Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [34]
“Oh, I’ve got me a cog or two that’ll carry grain and such out to Inception—but it’s Ilsigi ships that keep the pirates away, not ours. And the bey-sib? Even if I had me one of my mother’s sleek ships, I wouldn’t know how to sail it, or where. It’s all lost, lad—lost forever, and not all Lord Torchholder’s gold will bring it back again. Damned shame. We paddle the shores now, like children, never out of sight of the shore. And we shun the seas where we once sailed like men.”
Sinjon stared across the table, both eyes together and watching something that wasn’t in the room with them. Then he blinked—only not with his froggin’ eyelids, but with something clear and shiny that flicked out of the inside corner of his eyes.
“Shipri’s tits!” Cauvin shouted. He was on his feet before he knew he was moving. “You—You’re—!”
Word failed Cauvin because the only words he knew to describe what he’d seen were too crude, too insulting to say to any man’s face without starting a brawl. Indeed, he’d never actually seen anyone blink without moving their eyelids.
“You’re a froggin’ fish,” he sputtered, settling on the word Mina used to describe the invaders who’d ruled and left Sanctuary before she’d been old enough to remember anything, because Mina truly did try not to curse. By what Cauvin had heard, the fish-folk were worse than the froggin’ Dyareelans, which was—for him, anyway—froggin’ hard to imagine.
Captain Sinjon hadn’t exactly denied his race. He’d spoken of his mother and her departed kin; the phrases swam in Cauvin’s freshest memories.
“B-B-But they left. They all left … didn’t they? Packed up and went home as if they’d never been?”
There were some on Pyrtanis Street who swore they hadn’t—that the fish were just froggin’ stories made up to frighten children when tales of the froggin’ Hand weren’t enough. Sheep-shite Batty Dol—she swore the fish were real, that she’d seen their froggin’ staring eyes for herself and stood on the Wideway with her children beside her to watch them sail away for good … But, frog all, Batty Dol talked to the ghosts every night and swore up and down that the dead could come back to life. A man had to be froggin’ moontouched if he believed Batty Dol.
Then Sinjon blinked again, and said, “The ones who came, left. And the ones who’d been born here with clan rights through their mothers and fathers. But not the others, not the ones born to the bey-sib and Sanctuary. It wasn’t a matter for questions. I wouldn’t have gone; I’d visited the land—maybe—I could have passed. I knew the language, then”—the captain made noises that froggin’ might have been words—“and I have the look. But the Beysib Empire’s no place for a man without a clan to back him. The Torch made me an offer. He thought the trade would continue—Damned shame,” the captain said, and blinked again, as if he were holding back tears.
The remains of Mina’s mutton stew heaved in Cauvin’s gut. Gods-all-be-damned knew that the Hands with their worship of pain, blood, and chaos were worse than the fish. The fish stared … and their women did things with snakes. They had snakes between their legs, so did their men—according to Batty Dol, who said a man-fish could see where he pissed and what he fucked. If he believed Batty Dol …
Cauvin found it getting harder not to believe Batty Dol.
Damn your froggin’ eyes to froggin’ hell, Cauvin sent a heartfelt curse toward the old man in the redwall henhouse.
“Gimme the froggin’ box and let me out of here.” He held out his hand.
“You’re too young,” the captain countered, his hands still resting on the box. “You don’t know what it means to watch your dreams disappear.”
“Gods damn your dreams—there was blood on the froggin’ moon last night. That box belonged to the Torch, now he says it belongs to me.”
Sinjon slowly lifted his hand from the box, leaving it where Cauvin could reach