Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [89]
“Stoke up the fire and hold this in the smoke a moment.”
“I’m not your froggin’ slave, pud. You can’t order me around.”
“By all means, pud—humor an old man and please hold this above the fire, high enough for heat, but careful not to singe your dainty fingers.”
Cauvin seized the parchment and knelt by the ashes.
“You remind me of Lalo, pud,” the Torch gibed, while Cauvin fed fresh tinder to the embers. “You want a thing bad enough that you can taste it, but you spit it out as soon as it’s in your mouth.”
Cauvin swallowed the insult whole. When the fire was as big as a dinner plate and crackling nicely, he picked up the parchment. His froggin’ hands were the froggin’ opposite of dainty. He and Swift used to play a betting game—who could hold a live coal longer. He could hold one for ten count and had every intention of holding the parchment in the flames until it was utterly consumed, but when row upon row of tiny black marks appeared suddenly on the sheepskin, he tossed it away from himself and the fire both.
“Froggin’ shite—what’s that?”
“Writing, pud. My notes about the Bloody Hand of Dyareela.”
“But—But—That parchment was blank! Sorcery … you’re working sorcery, damn you. I want no part of sorcery.”
“No sorcery. Best fetch them before the wind carries them away.”
Cauvin stayed put.
“My word, Cauvin, there’s not the least bit of sorcery involved, only a few drops of lemon juice. Now, fetch them. I am an old man; I forget. I need my notes if we’re to beat back the challenge the Bloody Hand has thrown at us.”
“Froggin’ thrown at us? I don’t have anything to do with the Hand.” Cauvin held his hands between himself and the old man, as if to ward away the whole froggin’ idea.
“Come now, Cauvin. Remember what you just told me—they attacked your brother in Silk Corner. Surely you, above all others, know what would have happened to him—”
“Bec was there because of you!”
The Torch dismissed Cauvin’s objection with a wave. “Because of a dead man? Did you tell them I’d sent you? Did you tell them I’m still alive? Do they think I sent you or your brother? They had him, then they saw you. That skull of yours can’t be so thick that you don’t grasp the implications. Even if they didn’t recognize you, Cauvin—and I doubt that they did—they’ll remember you now, and they’ll be looking for you and your brother.”
Cauvin shook with shock and rage. “All the more froggin’ reason to go to ground. I’m done with you, pud—you’re getting into the cart and going to the palace or you’re staying out here—alone— ’til you froggin’ die.”
“Nonsense, boy—you want revenge! I saw it in your eyes yesterday when you realized what your brother and I were talking about. You don’t want him to know what happened to you in the pits because the wounds are still raw. Revenge will heal you, Cauvin; nothing heals like vengeance. And you want it so bad your hands are shaking.”
Cauvin looked down and saw that the Torch’s accusation was true, as far as it went. “The only revenge I want is against you.”
For the first time, he seemed to have surprised the old man. The Torch’s lips disappeared in a scowl, and the ruins were quiet until he said: “Against me? I saved your porking life. You’d have died in the pits like all those others if I hadn’t seen a spark of conscience in you. Talk about obligations! Look at me, Cauvin. Look at me and tell me you’d rather have died that day. I gave you your life.”
Cauvin could stop his hands from trembling by clasping them behind his back, but he couldn’t meet the Torch’s stare, and his response, when he got it out, was whispered, not snarled: “What life?”
His memories had broken free. They ran riot behind his eyes, more real than the ruins.
It hadn’t been so bad at first. Life with his mother had never been froggin’ settled. Life after the Hand flayed her had been shadow to shadow with an empty gut. He’d lived off what he and Leorin found in the gutters—which wasn’t much—and what they stole. They were bound to get caught