Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [181]
“Forty-two—that’s just a start, just for your labor. He still owes for the stone, doesn’t he? You’re finally taking your share first?”
“Something like that,” Cauvin confessed. “I want to get us out of Sanctuary.”
“The Ender, can you tap him again?”
“What Ender?”
“The froggin’ Ender pud who gave you the coronations and soldats! Is he good for more?”
Cauvin squirmed uncomfortably. “I never said I got those coins from an Ender.”
“Frog all—who but an Ender has bright, shiny coronations and soldats in this city?”
The Torch, Cauvin thought, but didn’t say. Having held Leorin in his arms and kept her safe as she wandered through her waking nightmare, he’d convinced himself that the only path for him and Leorin was the path out of Sanctuary, to Ranke or Ilsig, by land or sea, the sooner the better.
“Forget more coronations or soldats or shaboozh. We’ve got the money to leave, and once we’re out of Sanctuary none of this will matter …” Cauvin was hoping out loud and cringing inside because if he let his guard down, then all his suspicions came roaring back to life.
“We can never have too much gold and silver, Cauvin. Never. If there’s silver to be had, then let’s have it. If there’s gold, so much the better.”
Cauvin answered by scooping up pile after pile of shaboozh from the planks between them. Leorin reached for his wrists.
“What troubles you, Cauvin? If you’d rather stay here in Sanctuary—If you’re doing all this just for me—?”
“No. No, I want to leave Sanctuary.”
“You never did before. You didn’t when I told you about the merchant.”
Cauvin tucked the closed purse within the heap of his cloak. “All this had barely started then. I didn’t know where it was leading.”
“Where all what was starting and leading?”
He shook his head. “I can’t talk about it. I want to—that’s why I wanted to come up here—but I can’t. I can’t separate the good from the bad, even in my own mind.”
“Don’t try.” Leorin slid her arm around Cauvin’s shoulder, more friend than lover. “If you’re in trouble—If it’s more than collecting what you’re owed—”
“No—that’s the easy part, the good part, the part I can believe happened, because the rest of what’s happened to me this week, I don’t believe it myself. It started the morning when they found the bodies at a Pyrtanis Street crossing.”
“The bodies? Oh—the Torch and the Ender—the old pud’s spare son? Nothing hard to believe about that. A sparking Ender cut down on the streets. A froggin’ old pud. Only bit that’s hard to believe is that the Torch was alive to murder. That was one unnaturally old pud.”
“He didn’t die, Leorin,” Cauvin whispered. “The Torch didn’t die on Pyrtanis Street. I found him the next morning. He was getting the snot stomped out of him on the Promise of Heaven—”
“Where on the Promise?” Leorin demanded.
“Inside the old Temple of Ils. All I saw at first was a Hiller pounding an old man—”
“Did you recognize him?”
“Not hardly. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman getting pounded—”
“No, the other one—you said a Hiller. Did you recognize him?”
Cauvin shook his head. “Some rat from the Hill. He couldn’t fight me and knew it. I’d’ve followed him when he ran, but the old pud—the Torch—he was in bad shape.”
“He was in the temple of Ils?” Leorin demanded.
froggin’ sure, the Torch was an Imperial priest with no business in an Ilsigi temple, but froggin’ sure Great Father Ils hadn’t been seen on the Promise of Heaven lately. “He must have gotten himself lost. I said he was in bad shape and so old you’d froggin’ swear a good sneeze would blow him apart.”
“And you stayed with him until he died, then you took what he had on him?”
“The Torch didn’t die, Leorin. He’s still alive. I wanted to take him to the palace. Shite for sure that’s where he belongs, right? But, no, he won’t go to the palace. We’re arguing and suddenly he says: ‘Where were you going when you found me?’ And me—the sheep-shite idiot—the next thing I know, I’m on my way with him in the gods-all-be-damned mule cart.”
Leorin