“In what, two more days? Three?”
“According to Vansen, it might be as little as one.”
Antimony snorted. “No offense, Master Chert, but I doubt we’d have managed it. We still have several more yards of stone to cut and move in Mudstone Reach before we can lay the charges, and twice that in Last Reach. Too bad we couldn’t use blasting powder to open the holes to put in the blasting powder ...” He chuckled.
Chert’s gloom turned to a moment of pure terror. “By the Elders, Antimony, don’t even jest! If we knocked down the walls at Last Reach before we were ready ...”
“I know, I know.” The young monk rubbed his big hands together. “But I wouldn’t mind if we did it and forgot to tell Brother Nickel, I’ll confess. Does that make me a bad Metamorphic Brother, do you think?” He laughed again, but it had a morose tone. “And how are your wife and the other ladies doing?”
“Very well, actually. They surprise me.” Chert knew he should get up and try to solve some of his many problems, but he felt weak and brittle, as if all his supporting struts had burned away. “I do not think we will have corned sixty barrels worth of blasting powder by tonight, but we will be close to it. That Vermilion is at least as much of a general as her husband, if not quite so sweet-natured. She and Opal have not just the other women jumping to their drumbeat, but Ash Nitre and his men, too. Do you remember when part of the guildhall fell down a few years ago, how the men stood in lines passing stone hand to hand all through the first night? That’s what it looks like down by the ladies’ camp. Never doubt that women can sweat, Antimony.”
“I never did,” the monk said. “I come from a big family. Our mum had nine to feed, but she still always had a hand free to give me a clout on the head if she thought I was out of line.”
Chert smiled. “Ah, well. I have sat here like a lump of flint in a limestone bed for long enough. We’d better make sure things are safely secured here while I think of what to do next. Where’s Salt?” Although Antimony was Chert’s eyes and ears, Salt Nitre, Ash and Sulphur’s nephew, was the job’s foreman. “And for that matter, where’s Chaven?”
Antimony looked at him strangely. “What do you mean? Isn’t Chaven back in Powder Camp with you and the women?”
“No.” Chert felt a clutch in his chest. “Of course not. He said he was coming here to give you what help he could—told me he was too big and clumsy and would only be in the way among all those nimble little ladies. You know how he talks. Didn’t he come here?”
“Never.” Antimony shook his head emphatically. “We have fewer than a hundred men here, all of them retired Guildsmen. We take our meals together here and we sleep each night back at the temple. I’ve seen no sign of Chaven either place and he’s hard to miss, being twice as tall as the rest of us. He’s been gone since the Xixians invaded our tunnels.”
“By the Elders,” Chert groaned. “He is wandering lost down in the depths somewhere, with the autarch’s men all around, and those horrible clawed monsters, and… and ...”
A sudden, even more frightening thought occurred to him: Chaven had been acting strangely since he had come to Funderling Town—perhaps his obsession with the mirror had turned him traitor. Perhaps the physician had sold his allegiance to the one man who could help him get the mirror back, the mirror that he yearned for like a drunkard craved mossbrew. Perhaps even now he was taking news of Vansen’s and Cinnabar’s plans—and even of Chert’s own farfetched scheme—to their greatest foe, the Autarch of Xis.…
“He wouldn’t do that ...” Chert said quietly, mostly to convince himself.
“What did you say, Master Blue Quartz?” Antimony asked. “You don’t look well. Should I get you something to drink?”
“No, no.” Chert’s skin was cold with sudden fear. “Nothing for me. I don’t think I could keep anything down.”
“The southern mortals will come down from the hills with the morning’s light,” Saqri said when she returned to Barrick’s tent. “They have numbers and powerful guns, and they fear their master too much to do otherwise. Most of all, they fear what he will do to them if he is victorious below but they have lost everything above.”
Barrick tried to heave himself out of the cot, but the walk down the beach had overwhelmed him. He settled for sitting upright, which made him feel less of an invalid. “What does that mean, Saqri? We fight them again?”
“It means we must not be here. Otherwise, we will be fighting a pointless battle for nothing more important than the honor of the Xixians when the true danger is below. How is your strength?”
“I can walk if I go slowly.” He paused, troubled. “My sister. That was my sister.”
“I saw her, yes.”
He didn’t remember how he had once felt, that was the problem, but he knew he did not have those feelings anymore. “She was unhappy with me. Why?”
“Perhaps because you are no longer the child she remembered and that frightens her. Perhaps because you have found newer and greater responsibilities, or have changed in other ways she cannot understand.” Saqri’s dispassion was so complete it almost looked studied. “Who can say?”
“It bothers me, and I don’t know why. I feel as though I’ve lost something important. Left something behind ...”
The minute downturn of her lips was a frown. “Do not waste your thought on it, Barrick Eddon. We have more than enough to do. The southerners have a long lead on us—in fact, they have almost reached the deepest place, the very Last Hour of the Ancestor.”
He did his best to shake off the mood brought on by seeing his sister. What could it matter now, when the People’s last moments were at hand? “But it seems so hopeless—you told me that the ritual, the spell, whatever foul thing it is that the autarch seeks to do, is meant to happen tomorrow ...”
“One moment after midnight,” Saqri said. “When the year begins to die.”
“How can we possibly stop him before then? He has thousands of men in the caverns. You sent our only allies away, my sister and those Syannese, to fight in the castle against other mortals. Why? What chance will we have now?”
“No chance at all, of course.” Still the impassive mask. “But we have many other important things to concern us. I myself must choose what to do with my death.”
For a moment he thought he had not heard her. When he spoke, his skin was prickling. “Your… death?”
“It is hard to explain, but I think there will be no small power in the death of half the Fireflower. Perhaps not enough to change the outcome of such an uneven fight, but perhaps at least enough to thwart the autarch in some way. But if I am not there to employ it, my death will avail nothing.”
He swallowed. “And me… ? Do I have this… death to give, too?”
She made the gesture The Book is Closed, a Qar equivalent of a shrug. “What I speak of has never happened before. Always when one of my ancestors died in battle their heirs were primed to take the Fireflower. Now, who knows? I die with no living issue. As for you… ?” Saqri shrugged. “Nothing like you has ever been heard of, not by the Fireflower, not even among those of the Deep Library.” Her smile looked like the bared teeth of a wolf. “Still, I would advise you not to sell your own passing lightly, either.”
He nodded, pushing away the mote of disquiet which meeting his sister had left in him. “So we fight. And we almost certainly die.” It seemed so simple and so final—but also so terrifying. “Not knowing if we have won or lost. Not knowing what happened to Qinnitan.”
“It is possible we will find your southern girl before the end.” Saqri did not quite seem to approve. “As for the rest, we will lose, of course—that is certain. In the whole of our world there is no longer enough Qar… magic left, as you would call it, to save us. But you and I still have work of our own to do. For better or for worse, my husband chose you to carry the Fireflower of the kings into this final battle. That is why I gave you the armor that once belonged to my son, Janniya. It did not save him. He died here in Southmarch at the hands of your ancestor, but to me he was noble and lovely beyond even the gods themselves.” She put her hand upon his. “Will you fight with me, Barrick Eddon?”