Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [59]
Molin pushed past his faithful servant, not answering any of his questions. He descended the remaining stairs as rapidly as weapons and armor allowed. The vast palace courtyard was gray with winter’s early twilight. The scent of ice sharpened the air. Walegrin himself held the reins of Molin’s horse and cupped his hands to boost the older man into the saddle.
Walegrin’s lifelong dream had been escape from Sanctuary, and he’d succeeded once or twice in putting the city’s walls behind him. He’d fought well in Ranke’s northern wars and led the clandestine expedition that rediscovered the ancient formula for Enlibar steel. But fate had always dragged him back to the city of his birth.
Though he was only in in his fifties, Walegrin’s shaggy, parchedstraw hair was streaked with wintry gray. His face was creased like last year’s leaves. He limped when he walked, thanks to a fractious horse. Three fingers had disappeared from his off-weapon hand after the Maze ran riot. Molin hadn’t seen Walegrin smile since his wife had died of the sweats five years earlier. Still, there was no man in Sanctuary—no man in the whole benighted Empire—that Molin would rather have beside him in a close-quarter skirmish.
“Have you heard the tales the Servants have sprouted about the Quickening’s source?”
Walegrin nodded his answer.
“Pray we’re not too late.”
“Two years ago was too late,” the green-eyed man countered. “I told her to go, her and Dubro both. But they wouldn’t listen. Dubro couldn’t imagine any other place, and she said because she was my half sister, the S‘danzo wouldn’t have her. Damn the S’danzo, says I, the Empire’s gone to ruin and Sanctuary’s Wrigglies wouldn’t treat her any better, push come to shove. They were stubborn, both of them. Break their backs before they’d take my advice … anyone’s advice.”
He put his hands on his horse’s withers, raised himself up on his arms, and balanced there. For a breathless moment it seemed Walegrin lacked the suppleness or strength to swing his weight across the animal’s back, then he and the horse grunted from deep in their guts. His leg arced over the saddle, and he settled lightly onto the blanketed leather.
“Say ‘they are stubborn’ instead,” Molin suggested. “There’s hope yet-”
“Say we’re after vengeance and be done with it.”
With a minimum of motion, Walegrin wheeled his horse toward the city. They took torches from the guards at the palace gate.
“Lower the bar behind us,” Molin ordered, “and keep it down ’til it’s light. We’ll come back through the postern.”
“If we come back,” Walegrin added, though neither he nor the six men riding behind him hesitated to follow Molin onto Sanctuary’s streets.
Along Governor’s Walk they met a gang coming up from the slums on the hillside behind the Promise of Heaven. Armed with torches, shovels, and other tools, they were looking for someone to lead them against the S’danzo.
When Molin asked why, a lean, sour-faced man snarled, “The gods will.” His Ilsigi grammar was as bad as his teeth.
“Not your gods,” Molin snarled back, matching the churl’s tone. “Thousand-eyed Ils never wages war on women. He watches you now, and He’ll smite you a thousand times for every blow you take without His blessing. Go home, and quickly, lest you be marked for heresy, or worse.”
A dark-haired lout bearing an ax shaft in each hand objected to Molin’s advice by raising his weapons, but—no matter that Molin Torchholder was a Rankan priest or that his god had been vanquished years earlier—he couldn’t endure Molin’s glower for long. Once the lout’s arm dropped, the gang melted away.
“They’ll change their minds before they’re halfway home,” Walegrin muttered.
Molin agreed before adding, “But they’ll do their hunting in the uptown quarters, not the bazaar. That’s the best we can hope for tonight.”
They weren’t halfway from the palace to the bazaar when Molin first smelled smoke. Walegrin was right, he realized, and the best they’d achieved would be vengeance. But the men riding with him