Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [138]
Soldt stopped short, spread his arms, and bowed. “You’re the one knows the way, you carry the box.” Soldt’s leather cloak rippled as he extended his arms, the carved wooden box balanced in his right hand.
Ignoring the insults and mockery, Cauvin snatched the froggin’ box, tucked it tight under his sopping armpit, and set off at the longest pace his legs could manage. He didn’t truly expect to lose the Torch’s froggin’ spy. Soldt had an air of strength and wiliness around him; he’d keep up without breaking a froggin’ sweat. Besides, Soldt had the Torch’s froggin’ map. But, threading through the throng—shouldering between a matron and her maid and knowing that Soldt would be the one to catch froggin’ hell from their body servants when he followed—soothed Cauvin’s temper.
The archway alley to Governor’s Walk was more crowded and noisier than usual. Another time, Cauvin would have hung back, waiting for the traffic to sort itself out, but today—with Soldt a few steps behind him—Cauvin strode into the thick of it.
Suddenly there was shouting and screaming up ahead, and in a heartbeat the crowd was thick as Batty Dol’s sour jam. Another heartbeat and there were elbows froggin’ everywhere. Slowly a sickening stench wove its way out of the arch.
“What froggin’ died?” Cauvin muttered to himself—because that was the smell. Some froggin’ pud’s gut had burst and dumped his last meal between his ankles. Some froggin’ huge pud, or maybe a froggin’ horse. A burst horse could account for the screams and the way the crowd had frozen in the alley. The stench was that froggin’ bad.
The crowd parted for a heartbeat. Cauvin saw all the way to Governor’s Walk and saw the source of their stench before the crowd congealed again. A cart had tipped over dead center beneath the arch and dumped barrels of night swill on the cobblestones. The west side of Sanctuary wasn’t as steep-sloped as the east side Stairs or the Hill or froggin’ Pyrtanis Street itself, but it wasn’t froggin’ flat, either. The swill was gushing into the bazaar, and the people in its path—the people between Cauvin and Governor’s Walk—were desperate for high ground.
Before Cauvin got himself turned around, a woman lost her balance. She lurched against Cauvin’s chest and together they staggered into a third person, too small to be Soldt. They all would have fallen, if there’d been enough room to fall or if the palace wall hadn’t been directly behind the body behind Cauvin. That body grunted rather than screamed. It didn’t have the froggin’ strength to free itself.
Cauvin wasted a heartbeat feeling thankful that they’d left Bec behind—what was merely froggin’ uncomfortable for him could be death for a sprout. In his mind’s eye Cauvin saw the boy slipping down to the froggin’ cobblestones. He was imagining boots tromping on Bec’s chest as he braced himself and shoved. The woman against his chest yelped like a stepped-on dog, but Cauvin had made a hole large enough for them both to turn around in. He shoved again, this time against the bald runt who’d been behind him.
The dug-up box shifted beneath Cauvin’s arm. He put his free hand over the clasp and shoved again. The runt and several others stumbled out of Cauvin’s way and onto one of the bazaar’s uncrowded dirt paths. Cauvin had saved the runt’s life, but the little man didn’t see it that way. From one knee in the dirt he cursed Cauvin up one side, down the froggin’ other. Cauvin looked around for Soldt, who’d made his own escape from the throng, and strode on without saying a word.
There was another way out of the bazaar—There were two, actually, but the second was back over by Davar’s: the old Common Gate that opened outside, to the graveyard, the rebuilt temples, and the whorehouses on the Street of Red Lanterns. The second way between the city and the bazaar was south, down where the big caravans used to tie up. It wasn’t so much a gate as a whole froggin’ missing wall, but, as the crush at the arch had shown, not many went that way unless they