Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [189]
“Coming!” he called, and groped for the clothes he’d shed only a few moments before. His breeches were still warm when he grasped them.
Grabar couldn’t wait. “Where’s Bec?” The ladder creaked as he climbed. “Where’s the boy? We thought—prayed—he was with you.”
The fabric of Cauvin’s breeches fell through his fingers. “No. I haven’t seen Bec all day. He was—” Cauvin couldn’t finish.
“He was what?”
Cauvin found his breeches and cinched them tight. “He wasn’t with me.” Painfully tight.
“He’s gone—After you left, I thought he went to market with the wife; the wife thought he was with me, but he’d run off … run off without telling either of us.”
In his mind’s eye, Cauvin saw what must have happened: Soldt and Bec at the stoneyard gate after his day at the ruins. Bec saying farewell, going inside. Soldt believing Bec was where he belonged, where he’d be safe for the storm. And Bec slipping out again as soon as no one was watching.
Damn Bec’s puppy-dog eyes. His parents loved him so much, they couldn’t see that he was a practiced liar. Cauvin had to tell the truth even though—shite for sure—the blame for everything was going to twist around his neck, not Bec’s. Good thing he’d already planned to leave the stoneyard.
He stamped into one boot, and said, “The boy’s out at the ruins—where we’ve been smashing brick.”
“How … ?” Grabar snarled, but relief got the better of him. “Are you certain?”
“Fairly. Coming back from the Unicorn, I met a man who’d seen him. Thought he’d walked him home, too.”
There wasn’t enough light in the loft for Cauvin to see the boot he held in his hand if he held it in front of his face, but it didn’t take light to sense the change in Grabar’s mood.
“What man? Who? What was he doing out there? What was Bec doing? What’s going on, Cauvin? If something’s happened to the boy—” Grabar let the threat hang unfinished; it was more potent that way.
“Husband! Where are you?” Mina’s shrill question was followed by the wildly flickering light of a lamp held in a trembling hand. “Where have you gone?”
Cauvin and Grabar’s eyes met in the faint light. Cauvin saw his foster father standing halfway up the ladder, nightshirt loose on his shoulders, nightcap lopsided on his head. Worried shadows played across Grabar’s face. A moment ago Cauvin’s thoughts were about blame, injustice, and his own future. Those selfish thoughts disappeared, replaced by a single, burning need: Find Bec.
Grabbing his shirt on the way, he stamped into the second boot as he strode toward the ladder. Grabar retreated ahead of him.
“Has he got Becvar?” Mina demanded, then, when she saw Cauvin: “What have you done with our boy?”
Cauvin dropped down, barely touching the rungs. “Nothing—but I know where he went.”
If Cauvin hadn’t recognized Mina’s voice, he wouldn’t have recognized her. The tears streaming from her eyes had aged her face twenty years since morning.
“Where? Where did you take him?”
“I didn’t take him anywhere. I was in the city all day. Bec went by himself to the ruins to visit—”
Cauvin paused for breath before admitting who was holed up in the abandoned estate. Mina didn’t give him the chance to finish.
“The ruins? What ruins? Where? Did he go to Land’s End? We’ll go there—The good lord Serripines will help us.”
Cauvin was speechless: Trust Mina to find an Imperial opportunity in her beloved son’s disappearance. Thank the damn gods that Grabar could answer Mina.
“The ruined estate where Cauvin’s been collecting bricks for the front of Tobus’s new house.”
Mina’s mouth worked but no sounds came out. When the dam of silence burst, her rage was directed equally at her husband and her foster son. “Fools! Both of you! Fools! Put the Savankh in my hands! Let it burn my soul to ashes, if I’m wrong. I’ve tried, Sweet Sabellia, I’ve tried to protect him from both of you. You wouldn’t be satisfied until he was out in the sun, breaking his back, ruining his hands? I can see him—I can see