Springwar Read Online Free PDF Page A

you … Well, I said it before. I don’t like secrets.”
    “And you?” Ayll inquired archly.
    Crim managed a sly smile. “I will hear what you all have to say three days hence. After that … let’s just say that it’s well past time that I offered my condolences to the … widow.” And with that, she rose and gestured them all into the antechamber.
    “It’s too bad,” Pannin murmured to Ayll as they moved toward the door, “that torture is illegal.”
    Crim caught that comment and had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. She agreed. But she’d start her interrogation at a more rarefied level entirely.
    In spite of the fact that he was her courtesy escort, Nyss found it hard to match paces with Sipt as they made their way down one stone corridor after another, first through Gem-Hold’s attics, then through the living quarters. They didn’t speak, though Sipt’s jaw twitched once or twice, which made Nyss wonder what he might be provoked into revealing under certain circumstances, with particular stimuli.
    In any event, she was grateful when they made one last turn, which put them in the common room outside Priest-Clan’s suite. Its sigil glittered in the floor, worked in colored marble. Wood-paneled passages teed off to either side, and a light well brought indirect illumination from the rapidly rising sun.
    She bowed her thanks and stole away, approaching her suite alone. The lock required two keys, for more reasons than personal security. Nor did she linger in her chambers longer than required to divest herself of cloak and hood, and to retrieve three black tiles, each a hand square, from a secret compartment in one of her bedposts. Thus equipped, she made her way into the bath, knelt, and pressed three other black tiles in one corner simultaneously. Each promptly lowered a finger’s width. A deep breath, and she dropped the remaining tiles into the resultant recesses and pressed them down in turn.
    Something clicked, and she rose to watch a section of the wall slide back, then aside, revealing a passage barely wider than her shoulders, lit by a lone glow-globe. She entered boldly, pausing only to confirm that the panel had closed behind her, then moved on—straight at first, then up a tightly coiled stair that made her wish she’d chosen house-hose and a short tunic instead of her robes of office.
    Soon enough she found herself on the landing of another,better-lit corridor, paved with alternating bands of colored marble. She stepped on certain colors in sequence as she marched along, which would send word of her approach ahead. And was not surprised when the blank wall at the end of the corridor drew back to reveal an antechamber no more than a span square, but as luxuriously decorated as any she’d ever seen, where richness of materials was concerned. The door beyond opened into a room two spans to a side, lit only by a glass-brick wall fronting a light well that bathed the chamber in soft radiance.
    A figure sat before it, enthroned in a limestone chair, hooded, cloaked, and with a mouth-mask raised, so that only eyes showed. Thus arrayed, it was impossible to determine the person’s age or sex. Twin mugs of cauf steamed on a low table to the figure’s right, one of which the host took in a gloved hand and raised in salute.
    Nyss did the same. This was ritual. A pause for one sip—the sip of trust—and Nyss spoke without prompting. “They know.”
    “Ah, but
what
do they know?” the figure replied in a buzzy voice, courtesy of a metal screen affixed to the mask.
    “They are questioning why Rrath would dare the Deep with Eddyn. They do not believe his friendship with Eddyn sufficient. And that implies some agenda of his own—which as much as implicates Priest-Clan.”
    “Can we stand the scrutiny?”
    Nyss gnawed her lip for a moment before replying. “The surface can stand it,” she said at last, “because the surface doesn’t know the heart, and can therefore only speculate, not