Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [13]
The hip pain was not as severe as it had been before dawn. Molin could stand but knew, even as he balanced on the cobblestones, that he could not walk. The long, black wool robe he’d worn to the Foundation feast was stiff and sticky with blood. His blood, Molin thought incredulously and at the same time remembered the stranger throwing a knife that had tangled in his cloak. It had nicked him; and he hadn’t noticed. No doubt it had been slick with poison—the Hand was especially fond of paralytic poisons; and he hadn’t noticed. He’d plunged into witchcraft, not noticing that he bore an open wound.
Molin had killed himself. It was as simple as that. A man who’d prided himself on his cleverness had slain himself with carelessness. The only thing Molin felt more keenly than the pain in his hip was shame. He hid his face behind a frail hand while with his mind’s eye he beheld all his unfinished intrigues.
Not now, Molin complained to fate, which was never known to answer prayers. Not with Arizak crippled and his family divided. Not with the Hand loose in Sanctuary again. I’ve got work to do; I can’t die now, not without an heir …
Vashanka was not a chaste god, nor did He expect His priests to live a celibate life. Molin had been married once, long ago. He’d sired children then and later, but none had lived more than a handful of years. Something to do with the witchblood, he suspected. He’d had other opportunities to choose an heir; and he’d rejected them all. Intrigue was Molin’s life. Without intrigue he’d have no life, so he’d never surrendered, nor even shared his web of secrets.
Shame weighed on Molin’s shoulders. His chin sank to his breastbone. His hand fell to his side. He stared, seeing nothing but failure and his feet until he blinked and saw himself.
If there were rules to witchcraft—predictable consequences to repeated actions—Molin Torchholder had never learned them. He certainly couldn’t account for what lay on the cobblestone—a corpse wearing his face, the face he’d worn yesterday at Land’s End—save for the shattered jaw and devastated nose. Its hands were his, too, gnarled and mottled with age, but unmarked by blood-colored tattoos.
When the street awakened, as it surely would now that the eastern sky was gold and crimson, they’d find two corpses on the street—a youth with Rankan features, wealthy clothes, and a single wound; and Arizak’s longtime advisor, brutally beaten and stripped to his loincloth. Arizak would be outraged, Lord Serripines of Land’s End, too. Lord Serripines would insist that Arizak search the city inside out for the murderer; and Arizak would comply … and proclaim a hero’s funeral. The Irrune chief had promised as much many, many times, and he was a man of his word.
What would Strangle make of that? Would he come to see the pyre, hiding his telltale hands? Could a decrepit and crippled old man sniff out the villain and expose him before his ruined body failed completely?
The man who had been Molin Torchholder had to try. It was better to be dead on the streets of Sanctuary than hobble before Arizak to admit his carelessness and his failures.
Chapter Two
More asleep than awake, Cauvin lay on his back thinking about gray.
Grabar’s stoneyard, where Cauvin lived and worked, had begun to fill with daytime noise. The cow wanted milking. The chickens and goats squabbled over whatever slops Mina had thrown out the kitchen door at the start of breakfast. The dog barked itself silly at the yard’s Pyrtanis Street gate. But when Cauvin set himself to thinking about fog and twilight a few household animals didn’t stand a chance.
As a boy, Cauvin had mastered gray because his life had depended on it. Don’t think, the Hand would say as they’d taught him the lessons they wanted him to learn. Stop thinking. Nobody wants to know