Sanctuary

by Lynn Abbey

  Undertow, indeed—

  “Grandfather?” Bec asked. His eyes were squeezed shut, and there were tears dribbling down his cheeks. “Grandfather, are you awake?”

  Eyelids parted suddenly. Bec found himself nailed by the old man’s black, birdlike eyes. He defended himself with a mug of steaming fragrant water.

  “Here—I made tea. Are you well, Grandfather? You were—you were—” Bec couldn’t bring himself to put words to what he’d seen.

  “Well enough, boy, considering what I’ve seen. Settle yourself beside me here. I’ll tell you a story—”

  “Wait! I’ll get the inks and parchment.”

  Grandfather caught Bec’s sleeve before he got away. “No need. This isn’t a story others need to hear, it’s just for you.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “Call it the ‘Women of Sanctuary.’”

  Chapter Twelve

  The bazaar wasn’t one of Cauvin’s haunts. Its walls—broad-based, tapering, dirt-filled relics of Sanctuary’s earliest years—had withstood the worst that gods and man could hurl at them. They didn’t require a stonemason’s constant attention, unlike the froggin’ royal and Imperial walls that crumbled whenever wind or rain touched them. The bazaar’s residents in their wooden homes, many of them built on the hulks of foundered ships and wagons, weren’t among the stoneyard’s regular customers, either.

  But more than the tapered walls or the odd-shaped homes, it was the people of the bazaar themselves who kept Cauvin from feeling comfortable in their midst. Bazaar-folk looked on outsiders as prey, and anyone whose parents and grandparents hadn’t lived within the old walls was an outsider—even a sheep-shite stone-smasher from up on Pyrtanis Street. Besides, Cauvin never had enough money to take advantage of what the bazaar offered those who visited it.

  The bazaar was not the market for purchasing a cooking pot or a pair of boots. New or secondhand, ordinary goods could be gotten for less in other quarters, particularly in the Shambles, south of the bazaar, where a handful of merchants sold a steady stream of castoffs. Food was more expensive in the bazaar, too—unless you were an insider or were looking for delicacies.

  Bilibot and Eprazian at the Well spoke of hundred-camel caravans and a wharf crowded with merchant ships from ports whose names they couldn’t remember. These days a ten-mule caravan was the start of rumors, and the wharves might stand empty for weeks at a time. Still, when foreign goods arrived—exotic delicacies and luxuries—the bazaar was the place to find them.

  Just inside the open arch that funneled traffic from Governor’s Walk into the cobblestone alley that led into the bazaar proper, Cauvin spotted vendors selling dark green eggs that stank of brine, sweet oranges with bloodred pulp, a purple powder from Aurvesh that was so pungent it made his eyes water, and dried lizard feet. Cauvin would sooner catch himself a mangy rat than pay a single padpol for a froggin’ green egg or a lizard foot, but rich folk were different.

  And there were rich folk in Sanctuary.

  A litter-borne woman in gaudy brocades—almost certainly purchased elsewhere in the bazaar—directed her flock of servants and bearers to shove everyone else aside so she could sample the gods-forsaken eggs.

  “Ten padpols each,” the vendor chirped as she ladled up a selection from a bucket at her feet.

  “How much for the lot?” The eager woman licked her fingers like a snake.

  “Fifty soldats.”

  “Pay the man,” she told her purse-bearer.

  Fifty soldats, just like that—without even a token round of haggling. Fifty soldats for a sloshing bucket of delicacies a froggin’ dog wouldn’t eat! Give Mina fifty soldats and she could put festival meat on the table every meal for a month.

  Cauvin wanted to spit in the bucket as it passed from the vendor to one of the servants, but that would have bought him more than fifty soldats’ worth of trouble with the guards—and separated him from Soldt, who’d taken the opportunity to study the Torch’s map. The dark-dressed man was already off the cobblestones and striding deeper into the bare-dirt bazaar.

  Point of fact—Cauvin didn’t need to follow Soldt. The Torch’s stranger had let on that they were looking for a blacksmith’s anvil. There were five blacksmiths in and around Sanctuary. They all knew one another, and Cauvin was close friends with one of them, which meant that Davar’s forge, tucked up against the bazaar’s northern wall, was one of the few places Cauvin could find with ease. He could have taken the lead, or struck out on his own (and gotten to Davar’s forge first, judging from the direction in which Soldt was headed), but it served Cauvin best to stay a half step behind the Torch’s stranger, trying to measure the man.

