Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [237]
“I am disappointed in my son, but not truly surprised. He is the image of my wife’s brother, and it would appear that he has Teo’s love of treachery, as well. Verrezza will rejoice, but the one Naimun should truly fear is his mother. Nadalya won’t forgive treachery. But that’s family. What am I to do with these Hand below the palace?”
“Smoke them out,” Cauvin suggested. “Build a wet-wood fire in the pit at Temple of Ils, then use bellows to drive the smoke through the warren. Post your men throughout the city and outside the walls, too—to watch for men escaping. And smoke—wherever they see smoke, they’ll find an entrance to the warren—”
Both Soldt and Arizak stared at him.
“It works with froggin’ rats,” Cauvin explained. And Teera the baker did smoke out the storerooms every fall, but the idea hadn’t come from Teera. The Torch had used wet-wood fires to flush the enemy out of caves along the Empire’s northern frontier some sixty years earlier.
“Throw some camphor wood on your fire, and you can use dogs to help you sort the Hand out,” Soldt added.
Arizak wasn’t comfortable with the plan. “This will be a very large fire. Very dangerous.”
“For the Hand. The other choice is to send your men into the dark.”
“Ah, yes, it would be very dark underground. Without light, men could get lost, killed. Better those men are not Irrune, not Wrigglies.” As far as Arizak was concerned, all the people of Sanctuary were Wrigglies—it was an improvement over the Irrune word for anyone not born into the tribe.
“No matter what we do,” Cauvin warned, “a few will escape—just as they did last time. We got lazy. We can’t make the same mistake again. The Hand won’t go away, not in our lifetimes.”
“Not in mine,” Arizak agreed. “I will speak with my commanders—only Irrune, at least until we’ve winnowed the Hand from the palace. My wife Nadalya will say that we need that Savankh she’s always talking about. How else to know whether a Wrigglie is lying?” He looked Cauvin in the eye. “Can you bring my wife this great Savankh?”
Yesterday, the Torch had been ready to turn over both the Savankh and the Necklace of Ils. Cauvin wasn’t the Torch. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Listen to him!” Arizak exclaimed to Soldt. “He has an idea—He’ll see what he can do—I have heard this all before. Next he will be telling me that he is but a poor man and reminding me that Sanctuary is the least of the Imperial cities. He does not have my old friend’s voice, but already he has begun to talk like him!”
It was late afternoon before Cauvin left the palace, finally satisfied that the Irrune were hauling green wood over to the Promise of Heaven. They’d have a smoky fire burning by sunset, which might be too late, but was the best they could do. Soldt agreed to stay with Arizak. The duelist wasn’t pleased to be seen in the company of Sanctuary’s prince, but Cauvin had been a night without sleep before he’d opened the Torch’s froggin’ box. The weight of the old pud’s memories had left him pillow-walking and scarcely able to string a thought together in any of the odd languages whose words were rattling around in his mind.
Arizak had suggested he settle into the old pud’s palace apartment—three unremarkable chambers, including the one where he’d opened the ornate box. Cauvin would use them, or more accurately, he would use what they contained. The Torch was a froggin’ pack rat—
Had been.
The Torch had been a froggin’ pack rat, and Cauvin was still a sheep-shite stone-smasher. He wouldn’t hazard a guess how he’d feel in a month or a year, but for the time being, Cauvin didn’t want to sleep in a dead man’s bed no matter how tired he was. Cauvin wanted to go home, to the stoneyard, his foster parents, and—especially—to Bec. His hand still stung from striking his brother. It had been the right thing to do; he hadn’t known Soldt had followed him and Leorin