Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [180]
“Leorin? Leorin, it’s all right. Come back—”
Cauvin reached for her arm. She cringed and he froze, waited, then reached closer. With his third reach Cauvin’s hand circled hers.
“Come back, Leorin. It’s only dreams and memories.” The dreams and memories and the darkness Cauvin had escaped.
An inch at a time, Cauvin drew Leorin into his arms. The storm peaked with howling winds, crashing shutters, and bright-as-day thunderbolts. He flinched when they fell close enough to shake the walls, but he kept hold of Leorin and she, lost within herself, was blind to the storm. A few moments passed, or maybe a few hours—Cauvin had let his mind go gray and lost track of time. The rain had gentled when Leorin began to shiver. Cauvin wrapped her in blankets pulled from the bed.
“Storm’s over,” he suggested, and Leorin began to cry in earnest.
Leorin cried until tears had washed away whatever memories had risen earlier. First one arm, then the other emerged from the blanket cocoon. She caressed his shoulders, his back. She pulled his face to hers and gave him a kiss fit for waking the dead; but it was a wasted effort. Cauvin never loved Leorin more than when she needed him, but it was a chaste love at cross-purposes with passion or lust.
“No.” He pushed her away. “Not now. That was a bad one, Leorin. I wasn’t sure where you were, or who you thought I was, or if you were coming back.”
“You worry too much.”
“And you don’t worry enough. Sanctuary’s not a good place for you—or me either. Too many memories. We’ve got to get out of here. I collected forty shaboozh today. With them and the coronations I got the other day—it’s enough, Leorin. We can pay a ship’s captain. We can go to Ilsig in style—”
“A ship to Ilsig?” Leorin’s eyebrows arched. Her voice was acid. “Frog all, Cauvin, Ilsig’s the last place I’d go. You haven’t made any promises to some froggin’ sea captain, have you?”
“No,” Cauvin confessed. “I just got the shaboozh.” He found the broker’s purse and showed her its secrets. “What’s so bad about going to Ilsig? Just the other night, you wanted to follow a merchant to the kingdom.”
Leorin paused in her coin counting. “Look at me, Cauvin. Do I look like I belong in froggin’ Ilsig? If I’m leaving Sanctuary, I’m not going where I look like the froggin’ down-on-her-luck, Imperial whore. Ten days with that merchant, and everything he owned would have been mine—ours. We wouldn’t have stayed in Ilsig, not one day longer than necessary.”
“I want to take care of us, Leorin. I can earn enough that no one would ever think you’re a whore, Imperial or otherwise, here or in the heart of Ilsig,” Cauvin proclaimed before he could stop himself.
“No.” Leorin stroked Cauvin’s cheek. “But, if I’m leaving, I’d sooner go to Ranke. Froggin’ sure I could turn heads there. You know I could.”
Cauvin clenched his jaw.
“Oh, Cauvin, don’t sulk. It’s business … opportunity there for the taking. You’ll have me long after I’ve lost my looks, but until then, I can make us rich!”
“You may look Imperial, but inside you’re just another Wrigglie. What chance have we got in a city where we don’t speak the froggin’ language?”
She called him a child and a fool, but she did it in Imperial, using the gutter words every Wrigglie understood, then she went on with words he didn’t understand in his ears, but—perhaps—could have read, if she’d written them out.
“Enough!” he snarled. “You’ve made your point. I don’t want to argue with you, Leorin, I just want to get you out of Sanctuary before something bad happens.”
“What ‘bad’? We’ve been through the worst, haven’t we?” She shook out the last of the shaboozh. “froggin’ gods, Cauvin—you’ve got forty-two shaboozh here. Forty-two froggin’ shaboozh on top of four coronations and twenty-three soldats. That old pud you’re working for must be made of gold and silver. What’s his froggin’ name, anyway?”
“It’s not the same pud. I got the shaboozh from Lord Mioklas