by Lynn Abbey
Stinking Street marked the west-side border between the Shambles and the Maze, and though Cauvin knew his way to the Unicorn best from the east, midmorning was a fairly safe time of day for wanderers, even in the Maze.
He was tempted to revisit the Torch’s atrium armory. If he and Leorin were leaving Sanctuary, they’d need money, particularly if they followed another decision he’d made while waiting out the watchdog. Rather than walk out of the city—which committed them to a long, footsore journey and left open the possibility that they could always turn around, and walk back—they would buy passage on the next ship to Ilsig. There’d be no turning around once a ship left the harbor and, from what Cauvin had heard, they’d be in the kingdom’s capital a week later.
The cost of an Ilsig passage was measured in shaboozh, not padpols. Cauvin had three gold coronations from Captain Sinjon’s box. Three coronations was a fortune on Pyrtanis Street, but was it enough to get one person to the kingdom’s capital, let alone two? He’d feel better with a purse filled with heavy Ilsigi silver to go with his Imperial coins, and the best source of shaboozh lay in the cellar of a ruined Vulgar Unicorn. The preserved armor of Tempus Thales should get him and Leorin to Ilsig and keep them on their feet until they found livelihoods. Cauvin had gotten as far as imagining to whom he could trade the armor, when the voice of his conscience shouted—
For the love of Shipri—talk to Leorin first! Tell her what’s happened— all of what’s happened—and get her advice. She’s no sheep-shite fool; she’s made for thinking—
A shiver ran down Cauvin’s back. The people who’d said that Leorin was made for thinking were the same as said he’d never be more than a sheep-shite fool. Cauvin knew what the Hand had taught him; he didn’t know what they’d taught Leorin after they’d taken her behind the walls …
Cauvin caught himself on the verge of suspicion. She loves me. The S’danzo said that Leorin loves me and nothing, nothing at all, changes that. Love is enough … It’s got to be.
He turned toward the Unicorn—the new Unicorn.
The tavern looked smaller by daylight, just one more warped doorway, framed with unfinished wood, opening onto an alley with a slippery gutter running down its middle. The door stood open; anyone could wander inside where, without its lamps and candles, the common room was darker by daylight than it was at night. Abandoned mugs scattered across the tables scented the air with stale beer and sour wine.
A solitary wench—an unbudded girl with long, braided brown hair—collected the mugs. She looked Cauvin up and down once he’d cleared the threshold and, judging him no concern of hers, went back to work. A fresh keg had been rolled up to the bar; the tools to tap it lay on the floor, as though the keeper had gone off in search of an assistant.
The upper-room stairs beckoned, but Cauvin resisted their invitation. No matter that Cauvin knew exactly which room was Leorin’s or his determination to get his beloved out of Sanctuary, he wasn’t about to knock unexpected on her door. He sat at a table, waiting for the keeper or a familiar wench to appear, and was still waiting when the girl headed out of the commons with the last of the dirty mugs.
Realizing that he could be sitting alone until midafternoon, he called: “Have you seen Leorin this morning?”
The girl set her mug-filled bowl down with a clanking thud. “Who’s asking?” She might be too young to serve customers, but she knew how the Unicorn worked.
“A friend,” Cauvin replied; he didn’t give his name to Unicorn strangers either.
“She’s gone.”
Cauvin’s heart skipped a beat. “Gone? Gone where?”
The girl shrugged. “How should I know? I heard Mimise say she left last night.” She put one arm on her hip and cocked her body around it, imitating the wenches at work. “Why’re you looking for Leorin?”
“I was in the quarter and wanted to see her. We’re friends.”
“She left with a man,” the girl said with a voice both childish and seductive.
A bad taste rose in Cauvin’s mouth. Once they were gone, he’d froggin’ sure find a way to earn enough money that his wife didn’t go off with other men. “I’ll come back later … She’ll be working tonight?”
“Maybe … maybe not.” The girl twirled the tip of one braid against her lips, then caught it with her teeth.
“I’ll take my chances.” Cauvin made a hasty retreat into the clear light of morning.
There was another way to gather up enough money for passage out of Sanctuary, an easier way than trading the Torch’s treasures, at least for Cauvin’s mood as he stalked out of the Maze. It would mean keeping money that was owed to the stoneyard, something he’d never considered doing before, but the moment Cauvin began to think of abandoning Grabar, Mina, and Bec—the only true family he’d known—other previously unthinkable thoughts became possible.
