from here before any of what I’ve foreseen comes to pass. I’ll be gone. I won’t die here. I won’t—
“I won’t die here. I won‘t—”
Grandfather slumped sideways on the pallet. His whole body trembled.
“Momma!” Bec shouted, because he’d heard her lurking at the bottom of the ladder, waiting for Grandfather to finish his story. “Momma! He’s dying, Momma! Grandfather’s dying!”
The box was a masterpiece of woodcarvers’ art, inlaid with stones carefully chosen to complement the wood grain. The scrollwork vines and leaves were so lifelike that Cauvin expected to hear them rustle when he touched them. Yet for all its advanced beauty, the box was kin to the boxes he’d received from Sinjon at the Broken Mast and dug out of the bazaar dirt. When he place his thumbs on the familiar spots, the vines and scrolls separated, and the lid opened.
“What’s in it?”
“What has my friend the Torch been hiding all these years? Where does he keep his gold?”
The first voice was Soldt’s, the second belonged to Arizak per-Mizhur, lord of the Irrune—the man who had brought Cauvin to this bright, sunlit room on the southeast corner of the palace.
“Nothing—” Cauvin began, because in such a box a scrap of dirty parchment was nothing.
Then, before Cauvin could mention the paper, his nostrils filled with the scents of flowers, spices, and the sea. With the scents came … memory. He knew where the Torch’s treasure was—all the places, all the gold, the jewels, and the names of Arizak’s mistresses—all of them. To say nothing of the thousand other secrets the Torch had hoarded.
Cauvin braced himself. The myths of the Empire and Ilsig alike were lousy with men who’d lost themselves to gods or sorcerers but the assault on his sense of self didn’t happen. He was simply the Torch’s heir, beneficiary of property, not personality. Cauvin figured he’d need the rest of his natural lifetime to sort through his inheritance, but he could already feel a difference.
How else had he known—not guessed, but froggin’ sure known—that he remained himself?
“What about it, Cauvin?” Soldt asked. “I see something in there.”
Cauvin unfolded the parchment. “It says, ‘Fortify the grass.’”
Soldt’s comment was, “Odd,” while Arizak, a true herdsman, said, “Only a complete fool builds forts on grass.”
But Cauvin remembered his friend—the Torch’s friend—Hakiem in a hundred different conversations, all of which ended with the same sentiment: We certainly fortified the grass today, didn’t we? He hid a smile behind his hand and returned the paper to the box.
“We’re done here,” he told the other two men.
“He was a strange one,” Arizak said, leading them slowly from the room.
The Irrune used a padded crutch to get around and never put any weight on his heavily wrapped foot. Cauvin wondered if there even was a foot within the bandages. His inheritance quickened, and he recalled the night when he—or rather the Torch—sat by Arizak’s shoulder, holding his hand while a physician summoned from Caronnne performed the amputation.
This would take some getting used to.
He missed the start of Arizak’s eulogy.
—“To call him friend was to give your fate to a summer storm. Are you certain the Hand invades Sanctuary from below? All this burrowing in rock and hardened sand, it would not be a problem if we dwelt in tents. Live in a tent, and your enemies can only come at you like the wind.”
Cauvin waited until he was certain Arizak had finished speaking—the inheritance let him know that the froggin’ Irrune never interrupted their froggin’ chief—before saying, “We’re sure. And the Hand’s not just below the palace, Sakkim—” that was the froggin’ Irrune word for sheep-shite leader-of-many-chosen-by-all. “The Hand’s in the palace, too. I saw your son, Naimun, speaking to the very bastard Soldt killed with his arrow.”
Arizak hobbled away, saying nothing. Cauvin guessed he’d froggin’ offended the man. There was another Irrune word, Bassomething, for the Sakkim’s sons but just because he knew the right words didn’t mean Cauvin was going to froggin’ use them. He wasn’t Lord Molin Torchholder. They were in a ground-floor corridor, headed for Arizak’s private quarters, before the Irrune chief spoke again.
“I am disappointed in my son, but not truly surprised. He is the image of my wife’s brother, and it would appear that he has Teo’s love of treachery, as well. Verrezza will rejoice, but the one Naimun should truly fear is his mother. Nadalya won’t forgive treachery. But that’s family. What am I to do with these Hand below the palace?”
