Sanctuary Read online

  The Irrune—gods rot them—understood scavenging. Shite for sure, they were raiders-horse-riding brawlers who looked at a city the way farmers looked at a field ripe for harvest or fisherfolk looked at schooling fish. The Irrune had laws—and punishments that would’ve made the Hand blink—but scavenging wasn’t a crime unless someone complained. Only once in Cauvin’s memory had some sheep-shite Ender made his way to the palace waving a dusty old scroll and forced Grabar to make restitution.

  Grabar had been more careful since then, asking his wife what she knew about each of the estates they plundered. Mina swore the old, red-walled estate had been empty before she got born. She said it was haunted—something about betrayal, massacre, and divine retribution. Cauvin didn’t pay much attention to Mina’s froggin’ stories; and so long as he was home by sundown, sheep-shite ghosts didn’t worry him either.

  Cauvin could have led Flower down any of the crossing’s streets and gotten her to the red-walled ruins, but the easiest route, and the quickest, was across the Promise of Heaven then down the Hill to one of several gaps in Sanctuary’s defenses. Cauvin would froggin’ sure come home the regular way, through the East Gate. No way Flower could pull a loaded cart up the Hill, but in the morning, the Hill’s haphazard streets were safe enough for a man, a mule, and an empty cart.

  The Promise was empty, save for a boy grazing a flock of goats on the weeds. Goats didn’t care that the dirt here was rusty with blood. Goats didn’t care about mules or carts, either, but Flower didn’t like goats. She blew and balked until Cauvin gave in. He led her away from the goats, along the broken, stained marble slabs fronting the ruined temples.

  The Irrune worshiped their own god and wouldn’t share him with anyone not born to their tribe. They didn’t much care who or what other people worshiped—excepting Dyareela, of course—but they didn’t want any priests underfoot. After the Troubles, pretty much everyone in froggin’ Sanctuary agreed with them. The temples were in pretty bad shape by then, anyway. The Hand had cared; the Bloody Mother was a damned jealous bitch. Her priests had burnt or broken every statue and priest they could seize.

  If you needed a god or a priest these days, you went outside the west wall between the old cemetery and the froggin’ brothels on the Street of Red Lanterns. Cauvin didn’t need any froggin’ gods or priests. He’d had his fill of them even before he’d fallen into the pits. As for women, he had Leorin to think about, and so long he did, there was no froggin’ way any extra padpol that flowed between his fingers was going to wind up in some whore’s treasure chest.

  Cauvin was brooding about the future when he heard scuffling in the temple shadows. Froggin’ dogs hunting rats, he told himself, and tugged on Flower’s lead. But rats didn’t groan …

  Any man who put himself in the middle of someone else’s fight froggin’ sure deserved all the trouble he got; still, Cauvin left Flower’s lead dangling. On his way up the uneven steps of the soot-streaked Imperial temple, he reached inside his shirt and tugged on the lump of bronze he wore suspended around his neck. The slipknot loosened, the way it was supposed to. He closed his fist around the only token he’d kept from his days among the Bloody Hand of Dyareela.

  By then Cauvin could see a bravo from the hillside quarter behind the temples deep in dead-end shadows rousting someone who wasn’t putting up a fight. The Hiller sensed Cauvin’s approach. Hunched over his victim like a wolf, he raised his head and snarled a warning: “Back your froggin’ arse out of here, pud.”

  There was enough light to assure Cauvin that he didn’t know the Hiller and, more significantly, to reveal the knife in the Hiller’s hand. With two corpses in the crossing and the murderer still loose, a prudent man might have gone looking for Gorge and Ustic, but a clever man thought of the reward Lord Serripines’ would froggin’ surely give to whoever caught his froggin’ son’s killer. Cauvin figured he could put those coins to better use than any sheep-shite guard.

  “Froggin’ after you,” Cauvin snarled back, and came closer.

  Cauvin didn’t much care if the Hiller bolted. One Hillside pud was as good as another as far as the Serripines’ reward was concerned. If he couldn’t have the Hiller, Cauvin would happily drag the Hiller’s victim back to Gorge and Ustic as his first stride toward riches.

