Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [1]
From the beginning Molin had loathed everything about Sanctuary: its wretched, soggy climate; the brackish taste of its water; and, especially, its citizens. He swore he could never be reconciled to an unjust fate; then the moon would rise and he’d be drawn to the roof above his palace apartment—or find himself delayed on the East Ridge Road. His thoughts would wander, and Sanctuary would take his soul by surprise, flexing its claws, reminding him of what he tried so hard to forget: This place, and none other, was home.
Footfalls drew Torchholder’s attention away from the rooftops of Sanctuary. He turned in time to see his escort, a man scarcely a quarter his age, climb out of the roadside ditch. Atredan Larris Serripines’ face was paler than the moon and shiny with sweat but, on the whole, he looked a good deal better than he had when he’d staggered into the grass.
“Better now?” Molin asked pleasantly.
Atredan favored him with a scowl. “So much for Father’s Foundation Day Feast.”
In another time and place, Lord Serripines’ second son might have amounted to something. He had the golden hair and hazel eyes of a true Rankan aristocrat, an amiable personality, and the sense not to get caught when he succumbed to temptation. Lesser men had ruled well in Ranke. But in Sanctuary, a generation after an eastern horde had brought fire, rape, pillage, and death to the Empire’s heart, Atredan was doomed to ambition without prospects.
No commemoration of the Imperial Founding, however precisely observed, could change that.
Molin dug into his scrip and found a sprig of mint twisted with other herbs, which he offered to the younger man. “I think you’ll find it settles what’s left and takes the taste away.” When one indulged as the Imperial court in its prime had indulged, one never forgot its remedies and kept them forever close to hand.
Atredan had refused the digestive when Molin had first offered it, but took it gratefully now and chewed hard. Within moments his face had relaxed.
“Gods all be damned, Lord Torchholder, I can’t believe any emperor has ever sat through a meal like that! The food. The wine—especially that wine. Anen’s mercy, what did my lord father put in it this year?”
Never mind that Anen was the Ilsigi god of vineyards and anathema to the Rankan pantheon, Atredan had a valid argument.
“Honey,” Molin replied with an honest sigh. “A comb of Imperial honey, straight from the Imperial hives, the Imperial garden, and the Imperial pantry. The genuine article—or so he told me. Very rare these days.”
“Very expensive,” Atredan corrected. “Very old, very spoilt, and fit only for swine or my lord father’s Foundation Day table.”
“That is not for me to say,” Molin said diplomatically and—because he was, among many other things, an accomplished diplomat—he made it clear that he would have agreed with the young man, had it been necessary to do so.
Diplomatic nuance was wasted on the Serripines’ cadet heir. “Did you actually drink that swill?”
“I’m an old man, Lord Larris, and my palate is as old as the rest of me. Swill or ambrosia, it all tastes the same now—Yet, I am sure the wine we drank in Ranke was not so sweet … or gluey. And neither did we ferment it ourselves. Truth to tell—we seldom drank Imperial wine, with or without Imperial honey. All the best vintages came by ship from Caronne. They still do, I suppose, but not to Sanctuary. Have a care for your lord father. He was a babe-in-arms when Ranke fell. He dreams of Rankan glory, but he doesn’t remember it.”
Atredan muttered words too soft and slurred for Molin to catch. The indignities of age! His reputation had been built on his eyes and his ears. Time was when no word or gesture had escaped his senses; that time