Sanctuary by Lynn Abbey

Author:Lynn Abbey
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780765336224
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 2002-06-14T22:00:00+00:00

Bec retreated, leaving Molin alone. The priest had lied about his pain, which was considerable, though not entirely physical—call it a consciousness of loss as his soul faded from his body; or regret for missed opportunities. Molin had bungled as many opportunities as he’d seized. He could have handled Bec better just now, and regretted that he’d mocked the boy’s ancestors. Molin knew the ache of inglorious ancestors.

Wrigglies weren’t the only reason Molin Torchholder despised the city where he was doomed to die. The native breed of Rankan aristocrat was worse than any son or daughter of Ilsigi slaves. The old vizier Coricos Cordion Coricidius had been among the worst of the worst.

To be sure, there were fouler specimens of mankind to be found in Ranke, but they left smaller marks on a vastly larger city. In Sanctuary, the Imperial vizier, Coricidius, had been the greatest fish in a tiny pond, proudly dominating the stolid Wrigglies, never guessing that he was great simply because in Sanctuary he had no competition. No competition, that was, until Emperor Abakithis had sent his young half brother into exile.

Prince Kadakithis, normally a man of the mildest temperament, had marked Coricidius for elimination within days of his arrival in the city. It wasn’t that the feast the vizier served that first night in Sanctuary was so poorly prepared that sixty years later Molin could still taste every miserable course—but the man had been fool enough to think that he could bribe the prince with glass jewels and doctored gold! The prince had wanted to pronounce judgment immediately; Molin had said no, give him rein, see where he goes and with whom.

If Molin had been attentive—not prescient, but merely clearheaded—he would have realized right then that he’d been bitten by Sanctuary and was doomed to die from its poison.

When he closed his eyes, Molin’s memories cleared. The crumbled brick walls reassembled themselves and became the villa once known in Rankene as High Harbor View. Only the Ilsigi gods knew what the Ilsigis had called it when they ruled the city; it had been built in their era. For his life—what was left of it—Molin couldn’t recall the name or face of the patriarch who’d called it home. It hadn’t been Coricidius, that would have been too bitter, even for Sanctuary. Coricidius had been a High Harbor View visitor, though. Coricidius and everyone else who’d mattered in those early days.

Thanks to its mongrel population, Sanctuary eagerly observed the festivals of the Rankan and Ilsigi gods, and a handful of other pantheons as well. The rabble would seize any opportunity to indulge their indolence. The nobility wasn’t much better. For them the festivals were an excuse to entertain—and observe—one another. For a hindmost city—the smallest of the Imperial cities—Sanctuary had been blessed—or cursed—with an abundance of aristocrats. No real mystery there—generations of kings and emperors had been exiling their malcontents to this armpit by the ocean.

A man of status and good conversation need not dine at home above one night in four.

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