“Fracture and fissure!” Chert smacked his hands together in frustration: Vansen’s errand would have to wait, at least for a while. He set off after Brother Nickel.
The loud voices seemed to be coming from the library and they sounded angry indeed. As Chert crossed the front hall he had a sudden premonition of what he would find there.
To his sorrow, he turned out to be right: Flint stood in the middle of a crowd of furious, dark-robed monks, half a head taller than most of them and as serene as a tall stone in the middle of a rushing river. The boy’s eyes met Chert’s for a moment and then continued roaming the walls as though he were sizing up the stone before carving a stringcourse.
“What’s going on here?” Chert had to struggle to keep his temper. He knew the boy was unusual—it made his stomach churn sometimes just to think of how carelessly he and Opal had brought the child into their lives—but had never seen a scrape of harm in him. The Metamorphic Brothers were acting as though they had caught a thief or murderer.
Brother Nickel turned toward him, face flushed. “This is beyond all bounds, even for you, Blue Quartz,” the monk said. “This child walked into the library—the greatest library of our people left in the world!—and began to put his hands on the texts! His filthy hands!”
Despite his own rage, Chert was shaken: trespassing in the library was no simple prank. It was worse even than entering the Mysteries, because the books in the library—some of them ancient prayers scratched into fragile slate in letters so shallow that they had become almost entirely unreadable, or etched on parchment-thin sheets of mica—were rare and easily damaged. The great Funderling library in Stonebeneath, a settlement that for centuries had lain beneath ancient Hierosol, had been destroyed along with most of the city in the floods of four centuries earlier, along with almost half of the lower city’s inhabitants, and the library had been lost completely. The dreadful toll of the Stonebeneath Floods had been taught to Chert since he had been big enough to walk—the single greatest tragedy of Funderling history. No wonder the monks were so upset.
“Flint,” he said as calmly as he could. “Did you go into the library? Did you handle the books?”
The pale-haired boy looked as if Chert had asked whether it was good to eat when you were hungry. “Yes.”
“Do you see?” Nickel cried. “He feels no shame! He breaks into the Mysteries like an invader and then, not content with that outrage, comes to play his wicked tricks in the very heart of our people’s memory.”
Chert struggled for composure. “I’m sure with all those clever words you truly will be abbot one day, Nickel, but let’s not completely lose our heads. Flint, why did you do it?”
The boy now looked at him as though he were actually a bit surprised, something Chert had scarcely ever seen from him. “I needed to learn something. I went to look at the oldest books. It’s important.”
“What? What did you want to learn?”
“I can’t tell you.” He said it with such clarity that Chert knew arguing would be useless. The assembled brothers were no longer just murmuring, but crowding forward as though they meant to lay hands on the boy and administer punishment. Chert stepped in front of Flint and held up his hands.
“He didn’t understand. He doesn’t mean harm, but he… he’s different.” He was ashamed to capitulate to the monks so easily, but there was no time to waste. “I’ll take him with me. You won’t have any more trouble with him—I promise that on my honor as a Guildsman. Just… just go about your business.”
“How can we trust you?” Nickel demanded. “You have let him run wild, let him meddle in the affairs of holy men…”
“This temple and Funderling Town are under attack,” Chert said loudly. “And you know it as well as I do, Brother Nickel. We all have far more to fear than this boy—you should be organizing these men to defend the temple, not to attack a child. Now, will you let me go? I am very sorry Flint touched the books but it looks like no harm was done. I’ll take him with me and he’ll get into no further mischief. Please, let us all remember what’s important now.”
Nickel was scowling, but one of the other monks said, “Antimony told me that Chert Blue Quartz is a good man.”
“He’s right about defending the temple, that’s certain,” said another. “If Chert gives his word, perhaps we should allow him this one chance.”
“Thank you.” Chert looked around. The anger on the faces of the other monks had begun to fade like the disappearing sheen of water as it dried on a rock face: talk of an attack had reminded them of the true danger. Nickel, though, did not look satisfied. “Come along, Flint,” Chert told the boy. “Say you’re sorry and we’ll be going—I have important errands for Captain Vansen.” He grabbed the boy’s hand and pulled him away from the library.
Flint did not say sorry, of course, but Chert hoped that in the racket of the monks beginning to argue among themselves they hadn’t noticed the boy’s silence.
He found the physician upstairs in his small dormitory cell and told him what Vansen had asked. Chaven thought about it for a moment before saying, “I think that the best solution in the short run would simply be to tie a cloth soaked in water across their faces. Anything more complicated will take me some time.”
Chert stood, amazed at his own stupidity. “Cloth—water! By the Elders, I have been so preoccupied it is like I did not even hear Vansen. If there is one thing we Funderlings have, it is dust masks! With a little stuffing around the edges they should keep out the fumes of the Qar’s poison dust.” He began to pace. “In fact, the craftsmen who do the near-work, as we call it, the sanding and polishing, even wear hoods with mica over the eyes. What a fool I am!”
“Do not condemn yourself,” Chaven told him. “We are all much distracted. Is there anything else I can do for you? If not, I have a few matters of my own…”
“Yes, yes, I’m afraid there is.” Chert grabbed the boy. “Keep an eye on this young scamp for me—I must try to find some dust masks for Vansen. Even now he and Jasper’s men are trying to keep the Qar out of the Festival Halls, if you haven’t heard. But don’t let this fellow out of your sight! He has been up to all kinds of outrage and mischief according to Brother Nickel. And especially keep him away from the library.”
Chaven seemed to notice the boy for the first time. His round face relaxed into a smile, but Chert fancied he saw something else there, too, something more… calculating? “Ah, Master Flint, I hear you have been up to all kinds of interesting things since I saw you last. A visit to the Skimmers, was it? And now the library. Perhaps you can tell me about all of it while we keep each other company.”
Flint was persuaded into the room with the bad grace of a cat being coaxed down off a high place.
“Remember,” Chert said as he went out, “you can’t let him out of your sight!” The physician waved a hand in acknowledgment.
Chert’s search of the small forge where the temple smith repaired tools and other simple household objects turned up two fire-hoods, one of which the temple smith himself was wearing, pushed back on his bald, sweating head. The large-armed monk objected angrily to giving up either of them, but Chert asserted Vansen’s guild-given authority and grabbed the unused hood, then scampered out before the smith lost his temper entirely.
In the temple undercroft he found some heavy cloth dust masks, the remains of an old rebuilding project. There were only a dozen, but he thought they might at least keep those in the front safe against the fairy poisons. He was about to go when he saw something else, a stone chest with a heavy wooden lid. Chert opened it and stared for a while at the wedge-shaped iron objects carefully stacked inside.