Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [35]
“Where’s the froggin’ clasp? The froggin’ key?”
The captain shrugged. “You’ll have to break it—unless Lord Torchholder taught you the trick?”
Tricks. Suddenly Cauvin imagined a welter of tricks—poisoned needles, deadly insects … froggin’ snakes—that opening the box improperly might release. To froggin’ hell with the old man’s quills and parchment. On the spot, Cauvin decided that he’d take the box, unopened, to Molin Torchholder. The old man could open it himself. Froggin’ bad cess, if it killed him—at least it wouldn’t kill Cauvin.
And if the old man died before dawn?
Fleetingly, Cauvin considered marching down the Hill, through a breach—He stopped cold before his imagination took him all the way back to the ruined estate.
If the old man died, then he’d prop the box against a wall and heave stones at it until it cracked apart.
“Did he?” Sinjon asked while Cauvin tossed imaginary stones.
“He froggin’ sure told me not to froggin’ open it in front of witnesses.” Cauvin forced himself to meet the captain’s eyes but, of course, he couldn’t break the older man’s stare. “It’s too shiny to carry at night; attract too much attention. Give me a scrap of cloth to wrap around it?”
Sinjon cocked a thumb toward a pile of rags in a corner. “Two padpols.”
Cauvin had bright soldats and an uncut shaboozh, fresh from the palace mint and not yet tarnished, in a pouch tied to his belt. He could bite off a corner of the shaboozh and still have enough silver for a feast at the Unicorn, but the notion of buying rags offended him. He snatched a piece of tight-woven, reddish cloth that looked large enough to tie around the box. “The Torch would’ve wanted his box kept safe for free.”
Trailing a knotted, filthy cord, the cloth proved to be a verminchewed sack, and though the box was larger than any individual hole, Cauvin wasn’t about to test the sack’s strength by slinging it over his shoulder. He loosened his shirt instead and tucked the stiff cloth against his gut.
“I’m leaving. I better not have any froggin’ trouble getting out,” Cauvin said with his hand on the latch.
Sinjon watched Cauvin. His left eye was wandering again, but they both stared. The effect was unnerving.
“He must have been desperate,” the captain said, still staring.
“Who?”
“The Torch, boy—Lord Torchholder—if he’s made you his heir.”
“I’m not his froggin’, sheep-shite heir. I’m just collecting a debt.”
The captain shook his head the same way Mina did when she thought he was too sheep-shite stupid to understand her insults. It was a look that got under Cauvin’s skin in an instant.
He lifted the latch, and snarled, “Have a froggin’ good life,” as he opened the door.
Sinjon said something that Cauvin’s ears couldn’t untangle. He didn’t want a second hearing. Anst, the ghost, was waiting at the top of the stairs—out of earshot, if he’d been there the whole time. And if he hadn’t? Well, Cauvin didn’t give a froggin’ damn. The Torch’s box was safe inside his shirt, and he could take any one-handed ghost who disagreed.
The fog had gotten heavier while Cauvin was inside the Broken Mast, the blackfish stench, too. He still didn’t know what a hagfish looked like, but he imagined they stared. The air on the Processional was almost clean-smelling by the time Cauvin reached the street called Lizard’s Way, which was the best—though far from the only—path into the warren known to one and all as the Maze. The Maze had its own smells, stronger and older than dead fish.
Cauvin didn’t know the Maze well. As a child he’d lived with his mother on the Hill until she ran afoul of the Hand, for what, he’d never known. Maybe for nothing. The Hand didn’t need a reason to