Shadowplay

“How are you, lad?”

“Well.” But he didn’t meet Chert’s eye.

“I wonder if that’s really true. Your mo...Opal says you had a bad night.” He sat down beside the boy and patted his knee. “Did you not sleep well?”

“Didn’t sleep.”

“Why not?” He peered at the pale, almost translucent face. Flint looked as though he needed sun. It was a strange thought—he certainly couldn’t remember ever thinking it about anyone else. Of course, most of the people he knew never even saw the sun if they could help it.

“Too noisy,” the boy said. “Too many voices.”

“Last night?” It was true that in the early part of the evening Cinnabar and some of the other Guildsmen had stopped by to talk about where Chert was going today, but they had been gone by the time the darklights came on. “Really? Well, we’ll try to keep it more quiet.”

“It’s too crowded,” Flint said. Before Chert could ask him to explain, he added: “I have bad dreams. Very bad.”

“Like what?”

Flint shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. Eyes, bright eyes, and someone holding me down.” His chest heaved with a sob. “It hurts!”

“Come on, lad. Don’t be feared. Things will get better, you’ve just had a rough time.” Helplessly, Chert put his arm around him and felt the child’s entire body shudder.

“But I want to go back to sleep! Nobody understands. They won’t let me sleep! They keep calling me!”

“Lie down, then.” He did his best, half helping, half forcing the child back into the bed. He pulled the blanket up to his chin. “Ssshhh. Go to sleep, now. Opal’s just in the other room. I have to go out to work, but I’ll be back later.”

Flint miserably allowed himself to be stroked and soothed into a thin, restless slumber. Chert got up as quietly as he could, desperate not to wake him.

What have we done to that boy? he wondered. What’s wrong with him? Odd as he was before, he was always alert, lively. He seems only half alive since I found him down in the Mysteries.

He didn’t even have the heart to talk about it to Opal, who felt the boy’s distraction and strangeness even more than he did: he only waved to her as he passed, tying on his tool belt.

“Vermilion Cinnabar had a message for you from her husband,” Opal called.

Chert stopped in the doorway. “What’s that?”

“She said to tell you that Chaven wants to see you again before you go upground.”

He sighed. “Why not?”

The physician was waiting in the middle of the mirrored floor of the Guild’s great hall. Several Funderlings were preparing the hall for the next meeting, politely avoiding him as he stood staring down, like children circling an absentminded father. For the first time Chert’s own people looked small to him in their own great hall.

The physician didn’t look up even after Chert coughed politely. “Chaven?” he said at last. “You wanted to speak to me?”

Startled, Chaven turned. “Oh, it’s you! Sorry, so sorry, it’s just...this place. I find it strangely...restful is not the right word, not quite. But it is one of the few places where my cares, they just...slip away...”

Chert had never felt the presence of the Lord of the Hot Wet Stone to be particularly restful, even in statue form. He looked up to the image of Kernios sunk deep in the ceiling, then down to the mirror-version below their feet. Being suspended, as it were, between two versions of the blackeyed, somber-faced earth god seemed even less soothing, especially when the mirroring rendered Chaven and himself as blobs with feet in the middle and heads at each end, suspended halfway between Heaven and the Pit. “I heard you wanted me.”

Chaven dragged his attention away from the representation of the god. “Oh, yes. I just felt I should talk to you again about what you should say.”

“Fracture and fissure, man,” Chert cursed, “we’ve been over this a dozen times already! What more can there be to say?”

“I am sorry, but this is very important.”

Chert sighed. “It would be different if I were actually going to pretend to know something I don’t, but if he asks me something I don’t know an answer for I’ll just make important-sounding humming noises, then tell him I need to confer with my Funderling colleagues.” He gave Chaven an annoyed look. “And then, yes, I’ll come right to you and tell you, and find out what to say.”

“Good, good. And what will you look for to know if it’s my mirror?”

“A dark frame of cypress wood, with wings that open out. It is carved with pictures of eyes and hands.”

“Yes, but if there’s no frame, or if he’s put a new one on it?”

Chert took a deep breath. Patience, he told himself. He’s been through a great deal. But it was more than a little like dealing with a drunkard, someone forever trying to shake the last dribbles of mossbrew out of an empty jar. “The glass itself has a slight outward curve to it.”

“Yes. Good!”

“May I go now? Before Okros decides to ask someone else to do it instead?”

“Will you write down anything you are unsure about? It will help me understand what Okros is trying to do. Do you promise?”

Chert said nothing, but tapped the slate hanging on a string around his neck. “Really, I must go now.”

Worriedly repeating all that they had just discussed, Chaven followed him to the door but, to Chert’s relief, went no farther, as if he did not want to travel far from the reassuring presence of the earth lord and the haven of the guildhall’s great room.

Chert hadn’t been out of Funderling Town for many, many days—was it almost a month?—and he was surprised by the obvious differences since the last time he’d been upground. The spirit of ragged camaraderie he’d seen everywhere in the castle had now just as obviously expired, overcome by weariness and fear of the unchanging siege conditions, the strange, suspended watchfulness that in some ways was worse than even a real and imminent danger of attack.

The faces bundled up in scarves and hoods were red with cold and very grim, even as he reached the Raven Gate and the vicinity of the royal residence itself, where at least the people did not yet have to worry about starving. Still, these comparatively well-fed courtiers had a wolfish look about them, too, as though even the most kindly and cheerful of them were spending a large part of their thoughts considering what they were going to do and to whom they were going to do it when things became really bad, when they would have to struggle to survive.

The castle itself looked different, too. The walls around the Inner Keep were built over with wooden hoardings and crawling with guards, the greens were full of animals (mostly pigs and sheep) the wells were guarded by soldiers, and there seemed to be twice as many folk as usual milling in the narrow roads and public squares. Still, when he showed the letter from Okros he received only cursory attention before being allowed through Raven’s Gate, although he thought he heard a few of the guards mutter uncomplimentary things about Funderlings. That was certainly not the first time in Chert’s life such a thing had ever happened, but he was a little surprised by the vehemence in their voices.

Well, bad times make bad neighbors, he reminded himself. And there were always rumors that the king fed us —as though we were animals in a menagerie, instead of us earning our own way, which we always have. Just the kind of thing to make the big folk resentful when times are hard.

It was disturbing to find that Okros had openly usurped Chaven’s residence in the Observatory, but Chert supposed it made sense. In any case, he was not even supposed to know Chaven, so he certainly wasn’t going to say anything about it.

A young, jug-eared acolyte in an Eastmarch robe opened the door and silently led him to the observatory itself, a high-ceilinged room with a sliding panel in the roof, permeated with the smell of damp. Okros rose from a table piled with books, brushing off his dark red smock. He was a slender man with a fringe of white hair and a pleasant, intelligent expression. It was hard to believe he was the villain Chaven believed him, even though Chert