by Lynn Abbey
Soldt stopped short, spread his arms, and bowed. “You’re the one knows the way, you carry the box.” Soldt’s leather cloak rippled as he extended his arms, the carved wooden box balanced in his right hand.
Ignoring the insults and mockery, Cauvin snatched the froggin’ box, tucked it tight under his sopping armpit, and set off at the longest pace his legs could manage. He didn’t truly expect to lose the Torch’s froggin’ spy. Soldt had an air of strength and wiliness around him; he’d keep up without breaking a froggin’ sweat. Besides, Soldt had the Torch’s froggin’ map. But, threading through the throng—shouldering between a matron and her maid and knowing that Soldt would be the one to catch froggin’ hell from their body servants when he followed—soothed Cauvin’s temper.
The archway alley to Governor’s Walk was more crowded and noisier than usual. Another time, Cauvin would have hung back, waiting for the traffic to sort itself out, but today—with Soldt a few steps behind him—Cauvin strode into the thick of it.
Suddenly there was shouting and screaming up ahead, and in a heartbeat the crowd was thick as Batty Dol’s sour jam. Another heartbeat and there were elbows froggin’ everywhere. Slowly a sickening stench wove its way out of the arch.
“What froggin’ died?” Cauvin muttered to himself—because that was the smell. Some froggin’ pud’s gut had burst and dumped his last meal between his ankles. Some froggin’ huge pud, or maybe a froggin’ horse. A burst horse could account for the screams and the way the crowd had frozen in the alley. The stench was that froggin’ bad.
The crowd parted for a heartbeat. Cauvin saw all the way to Governor’s Walk and saw the source of their stench before the crowd congealed again. A cart had tipped over dead center beneath the arch and dumped barrels of night swill on the cobblestones. The west side of Sanctuary wasn’t as steep-sloped as the east side Stairs or the Hill or froggin’ Pyrtanis Street itself, but it wasn’t froggin’ flat, either. The swill was gushing into the bazaar, and the people in its path—the people between Cauvin and Governor’s Walk—were desperate for high ground.
Before Cauvin got himself turned around, a woman lost her balance. She lurched against Cauvin’s chest and together they staggered into a third person, too small to be Soldt. They all would have fallen, if there’d been enough room to fall or if the palace wall hadn’t been directly behind the body behind Cauvin. That body grunted rather than screamed. It didn’t have the froggin’ strength to free itself.
Cauvin wasted a heartbeat feeling thankful that they’d left Bec behind—what was merely froggin’ uncomfortable for him could be death for a sprout. In his mind’s eye Cauvin saw the boy slipping down to the froggin’ cobblestones. He was imagining boots tromping on Bec’s chest as he braced himself and shoved. The woman against his chest yelped like a stepped-on dog, but Cauvin had made a hole large enough for them both to turn around in. He shoved again, this time against the bald runt who’d been behind him.
The dug-up box shifted beneath Cauvin’s arm. He put his free hand over the clasp and shoved again. The runt and several others stumbled out of Cauvin’s way and onto one of the bazaar’s uncrowded dirt paths. Cauvin had saved the runt’s life, but the little man didn’t see it that way. From one knee in the dirt he cursed Cauvin up one side, down the froggin’ other. Cauvin looked around for Soldt, who’d made his own escape from the throng, and strode on without saying a word.
There was another way out of the bazaar—There were two, actually, but the second was back over by Davar’s: the old Common Gate that opened outside, to the graveyard, the rebuilt temples, and the whorehouses on the Street of Red Lanterns. The second way between the city and the bazaar was south, down where the big caravans used to tie up. It wasn’t so much a gate as a whole froggin’ missing wall, but, as the crush at the arch had shown, not many went that way unless they had to.
Storms before Cauvin’s birth had whipped up the placid White Foal River into a torrent, and the river had carved itself a new channel to the sea. The change had transformed a fishermen’s village into a bracken marsh, good for hunting crabs and birds, but little more, and gouged a treacherous cove into the middle of what had once been Caravan Square. The fishermen had rebuilt their stilt-y homes on what was left of the square. What was left of the caravan trade came through the East Gate near Pyrtanis Street because there was a man-deep ditch connecting the cove and the eroded wall.
