Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [172]
He was Wrigglie; he endured insults, but once Cauvin had gotten away from the Hand, he’d sworn that he would not suffer manhandling. The oath had gotten him into more brawls than all his other bad habits combined. This time, after Cauvin swung wide, it not only got him clouted hard above his ear, it cost him his best shirt. The cloth tore when two men contested for the privilege of slamming him to his knees on the wharf planks. His left sleeve dangled around his wrist.
With an animal growl, Cauvin surged to his feet and renewed the fight. He grabbed one tormentor by his shirt, yanked the man close, and locked an arm around his head. Then Cauvin pounded the man’s face a few times before they were pulled apart. He wound up breaking a fall on the knee he’d bruised fighting Soldt the previous day. The pain cleared his mind; he stayed put, sniffing and panting.
“Azyuna’s mercy! I know this one. Pork all, Cauvin. What are you doing down here? Drunk out of your mind at this hour? Spiked on krrf or kleetel?”
Cauvin recognized Gorge, who usually prowled the Stairs, the Tween, and Pyrtanis Street, with two other guards whom he didn’t recognize, one with a very bloody nose. There was a bit of satisfaction in knowing he’d bloodied a city guard when there’d been three of them against one. “I wasn’t doing anything I shouldn’t. What are you doing down here? Couldn’t find anyone to roust up in the Tween?”
“We got visitors”—Gorge hooked a thumb toward the Ilsigi galley—“and they don’t like garbage around their property, or sitting on it, either—if you catch my meaning.”
“Froggin’ shite,” Cauvin replied, and tasted the blood dribbling down from his nose. He lifted his left arm to wipe his face with his dangling sleeve—
One of Gorge’s companions didn’t approve. They’d have been into it again if Gorge and the third guard hadn’t scrambled to keep them apart. Cauvin’s shirtsleeve lay on the ground. He reached for the cloth and thought better of it. The way his luck ran and with his shirt coming apart, it was a froggin’ miracle the guards hadn’t spotted the pouch on his belt or the Ilbarsi knife.
There wasn’t a law against a free man carrying a weapon in Sanctuary, but froggin’ sure, it wasn’t against the law to sit on the froggin’ pilings, either, and look what that had gotten Cauvin. He stayed on his aching knees while Gorge berated him, then got slowly to his feet.
“Stay off the wharf, Cauvin,” Gorge advised. “The captain there”—he hooked his thumb again, this time in the direction of a black-bearded man, head-and-shoulders taller than his mates and dressed in the dark blue breeches and leathers of the Ilsig king—“says he doesn’t like the look of you so close to the king’s ship.”
Cauvin couldn’t help it—he rolled his eyes in froggin’ disbelief.
“Yeah. Must be he’s mistaken you for someone else, but I don’t argue with him, and you don’t argue with me—Clear your pork butt out off the Wideway.”
“Right,” Cauvin agreed, retreating a long stride away from the water.
Then he remembered his torn-off sleeve. He only owned two shirts and couldn’t afford to walk away from the cloth. Gorge guessed Cauvin’s intent. The guard tossed the ratty sleeve into Cauvin’s hands before either of his companions objected.
“Keep going, Cauv—”
Cauvin did, but there had to be some mistake. He’d recognize the captain again—a man that size wasn’t easy to forget—but there was no reason for a galley captain to know him, even less for a royal Ilsigi to be wary of a sheep-shite Wriggle stone-smasher. No reason at all—or none that Cauvin wanted to imagine. He added the sleeve to the clutter at his waist and kept going.
There was a second reason for leaving the Wideway. A cloud had swallowed the sun while the watch was hassling him. Not just any cloud, but the leading fingers of a horizon-covering