Jerbrah Mioklas—Lord Mioklas to the likes of Cauvin—owed the stoneyard a froggin’ pile of money because Mioklas’s father had been one of the first sheep-shite stupid Wrigglies to invite the Servants of Dyareela into his home on the Processional. The old patriarch had met the same flayed fate as Cauvin’s mother. The family would have fled to Land’s End, had they been golden-eyed Imperials, but being Wrigglies, they’d gone to ground in a farm village north of Sanctuary.
Lord Mioklas had reclaimed the family mansion at about the same time as Grabar claimed a foster son from the palace. A reasonable man would have realized that his childhood home was beyond salvage. A reasonable man would have torn the whole place down and maybe moved to another froggin’ city.
Lord Mioklas wasn’t a reasonable man. He was determined to have his home back, better than memory, if it was the last thing he or Grabar did. Grabar or Cauvin. Half of what Cauvin knew about stone he’d learned at the Mioklas mansion. Last spring, when Mioklas was ready to repair the perfume garden, Cauvin had done the work himself, shaping hundreds of stones by hand, then fitting them into a swirling wall that stood sturdy without a dollop of mortar between its stones and whispered gently when rain trickled between its stones. It was the best stonework Cauvin had done—his masterpiece, if he’d been a proper apprentice or if Sanctuary needed two stone masters.
Come high summer when the wall was finished, Mioklas had hosted a feast to celebrate the rebirth of his perfume garden. He’d invited every Wrigglie who mattered, the Irrune from the palace, and all the froggin’ Imperials from Land’s End. Mina complained the markets were empty for a week. Then Mioklas sent his housekeeper to Pyrtanis Street, pleading poverty and saying it would be autumn before he could even begin to pay his debt for the wall.
Grabar hadn’t argued. Shite for sure, they knew the man’s ways, and there would always be more stonework to be done at his mansion. When Mioklas decided what he wanted done next—and not one day sooner—his housekeeper would show up with enough silver to soothe even Mina’s easily ruffled feathers. Until then, they’d let it ride. It wasn’t as though Grabar had money tied up in the stone Cauvin had used—they’d scavenged the rock from another ruined garden. The debt in Mina’s eyes was labor only—Cauvin’s sheep-shite labor, day after froggin’ day.
Promises were promises. They were well into Esharia, the second full month of autumn and past time for Lord Mioklas to lay down his debts—or as much would buy two passages to Ilsig.
One block from the Processional, Cauvin came to an alley that led, even here in the wealthiest quarter of Sanctuary, to a courtyard where the scars of fire, storm, and the Bloody Hand of Dyareela were still clear on the abandoned buildings. Cauvin scaled a naked wall and picked his way carefully across a balcony that was more gap than wood. Next autumn, it might be gone altogether, but this year it still provided the best view of Mioklas’s perfume garden and Cauvin’s winding wall within it.
Cauvin stood in silence a moment, admiring his own craft. The mansion bustled with the servants a rich man needed to keep himself happy. One was a grizzle-bearded bodyguard with whom Cauvin had tangled before. He carried a sword
and knew how to use it, but his presence assured Cauvin that Mioklas was at home and working as rich men worked: clean clothes, clean hands, and seated on cushions before a polished table.
After just one of Soldt’s lessons, Cauvin wasn’t sheep-shite stupid enough to think he’d win any challenge with a rich man’s bodyguard, but the guard had removed his sword belt, the better to hide under the gold-and-amber trees with a woman. Cauvin could have had his hands on Lord Mioklas’s neck before the guard knew there was an extra man in the garden, if that had been what Cauvin had wanted to do. It wasn’t. The only reason he’d climbed to the balcony was to see his stonework. If he got what he wanted, he’d never see it again.
There were two doors to a rich man’s home—the high door where his family and peers made their entrances and the low door near the storerooms for servants and tradesmen. When Cauvin worked on the wall, he’d come and gone without complaint through the low door, but when he came to settle debts he climbed the stone steps to the brightly painted high door and let the bronze ring strike hard against the plate beneath it. Within moments a woman’s face appeared at a barred round window and quickly vanished.
