Author's Preface
Only Umin's way-weary and thinning boots rasp along in their passage.
From out the wood-whorled hall and across a chiaroscuro commons.
Here numerous figures lounge. Clad in the commonly caliginous and ample garb - all folds, creases, pockets and flowing cloth for alacrity, concealment and cleverness - of those in the unending employ of the Lower Houses .
Huddled and hushed before short candles and dusky lamps, around low stony tables.
Sipping, murmuring and subdued laughter.
The ivory pin-prick of one man's apparently blind eye, his abbreviated beard a grey scraggle, snares Umin's gaze for a singular moment. Something akin to recognition briefly passing there.
Ah love, can you smell Enic?
He is the oldest and most belovéd of Father's Weavers...
All fennel and garlic.
Pyna mocks in a playful sing-song, unheeding of Umin's tremor as he hastily turns from the old man's crafty and murderous eye.
As the pair move nimbly through another broad, bent-frame doorway and out of the crepuscular commons.