by Lynn Abbey
There was a sheet of parchment in each of the Torch’s hands. He flapped the sheet that didn’t bear the Limner’s drawing at Cauvin.
“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 sooner or later. With the Hand there was a roof to keep him dry, a fire to keep him warm, and a full bowl every day, even if it was gritty bread and froggin’ fish-head chowder. Besides, they taught him how to use his froggin’ fists.
For froggin’ sure, the pits were brutal, and he’d never froggin’ get over the first time he’d seen the Hand kill. Not execute, the way they’d executed his mother, but just kill with a backhand clout to a girl’s head. Without trying, Cauvin could still hear the sound of her skull cracking. She never knew.
Honor to the Great Mother, the Hand said, and carried her body to the altar.
Waste not, want not, Cauvin’s own mother had said when she fed him scrapings from her clients’ plates.
He’d gagged at the altar and again at supper, but—the froggin’ truth be told—anything was better than froggin’ fish-head chowder.
The palace gates were barred and guarded by Hands who’d kill you as soon as look at you, but the Hands were teaching Cauvin how to fight, too, and he’d never had any trouble obeying froggin’ rules—provided he and they were pointed in the same direction. He liked to fight and didn’t shirk his lessons.
Bigger, smaller, willing or not, Cauvin fought. The Hand took him out on the streets. When there was froggin’ trouble, he helped take care of it. Froggin’ truth be told, it wasn’t unpleasant, especially when the Hand pointed Cauvin at a merchant who’d used to make his mother’s life miserable.
He’d killed the man. He supposed he’d froggin’ killed more than a few men. He couldn’t be sure. The Hand told him when to start fighting and when to stop, too. They always left their victims behind.
He learned how the Hand had killed the girl with a weighted fist, but except for dogs and a few goats for practice, they’d never asked him to kill with an unsuspected blow—that was an honor reserved for priests. If he’d been thinking straight then, Cauvin might have realized where he was headed when they taught him the trick. He hadn’t been. He liked fighting, and being a brawler served him well in the froggin’ pits when the Hand wasn’t watching close. Weaker sprouts looked to him for protection. They served him like slaves; he’d been as comfortable as you could be in the pits.
Cauvin got used to his life. He didn’t expect it to change, then it did: The Hand introduced him to Dyareela. They gave him wine—more than wine. There was nothing in wine to make the world glow and shimmer the way it did after he’d drank Dyareela’s warm, bloodred wine.
They’d led Cauvin into the palace where he saw the Mother’s statue without its black robes, cock and cunt together. When Chaos came and Dyareela reshaped the world in Her image, they’d all be like that—so said the Hand. Until then, the priests and priestesses did what they could with what lesser gods had given them. There were others at the altar, men and women, naked except for the red silk over their faces, all writhing together. Take off your clothes, they told him. Join your brothers and sisters.
Froggin’ hell—there wasn’t wine enough to get Cauvin that drunk.
He’d said no thanks. Leaving a body in the street, not knowing if it were dead or alive, Cauvin didn’t have froggin’ problems with that, but he wanted no froggin’ part of what was happening around Dyareela’s altar. He’d thought saying no would be enough. As usual, he was froggin’ wrong when it mattered.
Cauvin didn’t know why he hadn’t froggin’ broken. Imprisoned alone in the utter dark for who knew how froggin’ long was bad enough, but it wasn’t the worst. The froggin’ worst came when they dragged him back to Dyareela’s froggin’ altar—not the black-stone fornication altar but another one, far below the palace. He was blindfolded when they slashed his chest; he figured he was going to die without his froggin’ skin, same as his sheep-shite mother. Then they took the blindfold off.
Some thing hung there above him: some thing with too many glowing eyes, too many shimmering teeth, too many everything. It wrapped around him like a snake … or a lover …
“Cauvin!”
Cauvin came back to himself with a shudder. He’d survived—the gods knew why or how. He was alive, in the redwall ruins, with Molin Torchholder.
“Cauvin, you’re here and now, not there and then. Do you hear me, Cauvin?”
Memories couldn’t harm him. Even so, he was dripping sweat and shaking. There was a froggin’ black staff pointed at his chest again. Cauvin tried to convince himself it was only the old pud stirring his memories.
“You need vengeance, Cauvin. You wish for vengeance.”
