Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [83]
Cauvin shook his head. Bec was slippery in ways he couldn’t fathom; he could feel his anger slipping away. He would have let it go altogether, but for one thing—“Frog all, Bec, that wasn’t some sheep-shite drunk from the Hill with his hands around your head—that was a priest of the froggin’ Mother of Chaos. A Bloody Hand priest, Bec. You’re so froggin’ clever, Bec—the froggin’ Hand was froggin’ waiting for you!”
“If I’d’ve turned right, instead of left, when I came out, nothing would have happened,” Bec protested. “Nothing. You’ll see—” He pulled folded-up parchment from the waist of his breeches.
“You’ll see when I give this to Grandfather tomorrow.”
Cauvin snatched the parchment out of Bec’s hand, doing what the Hand had failed to do, if he and not Bec were right about the Hand. He held it above Bec’s desperate reach. In the moonlight, the sheepskin didn’t look worth killing or dying for.
“It’s mine, Cauvin! I went and got it, not you. Give it back, so I can give it to Grandfather tomorrow.”
“Froggin’ hell.”
Cauvin shoved the wad into his boot and, when Bec lunged for it, shoved the boy away.
“I’ll tell!” Bec shouted his threat. “I’ll tell Momma and Poppa what you’ve been doing out at the redwall ruins. How you’ve got the Torch holed up out there and that you’ve held out on the silver and gold he gave you. I’ll tell them that you made me—”
“You do that,” Cauvin shouted back. “You tell your sheep-shite parents whatever the froggin’ hell you want to tell them. Go ahead, get me thrown out of the stoneyard—Then what, Bec? Then what? Weren’t you paying attention? I’m talking about the Bloody Hand. A priest of the Bloody Hand of Dyareela had his hands on your neck, Bec—even if it were a froggin’ complete accident. Don’t you froggin’ forget that the Torch says—in so many froggin’ words—that him and the sparker got ambushed by the Hand two nights ago. Was that another froggin’ accident? Two froggin’ accidents involving the froggin’ Hand? Do you think anything Lord-High-and-Mighty Molin Torchholder does is a froggin’ accident? You think Dyareela’s froggin’ Hand believes in accidents?”
“Quiet down there!” a faceless stranger shouted from the upper story of one of the buildings surrounding the brothers.
They said shame couldn’t kill, but the froggin’ shame of knowing that he and Bec had been sharing their anger—and their secrets—with strangers hurt Cauvin worse than the bruises he’d gotten in the atrium. Shame or something similar took the wind out of Bec’s sails, too. The boy began to shiver violently, then threw himself against Cauvin.
“I was scared,” Bec whispered, “scared like I’ve never been before.”
“So was I.”
Bee’s arms tightened into an unexpectedly strong hug, and his head pressed against one of Cauvin’s growing bruises, but Cauvin didn’t care. He wrapped his arms around the boy.
“You’re safe now. C’mon, let’s get home.”
He unwound the boy and got them moving toward Pyrtanis Street.
“Cauvin …?” Bec asked softly after what was, for him, a lengthy silence.
“What?”
“Cauvin, that one, that one that you said was a Bloody Hand priest. I’m not so sure. He never said anything, but the way he was holding me—what I could feel against him—well, I think he was a woman.
“Man or woman, it was still a Hand.”
“But how could a priest be a woman, Cauvin? Women are priestesses. And I’ve never heard of priests and priestesses serving the same god. Even yesterday, when Grandfather told me his tale and you an’ he were arguing, you said priests, not priestesses.”
Cauvin sighed and dropped an arm around Bec, pulling him close so they walked side against side and could talk with whispers. “There were women among the Hand,” he admitted. “Dyareela is a goddess, but She’s a froggin’ god, too. A herm-something. Every time they initiated a priest, they made a priestess, too, to be—”
His voice broke on a reef of memories. If it had only