“Smoke them out,” Cauvin suggested. “Build a wet-wood fire in the pit at Temple of Ils, then use bellows to drive the smoke through the warren. Post your men throughout the city and outside the walls, too—to watch for men escaping. And smoke—wherever they see smoke, they’ll find an entrance to the warren—”
Both Soldt and Arizak stared at him.
“It works with froggin’ rats,” Cauvin explained. And Teera the baker did smoke out the storerooms every fall, but the idea hadn’t come from Teera. The Torch had used wet-wood fires to flush the enemy out of caves along the Empire’s northern frontier some sixty years earlier.
“Throw some camphor wood on your fire, and you can use dogs to help you sort the Hand out,” Soldt added.
Arizak wasn’t comfortable with the plan. “This will be a very large fire. Very dangerous.”
“For the Hand. The other choice is to send your men into the dark.”
“Ah, yes, it would be very dark underground. Without light, men could get lost, killed. Better those men are not Irrune, not Wrigglies.” As far as Arizak was concerned, all the people of Sanctuary were Wrigglies—it was an improvement over the Irrune word for anyone not born into the tribe.
“No matter what we do,” Cauvin warned, “a few will escape—just as they did last time. We got lazy. We can’t make the same mistake again. The Hand won’t go away, not in our lifetimes.”
“Not in mine,” Arizak agreed. “I will speak with my commanders—only Irrune, at least until we’ve winnowed the Hand from the palace. My wife Nadalya will say that we need that Savankh she’s always talking about. How else to know whether a Wrigglie is lying?” He looked Cauvin in the eye. “Can you bring my wife this great Savankh?”
Yesterday, the Torch had been ready to turn over both the Savankh and the Necklace of Ils. Cauvin wasn’t the Torch. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Listen to him!” Arizak exclaimed to Soldt. “He has an idea—He’ll see what he can do—I have heard this all before. Next he will be telling me that he is but a poor man and reminding me that Sanctuary is the least of the Imperial cities. He does not have my old friend’s voice, but already he has begun to talk like him!”
It was late afternoon before Cauvin left the palace, finally satisfied that the Irrune were hauling green wood over to the Promise of Heaven. They’d have a smoky fire burning by sunset, which might be too late, but was the best they could do. Soldt agreed to stay with Arizak. The duelist wasn’t pleased to be seen in the company of Sanctuary’s prince, but Cauvin had been a night without sleep before he’d opened the Torch’s froggin’ box. The weight of the old pud’s memories had left him pillow-walking and scarcely able to string a thought together in any of the odd languages whose words were rattling around in his mind.
Arizak had suggested he settle into the old pud’s palace apartment—three unremarkable chambers, including the one where he’d opened the ornate box. Cauvin would use them, or more accurately, he would use what they contained. The Torch was a froggin’ pack rat—
Had been.
The Torch had been a froggin’ pack rat, and Cauvin was still a sheep-shite stone-smasher. He wouldn’t hazard a guess how he’d feel in a month or a year, but for the time being, Cauvin didn’t want to sleep in a dead man’s bed no matter how tired he was. Cauvin wanted to go home, to the stoneyard, his foster parents, and—especially—to Bec. His hand still stung from striking his brother. It had been the right thing to do; he hadn’t known Soldt had followed him and Leorin into the warren or that the magician, Enas Yorl, had his own quarrels with the Mother of Chaos. Still, right or not, Cauvin had to apologize.
The stoneyard gate was closed and barred. Cauvin didn’t have the strength to scale the wall. He rang the bell and waited for someone to let him in. The yard dog set up a racket, but there was a second dog in the chorus.
Vex.
If Vex was in the stoneyard, then Bec was, too. Since he’d come to on the steps of the Thunderer’s temple, Cauvin hadn’t allowed himself to think anything else. Soldt swore the dog was dependable, but Soldt also insisted that Cauvin had to go to the palace before he went home.
Vex was barking. Vex was here. Bec was home. Bec was safe. Cauvin slumped against the wall and began to shiver. He straightened up as the gate swung open, but couldn’t stop shaking. Grabar looked Cauvin over in silence and made him feel like a ghost—an unwelcome ghost. Grabar had come to the gate with a stone mallet in his hand, and he wasn’t about to let his foster son cross the threshold.
“Bec?” Cauvin asked, suddenly fearful that he’d leapt to the wrong conclusion when he’d heard a second dog barking.
“Here,” Grabar answered. “The boy said you’d gone over to the Hand. That your woman had been over for years.”
