Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [205]
“What do you know about this ring?” Cauvin asked.
“I’ve never seen Lord Torchholder without it. If it’s sorcery you’re looking for, look at his staff.”
“Aye, I’ve noticed. What about Arizak?”
“He’s not the man he was, especially on days when his leg’s bad. Best hope today’s not one of the days when he’s chewed black-poppy seed or it could get dicey. They’ve made promises, one to the other; I don’t know what they are.”
The quickest way from Pyrtanis Street to the palace was, as Cauvin had told Gorge, across the Promise of Heaven and in through the old God Gate. But quickest wasn’t easiest, not for Cauvin. The God Gate was the gate the Hand had used when they crept out of the palace, looking for anyone who’d displeased the Bloody Mother, anyone who caught the Whip’s eye. He hadn’t retraced those steps for nearly ten years.
“Having second thoughts?” Soldt asked when Cauvin hesitated in the God Gate’s shadow.
“It’s been a long time.”
“We can go around to Governor’s Walk and the Processional Gate.”
“No, the froggin’ gate’s here, whether I walk through it or not, and so are the memories.”
There were no guards at the Promise end of the God Gate but there were two of them where it opened onto the palace forecourt, both of them Irrune with rust-colored hair and ruddy faces. They spoke Wrigglie well enough to challenge a Sanctuary native, but the truth was that well-dressed, well-groomed men weren’t seriously challenged, regardless of their language.
When Cauvin said he had to see the majordomo because Arizak was expecting him, the guards were unimpressed, until Cauvin added—
“But we’re not sure where to find that worthy man. Can you tell us where he’d likely be at this hour?”
The taller Irrune pointed across the courtyard. “In the Exchange.”
“So, that’s what they’re calling it now,” Cauvin said, mostly to himself.
When the Hand ruled Sanctuary, they’d called the gray-stone building an armory and kept some of their weapons in it. The whole forecourt had smelled of sweat and shite, with slop buckets fermenting in the sun, flayed corpses hung on iron hooks until the crows picked them apart, flies everywhere—except in winter—and rats the size of a man’s forearm.
The rats kept their distance by day but come darkness, they’d ooze out between the stones, looking for food. When it came to cleanliness, the Mother of Chaos was a man’s god. Food for rats collected in every corner of the Hand’s palace, in every open space, too—but there were so froggin’ many rats. The Hand’s rats were as scrawny as its orphans. If you caught one brushing against your leg, it was all bone and gristle, scarcely worth the effort of splitting it open and sucking dry.
But Cauvin had … whenever he could, because food was food, and if he hadn’t, someone else would. He’d been big for his age from the time he stood up, but when the Hand caught him, he’d been one of the younger orphans. His first years in the pits were the darkest. By the end, when everyone older had either died or gone behind the walls with the Hand, he knew how to survive.
Impulse spun Cauvin around. Except for their color, deep blue instead of black, the Justice Doors of the palace hadn’t changed. They still swung outward, still three times the height of the tallest man, still a frame around darkness. Whoever had built Sanctuary’s palace had laid it out so sunlight never crept more than a few paces beyond the Justice threshold. Inside, Arizak might be holding council or the great altar of Dyareela might be leaking blood onto the marble floor.
In the right half of the forecourt, in a line that ran between the God Gate in the eastern wall and the flagstone path to the Processional, Cauvin spotted the scars of the pits themselves. Another man might not see the slight depressions in the dirt, the slight difference in color, darker and redder than the rest. Another man, even noticing the differences, might not grasp their meaning. Cauvin was not another man. He shivered when a stabler led a horse across a rusty scar.
If Batty Dol shivered like