  Soldt was a mystery. Sanctuary was large enough that Cauvin didn’t claim to froggin’ recognize, much less know, everyone he passed, yet between the Hill and the bazaar arch, he’d been hailed several times by familiar faces. Soldt spoke Wrigglie well enough that he couldn’t be a complete stranger to the city’s streets, yet no one had hailed him. No one had even seemed to notice Soldt, which struck Cauvin as froggin’ odd since Soldt was a memorable sort with his brushed-leather cloak and fancy boots.

  No point in stealing those froggin’ fancy boots. With their steel studs and catgut laces to keep them snug, they’d clearly been made to fit Soldt and Soldt alone. Cauvin, who’d never worn a boot that wasn’t worn before he got it or didn’t bind somewhere, envied those boots. Someday before he died, he swore he’d own a pair of boots cut to fit his froggin’ huge feet.

  Guided by the Torch’s map, Soldt made their way to the manhigh Settle Stone in the middle of the bazaar where he paused to consult the parchment a second time. The Settle Stone had been carved from local rock, which meant it had weathered so badly that Cauvin could scarcely have read the inscriptions, even if he’d known how to read. The legend was that it had been raised by the Ilsigi slaves who’d founded Sanctuary. Fitting, then, that in Cauvin’s experience it was the daytime home of beggars displaying their misfortunes.

  Cauvin had lived on the streets long enough to know a few beggars’ tricks—a leather harness to bind a healthy leg from sight, a few grains of pepper to bloody an eye and make it weep all day. He knew, too, that a bound leg eventually withered and soon enough a peppered eye would bleed and weep itself to true blindness. He’d rather break his froggin’ back smashing stone every day than cripple himself beside the Settle Stone.

  Some of the beggars didn’t resort to tricks. They exposed twisted feet, fingerless hands, and faces fit for nightmares. Cauvin dug into his belt pouch and tossed a black padpol to a girl about Bec’s age who’d been cursed with a lopsided, wine-colored face and moon eyes.

  Soldt folded the parchment. He’d watched gods knew how much of Cauvin’s charity. His eyes were utterly without pity when he sneered: “They’re all frauds.”

  “Not all of them. That girt—she couldn’t fake that.”

  “And she won’t keep your measly padpol, either. She’s got a keeper, Cauvin, someone who tends her, same as you tend your mule. He—or maybe she—will get your charity while that girl gets gruel.”

  Soldt was right—and he wasn’t telling Cauvin a truth he didn’t, in his head if not his heart, already know. He’d tossed the padpol because cheap charity felt good, but Soldt left him feeling foolish and, worse, soft around the heart. He hated feeling soft around the heart. “At least she gets something!” he snapped in his own defense.

  The Torch’s stranger gave Cauvin a once-over stare, then set off in the general direction of Davar’s forge. Cauvin almost let him get away. Yes, the conversation in the ruins had rekindled all his froggin’ questions about Leorin, and when the Torch had said he could get the answers, Cauvin went along willingly to get them; that didn’t mean he trusted the Torch’s stranger. But, not trusting Soldt was all the more reason to stay on his sheep-shite tail. After a final glance at the beggar girl—whose silvery eyes were looking for new targets—Cauvin caught up with the dark-dressed man.

  “Acco
rding to what Lord Torchholder’s written, about fifty paces on, we should be coming to a perfumer’s stall. If we turn left there, the blacksmith’s should lie straight ahead—”

  “Depends,” Cauvin shot back. “How long do you think it’s been since the old pud bought perfume? The bazaar changes, you know, like the Maze.”

  “Fifty paces, whether there’s a perfumer’s stall there or not.”

  Soldt wasn’t Grabar. Cauvin couldn’t get the better of him, and they’d have to turn left—turn north—in about fifty paces, if they were going to Davar’s. He swallowed all the sheep-shite clever replies that came into his mind and followed Soldt when he turned left … at a perfumer’s aromatic stall.

