Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [95]
Arizak’s second wife Nadalya stood behind Arizak’s left shoulder. She was oh-so-froggin’-careful not to touch Verrezza and didn’t seem a match for her hardened rival, though maybe that was because Nadalya looked enough like Mina to be her sister. Nadalya acted like Mina, too—her mouth and hands were never still, and she fussed over her youngest son, the red-haired Raith, already head and shoulders taller than she, but not yet as tall as Verrezza.
Of all the folk gathered upwind of the pyre, only Raith and Arizak had the hollow look of men in mourning. There were streaks on Raith’s face where his tears had sluiced through the black grease. Nadalya swiped at them with a bit of cloth that would never be clean again. Raith didn’t seem to notice his mother’s efforts—the froggin’ sure sign of a boy whose mind was in another place. Apparently, Bec wasn’t the only boy to fall under the Torch’s froggin’ “Grandfather” spell.
Naimun, eldest son of Arizak and Nadalya, arrived late and stood apart from his kin. No streaks in the grease around his eyes, Naimun appeared as sullen as Verrezza, but not nearly so strong. He whispered something to a sparker companion and brought a smirk to that man’s face.
The drumming stopped, and Zarzakhan leapt onto the pyre, which creaked but didn’t tumble. For the first time since he’d arrived, Cauvin found himself looking closely at the corpse that wasn’t Molin Torchholder’s. Tightly wrapped in dark, wrinkled cloth, it resembled a log more than a man, which was froggin’ fine with Cauvin. Despite all the death he’d seen, he wasn’t comfortable with cremation. There was something about the notion of rendering a man down to froggin’ ashes that left him weak in the gut.
Zarzakhan exchanged his horse-head rattles for burning torches, which, after a jabbering speech, he pointed at Arizak. After a moment’s hesitation—and a froggin’ nudge from his father—Raith made his way to the pyre. The boy said a few words no one but Zarzakhan and the corpse could have heard before taking the torches and shoving them between the logs.
In a heartbeat the pyre was engulfed in searing flame. Sorcery, Cauvin suspected, or pitch, or a combination of the two. The shrouded corpse was briefly visible, a dark shadow within the fire, then it burst into flames. Cauvin felt the heat where he stood. He held his breath as long as he could, let it out, and inhaled reluctantly. The difference between a roast on the hearth and a corpse on a pyre was in the mind, not the nose. But—Sweet Shipri’s mercy—the only smells in the evening air were wood, bitter pitch, and the froggin’ muck in Zarzakhan’s hair.
“Look at him,” a nearby stranger complained.
Cauvin followed the woman’s eyes and guessed she was speaking about Raith. The boy had returned to his father’s side with unmanly tears running down his cheeks.
“The Torch won’t see justice,” another stranger, a man, added.
Cauvin realized they were watching Naimun, still joking with his Wrigglie companion.
“Sure as shite,” the first stranger agreed. With her round, chinless face and frayed, blue shawl, she could have been any one of the middle-aged women Cauvin saw in the doorways and market stalls once he’d strayed from Pyrtanis Street. “Arizak’s not going to look inside his own house.”
“Nor outside it neither,” another shapeless woman added.
“Aye,” said the man. “Frog-all sure, the Dragon’s taken off—and look at his mother’s face. She knows who killed the Torch. Frog-all sure.”
“Strange beds for stranger times. Those two—the old bat and Naimun—had just one thing in common: hating the Torch,” the blue-shawled woman said.
“No wonder there,” the man explained, showing off for the women. “The Dragon wants his father’s people, Naimun wants Sanctuary—no need to fight between them. But Raith—the Torch raised him to want both—and take both, if he’d lived long enough.”
The second woman sucked loudly on her teeth. “Poor lad—he’ll be lucky to see midwinter now that his protector’s gone; Arizak, too. See those wrappings? My neighbor’s brother