Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [24]
Froggin’ sure, Cauvin could have caught the Hiller and, froggin’ sure, he would have, if the skeleton hadn’t rasped—“Help me!” at just that moment. Cauvin wanted that reward. Gods rot him, he wanted it bad, but not bad enough. He let the Hiller get away and sifted the debris instead until he found a signet ring with a black stone set in a golden band.
Cauvin couldn’t make out the symbol carved into the stone, but that didn’t matter much. He knew his stones, both the common ones and the precious. He didn’t know anyone important to have an onyx signet stone, much less a gold band to set it in. The ring alone had to be worth quite a bit, but the geezer himself might be worth more.
“You got a name?” Cauvin asked as he pressed the ring into the old man’s grasping hand.
With movements that were scarcely human, the geezer twisted the ring onto a bleeding, probably broken, finger. “Staff?” he asked. “I had a staff.”
“Don’t see it,” Cauvin said after a quick glance at the nearby debris. “You got a name, old man?”
“Black wood—old and polished, topped with a piece of black amber as big as your fist. Look for it!”
Cauvin took orders from Grabar and stoneyard customers, not from some sheep-shite old man. “It’s not here! You got a name, pud? A home? People who give a froggin’ damn whether you’re dead or alive?” He was thinking about a reward again.
The geezer latched onto Cauvin’s sleeve and tried to pull himself upright but didn’t have the strength. Cauvin got an arm beneath him and began to lift. Bec would have weighed more. The old man was nothing but skin and bones inside a well-made, way-too-large robe. Cauvin had his shoulders up and was starting to raise his hips when the geezer let out a groan, and Cauvin eased him quickly back to the floor.
“Where does it hurt?”
“Where doesn’t it?” he snapped back. “Find my staff!”
“Listen to me, you sheep-shite pud. I could take that froggin’ ring of yours and leave you here to die, but I’m trying to help you instead, so act grateful.”
“If you want to help me, pud, find my froggin’ blackwood staff.”
For someone who couldn’t stand or sit on his own, the old geezer was froggin’ feisty—and not from Sanctuary, though he cursed like a native. Cauvin had begun to feel like a fisherman who’d hooked a fish that was bigger than his boat.
He tried bargaining: “You’ll tell me your name, right, if I look for your froggin’ staff?”
“If you find it.”
Cauvin got up and walked toward the Promise, dragging his feet through the rubble and finding nothing until he was out on the steps. Flower was nibbling weeds alongside the pavement and there, not two froggin’ paces from the cart’s rear wheels, was the sort of black staff an old man with a gold-and-onyx signet ring might lean on. Leaving Flower to enjoy her midmorning meal, Cauvin returned the staff to the old man, who smiled a death’s-head grin when he saw it.
“So, what’s your name?”
“You can call me Lord Torchholder.”
“And you can call me the froggin’ Emperor of Sanctuary.”
“I very much doubt that.”
The man calling himself Lord Torchholder struggled to brace the staff against the wall and himself against the staff. Cauvin saw that the effort was a froggin’ sure lost cause, but the geezer wouldn’t give up until he was flat on the floor again and moaning like the winter wind. Having a better idea what the old man could endure, Cauvin scooped him up and carried him toward the cart.
“I’ll take you home. Just tell me where you live, and I’ll take you there.”
The old man squirmed in Cauvin’s arms. “My staff! Don’t leave my staff!”
“Gods rot you, pud—you’re one ungrateful bastard,” Cauvin groused as he settled the old man in the cart, but that didn’t stop him from brushing dead leaves and worse from the bastard’s thick silvery gray hair or cushioning his bones with folded canvas or noticing, as