Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [221]
She was mad, Cauvin decided. Not raving mad or harmlessly mad, like Batty Dol, but hollowed-out mad, missing all sense of what the world looked like through another person’s eyes.
“Cauvin”—Leorin pasted herself against him—“Cauvin, I love you! Dyareela loves you. You can have a better future than you ever imagined.”
“Is that what you were thinking when you straddled me or when you powdered my wine?” He shed her again, this time less gently.
“I’d never let anything happen to you, Cauvin.”
“Frog all, Leorin, what were those three men here for? Supper?”
“If you’d agree, Cauvin. If you could see that serving the Mother of Chaos is serving yourself. The age of Ilsig is over, the age of Ranke, too. The Torch is the dying priest of a dead god. Don’t devote yourself to the dead. Serve the Mother, and you serve the future. Everything can be made right.”
“Froggin’ sure, I don’t serve the Torch or his god. I don’t serve any one, any thing, or any god.” Leorin’s room was too small for pacing, Cauvin simply swayed. Thoughts swarmed like wasps in his head, but only one was important: “What about Bec? Can everything be made right for Bec?”
“He’s not too young to serve Dyareela. The Mother loves children.”
Cauvin froze. The wasps had formed a pattern. He could see a way to save his brother. “Bec gets out. He’s got nothing to do with the froggin’ Torch, nothing to do with the froggin’ Mother. I’m the one you want, right? If I accept Dyareela, then Bec walks away. Froggin’ right? That’s if he’s unharmed. If Bec’s hurt, nobody gets anything.”
The change in Leorin’s smile was chilling. “You’d truly accept the Mother? You’d become my true husband before Her? Don’t lie, Cauvin—She’ll know if you’re lying. Strangle will know.”
“No lies. I see where I belong. I shouldn’t have walked away the first time.”
Leorin flew into his arms. “Everything can be made right—Trust me,” she pled, which was the last thing Cauvin intended to do.
“Take me to them,” Cauvin whispered in his wife’s ear before he kissed her.
They unwound slowly. Leorin sat down on the bed. Suddenly, unexpectedly, her face was dark with doubt.
“If I take you, I can’t—I can’t swear that Strangle will let the boy go. After we’ve sacrificed Strangle, then Bec can leave, if he wants, if he chooses not to serve. But for you, Cauvin—if you think you’re tricking me—once we’re underground, it’s submit or sacrifice. You won’t come up again, except with the Mother’s blessing.”
“You trust me, Leorin, I froggin’ trust you.”
Leorin nodded and reached for cloak. Her bruises had swelled, and she had stiffened. She couldn’t lift the heavy garment. Cauvin wrapped it around her shoulder and carried her over the windowsill, as well—neither of them wanted a confrontation with the Stick.
Leorin stood on the eaves, arms wrapped under her breasts, hands hidden inside her cloak.
“Just step off. I’ll catch you,” Cauvin said from the street.
She didn’t trust Cauvin any more than he trusted her but, like him, Leorin was desperate. She yelped when she leapt and again when Cauvin’s arms closed around her, catching her before her feet touched the ground but not sparing her battered ribs. Walking was impossible without Cauvin’s arm around her waist to support and steady her.
Cauvin could easily have carried Leorin across Sanctuary. They would have reached Ils’s Temple at his pace rather than hers. She didn’t ask, and he didn’t offer, though he did carry their torch. The eastern horizon had brightened by the time they reached the Promise of Heaven. Cauvin let his wife sit on a chunk of Ils’s arm while he dragged the scaffold away from the pit.
“It’s all Strangle’s fault,” Leorin whispered when he helped her to her feet again. “It was him, not the Mother. None of this would have happened if he hadn’t promised a blessing to whoever brought down the Torch. Strangle’s will isn’t Dyareela’s will. Pilfer died because he listened to Strangle, not the Mother.”
They were mad, Cauvin thought as he climbed down the rope ladder, and soon he’d be one of them … or dead. It didn’t matter