by Tom Deitz
“Fatigue, mostly, and he got a bit of a chill earlier today. Fell in the river, and it had a good go at him before I got him out and thawed.”
Rrath coughed obligingly and tried to shiver.
“He’s lucky, then,” Vil snorted. “Most times it’s so cold he’d have died before he dried. But it’s been amazingly warm of late.”
Eddyn nodded, and for a while the conversation turned, as it always did in Deep Winter, to the weather. It had, in fact, been unseasonably warm—which is to say, most days were only slightly below freezing.
“Thankless duty, isn’t it?” Eddyn ventured eventually. “Exiled over here when there’s so much more going on in the hold itself.”
Vil scowled, shifted, and gnawed on a sausage. “Especially when it’s punishment,” he muttered.
“Which is as much as anyone needs to say,” Gorrinn warned. “Our, uh, youthful high spirits got a little out of hand a few days ago, and they sent us over here to cool off.”
“Wouldn’t mind a look at the horses sometime,” Eddyn said, overtly to change the subject. “Morning’s soon enough, though.”
“Too soon,” Gorrinn yawned. “You lads are welcomed to stay up as late as you like—I’d recommend sleeping in here, as the fireplace in the spare room is smoky—but we need to go to bed.”
Vil rose and scratched his side. “Gotta piss,” he announced, padding off to the right.
“I’ll see if I can find some blankets,” Gorrinn added, also rising.
Eddyn grinned. “Fine. And I’ll fix us all a hot toddy.”
Gorrinn grinned back. “You do that. That’s some fine brandy you’ve got there. We’ve got cider,” he added. And with that, they both departed.
Eddyn acted instantly. As soon as the doors closed behind their hosts, he fished a phial out of the blue pouch and emptied a healthy quantity of the contents into the mugs the grooms had been using.
“Not so much!” Rrath hissed. “It’s supposed to be burned. Concentrated like that—I don’t know …”
Eddyn glared at him. “Now you tell me! Pass me that cider, if you don’t mind.”
Rrath glared back, but complied, watching as Eddyn added a good dose of brandy to all four mugs, and more cider, accenting the whole with a dusting of dried mint he hoped would disguise the flavor of the drug. He set the containers close by the fire to warm. It wouldn’t take long. The cider had already been steaming.
Rrath hoped he knew what he was doing, but was too tired and brain-weary to argue. The morning’s witching had taken more out of him than he wanted to admit.
In any event, their hosts returned soon enough, Gorrinn encumbered by a pile of fresh-smelling bedding Rrath was loath to foul with his filthy body. He wondered if it was too late to beg a bath.
Gorrinn dropped his burden in the nearest chair and accepted the mug Eddyn offered. He sniffed the vapors appreciatively, and smiled, an easy relaxed smile that troubled Rrath for its utter lack of guile.
Vil took the second drink with stiff grace, leaving the two untainted ones for Eddyn and Rrath.
“Health,” Gorrinn laughed.
“I’ll drink to that,” Rrath chuckled back, earning a scowl from Eddyn.
“Long life,” Eddyn countered.
“And a good night’s sleep,” Vil finished, quaffing at least half of his at one draught.
“Lots of bad dreams of late,” Gorrinn confided offhand, smiling appreciatively.
They finished the libations quickly, and the two grooms trundled off toward one of the bedrooms—one less fire to keep going, Rrath supposed. They didn’t look like bond-brothers or lovers. Barely even friends, if the truth were known.
Eddyn reached for the nearest blanket. “How long before that takes effect?”
Rrath glared at him. “I don’t know—exactly. It’s designed to be breathed in smoke, not swallowed. What you gave them was a very concentrated dose, so I’d say—no more than a finger. They’ll be lucky to undress before bed.”
“If we hear a thump, we’ll know,” Eddyn replied dryly.
Rrath didn’t answer. He really did want to get some sleep before Eddyn had them out in the Wild again. Without waiting for any manifestation of Eddyn’s subterfuge, he stretched out on a thick wool rug before the fire and pulled a blanket over him.
Eddyn stayed up, pacing.