The ditch wasn’t empty, and it wasn’t really a ditch, but the remains of a tunnel meant to transfer water and waste from Sanctuary’s west side to the sea. It still did; it just didn’t do it very well. The stream at the bottom of the ditch was low or high, fast or stagnant, depending on rainfall and the season. This time of year, the stream should be nearly pure swill, knee deep and rank as froggin’ hell.
Some families from the Shambles had built a footbridge from their quarter on the eastern side of the ditch to the bazaar on the western side. They’d set gates at both ends of the bridge and hired bruisers too froggin’ stupid to join the watch to sit beside them, charging every man, woman, or child a padpol to keep his feet dry.
Froggin’ sure, no one had to use the Shambles bridge. People could slide down the ditch bank, jump across whatever happened to be flowing at the bottom, and climb up again on the other side, but if a person misjudged the breadth of the swill or lost his footing, which was damned easy to do, then that person was going to be out boots, breeches, and a tub of coarse soap from the gluemaker. If Cauvin had wanted to take chances with his boots, he could have braved the arch to Governor’s Walk. Instead, he extracted the smallest padpol from his belt pouch and advised Soldt to do the same.
Five people had beaten them from the arch to the bridge—or maybe they were froggin’ rich enough that they regularly paid to enter or leave the bazaar. A handful of others stood on the Shambles side. Though the bridge looked sturdy enough for a horse, the padpol collectors didn’t allow but one person at a time on its planks. Someone left the bazaar or someone entered. Cauvin and Soldt waited their turn.
Cauvin let his mind wander. He’d returned to the gray fog of his palace years, thinking of nothing at all, when he got rocked from the right. As fast as Cauvin’s hand dropped to his belt, he knew his coin pouch was gone before it touched. The thief, a sprout Bec’s size, was already out of reach, three strides from the ditch. The man to Cauvin’s right—not Soldt—had seen it all and shouted an alarm—
“Thief! Thief! Catch him before he gets away!”
But no sheep-shite fool was going to follow the sprout into the ditch, not for the size of Cauvin’s purse. No sheep-shite fool except for Cauvin himself. Arms and legs pumping, he took one stride where the sprout took two and caught the thief halfway down the bank. With one hand on a scrawny neck and the other on a pair of ragged britches, Cauvin threw the little bastard clear across the swill stream.
The sprout landed hard, but had shaken off the shock before Cauvin had bounded the stream himself. The child turned and showed a face that was softer, even, than Bec’s. A girl—a froggin’ girl—Cauvin realized—had thieved him! Embarrassment pushed Cauvin to the limits of restraint. The girl saw the change. She brandished the leather pouch she’d sliced from Cauvin’s belt, tossed it downstream into the sludge, and clawed her way, hand over foot, up the Shambles bank.
Cauvin had a choice to make: vengeance or his money. No way he’d have both. Turn his back on the pouch, and some other thief would claim it. Take the moment to retrieve it, and the sprout would get away. Cauvin chose his froggin’ money, but there was no way to retrieve it without letting one foot sink ankle deep in swill. Gritting his teeth, Cauvin took the step and plucked the pouch off a slick brownish lump he hoped to the gods was rotting wood and not a froggin’ dead cat.
Then he heard applause … and laughter coming from both ends of the bridge. Worse, he saw Soldt at the bazaar side of the ditch, laughing and clapping along with the rest, the gods-all-be-damned wooden box tucked under his arm. The froggin’ spy waggled a finger
and pointed to the ground at his feet.
A man wasn’t a froggin’ dog. A man deserved to be asked, not told, but standing at the bottom of the bazaar ditch with swill clinging to his only pair of boots, Cauvin didn’t feel much like a man. He stuck his hand up in the air and accepted Soldt’s help climbing up to level ground.
Soldt greeted him with: “That was well done. Do you think you could have made a greater spectacle of yourself?”
“I’m not as rich as you. When some froggin’ thief steals my froggin’ coin pouch, I need to get it back.”
“You could have lost this—” Soldt offered the wooden box.
Cauvin hadn’t expected to get it back. He eyed it and Soldt a moment, then tucked it under his arm again.
“Let’s just get out of here and go back to the ruins. I can’t listen to some froggin’ S’danzo lie about my betrothed until I’ve scraped myself raw. Maybe the arch is clear by now—”
“That way’s not possible now.”
“Froggin’ sure why not?”
