Warautumn

by Tom Deitz

  “I thought you would want to be here,” Avall told him simply. “I heard how you conspired with Kylin to effect my rescue. Sleeping draught, wasn’t it? To give Kylin time to sneak out of camp so he could be taken prisoner here? And while I don’t approve of your methods, I do approve of loyalty to Sovereigns—and to bond-mates. I also understand it very, very well.” He turned back toward Ahfinn. “Well, where is he?”

  Ahfinn dipped his head to the right. “Last door to the right. There’s a corridor—”

  Tryffon bent close enough to mutter into Avall’s ear. “Might as well try them all, lad—just in case. And if they’re locked, do what you must to open them.”

  “I’ve got the keys,” Ahfinn murmured under his breath.

  “Then use them!” Avall snapped, tired of having his patience tested.

  Ahfinn nodded smoothly and reached for his belt pouch. “As you will.”

  The first room contained only a chair, a tapestry, and a rug, and was clearly a private meditatorium. The second was a strongroom of some kind, and contained, among other things, an impressive stone table-safe. The last gave onto a short corridor off which more rooms opened—possibly guest rooms for whoever claimed the main suite, but easily enough converted into cells. Kylin had stayed in one, Avall recalled—from which he had been brought out to play on command, like a pet or a toy.

  The third one contained Rrath syn Garnill.

  At first Avall thought he was as dead as Crim had been, for he was lying in almost the same position Crim’s corpse had displayed: on his back, with his hands folded on his breast, and everything below his armpits hidden beneath a blanket of dull tan wool. In spite of the covering, it was obvious that he had lost weight—which he could ill afford, given that he had been shockingly thin already. But then Avall saw the slow rise and fall of his chest and breathed a small sigh of relief himself. Veen—who had done a double tour at Healing, and had attached herself to the army’s healers in her free time—checked his pulse and pronounced it slow, but strong and even. “He’ll live,” she informed Avall, who had not entered the room. Esshill was hanging back too, probably grown afraid of what he might find. But now that he had heard—

  Avall eased aside for the priest to enter, watching as the man immediately sank to the floor beside Rrath’s bed and reached up to grasp his bond-brother’s hand, oblivious to everyone present. “I’m here,” Esshill whispered. “I won’t ever leave you again, and I’ll do whatever I can to help you recover.”

  Avall watched for a moment longer, then leaned over to Veen. “There’s nothing to be gained by staying, and nothing to be harmed by leaving him here for now,” he whispered. “Just don’t forget them when we leave. And—” He paused. Something had just occurred to him. He still had the box of gems Ahfinn had given him—and he now had proof positive that such gems could sometimes, in time, heal damaged minds. Impulsively, he eased over to where Esshill sat, hunkered down beside him, and opened the box. “Esshill,” he murmured, extending the container, “maybe one of these will help. You’ll have to choose, and I can promise nothing, but Veen can show you when things are a bit more settled. For now—look at these, and see if one doesn’t … connect to you. Touch them if you have to, or—”

  He got no further because Esshill had reached out and taken the third-from-smallest stone—less than half the size of a pea—between two fingers of his right hand. “This one,” he announced with conviction.

  “Take it—for now,” Avall told him. “Work with it. See what you can do. I’ll need to have it back, of course—and you’ll have to remain under watch while you’re working with it. But it’s the least I can do for the two of you. Believe me, I truly do understand.”

  That small kindness accomplished, he rose and returned to the corridor, moving thence through Zeff’s bedchamber to his common hall.

  He had just strode into the larger corridor outside when he felt the floor buck upward beneath him, then subside. A general quivering followed, as though the hold were some vast beast trying to shake itself free of water.

  “Earthquake!” someone shouted, as stone dust trickled down from a ceiling that—fortunately—held.

  “Maybe,” Rann agreed. “Or maybe not.”

  Avall met his gaze, eyes grim with concern. “What do you mean?”

  “It could just as easily be the hold settling,” Rann replied. “With all the lower levels flooded, never mind the mines, there’s no telling how much damage has been done to the structure of this place. In fact,” he added, to Merryn, Tryffon, and Avall alone, “I fear it may have to be abandoned—or leveled to its foundations and rebuilt from scratch.”

