Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [63]
Molin continued, “But there wasn’t enough water in that winter night to keep the bazaar from burning to the ground. We beat a retreat to the Governor’s Walk and cut through the mob when it tried to follow us. Twenty men and women there on the walk. Good riddance! The gods alone know how many more died in the bazaar. They spread, you realize. The fires and the mob, they both spread through the city. It was two days, I swear, before we returned to the palace. Two days of fighting fires and damned fools. But damn us all, when the smoke cleared, the Quickening was gone, and the Servants of Dyareela took the credit.”
Chapter Seven
Bec blew across the cup of tea, not because it was steaming hot but because if he blew hard enough, Grandfather might think the tea had indeed once been steaming hot. Momma made the stoneyard’s tea. She went outside the walls to collect the leaves and flowers. She dried them and crushed them and, most important, she tended the hearth fire that heated the water that became the tea Bec drank with every meal. Bec watched his mother coax the embers back to life every morning. She made it look so simple, Bec had never imagined it wasn’t something he could do.
“Here,” he said, offering the cup. “I was afraid it might be too hot, so I blew on it for you.”
Grandfather extended a trembling hand. Bec tried to make the exchange without actually touching the old man’s fingers. It was impossible, and Grandfather’s flesh felt like—Well, it felt like nothing Bec could describe, except that it wasn’t right and sent shivers down his backbone. He took a backward step and then another before attempting to meet Grandfather’s eyes.
“Next time, boy—if there is a next time—don’t bother blowing.”
Bec opened his mouth to protest and shut it quickly. Grandfather was the most frightening man he’d encountered. Far worse than Poppa when Poppa was angry, or Cauvin, who got angrier and got that way more often. The old man was scarier than the Irrune who lived in the palace and took whatever they wanted from any shop in any quarter of the city—
Thank Shalpa (Bec’s favorite among Sanctuary’s gods, despite his mother’s Imperial disapproval, because Shalpa was quick and clever and He never, ever got caught) that the Irrune had no use for stone!
Bec had slipped into an Irrune daydream when Grandfather’s raspy voice brought him back to the ruins. “Did that stone-headed brother of yours buy more parchment, or is that the only skin you’ve got?”
Should he tell Grandfather that it had been his idea to buy a single skin? Momma could get a whole year’s worth of writing onto a single sheepskin. Or should he let Cauvin take the blame? Cauvin could take it. Cauvin could take anything because he’d walked out of the palace alive.
At least that’s what Cauvin said.
Giving the question a second heartbeat’s thought, Bec decided that he shouldn’t make things worse between Cauvin and Grandfather. Grandfather had an edge against Cauvin the likes of which Bec had never seen. It had something to do with the Troubles …
“That night when your friends died in the bazaar,” Bec asked boldly, determined to get his answers, “was that when the Troubles began … with the Servants? Cauvin says the Hand caught him, and that’s all he’ll say. Was the Hand the same as the Servants, or were they something different?”
Grandfather glared over the lip of the teacup. His eyes seemed to glow with a light of their own, and Bec regretted to the soles of his feet that he’d dared to ask any questions at all. Then Grandfather began talking again in a voice so soft that Bec ignored the ink, the quill, and the parchment. He sat on the floor beside Grandfather instead, with his chin resting resting on the mattress and his eyes closed to remember every word.
The shape of the future should have been clear to anyone with the wit