Chert still looked suspicious. “What does that mean? Torture?”
Vansen laughed sadly. “I would not hesitate if I thought it would save your family and my people aboveground, but the answers given by a man under torture are seldom useful, especially if we cannot speak his tongue well. But if you think of any other ways, let me know. Otherwise, I may begin to change my mind.”
Magister Cinnabar gave directions for the prisoner to be taken back to the temple, then hurried off to supervise the other tasks he had assigned. Those of his reinforcements not gathering up bodies or helping the wounded had already been sent to repair the breach the Qar had made into the Festival Halls.
Vansen rubbed his aching head. He wanted nothing so much as to lie down and sleep. He had been exhausted long before Chert’s bursting shell had nearly deafened him, and although his wounds had been washed and bandaged while he was senseless he ached mightily all over. He wanted a drink of something strong and at least an hour in bed, but he was the commander here, more or less, so it would have to wait.
“You said you had a dozen more of the gunflour beetles and more powder,” Vansen said to Chert.
“That’s what we have at the temple. We have more in Funderling Town, much more. We use it to break up stone when we must work fast—when we are not given time to do things in the old, proper ways…”
Vansen had learned more than he really wanted to in the past month about the good old days of wet-wedging and sand-polishing. “Let us talk to Cinnabar about it, then,” he said hurriedly. “Perhaps we can prepare a welcome for next time that will make the dark lady and her soldiers think twice about coming into our home uninvited.”
Chert did his best to get Vansen to rest—the captain was ribboned with cuts and still clearly not hearing very well—but the big man would not be dragged away from the battlefield, so Chert returned to the temple alone. The Metamorphic Brothers had already heard news of the battle and almost all of them wanted to ask Chert about it, including many who seemed to think of him as a kind of hero. In another time he might have enjoyed the attention but now he was too frightened and weary to want anything but to get back to his room. He had seen some of the Qar forces, however briefly, and he knew there were thousands more of them besieging Southmarch aboveground. He had caught a very small number of these attackers by surprise with a blasting beetle, but next time there would be no surprise. The drows might even have rock-cracking powder of their own.
Chert was almost back to his room when he remembered Flint, whom he had left with the physician. Wearily he turned back up the corridor, but when he got to Chaven’s room and rapped on the heavy door nobody answered. When he tried it, the door was not locked or even latched. He pushed it open, suddenly fearful.
Chaven lay stretched full-length on the floor as if he had been stunned with a club; there was no sign of Flint. For a terrible moment Chert thought the physician was dead, but when he kneeled beside him he could hear Chaven moaning quietly. Chert found a basin of cold water and a cloth and splashed water across the physician’s broad, pale forehead.
“Wake up!” He did his best to shake Chaven, who was twice his size. “Where is my boy? Where is Flint?”
Chaven groaned and rolled over, then struggled until he could sit by himself. “What?” The physician looked around his room as if he had not seen it before. “Flint?”
“Yes, Flint! I left him with you. Where is he? What happened?”
Chaven looked blank. “Happened? Nothing happened. Flint, you say? He was here?” He shook his head slowly, like a weary horse trying to dislodge a biting fly. “No, wait—he was here, of course he was. But… but I do not remember what happened. Is he gone?”
Chert almost threw the wet rag at him in exasperation. He quickly searched the small chamber to make sure the boy was not hiding somewhere. He did not find him, but in one corner of the room he discovered a small hand mirror and a stump of candle lying on the floor. He smelled the wick. It had only recently been extinguished.
“What is this?” he demanded of the confused physician. “Did you get up to some of your mirror tricks with him? Did you frighten him into running away?”
Chaven looked both affronted and anxious. “I can’t remember, to tell the truth. But I would never hurt or frighten a child, Chert—you should know that.”
Chert remembered the boy’s cries of terror the last time the fat physician had tried out his mirror-magics. “Pfah! He’s gone, that’s all I know. Have you no idea at all where he might be? How long he’s been gone?”
But Chaven was mystified—and useless. He could only look from one corner of the room to another, rubbing his eyes as though the light in the dark room was too bright.
Chert was hurrying through the halls when he suddenly remembered the library. Flint had already got them both into trouble for going there once. What more likely place for him to end up this time?
To his immense relief he found the boy slumped in what seemed like ordinary childish sleep at one of the ancient tables, his head cradled on an irreplaceable book, a centuries-old collection of shallow carvings on sheets of mica thinner than parchment. As Chert lifted the boy’s head to slide the pages from beneath him he glanced at the antique writing. He could not read it—it was too old, too strange—but it reminded him of the scratchings he had seen on the walls deep in the Mysteries. What was the boy doing with it? Did he have any sense of what he was up to? Flint acted sometimes as if he was ten times his true age, but at others he seemed nothing more than the child he was.
“Wake up, boy,” he said gently. He could forgive almost anything as long as he didn’t have to tell Opal he’d lost their child. “Come, now.”
Flint lifted his head and looked around, then closed his eyes again as if to go back to sleep. He was far too big for Chert to carry—he was taller than his foster father, now—so Chert had to pull on his arm until the boy got to his feet and reluctantly allowed himself to be led out of the library and back across the temple to the room they shared. For once they seemed to be in luck: Vansen was apparently keeping Brother Nickel and the other monks busy with the temple’s defense. Flint’s return to the library had apparently gone undetected.
“Why did you do that, boy?” he demanded. “The brothers said to stay out of there—what were you doing? And what happened in Chaven’s room?”
Flint shook his head sleepily. “I don’t know.” He walked on in silence for several paces, then suddenly said, “Sometimes… sometimes I think I know things. Sometimes I do know things—important things! And then… and then I don’t.” To Chert’s astonishment, the boy abruptly burst into tears, something Chert had never, ever seen him do. “I just don’t know, Father! I don’t understand!”
Chert wrapped his arms around Flint, hugging this strange creature, this alien child, feeling the boy shake with helpless sorrow. There was nothing else he could do.
He had just got Flint settled in bed when someone rapped at the door. Wearily, Chert got up and opened it to reveal Chaven, wide-eyed in the dark hallway.
“Did you find the boy?” he asked.
“Yes. He is well. He went to the library. I have just put him to bed.” He stepped back, beckoned the physician to enter. “Come in and I’ll see if I can find us some mossbrew. Do you remember what happened?”
“I cannot,” said Chaven. “In truth, I came to bring you a message. Ferras Vansen has sent to say that they have learned how to speak with the Funderling they captured.”