Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [125]
Bec interrupted: “So it would be all right if we took all this to Land’s End? Do you think Lord Serripines really would let me see the other relics? Maybe he’s got the signets and such from my great-grandfather. Momma says they were rich. Their house on Pyrtanis Street had twenty rooms. My great-grandfather was an important man. Momma didn’t know him; he was dead before she was born—but you’re old, did you know him?”
“Possibly—what was his name?”
“Coricos,” Bec replied and it seemed that Grandfather’s eyes widened a bit. Momma had warned him against bragging about his Imperial ancestry. The folk on Pyrtanis Street didn’t understand how important lineage was to Imperials, to Momma. They made jokes about the family’s fallen fortunes. But surely Momma would have told Grandfather herself, considering who Grandfather was. “Coricos Cordion Coric—Corsic—Coricsicidos?” That wasn’t it. Too many sounds. Bec’s tongue frequently got tangled around all the sounds of Momma’s family name.
“Coricos Cordion Coricidius,” Grandfather supplied helpfully. “I would never have guessed. In his day, Coricidius was the face of the Empire in Sanctuary—the emperor’s vizier. A bit of irony, that. Vizier is an Ilsigi office, left over from the old days when the kingdom ruled this place. Only in Sanctuary were there Imperial viziers.”
“Great-grandfather wasn’t a Wrig—” Bec caught himself. Cauvin could call himself a Wrigglie, because he was, and so could Bec. Anybody who’d been born in Sanctuary or spoke the language of its streets could call himself a Wrigglie. But someone speaking Rankene or claiming Imperial lineage, he couldn’t call anyone a Wrigglie without it being a bitter insult. “Great-grandfather wasn’t Ilsigi; he was Imperial, the best Imperial—Momma said.”
“And what does your poppa say about that?” Grandfather asked, still speaking Rankene but sounding stern.
“Poppa knows,” Bec answered. There weren’t words in either language for the subjects that weren’t ever discussed at the stoneyard. “I put some water by the fire. I can make tea. Or stew. If you’re hungry.”
“Tea might be pleasant. No stew. I’m sure it’s delightful, but a dead man has no need of stew.”
Bec retreated, leaving Molin alone. The priest had lied about his pain, which was considerable, though not entirely physical—call it a consciousness of loss as his soul faded from his body; or regret for missed opportunities. Molin had bungled as many opportunities as he’d seized. He could have handled Bec better just now, and regretted that he’d mocked the boy’s ancestors. Molin knew the ache of inglorious ancestors.
Wrigglies weren’t the only reason Molin Torchholder despised the city where he was doomed to die. The native breed of Rankan aristocrat was worse than any son or daughter of Ilsigi slaves. The old vizier Coricos Cordion Coricidius had been among the worst of the worst.
To be sure, there were fouler specimens of mankind to be found in Ranke, but they left smaller marks on a vastly larger city. In Sanctuary, the Imperial vizier, Coricidius, had been the greatest fish in a tiny pond, proudly dominating the stolid Wrigglies, never guessing that he was great simply because in Sanctuary he had no competition. No competition, that was, until Emperor Abakithis had sent his young half brother into exile.
Prince Kadakithis, normally a man of the mildest temperament, had marked Coricidius for elimination within days of his arrival in the city. It wasn’t that the feast the vizier served that first night in Sanctuary was so poorly prepared that sixty years later Molin could still taste every miserable course—but the man had been fool enough to think that he could bribe the prince with glass jewels and doctored gold! The prince had wanted to pronounce judgment immediately; Molin had said no, give him rein, see where he goes and with whom.
If Molin had been attentive—not prescient, but merely clearheaded—he would have realized right then that he’d been bitten by Sanctuary and was doomed to die from its poison.
When he closed his eyes, Molin’s memories cleared. The