  “What about the gems?” Merryn hissed.

  Avall patted the box he still held. “I think we’ve found all there are to find—here. And I think that if there are any more, we have the means to locate them.”

  Merryn scowled and looked as though she were about to speak, before she finally settled on nodding.

  Avall caught Tryffon’s gaze in turn. “In any case, Chief, I’d suggest we conclude this sweep expeditiously. I’d also recommend—no, make that command—that, as much as I know people will hate it, everyone sleeps outside tonight. That includes former hostages, present hostages—everyone. If Rann doesn’t trust this place, I certainly don’t. People can gather what they will until sunset, and we’ll let smaller groups in to salvage for as long as they need to do so afterward; but until we can get some folks up here from Stone—people I don’t need with me, Rann—we had best consider this place restricted. Which also means we’ll have to post a guard.”

  “Which wouldn’t be a problem,” Merryn retorted, “if it didn’t look like we’d need everyone we have and then some if we’re ever going to retake Tir-Eron.”

  “Sister,” Avall sighed, squeezing her hand, “once again you have read my mind.”

  CHAPTER XXVIII:

  PLOTTING IN A MAZE

  (ERON: TIR-ERON—NEAR-AUTUMN: DAY II–MIDAFTERNOON)

  “It’s too big a risk,” Ilfon hissed. “And it’s certainly too big a risk to take right now. I don’t have to remind you that neither of us is what one would call unobtrusive.”

  Tyrill glared at him from a shaded niche in the much-neglected hedge maze behind Smith-Hold-Main. Pale new growth along the edges shielded much of the interior, including the stone bench on which they sat, facing each other, feet drawn up before them. Long cloaks the color of fading foliage draped their shoulders, while hoods far overhung their faces, so that only their bright eyes showed.

  “We couldn’t be more unobtrusive than we are now,” Tyrill muttered back. “I can barely see you, and this is broad daylight, and you half a span away.”

  “You know what I’m talking about, Tyrill.”

  She reached over and tweaked his nose playfully, as she had not done to anyone since she was a girl running wild behind this very hold. As she was now doing many things she had not done since then, she reflected. Like playing hide-and-find within this same maze—often as not with Eellon in those days. That seemed a thousand years ago, too, not eighty. That was before the plague had taken more than half of her adult kin, before rivalry had sundered her from Eellon, who should by rights have been her closest friend. Before anyone had dreamed of a handsome young Argen-a King named Gynn. Before the names that now rattled in her head in a litany of the living mingled with the lately dead had, any of them, been born. Eddyn—he always came first. And Avall and Merryn and Strynn. And then Rann and Lykkon. Nor could she omit Preedor or Tryffon, who had sworn in open council never to share space with her again, unless the King command it. There had been plague and war; but they had consumed barely two years between them. The rest—there had been wonderful things: friends and travel and the crafting of marvelous things out of metal—including, she was secretly proud to say, the sword, shield, and helmet that comprised the new royal regalia, which were by all reasonable standards the marvels of that, or any, age.

  Ilfon grunted and rubbed his nose, jolting
Tyrill back to the present. “What was that about?”

  “We could always break it again,” Tyrill chuckled. “If you think the new shape isn’t disguise enough.”

  Ilfon spared her a warning grin. “Let me remind you, Lady, that there are still parts of you that could be broken without imparing your … functionality. You’ve far too many teeth for a clanless goodwife, for instance. And, to be serious for a moment, we really should think about obliterating our clan tattoos. Yes, I know you don’t want to do that because it’s something the Ninth Face does, but it truly would afford some protection.”

  “It would,” Tyrill conceded, “but most of life reduces at some point to what one wants to worry about. I choose to worry, first of all, about my country, my clan, and my craft, and that’s why I’m here with a blowgun up my sleeve. If I just wanted to be warm and fed, there are any number of places I could be. If making was still my concern, I could head north, hire on at a Common Clan hold, and probably live there in peace making horseshoes and dinnerware until Priest-Clan stumbled on me. And at that, I’d lay odds of my dying a natural death in bed before that occurred. If you’ve noticed, for all their pride before the coup, they’re not very good at actually making things happen.”

