Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [159]
Chasing down one of Shadow Street’s innumerable dodges, Cauvin gained strides on the thief. The thief was aware of Cauvin’s pursuit, casting desperate glances over his shoulder as he shoved his way past stalls along the narrow passage. Cauvin shoved back, flattening vendors and their customers alike against the walls and dropping a customer to the ground. They cursed him and the thief with equal venom.
A roving sausage-seller with his wares hung from poles like battle pennants heard the commotion and chose to block the dodge against them both. The thief crashed hard against him. Sausages flew and, for a heartbeat, Cauvin clutched the thief’s tunic. Then, the thief back-slashed with a bloody knife. Cauvin released the cloth and they were running again.
The thief cried, “Father!” and crashed through a flimsy gate, exposing another passageway. Cauvin, bigger, heavier, and unfamiliar with the lay of the street, barely kept his balance as he cornered. He was still reeling when the passage opened into a courtyard. Skidding to a two-stride halt, Cauvin saw mounds of pottery: raw and baked; a pair of shimmering kilns; and a handful of men, each armed with heavy kneading sticks and the will to use them.
For the moment, the strangers held their ground, and so did Cauvin. He spotted his quarry, the thief, in the shadow of a stranger, much as he might have taken shelter in Grabar’s shadow during his first years on Pyrtanis Street.
“Who are you?” the thief’s protector demanded.
Cauvin swallowed an honest answer. The potters’ faces were unfamiliar but not entirely unknown. The man to his extreme left—a rangy sort, his face ringed with wild, black hair, his club thumping against an open palm, and his eyes so narrowed they didn’t glint in the sun—that man’s name hung just out of reach in Cauvin’s memory. If he waited another moment, he might remember these men.
“He robbed a man on Shadow Street—” Cauvin pointed at the thief. “Maybe killed him. A woman screamed first.”
The protector seemed unsurprised, undisturbed. “That’s no concern of yours.”
The leftmost potter strode forward. Forget the wild hair and change the thumping club into a five-tailed whip—one blistering braid for each finger—drawn again and again through a cupped hand, and you’d have one of the pit guardians of the Bloody Hand. It seemed impossible that Cauvin could forget the men who’d tormented him, but ten years was a long time. The guardians’ faces were nearly as faded as his mother’s now, and the potters’ hands were stained with brown clay, not red-as-blood tattoos.
“You’re not part of this, boy,” the protector warned. “Get out before you are.”
Boy? Bec was a boy; Cauvin never was. The thief, now there was a froggin’ boy, with nary a whisker on his chin but a fresh bloodstain smeared across the front of his shirt. His chest heaved from the chase—so did Cauvin’s—but he wasn’t afraid. Cauvin hadn’t been afraid when he’d walked behind the Hand.
Cauvin wasn’t behind or ahead of the Hand any longer, so he did what men and women had done when the Hand owned Sanctuary: He ran. His feet kicked up dust and grit, but there was no pursuit. The potters were as good as their word. Besides, they knew Cauvin wouldn’t take his tale of blood and theft to the guard … He was an outsider in the Shambles; the guard wouldn’t believe a word he said.
After leaping over the broken gate, Cauvin slowed down. No one took note of him leaving the dodge; the street’s attention was still fixed at its other end, where a flash of sunlight off metal showed that the city guard had finally arrived to investigate a murder. Guards might wander down the dodge, talk to the people he and the thief had shoved aside, even find the broken gate and visit the pottery. The potters would deny everything. They’d have their boy hidden by now and wouldn’t set the guards on Cauvin’s trail.
Cauvin thought he could count on that, the same way they’d counted on him. The stoneyard wouldn’t set the guard on a stranger’s trail, not without