“Papa Chert?”
He started. As was often the case, Flint had been silent so long he had forgotten he was there. “What, lad?”
The boy frowned as if trying to find the words to put across some particularly difficult notion. “I don’t feel well.”
“What’s wrong? Is it your middle? Are you hungry?”
Flint shook his pale head. As always, he was as solemn as a Metamorphic Brother at prayer. “No. I feel strange. Something is starting up. Coming awake.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “No. Not coming awake. Still asleep ... but coming closer.” He wrapped his slender arms around his chest as though suddenly cold. “It gets stronger. In my sleep every night I hear the singing. It’s my fault. That’s what it says. It’s my fault and it’s going to get out.”
Chert opened his mouth and then shut it. He knew that what he had been about to say, whatever it might have been—Don’t worry, lad, all will be well, or They’re just bad dreams—would have been a lie. And one thing about Flint was, it didn’t do any good to lie to him. He always seemed to know. Since the moment he had entered their lives, since the moment Opal had fed him and he had attached himself to them like a stray cat, Chert had always felt that the boy knew more than Chert did himself. And, often enough to be disturbing, Flint had proved that it was true.
“Is there anything I can do?” he asked instead.
Flint looked up at him, and there was enough of the frightened child in him still, of a true frightened innocent, that Chert’s heart felt as though it would break in his breast. “I don’t know,” the boy said quietly. “I don’t think so. But sometimes I feel that I shouldn’t be here—that I should go away. Far away.”
“You can’t do that, lad. Your mother would throw a strut and dump a load wall. No, if you’re really worried about things then you should stay close to her. There’s nothing on this earth, whether goblin or southron, that wouldn’t be scared of Opal.”
Flint actually smiled, a tiny, shy twitch of the lips that Chert had seen only twice or thrice all told. “You always say that, but you’re not really afraid of her.”
“Oh, but I am, lad. That woman is a terror, and I am more frightened than you can guess.”
Flint looked at him closely, not certain whether he was joking or not. Chert wasn’t quite certain, either. “Frightened of what?”
“That I’ll disappoint her. That I’ll let her down. That she’ll finally decide she shouldn’t have married me—that she should have accepted my brother’s offer, instead. Oh, he fancied her, your uncle Nodule did. But she thought he was a blockhead.” He laughed. “Blockhead—that’s what she said! A wise woman, your mother.”
He found Opal, Vermilion Cinnabar, and the rest of the women sitting in the deserted courtyard of what had once been the old way station between the Great Delve and the temple, talking and enjoying the cool, moist air. The way station was not only near the place Chert had chosen for his undertaking, but the air came down to it from vents above sea level, so it was always a bit cooler than the rest of the temple’s lands. That was one of the reasons they had chosen it as a spot to mix gunflour: even mill dust could burn and explode if the weather was too hot and dry, so how much more dangerous would the mixture they were making be?
Opal and Vermilion had explained to the others most of what was to be done, the need for careful separation of the saltpeter from the other sands (it would be added at the last moment) and crafting the blasting powder into little balls the size of peppercorns, which according to Nitre made it burn hotter, faster, and more evenly.
“We will come only two times a day to carry back the blasting powder you ladies have made,” Chert explained. “That way we can apply ourselves to our own tasks and you can do yours without too much interference.”
“Too much interference from men, you mean,” said Pebble Jasper, Wardthane Sledge’s wife, who had her husband’s delicate touch with a joke. “Men trying to interfere with us women, is what I mean.”
“Since when do you run away from that?” another called. “We’ve heard you down on Gem Street, mooing like a lost cow outside the guildhall—‘Sledge! Sledger, my beauty! Come home to your Dolly! I’m a-lonely!’”
Several of the women laughed so loud Chert thought they’d hurt themselves. He felt a bit awkward to have the boy hearing this, although of the two of them, only Chert was blushing. “Enough, good ladies. We all need to get to our work. Opal, a moment?”
She looked well—good color, as though she had been out in the upground sun. It was clear she had been working hard as well as talking and laughing. “So you’re off, are you?” she asked.
“Have to, my old darling. We’ll be back by suppertime to see how you ladies are doing and take away what you’ve made so far. Did Nitre show you all the tricks?”
“It’s not a lot different from making a stew,” she said dismissively. “We’ve got it written down—Vermilion writes a beautiful hand. Like something you’d see here in the temple, in a book.” Her frown of preoccupation abruptly softened and she looked straight into his eyes. “Oh, my old man, you are so full of mad ideas! Do you really mean to bring down so much stone with this blasting powder? What if the whole world caves in? You frighten me, sometimes. You always have.”
“What does that mean?” He had to admit it was mildly pleasing to be thought of as full of mad ideas. Certainly it was better than being Magister Nodule Blue Quartz’s less-successful brother.
She looked around as if others might be listening in, but the women were busy overseeing Chert’s men as they unloaded the various powders from the cart and their barrows, making certain each was delivered to its proper place and taking the opportunity to show off the innovations they had thought of, which of course set the men to arguing with them.
“You are my husband,” she said, so quietly it might have been a secret. “I love you dearly, old fool, whatever you have got us into in the past—and I do not even wish to think what you might have done to us this time.” She laughed, but her eyes blinked, and Chert realized to his surprise that they were full of tears. “You remember that as you dash about with your ... strategies and wars.” She made them both sound like play-things for errant boys. “Come back to me safe. I demand it of you. Do you promise?”
He looked at her face, her adored, familiar old face. “I do—at least I will do my best ...”
“No. Promise.” She had his hands tightly. “Don’t go without saying it. Say you’ll come back safe.”
He looked at her, felt once more what he had felt other times—that she wanted something important from him, but he could not understand what it was and she could not tell him. “I promise,” he said at last. “I’ll come home safe.”
“Good.” She let go of his hand and swiped her sleeve roughly across her eyes. “Go on then. We’ll be fine. We’re Funderling women—we’ll get the job done.”
“I know.” He leaned in and kissed her on the lips. “The boy should stay here with you. I do not want to have to keep an eye on him out where I’ll be. Too many cross-passages, too many places to fall.”
She nodded. “Fine. Go on, before I start blubbing again.”
Lightened of its load of blast powder makings, the cart bounced over every stone as they wound along toward the Stormstone Roads, and Chert bounced with it. He reflected that it would probably be more comfortable to be walking and pushing an empty barrow like the others, but somebody had to make certain the donkeys didn’t roll the cart into a pit.