  “That’s because most of their really good people are doing what they’ve always done, and ignoring the new power structure entirely.”

  “And since most of the other really good people are dead or in hiding—by which I mean our fellow Chiefs, among others—that leaves their least-well-equipped people to handle the most difficult tasks. Eight, Ilfon, even I didn’t know how much depended on the system of clans and crafts until it shattered. It makes me feel proud, in an odd sort of way.”

  “Not that you need an excuse to feel proud,” Ilfon snorted.

  Another glare. “You don’t have to stay here, youngster. I can do what I came to do on my own.”

  Ilfon scowled at her. “May I remind you that I can’t leave until dark—now that you’ve actually got me in here.”

  “You should have considered that when I suggested we sneak in here before dawn this morning.”

  “What I was considering was an old woman—and an old friend—putting herself at considerable risk for something stupid. As you said, Lady, it was what I chose to worry about.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t!”

  “I—” Ilfon broke off abruptly. Something had rattled twigs nearby. Tyrill held her breath, even as he did. The rattle became a full-scale symphony of small outdoor noises: twigs, leaves, and branches being bent, pushed, and strewn about. And then came a flash of gray right past their hiding place, and a graceful arch of curving tail—with, right behind it, a larger splash of pursuing yellow: squirrel and cat, in their age-old game, with two birds behind, cheering on the action.

  “Someone else who isn’t worried about the Ninth Face,” Tyrill laughed.

  Ilfon’s face went serious. Holding his breath, he thrust his head outside and gazed quickly at the sky. “It’s getting close to time, if you’re still determined to do this crazy thing.”

  Tyrill patted her voluminous sleeve. “We’re running out of darts, in case you haven’t noticed. I’ve got exactly five glass ones, and that’s all—and Elvix says she can’t get more until Tozri returns at Sundeath—”

  “—Which he may not do, if he hears what’s going on here.”

  Another snort. “Either that, or he’ll return with Kraxxi leading the Ixtian army—overtly to restore his friend and ally—who has not, let me remind you, officially been deposed—but one would have to wonder.”

  “Ambition dies slowly,” Ilfon agreed. “I have only to look across from me to see clear proof of that.”

  Another glare. “The fact is, Ilfon, that we need more darts if we’re going to continue our little subversive action. We can’t get more glass ones, but if I can get some bloodwire, I could make some that would do almost as well. The problem is, there are exactly two sources of bloodwire right now: One is in the forges beneath the Citadel; the other is in Smith-Hold. The first is out of the question, which leaves the second. Unfortunately, the only viable time to get into Smith-Hold is when the place is least well guarded, which is the middle of the afternoon. The guards are lazy then—because they’ve become used to most of the trouble happening at night—and there are so few of them that most of those that are present are half-asleep, because they’ve already worked a shift. Besides, if we—I—do encounter anyone, there’s a good chance it will be an ally, or at least someone who won’t betray me. Besides, old beggar women are everywhere, or haven’t you noticed?”

  “Not at a major hold’s usually well-secured back door.”

  A shrug. “Some old women are also confused and stupid. And … Fate will attend the rest.”

  And with that, Tyrill thrust her head from beneath the arbor. A quick check of the sun’s position in the blessedly cloudless sky, and she unfolded herself from the bench, leaving Ilfon to decide for himself whether the time had come for action.

  Yet for all their free speech earlier—which really had been safe, since no one could possibly come upon them unawares in the maze—Tyrill was suddenly as silent as Eddyn’s statue in the water garden two courtyards to the east. It was a skill she had been forced to cultivate, and not easy at all for someone who could barely walk unassisted. Except that, however ruthless a taskmaster she had always been to Smith-Hold’s apprentices, she was ten times as ruthless on herself. Pain was only a thing, she told herself over and over. It was not the thing. It might pain oneself to walk, but pain was clothes on one’s legs, or paint on a coach. The object—and the action—could exist without it, though she had never quite convinced Ilfon of the fact. And if she still needed a cane … Well, that was as much for balance as anything, because balance was harder to control in a hurry.

