Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [19]
“No,” Mina decreed from the hearth. “Cauvin can work alone. I don’t want my Becvar pretending he’s more bull than man like the two of you—especially not outside the walls. He’s fine-boned, like my father, and not made for heavy work. What if something happened out there beyond the walls?” She shivered dramatically.
“He could chisel mortar off the bricks,” Cauvin suggested.
Bec wouldn’t waste much time working, no matter what, but Cauvin would be glad of his company. The boy had named all the household chickens, and the stories he made up about them were better than the ones Bilibot and Hazard Eprazian told for drinks and padpols in the Lucky Well at the other end of Pyrtanis Street.
“Grabar!” Mina trilled. “I won’t have it! Bad enough when you’re with him in the yard, but Cauvin’s sheep-shite stupid. Becvar could chisel off a finger, and Cauvin wouldn’t notice ‘til he’d bled to death!”
“Calm yourself, wife. The boy’s fingers are safe for another day. Not that they’d be at risk. Like as not, our Bec would jabber like a crow, and Cauvin wouldn’t get a day’s work done.”
Cauvin could have done with a better defense. He could have done with the wits to do something more than smash stone all day. He could have done with lots of things, but he made do without. “Tough cess, pud,” he advised Bec, tousling the boy’s hair as he spoke and nudging Bec’s scowl into a bit of a smile.
“Sweet Sabellia! How many times to I have to tell you—mind your tongue around Becvar. Bad enough you run like a sewer around us who shelter you. Think of his future? What master’ll have him if he runs off like you?”
“Don’t worry, Mama. I remember what you’ve told me about talking to masters and lords and ladies. ‘Yes, my lord’ and ‘as you wish, my lady.’ Cauvin knows I’m no lord or lady—same as you when you call him ‘sheep-shite’ or ‘turd-head’ or when you and Batty get talking about—”
“That’s Mistress Dol to you, young man!” Mina snapped at Bec who rarely heard the edge in his mother’s voice. Then Mina turned on Cauvin. “You’ve got your orders for the day. Go harness the mule and get gone. You’re naught but a bad influence around here.”
“Fine!” he snarled on his way to the door. “I’m leaving! Leaving for good and forever. Got that? Find someone else to smash out your red bricks, someone with a priest’s tongue in his head!”
Cauvin hated her just then, hated her as much as he hated the Hand and everyone else who’d ever pushed him around with fists or words. He had a bad temper—that was no secret—and he had the scars to remind him what happened when he lost it. He was through the door and letting it slam when Bec caught the wood.
“You’ll be back for supper?”
Gods knew where Bec had gotten those huge dark eyes—not from his parents, for froggin’ sure. He could charm a snake out of its scales and have it hissing thanks in the bargain. Bec’s soft-eyed smile wouldn’t last the night on the Hill or in the Maze—and that was another reason the boy could get whatever he wanted from Cauvin.
“I’ll be back by sundown,” he promised, and tousled the dark hair again.
“I’ll help you harness Flower?”
“Nah—” Cauvin whispered.
“I’ll tell you a story … a new story—”
“Later, Bec. There’s no time now. Get back to the table and make your mother happy.”
“How come I have to do all the hard work around here?”
“Sh-h-sh, and get your ass back in there.”
Cauvin led Flower in her harness out to the wagon and began attaching the traces. Bec waved to him from the far corner of the work shed, where he was practicing his letters on a loose slab of slate. No shortage of writing material in a froggin’ stoneyard.
The boy had shown Cauvin how to write his name in both Imperial and Ilsigi characters. Mina wouldn’t have approved, but Mina didn’t know. She didn’t know that sheep-shite Cauvin could read numbers and a few Ilsigi words—the sort merchants and mongers wrote on the slates tacked to their market stalls. The stoneyard’s account book, which Mina kept in the language she knew best, was safe. Cauvin couldn’t read a froggin’ Imperial word—except the name Bec had