Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [49]
“If your geezer’s really from the palace,” Bec said once he was back inside the stone cart, “then we should get wine, too: aged, red wine. That’s what they use in the palace to make their ink.”
“Bad enough I had to buy soot! The old geezer can mix his froggin’ ink with water—Can’t he?”
“Wine’s better. Wine or piss.”
“That’s sheep-shite nonsense.”
“Is not,” Bec insisted, and went on at length about ink-making … as if Cauvin were going to believe someone who made up tales about chickens and birthday presents.
Cauvin guided Flower toward the Promise of Heaven and the Hill behind it. He was grimly eager to get to the abandoned estate until Bec reminded him of Batty Dol and the old man’s blankets. Reluctantly, Cauvin turned the cart back toward Pyrtanis Street.
The addled woman greeted them with a taste of her fresh-baked bread. That was the odd thing about Batty—one of them, anyway—what she did, she did well. She was a froggin’ witch with a threaded needle, and the bread she baked was good enough to sell to taverns and houses in the better parts of town. Batty was harmless, everyone said, but she gave Cauvin the chills whenever she looked at him like she’d known him before because, sometimes, like this morning, damned if she didn’t look familiar, too.
Batty never stopped talking about neighbors only she knew about. Bec spun his lies, Batty shook out enough threadbare cloaks to carpet the floor, and Cauvin paid a fair price for three of the best.
“She won’t tell,” Bec said as he made himself a woolly nest in the cart. “Come noon, she won’t even remember it was us and not ghosts.”
Cauvin grunted. He led Flower away from the tumbledown house. The boy was right, of course, and there was no reason to pity Batty Dol: She might be addled, but she never dreamt. Still, Bec didn’t know why Batty talked to ghosts, and, not knowing why, he couldn’t possibly care.
The boy wouldn’t care, either, if the day’s adventure ended with Cauvin digging a grave. He’d turn it into story about chickens and roosters. Death, madness, and the Hand weren’t real to Bec, not the way they were to Cauvin. Cauvin envied his foster brother, who didn’t know the darkest meanings of terror or loneliness, but the boy’s carefree confidence irritated him, too. A voice deep in his mind would mutter: You’ll learn, Bec, and the older you are when you do, the worse it’ll hurt.
Cauvin choked that voice before it got to his tongue, but he was prepared for the worst—the Torch not merely dead but torn apart by dogs or wolves, his limbs scattered, his eyes wide-open, and smeared with blood. Cauvin didn’t need a sheep-shite imagination when it came to violent death.
“Stay here,” he said when another ten steps would have taken them into the ruined room where he’d left the Torch.
Grabbing one of the blankets, Cauvin crossed the threshold alone.
“So you decided to come after all.”
The Torch was very much alive and reclining on his makeshift bed. His face had made a remarkable recovery from the previous day. What had been purple was now a pale yellowish gray. What had been swollen smooth was now sunken, wrinkled, and terribly old. If the Torch’s recovery were miraculous, his persistence was twice that, which led Cauvin toward thoughts of gods and magic. Those thoughts and the sight of the heavy blackwood staff in the Torch’s hand stopped him cold in his tracks.
Bec wriggled between Cauvin and the doorframe.
“Who is that?” the Torch asked in a tone that changed “who” to “what.”
“My foster brother, Becvar—we call him Bec.”
“I seem to recall asking for parchment, quills, and ink. What possessed you to think I wanted a boy?”
The worst scars Cauvin had carried away from the Hand came from insults that couldn’t be evened with a well-thrown punch and words that cut deeper than the sharpest knives. Without effort, the Torch had reopened the worst of them. Cauvin stayed put, speechless and seething, but Bec—Bec, who didn’t know any better—strode forward.
“That’s where you’re wrong, old man. I’m