Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [17]
“You sleep dead, Cauvin; nothing short of a kick to the head wakes you. You were like that the day you walked through the door, and you’ll be the same when you walk out. Batty Dol says no one heard the two men die, but she saw the palace guard come to claim the bodies.”
“Batty Dol?” Cauvin rolled his eyes. “You’re listening to froggin’ Batty Dol and believing her?”
Mina banged her iron ladle against the iron pot. “Mind your language! Batty gets mixed up sometimes, but she doesn’t lie—not like some I could name. She came running here soon as she saw the guard in the street picking up bodies with drawn swords. Gave her a damned fright, it did. She had a hard time during the Troubles.”
Nobody on the topside of the Stairs knew what hard times were, not compared to what had gone on in the pits, but the Troubles were the one subject that Cauvin and Mina held taboo. Not many people talked about the Troubles-except to say that times had been hard and that lots of people still couldn’t sleep.
“So, did old Batty say who’d gotten himself killed?”
“No names, but one was a Land’s End sparker—all fancy clothes and a fancy sword that was still in its scabbard. She said there wasn’t a mark on him save for the hole from the knife that killed him. The other was an old man, stripped near naked—now, that’d be a sight to give any woman a damned fright. No knife in him; he’d been beat to death, she said. But he must’ve been somebody important, though, ‘cause the guards took him away with the Ender.”
Cauvin scraped the last of the porridge from the side of his bowl. He thought about seconds and decided not to, at least until Grabar showed up and told him what they’d be doing all day.
“Someone better knock on all the doors and make sure no old man’s turned up missing overnight. A Land’s End sparker’s got no good reason to be topside of the Stairs after dark.”
“The Enders still own half the properties on this street. Pyrtanis Street was their street when my grandmother lived here. The grandest street in Sanctuary. When the Enders come back into Sanctuary—this is where they’ll live. They’ll rebuild their houses and serve dinners that last all night. Imagine it, Cauvin! My grandfather’s house—the house that stood right here—was four stories high. It was built from dressed stone and had twenty rooms! The whole top floor was divided into two rooms: one for the menservants, the other for the ladies’. Grabar, he pulled it down right after we married. Sold the stone to a sea captain. He built a warehouse down by the wharf …”
Cauvin looked up and caught Mina with tears in her eyes. Some people had problems because of the Troubles; Cauvin understood that. Mina’s problems were older than the Troubles. Grabar had told Cauvin that by the time he married Mina, her Imperial grandfather’s house had burnt and rotted. Froggin’ sure, Mina and her father were still living on the property, but in a root cellar under the chicken coop. That was the real reason why Mina wouldn’t gather the eggs: She didn’t dream about the Hand, she dreamt about froggin’ chickens.
When Mina hit the wine harder than she ought, she’d put on airs and talk about how she’d be living with the Enders if they knew who her grandfather had been, and if she’d been willing to set aside her marriage vows to Grabar. She bleached her hair because the best Imperials had golden blond hair—only hers looked more like last year’s straw. If the Enders came back to Pyrtanis Street—a froggin’ big if: It was ten years since the Irrune wiped out the Hand and not one of them had returned. But if the Enders did return, they wouldn’t pay attention to a stonemason’s blowzy wife.
If he’d wanted to make Mina miserable, Cauvin could have started cursing in the gutter Imperial he remembered from the pits, but making people miserable wasn’t something Cauvin ever wanted to do. He had to be froggin’ mad before he let his temper go because shite for sure, he always