Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [88]
Cauvin tucked his chin against his breastbone. Bec had done it; he’d covered their froggin’ tracks and then some. The boy had clever to spare. A sheep-shite stone-smasher could only bite his tongue to keep from grinning. He had to stay out of the froggin’ house—no way he could have faced Bec without undoing the boy’s good work—but Cauvin’s heart was still laughing when he led Flower out of the stoneyard.
The Torch had propped himself up against the wall. He had parchment strewn across his lap and a white-feather quill dangling loosely from a motionless hand. Cauvin thought—hoped—the old pud had died, but his eyelids fluttered and he coughed himself awake as Cauvin crossed the threshold to his refuge.
“Did you get it?”
Not good morning nor it’s good to see you nor did all go well last night? but the froggin’ greeting of a gods-all-be-damned sparker to the least of his froggin’ servants. Any reluctance Cauvin might have felt about arguing with a man on his deathbed was gone in a heart-beat.
“Shite for sure we got it.” Cauvin removed the parchment from his boot and brandished it beyond the Torch’s reach. “We damn near died, too. Your friends were waiting for us. Your friends with red hands and faces,” he snarled and went on to describe the skirmish in Silk Corner, leaving out only one froggin’ detail: that Bec had done the deed alone.
The Torch—gods rot his sheep-shite soul—wasn’t fooled.
“Send a boy on a man’s errand, and what else would you expect? He’d have stayed snug in his bed if you hadn’t shirked your obligations.”
“My froggin’ obligations? I saved your froggin’ damned life, you old pud—I don’t owe you sheep-shite. What about your obligations? Go here. Go there. Get me this and that. You froggin’ well knew the Hand would be watching—”
“I know precious little about what the Bloody Hand of Dyareela knows right now, pud. Until three days ago, I thought they were dead. Stop waving that parchment about. Give it here.”
The Torch held out his hand. Cauvin hesitated, then slapped it into the old man’s palm.
“There—it’s yours, if Bec snatched the right one. It’s a froggin’ picture! A froggin’ picture of the froggin’ Wrigglie gods in a froggin’ tavern garden.”
“Then it’s the right one,” the Torch said mildly, and began unfolding it.
“A picture, you damned pud—you risked our lives for a froggin’ picture!”
The mildness vanished, replaced by a hiss of contempt that rocked Cauvin back a pace.
“Pay attention, pud, and you might learn something. It’s not what’s on the parchment—though I could tell you a tale or two about the man who drew it: Laylo … no, Lalo … Lalo the Limner he called himself. He had the gift of his gods whenever he picked up a brush or pen—”
Cauvin watched with gape-jawed astonishment as the Torch held the drawing at one corner and began to carefully split it into two thinner sheepskin sheets. He started to ask a foolish question, but clamped his mouth shut before it escaped.
“Lalo painted the truth of a thing …or a person. Damnably inconvenient for a portraitist who’d hoped to support himself painting the nobility, as you can imagine. He painted a picture of my wife … no surprises; I’d known her for what she was from the start—but frightening all the same—the features of a pig draped in pearls …”
“What happened when this Lalo painted your portrait?”
“I’ve been many things in my life, pud, and none of them a fool. I never sat for our little ginger-haired artist, and if he ever sketched me, he had the wit to keep the lines to himself. Painting the truth wasn’t enough; his gods gave him the gift of life. Those brightly colored flies the women catch with honey and grind up for dyes …? They’re his. Them and less savory beasts, but we got rid of those … or they followed him when he cut his strings. Damn shame. Sanctuary was his city, and he ran away when it needed him most. Ran from his family, too—damned if I can remember her name, but she posed for Shipri—Eshi, too, as I recall.”
There was a sheet of parchment