He could imagine the messages whispered from one servant to the next: He’s here again—That sheep-shite stone-smasher from Pyrtanis Street—You tell the master—No, you tell him—
Just when Cauvin was about to hammer the door a second time, it creaked and cracked open.
“We receive tradesmen below,” the housekeeper snarled, as though he’d never laid a sheepshite eye on Cauvin before.
“Tell Lord Mioklas that Cauvin, Grabar’s son, is here on business.”
“Lord Mioklas is not at home—”
The housekeeper tried to shut the door. He wasn’t quick enough, or strong enough. Cauvin slapped his palm against the wood and effortlessly held the door open against the housekeeper’s best efforts.
“I know the pud’s here, in his workroom, counting his coins.”
“He’s not expecting you—”
“That’s his froggin’ problem, not mine and not yours either, unless you don’t take me to see him.”
Though the housekeeper sported a tuft of black beard on his chin, the rest of his face bore the soft, unfinished features of a lifelong eunuch—not someone who was likely to stand his ground against a stone-smasher. In fact, he hadn’t on the other occasions when Cauvin had come to collect a debt. Cauvin put his strength into his arm and, straightening his elbow, moved the door—and the housekeeper with it—far enough to get across the threshold.
“You won’t cause trouble, will you?” the housekeeper pleaded.
“Not if you get your ass turned around and take me to Mioklas. Or, I could take myself. I know the froggin’ way. I’ve been here how many times before? Your froggin’ lord doesn’t pay his debts. He’s froggin’ greedy, and he’s froggin’ cheap. I’ll wager he doesn’t pay you on time, either; does he?”
The housekeeper shot Cauvin a look sharp enough to draw blood but didn’t deny the accusation. He led Cauvin down a corridor and stairway each painted with murals of Ilsig’s gods and Ilsig’s glory. Cauvin counted three braziers, each piled high with charcoal and ready for the flame, ready to heat the froggin’ corridor.
Mioklas’s bodyguard, his sword now properly belted below his waist, blocked the workroom door. “You’re here to make trouble?”
“Lord Mioklas said autumn. It’s been froggin’ autumn for weeks now. We were expecting him at the yard. He should’ve been expecting me.”
“Let him in, Brevis,” the froggin’ lord himself called from behind Brevis’s back.
Brevis—Cauvin had forgotten the man’s name until he’d heard it again—stepped back, putting himself inside the workroom before Cauvin entered it. They exchanged keep-your-froggin’-hands-to-your-froggin’ -self glances as Mioklas rose from his chair. He was a few years younger than Grabar and in better shape than either Grabar or most rich men nearing the end of their prime. His eyes were sharp, his handshake firm and freely given—even to a man who might make trouble.
“How’s the garden?” Cauvin asked, freeing his hand.
“A delight. Would you care to see it?” Mioklas beckoned Cauvin toward the door behind his table, the door through which Cauvin had watched him moments earlier. “I’ve planted evergreens and gathered driftwood ornaments for the winter—”
Cauvin stayed put. “Up on Pyrtanis Street, we’re gathering driftwood for the froggin’ hearth. You know what I’m here for, Lord Mioklas.” He hadn’t meant to swear, not this early in the conversation, but oaths and curses were part of him, like breathing.
“It has been an unsettled season, Cauvin—I wouldn’t expect you to fully understand. With Arizak dwelling in the palace now, our Irrune are preoccupied with their own affairs. The customs we’d cobbled together—who does what, when, and how between them and us—have unraveled.” The man winced dramatically. “Not unraveled ; I wouldn’t want you to leave here thinking that the peace and security of Sanctuary are in any way jeopardized. It’s merely that Arizak is as much a stranger to Sanctuary today as he was the day he came through the gates we’d left open for him. More so, perhaps, because we’d come to so many arrangements with his wife and Lord Naimun, so many accommodations for their comfort and ours—”
Cauvin cut him off. “That the last thing you wanted was Lord Naimun’s froggin’ father back in Sanctuary, poking his nose into your accommodations and trailing his full-grown Dragon-son in behind him. Sorting out the palace is your problem, I just want my money—our money—so we can keep warm this winter.”
Another slip of the tongue. He wasn’t a good liar, especially when he was wrestling a guilty conscience.
