Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [200]
Cauvin flexed his fingers. Shite for sure, he couldn’t remember how many times he’d been bloodied, but bandages weren’t a usual—or comfortable—part of his healing. They’d protect his linen shirt, though.
“How come you’re not wearing bleached linen?” he asked, carrying the blackwood staff to the ladder.
“I don’t need to. Stop dawdling.”
The loft was never brighter than twilight. Cauvin’s eyes needed a moment to adjust. Mina and Grabar had made a wreck of his quarters. They’d dragged the pallet into the center of the loft—where, if it started raining again, the Torch would be driven mad by roof drips. Unless the geezer was already dead. The dark lump nested in Cauvin’s blankets wasn’t moving until Cauvin got within an arm’s length. Even then, he couldn’t truly see his chest rising, only hear the raspy, shallow rhythm of his breath.
“It’s your fault, pud,” he whispered. “Galya was right—it’s all games to you, and you thought you could win one last round. Damn you to Hecath’s coldest, darkest hell.”
Cauvin supposed he couldn’t blame his foster parents for mistaking his new breeches for bedding. He laid the staff beside the Torch’s shoulder and took the cloth with both hands to yank it free. The Torch’s eyes opened—maybe from the sudden movement, maybe from the staff. He said something, but not anything that Cauvin understood, then those eerie moonlight-and-fire eyes closed again.
“If anything’s happened to Bec, you’d best be dead the next time I see you.”
He switched breeches and pulled on the linen shirt.
“Do you own a comb?” Soldt asked when they were face-to-face again.
Cauvin didn’t answer, but slicked his hair down with water on his way past the trough.
Chapter Seventeen
Cauvin and Soldt took the high road to the ruins. They had a clear view of the city, its harbor, and the tide coming in over the sea flats on either side of the harbor. The Ilsigi galley rode high beside the wharf. She’d dumped her ballast, but her crew didn’t have her laded yet. She’d miss today’s tide and depart tomorrow … without Cauvin … without Leorin.
He didn’t mourn people. He’d seen many of them die. Dreams were rarer in his life, especially pleasant dreams. When one died, as Cauvin’s love for Leorin was dying, he felt the loss with his entire heart. Had they been going to Land’s End, where the road hugged a cliff to the sea, he might have run to the brink. But they were simply on the high road, far from danger, and headed for the ruins. Despair nailed Cauvin to the ground.
Soldt clapped Cauvin on the shoulder. “Time to move.”
Cauvin shrugged free. “I understand it now,” he whispered, as much to himself as the assassin. “Why the Torch chose me, a sheep-shite stone-smasher. This froggin’ heir nonsense—I thought he was giving me things—coins, weapons, even words written on parchment. But it’s not that at all. It’s more like smashing bricks out of the ruins and rebuilding a house for Tobus. He’s rebuilding me with froggin’ sorcery. When he finally stops breathing, he’s not really going to die, he’s going to move into me. I’m the sheep-shite fool who’s going to find himself dead—No, not dead, just gone.”
“I don’t think the sorcery goes that far.” Soldt clapped Cauvin and, this time, gave him a tug toward the ruins.
“You don’t know.”
“I know that for years, when Lord Torchholder’s spoken of death, it was a threat; secretly, he didn’t expect it to happen, not to him. Since I got back and found him dying, he speaks only of preserving what he’s nurtured and passing on what he can. Not a word about a second chance in a young man’s body. And—trust me on this, Cauvin—if Lord Torchholder planned to replace you within your flesh, he’d have said something to me.”
Cauvin tried to be reassured, but the effort failed.
They approached the ruins in silence. Soldt knotted a long leather lead to Vex’s collar, the first restraint he’d placed on the brindle dog; and just in time. They hadn’t gone a hundred paces when Vex lowered his nose to the ground. The leash snapped taut and Soldt’s shoulder got a workout keeping