He was still pacing when something woke Rrath. He sat up groggily, looked around, fighting the heavy languor that had claimed him.
Eddyn’s face was unreadable. “They made it to bed,” he said tersely. “I’ve checked the horses and found two that will do—hardy enough for what we plan, but not so good we’d rob the world of something wonderful if we rode them to death.”
Rrath shuddered in spite of himself, but slowly began to untangle himself from the bedding. He yawned, stretched, and finished the last of his toddy—surprised to find it still warm.
Without saying a word, he followed Eddyn’s lead through a series of doors into a long curving arc of stone-paved corridor lit with rushlights and lined with stalls from which the sounds and scents of probably two hundred horses issued.
Eddyn made short work of locating those he’d chosen, waiting at patient tether outside the tack holds. Nor was Rrath surprised to find them already saddled and bridled. He patted the nose of the rough-coated gray gelding Eddyn had chosen for him and was rewarded with a grateful whicker. Eddyn’s was a big, rawboned mare with tired, trusting eyes—whose reins he took at once, leading her through a final gate and into the access corridor, pausing to wait for Rrath to likewise lead his through, before bolting the gate behind.
“I sure as Eight hope Gorrinn and Vil don’t decide to wake up around now,” Rrath muttered, as they slid one of the outer doors aside and eased into the night.
“They won’t,” Eddyn assured him, with an odd, strained edge in his voice that made Rrath pause in the act of climbing into his saddle.
“How can you be so sure?”
Eddyn’s eyes mirrored the night sky: near-black, and clouded by a sudden gust of chill wind. “Because I looked in on them before waking you,” he said softly. “One was asleep on the floor, as though he’d dropped down where he stood.”
“And the other …?” Rrath dared, as a cold fist squeezed his heart.
“It was the skinny one. He also dropped down in place—but unfortunately he seems to have hit his head as he fell. I’m pretty sure he’s dead.”
“Dead,” Rrath echoed numbly. “Someone who helped us—almost befriended us—is dead?”
“Of too much drink, it will appear,” Eddyn said quickly, as he, too, mounted up.
“Yes,” Rrath replied. “We’d better hope that’s how it appears, because if anyone finds that drug you used—Well, I wish you’d told me you were going to use it, because no one knows about that stuff but … those of whom I cannot speak.”
Eddyn shrugged. “And how many times have I wished you’d told me things?”
“What we need to wish now,” Rrath told him, as he kicked his horse to the fastest pace he dared in the knee-deep snow, “is that Gorrinn remembers very little about certain visitors.”
Eddyn nodded grimly. “Too bad those doors bolted from inside—but they’ll find the missing horses soon enough. If we’re lucky, we’ll be shots away by then.”
Rrath stared stonily at Eddyn’s back. “Someday,” he said, “Luck is going to claim an accounting of you. And you’d better be placating Him with every breath, because I don’t think even your connections will shield you from what’s no more than a razor’s edge from murder.”
CHAPTER VI:
HIDING OUT
(ERON: GEM-HOLD-WINTER-DEEP WINTER: DAY XLIII-LATE AFTERNOON)
It’s already getting hard to hide you,” Strynn sighed, as she deposited a tray of food atop the small table to the right of the slight, handsome youth who was at once her husband’s best friend and bond-brother, and in some odd sense her rival. The meal had appeared an instant earlier: brought to the suite’s
common room by one of her younger clansmen, doubling as a hall page. She’d brought it here, to Avall’s workroom, because no one except Avall, Rann, or she was legally allowed to enter such a place. But she wondered. Spies had spies of late.
Rann shot her a lopsided grin—an expression he usually reserved for Avall, which she found flattering. He raised the dome-shaped dish covers one by one, revealing fried blind-fish nuggets, fresh orange slices, hot bread, and a piquant sauce that was supposed to soothe pregnancy pains. His gaze promptly shifted from sauce, to lid, to Strynn’s bulging belly. He tried to fit the lid against it, and grinned again.
