Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [85]
Bec said nothing until they were inside the stoneyard. “I’m sorry, Cauvin. I wanted to help Grandfather—I wanted him to be my grandfather. I’d be in real trouble now, wouldn’t I, if you hadn’t followed me.”
Never mind that Cauvin hadn’t actually followed his brother or that “real trouble” didn’t begin to describe the danger Bec had gotten himself into. “You want ‘real trouble,’ sprout, you try sneaking out of here again. Now—off with you. Get back to your bed!”
Cauvin sped the boy on with a swat across the rump. The eastern sky was brightening, but it was too early to smash stone. Up in the loft, Cauvin lit an oil lamp. Bec’s stolen parchment was grimy on the outside and stiffer than the sheepskin they’d bought at the scriptorium—not the stuff an important man like the Torch would use for writing an important message.
Cauvin unfolded the parchment, even though he couldn’t read more than a few Wrigglie words, just to see what words worth dying for looked like.
“Gods!” he swore softly. “Froggin’ gods,” because that’s what the parchment revealed: an unfinished drawing of Father Ils and All-mother Shipri holding court in some black-ink garden behind a tavern that could have been the Lucky Well.
The artist had drawn a stout Lord Anen, a goblet dangling between his fingers. A broad and drunken grin slit the wine-god’s face as he watched a barely gowned and not particularly beautiful Lady Eshi dance. Lord Shalpa skulked in the garden shadows, young, sullen, easy to recognize, even without His telltale shadowcloak. The other figures were probably Ilsigi gods, too, though Cauvin couldn’t put names to Their incomplete faces.
He’d had his fill of religion in the palace. The froggin’ gods were real; Cauvin didn’t doubt that for a heartbeat. Life in the pits wouldn’t have been half so oppressive if he hadn’t been sheep-shite sure that the Mother of Chaos was real and was watching. And if one goddess was real, then so, probably, were the rest, but neither Father Ils nor any of his froggin’ family had lifted a froggin’ immortal finger to help the orphans.
In Cauvin’s mind, no god was worth dying for and dying for a froggin’ drawing of feckless gods was an outrage. Cauvin had already made up his mind what he’d do with Molin Torchholder, the gods-all-be-damned drawing only hardened his resolve. He refolded the thick parchment, rasping his thick, blunt fingernails along the creases, and blew out the lamp. The faintest dawnlight seeped through the loose boards around the loft’s solitary window. Cauvin pulled the blanket over his head.
Maybe he could convince himself that a whole night’s sleeping still lay before him.
Maybe, with the Torch’s funeral occupying Sanctuary for a day, Grabar would let him sleep away the morning.
Maybe the froggin’ Torch would get worried, thinking his servant wasn’t coming out to the redwall ruins, and have second thoughts about the sheep-shite errand he’d sent them on.
It would serve the old pud right well if he worried himself to death.
On the cusp between dreams and thoughts, Cauvin imagined himself walking into the redwall ruins. The Torch hadn’t died, but he’d stopped moving. His forehead was all twisted up and his mouth wide-open, with no sounds coming out. Cauvin could have taken the old man to the palace and added him, like a log, to his funeral pyre, but anger had him and he decided to leave the Torch where he lay, for vermin to devour. He imagined leaving …
The door was gone, the red walls, too. White marble walls rose in their place while, behind Cauvin, men and women engaged in lively conversations. He turned again, knowing in a small way that he’d begun dreaming, yet caught up all the same and unsurprised to find that the voices belonged to the gods he’d seen on the parchment painting.
Lady Shipri beckoned Cauvin closer. She was a large woman, strong and soft, together with arms that could hold a baby or swing a hammer with equal ease. Cauvin drifted toward Her, but stopped when She offered him an apple so bright and perfect that it glowed. He