Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [121]
It took that long, no longer, for Grandfather’s eyes to close and his hand to lose its grip on the blanket wound over his hips. Bec called “Grandfather” just loud enough for a waking man to hear. When Grandfather didn’t rouse, Bec tiptoed closer. The sounds of breath reassured him, though he’d hoped for better. Yesterday, when he’d lain in bed pretending to hurt worse than he did, Bec had set himself to recalling every word of Grandfather’s long, rambling tale of Sanctuary’s history. He thought he had made the story his. He’d hoped to show off a bit and get a second chance to learn the passages where his attention had slipped.
There wasn’t a lot of time. One look at Grandfather, and Bec knew that even if the old man survived through tomorrow or the next day, he wasn’t going to last out the winter, especially if they didn’t find some place warm and civil for him to live.
That was Cauvin’s problem, or maybe Soldt’s. Bec’s problem was to keep trouble from finding him the way it usually did. (Bec never looked for trouble, no matter what Momma, Poppa, or Cauvin said.) He checked Flower’s hobbles, approaching her cautiously lest she decide to get ornery when Cauvin wasn’t around to calm her. The mule nibbled a handful of grass Bec offered her, even though it was no different from the grass between her feet. He scrounged windfalls and tinder for a fire, which caught on the second attempt.
When he’d finished settling Momma’s stewpot where it would heat but (hopefully) not boil over—and a pot of water, too, for tea—Bec had done all the chores he knew to do. He thought about smashing bricks, but a few practice swings convinced him that, today, trouble had set itself up in Cauvin’s big hammer. That left him with the ruins themselves, a sprawling tangle of cracked walls and rubble several times the size of the stoneyard.
Bec didn’t know how old the ruins were, but its bones had been picked clean. A few bits of bright paint clung to some of the inside walls, and there was one room where, beneath the leafy bits and dirt, the floor was made from tiny stones—each no bigger than his thumbnail—that formed portraits of the Ilsigi gods. Bec knew They were the Ilsigi gods because Their names were written—with Imperial letters—in bright, stone chips beside each portrait.
Father Ils had two eyes, not a thousand, and looked like Grandfather; all old men looked like one another. The god pointed at the largest, almost intact wall. Having nothing better to do (and hoping that trouble was content to stay with Cauvin’s mallet), Bec set about examining every exposed brick and swath of plaster he could reach. He found nothing of interest on the wall, but the hollow sound and sinking feeling he got when he stood on a particular section of the floor captured his attention.
On hands and knees, the boy soon marked out a hollow square. Moments later he’d retrieved a chisel from the cart and not long after that he’d pried up a board covering the hollow. The wood crumbled in his hands and crawly bugs scrambled away from the sudden light Bec brought into their world. A true son of his mother, the first shapes Bec identified were black, round and flat … coins! He tapped one with the chisel to satisfy himself that beneath the crust the coins were … silver shaboozh!
Bec was rich with ten shaboozh, each larger than the Rankan soldats Cauvin had brought back from the seamen’s place. He couldn’t wait to see the look on Swift’s face when he brought the coins to be cleaned and changed.
The coins weren’t the only treasure in the foot-deep hollow, though Bec judged them the only part that would interest adults. Also in the hollow was a snake’s shed skin. The snake had been thick as Bec’s wrist and longer than he was tall. Beneath the snake skin, Bec found a goblet, now broken, that had been blown from astonishingly blue glass; and a string of glass beads—each different from all the others. The string was in worse shape than the wood. It disintegrated as soon as Bec touched it.
The coins were more valuable—too valuable to keep. Swift would turn them