“It passed that size some time ago,” she growled, shooting the door bolt, then helping herself to a seat beside him. “But I’m serious, Rann. This is no life for any of us. We can maintain the facade for a while, but eventually I’ll have the child, and then I won’t have the excuse of ordering extravagant meals under the guise of eating for two.”
Rann patted his flat stomach. “I’ll eat less. If half an eighth in the Wild didn’t kill me, a whole one on short rations won’t, either.”
Neither mentioned the way he had looked when he’d returned from the Wild the previous evening: like a skeleton sewn into a bag of skin. He’d been eating practically nonstop ever since.
Strynn took a deep breath. “I’m serious, Rann. It’s starting to wear on me—and on Kylin.”
Rann nodded and helped himself to a swallow of wine. “You think I don’t appreciate this? I know the risk you’re taking hiding me. Not that they’d be able to get anything out of me I didn’t want to tell them—as if it would do any good now, if I told every sliver of the truth. But we have to remember that what we’re doing is buying Avall time. I know we’ve discussed this before, but the fact that Eddyn and Rrath set upon us proves without doubt that there’re others in this hold who know something. Those folks with Rrath—the ones who did the actual fighting—their clan tattoos were all obliterated except one. It was Priest-Clan, Strynn. But they had to have authority from somewhere, and the only place Rrath could’ve contacted them was here. Therefore, they have agents here, and if they have agents, you’re at risk. I’m the black stone in the white. If they move against you, they won’t have taken me into account. I don’t have to remind you that I owe you absolute allegiance as my bond-brother’s wife.”
Strynn smiled in spite of herself. Jealous she might be, at times, but that bond was a beautiful thing: true devotion that transcended gender. Nor had she been denied access to it. Not after they’d found the gem.
“Still, it has to be wearing on you,” she replied, “to stay cooped up like this. I know you’d like to be doing something for Avall—we all would. And we can’t.”
“We know he’s alive. That’s something.”
“It’s hope. But is hope enough?”
“Want to try again?”
Another deep breath. “I want to try every instant of every hand of every day. I know you don’t believe it when I say I love him as much as you do, but I do. We don’t have enough secrets from each other to matter now—none of us do. But Rann, I swear to you, if I could spend the rest of my life just lying somewhere warm with him beside me, I could be content. I don’t understand it, but it’s true.”
“I feel the same,” Rann replied. “But what have you heard about any of this? I hear nothing you don’t tell me.”
She regarded him wryly. “Only if you promise to eat while I talk, and not interrupt. We have got to get some meat on you, or Avall will kill me if—when—we survive all this.”
“Not likely,” Rann retorted. “He’d never get your like again, and he knows it. But for the sake of argument, go on.”
Strynn poured herself a full mug of wine and settled back, letting her body lapse into the slump her pregnancy demanded. She was already barefoot, and only refrained from asking Rann for a foot massage from fear they might both find that distracting. “Very well,” she began. “I know that Crim has already put far too much together, and The Eight alone know what the rest have puzzled out—especially Nyss, if what you said about Priest-Clan is true.”
“And what are you giving out as the official comment?”
“Same thing that I told our Clan-and Craft-Chiefs: that Avall first and foremost serves his country and King, and that anything I say would put both at risk.”
“You’ve not lied then? Not directly?”
She shook her head. “I know better. If this resolves as it ought, we’ll have royal warrant for whatever we’ve done. No one here can command me directly, and I’ve said I’ll tell anything they like—in the presence of Eellon, Tryffon, Preedor, and the King.”
“But if they knew I was here, you’d have to tell the truth about me—as much as you know. So maybe I ought to think about leaving again. Ideally, we both ought to. Or all three, given that our departure would leave Kylin totally on his own.”
Strynn rolled her eyes. “What a notion! A pregnant woman, a blind man, and a fatally idealistic scarecrow who’d blow away in a high wind.”
“I’m still heavier than Kylin,” Rann shot back. “In any case, we at least ought to consider the possibility before we completely dismiss the idea. Remember, we thought it was preposterous when Avall and I first proposed going out into the Deep. But then we found that at least two types of people do it all the time. Hunters, whom we sort of knew about, and whatever those screwy Priests were.”
“Which raises the question. What about Div?”
