“Come here,” she said, lifting her pale hands. “Let me give you a kiss.” And to his immense sadness, she did—a chaste, sisterly peck on the cheek. “I will never forget you, Matt. I will never forget you, or your sister, or your mother ...”
“Nobody forgets my mother,” he said bitterly.
“You could be a better son to her, you know. She only wants what is best for you. ...”
Tinwright’s aching heart immediately shrank inward a little, nestling deeper in his ribs. He began to say something sour, then realized that he and Elan were not even speaking the same tongue any more. “Best for me? You must think I’m a child.”
“I think you are a good, kind man.”
“Which it does not take a poet to understand is the same as saying, ‘I don’t need you any more,’ am I right?”
“Don’t be angry, please.”
“Angry?” He stood up and bowed. “Not at all, my lady, not at all. No, I am happy, because I have learned an important thing about love today—and that’s a poet’s proper study, isn’t it—love? Farewell, Elan. I wish you and Gailon very well.”
But when he looked back from the doorway after this noble, poetic leavetaking, Elan M’Cory wasn’t even watching him leave with eyes full of regret and longing, as he had hoped. She had returned to her stitchery.
“I saw no sign of him,” Chert reported to Opal as he slumped onto the seat. “I asked all over town, and no one else has, either.”
Opal could barely muster the strength to look up. “Why did he lie to me? Why did he tell me I would see him again?”
Chert sat beside her on the bench and wished for the hundredth time that they didn’t have to shelter in his brother’s house, but their own place on Wedge Road was too close to the area where Durstin Crowel and the renegade Tolly supporters held out against capture.
As if to remind him of all the miseries in his life, Nodule Blue Quartz picked this particular moment to come down the stairs and into the dust parlor that was currently serving as his brother’s and sister-in-law’s place of refuge. “Ah, Chert. Sitting about, I see. Surely you can find some way to pitch in and help—the Elders know, there is plenty to do these days.” He nodded slowly, as if the weight of his responsibilities made even such simple movements difficult. “And someone was here from the guildhall claiming you are wanted upground at the castle.” He laughed, but there was more than a little anger in it. “I imagine someone has simply mistaken you for me, but the fool of a messenger kept saying no, it was you who was wanted, so I suppose you must go and find out.” Nodule nodded to Opal, shouldered on his cloak, and went out the front door.
Chert had barely heard what his brother said about the summons; he was still chewing over the insult. Pitch in and help? It was he who almost destroyed everything, Chert thought. My own brother. He tried to stop me without even bothering to find out what I was doing.
Another thought came to him, one that had been there all along but he had been too busy to entertain. I had something to do with all that happened—with things turning out better than they might have otherwise. With the end of that autarch fellow. With us all being alive. For a moment Chert wanted to run after his older brother and skull him with a rock. Me. Not him. But so far most of Funderling Town knew only enough of what had happened to understand that Chert had been instrumental in destroying their most sacred places.
He was startled out of his reverie by Opal’s hand closing on his arm, a hard squeeze with fingernails in it. “Go to her,” she said.
“What? Go to whom? Why?”
Opal’s deep, crippling sadness had fallen away, replaced by a feverish intensity only marginally less worrisome. “To the princess, of course, since you must go up to the castle anyway. You saved her life! She will help us!”
“Saved her life? Perhaps. But she also saved mine. I told you, it was nothing so simple as ...”
“Tell her we need her to find our boy! Tell her all Flint did! She cannot turn you down—she owes you!”
“But, my love, Princess Briony has more than enough to do ...”
“What could be more important than finding our boy, you old fool? You heard what Antimony said—he saved Beetledown so he could deliver the Astion! And the Qar—Flint did things for the Qar, too, although I never quite understood. But… but our boy matters. Tell her that. Flint matters. She must help him!”
Chert shook his head, though he knew the battle was already lost. “I cannot simply go to Briony Eddon, the princess regent of all the March Kingdoms, and say, ‘You must find our son.’ She will think me mad.”
“She will think you a father.” Opal had that look, the one she wore when something was agreed upon, even if she was the only one agreeing. “She had a father herself—in fact she has just lost him. She will understand.”
Chert sighed. The pain of Flint’s absence was terrible, but he felt certain that begging the mistress of all Southmarch for her help wouldn’t change things. If he still lived, Flint would not be found unless he wanted to be found. A new thought chilled him. If they never found Flint, would Opal ever be happy again?
“Of course I will go to her,” was what he said out loud. “Of course I will, my only darling.”
Sister Utta came back from her walk along the walls heartened. It was good to see so many people already at the work of rebuilding Southmarch, although she knew a long time would have to pass before the scars of the conflict were even partially hidden. How much longer until people’s hearts had also been mended? That Utta couldn’t say, but she could smell summer in the air and that was good enough for now. The day after the ocean had crashed in and drowned the deepest caverns beneath the castle, black clouds had filled the sky over Southmarch, hurling down rain as if to soak all that was aboveground as well. In the storm’s wake, little sprigs of green had already begun sprouting between the broken stones and out of the gouged, naked mud of the commons.
As if to underscore this theme of renewal, Merolanna was sitting up in her bed taking soup from one of her maids. The duchess had seemed at death’s door only a few days ago, but today was feeling so much better that Sister Utta had been able to leave the nursing to others and go out of the house for a little while.
“Utta!” Merolanna pushed away her bowl with a trembling hand and shook her head sternly when the maid offered her more. “I have been asking for you, my dear. I feel as though I have been on a long journey. Tell me all the news, quickly—is it true Hendon Tolly and his bullies are gone?”
“Tolly is dead by all reports,” Utta said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “But you should lie back and rest. We will have plenty of time to talk later.”
“Nonsense. At my age?” Merolanna laughed, although her voice was still weak and reedy. “In any case, I have news of my own! I have met my son.”
“What?” Utta’s heart, so buoyant only a moment before at seeing her friend so much better, suddenly felt cold. Was it still the lingering fever, or was this madness something separate and deeper, something that would not go away even if the dowager duchess regained her health? “You saw him?”
“Not just saw him, met him! He came to me!” The old woman laughed again, then frowned as the maid dabbed at a spot of soup on her chin. “Stop that, girl. And Utta, don’t frown. I can tell by your face that you think this some feebleness of mine, or else a piece of fever-foolery, but it was neither. He came to my bedside last night after you slept. I saw him and spoke to him. He even remembered his true name, the name only I know… Adis.” She looked a little abashed. “I named him for the holy Orphan, yes. But even so, it did not protect him—the fairies stole him anyway.”