Summerblood (46 page)

“Two days,” Rann said. “Two days and then we'll know.”

It wouldn't be two days if Kylin had anything to do with it. Not even two hands.

He'd had the plan in place for a good while now. Ever since word had come from Tir-Eron of how desperate things were there. It was simple enough, really. He was a common sight around the camp, he reckoned, and neither Rann, Tryffon, nor Vorinn had ever tried to deny him access to any part of it. Not even to the edge of the forest, where the trebuchets and siege towers were a-building. And since he was blind, he'd asked them—or whoever they'd assigned to him—to describe what they saw there, and what images went with the sounds. The upshot of all such lurking about was that no one would think
twice about seeing him at the front. And since he was known to be a member of the “Royal Party,” no one would question him turning up in
odd
places, either, even blind as he was.

And it wasn't as if he were
totally
blind anyway. He could tell dark from light. He could gaze at a daytime sky and say if anything was cut out before it—anything close enough to register as dark, anyway.

In any case, he knew where the hold was.

It would only take a few moments, if he worked it right.

It was twilight and still raining, which would also help. Most of the workmen would have left, and most of the guards would be more concerned with stuffing down their bread and cheese than doing their jobs. After all, it would be easy enough to see anyone leaving Gem-Hold. And they'd have to cross a quarter shot of short grass and mud before they could even reach the palisade. There was no way a sneak attack could be mounted from that quarter.

So it was that Kylin dressed himself in the dullest clothes Esshill could find for him without drawing attention to his change in wardrobe, and began a careful amble toward what he assumed would be the most thinly manned part of the front. He passed soldiers going the other way: toward the mess tent, one of the other baths, or their own tents and caravans. A few hailed him. He called them back by name often as not. When one woman asked him why he was going away from dinner, he told her he was also going away from noise. That satisfied her.

And sure enough, the noises of the camp fell away, as he made his way toward the edge of the ridge. Once, granted, he almost tripped over a pine stump, and more than once he had to fumble his way past construction debris that had a tendency to poke out at unexpected angles. But it wasn't long until he found his goal: the guard station closest to the southern end of the ridge, where the camp butted up against the road. Someone hailed him there: a young guardswoman who was
distant kin to him. He hailed her back and turned his face unerringly in her direction.

“What are you doing here, cousin?” she asked, rising by reflex to assist him back to her station: a waxed canvas shelter between two trees, from which she could watch without being completely soaked to the skin. She even had a small fire, which Kylin could both feel through his own damp clothes, and— barely—see.

“I need quiet,” Kylin told her. “I knew I could tell you to be quiet without insulting you.”

“You think so?” she challenged through a chuckle. “It gets lonely out here, and I'm not due for relief for another hand.”

“I brought you a friend,” Kylin laughed back, patting a pair of wineskins at his waist. “Two, actually: one for you, one for me.”

“The best kind of friend,” the guard retorted. “The kind that warms you on the inside.”

Kylin laughed again, as he lowered himself onto the bench in the watch-tent.

“I can't have any, though. Not until I'm off duty.”

“It's still warm from Rann's own fire—and it's Royal vintage. You won't get better. Besides which, I want some, and I don't want to drink alone. And if you drank it slowly, it wouldn't affect you until you were off duty.”

“I don't know …”

Kylin sighed dramatically. “Two sips, then—one for friendship, one for kinship—and I'll say no more.”

A pause, then: “I suppose I could manage that much.”

Kylin grinned and reached to the frontmost flask—suede leather in lieu of plain—then unscrewed the nozzle and passed it to her. He heard her hesitate, then sniff it, sighing approval at the heady odor. And he heard the eager splat of the first squirt against the back of her mouth.

An odd gasp followed, then the sound of her slowly slipping to the ground, as the very potent sleeping drug Kylin had
acquired from Esshill, and with which the draught was mingled, set her dreaming.

Kylin acted quickly. It was already twilight, waxing into true night, and with the ever-present rain, the world would be all one color.

Against which he was simply another shape. This part of the slope was pocked with boulders, he'd been told. For one of which, if he moved slowly, he might be mistaken.

