Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [171]
Cauvin had heard that before from the Hand. “I’m grateful, my lord, but no thanks, I do my best with stone and a hammer.”
Mioklas shook his head with exaggerated sadness. “Think about it, Cauvin—talents like yours, they don’t last forever. You don’t want to waste them building walls, do you?”
“No, my lord—I mean, yes, my lord.” Omen or daydream, Cauvin imagined himself in the Ilsigi capital, hungry and looking for work—looking for a stoneyard but finding only a man who needed an obedient man with a mean face and hard fists.
“Think about it … and come back when you’re ready. I see great things on Sanctuary’s horizon. You could be a part of them. I’ve watched you become a man, Cauvin, working for the stoneyard. Why, you’re almost as much like family here as you are on Pyrtanis Street. There’s not a wall in this house that doesn’t have a bit of your sweat, maybe even a bit of your flesh and blood worked into it.”
“If you need another wall, my lord, or anything built from stone—”
“I’ll come looking for you, Cauvin. I know where to find you, don’t I? Now, I have work to do before the tide changes and my ship sails. Brevis will show you out. Brevis?”
The bodyguard led Cauvin to the high door.
“Mind where you’re walking,” Brevis advised as Cauvin descended the steps to the Processional. “You might step in something that clings.”
Cauvin nodded. He walked toward the harbor, paying no attention to where he put his feet. When the water was in front of him, he sat down on a piling. His breathing steadied, but not his mind. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees and head between his hands, trying to make sense of the forty-two shaboozh hanging heavy at his waist.
The Torch had been so certain that he’d been attacked by a Bloody Hand survivor. Whatever else Mioklas might do, he wouldn’t go near the Hand, not after what the Hand had done to his father. People didn’t forgive things like that, not even rich people. Yet when Cauvin had spoken the Torch’s name, Mioklas betrayed all the signs of a man with something to hide. What? Could the Torch have been wrong about the attack? Could Mioklas truly have plotted murder but not known the would-be murderer?
Froggin’ gods all be damned—Cauvin knew the Hand and its way better than any Imperial lord or Wrigglie magnate, but could he have misread the Copper Corner ambush?
Confusion became a throbbing pain behind Cauvin’s eyes. A sheep-shite stone-smasher wasn’t half clever enough to put these pieces together. He needed to talk to someone older and wiser—
No, he put that thought out of his mind. The Torch was the source of his misery.
Soldt? Frog all, Soldt was the Torch’s man, the Torch’s assassin. Bilibot’s winter tales were froggin’ full of assassins who betrayed the men who’d hired them. Froggin’ sure Soldt had had ample opportunity to correct any mistakes he might have made six nights ago, but—what was it that the S’danzo had said: Cauvin could trust Leorin because she was predictable. Shite for sure, Cauvin couldn’t predict Soldt.
Leorin herself? Because Cauvin had already given her his love and his trust and because, from the moment Mioklas had spread those forty-two shaboozh across the table, broadening his suspicions, Cauvin had seen Leorin in a brighter light. If it weren’t for the S’danzo’s cards—
No, Cauvin’s worries about his betrothed went deeper than paintings on stiffened parchment, deeper than the attack on the Torch. The seeds had been planted when she’d reappeared in his life two years earlier, and they grew—damn every god and goddess—each time she disappeared with another man. Shite for sure, Cauvin wanted to talk to Leorin. He wanted to get her out of the Unicorn, out of Sanctuary … Then, and only then, he’d tell her about the last few days. He wouldn’t—couldn’t—turn to her for advice while his own mind was a sucking mire.
“Move it, pud!”
A harsh voice and a sharp pain above his right ankle jolted Cauvin