by Lynn Abbey
“Scav-something,” Cauvin answered Bec’s question. “Scavenge Island. Something like that. It was long before me. Long before your parents, too.”
“Scavengers Island and forty years ago—exactly. Same year as the Dark Horde sacked the Imperial city.”
Cauvin grunted. Had he been alone, the history of Sanctuary would have been the farthest thought from his mind. His body ached, but his head ached worse, maybe from the stench his boots released each time he took a stride or maybe from the sorcery that had made him literate. But most likely Cauvin’s head ached from a froggin’ stubborn refusal to think about Soldt when the duelist—the assassin—was everywhere in his mind. Froggin’ forget the Torch and Soldt, Cauvin wanted to be alone.
But Cauvin wasn’t alone and he couldn’t be for hours, so he took refuge in whatever distraction Bec could provide. Fortunately, his little brother was a master of distraction.
Since leaving the red-walled ruins, they’d watched an Ilsigi galley make its way into Sanctuary harbor. The galley dwarfed everything else on the water. Its mast was taller than any wharf-side building, and its immense sail, furled now, had been like a cloud branded with the pointed crown of the Ilsigi king, Sepheris. Centipede oars arranged in two ranks that ran the length of the ship had brought the galley into the Wideway wharf. He’d heard that the lower rank of an Ilsigi galley was manned by condemned criminals—four to each froggin’ oar, chained to their benches until they died or drowned.
Maybe the tale was true, maybe not. Cauvin’s path had never taken him into a galley’s hold and neither had the path of anyone he knew. What he did know was that the galley had rowed and sailed its way to Sanctuary from Inception Island, whose dark hilltops could be seen hovering, as if by sorcery, above the ocean on the hottest days of summer.
Once, the island had belonged to Sanctuary, then the Hand came to power and lost it to the Ilsigi Kingdom. Of all the things Sanctuary had lost to the Bloody Hand of Dyareela, Inception Island was among the least valuable. The island itself was barren—not fit for farming or living. The water, Cauvin had heard, was brackish. If men wanted to live there, they drank the rain, or sent galleys to Sanctuary, across the strait, for barrels of water as well as food.
That kept the population down.
Then, a few years back, the Ilsigis had crowned themselves a new king, a froggin’ ambitious king who’d plunked a full-blown garrison on the island. Since then, two or three times a month—more often if the rains were sparse—a big Ilsigi galley hove into Sanctuary’s harbor. Its officers paid whatever the Sanctuary merchants charged to resupply their garrison—and why not? They were spending Sepheris’s money, not their own. They and the crews spent their own money almost as freely in the taverns and markets.
Thieves waxed their fingers when the galley breached the horizon. Merchants laid out their best and brightest wares; whores did much the same. Few complained that everything cost more when the galley sat in the harbor.
Well—Mina minded, but Mina had the tightest fist on Pyrtanis Street. Padpols flowed through her hands like glue. And, on balance, the stoneyard benefitted from the Inception trade. Wary of storms that could roil the strait without warning, the galleys set sail with island rock ballasted in their cargo holds. They threw a goodly portion of that ballast overboard as they laded up for the return voyage. Grabar paid a padpol for every barrow of island rock the low-tide gleaners pulled out of the mud.
“You want to hear a story about Scavengers Island?” the boy asked, pulling Cauvin’s thoughts back from the piles of Inception rock he’d be sorting a few days from now.
“Is it about Honald the scavenger chicken?” Cauvin teased.
“No-o-o-o … pirates! It’s a story about pirates!”
“Our chickens and their rooster have turned pirate?”
“No! It’s not a made-up story, it’s lived-through. Grandfather lived through it—”
Cauvin lost the rest of Bec’s explanation. A sheep-shite like himself might not have expected to see a galley this particular day or any other, but the Enders clearly had. They’d sent a string of carts onto the spur road between Land’s End and the East Ridge Road when the galley had furled its sail. The carts looked to be weighed down with grain, and Cauvin had figured empty-carted Flower could clear the watch gate before they were anywhere near. And she would have, but that’s not how the froggin’ Enders saw it.
An Ender steward thundered up to them.
“You there!” he shouted through a thick Imperial accent. “You there! Clear the way, pud!” His horse stamped and shook, spraying Cauvin with horse sweat.
