Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [108]
“Well, you keep on feeling it, then.” Leorin stood up. “I’ve got customers to tend.”
She didn’t—at least not beer- or wine-drinking customers. Leorin put a sway in her hips and strode over to a wall-hung table where two men—neither of them the man in the stiff-necked cloak—were deep in conversation. In no time she was sitting in one man’s lap, toying with his beard.
Another reason for Cauvin to be angry with Molin Torchholder: The froggin’ old pud had come between him and Leorin. Cauvin sipped his beer. He didn’t want to think about the changes barreling into his life with the Torch not yet dead, so he listened to the conversations around him.
The men with Leorin were the loudest and talking about how the new emperor in Ranke didn’t look half as Imperial as she did. He heard her laugh and say something that included the words “gown” and “upstairs.” When Cauvin glanced over his shoulder again, there was only one man sitting at the table.
It wasn’t jealousy. Leorin had been taking men upstairs since before they’d found each other two years earlier. She might stop after they jumped the broom; she might not. Cauvin never worried because Leorin didn’t care about any of the men she bedded, any more than she cared about her Imperial beauty. But until tonight, she’d never taken a man upstairs to spite him.
Slowly Cauvin finished his beer. He’d given the Torch’s armsmaster ample time to see him. If he gave any more, Leorin would be coming downstairs. That was a froggin’ moment Cauvin wanted to avoid. He dropped a chipped and blackened soldat on the table and left the Unicorn.
The funeral feasting had been cut short by a cold rain that numbed Cauvin’s bones before he’d escaped the Maze. Even so, he took the long way home, up the Processional and along Governor’s Walk, passing close to the palace. The gates were barred; the smell of smoke seeped through cracks in the wood. The stoneyard gate was closed, too, but not barred. Cauvin bribed the yard dog with affection, then carefully stowed his new knife behind the grain barrel. Grabar and Mina would ask questions if they saw it, so would Bec, and though the froggin’ questions would be different, Cauvin didn’t want to be answering either batch.
Chapter Ten
A storm descended in full fury not long after Cauvin wrapped himself in blankets. It hammered Sanctuary with mighty peals of thunder and lightning bright enough to see through closed eyes. Rain pounded the loft’s wooden walls, rattling the shutters and flicking cold water onto Cauvin’s face. There was a board beside the window. He could have propped it against the shutters—he’d nail it over them before the month ended—but getting out of bed was more work than he cared to do after midnight.
Wild storms were common visitors in spring and summer. This one was late, but Cauvin would have slept through it if he hadn’t been burdened with a storm-god’s memories. The skies were quiet before he slipped into restless sleep.
Hours later, aching cold shoulders awakened Cauvin from a dream about Leorin. He’d tossed and turned himself out of the blankets and nearly out of his shirt. Straightening them quickly, he tried to recapture the dream-stuff before it fled. He was partially successful and could have lain in the straw a while longer, imagining the pleasure he’d denied himself last night, but he’d opened his eyes while rearranging the blankets and knew that dawn was in the froggin’ loft.
If shirking could solve problems, Cauvin was more than willing to give it a try; and this time maybe shirking could. If he didn’t go back to the red-walled ruins, then the Torch would die. Eleven years ago Cauvin could have lived with leaving a man to die—he wouldn’t be alive if he couldn‘t—but he’d put all that behind. Cauvin didn’t believe he owed the froggin’ Torch life for life, but he couldn’t let a froggin’ root cellar become any man’s tomb.
He blinked Leorin out of