Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [14]
Cauvin did what he was told, and he didn’t ask questions. He’d seen what the Hand did to disobedient orphans. But he couldn’t stop thinking, so he’d made himself think about fog and twilight. The Hand didn’t seem to notice; neither did Grabar—not that Grabar was anything like the Hand. Grabar was a good-enough man whose worst crime had been seizing an opportunity to turn a sheep-shite orphan into a fake son. If Grabar had Cauvin working stone each day until his shoulders ached, it was honest work with hot food afterward and a place to call his own in the loft above the work shed.
Froggin’ sure he argued with his foster parents, but everybody argued. In ten years Grabar had never raised a fist to Cauvin, nor he to Grabar, not even in the early months when Cauvin hadn’t known one kind of stone from another. Cauvin hadn’t needed the gray since he’d come to the stoneyard—except late at night when he got to remembering life before. Then, when his froggin’ memories were sore and throbbing, Cauvin dove so deeply into fog and twilight that it was almost like being dead—except that last night he’d had a dream.
Cauvin could count all the dreams he remembered. That’s how few there’d been in the twenty-five, maybe twenty-six, years he’d been going to sleep at night and waking up the next morning. He wasn’t complaining. What would a sheep-shite idiot like him dream about, anyway? The past? It was bad enough he froggin’ remembered his froggin’ past. If he’d dreamt about it, too, the way memories got twisted up in dreams, then froggin’ sure he’d have drowned himself the way Jess did.
Or Pendy.
Pendy had slit her own throat. Just picked up a knife one morning after she’d been dreaming and damn near sliced her own head off.
Froggin’ sure Cauvin didn’t want to wind up like Pendy.
Froggin’ sure Cauvin didn’t want to have any more dreams like the one he’d just awoken from.
In Cauvin’s dream, the Hand was back on the streets of Sanctuary. They were looking at everybody through Her eyes—through Dyareela’s eyes, the Mother of Chaos. They were looking for someone to kill, someone to make Her happy.
Looking for loose children.
The Mother of Chaos loved children.
In his dream, Cauvin had hidden himself in gray fog and twilight. He’d been the self he was now, full-grown and not the child he’d been when the Hand had caught him. He’d remembered what the Hand had taught him about fighting and about hiding when fighting wouldn’t be enough. In his dream, Cauvin would have been safe from the Hand, except that his father had been looking for him, too.
Cauvin had a father. Everybody had a father. You couldn’t crawl out of your froggin’ mother’s belly without your father had put you there first, but Cauvin had never met the man who’d fathered him. Froggin’ sure, he could scarcely remember his mother; still, he could have understood if she’d appeared in his dream. But—no—it was his gods-all-be-damned father wandering through the froggin’ fog and twilight, shouting “Where’s my son? I need a son! Give me a son!”
Worse, Cauvin’s sheep-shite sire was leading the Hand through the fog like it wasn’t there. Leading them straight to Cauvin, who’d outgrown the need for even Grabar’s fathering years ago.
Thank the gods-damned gods, he’d woken up before push came to shove. That froggin’ dream had been different. Not that Cauvin had had a lot of experience with dreams, but last night’s had felt like a warning: Hey, pud, we’re back, and we’re looking for you.
The dream had been more exhausting than a sleepless night. Cauvin lay on his back with his