“We’ll be through before your—”
The steward cut him off. “Don’t argue with me! Pull this porking rig off the road here and wait until we’ve passed. We’ve got trade with that ship in the harbor and can’t be waiting while you fix a wheel or harness.”
Cauvin wondered if the Ender would have been so froggin’ cocksure if it had been someone else—Soldt with his cloak and boots—walking beside the cart and not a Wrigglie like him in ratty homespun and stinking boots.
“You hear me, pud? Move it! It’s Lord Serripines’ money that maintains this road and Lord Serripines’ carts that use it first.”
“You don’t look like you’re froggin’ Lord Serripines,” Cauvin muttered. He imagined that Soldt or the Torch might have said something similar … of course, they’d have spoken Imperial and the froggin’ steward would have whored himself with apologies.
“What? What did you say to me, pud?”
“Nothing.” He wrapped an arm around Flower’s head and shoved her gently sideways.
The mule went easily. She knew when not to argue and, sometimes, so did Cauvin. A steward was always worse than a lord, no matter whether the lord was an Imperial sparker, home-grown Wrigglie, or the kingdom-captain on that galley. Lords never had to prove themselves; stewards did, stewards and stoneyard foster sons sent to collect debts from their betters. Froggin’ sure Lord Mioklas would settle his stoneyard accounts in a hurry if an assassin showed up to collect their debts.
“It’s not his road!” Bec grumbled, distracting Cauvin from vengeful thoughts once the cart was off the road and the steward had spurred his horse back to the sparker caravan.
Cauvin hissed the boy quiet. “Froggin’ Enders … Shalpa’s luck, give them a broken axle on every cart—Tell me your story. We’ve got the time.”
“It’s not my story; it’s Grandfather’s.”
“Just tell it, Bec.”
“It starts at the very beginning, with the gods. Grandfather says that every story has to start with the gods—”
“He’s a froggin’ priest. What else would a froggin’ priest say?”
The boy said nothing for a moment, as if he’d taken Cauvin’s gibe for a serious question, then began his tale in earnest: “The gods love to laugh. They gave Sanctuary a good harbor, then put the best harbor in all the world on an island just over our horizon. To amuse themselves further, they scraped most of the dirt off the island and sucked up its streams. Then they waited and waited for fools to find it—”
Cauvin caught himself staring. Bec, despite his squeaky, shortwinded child’s voice, had pretty much nailed the Torch’s style. The boy sat stiff on Flower’s back, except for his arms and hands, which stabbed the important words. The words had come from the old geezer, too—Honald and the chickens didn’t care about gods or laughter.
“It’s possible to earn an honest living in Sanctuary, not easy, but possible—” The boy’s arms dropped to his sides, and he spoke with his own voice. “You and Poppa do, and Swift, and Momma says Teera never shorts the loaves she bakes. Grandfather said an honest life couldn’t be lived at all on Scavengers Island. Only smugglers, thieves, sorcerers, and mis- mis- miscreants!”
The boy struggled to get the word past his teeth. He needn’t have bothered. It was one of the Torch’s fancy, Imperial words, and Cauvin didn’t know the meaning except by tone.
“Don�
��t ever forget,” he advised Bec, “that pud you’re calling Grandfather’s a froggin’ sparker lord. We’re all nothing but Wrigglies to him.”
“But the Scavengers were worse. It was them who ruled Sanctuary before the Imperials came. When Emperor—Emperor …? Furzy feathers! I can’t remember his name, and Grandfather even spelled it out for me!”
“And I won’t remember it, so don’t bother. One emperor’s the same as another, or a king.”
“Well, the emperor’s army chased the pirates out of the palace and sent them sailing out to Scavengers Island. The people of Sanctuary welcomed him—”
“That’s what Sanctuary does best: welcome its froggin’ conquerors, from the Ilsigis to the froggin’ Irrune. We are sheep-shite Wrigglies.”
The Land’s End steward rode past, a hundred or so paces ahead of the carts. He wouldn’t so much as look at them, and neither would his sweated-up horse, so Flower loosed a bray worthy of her she-ass mother. She spooked the steward’s horse and the teams pulling two nearby carts. The steward put brutal strength on the reins, bloodying the horse’s mouth and flanks while he kept it in froggin’ order.