“What about her?”
“Would she shelter us?”
“Of course! She’d adore you—and put you to work sharpening every blade in the place.”
“And you’re sure no one else knows about her?”
“Not here, I don’t think; woodswomen like her tend to keep to themselves and trade only with the Tanners. And even as savvy as she is about the Wild, she’d never had reason to suspect the Priests exist, else she’d have been prepared for them.
“They know about her now, though,” he went on. “Which is a reason we shouldn’t go there. If they’re watching her—Well, it’d be the three of us plus maybe some birkits, against the whole nebulous might of whatever group those fellows represent.”
Strynn started to reply, but paused. A knock had sounded on the door to the outer chamber—her nominal sitting room. She waited until it repeated: three raps, then three again, then two. Fine: It was safe. She rose, hastening through the door even as Rann moved to lock it behind her. Strynn heard the bolt shoot home as she stepped from sitting room to vestibule.
A third cadence had begun before she was able to shoot all three bolts and heave the heavy panel open. It was Kylin syn Omyrr, of Music, with his harp in tow. He was a bit shorter than either Rann or Avall, which put him on the low end of average, and was elegantly—almost daintily—built. Typical for him, he wore house-hose and short-tunic of velvet, the textures compensating, he claimed, for his lack of sight. He also wore a sylk blindfold across his eyes, and carried a slender, silver-chased cane Strynn had made him from an aborted sword.
“Is this a bad time?” he ventured, wrinkling his nose—to catch the scent of her perfume: one of several ways he identified her.
“Not at all,” she murmured, whisking him inside and resecuring the door. “In fact, Rann and I seemed to have blundered from discussion to actual plotting. We could use another head.”
“Music helps the brain think more harmoniously,” Kylin chuckled, his voice smooth as the fabric that covered him. He walked soundlessly in low velvet boots to the door to the workroom. Unerringly, Strynn noted. He paused there expectantly while she turned the key.
Rann shot the bolts from inside as soon as she began, and ushered them both in, helping Kylin to his own former seat, before locking the door again and securing another chair for himself. The light was failing and the room held a comfortable gloom that encouraged conversation. Kylin sniffed the food appreciatively and helped himself to a fish in sauce. “You eat better than I do,” he murmured.
“Try getting pregnant and see how you’re fed,” Strynn shot back, with what she discovered was honest good humor. She didn’t like having Kylin out and about in the hold—too many things could happen to him there. But he was the Hold-Warden’s favorite musician, and also had other obligations, including those to his craft, in which he was both student and teacher. His quarters were here, however; Strynn had secured that as a clan boon after Eddyn’s savage attack on the harper, the bruises from which were still fading.
In any case, her circle was now as complete as it could be without Avall and his twin: her bond-sister, Merryn. The wine was calming her, too, while at the same time sharpening her wits by filtering out extraneous worries. Which is how it worked with creative people.
“We were talking about leaving,” Rann told Kylin, just loud enough to be heard above the harper’s subtle melody.
“Who is we?” Kylin murmured. “And what, exactly, do you mean by ‘leaving’?”
Strynn tried to glare at Rann, but couldn’t without feeling a hypocrite.
“The three of us, in theory. We’re not really safe here, and it’s only going to get worse, especially for Strynn as her time approaches. Me … I’m ready to go back out if I have to, but Strynn won’t let me. Plus I’m bound by oath to Avall to look after her. Oh, I could find somewhere in this warren to hide, and ghost about surreptitiously, but that would be a risk, if for no other reason because if I was caught, people would want to know why I thought I had to hide. Nor would I have a good answer. But perhaps I should—just to hear what’s being said. I think … I can use Strynn’s gem to help with some of that. With your permission, of course,” he added, to Strynn.
“I’ll have to think about it,” she said.
“Surely you’re not serious,” Kylin yipped. “With your time almost upon you.”
“Women have given birth in the Wild before,” Strynn answered tartly. “I’m strong for a woman and we’re not talking about going all the way to Tir-Eron.”
“We weren’t really talking about it at all,” Rann grumbled. “This is getting a little too serious.”
