Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [44]
“They’re soldats, not shaboozh,” Cauvin corrected as he grabbed Bec’s ear. “And you’ll keep your froggin’ mouth shut.”
The boy howled and Cauvin released him, lest he draw his parents to the loft.
“Froggin’ froggin’ froggin’—I will if you tell me how you really got them. Wasn’t any merchant, was there?”
Cauvin shook his head. “There wasn’t—”
“So you did steal them!”
“No, gods all be damned, I didn’t steal anything. There was—there is an old man—”
Cauvin’s mind raced. Did he dare tell his foster brother the truth? Did he dare tell the boy anything less? The boy was too froggin’ clever by half. He’d picked up the scattered pieces of the carved box and started putting them back together again, as sure as if he’d done it every froggin’ day of his life. Could a sheep-shite stone-smasher possibly put together just enough of the truth to satisfy Bec’s demanding curiosity?
“This is what they came in?” Bec concluded, as the box grew in his hands. “You found it, maybe? Found it so you can say you didn’t steal it, but you found it with the merchant’s goods—or left behind in the place where you were moving them—”
“I didn’t steal anything! It’s complicated, Bec. I don’t hardly understand what’s happened today myself, but you’ve got to swear you’ll keep your mouth shut—”
Bec mimed placing a strip of cloth over his mouth and tying it tight behind his ears.
“There is an old man. He lives in the palace; and he’s an important man there. He’d gone to the old temples and got himself attacked.”
“He gave you the coins for saving his life while he was praying to the old gods?”
“No,” Cauvin corrected and cursed himself a heartbeat later: Bec’s conclusion was simpler—better—than the truth he’d condemned himself to tell. “The old pud wasn’t praying. He was—He’d been looking for whoever killed those two puds at the crossing, but he got himself froggin’ set upon and robbed. He was beat-up pretty bad when I found him. I would’ve taken him to the froggin’ palace, but nothing would satisfy him, except I took him out to the froggin’ red-walled ruins—”
“But you said you never went to the red-walled ruins. I heard Poppa say you didn’t bring back any bricks!”
“Look, Bec, I’m telling you the truth, so froggin’ keep quiet! You want to listen or you want to, maybe, stumble on your way down the ladder?”
The boy blanched and didn’t say another word until Cauvin had cobbled together a version of his misadventures in the ruins and at the Broken Mast. He left out his meeting with Leorin at the Vulgar Unicorn.
“It’s a good thing it’s turning cold—” Cauvin concluded, “or we’d be smelling that rotten blackfish up here. Probably will be anyway when the sun comes up.”
“You went to the Broken Mast?” Bec asked with wide-eyed astonishment. “That’s a bugger’s den.”
“Who told you that?” Cauvin couldn’t hide his surprise. “Who tells you sheep-shite nonsense like that?”
“Nobody tells me. I keep quiet and listen whenever people come to buy stone, and especially when Momma has me go to market with her. Teera the baker says that Cervinish would rather spend his nights at the Broken Mast with the seamen than with his new wife—”
It was Cauvin’s turn to gape. When he’d been Bec’s age there wasn’t anything he didn’t know about the things men did alone, with women, with other men, and sometimes with boys who weren’t strong enough to defend themselves. But Bec wasn’t living in the streets or under the Hand. There was no reason, Cauvin hoped, to think he understood the rumors he’d repeated. There better not be. Cauvin didn’t care what Cervinish did or didn’t do with his wife, but if that froggin’ little man had laid a finger on Bec!
Some of Cauvin’s anger got into his voice. “Don’t go repeating sheep-shite stories you froggin’ don’t understand. You hear me?” he snarled.
“But I do understand,” the boy protested. “There’s never any women at the Broken Mast, just like there’s never any women on a ship. Seamen and sailors, they’ve got no use—” The boy’s words caught in his throat and when he spoke again it was in a whisper. “You’re not a seaman, are you, Cauvin? You