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chambers hollowed in the rock of Tar-Megon itself. Argen'svein was to the right, the guard niches beside the entrance occupied by two weary-looking women in Gem-Hold livery. They straightened when they saw her, and nodded smartly, trying to look alert, and failing. Crim didn't blame them. This was dull work, most of the time. But now, regrettably, necessary.
    “Any visitors?”
    “Argen's Sub-Craft-Chief, about a hand ago,” the righthand guard replied
    Crim grunted an acknowledgment and continued on.
    The vein itself was fronted by a circular chamber three spans across, its walls covered with gold leaf and its marble floor marked by Smithcraft's sigil wrought of rustless steel. The same emblem was cut into the stone above the archway that gave onto the vein itself.
    But where was the guard?
Besides the two she'd posted in the corridor beyond, Argen had started posting one of its own here. Yet the niche by the door was empty. Still,
her
guards had said nothing about anyone leaving. Therefore …
    It was with considerable determination that she strode through the archway and into the vein itself. One span beyond the entrance, the floor became dirt and began to slope upward. Soon enough she had to stoop to continue, which was when she began to see the irregular openings of the side veins, most of them entering the main one at roughly waist level—dark, uninviting holes so small a person must crawl to work them, which had led to their being called crawls.
    Propriety got the best of her beside the first one. This was her hold, aye, and the hold of her clan. But it was Argen's territory on which she actually stood, as much theirs as Argen-Hall in Tir-Eron. She had no right here save by courtesy and with permission she'd neither sought nor expected to have granted.
    Still, Tir-Eron—and Argen-Hall—were a thousand shots to the southwest, and while their local representatives were among the more forceful representatives of that clan, she had a fair bit of experience with force herself, much of it recent, when bullying had become a fact of life. Unfortunately,Brayl and Pannin, the old Argen chiefs she'd known for so long, were gone, having left the previous spring in ignorance of the war they'd found mustering upon reaching Tir-Eron. Their replacements had been two women who'd fallen from favor with old Eellon and been dispatched here. A new Sub-Craft-Chief had come with them.
    Both Clan-Chiefs kept to their quarters, but Liallyn, Smith's much younger Sub-Craft-Chief, could often be found here, and was in fact in the vein even now. Which was just as well; Crim needed to talk to her. Indeed, she almost abandoned decorum in truth, and was actually removing her cloak with the notion of entering the nearest crawl in her shift, when she heard the sound of someone backing out of it. By the feet, which appeared first, it was male. The missing guard, in fact, looking embarrassed at being caught off his post and in such disarray. He wore no sword, but did sport a dagger. And given the closeness between Argen and Ferr, he probably knew how to use it better than most. Indeed his hands reached to it by reflex, before he realized whom he was confronting. A shadow of confusion crossed his face. This was his clan's vein, but Crim was the Hold-Warden …
    He had already opened his mouth, when a second set of scrabblings issued from the crawl. He sighed relief and looked away—which implied that whoever he awaited ranked him, which meant he could abdicate responsibility.
    More feet appeared, these clad in dirty boots and small enough to belong to a woman. Legs followed, cased in the leather breeches worn by both sexes when working the narrower crawls. Someone fairly young and supple, to judge by the way those hips were twisting.
    Liallyn herself, as it turned out. The woman—she was roughly Crim's age, and they shared some history, years ago— brushed dirt off her tunic and was already inhaling the shaft's relatively fresher air, when the