Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [142]
Besides, if Cauvin went into the fane, he’d have to tell Soldt what had happened, and that would give away a froggin’ precious secret. Cauvin decided the All-Mother would understand that he couldn’t pay such a high price for good fortune.
There were only two roads that meant anything around Sanctuary: the East Ridge Road to Ranke and the General’s Road that flowed out of the Street of Red Lanterns, across the distant Queen’s Mountains, and on to the Ilsig Kingdom. Cauvin didn’t know what general had named the road, and there weren’t any signposts for him to read, or time to read them. Soldt had settled into a longlegged stride—easy in his froggin’ supple boots—that was likely to have them in the kingdom before sunset.
Soldt slowed once they were beyond easy sight of the city walls. He led Cauvin off the road, and for a moment Cauvin thought they were taking the very long way to the ruins, but—no, Soldt headed into rows of trees that must have been an orchard. There was a walled and gated yard in the midst of the trees. Within the wall the grass was cropped short, as though animals were usually penned there. Outside the pen stood a little square building, about the size of Flower’s stall, but with no telltale traces of manure and straw to give it away. Cauvin guessed they’d come to one of Soldt’s haunts, if not his outright home.
Not bothering with the gate, Soldt threw a leg over the waist-high wall. “Well, let’s get on with it.”
“On with what?”
“The fighting, Cauvin, the fighting. You’re nursing a grudge; I promised Lord Torchholder I’d test your mettle. Let’s see what you can do. Draw that Ilbarsi knife you’ve been carrying.”
Cauvin reached awkwardly across his body for the hilt. The weapon was, as Soldt had just named it, a knife, not a sword, and it belonged on his right hip, not his left. He’d look the sheep-shite fool fumbling it out of its froggin’ sheath, and Soldt had seen enough of Cauvin’s foolishness for one day.
“I’m not a knife fighter,” he admitted, releasing the hilt. “I fight with my fists. I’m good with my fists.”
“If you say so. Come at me with your fists.”
Never mind that pounding bruises into Soldt’s face had been foremost in Cauvin’s sheep-shite mind a moment earlier, he couldn’t simply lay into a man, any man. “It wouldn’t be right,” he explained. “The Torch—I don’t know what he told you, but I was in the palace when he led the Irrune against it. The Bloody Hand, they taught me; I was one of their warriors. If I fight you, I’ll hurt you. I don’t want that on my conscience.”
“Don’t insult me, Cauvin. If the Bloody Hand taught you to fight with your fists, then you were a thug, Cauvin, not a warrior, not even Dyareela’s. You went out at night, marching behind a red-handed priest, and when he told you to hurt someone, you did—exactly the way you’d been taught. You’d kill, if that’s what you’d been told to do, and not just in Sanctuary’s dark streets. You’d killed in the pits, too—when they told you to make an example of someone. You weren’t even a thug, just a big dog, trained to obey its masters’ commands.”
Cauvin swallowed hard. The Torch’s spy had described the essence of his life in the Hand’s fist, except for one important detail. “Not the pits. I looked out for the little ones. Protected—”
Soldt cut him off with a sneer. “Better be damned for killer than a liar, Cauvin. If the Hand taught you anything, it was because they trusted you wherever, whenever, and against whomever they chose. What did you do to earn their trust?”
Sweat seeped on Cauvin’s forehead. He wiped it off on his sleeve, then ran his hand across the back of his neck, slipping the knot and drawing the bronze slug into his palm. Those memories were buried; he wouldn’t dig them up. “Not the pits,” he repeated.
Soldt wouldn’t back