Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [30]
Cauvin pulled his other shirt on and tried to tousle the boy’s hair, but Bec eluded him.
“You said,” Bec complained in a nasal whine that was already halfway to tears.
“I’ve got to go out—”
“You’re going to see Leorin.”
The boy had met Leorin a handful of times. Leorin hardly spoke to Bec at all. Boys, she said, were noisy, dirty, and boring. In return, Bec disliked her with all the intensity he could muster.
“If I can,” Cauvin admitted. Leorin wasn’t expecting him and might not be at the Unicorn. She had her own life and guarded it zealously.
“She’s mean. She doesn’t love you at all, Cauvin. She treats you like her dog. Worse than a dog. No dog would have anything to do with her. The yard dog said—”
“Lay off, Bec. Stick to stories about chickens.”
Cauvin was joking, but his sheep-shite tongue put an edge on his words. Bec’s eyes widened, and his jaw dropped. He turned tail and darted away. Cauvin couldn’t see where the boy had gone, but he could hear him sniveling.
“Gods all be froggin’ sure damned!” Cauvin fished his sweated-up shirt out of the trough. “Bec! Come back here!” He beat the wet shirt against the outside of the trough. “Tell me how your story starts. You can finish telling it tomorrow. Bec! Becvar!”
Nothing—except froggin’ sniffles and sobs that he didn’t have time for. Cauvin wanted to see Leorin at the Unicorn, but he had to find the Broken Mast first, and he didn’t want to be late on the streets of Sanctuary. Two men had died last night in his own quarter. Maybe the Torch had the froggin’ truth of it: The killer had been hunting particular prey, and the rest of the city was safe. Or maybe not. Cauvin might have sheep-shite in his head, but even he wasn’t dumb enough to think he could best the Torch’s enemies with a fistful of bronze.
He draped the damp shirt over a fence, where it might dry by morning.
“Bec! Bec, you hear me? I want to hear your froggin’ story about Honald and the hens. All right? I want to hear it, I just can’t listen now. I’ve got to go. It’ll be too late for you when I get home. I’ll listen in the morning. I swear it. I’ll get up early. You can tell me before breakfast? All right?”
The boy didn’t answer, and Cauvin was twitchy with guilt when he opened the stoneyard gate. By Arizak’s law, every household kept a torch or lantern burning beside its gate or door from sunset until midnight, and those who kept a sheaf of torches available for the public good paid a smaller hearth-tax. The townsfolk said it was because the froggin’ Irrune were afraid of the dark, but the abundant torches had gone a long way toward making the city safer after the Troubles.
Cauvin didn’t usually bother with a sheep-shite torch when he left the stoneyard for a night on his own, but usually he wasn’t going someplace unfamiliar, and tonight the clouds of sunset were settling in for a night of fog. Sanctuary’s cats would be blind by midnight, so Cauvin grabbed a torch from the stoneyard’s bucket.
If worse came to worst, the shaft made a decent weapon.
Cauvin made his way down the Processional to the wharf—always best to stick to the widest streets after dark. The wild Irrune were still in town. If the babble of their froggin’ language didn’t give them away, the telltale scent of horse dung did. Cauvin tried to stay on the other side of the street whenever he passed a clot of them. It was one thing to get drunk every froggin’ night—he’d do it himself, probably, if he weren’t trying to save money, but the Irrune didn’t believe in paying for what they drank or for anything else.
The sitting Irrune in the palace were supposed to make good on their wilder cousins’ debts, but that was like paying your froggin’ right hand with coins from your left, so there were fights whenever the wild Irrune came to town, especially when the Dragon led them. And Cauvin, who seldom shirked a brawl, had learned the hard way that when you threw a punch at one of the Dragon’s own, five other Irrune returned it. If he’d traveled in