Shadowheart (77 page)

Shrieking without sound, Qinnitan began to swim up through the blackness, desperate to escape. Patient as death itself, the thing let her go; after all, it only had a short time to wait before it would get everything it wanted.

Hands quickly but efficiently tied behind his back and a sack pulled over his head, Chert now was hurried across uneven ground. Cannon fire still boomed above his head but it was growing a little fainter. From the sound of the sea, he guessed he was being forced toward the North Lagoon. The men who had captured him spoke little among themselves, and although they did not spare him any kindness, they were no rougher than they needed to be, which made him decide with a sinking heart that they must be soldiers. That meant they were Tollys’ men, and the swiftness with which they had grabbed and captured him suggested he had been recognized.

He staggered and nearly fell again as he understood that he might never see Opal again, or Flint, or Funderling Town. If he was to be executed, he might never see anything again but the inside of this noisome sack. . . .

Chert stopped and planted his feet. “I won’t go any farther until you tell me where you’re taking me,” he said, ashamed to hear how his voice quavered. “If I’m to be killed, at least tell me why. At least tell me who my murderers are.”

“Keep moving, half-size,” growled one of the men and gave him a shove in the back that sent Chert staggering forward once more. The man had an accent Chert couldn’t place—perhaps he was a Kracian mercenary. Chert had heard rumors Hendon Tolly had been looking for help abroad since it became clear the Qar were headed toward Southmarch.

At last he was pushed into a doorway, feet crunching across a floor made of strewn rushes, then rough hands grabbed his shoulders and forced him down onto a stool. An instant later the sack was yanked from him. When he had finished blinking, he looked at the strange figure in the chair opposite. At first the armor made him think it was a man, a young one from the look of his face, but he realized a moment later it was a woman looking him up and down with calm interest, her golden hair cut short and her serious face smeared with dirt in what Chert could not help thinking was a most unfeminine way.

“Only one?” the woman asked. Chert was certain he had seen her before somewhere. “All that time and you only brought back one? What if he doesn’t know?”

“None were coming out!” protested one of the men, whose accent was less pronounced than the others’. “You saw it, High . . . I mean, my lady. Tolly’s men have it sewed up tight, and they were keeping them all inside today. But just now someone dropped a cannonball on the Kallikans’ front porch and this one hurried out, so we grabbed him.”

“Funderlings. Here, in Southmarch, they are called ‘Funderlings,’ Stephanas, not ‘Kallikans.’ ” She turned back to examine Chert once more. “Don’t be afraid,” she said. “I hope they didn’t treat you roughly. They are rough men, but I told them to be careful.”

“They did not hurt me . . . but I can’t say I was given much choice about coming.”

“No, you weren’t. Because I need your help and I need it badly.”

And then he knew her, at once and in a rush, and the words came out without any further thought from him. “Fracture and Fissure! Whatever you want, Princess Briony. I am at your service. It is good to see you back in your home again.”

Her eyes narrowed. “It is not my home again—not yet. Who are you?”

“Chert of the Blue Quartz. We met once before, on the day your brother killed the wyvern. You . . . you nearly ran me over with your horse.”

“Merciful Zoria, I remember! That was you?” She laughed, and for an instant was once more the young girl he had seen that day. “Do you really mean that you will help me?”

He shrugged. “Of course. Your father is our king, Highness. Is he coming back, too?”

The girl’s mouth set in a grim line. “If I have any say about it. But just now he is somewhere beneath our feet, a prisoner of the Xixians.”

Chert’s stomach lurched, and he had to suppress a groan. “I know too much about the Xixians already, Highness! They have pushed down past Funderling Town and are chewing their way into our sacred Mysteries like worms through an apple. I will be happy to help strike a blow at those southerners—just tell me what I can do for you.” But even as he spoke these brave words, he could hear Opal’s voice in his head:
“Stop showing off for the Big Folk, Chert Blue Quartz. You have work of your own to do and time is dripping away!”

“Well, these men and I are not fighting the Xixians just yet. ...” The princess looked as though she wished it was otherwise. “My enemy is closer to hand—Hendon Tolly. But the prince of Syan and I cannot get our soldiers into the inner keep because the walls are too strong. I am kept at bay by my family’s own castle!” Her laugh was sour.

“And what can I do?” he asked, but he was beginning to see the shape of things.

“I wanted a Funderling, Chert—any Funderling. I did not know it would be you. I need a way to get into the inner keep, and quickly.” She fixed him with a surprisingly sharp, hard stare. “You see, I’ve learned things. I am not such a simple creature as I was when last I lived here. I met the Kallikans of Tessis, your relatives, and found that they keep secrets from their monarchs. I’m sure your folk have secrets they have kept from my family, too.”

“Secrets . . . ?”

“Passages beneath the castle, perhaps. Tunnels. Hidden doors? Things that the Big Folk—isn’t that what you call us—that the Big Folk aren’t supposed to know about? But now I
need
to know, Chert of the Blue Quartz. How can I get enough men into the inner keep to open that gate and let the rest of our soldiers through?”

He had reached a moment of decision, that much was clear. She was asking about the Stormstone Roads, even if she didn’t know them by name. Everything in him that was conservative and cautious warned that this was not a decision he should make himself. After the hundreds of years his people had kept those passages secret from the Southmarch royal family, even the present extraordinary situation did not give him the authority to make such a decision. But he had his own mission, and there was no longer any way he could get back in time to try something else.