  So it was that she had already retuned her movements, emotions, and senses alike to stealth as she made her way out of the maze, the twists and turns of which she had memorized eighty years gone by. Ilfon had no such memories to guide him, and therefore had to rely on her—which she found amusing, since it meant he had to creep along in her wake, and him barely half her age.

  They were now one turn from the maze’s entrance, and nearing one of the few places where the hedge wall thinned enough to permit a view of the lawn beyond, which could not, however, be entered thusly without cheating the maze. It also made a convenient place from which to observe the back of Smith-Hold-Main.

  The part best seen from their new vantage point was the oldest part of the entire hold, built in haste for maximum size, space, and serviceability, before the clan had grown rich enough and accomplished enough—and had married into Stone enough—to produce the more elegant, better-proportioned, and better-detailed structures to either side. Ivy covered most of it now, and close-grown trees gave shade in the few places where light wasn’t needed, while also masking a host of architectural sins.

  What Tyrill needed was simply to see one door—and see if that door was guarded, for, if nothing else, Priest-Clan tried very hard to be thorough. Certainly, every clan- and craft-hold was guarded, optimally by two soldiers per entrance. But with the Ninth Face’s resources stretching ever thinner, and some holds amazingly vast and sprawling, there was no way every entrance could be adequately policed at all times. Happily, this particular door to Smith-Hold was one of the latter. True, it was guarded faithfully every night, and until noon every morning, but after that, Smith’s secondary entrances were left unwatched by a complicated but real rotation—one it had taken Ilfon’s peculiar brand of logic to puzzle out. Then again, he was Lore, and therefore accustomed to observing such things.

  And if things went as they ought, the guard would be leaving his post just about now. If it was the same fellow who usually manned that position, he would yawn a couple of times, scratch his backside, and amble off toward the postern gate to rejoin his Ninth Face fellows.

  And there he was, as regular as Argen-el’s best clockwork! A nice-lo
oking young man, he was, too, save for a wine-colored birthmark across otherwise fine high cheekbones, which disfigurement he tried to hide with sideburns that were far too wide. Tyrill felt sorry for him. As obsessed with beauty as most of her kind were, he would have stood out at any hold—which perhaps explained why he was a Priest now. No one was ever born to Priest-Clan; and they tended to take in all comers.

  In any case, his Ninth Face tabard swung jauntily as he started down precisely the path Tyrill had predicted. Which brought him within easy range of her blowgun, had she been fool enough to use it.

  She was not. For all her stealthy intentions, the guard was far too visible—and a dead body would be visible far longer than it would take an old woman in a dark green cloak to navigate three spans’ worth of paces. Besides, this was daylight, and, while Tyrill was willing to kill foes whose faces she could not distinguish, she had qualms about killing those whose faces she could.

  So she waited, resisting a rising urge to let the blowgun slip into her hand.

  … rustle, rustle, rustle …

  Tyrill nearly jumped out of her skin, and Ilfon was so alarmed for her that he covered her mouth with a hand.

  What The Eight had that been?

  Ilfon shaped the answer with silent lips: “Cat.”

  Which would have been perfectly fine, had the noise not made the guardsman turn. For a moment Tyrill thought he was going to ignore the matter and continue on. Indeed, she could all but feel him weighing the decision: Should he investigate, here at the end of his shift, knowing it was probably nothing, but also knowing that it would be his head on the Citadel’s gate with several others if he let anything untoward transpire on what was still, officially, his watch?

  To his credit—and Tyrill’s chagrin—the lad proved conscientious. He sighed again, and strode straight toward the hedge—straight toward the thin space behind which Tyrill was hiding, in fact. A hard tap on Ilfon’s thigh made him back away, which happened to be toward the entrance. Which was fine. The hedge was thick and dark there, and the entrance wall kinked around both its corners for half a span to form walls, in the angle of which one could hide reasonably effectively.