“I wish I’d died with the others. It froggin’ ended for them. No froggin’ memories. No froggin’ dreams. The ones you separated—the ones that the Hand didn’t manage to kill—do you know how many are still alive?” Cauvin began to tick off the names of those who weren’t.
“Spare me, Cauvin, I’m years past guilt. They had the same chance you had, and you’re still here—I count that victory enough, but you take me back to the palace, and I’ll be dead in a day. I can’t fight the Hand any longer, and I have no sons alive, none to finish what I’ve started. Let me make you my heir, Cauvin. My wisdom, my cunning; your eyes, your ears, your strength. My vengeance and yours together—the Bloody Hand of Dyareela will know the fear that you knew in the pits.”
Cauvin shook his head. “You’ve got froggin’ nothing I froggin’ want,” he swore, because there was nothing that would set him free of his memories.
“Not for you, Cauvin, for your brother.”
Cauvin snarled a fast rejection, but the damage was done. “Can you swear it by your god-all-be-damned Vashanka—Bec stays safe from the Hand forever?”
The Torch grinned; his face looked like parchment stretched over bone. He lowered his staff. “Swear by my god—is that what you want me to do? Very well, then: For little Bec and the future of Sanctuary, I swear by Vashanka that I’m offering the noblest vengeance a mortal can taste. Open your mind, Cauvin—you’ve got a lot to learn and precious little time for learning it. We’ll start with the lessons you’ll welcome—you need to become a fighter. You were lucky once, but luck isn’t enough when you’re confronting the gods—”
“I can fight. That’s the one thing I can do; it’s what the froggin’ Hand taught me.”
“Dyareela has no use for a man who can think. They have no use for men. Why do you think they steal children? The Hands take boys and make them brawlers, little more than trained beasts. You’ll never best them with the weapons they gave you. Be honest with yourself: You were lucky last night, and you won’t likely be that lucky again, not after they’ve seen your face.”
Cauvin opened his mouth to protest. The Torch’s flicking hand warned him to silence. He could grow to hate that froggin’ gesture as much as he’d ever hated anything in the pits.
“Obviously, I cannot teach you, but I’ll second you to the best armsmaster in Sanctuary—in lands far beyond Sanctuary. He’ll teach you now and when I’m gone. He’ll keep you alive until you can carry that burden for yourself. You’ll find him in a place you already know—the Vulgar Unicorn. He’ll recognize you by the token you’ll be carrying—a mask, not red silk, but leather, boiled hard and dyed blue. You need not wear it—just expose a bit of it as you sit and drink. Listen close; I’m going to tell you where I’ve left a cache of them.”
The cache was in the Maze, and the Torch’s directions were as tangled as that quarter’s streets. Cauvin recited them back after the Torch finished laying them out, then endured a froggin’ oration—
“A man who wishes to revenge himself on the Bloody Hand of Dyareela can rely on neither steel nor sorcery. He must be a master of both—and a quiet master at that. Let no one suspect the depth of your skills, once you’ve acquired them. It’s always best to lull your enemies into underestimating you. I speak from experience. For that matter, Cauvin, it’s never a bad idea to have your friends underestimate you a bit, too. Make it look too simple, and they’ll take you for granted. They’ll fail to show up when you need them—”
Cauvin wondered how many of Torch’s experiences might have led to that froggin’ conclusion. He was still wondering when the old pud surprised him with a question:
“Now, recite those instructions I gave you again.”
With his eyes closed tight, Cauvin reconstructed the Torch’s words in his mind. He stumbled a few times, but in the end, he put them together correctly and knew, as he finished, that it would be a good long time-if ever—before he forgot them.
“Good, lad. I see it in your eyes—you’re cleverer than I thought, cleverer than you give yourself credit for. Run along and enjoy my funeral before you hie yourself into the Maze.”
“I’ve got work to do.” Cauvin pointed at the empty cart.
“On the day of my funeral?” the Torch asked with a rare hint of humor.
“Frog all,” Cauvin replied in the same tone. “I know you’re not dead—” He paused. “How do you know today’s your funeral?”
“You told me. Something about Arizak declaring a feast day and why you were late.”
Cauvin thought a moment. “I didn’t say that. I didn’t say anything about a feast or a funeral.” But maybe he had. He was sheep-shite stupid and couldn’t remember half the gods-all-be-damned words he’d said to the Torch today, but he’d swear on his mother’s name that the Torch was toying with him.