Not that he would have that option for very long. Steeling himself, and uttering a prayer to Luck to go with him, and another to the Lord of Fools not to let him be noted too soon, he began to steer a course into the no-man's-land between the ridge and the palisade beyond the hold. The first dozen breaths were the worst, because he'd have been in clear sight of at least one other guard tent, but then the rain—as if by blessing—came harder, and he went on. He fell once—in the mud, which actually helped—and once back on his feet, began to stagger as though he were drunk.

He was miserable. He was also almost invisible, for Esshill had chosen a gray tunic patterned with thin vertical stripes of a lighter gray that from a distance merged with the rain.

He fell again, rose once more, continuing on with an exaggerated stagger. Somewhere along the way, he contrived to drop the drugged flask still in his hand, but retrieved the other from his belt and drank from it. If anyone saw him, they'd see a poor drunk gone awry. But if someone saw him now, they'd be from Gem-Hold: from one of the patrols that constantly ranged the arcades far above, or the wooden palisade that loomed ever nearer.

He was near that palisade now; he could smell the freshly cut wood, even if he couldn't see the head-high, shaved wood tree trunks that comprised it. And now that he was closer to his foes than his comrades, and had the rain between him and the Eronese camp, he started singing—loudly, with the slurred tones of a drunk. He tried to dance, too, and staggered, and then managed to trip himself on purpose and sprawled backward in
the mud, arms outstretched, singing at the top of his lungs, when he wasn't filling his mouth with wine he surreptitiously spat out again.

And then he lay still, as though he'd passed out.

And felt, rather than saw, the light from the shielded torches of the men who gathered around him a quarter hand later, and without pause or comment, hoisted him roughly up by arms and legs and carried him inside. He heard oak slam, and a lock click, followed by the scrape of heavy timber, which was followed in turn by the rusty screech of a portcullis descending. And then he was being carried up many stairs, muttering snatches of songs all the while, with the scent of spilled wine so strong in his nostrils it almost made him drunk in fact.

“I don't know who he is,” Ahfinn told Zeff frankly, peering through the iron-barred vision-hatch at the slim, unconscious form now sprawling drunkenly in a clean robe on a clean cot in one of Gem-Hold's dungeon cells. “It's exactly as you were told: He came staggering out of the woods just south of the enemy camp right around sunset. He was obviously drunk and seemed to have been in the Wild for a while, based on how dirty he was. He hasn't said anything, because as best we can tell he's passed out. He's also blind. Or at least he had a band of sylk around his neck that might've slipped down from his eyes.”

Zeff rubbed his chin suspiciously. “Any clan tattoo?”

“Omyrr.”

“Music. That tells me some things right there.”

“Such as?”

“Crim had a pet blind harper for a while. I'm not sure what became of him, except that he showed up at Avall's court after the war.”

“Do you think that's him?”

“There's a good chance it might be. If so, that raises the question of what he was doing with the army, why he was
drunk, and how he managed to get here without his own folk noticing and bringing him back.”

Ahfinn scowled. “The drunk part makes sense enough—if he's blind.”

“It might, but Crim's harper was supposed to have made peace with his deficiency.”

“So you don't think it's him?”

“I don't know. A blind man in the wilderness—that can't be chance. He'd have to be attached to somebody; he couldn't survive out there alone.”

“We know there were several hunting parties out of the hold when we took over. He could've been attached to one of them.”

“That's true. But now that I think of it, wasn't Crim visiting Omyrr when we attacked?”

“She was. And someone arrived under Royal escort a few days before …”

“This fellow?”

“Makes as much sense as anything else Avall does.”

“And he hasn't been seen since …”

“No, and that's what bothers me. He can't have been wandering around on his own; therefore, he'd have had to be attached to the army. But then why … ?”

“He could be a spy.”

“He's blind.”

“He still has ears.”

Ahfinn gnawed his lip. “Well, we're unlikely to learn anything until he regains consciousness. I'd say let him sleep it off, and then we start at him with imphor.”