Mioklas stood tall and silent, his hands folded calmly, intricately beneath his chin while his eyes all but disappeared. “The welfare of Sanctuary is not a shadow play with puppets dancing behind a sheet. Lives and livelihoods are at stake here—your own and your father’s. You’ll do a lot worse than shiver up on Pyrtanis Street if that wound kills Arizak this winter and the wrong son inherits.”
Cauvin considered saying something snide: When there’s no froggin’ wood in winter on Pyrtanis Street it doesn’t matter who’s in sheep-shite palace, or: Froggin’ sure, I’ve already done worse than shiver. Then he considered what the Torch might say, or black-cloaked Soldt. He kept his mouth shut, sensing that silence, along with quickly raised eyebrows, was more powerful than words.
“I’ve known you since your father pulled you out of the palace,” Mioklas informed Cauvin. “You’ve got a strong back, and you’re good with your hands, but you haven’t the least notion what’s good for you or Sanctuary—”
Cauvin pointed at Mioklas’s nose. “I know which one of Arizak’s sons is right for Sanctuary—” He folded his fingers into a brawny fist. “And his name isn’t Naimun per-Arizak.”
“Brevis!”
The bodyguard approached Cauvin’s back. The man could kill him, no questions asked: It was a crime to attack a nobleman, but neither the trial nor the punishment occurred in Hall of Justice at the palace. And if Brevis didn’t kill him, Grabar would likely toss Cauvin out the door when word got back to Pyrtanis Street. Cauvin lowered his arm, yet didn’t unmake his fist. Brevis stopped, waiting for his master’s next words—
“You and every other pigheaded Wrigglie in Sanctuary. The lot of you haven’t got the sense Great Ils gave a single ant. Young Arizak—the Dragon—do you think he’s going to build walls with stone from your precious stoneyard? The Dragon and his sikkintair of a mother won’t—”
“This pigheaded Wrigglie’s tired of listening to some other pigheaded Wrigglie tell me what I’m thinking. I wasn’t thinking about the froggin’ Dragon!” Cauvin wasn’t thinking at all. He’d burnt his bridges with Mioklas, with Grabar, with Sanctuary itself. He was free—and reeling, as though he’d drunk three mugs of beer without pausing to breathe. “There’s a better brother for Sanctuary!”
“Nonsense—”
> “Raith,” Cauvin spat back.
“Raith? He’s a boy—” Mioklas paused with his mouth open. When he spoke again, it was with the slow, falsely patient tone strangers used with children or idiots. “Ah, you think the city would thrive best with an unbearded child for its prince? Do you think the city would govern itself? Good idea, Cauvin, but you’re not as clever as you think you are. What Sanctuary needs is a prince who relies on his advisors to govern for him.”
“And you’d be one of the advisors?” It was the obvious question for Cauvin to ask, though a sheep-shite stupid one, with a bodyguard standing behind him.
“Not alone, I assure you. I am neither so ambitious nor so bold as Lord Torchholder was.”
This time Cauvin’s silence wasn’t deliberate.
“Don’t get me wrong—Lord Torchholder was a great man,” Mioklas went on. “Absolutely fearless. Never a thought for his own safety. That’s why we sent him out to negotiate with the Irrune; they respect that sort of courage. Afterward, in the palace—he was beyond control. I’ll tell you, now that he’s dead, the Torch had something on everyone. Almost everyone. Nothing on me. Lord Torchholder was ever my friend. But there were a few men—more than a few—who breathed easier through their tears as the word went round—”
Their eyes locked by chance. Cauvin’s mind was spinning like a dog in pursuit of its flea-bitten tail. He needed to say something, but only one word came out of his mouth: “You … you … you …” He’d never felt so slow or sheep-shite stupid.
“Ah—forgive me. The Torch was your personal hero, no doubt. Leading the charge into the palace, returning you to your family. Yes. That’s why you mentioned Raith. You’d heard that Lord Torchholder favored him. You saw the lad at the funeral? I’m sorry, Cauvin—but Lord Torchholder was an old man, a very old man. One might say unnaturally old. There were rumors—no need sharing them now. Young Raith’s grieving, but he’s better off without Lord Torchholder whispering in his ear, putting dangerous thoughts in his head. There’ll be a place for Raith—a place for you, Cauvin. A city needs its master stone-workers. Indeed. How much do you need? Did you say twenty shaboozh now, the rest—oh, say after midwinter?”