Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [132]
Kama was right. Chenaya’s overlong childhood ended the night Rosanda died. She didn’t exactly repent, but she chose her enemies with greater care thereafter and brokered a reconciliation of sorts between the prince and Daphne. Molin even got some leverage on the gutter rats after Kama persuaded him to release their leader with his limbs and manhood intact.
Rosanda Uralde had not accomplished half so much in life as she did by the simple act of getting in the way of a man with a sword. And for that reason alone, Molin Torchholder sank into a morass of guilt from which Kama could not lift him. She left him and Sanctuary.
Molin never saw her again, or took another lover.
Chenaya stayed. So long as the city was gods-ridden, it held her interest. But when the stuff of sorcery began to dry up, when the witches left, the Beysib, and all the warriors, too, she was left with only her father’s gladiators for company. When her cousin Kadakithis announced his intention to return to Ranke and stake his claim to the Imperial throne, she buckled on her weapons and armor and went with him.
Two years passed, two endless, silent years without word from either of them nor about them. Lowan Vigeles swallowed his pride and came to the palace, begging for information, believing Molin still had influence with Vashanka and the Imperial court. Nothing could have been further from the truth; Vashanka was utterly vanquished at that point, and Molin survived in Sanctuary because his enemies in Ranke assumed he was dead.
Molin had no desire to attract attention by reawakening his web of spies, but a father’s desperation was difficult to ignore. After months of alternating pleas and threats, he betook himself to the bazaar, to a blacksmith’s stall and the little home that stood behind it. The S’danzo still dwelt in Sanctuary—it would be another nine years before they pulled up stakes—and Molin was on good terms with the best of them. He’d gotten Illyra’s boy out of Sanctuary before either the witches or the gods could lay their hands on the gifted, fated boy. Arton had grown to near manhood on the distant Bandaran Islands, and though Illyra had confessed that she did not expect to see him again in her lifetime, she welcomed the messages Molin brought her two or three times a year.
Her first words were about her son. “Have you had word from the Isles?”
“No,” he’d admitted. “The ship I sent isn’t due back until autumn. I’ve come to beg a favor. I’m looking for my niece. You remember Chenaya … ?”
When Molin thought of Illyra, he always saw a girlish face framed by dark chestnut curls in his mind’s eye, but the truth was that Illyra had been young no longer when he went to the bazaar to ask his brother-in-law’s questions. Her hair had dulled and the skin around her eyes was wrinkled from too many hours spent squinting at her cards, looking for trouble. The look she gave him when Molin mentioned Chenaya’s name was both ancient and bitter.
Chenaya might have mended her ways after Rosanda’s death, but she hadn’t changed anyone’s opinion.
“Two years have passed since she left Sanctuary with Prince Kadakithis and no word from either of them—”
“They rode to their doom. It was no secret. He should have sailed off with the Beysa and she … She should have stayed away from Sanctuary,” Illyra replied.
The moment that followed had been of the few times Molin Torchholder had been at an utter loss for words. He knew more about Sanctuary’s hidden lives than anyone else, but he had no notion what Chenaya had done to earn Ilyra’s coldest disdain. They’d sat there on opposite sides of Illyra’s scrying table, staring at each other like the fish.
Clang, tap! each time the hammer struck the anvil then rested while Dubro worked his trade nearby. Clang, tap!