  At least Cauvin hadn’t cared who ran and who remained until he got a better look at what was lying in the temple rubble. The Hiller’s victim had to be the froggin’ oldest man in Sanctuary. His head looked like a parchment-covered skull. But he wasn’t dead, and he wasn’t done. With the Hiller distracted, the old geezer actually made a grab for the froggin’ knife.

  The geezer didn’t have a sheep-shite prayer of getting anything away from the Hiller, and he was froggin’ sure lucky that he didn’t get his wrinkly throat slit for his efforts; but two things became clear to Cauvin. First, the geezer wasn’t a murderer. Second, if he wanted a reward from Land’s End, he’d have to best the Hiller.

  When Cauvin had halved the distance between them, the Hiller got to his feet and made a threatening pass with his knife. Cauvin just shook his head. They were about the same size, and his weighted fist had gotten the better of bigger men, bigger knives.

  The geezer—gods rot him—didn’t have the sense to lie still but tried to crawl away. The Hiller booted him in the ribs and something snapped inside Cauvin. He might have shouted as he surged toward the Hiller; he sometimes did when his temper got the better of him, or so he’d been told. Once his rage had boiled over, Cauvin’s thoughts were in his fists.

  Warding the Hiller’s knife with his empty hand, Cauvin delivered two quick, bronze-filled punches to the Hiller’s gut and a third to his chin that sent him reeling backward. The Hiller spit blood at Cauvin’s face, squared his shoulders, and surged forward, leading with the knife. Cauvin dodged; he caught the Hiller’s wrist as it passed and gave it a vicious twist. The knife landed in the rubble. The Hiller landed on his knees with a wide-eyed, worried look on his face. He eyed the corridor and the weeds of the Promise of Heaven, but Cauvin straight-armed him against the moldy wall before he could make his escape.

  Cauvin didn’t count his punches, but when he let go, the wall couldn’t keep the Hiller upright.

  “Take the damn thing,” the Hiller wheezed, tossing a nut-sized object into the rubble.

  It rang like metal before it disappeared, but Cauvin wasn’t interested in some trinket the Hiller had lifted from his victim; he had his heart set on a Land’s End reward. The geezer, though, heard the sound and came crawling like a groaning, moaning skeleton. Cauvin’s legs took him backward before his head could stop them, and the Hiller got a head start toward the Promise.

  Froggin’ sure, Cauvin could have caught the Hiller and, froggin’ sure, he would have, if the skeleton hadn’t rasped—“Help me!” at just that moment. Cauvin wanted that reward. Gods rot him, he wanted it bad, but not bad enough. He let the Hiller get away and sifted the debris instead until he found a signet ring with a black stone set in a golden band.

  Cauvin couldn’t make out the symbol carved into the stone, but that didn’t matter much. He knew his stones, both the common ones and the precious. He didn’t know anyone important to have an onyx signet stone, much less a gold band to set it in. The ring alone had to be worth quite a bit, but the geezer himself might be worth more.

  “You got a name?” Cauvin asked as he pressed the ring into the old man’s grasping hand.

  With movements that were scarcely human, the geezer twisted the ring onto a bleeding, probably broken, finger. “Staff?” he asked. “I had a staff.”

  “Don’t see it,” Cauvin said after a quick glance at the nearby debris. “You got a name, old man?”

  “Black wood—old and polished, topped with a piece of black amber as big as your fist. Look for it!”

  Cauvin took orders from Grabar and stoneyard customers, not from some sheep-shite old man. “It’s not here! You got a name, pud? A home? People who give a froggin’ damn whether you’re dead
or alive?” He was thinking about a reward again.

  The geezer latched onto Cauvin’s sleeve and tried to pull himself upright but didn’t have the strength. Cauvin got an arm beneath him and began to lift. Bec would have weighed more. The old man was nothing but skin and bones inside a well-made, way-too-large robe. Cauvin had his shoulders up and was starting to raise his hips when the geezer let out a groan, and Cauvin eased him quickly back to the floor.

  “Where does it hurt?”

  “Where doesn’t it?” he snapped back. “Find my staff!”

  “Listen to me, you sheep-shite pud. I could take that froggin’ ring of yours and leave you here to die, but I’m trying to help you instead, so act grateful.”

  “If you want to help me, pud, find my froggin’ blackwood staff.”

