Cauvin. Bezul knew a Cauvin… knew of one, anyway. The stonemason's son from up on Pyrtanis Street, rescued from the palace after the Irrune slaughtered the Bloody Hand. The gossips said he was good with stone, better with his fists and not at all reluctant to use them.
But, perhaps, there was another Cauvin in Sanctuary.
His prize in hand, the eunuch waddled toward them. "One less problem to worry about, eh? No one stealing the sun, trapping it in a box?"
Cauvin didn't answer, didn't look like he particularly agreed. The eunuch giggled and for an instant his eyes glowed red, then he was gone.
"Wh-?" Bezul began.
"Don't ask," the brawler snarled, leaving Bezul with no doubt that there was only one Cauvin in Sanctuary.
"What do you want to do with the bodies?" the black-booted swordsman called from Nareel's side.
"Shite if I know or care," Cauvin muttered as he turned his back on Bezul.
The way out of the ruin was clear. A wise man-an ordinary man with a wife, children, and a business waiting for him-would take a few sideways steps and be gone. Bezul even took one of those sideways steps, before choosing against wisdom and striding toward the pit.
"This thing," he said, pointing at the red glass. "It belongs to a young man who lives out in Night Secrets. I'd like to give it back to him. Apparently, it keeps his crab trap full."
Cauvin and the swordsman stared at Bezul then at each other.
"Your call," the swordsman said and, to emphasize the point, busied himself untying the mask from Nareel's corpse. "Make up your mind. I can't stay here. They're expecting me across town. Never should have let you talk me into that one. Goes against my principles and then you tell me I've got to lose."
Cauvin paid no attention to his sarcastic companion. "Froggin' crabs?" he sputtered. "A froggin' Nighter's using a froggin' attractor to trap froggin' crabs?"
Bezul nodded. Against all expectation, the stonemason's brawler-son was giving orders to swordsmen and sorcerers. He'd have to make inquiries after he got back to the Shambles. Until then, Bezul could sympathize with Cauvin's frustration. "Probably the smartest thing you or I could do is break it into little pieces, but the Nighter wants it back. I don't know if he eats the crabs or sells them; as Father Ils judges us all, I'm not sure if it's his or his whole family's. Either way, he calls it the 'red lucky' and my brother tricked him out of it. Then my brother lost it himself to that one there-"
Bezul gestured toward Nareel just as the swordsman lifted the mask. The black-clad man swore an oath in a language Bezul didn't recognize and cast the mask aside. Nareel had died a hideous death, and not from the swordsman's weapon. His face was blackened- cracked, curled and peeling, like a log left to char at the back of a hot fire. A breeze not strong enough to lift a lock of hair, set an ashy flake adrift. Bezul leapt backward to avoid contact with the flake; the other men did likewise as other bits of Nareel lifted into the quiet air.
The corpse began to crumble from within, shrinking and losing form. Bezul watched, transfixed, for one or two heartbeats, then forced himself to turn away. He steadied himself by breathing in through his nostrils and out between his lips-the way he'd learned years ago when the Bloody Hand of Dyareela summoned the city to public executions.
Not since the Troubles. Not since the Troubles. The notion tumbled in Bezul's mind along with Who? and Why? and What manner of darkness has Perrez stumbled into? He concentrated on the mask: a shallow bronze disk, polished smooth, without holes for sight, breath, or speech; but touched with gold and ringed with stylized flames. A sun god, Bezul told himself, not one he recognized, but not the Bloody Mother, Dyareela, either; and for that he was relieved.
Bezul's relief was interrupted when the corpse of Nareel's companion collapsed with a sigh, like air released from a bladder-a foul, rotting bladder. He recoiled from the sight and the stench; the swordsman did the same. But Cauvin leapt across the hole, seized a shovel the diggers had abandoned, and went to work with more effort than effect until the remains of both corpses were either in the hole, covered with a layer of dirt, or floating in the city breezes.
"Shite for sure," the young man swore as he leaned, sweating and gasping, on the shovel, "I didn't froggin' ask for thisl"
The swordsman said nothing and Bezul judged it was time for proper gratitude: "I owe you my life, and the lives of my brother and the Nighter, Dace. I think it would be us in that hole, were it not for your timely arrival."
"Froggin' shite, we were already here, waiting for Yorl to show up. You never know what he's going to look like, so I thought, maybe, he was you-until nearly too late. Lucky we weren't all froggin' killed."
Confused by the explanation, Bezul asked, "You were waiting for Nareel?"
"Yorl, Enas Yorl?" Cauvin paused, clearly expecting a reaction to the name, which Bezul didn't provide. "You saw him. He's the one who claimed the chest." Cauvin shook his head. "He's under some froggin' curse that changes him every day, but his eyes give him away… most times. Sometimes, you froggin' just don't know."
Bezul hadn't heard the name, Enas Yorl, since before the Troubles started. Gedozia and the other gossips said the mage's mansion had vanished one long-ago night with him in it-Come to think of it, the mansion had been up on Pyrtanis Street, same as the stoneyard where Cauvin worked with his father. Maybe that was the connection-
"You work for him?" Bezul asked and realized, before he'd finished asking the question, that he shouldn't have.
"What's the one true thing about Sanctuary?" Cauvin asked. He didn't wait for an answer. "We've had our froggin' fill of miracles and magic. A froggin' priest comes to Sanctuary, he better talk about what his god does for us, not the other way around and a magician better keep to himself, if he knows what's good for him. We like our froggin' gods quiet and our froggin' sorcerers even quieter. If they're not, we'll froggin' run them out. And if we can't, then there's froggin' Enas Yorl."
The swordsman offered his opinion: "Better one man you can't quite trust than a score of them?"
They glared at each other a moment before Cauvin insisted, "I froggin' trust froggin' Yorl."
"But you knew about Nareel?" Bezul asked quickly, hoping to distract both men. ''You know about that shop he has-had-off the Processional?"
"Anyone asks that many questions is bound to attract attention. He was wasting his time and his shaboozh until he got lucky-" Cauvin looked down at the red glass teardrop. He'd come close to breaking it with the shovel, but-luckily?-he'd missed every time. "Crabs? Frog all."
"That's what the Nighter said. They've been using it for years. Your Enas Yorl left it behind-"
"He said an attractor was just a tool," the swordsman said, then added: "Don't let it fall into the wrong hands."
Bezul couldn't tell if the man was speaking for himself or the absent magician, to him or to Cauvin.
Cauvin picked the red glass up, pulled it free of the triangle, and gave it to Bezul. "Yorl didn't know there was an attractor loose in Sanctuary until it left the swamp. See that it gets back to the swamp and stays there. Tell your brother to forget he saw it."
Bezul slid the glass carefully into his scrip.
"See to it," Cauvin warned. "Remember: You owe your life."
Suddenly, Cauvin didn't sound like a foul-mouthed brawler. Bezul met his eyes and quickly turned away from the depths he saw there. "You have my word." He left the ruins without a backward glance.
Bezul found Dace in Chersey's kitchen, watching the children while she stirred the kettle. He took the red lucky from Bezul's hands with a joy that bordered on reverence and, though the sun had set, the Nighter left at once for the ferry and home. By contrast, Perrez hadn't returned to the changing house. He had missed supper which, Bezul admitted, was unusual and cause for concern, especially as Bezul had decided against telling his mother the unburnished truth about his adventures in the uptown ruins.