Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [114]
“I was there when you came in, lad, and there when you left. I would have joined you, had I trusted the company you kept.”
The stranger had an accent Cauvin couldn’t place and a smile he didn’t like. Feeling cockier than he had a right to feel, Cauvin restated his claim. “The Unicorn was dead-quiet last night. I could see who sat at every froggin’ table, and you weren’t there, or you’d know that I came alone, I wasn’t keeping company with anyone.”
“Except a woman. Which is why, although I saw you clearly—You tucked the mask over your belt and you bore your knife on the right last night. Is it your habit to rearrange your weapons each day?—I chose not to reveal myself.”
“He’s young yet,” the Torch said, coming unexpectedly to Cauvin’s defense and giving him a chance to scrutinize the stranger again. “And full of himself. Succumbing to the charms of a Unicorn wench is an accident that befalls most young men in this town once or twice.”
“Begging your pardon, Lord Torchholder”—Soldt gave the Torch his title—“but, upon inquiry, I find it is not once or twice, and this wench is not the Unicorn’s common breed.”
“What breed, then?”
Soldt shrugged. His cloak slipped. As he rearranged it Cauvin caught sight of a collar and hood. With that, he recognized the faceless man who’d watched him—and Leorin—the previous evening. That made the stranger a froggin’ spy, which to Cauvin’s mind was worse than a froggin’ liar. He didn’t take a swing at Soldt—armed or not, the stranger had a fighter’s aspect—but he got close enough to smell his breath as he shouted—
“Leorin’s not a froggin’ whore! She works at the Unicorn because there’s good money to be made there … honest money. When we’ve got enough between us, we’ll marry, but until then she’s got nothing to be ashamed of. I won’t listen to you talk about her as if she were a whore, and I won’t stand for being spied on.”
“Trouble doubled, Lord Torchholder,” Soldt said calmly, turning away from a threat he obviously didn’t consider serious. “You can’t lean on a man who’s burdened by love; and the girl herself, my lord, you’d tremble to see her by candlelight.”
“Would I?” the Torch asked, as arrogant with Soldt as he was with Cauvin. “At my age, I’d count it a god’s boon to tremble at the sight of a woman.”
“It’s not her beauty, though that is considerable—”
“Say it straight,” Cauvin snarled, getting in Soldt’s face again, now that he could froggin’ see where this was headed. “I’ve heard it before and so has she—as far back as she can froggin’ remember. Leorin’s the froggin’ image of Sanctuary’s last sheep-shite prince, Kadakithis. She’s got Imperial hair and Imperial eyes. If she showed up on their doorstep, the Enders would have to take her in, and if she approached a madam on the Street of Red Lanterns, she’d be rich in a week. But she stays at the Unicorn because once he’s paid, the Stick sees that she’s left alone.”
The Torch’s eyes narrowed. “How old is this woman?”
“Too young to be legitimate,” Soldt answered before Cauvin. “Too young by half, but the resemblance is uncanny. I can think of a few notables in Ranke who’d claim her in a heartbeat, just to start rumors. One would like to glimpse her parents—”
“One froggin’ sure would!” Cauvin returned Soldt’s words with a snarl. “You aren’t listening—the damned Hand scooped Leorin up and dumped her in the pits, same as me—”
“Impossible,” the Torch insisted. He seized his staff and tried, with no success, to stand up. “Nonsense and impossible. I misplaced your face, pud, but a youth who resembled Prince Kadakithis, girl or boy, that I would have remembered.”
Cauvin would have liked to call the froggin’ old pud a liar, but that would have made him the liar instead. “You never saw her,” he admitted. “They’d pulled Leorin out of the pits before the Irrune got there. A couple winters before. There was one—” he lost his voice as a Hand’s face floated up from memory. Lean, scarred, and the cruelest of the cruel, the Hand he and the other orphans called the Whip