  Cauvin would have recognized Davar anywhere. His arms were longer than his legs, giving him the look of a tall man squeezed short. There was more gray in his hair than Cauvin remembered, but his beard was still black and confined in three stiff braids. Davar didn’t look pleased to see them, reminding Cauvin that his friendship with Swift didn’t count for shite in the bazaar.

  “Come to get an edge from a master?” Davar asked, flicking a thumb toward Cauvin’s new weapon.

  Cauvin shook his head. When the knife needed honing, he’d take it to Swift.

  “What then?”

  Before Cauvin could answer, Soldt announced. “We’re looking for a box. We expect to dig for it. Right about there—under your anvil, I presume there’s a mark on the metal? A kind of face gone to pieces?”

  Davar nodded slowly. His face was pale above his beard. Cauvin figured they were headed for trouble when Davar asked—

  “Who sent you?”

  “Lord Molin Torchholder.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “He wasn’t when he told me to dig it up,” Soldt countered with froggin’ honesty that wasn’t honest. “Don’t worry. We’ll set it back down once we’ve got what we’re looking for.”

  “Frog all, we can’t do that—” Cauvin corrected his partner of inconvenience. “An anvil’s got to sit on ground that’s ten years’ settled.” Swift had told him that. Maybe Swift wasn’t the best blacksmith in Sanctuary, but he had the best forge: high up on Pyrtanis Street, where floodwaters never lingered.

  “Then we’ll move it to settled ground.”

  “There’s work to be done.” Davar pointed to a tangle of iron that froggin’ sure looked like a scrap hoard to Cauvin. “Man’s got to keep food on his family’s table. Five soldats.”

  Trust the bazaar-folk to cheat outsiders every chance they got. Five soldats was robbery, froggin’ plain and simple, but Soldt—who wouldn’t give a froggin’ padpol to a beggar girl—didn’t balk at the smith’s request.

  “Seven—if we can use your shovel.”

  “Davar doesn’t need seven froggin’ soldats if we’re doing the froggin’ digging!” Cauvin muttered, while the smith rummaged behind the gap-planked shanty he called home. “This ground’s hard as stone.”

  “Then you should be well suited to dig through it.”

  Cauvin clenched his fists without thinking, then unclenched them again when Davar returned with a decent shovel and a pick with a crooked arm and a broken shaft.

  “We’ll set the anvil here—” the smith said, scratching a mark in the dirt a foot closer to the fire.

  Cauvin didn’t expect Soldt to help with the anvil. The sheep-shite thing was heavy as sin and whatever Soldt did to keep himself in boots and cloaks, it wasn’t hard labor. Besides, there was scarcely room for him and Davar to get their arms around the froggin’ iron without knocking heads. He was sweat-drenched from holding up one side of the anvil after the other while Davar added pebbles to the pad.

  When the anvil was leveled to Davar’s satisfaction, Cauvin thrust his arms into the slaking barrel. He splashed the bitter water against his face, swallowed some, and spat out the rest. Not by accident, the stream barely missed Soldt’s fine, black boots. Soldt gave Cauvin a one-sided grin and never budged. Then Davar pulled a length of red-hot metal from the fire where it had been since before they arrived and started hammering as though he always had a froggin’ audience when he worked.

  Shite for sure, If they’d been shouting, the two men couldn’t have made their froggin’ thoughts clearer: There was hard work to be done, and he was the sheep-shite fool who had to do it. With a silent snarl, Cauvin grabbed the pick. The froggin’ shaft was so short Cauvin had to hunch over to swing it, and the crooked arm made it buck and twist. If his luck ran true to form, he’d have blisters under his calluses before he was through …

  “Back a bit to the right,” Soldt advised. “You’re starting to drift.”

  Cauvin adjusted his swing.

  “My right,” Soldt corrected.

  Froggin’ hells of Hecath! Cauvin corrected his mistake. He slammed the pick into the packed, brown dirt so hard the metal nearly separated from the shaft, then he raised it up and slammed it down again.

  “Good, good—you’ll find it soon enough,” Soldt said, ladling out the kind of mealy-mouthed praise no man wanted to hear.

  Cauvin didn’t raise his head until there was enough loosened dirt about to warrant the shovel. The froggin’ shovel was where he’d left it, but the Torch’s froggin’ stranger had made himself scarce. Davar shrugged with his hammer and heated metal.