“Well, then, call it wishful thinking. I’ve been dead two days, haven’t I? By Irrune custom, they burn their dead at the second sunset. My old friend Arizak swore he’d send me off with an Irrune funeral.”
“He is,” Cauvin admitted. “The pyre’s built … and your froggin’ corpse is atop it. I guess. Somebody’s corpse is. I haven’t seen it; others have.”
“How many horses are they going to roast? How many oxen, and pigs?”
“Don’t know,” Cauvin shrugged. “Mina said, but I wasn’t paying attention. No froggin’ reason to. Look, I’ve got to smash some froggin’ bricks out of these walls or Grabar’ll have my sheep-shite hide—” He headed for the cart and his mallet. As soon as he crossed the threshold, he saw the flaws in everything he and Molin had been discussing.
“It’s froggin’ useless, old pud. Grabar’s not going to give me the froggin’ time to become some froggin’ hero warrior. I used up all my froggin’ excuses this morning, coming out here to tell you that I’m hauling your sheep-shite butt down to the palace. The only froggin’ reason I’ve been coming out here at all is because the Dragon and his men have kept honest folk off the streets—an’ he’s leaving—doesn’t want to be around when his froggin’ father lights your froggin’, pyre. Come tomorrow, I’ll be down at the waterfront, standing in mud all day, piling stone around the piers. I won’t be coming back out here until froggin’ Tobus hires us to get the stone for a dower house. There’s no telling when that’s going to happen. Maybe spring. Maybe never.
“You’re going back to the palace, old pud, going to die in your own froggin’ bed—”
“Tobus?” the Torch asked. “Tobus the wool dyer? Little man with big eyes? Afraid of his own shadow?”
Cauvin nodded. “He faced the house he’s got now with bricks from this place. He’ll want the dower house to match, but he and Grabar haven’t come to terms … haven’t froggin’ started. It’s not going to work. I smash stone, Lord Torchholder; that’s all I froggin’ do. Anything else is dreams … nightmares. Get yourself ready. I’m taking you to the palace.”
“Smash your stone, Cauvin, if that will keep the peace at the stoneyard. Let me worry about Tobus and Grabar and the rest. The only thing you need to worry about is how crowded the Unicorn’s likely to be while my bones are burning.”
“No,” Cauvin said with patience that surprised him. “It’s over, Lord Torchholder.”
As Cauvin advanced across the rubbled floor the
Torch reached for his staff. The old pud didn’t have the strength to ward off a froggin’ lapdog, but Cauvin stopped short of manhandling him.
“You asked me to swear an oath by my god, Cauvin, and I did. Now you’ve got to trust me and listen to me and do what I say.”
Another time and Cauvin would have slipped into a stubborn rage. This time his temper failed to kindle. He smashed a few bricks, then noticed that clouds were piling up above the ocean. Sanctuary had gone four days without rain; at this season, the city couldn’t count on a fifth. He tried one more time to get the Torch into his cart, but the old man wouldn’t listen to reason. The best Cauvin could do was waste the rest of the day shoring up the walls of a half-collapsed root cellar and rebuilding the Torch’s bed there.
He and the old man were both drained by the time the job was done. Cauvin surveyed his efforts from the foot of the stairs. The cellar was dark and dusty and reeked of decay.
It was like a froggin’ tomb.
It was likely to be a froggin’ tomb.
“Bring me a lamp tomorrow. Better, bring several. And a brazier.”
Cauvin didn’t bother arguing.
“And give this to the boy.” The Torch produced a lump of what appeared to be hardened tree sap from the depths of his robe. “Tell him to suck on it. He’ll feel better.”
Cauvin tucked the lump in his boot and left. With no anger to sustain him, he was hollow inside, convinced he’d as good as buried the Torch and convinced the froggin’ old pud had left him no other choice.
Chapter Nine
The storm clouds looming on Sanctuary’s horizon collapsed as Cauvin led the mule home to the stoneyard. Mina said the improving weather was a good omen, an omen that Savankala and Sabellia had welcomed Lord Torchholder and that he’d continue to befriend the city from the lofty heights of paradise. Cauvin agreed with her. Froggin’ sure he couldn’t tell his Imperial foster mother that her gods had to be sheep-shite fools if they were wasting good omens on the corpse of a man who was a murderer, not a priest.