Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [239]
“It makes you have to tell the truth.”
“So, froggin’ ask.”
“Are you one of them—a Bloody Hand like her?”
“No. Not now, not ever.”
That was all Bec needed to hear. He ran straight at Cauvin, and maybe it was simply that Cauvin was bone-weary, or maybe Bec had grown some in the past few days, but Bec knocked Cauvin off-balance and they wound up on the ground.
Cauvin had told the shite-for-sure truth while he held the blackwood staff, not that it mattered. The Torch could lie left and right when he held his staff and the Savankh within it. Cauvin had inherited that treacherous, little ability. But the other powers of the staff—how it started fires where fire shouldn’t ever burn and the way it had kept the Torch alive since the attack—those were shrouded secrets. Cauvin would need time—not to mention sleep—before he understood them, if he ever did.
Just then Cauvin used the staff’s most ordinary strength and steadied himself against it as he stood.
“Grandfather said I could keep the his staff”—Bee held out his hand—“because I might be needing it, if—But you’re back! And everything’s going to be just the way it was—except you’re going to get rid of the Hand … and her?”
“Arizak is,” Cauvin replied. He doubted that anything was going to be the same, but there was no reason to say that—the staff didn’t compel him to tell the truth. “And Grabar tells me the Torch isn’t dead yet. Maybe he’ll change his mind about giving you the staff. Maybe you will—if it means you’ve got to tell the truth all the time.”
Bec’s jaw dropped, and so did his arm. Cauvin kept a straight face until Grabar started laughing. Mina scolded them both, but even that sounded good to Cauvin—a sign that some things wouldn’t ever change.
Cauvin went up the loft ladder first, pausing to clear out a gods-all-be-damned infestation of spiderwebs that had sprung up overnight. His shoulders hadn’t cleared the floor hole when the Torch whispered his name. The lamp was lit and sitting in the sandbox near the Torch’s head. Shite for sure, the old pud didn’t look that much worse than he’d looked eight days before in the Temple of Ils. His breathing sounded odd, though, and the fire was gone from his eyes when he opened them.
“Come here, Cauvin.” The Torch’s skeletal arm rose a handspan above the straw.
Cauvin knelt. He took the old pud’s hand, but didn’t say anything. His mind was crammed with memories of a life he hadn’t lived and, despite its moments of heroism and sacrifice, Cauvin wasn’t tempted to say “thank you” for the rest.
“Do well, Cauvin. Do better than I did.”
Cauvin squeezed the hand he held. He still had nothing to say, but breathed in the Torch’s slowing rhythm until the old pud’s chest no longer moved. Cauvin let his held breath out with a sigh and swept his hand over the sightless eyes to close them.
“Is he … ?” Bec asked from the ladder.
Cauvin nodded. “It’s over for him.”
With a rending wail, Bec fell across the Torch’s body, but for Cauvin, it was just beginning.
Epilog
Winter had settled into Sanctuary. A raw wind blew off the sea, and snowflakes swirled through the air, never touching the ground. Two months had passed since Cauvin’s first visit to the Torch’s rooms. Most of the furnishings had been claimed by those who lived fulltime in the palace. Only camp stools, scroll-filled racks, and a herd of locked chests remained.
Cauvin stood back from the open window, avoiding the worst of the wind and beyond the sight of anyone in the forecourt who might be looking his way. His hands were cold and the finger that bore the Torch’s black-onyx ring was coldest of all. He wasn’t used to the ring. It got in the way when he laid red brick for the front of Tobus’s new house. Most days he left the ring buried in the lampbox sand in the loft.
Cauvin wore the ring when he went about on the Torch’s business or when he wore “good” clothes. This day he was doing both: honoring the old pud’s memory and wearing the soft suede breeches and linen