“Thanks to you, we’re being watched, so we’re not going anywhere that we want to go. We’ll take a walk along the river instead. Lure them out or lose them.”
Soldt started walking away from the footbridge. Cauvin scuffed his boots brutally against the nearest rocks before catching up with him.
“All right, they laughed at me. I made a froggin’ fool of myself. People in Sanctuary have better things to do than watch fools crawl away in shame.”
“How do you know? You don’t know that we’re being watched right now.”
They were back in the bazaar with Soldt leading at a steady pace, not headed for the arch or Davar’s or the center, and not consulting Molin’s map, either.
“Frog all, no one’s watching us. This is Sanctuary, Soldt, home to the world’s greatest fools. Safest way to hide in this froggin’ city is to act like a sheep-shite fool.”
Soldt sighed from somewhere below his navel as he confronted Cauvin with—“We are not being watched because you made a fool of yourself chasing a child into a sewer. We’re being watched because we have secrets, and secrets attract a certain type of man the way sewers attract flies, children, and sheep-shite fools.”
“What secrets?”
Soldt raised a finger to his lips. “We’ll just go for a little walk along the river. Lure or lose—follow me.”
Cauvin had no intention of following Soldt one step farther. “Damn you to Hecath’s hells, you’ve been baiting me like a fish since you walked out of the froggin’ shadows up at—”
Soldt blew across his finger. “Take advantage of opportunity and try to control yourself.”
“You’re not as clever as you froggin’ think you are, Soldt. I’ve got all the control I need to put my fist between your eyes.”
That almighty smile spread across Soldt’s face again. “Have you? Lord Torchholder said I was to teach you. I know a secluded spot along the White Foal where you can try to put your fist where it doesn’t belong.”
Cauvin liked the idea of battering Soldt’s froggin’ face. He’d have liked it more if Soldt had liked it less. The man was a froggin’ spy and, for all intents, unarmed. If he were the Torch’s froggin’ armsmaster, Cauvin didn’t expect to do much learning.
Anger and resentment made Cauvin cocky. “Since I’ve got the box and you’re not going to feel like showing your black-and-blue face anywhere tomorrow, you mind telling me where I’m supposed to find this froggin’ S’danzo?”
Soldt held out the parchment scrap. The writing didn’t look Wrigglie; Cauvin guessed it was Imperial. Too shamed to admit that he couldn’t read much more than his own name in either language, Cauvin said, “Can’t read it here—we’re being watched,” and stuffed the scrap into the pouch he’d retied to his belt.
“Can’t read it at all,” Soldt corrected. “Can’t read a word of your own language, can you? and certainly not Imperial Rankene.”
Gods all be damned, Soldt grated on Cauvin’s nerves—grated so much that he retrieved the parchment and unfolded it. The Torch had drawn a map, after all, not written an edict. Cauvin knew about maps, and he knew the lay of Sanctuary. There was a chance—a froggin’ small chance—that he’d be able to make sense of the map, but his froggin’ luck didn’t change. The Torch’s map consisted of four lines, three dots, and a froggin’ waste of words. Cauvin rotated the parchment, as if that would help. His eyes burnt the way they did when he was on the brink of a froggin’ rage. Sweet Eshi’s mercy, Cauvin wanted to hit Soldt a thousand times, in a thousand places, he wanted to hit himself, too, for being a sheep-shite idiot who couldn’t read a word that wasn’t his own name—which, froggin’ come to notice, the Torch had written above one of the dots on the parchment:
“Cauvin,” followed by another word, “home.”
And “blacksmith” above another dot, which, froggin’ come to notice, was at one end of a crooked line that had “Settle Stone” at its beginning. Above the third dot the Torch had written “Elemi’s home” and in a column beside it, a series of street names: “Wideway,” “Stink Street,” “Shambles Cross,” “Shadow Street,” “Dippin Lane,” and “Paddling Duck” …
Dippin Lane. Dippin Lane. Cauvin knew Dippin Lane. It was one of those froggin’ Shambles’ dodges off the street they called Shadow because it was so narrow and the roofs so high that sunlight never got down to the ground …
The parchment slipped through Cauvin’s suddenly lax fingers. His vision blurred. If someone had asked—and froggin’ held his head underwater until he’d answered honestly—Cauvin would have admitted he was crying. Crying because he was reading—reading froggin’ Imperial Rankene. He didn’t know why he was reading or weeping.
