Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [176]
“Why me?” he asked, scarcely aware he’d spoken aloud.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t have answers. Because I don’t even know where to look for answers. Because the—” Cauvin caught himself before he slipped and mentioned the Torch by name. “Because if I’m what they’re looking for, then it can’t be very important, or they don’t really care.”
“Who are they?”
Cauvin hesitated, then said, “Soldt.”
The laundress blinked but said nothing.
“Tell me, Mistress Galya—what does Soldt want with me?”
“Get dressed, Cauvin.”
He did, quickly and relying on the maze of drying linen to shield him. The laundress was pouring thick blue liquid from one of the jars into one of the basins when he confronted her again.
“Do I get an answer?”
Galya corked the jug. “Why ask me what Soldt wants? Ask him yourself. He’ll tell you—if it suits him.”
“He must have told you something. You said I was the first he’d sent here. What does an assassin want with a sheep-shite stone-smasher like me?”
“Duelist,” Galya corrected.
“Assassin. Duelist. No froggin’ difference.” Cauvin shot back—though there was some difference, if the tavern stories were true and not that one was a villain and the other a hero. An assassin killed without warning and not necessarily with a sword. A duelist made his intentions known and gave his victims a chance—whatever chance an ordinary man could manage against a master like Soldt. “What does a froggin’ duelist want from me?”
“Your attention, I imagine.” Galya folded her arms beneath her breasts. “He’s been hired to do a job: teach you to fight, that’s what you said, isn’t it? He won’t be happy to hear that you tangled with the guards … and lost.”
“Will you tell him?”
“No, you will—if you’re clever. Aren’t you going to ask me who hired him?”
“Do you know?”
She shook her head. “But whoever it was didn’t tell him to send you to the Ravens, lad. That’s what I meant when I said you’re the first. You must be very important—to Soldt, and not only the man who hired him.”
A twinge of guilt crawled down Cauvin’s back. “You can give Soldt a message?”
The laundress didn’t answer.
“Tell him—Tell him I went to look at a wall today on the Processional—a perfume-garden wall. Tell him that while I was there the man who owns the garden seemed to know things he shouldn’t know about the death of a man who isn’t dead. He’ll understand.”
Galya closed her eyes as she nodded. “And should I tell him where you’re running off to?”
“I’m not running off.”
“Of course not. A what—a sheep-shite stone-smasher?—always carries a sackful of silver tied to his belt while he’s losing a fight with the guards on the Wideway.”
Cauvin studied the floor, feeling very much the sheep-shite stone-smasher.
“It’s no concern to me, but a knotted cloth’s no way to carry silver in Sanctuary. There’s a broker’s baldric there on the box. Wear it under your shirt.”
He picked it up. The leather was thick but supple, and there was a substantial pouch where the ends overlapped. Galya restrained Cauvin’s wrist as he reached for the flap.
“Let me show you how—”
The broker who had made or owned the baldric didn’t want to share his wealth accidentally. The flap was edged with quills that might not pierce a pickpocket’s fingertips but would almost certainly throw him off stride. They’d give an unwary owner a nasty surprise, too, until he learned where to grasp the leather safely. It would take some getting used to, but Galya was right: A knotted cloth was no way to carry forty-two shaboozh through Sanctuary. Less than forty-two shaboozh.
“How much do I owe you?” Cauvin paid his debts … at least he froggin’ tried to … usually.
“A soldat for the shirt tomorrow, when you come for it. The rest is mine to give.”
He didn’t argue, but left the small courtyard behind the Inn of Six Ravens under a cloud of guilt as vast and dark as the clouds over Sanctuary. If Galya passed the message along to Soldt, Cauvin told himself,