Zeff scowled. “That could take a while unless we want to risk breaking his mind. We may not have a while. It's obvious the army is only waiting for the weather to change before they act.”

A matching scowl. “And us no closer to either mastering the armor or finding gems of our own.”

“Not the situation I would've chosen, no. But we still have many, many options, Ahfinn.”

“So, what do we do with this lad?”

“As you said. Let him sleep it off, then bring him to me. I'll try to win him with sugar, first—I'll ask him to play for me. Then we'll try imphor. Then … well, he has very pretty fingers, don't you agree?”

“It always seems to come 'round to that, doesn't it?”

A sly nod. “In a nation of artisans, that's always an option. The problem lies in the fact that the rest of us are trained from birth either to revere them, or to be artisans of another kind. I once had a craft, too, you know.”

Ahfinn lifted a brow ever so slightly.

“You didn't know, did you? Never asked?”

“Once we vow to the Face, we have no clans. Isn't that the rule? That's why we have their signs erased.”

“And for other reasons. But having no clans doesn't mean we never had them. We're fools to make ourselves slaves to the past, but we're also fools to forget it.”

“And you … ?” Ahfinn dared.

Zeff grinned a conspiratorial grin. “Omyrr.”

A brow shot up again. “So you think—? Oh, Eight, Chief; you're not saying you and this one are kin?”

“No longer. But maybe once. I'd need to know his sept. He'd have been born after I joined the Face, to look at him.”

“So you think to appeal to kinship in order to break him?”

“I hope I don't have to. What I hope, Ahfinn, if nothing else, is—just once more before all this comes to whatever conclusion Fate wills—to hear some truly accomplished harping.”

“And then?”

“We shall see. And I hope our blind friend here sees as well.”

With that they departed.

And Kylin, who had very sharp ears indeed, could only continue to feign unconsciousness while his mind raced like a
diving falcon to consider the ramifications of these new facts he'd just been given to ponder.

(
SOUTHWESTERN ERON—HIGH SUMMER: DAY LXXIII—SUNSET
)

Not quite two days after passing War-Hold, Div and Strynn found the campsite.

It wasn't hard, really; Strynn had a reasonably strong grasp of how Merryn would think when it came to determining a route west. She'd have been unable to resist looking in on War-Hold, Strynn knew, but after that, she'd have hugged the tree line for as long as possible so as not to draw attention to herself by appearing as a silhouette atop the ridges. She'd have done that for at least a day, since it would take that long to clear man-made structures indicated on the newest maps. After that, she'd have been in virgin country, so she'd have hurried, which meant taking the ridges where she could, simply because the vegetation was lower there and the views more impressive.

Magnificent, in fact: a vast, breathtaking jumble of angles, at least a third of which were raw rocks, or raw rocks covered in snow. Smoke drifted from some of them—or steam—and one, far off, belched fire.

Merryn would've loved that, besides which, Div had found a much more prosaic, if surer, sign, in a set of tracks: two horses, one more laden than the other. And around sunset the second day out, they found human prints as well, of a size that could easily have been Merryn's. After that, it was easy to follow her trail downhill into the woods where she'd made camp. The pole holes and fire pit were still present. There was also a pool nearby, fed by a handsome waterfall, which Strynn knew Merryn would've found impossible to resist—in more ways than one.

So they were on the right route at last—and not as far behind as they'd feared, to judge by the fact that the tracks had certainly been made after the last rainstorm, which had come three days back.

Indeed, Strynn was elated by that fact, so much so that she almost walked away when she saw Div's troubled expression as she returned from a more thorough examination of the campsite. One hand was fisted, she noted, as though to confine something.

“Two of 'em,” she volunteered. “One male—I can't tell more, except that he was either Eronese or had stolen boots from someone who was. But both of them were barefoot for a while, and that tells me they bedded down here—along with more obvious signs, of course.” She paused, gnawing her lip, then extended her clinched hand and unfolded it.

Gold and red glittered there: garnet set in precious metal. Strynn didn't have to look twice to recognize one of a set of earrings she'd given her bond-sister four years back. She held out her hand impassively as Div deposited the bauble with equal solemnity.