  For someone who couldn’t stand or sit on his own, the old geezer was froggin’ feisty—and not from Sanctuary, though he cursed like a native. Cauvin had begun to feel like a fisherman who’d hooked a fish that was bigger than his boat.

  He tried bargaining: “You’ll tell me your name, right, if I look for your froggin’ staff?”

  “If you find it.”

  Cauvin got up and walked toward the Promise, dragging his feet through the rubble and finding nothing until he was out on the steps. Flower was nibbling weeds alongside the pavement and there, not two froggin’ paces from the cart’s rear wheels, was the sort of black staff an old man with a gold-and-onyx signet ring might lean on. Leaving Flower to enjoy her midmorning meal, Cauvin returned the staff to the old man, who smiled a death’s-head grin when he saw it.

  “So, what’s your name?”

  “You can call me Lord Torchholder.”

  “And you can call me the froggin’ Emperor of Sanctuary.”

  “I very much doubt that.”

  The man calling himself Lord Torchholder struggled to brace the staff against the wall and himself against the staff. Cauvin saw that the effort was a froggin’ sure lost cause, but the geezer wouldn’t give up until he was flat on the floor again and moaning like the winter wind. Having a better idea what the old man could endure, Cauvin scooped him up and carried him toward the cart.

  “I’ll take you home. Just tell me where you live, and I’ll take you there.”

  The old man squirmed in Cauvin’s arms. “My staff! Don’t leave my staff!”

  “Gods rot you, pud—you’re one ungrateful bastard,” Cauvin groused as he settled the old man in the cart, but that didn’t stop him from brushing dead leaves and worse from the bastard’s thick silvery gray hair or cushioning his bones with folded canvas or noticing, as he did, that the lower half of the old man’s robe was stiff with dried blood.

  The pieces didn’t fit. The geezer was so thin, so frail; he couldn’t have bled that stain and survived. He was wealthy enough to have a gold ring and a polished staff, but his fine-woven wool robe hung around him like rags. And his eyes—All the old men Cauvin knew—and admittedly he didn’t know many—had cloudy, weak eyes. Not this one. This old pud’s eyes were bright and sharp as a hawk’s. Froggin’ sure he wasn’t just anybody’s grandfather—but Lord Torchholder? Maybe, if the guards hadn’t just said that the Torch had been killed in the crossing …

  Or maybe Gorge was wrong about the corpse they’d carted up to the palace? Were those the eyes Cauvin had met behind a table inside the liberated palace? Was that the voice, the accent that had ordered him to follow a stranger to a tiny room where he’d sat, cold and terrified, while the Hand’s other orphans died?

  “Don’t stand there gaping—go fetch my staff. You’re a disappointment, pud, no doubt you are. I prayed for better, but you’re what I got.”

  Without a word, Cauvin returned to the dead-end shadows. The staff was where they’d left it, but he took another moment to search for the Hiller’s knife. The blade was rusty and brittle, not a weapon an emperor would give his name to.

  Which meant froggin’ what?

  Froggin’ nothing.

  Cauvin slipped the knife inside his boot and put the staff in the cart beside the old man.

  “If you’re Lord Torchholder, then I guess I better take you up to the palace.”

  “You’ll do nothing of the kind. It’s too late for that. Too late or too soon. I can’t tell. You’ve got a home somewhere; take me there. I need time—” The old man winced and pressed a hand against his hip. “Time. So little time. Listen, pud—listen close, and you’ll hear the gods laughing.”

  “I’ll take you to the palace, Lord Torchholder,” Cauvin decided. “They’ll know what to do—”

  “The hell they will, pud. By now, they think I’m dead, and this is no time to contradict them. I’m staying with you; you’re all I’ve got—the Emperor of Sanctuary, or do you have another name?”

  “Cauvin,” Cauvin replied, stalling for time because the pieces were starting to fit, and he didn’t like the shape they were forming. “They call me Cauvin. You called me Cauvin once, if you’re really the Torch.”

  “Oh, I am, Cauvin, or I was until last night. But you’ve got me at a disadvantage. I’ve known too many people to remember them all.”