It had to be the Torch meddling with him again. The box had to be like the brick in the Maze atrium—larded with sorcery and set to trap him. Cauvin tried to be angry, but his tears washed away anger. He wanted to go home, to the stoneyard where Bec practiced his letters on a slab of slate. Froggin’ sure writing had to be easier if you could read.
Soldt picked up the parchment. “Careless is as careless does.”
Cauvin’s anger returned.
Cauvin was froggin’ sure Soldt was the Torch’s cat’s-paw, but, just as sure, he hadn’t caught the sorcery passing between Cauvin and the parchment. At least Cauvin didn’t think Soldt had, because Soldt had that sheep-shite smirking grin glued on his face when he put the parchment into the scrip he wore folded over his belt. Cauvin smiled back. He no longer needed Soldt to lead him to Dippin Lane. He could follow Soldt to the White Foal, pound the froggin’ snot out of him, and leave him there to rot.
froggin’ sure the Torch would have questions, of course, when Cauvin showed up to reclaim Bec and the mule without the spy behind him. The Torch could believe whatever lies Cauvin concocted between now and then; or not believe them. It didn’t much matter. Cauvin had the box, he knew where to find the froggin’ S‘danzo, and those questions the Torch had asked about Leorin— Cauvin froggin’ sure had asked them himself and he’d froggin’ sure sleep better when he had the answers he wanted from the S’danzo … from Elemi.
Cauvin knew the S’danzo’s name now; he’d froggin’ read it.
With Soldt in the lead and Cauvin seething behind, they doglegged around Davar’s forge and left the bazaar through the old Common Gate with a single word weathered on the lintel. Today, for the first time, he read it—“Sanctuary.”
They passed the fane of Shipri All-Mother, the finest of the rebuilt temples, though it, like all the others, was small and built more from wood and brick, than stone. Through the open door Cauvin saw Shipri’s painted statue atop the altar. It seemed the goddess was looking straight at him, smiling at him, too—the soft, proud mother’s smile that Bec got from Mina all the froggin’ time.
Cauvin knew he should thank the goddess, but Cauvin had never been one for visiting temples. Except for the time when he’d walked out of the palace behind Grabar, he’d never felt the need to
thank a god for anything. Even then it hadn’t seemed froggin’ right to thank a goddess when it was Grabar who’d just paid good silver to feed and clothe him and give him a home. And now—why thank Shipri when it was the Torch’s froggin’ sorcery that opened his eyes?
Besides, if Cauvin went into the fane, he’d have to tell Soldt what had happened, and that would give away a froggin’ precious secret. Cauvin decided the All-Mother would understand that he couldn’t pay such a high price for good fortune.
There were only two roads that meant anything around Sanctuary: the East Ridge Road to Ranke and the General’s Road that flowed out of the Street of Red Lanterns, across the distant Queen’s Mountains, and on to the Ilsig Kingdom. Cauvin didn’t know what general had named the road, and there weren’t any signposts for him to read, or time to read them. Soldt had settled into a longlegged stride—easy in his froggin’ supple boots—that was likely to have them in the kingdom before sunset.
Soldt slowed once they were beyond easy sight of the city walls. He led Cauvin off the road, and for a moment Cauvin thought they were taking the very long way to the ruins, but—no, Soldt headed into rows of trees that must have been an orchard. There was a walled and gated yard in the midst of the trees. Within the wall the grass was cropped short, as though animals were usually penned there. Outside the pen stood a little square building, about the size of Flower’s stall, but with no telltale traces of manure and straw to give it away. Cauvin guessed they’d come to one of Soldt’s haunts, if not his outright home.
Not bothering with the gate, Soldt threw a leg over the waist-high wall. “Well, let’s get on with it.”
“On with what?”
“The fighting, Cauvin, the fighting. You’re nursing a grudge; I promised Lord Torchholder I’d test your mettle. Let’s see what you can do. Draw that Ilbarsi knife you’ve been carrying.”
Cauvin reached awkwardly across his body for the hilt. The weapon was, as Soldt had just named it, a knife, not a sword, and it belonged on his right hip, not his left. He’d look the sheep-shite fool fumbling it out of its froggin’ sheath, and Soldt had seen enough of Cauvin’s foolishness for one day.