The drovers had a harder struggle. One drover won, the other didn’t. The inside rear wheel of his cart skidded off the road, struck a stone, and popped off its axle. The loose wheel missed Flower by less than an arm’s length an instant before the unbalanced cart overturned, dumping sacks of grain directly at Cauvin’s feet.
By rights, Cauvin should have helped get the cart righted and repaired-if only because the accident had Flower trapped, too. And he would have helped—the pounding he’d taken from Soldt had left him aching, not injured—if the sheep-shite steward had bothered to ask. The Ender looked through Cauvin as if he weren’t there, so Cauvin told Bec to continue with his story.
“The emperor’s governor was a fair man. He didn’t go looking for trouble. He proclaimed a pardon for any pirate who laid down his trade. Those that could lay it down sailed back to Sanctuary. The rest hid on Scavengers Island. Woe betide the ship that ran aground on Scavengers Island!” Bec dragged a finger across his throat. “If not enough ships ran aground, then the pirates would scavenge each other, or lurk near Sanctuary’s harbor. The pirates raided merchant ships as they sailed in or out, and there wasn’t a lot that Sanctuary could do to stop it, until the fish-folk arrived. If their ships couldn’t run a pirate down, they’d stare him down instead—”
Bec had his thumbs and forefingers against his eyes, holding them unnaturally wide open. Froggin’ sure the Torch hadn’t done that.
“Between the fish-folk, Tempus and his Stepsons, the witches, the gods and demigods, the hazards,” Bec counted the threats on his fingers, concluding with—“and all the resur- resur- resurrected dead in the streets, the pirates decided that Sanctuary was too dangerous for them and stayed away. Then the witches got rid of the gods, and the gods got rid of the witches. The dead people disappeared … so did Tempus and his Stepsons. The pirates thought the time was ripe for raiding.
“They stole people off the streets at night and stuffed them in barrels bound for the island. The stolen people, they were mostly lowlifes, thieves and troublemakers. Some other people thought the pirates were doing Sanctuary a favor, but not Grandfather. Grandfather said that stealing thieves was worse than stealing honest folk because honest people always came through the front doors. No matter how much they got tortured, they couldn’t tell the pirates anything about the holes in Sanctuary’s defenses. Stealing honest people was a moral outrage and demanded retrib- retribution, but stealing thieves was worse. Thieves could be bought without torture. Thieves knew where Sanctuary was weak. Thieves could lead the pirates in—”
Cauvin interrupted. “Grandfather said that That froggin’ pud knows more about sneaking in and out of Sanctuary than any froggin’ thief. The froggin’ pirates should’ve stolen him.”
Bec started to protest. Cauvin waved him down. The drovers had righted their cart, and the steward was shouting orders to get the caravan moving again. By chance, Cauvin snagged the Ender’s attention. No good would come from arguing with the mounted man in a froggin’ sour mood, so Cauvin bent his neck and studied his feet.
froggin’ sure, Cauvin knew his place. He was a sheep-shite orphan who’d walked out of the palace alive through no froggin’ fault or plan of his own, a stone-smasher with no prospects, a Wrigglie to the core. No moral outrage or retribution if pirates stole him!
The steward yanked the reins and clapped his spurred heels against already bloodied flanks. His driven horse took off down toward the East Gate.
“He doesn’t like you,” Bec observed. “Good thing he doesn’t know your name.”
The string of carts was moving again. Cauvin distracted Flower with an ear scratch, lest she let out another froggin’ bray. “Just let him come looking for me.”
“You’ll get in trouble for fighting.”
“Not if he starts it.”
Bec shrank. The boy wasn’t a fighter. Even in the cradle he’d been all smiles—pick him up, put him down, feed him, or ignore him, as a baby Bec had taken it all in stride. As a result, the world was easier for him than it had ever been for Cauvin. That bothered Bec far more than it bothered Cauvin.
“Finish your story,” Cauvin suggested when the Enders had all passed and the boy’s mood hadn’t lifted.
“It’s not a very good story. Grandfather talked to people—the prince and his wife, she was one of the fish-folk. I can’t remember their names—”
“The prince was Kadakithis. Her name was Shupansea.”