  “The day Arizak led the Irrune into the palace. You talked to all of us, one at a time—”

  The old man’s eyes widened. “Ah, Vashanka,” he whispered, almost in prayer. “How our deeds come back to haunt us. I tried to build Him a temple, right here on the Promise of Heaven. It was a mistake—the biggest mistake I made … until last night. Listen to the wind, Cauvin. My god is laughing. After all these years, Vashanka has avenged Himself upon me.”

  There wasn’t a breeze stirring so much as a leaf on the Promise of Heaven.

  “I’ll take you to the palace, Lord Torchholder.”

  “Not there,” the old man insisted. “Think of a better place. Where do you live, Cauvin?”

  “Grabar’s stoneyard,” Cauvin answered before he could stop himself. He imagined Lord Torchholder at the stoneyard. There was Mina squawking to all the neighbors that she had the froggin’ Hero of Sanctuary, in her kitchen. Grabar would complain about the cost of keeping him and Bee—! Froggin’ sure Bec would be telling stories about the froggin’ chickens until the Torchholder’s froggin’ eyes rolled back in his head. “No froggin’ way I can take you there.”

  The palace was simple. The palace was where Lord Torchholder belonged, and the palace was close by; Cauvin could see the Gods’ Gate from the cart, and there wasn’t anything the old man could do to stop from leading Flower in that direction. Yet their argument continued until the goat boy was staring at them, and three women with nothing better to do were walking toward them.

  “You can’t stay here—” Cauvin pled desperately.

  The old man—the legendary Torch—grabbed his staff and pointed its amber end at Cauvin’s chin. “Therefore, Cauvin, you will take me with you. Wherever you were going, we will go there now!”

  Cauvin stared at the amber and shivered. “The old red-walled ruins?” The place was a roofless ruin with trees growing in the empty rooms. But, the outbuildings were in better shape—or they had been, the last time Cauvin had scavenged bricks. “Froggin’ sure you’ll sing a different song before the day’s done.”

  Cauvin got Flower moving, and the old man let the staff fall to the bottom of the cart. His eyes closed. For a moment Cauvin thought the geezer had froggin’ died, then his chest began to move, slowly, steadily. Sure as shite, he’d wind up bringing the old man back into the city. Grabar would be frothing pissed because the cart would be empty when he got back to the stoneyard, but Grabar had been frothing pissed before.

  Chapter Three

  The feather mattress had seen better days. Its cover was stained with the gods froggin’ knew what, and the feathers had molded. The only good that could be said of it was that it didn’t move by itself when Cauvin shook it onto the bed frame.

  Cauvin could have afforded better—the purse the Torch had given him was heavy with froggin’ silver soldats, bright soldats mi
nted years ago in froggin’ Ranke itself—but bedding wasn’t like eggs or oil: You couldn’t just walk onto a market square and find someone selling it. Folk didn’t need a froggin’ bed all of a sudden. They planned. They went to a chandler and ordered something for delivery in a week or two or they made do and slept on froggin’ straw the way Cauvin slept in the stoneyard loft.

  Except the Torch was too frail to sleep hard and, though he’d surprised Cauvin by looking better by the time they got to the red-walled ruins than he had when they left the Promise of Heaven, it still didn’t seem likely that he had more than a couple days left to his life. The bruises he’d gotten in his struggles with the Hiller weren’t serious, even for him, but there was a weeping hole at the point of the old man’s hip. The wound didn’t bleed much, but it went down to the bone.

  So Cauvin had walked the Spine path through the Hillside quarter, begging for bedding.

  “I wish you’d let me take you to the froggin’ palace,” Cauvin said, and not for the first time. “So the guards made a mistake identifying your body. It’s not like it’s the first time they’ve made a froggin’ mistake, and Arizak will send for a priest to heal you—maybe even that wild-man brother of his.”

  “I am a priest, pud, and I know the limits of prayer. The limits of prayer, magic, and witchcraft together. None of them will help. I’m dying, pud, and I’m more aware of it than you can imagine, but I’m not dead yet.”

  Having seen the wound, Cauvin was inclined to agree. “Arizak will see that you’re kept warm. He’ll have someone sit beside you to tend your fire and bring you food—”

  “I have more food than I can possibly eat—” the Torch swept a hand toward the bread, fruit, and greasy sausage Cauvin had brought back from the Hill. “And you’ve laid the fire.”