  Shalpa knew what he’d do with the box—if there were a box, if the damned gods weren’t determined to show up him up as a great, sheep-shite fool in front of bazaar rats. The Torch had told them to take it to some S’danzo woman. Any sheep-shite fool with dark eyes and a moustache could call his froggin’ self S’danzo; likewise any woman with a taste for clinking jewelry and gossip, but real S’danzo—the ones who’d cursed Sanctuary on their froggin’ way out of town—knew froggin’ better than to parade around Sanctuary. If there were any S‘danzo left in the city, they were hiding deep, which meant that, without Soldt and the Torch’s froggin’ map, Cauvin had no notion where to take the damn buried treasure, if he found it.

  Cauvin put his foot to the shovel and removed the loosened dirt from his hole. He enlarged the hole to shin depth, striking up a crop of rocks and broken crockery and an arm’s length of rusted iron that Davar claimed for his hoard. He had the pick in hand and was chipping out another littered layer when he and Davar both heard a sound hollow enough to be a box. Before Cauvin could get down on his knees and clear the rubble, Soldt had reappeared, doling out unnecessary advice.

  “Careful now. The box itself is apt to be valuable. Use your hands—”

  Cauvin had half a mind to splinter the damn thing, just for froggin’ spite. He could feel it by then beneath the rubble: one hand by two … wooden … carved …

  A froggin’ big brother to the one he’d gotten from Sinjon at the Broken Mast! The Torch must have bought out a froggin’ peddler!

  “Give it here,” Soldt commanded.

  Cauvin tucked it under one arm and clambered to his feet.

  “Give it here. I’ll hold it while you repair the damage you’ve done to this man’s yard.”

  Both Davar and Soldt were giving Cauvin a scowl with edges and, reluctantly, he surrendered the froggin’ box for the froggin’ shovel.

  “Are you certain you don’t want the anvil replaced,” Soldt politely asked Davar once Cauvin had the hole refilled.

  Shite for sure, Soldt wasn’t planning to move it if Davar did but, sensing another defeat, Cauvin walked behind the anvil, ready to heave it on his forearms. He got his first good look at the mark Soldt had mentioned; he’d been on the other side when they’d moved it before. A shattered face, that was true, as far as it went. It didn’t describe how the face seemed to bleed off each of the jagged shards or how the whole thing seemed to froggin’ shimmer the longer Cauvin stared at it.

  “No—‘s’like I told you—it’s better here, closer to the fire.” Davar held out his hand, and not for froggin’ courtesy.

  For one of the rare times in his sheep-shite life, Cauvin had the seven soldats Soldt had pro
mised the smith, but he froggin’ sure wasn’t going to part with them. “You made the deal,” he said over his shoulder in Soldt’s direction. “You pay the man.”

  He didn’t know what he’d do if Soldt didn’t fork over the soldats, but it would involve fists, blood, and lots of trouble afterward. Soldt took his own damn time figuring out the obvious before he dug out two of the weightier Ilsigi shaboozh coins that passed for four soldats in most parts of Sanctuary. Not in the bazaar. Davar dropped the coins into a pouch he wore around his neck and gave no hint that he’d considered returning a soldat or even a padpol.

  “He’d have accepted less from you,” Soldt argued when they were clear of the smithy. “And, either way, you had more than enough left from Lord Torchholder’s treasure.”

  “I’m not carrying it with me,” Cauvin lied, while wondering if Soldt were guessing about the contents of the Broken Mast box or if he’d been spying from the start. “You made the deal. You owed the money.” Spying was a good bet. Hero or not, the whole of Sanctuary knew that the Torch was a damned spider with a web full of spies. “If you’re pinched, you shouldn’t have offered Davar the extra soldats. And give me the froggin’ box.”

  “I paid for it. I should think that it’s my froggin’ box.”

  “Fine—then you talk to the froggin’ S’danzo when we find her.”

  They’d reached the perfumer’s stall. Soldt pulled right, Cauvin to the left.

  “We turn this way,” Soldt said.

  “Only if you want to go the long way back to the arch. My way, and we’ll be out in half the time.”

  Soldt stopped and studied Cauvin. “You knew another way?”

  “I know more than you think I do,” Cauvin shot back, figuring that Soldt didn’t credit him with sense of a stinkbug.