Mina, standing beside Grabar, added, “You struck him. You knocked him down and made him bleed.” Her look said she would never forgive Cauvin for that.
That was more injustice than Cauvin intended to bear. He pounded his fist against the gate planks. Mina jumped back in surprise, while Grabar tightened up on the mallet.
“I was trying to save his life!” Cauvin complained. “Bec wouldn’t go. He wouldn’t leave without me unless I scared him or hurt him or both, so I hit him. I hit him good, and he started running.” The inheritance assured Cauvin that his plan was nothing to be ashamed of, it didn’t assure his foster parents. “froggin’ sure, I’m sorry I hit him. Shite for sure, I thought I was going to die, and you froggin’ know I’m not made much for thinking.”
Neither Mina nor Grabar was convinced.
“The boy said you’d gone over to the Hand,” Grabar repeated. “Don’t see how we can trust you.”
“I froggin’ didn’t go ’over to the Hand.’ I told Leorin I’d submit to the froggin’ Mother, so she’d take me to their lair. I told the froggin’ Whip I’d submit, so he’d let Bec go. I froggin’ told Bec, so he’d get the froggin’ hell out of there. I didn’t think I was getting out of there alive, but, no froggin’ way did I go ‘over to the Hand.’
“Shite for sure, didn’t Bec tell you that Soldt was there, too? That’s Soldt’s damn dog I hear barking! Soldt put an arrow through the skull of the Hand’s high priest. There was a magician there, too—maybe Enas Yorl himself—lobbing fire left and right. If I’d froggin’ known they’d be there, I’d have done froggin’ different. When Soldt and I made it out, we went to the froggin’ palace first—I’m sorry about that, too; I froggin’ should’ve come here—but Arizak believed me. Arizak’s got the guards and his Irrune building a wet-wood fire in the Temple of Ils. Go up to the froggin’ Promise right now if you don’t believe me—”
Grabar lowered the mallet and let Cauvin into the stoneyard—over Mina’s scowled objection. “We only know what the boy knew.”
“Shite.” Cauvin could have dropped to the ground and slept for a week, but he couldn’t, not yet. “Where is he? Where’s Bec? Where have you got the Torch laid out? Arizak’s sending a cart for the body. There can’t be another funeral, but he’s claiming it just the same.
“Comes now, it comes early. Lord Torchholder’s not dead yet.”
“Frog all?”
Cauvin spun toward the work shed just in time to see Bec coming out with the Torch’s big black staff in both hands. The staff was longer than the boy was tall. When Bec tried to point it, spearlike, at Cauvin’s heart, the amber finial bobbed unsteadily. Cauvin wrenched it effortlessly from Bec’s grasp.
He asked, “Do you know what this is? What it does?” because Cauvin knew that the Savankh Lord Serripines kept in his Land’s End vault was the Savankh of Sihan in the northeast corner of the Empire. The Torch had stuffed Sanctuary’s Savankh down the shaft of the blackwood staff.
“It makes you have to tell the truth.”
“So, froggin’ ask.”
“Are you one of them—a Bloody Hand like her?”
“No. Not now, not ever.”
That was all Bec needed to hear. He ran straight at Cauvin, and maybe it was simply that Cauvin was bone-weary, or maybe Bec had grown some in the past few days, but Bec knocked Cauvin off-balance and they wound up on the ground.
Cauvin had told the shite-for-sure truth while he held the blackwood staff, not that it mattered. The Torch could lie left and right when he held his staff and the Savankh within it. Cauvin had inherited that treacherous, little ability. But the other powers of the staff—how it started fires where fire shouldn’t ever burn and the way it had kept the Torch alive since the attack—those were shrouded secrets. Cauvin would need time—not to mention sleep—before he understood them, if he ever did.
Just then Cauvin used the staff’s most ordinary strength and steadied himself against it as he stood.
“Grandfather said I could keep the his staff”—Bee held out his hand—“because I might be needing it, if—But you’re back! And everything’s going to be just the way it was—except you’re going to get rid of the Hand … and her?”
“Arizak is,” Cauvin replied. He doubted that anything was going to be the same, but there was no reason to say that—the staff didn’t compel him to tell the truth. “And Grabar tells me the Torch isn’t dead yet. Maybe he’ll change his mind about giving you the staff. Maybe you will—if it means you’ve got to tell the truth all the time.”
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.