Warautumn by Tom Deitz Page A

Clan septs began to give way to those of rising status in Common Clan. Granted, a third of the buildings facing the pavement were still businesses or small holds, and a third were state-run apartmentsgiven over mostly to clanless folk—and now, refugees from South Gorge and Half. But a third were also the holds of private citizens or families; most walled, and far enough from the heart of the city that the turmoil that had marred Mask Night had reached there but sporadically. Only one had been torched, and that in error. And while the Ninth Face had dutifully made their sweeps in search of High Clan chiefs they could disempower, they had found no one home—in large part because those chiefs were already sheltering in disguise with trusted, but less politically visible, neighbors.
    Lynee’s family owned a candle shop farther west, but one of their primary customers had long been an increasingly affluent Common Clan family, and it was that estate she was approaching now—like Tyrill, in the guise of an unsteady drunk.
    She was not drunk, however, when she knocked a certain cadence on a certain gate and was summarily admitted—not to the estate itself, at this time of night; but into the gate-warden’s quarters, where waited another member of the former Council of Chiefs.
    It was hard not to bow to the man who rose to meet her from where he’d been reading in the gate-warden’s common hall. One
usually
bowed to Clan- and Craft-Chiefs, and certainly to ones as renowned as this one, for Lynee had come to meet Ilfon syn Kanai, former Craft-Chief of Lore, who—happily for him—had been absent from Tir-Eron during the uprising: a fact about which Priest-Clan was known to be deeply concerned, since Lore, with Smith, War, and Stone, was among the most powerful clans.
    In any case, Ilfon was not one to stand on more than minimal ceremony, and merely grinned wryly at Lynee’s amazement—which made her blush furiously, to her chagrin.
But how could she not?
Even in a nation of handsome men and beautiful women, Ilfon surpassed the norm. Though not as tall as many, his features—like Strynn’s—were absolutely symmetrical in a way that had been studied, in particular, by Paint,but by the sculptors in Smith and Stone as well. Like Strynn, too, no one feature tipped the balance toward perfection, but again like her, the consensus was that Ilfon’s face achieved some “finer synthesis” of all elements deemed, by the beauty-obsessed Eronese, to be desirable.
    That had been … before. Now, he was dirty by design, had dyed his hair a nondescript brown, and cut it roughly. Finally, he’d managed to convince one of his squires that it was in the best interest of all involved to break his nose—which indeed served as a very admirable disguise—especially as the swelling and bruising had not entirely abated.
    But it was not Ilfon’s looks that concerned Lynee now; it was what he might have to tell her.
    “I’ve little time,” Ilfon said, motioning Lynee to the other seat, then glancing up to see if their nominal host had departed.
    “Nor have I,” Lynee replied, though she accepted his offer. “Tyrill’s abroad tonight, doing who-knows-what, though I suspect.”
    “What?”
    “I will only say that if any of the Face are found dead under mysterious causes, they might be less mysterious to Tyrill. Beyond that—”
    Ilfon grinned again. “I’m used to wait-and-see.”
    Lynee shifted restlessly. “Lord … have you learned—?”
    Ilfon nodded in turn. “Most of what Tyrill desired. Unless things have changed in the last two hands, the King’s heir is, indeed, safe, as is the heir’s foster-one-mother.”
    “You found Evvion?”
    “It wasn’t hard. You know how she hates ceremony? Well, she hates revelry more. She therefore tries to find some reason to absent herself from Tir-Eron on Mask Night. And frankly—and to her benefit now—she’s been so unobtrusive for so long that people tend to forget she