“Still,” he whispered to Briony, “your men should keep their voices down. Sound bounces off stone in unexpected ways.”
He led them down a tiny street and into a deserted house at one end of it, praying that he had remembered the location correctly, a hidden passage he had occasionally used when he wanted to depart Chaven’s house without leaving the upground castle entirely. He was gratified by the surprise on Briony’s face as he revealed the trapdoor hidden in what looked like a room piled with builder’s trash.
Chert led the princess and her soldiers down a stairwell to a passage. A short while later they reached the basement door of the observatory where one of the soldiers slipped the latch with his dagger, then they were inside.
Chert looked around at the hangings and remembered when he had hidden here with Chaven from Hendon Tolly and Brother Okros. That seemed so long ago! Briony looked as though she had memories of her own. “And this is truly part of Chaven’s house?” she whispered. “Incredible!”
“The last time I was here, there were guards,” Chert warned her.
There were guards still. One of them, probably returning from a trip to the jakes, stumbled on the Syannese soldiers as they emerged from the stairs onto a ground-floor landing. The guard lunged at Chert with his spear, almost spitting the Funderling like a suckling pig, but Princess Briony’s Syannese soldiers surrounded the guard and cut him down before he could call out.
“Tolly livery,” she said quietly, prodding the dead man with her shoe. “An ugly sight. I have seen it everywhere since I returned.”
They encountered no one else as they made their way through the observatory. Chert did not take Briony and her soldiers out the front door, but led them out from a lower floor and along one of the other secrets of the observatory, a narrow passage that opened into the basement of a small building within the walls of the inner keep some distance from the physician’s house. “Even Chaven himself isn’t aware that I know of this one,” Chert said. He didn’t mention that it was actually Flint who had discovered it on one of their earlier visits.
“Our entire keep is riddled with tunnels like a rabbit warren!” Briony said in astonishment. “Not meaning any offense, Master Blue Quartz, but I thought I could not be surprised by anything else.”
“We aren’t rabbits,” Chert said. “But we are small and we like to dig.”
“Don’t misunderstand me,” she replied. “Just now, I am very happy with my Funderling subjects and their delving!”
The streets of the inner keep were all but empty, which was especially strange so close to Midsummer, when ordinarily the streets would have been full of revelers, but soldiers stood in numbers atop each of the cardinal towers and even in the shattered upper stories of Wolfstooth Spire.
“Now I must go, Highness, with your leave,” Chert said as they stood in the shadows of the passage from the observatory. Briony’s men had extinguished their torches and waited for her on the stairs just below.
“Go? I had hoped for more of your help, Chert Blue Quartz.” The princess did not sound pleased, and he feared her anger because he truly had no time to waste.
“And I would gladly give it, Highness, but I have an errand of my own—one just as important as yours, if I do not overreach myself to say so, perhaps even more important. An errand for your people as well as mine. But time grows short.”
She considered his words. “Yes, time grows short—it doesn’t take the wisdom of the gods to know that. Do what you must. I hope if we both survive we can have a proper talk someday about this night’s doings, Chert of the Funderlings, because I still have many unanswered questions. For one thing, you seem very familiar with the plan of the royal physician’s house ...”
“I… have been there before. A time or two.”
“I thought so. Will you promise me that talk, then?”
“I’d be honored, Highness. But as you said, it can only happen if we both survive. Be careful, Princess. Your people do not want to lose you so soon after your return.”
She laughed quietly. “And I feel sure your people would want you to be careful, also. Go with Zoria’s blessing.”
“And the Earth Elders protect you, Highness.”
A moment later she had trotted down the stairs, quiet as a cat, leaving Chert alone on Chaven’s doorstep.
The moon was high in the sky, mostly full, a lopsided white grape that shed so much light, sharp-eyed Chert felt quite conspicuous as he made his way across the inner keep in the shadow of the walls. The crashing of the cannons had finally ended, but he could still hear the sentries atop the walls shouting insults down at the Syannese in the outer keep.
The castle was quite different than he remembered—so much damage in such a small time! Rubble lay everywhere, and the once-beautiful greens had disappeared beneath dozens of refugee encampments, but the makeshift village abruptly ended at the hill on which the royal residence sat, enforced by a ring of armed sentries, an arrangement which made it plain that Hendon Tolly did not welcome peasants setting up housekeeping on his front doorstep.
Staying to the shadows, freezing at every unfamiliar sound or movement as though he really were a rabbit, Chert made his careful way across the inner keep beneath the rising moon, its great yellow bulk becoming smaller and colder as it climbed the sky. A lone bell in a residence tower was chiming midnight when he reached the Eddon family’s ivy-covered chapel on one corner of the Throne hall. It was the only place he could think of to come for what he needed. But even after almost being blown to flinders by a cannonball and being thrown in a sack and kidnapped, the worst part of his day’s work was still ahead. He had to climb to the roof.
Puffing so hard he saw little flashes before his eyes, so damp with sweat that even the cool night air could not ease it, Chert at last managed to pull himself over the wide, leaded gutter and onto the roof tiles. For long moments he could only lie on his back gasping for air. At last he was able to sit up again, wiping his forehead with his hands. The rooftop was empty but for the billowed moon perched between two chimneys as though someone had washed it and hung it out to dry.
He raised his voice as loud as he dared and called, “People of the rooftop! Subjects of Queen Upsteeplebat, it’s Chert of the Funderlings—a friend! I need you!”
Nothing happened. He tried again, certain that down in the darkness of the courtyards or across the narrow streets someone must be listening, perhaps even hurrying off to report what they heard to Tolly’s soldiers, but there seemed to be no movement on the rooftop. At last, just when he thought he might lie down and rest for a while and then try again when the moon had dropped behind the nearest tower, he heard a rustling sound and looked up to see a tiny shape crouching atop the roofline above his head, silhouetted against the parchment-colored moon.
“What be your business with Her Exquisite and Unforgotten Majesty?” demanded the tiny fellow. Chert crawled a few yards up the roof before answering so that he could keep his voice low. The little man watched him with what Chert imagined was amusement at how this monstrously large and clumsy creature kept its belly pressed against the roof as though a stray wind might sweep it up and blow it away.
The Rooftopper was a Gutter-Scout, but not one Chert had met before. Still, he seemed to know the Funderling’s name. After listening to what Chert had to say he just nodded his head, said, “Tha must be waiting,” and then dropped down the far side of the roofline out of Chert’s sight.