Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [31]
Someone hailed Cauvin by name a few paces short of the Wideway and the wharf. It was a city voice—not garbled by an Irrune or Imperial accent—but he pretended not to hear and headed west along Sanctuary’s waterfront. By the smell of things, something large and rotting had come in with the tide. Cauvin found himself breathing shallow and wishing he’d brought a lump of camphor. At least he had the froggin’ Wideway to himself.
The Broken Mast was right where the old man said it would be: dark, imposing, and hanging out over the water’s edge. Its doors were closed—no great surprise. Cauvin gave the latch a tug, expecting to find the doors locked as well. Gods be damned, not even froggin’ fishermen could eat or drink with that stench in the air. But the latch lifted easily and after planting his torch in the sand bucket beside the door, Cauvin stepped into a quiet, dim commons.
His presence lifted heads at the handful of occupied tables. Strangers gave Cauvin the froggin’ once-over, and he returned the favor. They were a strange lot—seamen with dressed hair and jewelry dangling from their ears and elsewhere. One sported a jeweled eye patch that glowed in candlelight. Several were drawing down on small-bowled pipes. Cauvin sniffed. The dominant smell inside the Broken Mast wasn’t rot, nor even incense to disguise it; it was krrf, the dreamer’s drug from northern Caronne.
What have you froggin’ sure gotten me into, Torchholder? Cauvin demanded of the absent geezer.
A tall young man, pale-eyed and maybe a year or two older than Cauvin himself, ghosted out of the shadows.
“You be looking for someone, eh?” The ghost’s Wrigglie was colored by an accent Cauvin couldn’t place. He carried his left arm bent and close to his side. The hand was withered and curled like a chicken’s foot.
“I’ve come to see Sinjon.”
“Captain Sinjon?”
“Could be he’s a froggin’ captain. Could be he’s not. I’m here to speak for another … privately.”
The maimed man grinned, revealing a shiny gold tooth in his upper jaw. “How privately?”
“You Sinjon?”
“No.”
“Then you don’t froggin’ need to know, do you, pud? Is Sinjon here?”
“And who’s here to speak privately with Captain Sinjon?”
Cauvin gave his own name and knew at once he’d said the wrong thing. He considered the passwords Molin had given him, but that was for Sinjon and this wasn’t Sinjon, so he gave Molin’s name instead. The maimed man recoiled as if he’d just gotten a mouthful of something foul. In the edgy silence, Cauvin produced the carved jade token.
“Tell Sinjon I’ve got this.”
The ghost attempted to conceal his froggin’ astonishment and failed utterly. “W-wait here,” he stammered, and ran two-at-a-time up a crooked flight of stairs.
Cauvin had enough time to regret every word he and Molin Torchholder had exchanged before the ghost reappeared. He hadn’t come down the stairs and didn’t lead Cauvin up them either.
“Froggin’ fantastic smell around here,” Cauvin snarled as they stepped out onto a balcony ringing the second floor of the Mast. “Is it coming from your sheep-shite kitchen?”
“Blackfish,” the guide said with a soft chuckle. “As big as a boat. Washed in last night. Have you ever seen the hagfish?”
“Blackfish, hagfish, what’s the difference? A froggin’ fish with an old shrew’s sheep-shite head?”
The ghost chuckled again. “The hagfish, she’s a fair lover and not no shrew. She always knows when a body’s drownded. She glides up to him, all soft and gentle, ’til she finds his arse, then she slips herself inside, like a greased witch, and reams him from the gizzard out—”
Cauvin hesitated with one foot poised to follow the ghost down a different flight of stairs. He had no difficulty imagining the ghost’s hagfish or guessing where those pale eyes would go in a crowded room. There hadn’t been much room for innocence growing up in his mother’s shadow, and less in the pits. He thanked his froggin’ father that he’d never been the sort to attract a boy-eater’s eye and wondered how loud the