Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [96]
“Eyes of Ils have mercy,” the other two chanted together.
“Eyes of Savankala,” the man corrected. “We’re at the Enders’ mercy already.”
Cauvin edged away from the man and his audience. He sought a better view of the clumped-together Enders. Which one of those white-robed men was Lord Serripines? And what was in his mind? What little Cauvin knew about the Enders he learned from Mina, and the harder she tried to build them up, the more they seemed like sheep-shite fools, but sheep-shite fools who owned frog-all everything worth owning in Sanctuary: the fields, the ships … the land beneath the stoneyard.
What were they thinking as Zarzakhan continued his wild dance around the blazing pyre?
—“If there’s an emperor in Ranke who’ll give them the gold, he’ll swear whatever he’s got to swear to get it.”
Cauvin’s attention slewed back to the nearby conversation. He’d been thinking about Lord Serripines and the rest of the Enders, but—no froggin’ surprise—he was froggin’ wrong.
“You’ve got it wrong, Dardis,” the blue-shawled woman said with exaggerated patience. “If the Dragon bends a knee, he’ll bend it toward King Sepheris in Ilsig. He’ll get the same gold; and after he takes off to conquer the old Irrune lands, he’ll be on the far side of the Empire, where he can ignore his oaths.”
“And we’ll have Sepheris all over our backs—”
“Better an Ilsigi king who speaks our language than the Rankan Empire and Rankan taxes.”
The man called Dardis expressed his opinion of Sanctuary’s ancestral home with a loud hawk and louder spit. “Pox on Sepheris. The Empire,” he declared, “can levy all the taxes it wants on Sanctuary, seeing as it can’t collect a rusty soldat.”
“Wherever the Dragon goes,” another man, a stranger to the others as he was to Cauvin, chimed in, “he’ll bleed us all white before he leaves. He thinks the only good city is a sacked city. Naimun’s the man for us. Does what he’s told.”
Dardis hawked and spat again. “Frog all—Naimun does what Naimun wishes … and Naimun wishes for gold, women, and wine!”
“Then we’ll give him women and wine until he forgets about the gold,” the other man argued.
A fourth voice—Cauvin’s voice-entered the conversation. “I think we’d be better off with Raith.”
Strangers turned and stared as if a froggin’ dog had reared up on its froggin’ hind legs and started to talk.
“You’re young yet,” Dardis explained. “Take it from a man who’s seen it all. The last man Sanctuary needs for prince-governor is a froggin’ clever man who learned his lessons from the froggin’ Torch.”
The others grumbled their agreement while the blue-shawled woman muttered, “Raith’s still a boy. Once Arizak’s gone, his older brothers will dispose of him quick enough.”
“Arizak or no, Raith’ll be dead by midwinter, mark my words,” Dardis swore, repeating the words Cauvin had heard when the conversation began. “The Dragon won’t wait until Arizak’s dead to bring that one down; his froggin’ mother will boil his balls if he doesn’t do it by then.”
“If the Torch taught Raith,” Cauvin scarcely believed he was hearing his own froggin’ voice. A sheep-shite stone-smasher didn’t care who ruled Sanctuary. “He won’t be easy to kill.”
“If the Torch taught him everything,” the second man agreed with a cackling laugh, “but what boy learns all his lessons, eh? Did you, lad? Put your money on the Dragon, if you want to see the future of Sanctuary.”
Dardis cleared his throat; they all stepped back, but the man didn’t spit this time. He stared straight into Cauvin’s eyes, and said: “If Raith’s brothers can’t kill him, then froggin’ Ils have mercy on our shite-baked souls, ’cause he’ll be ours for-froggin’-ever, just like the Torch.”
For a moment, Cauvin thought he recognized Dardis after all. A stoneyard customer? The wheelwright who’d mended the mule cart three years back when the axle split? Or maybe someone from the older depths of his