Warautumn (42 page)

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-looking 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.

More rustling, then a loud meow. “Cat! Damned cat,” she heard the now-unseen guardsman growl in a scratchy tenor that hinted of an autumn cold. As if to confirm that assessment, he sneezed.

And seemed to be going away—until he suddenly turned again and marched back to the maze’s entrance, not a quarter span behind Tyrill’s back. Her heart double-beat, then seemed to stop entirely as she waited, trying to free her blowgun silently only to discover that it was stuck. At least if they killed
him—if they
could
kill him—he had reached a place where it would be easy to hide the body.

What was he doing, anyway?
And then she knew. Fabric scraped, mail jingled, leather hissed, and then more fabric; followed by the sound of liquid striking the foliage behind her with considerable force, accompanied by a low, relieved sigh. Her eyes went wide and Ilfon’s wider as fear warred with amusement on both their faces.

And then over.

… rustle, rustle, rustle …

That damned cat again, and closer. If only the lad would ignore it and go on his way. Smith-Hold’s cats were no concern of his.

Once again Tyrill’s luck held.

And then came the unthinkable.

She sneezed.

She tried desperately to make it a little cat sneeze. But it came on her so suddenly that it rushed out with full human noise and splendor.

“Who’s there
?” The guard again, with his trews done up and no nonsense at all in his voice.

And then, impossibly, another sneeze.

Tyrill fumbled for her blowgun, but it had lodged between her cuff and the lining of her sleeve. For his part, Ilfon was so alarmed that he was simply staring—only for a breath, granted, but a breath was all it took for a young man to dash into the maze, look first right, then left, and see, however dimly, that he faced, to all appearances, a Common Clan crone and—possibly—her one-son.

At least that would have been the likeliest assessment had Ilfon not that moment managed to free his blowgun—exactly as Tyrill likewise untangled hers from her sleeve—neither with time to load them.

When Fate played games, it appeared, Fate played extravagantly.

“I don’t know who you are,” the guardsman snapped, leveling
his sword at the two of them, while maneuvering himself in such a way that he neatly boxed them into the corner. “What I do know is that there’s no way on Angen that you two are flute players, or that those are flutes. In fact, you’re”—he stepped closer—recklessly, but it caught them both off guard—and flipped back the edge of Tyrill’s hood—“Lady Tyrill. And you—”

Ilfon acted. He heaved himself forward toward the guard, but Fate still had one cruel trick to play and had let a twig in the hedge snare Ilfon’s tunic, so that as he leapt forward, it yanked him back again. Which was all it took for the guard to whirl around and slam the flat of his sword into Ilfon’s ribs.

“Lady, you will come with me,” the guardsman growled. “As for you—” He scowled at Ilfon anxiously, then, with casual, calculated precision, swung his sword’s point delicately across the juncture of Ilfon’s calf and ankle. Tyrill heard the tendon snap and Ilfon’s hiss of pain and anger as blood spurted out upon the green.

“You won’t die,” the guardsman told him with calm dispassion. “But I don’t think you’ll be going anywhere, either—not before I can get this one in chains and return with reinforcements.”

Tyrill said nothing at all. There was nothing left
to
say. Which left it to Ilfon to lie on the ground and bleed, sweat, and try very hard neither to cry nor swear.

“Dammit, I need to
be
there!” Vorinn growled. He was pacing up and down the riverbank, precisely at the juncture where rounded stones gave way to sandbar—stones that he kicked often as not, oblivious to what such useless violence did to his boots. Sand, he simply ignored. It was a beautiful place—or would have been had he not needed to be somewhere else. Lykkon walked beside him, along with Myx and Riff—and for some odd reason, that wretched birkit.
What did they mean, anyway, letting something that wild travel with them like a pet?

As if hearing his thought, the beast bared its teeth at him, growled, and danced away.

“We don’t even know if Avall made it there,” he told Lykkon. “All we know is that he isn’t here. That none of them are.”

“He has to be there,” Lykkon retorted quickly. “There’s no reason to assume otherwise, given the way you got here.”

Vorinn rounded on him, fighting down a rage he certainly had a right to feel, though not to direct at Lykkon—or any man he liked or had soldiered with. “Yes, but assuming he
is
there, he’s fighting my fight and probably getting himself killed for his trouble.”