Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [111]
The boy crowed, “I won’t say a word … if we get going quick.” He sheathed the knife and tucked the canvas around it.
Cauvin didn’t trust himself to say a word as he led Flower from the stoneyard. They weren’t clear of Pyrtanis Street when Bec started talking as if there hadn’t been an arm’s length of steel between them moments earlier.
“Poppa said he saw you leaving the feast last night, alone and walking toward the Maze. Did you see her?”
Sweet Eshi! “Yes,” Cauvin growled.
“Did you jump the broom and make babies?”
“No.”
“But you will, won’t you?”
“Leave it be, Bec. It doesn’t concern you.”
The cart was quiet, but not for long. “It doesn’t matter, does it? if you jump the broom? Or if you’ve got a real bed with a feather mattress? You don’t have a feather mattress, but she does, doesn’t she? at the Unicorn? The feathers aren’t important, are they? Except for the chickens and the rooster. Dogs don’t need feathers, and feathers wouldn’t turn Flower into a momma mule, would they? So, if it’s not the broom and it’s not the feathers, what is it?”
Cauvin brought Flower to a halt. He faced his brother. “What in the froggin’ frozen hells of Hecath are you talking about?”
“Momma,” the boy admitted, staring at the planks he sat on. “Poppa’s face was all red when he came home last night. Momma said he’d had too much wine and blew out the candle, but he and Momma didn’t go to sleep—and I couldn’t, either, ‘cause of the bed. Creak-creak. Creak-creak. I snuck outside—watched you come home. This morning, I asked Momma if they’d made a baby—’cause I’m ready to be older. She said the feathers were wore out. I don’t understand what feathers have to do with it. Or brooms. I heard Batty Dol say that Honald’s daughter Syleen jumps the broom with a different man every night, but Syleen’s got no babies. She doesn’t have a feather bed, either—I looked, she sleeps in straw, same as you. So, what about her—about Reenie—she’s got a feather mattress and she jumps the broom same as Syleen—just not with you. Why doesn’t she have babies?”
“Leorin’s not like Syleen!” Cauvin sputtered before he could stop himself.
“Maybe not every night, but some nights.”
“You don’t know that—”
“She lives above the froggin’ Unicorn, Cauvin—everybody knows.”
“Everybody doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“Momma does. Momma says—” Bec cleared his throat and launched a dead-on imitation of his mother’s voice. “It’s a shame, a god’s own shame. We took him in, raised him as our own, and what does he do? Chases a whore in the Maze. Gods forgive me, but they knew what they were about when they plucked him up. Him and his whore. Alike as peas. No surprise they found each other in that cess of a tavern. Blood will out. It always does. I bar the door every night. No telling when they’ll come to slaughter us—”
Mina thought Cauvin had a foul tongue in his mouth; Grabar, too. They thought his language was a bad influence on their precious son, but they’d never heard him use the words he used to quiet his foster brother. Bec certainly didn’t know them, except by tone. His face paled, and he wedged himself into the farthest corner of the cart.
Cauvin covered his eyes in shame. It wasn’t Bec’s fault he listened to his mother. Frog all, most of what Bec heard was the froggin’ truth, or froggin’ close enough that, angry as he was, Cauvin couldn’t call Mina a liar.
“It’s not true, is it?” Bec managed, little more than a whisper. “You and Reenie, you’re not really alike?”
“I’ve known her since I was younger than you, sprout. We remember the same things, all of them; but froggin’ shite, Bee—you know we don’t agree about everything.”
The boy blushed but sobered quickly to ask, in a quivering whisper, “The Hand marked both of you for sacrifice,