Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [22]
“Maybe. Maybe not,” Gorge snapped. “Maybe you and your shemule better keep on walking now.”
Ustic added, “Don’t go picking up anything that’s not yours.”
“Never do,” Cauvin promised with a grin as he got Flower moving again.
It was an open secret that Grabar sold scavenged stone and brick. Grabar froggin’ sure sold new goods when he could get them, but the nearest stone quarries were deep in Ilsigi territory, and the local clay pits were flooded three seasons out of four, so Grabar froggin’ sure sent Cauvin out scavenging three days out of four.
Long before Cauvin’s mother ran afoul of his froggin’ father, Grabar had worked for the Imperials scavenging stone from Sanctuary’s old Ilsigi-built wall for reuse in the higher, longer new wall that was supposed to keep the city safe from the hazards that had laid Imperial Ranke low. Froggin’ sure, the new wall hadn’t protected Sanctuary from sea storms, plague, or Dyareela’s Bloody Hand.
Grabar said Sanctuary had shrunk by half since he’d been a boy; and by all the empty, gutted buildings Cauvin saw, Grabar was overly generous. Whole quarters were abandoned and ripe for scavenging—if they’d ever held anything worth scavenging. The best pickings were outside the froggin’ walls, where the rich folk once lived. Their sheep-shite gold hadn’t protected them any better than walls had protected Sanctuary.
The Irrune—gods rot them—understood scavenging. Shite for sure, they were raiders-horse-riding brawlers who looked at a city the way farmers looked at a field ripe for harvest or fisherfolk looked at schooling fish. The Irrune had laws—and punishments that would’ve made the Hand blink—but scavenging wasn’t a crime unless someone complained. Only once in Cauvin’s memory had some sheep-shite Ender made his way to the palace waving a dusty old scroll and forced Grabar to make restitution.
Grabar had been more careful since then, asking his wife what she knew about each of the estates they plundered. Mina swore the old, red-walled estate had been empty before she got born. She said it was haunted—something about betrayal, massacre, and divine retribution. Cauvin didn’t pay much attention to Mina’s froggin’ stories; and so long as he was home by sundown, sheep-shite ghosts didn’t worry him either.
Cauvin could have led Flower down any of the crossing’s streets and gotten her to the red-walled ruins, but the easiest route, and the quickest, was across the Promise of Heaven then down the Hill to one of several gaps in Sanctuary’s defenses. Cauvin would froggin’ sure come home the regular way, through the East Gate. No way Flower could pull a loaded cart up the Hill, but in the morning, the Hill’s haphazard streets were safe enough for a man, a mule, and an empty cart.
The Promise was empty, save for a boy grazing a flock of goats on the weeds. Goats didn’t care that the dirt here was rusty with blood. Goats didn’t care about mules or carts, either, but Flower didn’t like goats. She blew and balked until Cauvin gave in. He led her away from the goats, along the broken, stained marble slabs fronting the ruined temples.
The Irrune worshiped their own god and wouldn’t share him with anyone not born to their tribe. They didn’t much care who or what other people worshiped—excepting Dyareela, of course—but they didn’t want any priests underfoot. After the Troubles, pretty much everyone in froggin’ Sanctuary agreed with them. The temples were in pretty bad shape by then, anyway. The Hand had cared; the Bloody Mother was a damned jealous bitch. Her priests had burnt or broken every statue and priest they could seize.
If you needed a god or a priest these days, you went outside the west wall between the old cemetery and the froggin’ brothels on the Street of Red Lanterns. Cauvin didn’t need any froggin’ gods or priests. He’d had his fill of them even before he’d fallen into the pits. As for women, he had Leorin to think about, and so long he did, there was no froggin’ way any extra