Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [153]
Bec blanched and knotted his fingers in Flower’s skimpy mane. The mule responded by straining against the traces and giving Cauvin her hardest butt yet. He snapped the lead against her nose—which was a froggin’ foolish thing to do. The world didn’t know from stubborn until the first mule got born. Flower bared her flat, yellow teeth and brayed up enough racket to draw a man down from the gate.
Cauvin made peace with the watchman and the mule while Bec sat on her back, white as winter snow, his eyes shiny with unshed tears. Bec’s obvious misery shamed Cauvin, and he hid deep in his own thoughts to escape its weight. The boy slipped off Flower’s back as soon as they were through the stoneyard gate. He ran straight to the kitchen. Cauvin didn’t think Bec would tell Mina the true reason he was on the verge of tears, but Mina would notice, and she’d blame Cauvin.
Supper was going to be froggin’ unpleasant. Cauvin would have climbed the ladder to his loft if he hadn’t gone hungry since breakfast. He could have gone to the Lucky Well for supper, or to the Unicorn, but he’d still have to face his foster mother, and the way he ached from top to bottom, he wasn’t eager to hike for supper. He tended Flower, hid the wooden box with the Ilbarsi knife, and after coating his boots with sweet oil walked barefoot through the sunset into Mina’s kitchen.
Everyone on Pyrtanis Street knew there was an Ilsigi ship in the harbor—they need only walk to the end of the street to see its mast rising above the wharf. The first words out of Mina’s mouth weren’t about Bec’s tears or Cauvin’s feet—as he’d feared. They were a warning that supper would be long on grain, short on fish.
“Someone thinks they’re worth a feast and sucked half the fish out of the damned market. Drove up the prices up on what was left. Hecath’s fires will burn cold before I spend four padpols on scrod.”
Mina had added extra grain to the pot to make up for the missing fish. It was tasty, though—Mina knew her spices and, more importantly, her spice-sellers the way sots knew the town’s froggin’ taverns. But food couldn’t lighten Cauvin’s thoughts. Nor could conversation.
The night’s good news—if it could be called that—was that late in the afternoon Tobus the dyer had shown up at the stoneyard to talk about rebuilding an adjoining house for his soon-to-wed son. Tobus wanted the fronts to match—to show his prosperity, now stretching into a second generation, to anyone walking down Sendakis Way.
“More than bricks, Cauvin, Tobus wants new lintels across both houses, with carvings, no less. I warned him the Irrune won’t abide gods in the city, Imperial or otherwise. He’s settled for fish, a row of them above each door and window. Tobus the dyer lives in a house crowned by tobutt fish—clever? We’ll cross the fish like this—” Grabar made an X with his forearms. “We’ve agreed on forty coronations paid in soldats—soldats minted in Ranke and not cut since they got here.”
“Forty! You should have gotten sixty!” Mina carped from the hearth. “Even a good soldat’s not the same as a damned shaboozh, you know.” It bothered her that shaboozh were worth more than soldats, never mind that a shaboozh was almost four times the weight.
“Wife! Enough! We’ll see a good profit. And before we’re done, I’ll tempt Tobus with columns, great thick columns faced with brick, to frame his two front doors. Meantime, I’ve got to order red-veined marble for the lintels all the way from Mrsevada. Tobus gave me the name of a ship’s broker—Sinjin, Minjin, something like that. The three of us will meet Ilsday to make the necessary arrangements—”
“Forty!” Mina repeated, “If Tobus can afford foreign marble, then he’s got enough to pay you another forty coronations for your labor. Think of the boy, Husband! Another forty coronations would see him apprenticed to a master apothecary in Ranke.”
“Enough! Forty coronations it is and will be!”
Mina