Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [41]
“Ki-thus, come with me. My people will welcome you—”
“Your people need their Beysa; they do not need a foreigner as her consort.”
The prince wasn’t the fool people thought he was. He was merely a man who’d been born at the wrong time—a man of grace and wit and justice trapped in a moment when those admirable qualities were worthless.
“I must return to Ranke. That is where I belong, no matter what fate awaits me there.”
Molin—Cauvin—watched the tide change in the Beysa’s glistening eyes.
“What of our children, Ki-thus? Our daughters? What will become of them?”
The prince’s face became a mask that could not hide his anguish as he said the little girls would be safer far away in the Beysib Empire than they’d ever be in Sanctuary.
The two should never have jumped the broom together, Cauvin judged, and in the echo of memories not his own, the old man—Molin Torchholder—agreed.
“Cauvin! Cauvin! What’s wrong with you!”
Cauvin looked into the eyes of Prince Kadakithis, who’d left Sanctuary but never arrived in Ranke—
No, he wasn’t looking at a prince’s face, he was looking at Leorin, who could have passed for the prince. Or his daughter? No. No. The years were wrong. Kadakithis had vanished more than thirty years ago. His daughters would be Mina’s age, not Leorin’s, and decades gone from Sanctuary. Still, the resemblance—
“Sweet Sabellia.”
“Since when do you swear by Imperial gods?” Leorin demanded.
Cauvin shuddered from his feet all the way to the top of his head. A ghost had touched his soul—that’s what Batty Dol would say. And this time, maybe she’d be right. The ghost of the old pud he’d left in roofless ruins outside the walls? The ghost of Prince Kadakithis? Or the ghost of his daughter?
Whatever it had been—Whatever had possessed Cauvin’s life for a moment and stirred its memories into his, it was gone. He was alone with Leorin in a room above the Vulgar Unicorn.
“Look at these!” She held her cupped hands where Cauvin could not help but see them and the shiny coins they contained. “Look at them! Not a mark on them. There’s fifteen silver soldats—I don’t even recognize the face on the—and a gold coronation! A coronation, Cauvin—Look at it! Have you ever seen a coin so big and bright? And more tumbled under the bed!”
Leorin emptied her hands into his and dropped immediately to her knees. Cauvin couldn’t explain what had happened to him, but coins—uncut and as shiny as the day they’d come from the mint—needed no explanation.
“I can’t take these to a scribe asking for quills and parchment.” Cauvin’s mind stumbled from one consequence to the next. “He’ll say one soldat’s as good as another and rob me blind. I’ll have to go to a changer first. With one soldat. I’ll get a better price for one good soldat than twenty—”
Clutching more coins in her hands, Leorin looked up from the floor. “Forget the old pud! We’re rich, Cauvin. Rich enough to leave Sanctuary and start over somewhere else. Mother’s blood, let’s leave! There’s a merchant downstairs; he’s leaving for Ilsig city tomorrow morning. We could travel with him. Oh, Cauvin.” She spilled the coins onto her bed before wrapping her arms around Cauvin. “Please, love, please? Let’s run away from Sanctuary before it’s too late. Come. Let’s go downstairs and talk to him. Right now. There’s nothing keeping us here. Grabar’s no more to you than the Stick is to me.”
Leorin tugged Cauvin’s sleeve. He took one step toward the door and became unmovable. “I left an old man alone outside the froggin’ walls. Easy money says he’s dead by morning—I’ve never seen anyone as old and frail as him. I’ve got to see to him, Leorin. I’ve got to know that he’s dead, if he’s dead, and bury him, if he is. I can’t leave him to rot. I’m done with that. My—” Cauvin’s stomach sank. The old geezer was right: “My sheep-shite conscience won’t let me.”
“Sheep-shite is right. What