“How do you know? Did Grandfather tell you the story already”
“I know, that’s all.” Cauvin didn’t want to get tangled up in the truth. “I must’ve heard the names somewhere.”
“They called him Kittycat, did you know that, too?”
“No,” Cauvin lied. “Never heard that before.”
“He took Grandfather’s advice and sent the fish-folk’s ships out to Scavengers Island to clear off the pirates. When they were done, they changed the island’s name to Inception, ‘cause it’s the first land between here and wherever the fish-folk came from—and went back to—and because it was supposed to be the start of Sanctuary’s glory. With the pirates gone and the Empire losing its war in the north—nobody was paying attention to the kingdom—Grandfather thought that Sanctuary could grow into a mighty place, maybe a kingdom of its own, because the fish-folk were rich, and they’d only sail into Sanctuary’s harbor, on account of their queen being the prince’s wife.”
“He got that froggin’ wrong.” Cauvin laughed. “It’s been downhill for Sanctuary since the fish.”
“That wasn’t Grandfather’s fault! Sanctuary would have become a mighty place if the gods had let it. But the gods wouldn’t let Grandfather finish what he’d started. The prince disappeared on the road to Ranke, and his wife went home with the fish. Then the storms came and wrecked all the big ships; and plague killed all the captains and sailors and navigators who knew where the fish-folk lived. Then, just when Grandfather had rebuilt the ships and was ready to send them out looking for the fish-folk, the Bloody Hand took over the palace. Grandfather sent the ships to Inception, ’cause he thought they’d be safer there, but he said he couldn’t watch the horizon and his back at the same time and no ships wanted to come to Sanctuary once the Hand was in charge—”
The boy hesitated … wary of Cauvin’s reaction and with good reason. Froggin’ sure, Cauvin usually walked away whenever the Hand got mentioned, but he let it slide this time, and Bec continued.
“Grandfather said he knew the Ilsigi king had put men on Inception Island, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it, and the Irrune … they won’t set foot in a boat, not even Arizak. So, now it’s still Inception Island, but it belongs to the Ilsigi king. The king’s ships control the strait between here and there. They keep pirates away from Inception and us, both—but they keep closer watch over ships that put in at Inception Island.
The galleys come here for supplies, but everything else goes there. It’d be better for us if we held Inception Island again. Better for the Ilsig king if he held Sanctuary, instead. Grandfather doesn’t think the Ilsigis will try anything while Arizak’s alive, but he won’t live forever. His sons will have a choice to make … his sons and Sanctuary: the Empire or the kingdom.”
Cauvin had his eye on the gate where the Ender steward was arguing with the watchmen at the East Gate. “Froggin’ puds,” he said without looking at Bec. “If it comes to choosing, you know which way this place’ll swing.”
A silent moment passed before Bec said softly, “Everybody hates the Imperials. Maybe they’re right to. Momma talks, but I wouldn’t want to live at Land’s End, even if I could. I don’t think they’re nice.”
Bec’s hair was darker than Cauvin’s. So was his mother’s, where it grew out of her head. Mina would rather look like a heap of straw at the end of summer than a Wrigglie. She bought bleach from the dyers and daubed it on her scalp until it bled and made froggin’ sure Bec wasn’t proud of anything he’d gotten from his Wrigglie father.
Cauvin wasn’t proud of his ancestors, either. On the whole, his people—the sons of thieves and daughters of slaves—weren’t as clever or brave or honest as other people. But Cauvin never liked to see Bec with a frown on his face. He dropped a hug around the boy’s scrawny shoulders.
“If nice mattered, sprout, we’d put Batty Dol in the Governor’s Palace—she’s just about the nicest person I know, but look out afterward, ‘cause she’s mad as a magpie. I hate the Imperials because they sit out at Land’s End, proud as peacocks, getting richer every day even without their froggin’ Empire to back them up, and there’s not a froggin’ thing we can do about it. But the Ilsigis—the real Ilsigis from the kingdom, not us bastard Wrigghes—would be froggin’ worse in the palace. To Imperials, we’re barbarians, but, shite for sure, they think everyone who’s not a citizen is a barbarian—”