Warautumn (41 page)

Ishvarr hesitated but an instant, then did as commanded. Ahfinn blinked in confusion. Avall fixed him with an icy stare, then nodded toward the ash-faced prisoner. “Your man: your clan: your justice,” Avall informed Ahfinn coldly. “You know the sentence for murderers. If he leaves this hold alive, this man’s fate will be the same—but he will suffer longer.”

Ahfinn’s face turned whiter than the accused’s, but bit his lip and, before anyone expected it, stabbed the murderer-thief beneath the ribs, then drove the blade upward with a sharp, deft twist. The man whimpered once, then went limp. Ahfinn left the weapon where it stood as the Guardsmen released the lifeless body and let it topple.

Ishvarr relieved the thief of the stolen treasure and returned it to Crim’s suite, then gently closed the door and rejoined Avall’s party in the hall. Leaving the corpse in a spreading pool of his own blood, they continued down the corridor.

“Rrath,” Avall reminded Ahfinn curtly. “Now.”

“He should be in Zeff’s private quarters. At least that’s where I saw him last,” Ahfinn replied carefully.

“He had best be alive, is all I can say,” Avall growled.

The suite Zeff had claimed as his base was more austere than Avall would have expected of even a minor Chief, then again, Zeff was Priest-Clan, and they prided themselves on asceticism. A door to the left led from the common hall to what was clearly Zeff’s sleeping chamber. A small wooden box stood on a bare stone table there—nothing remarkable, yet it drew
Avall’s gaze like a lodestone. Ahfinn saw him looking. “Majesty,” he said impulsively, “if I may …”

“Careful,” Tryffon warned. “It could be a trap.”

“No trap,” Ahfinn countered. “On my life.”

“Which belongs to us, in any case.”

“Let him,” Avall broke in. “We’re waiting.”

Ahfinn deposited Zeff’s head in what had most likely been the Chief’s favorite chair, to judge by the patterns of wear, then retrieved the box. It rattled when he picked it up. Avall was taken aback when Ahfinn approached again, knelt suddenly before him, flipped the box’s lid open, and raised it so that he could see inside.

Red glittered there.

Gems
.

Magic
gems. Not many, and most were small—some smaller than the fragments he had salvaged from his own smashed master gem—yet it was without doubt a treasure trove, and a power trove along with it. “All we could find before we flooded the mines,” Ahfinn explained, rising. “The rest are in the sword, shield, and helmet Zeff took to the duel. If there are more—”

“I doubt there are,” Avall murmured. “At least not here.”

Tryffon regarded him sharply.

“Rrath,” Avall prompted, looking around. “And could someone find Esshill? He will want to be here.”

“He’s here now!” someone called from the outer chamber. “If you mean that little former Priest who’s been following us around.” A moment later, and not without a bit of pushing and jostling, the crowd of Night Guard in the doorway parted to admit a slight figure still clad in the Argen-a livery he seemed to have adopted as his own. Then again, Esshill probably did not feel comfortable claiming his own clan just then. He bowed deeply when he saw Avall, then stood up straighter. “Majesty?”

“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.”

“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.”