Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [210]
“Stay in there,” the Stick snarled, and pounded the door for good measure. He never guessed there was a man waiting in his risky wench’s room. “Stay there until midsummer, but don’t show your face downstairs until I say you can.”
Leorin closed her eyes and kept them shut until the Stick’s heels were pounding the floorboards, then she studied Cauvin. He couldn’t make sense of her expression, but possibly his was no easier to read. He had no intention of being the first to speak. It had the makings of a long, quiet night until Leorin set the trencher and the lamp on her dressing table.
“Sorry I’m late. I thought I could settle my affairs in one morning. I forgot, this is Sanctuary. Everything takes longer.”
“Affairs?” Cauvin asked, taking one word and turning it into a question, the way the Torch or Soldt would.
She hesitated. “No need for secrets between us, is there? I had a few coronations and bits of jewelry with a goldsmith down on the Wideway. No way I leave anything valuable here; this place leaks like a sieve. And no reason to haul my wardrobe onto a boat and off again. I’d only have to replace it anyway when we got to Ranke—or Ilsig. Which passage did you arrange?”
“I didn’t,” he admitted.
“If you need more money—” She reached between her breasts for a jingly leather pouch. “I can loan you a coronation or two.”
Cauvin’s love hadn’t lessened, it had simply retreated. He couldn’t hate her or trust her, but he was curious, in a cold way, to hear her lies. He cast his net to pull them in.
“It’s not money. I didn’t go down to the wharves today—”
Leorin scowled and quickly tucked the pouch in a dressing-table drawer.
“There were problems when I got back to the stoneyard. My brother’s disappeared.”
“You don’t have a brother.”
“Bec’s my brother.” He’d been surprised by her tone, but not left speechless. “We figured out that he’d been outside the city walls when the storm began. We can’t know for certain. All we know is that he was gone when the storm broke, and he hasn’t come back since.”
“That’s terrible,” Leorin said, and managed to make the words sound sincere. “Mina and Grabar, they must be in a frenzy. Their precious little boy wandering outside the walls where he doesn’t belong. Who knows—” She paused. “In Sanctuary, you have to think the worst. He could have gone to a neighbor. That crazy woman—What do you call her? Batty Something? She lost all her children, didn’t she? I wouldn’t trust a son of mine around that woman.
Poor Batty Dol, but maybe, if Cauvin hadn’t known what had happened, he would have been willing to suspect Batty. And maybe Leorin didn’t know what had happened to Bec. Whatever else she’d done, Cauvin didn’t think she’d gone out to the ruins.
Cauvin said, “Batty’s harmless and as frantic as Mina,” then he cast another net. “At first light, Grabar and I went out to the ruins where I’d hidden the Torch—”
“Now there’s another one I wouldn’t trust. Like as not, he took off with Bec, and you’ll never see either one of them again.”
“No, the Torch was still there, surrounded by corpses.”
Cauvin watched Leorin’s whole body stiffen—with surprise? Disappointment? Panic?
“Sweet Mother of Night! How could that happen? You said the froggin’ pud was wounded and dying! How could he kill anyone who came after him? I mean, did he say what happened? Was he still alive? Is he still there, or did you move him?”
Cauvin’s nets were half-full. Leorin knew what should have happened overnight, but not what had happened. She was the one casting nets now, because the Hand always looked for a scapegoat when it failed: The Bloody Mother had to be appeased.
One moment Cauvin didn’t know what to say. The next, his thoughts seethed with lies.
“He’s dead … now. He looked me in the eye, and said, ‘Cauvin, I name