Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [136]
Davar nodded slowly. His face was pale above his beard. Cauvin figured they were headed for trouble when Davar asked—
“Who sent you?”
“Lord Molin Torchholder.”
“He’s dead.”
“He wasn’t when he told me to dig it up,” Soldt countered with froggin’ honesty that wasn’t honest. “Don’t worry. We’ll set it back down once we’ve got what we’re looking for.”
“Frog all, we can’t do that—” Cauvin corrected his partner of inconvenience. “An anvil’s got to sit on ground that’s ten years’ settled.” Swift had told him that. Maybe Swift wasn’t the best blacksmith in Sanctuary, but he had the best forge: high up on Pyrtanis Street, where floodwaters never lingered.
“Then we’ll move it to settled ground.”
“There’s work to be done.” Davar pointed to a tangle of iron that froggin’ sure looked like a scrap hoard to Cauvin. “Man’s got to keep food on his family’s table. Five soldats.”
Trust the bazaar-folk to cheat outsiders every chance they got. Five soldats was robbery, froggin’ plain and simple, but Soldt—who wouldn’t give a froggin’ padpol to a beggar girl—didn’t balk at the smith’s request.
“Seven—if we can use your shovel.”
“Davar doesn’t need seven froggin’ soldats if we’re doing the froggin’ digging!” Cauvin muttered, while the smith rummaged behind the gap-planked shanty he called home. “This ground’s hard as stone.”
“Then you should be well suited to dig through it.”
Cauvin clenched his fists without thinking, then unclenched them again when Davar returned with a decent shovel and a pick with a crooked arm and a broken shaft.
“We’ll set the anvil here—” the smith said, scratching a mark in the dirt a foot closer to the fire.
Cauvin didn’t expect Soldt to help with the anvil. The sheep-shite thing was heavy as sin and whatever Soldt did to keep himself in boots and cloaks, it wasn’t hard labor. Besides, there was scarcely room for him and Davar to get their arms around the froggin’ iron without knocking heads. He was sweat-drenched from holding up one side of the anvil after the other while Davar added pebbles to the pad.
When the anvil was leveled to Davar’s satisfaction, Cauvin thrust his arms into the slaking barrel. He splashed the bitter water against his face, swallowed some, and spat out the rest. Not by accident, the stream barely missed Soldt’s fine, black boots. Soldt gave Cauvin a one-sided grin and never budged. Then Davar pulled a length of red-hot metal from the fire where it had been since before they arrived and started hammering as though he always had a froggin’ audience when he worked.
Shite for sure, If they’d been shouting, the two men couldn’t have made their froggin’ thoughts clearer: There was hard work to be done, and he was the sheep-shite fool who had to do it. With a silent snarl, Cauvin grabbed the pick. The froggin’ shaft was so short Cauvin had to hunch over to swing it, and the crooked arm made it buck and twist. If his luck ran true to form, he’d have blisters under his calluses before he was through …
“Back a bit to the right,” Soldt advised. “You’re starting to drift.”
Cauvin adjusted his swing.
“My right,” Soldt corrected.
Froggin’ hells of Hecath! Cauvin corrected his mistake. He slammed the pick into the packed, brown dirt so hard the metal nearly separated from the shaft, then he raised it up and slammed it down again.
“Good, good—you’ll find it soon enough,” Soldt said, ladling out the kind of mealy-mouthed praise no man wanted to hear.
Cauvin didn’t raise his head until there was enough loosened dirt about to warrant the shovel. The froggin’ shovel was where he’d left it, but the Torch’s froggin’ stranger had made himself scarce. Davar shrugged with his hammer and heated metal.
Shalpa knew what he’d do with the box—if there were a box, if the damned gods weren’t determined to show up him up as a great, sheep-shite fool in front of bazaar rats. The Torch had told them to take it to some S’danzo woman. Any sheep-shite fool with dark