Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [81]
Bec’s part of the room was quiet, as it should have been; healthy children didn’t snore. Cauvin eased himself in that direction. His feet found blankets on floor; they put an end to the story. Grabbing a torch from the rack outside the gate, Cauvin took off down Pyrtanis Street without lighting it.
The thought of Bee—scrawny little Bee—roaming the froggin’ streets of Sanctuary in the dead hours between midnight and dawn struck fear in Cauvin’s gut. He couldn’t bring himself to think about what might go wrong, so he blamed Molin Torchholder instead. If the froggin’ damned old man hadn’t put ideas about stealing treasure from the palace into the boy’s fool head, Bec would be safe in bed.
And Cauvin wouldn’t be standing in the froggin’ middle of the old Money Path wondering which way to turn next. He’d made up his mind the moment the Torch opened his mouth that he wasn’t going to steal into the damned palace for froggin’ love nor money, so he hadn’t paid attention to the sheep-shite’s instructions. The best Cauvin could remember was something about a tunnel beneath a run-down house in Silk Corner.
Froggin’ hell—every house in Silk Corner was run-down. Every froggin’ house in Sanctuary needed repairs; that’s what kept Grabar’s stoneyard in business. Cauvin would be all night and most of tomorrow if he had to check the cellar of every house in Silk Corner, and he’d have cheerfully wrung the last breath from the Torch’s froggin’ neck—or anyone else’s neck, if there’d been a neck nearby to wring.
But there wasn’t. Cauvin was alone, and he had to choose one end or the other of the doglegged street. He chose the south end, farthest from the palace, because his first thought was to choose the north end, and Cauvin’s life was the history of making the wrong froggin’ choice whenever it counted. That’s how the froggin’ Hand had caught him—He’d run left when he should’ve run to the froggin’ right.
Cauvin marched up the street, scarcely able to tell the abandoned houses from the occupied ones. Halfway along, he heard a scuffle seething in an atrium’s depths.
Not my froggin’ concern, he thought, not this froggin’ night.
He kept going until his ears caught a single word, thin and desperate—
“Feathers—!”
There couldn’t be two souls in Sanctuary who made up their own curses. Cauvin surged into the atrium without pausing to plan his attack, except to switch the torch to his left hand and move the bronze-weighted thong from his neck to his hand.
The first Hiller never knew what was coming at him. Cauvin broke the torch over his head, then booted him in the face as he fell. He grabbed the second from behind—one handful of hair, the other twisting up the Hiller’s belt—and hurled him at the nearest solid-seeming wall. While the Hiller spun and groaned, Cauvin loaded his fist with bronze and broke the bastard’s jaw with a single punch. He landed a kick at the second Hiller’s crotch before he collapsed.
The other Hillers—there were at least three more—knew Cauvin had waded in by then. Two of them shifted their attention to the new target. Cauvin dodged fists aimed at his face, but endured punches to his gut and flank before locking his left arm around a set of shoulders and pummeling a face with his metal-loaded fist until the froggin’ Hiller’s arms were dangling. Cauvin finished that Hiller off by running him headlong into a stone pillar. Both the pillar and the Hiller collapsed.
A sheep-shite Hiller who’d missed Cauvin’s head each time he’d swung must have decided his chances weren’t going to get any better now that he had the lion’s share of Cauvin’s attention. He backed out of reach, then ran away like a froggin’ rabbit.
That left one Hiller in the atrium—a short and scrawny bastard who held Bec in front of him as a living shield. When Cauvin advanced, the Hiller wrapped his hands around Bec’s chin and scalp and began to twist. Bec gave