Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [166]
Jerbrah Mioklas—Lord Mioklas to the likes of Cauvin—owed the stoneyard a froggin’ pile of money because Mioklas’s father had been one of the first sheep-shite stupid Wrigglies to invite the Servants of Dyareela into his home on the Processional. The old patriarch had met the same flayed fate as Cauvin’s mother. The family would have fled to Land’s End, had they been golden-eyed Imperials, but being Wrigglies, they’d gone to ground in a farm village north of Sanctuary.
Lord Mioklas had reclaimed the family mansion at about the same time as Grabar claimed a foster son from the palace. A reasonable man would have realized that his childhood home was beyond salvage. A reasonable man would have torn the whole place down and maybe moved to another froggin’ city.
Lord Mioklas wasn’t a reasonable man. He was determined to have his home back, better than memory, if it was the last thing he or Grabar did. Grabar or Cauvin. Half of what Cauvin knew about stone he’d learned at the Mioklas mansion. Last spring, when Mioklas was ready to repair the perfume garden, Cauvin had done the work himself, shaping hundreds of stones by hand, then fitting them into a swirling wall that stood sturdy without a dollop of mortar between its stones and whispered gently when rain trickled between its stones. It was the best stonework Cauvin had done—his masterpiece, if he’d been a proper apprentice or if Sanctuary needed two stone masters.
Come high summer when the wall was finished, Mioklas had hosted a feast to celebrate the rebirth of his perfume garden. He’d invited every Wrigglie who mattered, the Irrune from the palace, and all the froggin’ Imperials from Land’s End. Mina complained the markets were empty for a week. Then Mioklas sent his housekeeper to Pyrtanis Street, pleading poverty and saying it would be autumn before he could even begin to pay his debt for the wall.
Grabar hadn’t argued. Shite for sure, they knew the man’s ways, and there would always be more stonework to be done at his mansion. When Mioklas decided what he wanted done next—and not one day sooner—his housekeeper would show up with enough silver to soothe even Mina’s easily ruffled feathers. Until then, they’d let it ride. It wasn’t as though Grabar had money tied up in the stone Cauvin had used—they’d scavenged the rock from another ruined garden. The debt in Mina’s eyes was labor only—Cauvin’s sheep-shite labor, day after froggin’ day.
Promises were promises. They were well into Esharia, the second full month of autumn and past time for Lord Mioklas to lay down his debts—or as much would buy two passages to Ilsig.
One block from the Processional, Cauvin came to an alley that led, even here in the wealthiest quarter of Sanctuary, to a courtyard where the scars of fire, storm, and the Bloody Hand of Dyareela were still clear on the abandoned buildings. Cauvin scaled a naked wall and picked his way carefully across a balcony that was more gap than wood. Next autumn, it might be gone altogether, but this year it still provided the best view of Mioklas’s perfume garden and Cauvin’s winding wall within it.
Cauvin stood in silence a moment, admiring his own craft. The mansion bustled with the servants a rich man needed to keep himself happy. One was a grizzle-bearded bodyguard with whom Cauvin had tangled before. He carried a sword and knew how to use it, but his presence assured Cauvin that Mioklas was at home and working as rich men worked: clean clothes, clean hands, and seated on cushions before a polished table.
After just one of Soldt’s lessons, Cauvin wasn’t sheep-shite stupid enough to think he’d win any challenge with a rich man’s bodyguard, but the guard had removed his sword belt, the better to hide under the gold-and-amber trees with a woman. Cauvin could have had his hands on Lord Mioklas’s neck before the guard knew there was an extra man in the garden, if that had been what Cauvin had wanted to do. It wasn’t. The only reason he’d climbed to the balcony was to see his stonework.