“Will you give my people back their Funderling Town if you succeed? Tolly’s men have occupied it.”

Briony smiled. “Without a moment’s hesitation. You have my word on it as an Eddon.”

“Then I’ll do my best to help you. You have
my
word as a Blue Quartz on that.”

Her smile grew a little wistful. “It seems we both have weighty family names to live up to, Master Chert.”

 

It was full dark when they reached the spot between the new walls and the castle’s great outwall, a warren of small alleys between the ends of the East and West Lagoons where only the poorest lived because the walls loomed so high on either side that the sun only reached the streets for an hour or two each day, even in summer. Chaven’s observatory was out of sight on the far side of the new walls, but the Tower of Spring stretched high above their heads. Chert imagined Tolly had a watch posted on its uppermost floor, but felt reasonably sure they were too close to the tower’s base to be seen from there.

“Still,” he whispered to Briony, “your men should keep their voices down. Sound bounces off stone in unexpected ways.”

He led them down a tiny street and into a deserted house at one end of it, praying that he had remembered the location correctly, a hidden passage he had occasionally used when he wanted to depart Chaven’s house without leaving the upground castle entirely. He was gratified by the surprise on Briony’s face as he revealed the trapdoor hidden in what looked like a room piled with builder’s trash.

Chert led the princess and her soldiers down a stairwell to a passage. A short while later they reached the basement door of the observatory where one of the soldiers slipped the latch with his dagger, then they were inside.

Chert looked around at the hangings and remembered when he had hidden here with Chaven from Hendon Tolly and Brother Okros. That seemed so long ago! Briony looked as though she had memories of her own. “And this is truly part of Chaven’s house?” she whispered. “Incredible!”

“The last time I was here, there were guards,” Chert warned her.

There were guards still. One of them, probably returning from a trip to the jakes, stumbled on the Syannese soldiers as they emerged from the stairs onto a ground-floor landing. The guard lunged at Chert with his spear, almost spitting the Funderling like a suckling pig, but Princess Briony’s Syannese soldiers surrounded the guard and cut him down before he could call out.

“Tolly livery,” she said quietly, prodding the dead man with her shoe. “An ugly sight. I have seen it everywhere since I returned.”

They encountered no one else as they made their way through the observatory. Chert did not take Briony and her soldiers out the front door, but led them out from a lower floor and along one of the other secrets of the observatory, a narrow passage that opened into the basement of a small building within the walls of the inner keep some distance from the physician’s house. “Even Chaven himself isn’t aware that I know of this one,” Chert said. He didn’t mention that it was actually Flint who had discovered it on one of their earlier visits.

“Our entire keep is riddled with tunnels like a rabbit warren!” Briony said in astonishment. “Not meaning any offense, Master Blue Quartz, but I thought I could not be surprised by anything else.”

“We aren’t rabbits,” Chert said. “But we are small and we like to dig.”

“Don’t misunderstand me,” she replied. “Just now, I am very happy with my Funderling subjects and their delving!”

The streets of the inner keep were all but empty, which was especially strange so close to Midsummer, when ordinarily the streets would have been full of revelers, but soldiers stood in numbers atop each of the cardinal towers and even in the shattered upper stories of Wolfstooth Spire.

“Now I must go, Highness, with your leave,” Chert said as they stood in the shadows of the passage from the observatory. Briony’s men had extinguished their torches and waited for her on the stairs just below.

“Go? I had hoped for more of your help, Chert Blue Quartz.” The princess did not sound pleased, and he feared her anger because he truly had no time to waste.

“And I would gladly give it, Highness, but I have an errand of my own—one just as important as yours, if I do not overreach myself to say so, perhaps even
more
important. An errand for your people as well as mine. But time grows short.”

She considered his words. “Yes, time grows short—it doesn’t take the wisdom of the gods to know that. Do what you must. I hope if we both survive we can have a proper talk someday about this night’s doings, Chert of the Funderlings, because I still have many unanswered questions. For one thing, you seem very familiar with the plan of the royal physician’s house ...”

“I . . . have been there before. A time or two.”

“I thought so. Will you promise me that talk, then?”

“I’d be honored, Highness. But as you said, it can only happen if we both survive. Be careful, Princess. Your people do not want to lose you so soon after your return.”

She laughed quietly. “And I feel sure your people would want you to be careful, also. Go with Zoria’s blessing.”

“And the Earth Elders protect you, Highness.”

A moment later she had trotted down the stairs, quiet as a cat, leaving Chert alone on Chaven’s doorstep.

 

The moon was high in the sky, mostly full, a lopsided white grape that shed so much light, sharp-eyed Chert felt quite conspicuous as he made his way across the inner keep in the shadow of the walls. The crashing of the cannons had finally ended, but he could still hear the sentries atop the walls shouting insults down at the Syannese in the outer keep.

The castle was quite different than he remembered—so much damage in such a small time! Rubble lay everywhere, and the once-beautiful greens had disappeared beneath dozens of refugee encampments, but the makeshift village abruptly ended at the hill on which the royal residence sat, enforced by a ring of armed sentries, an arrangement which made it plain that Hendon Tolly did not welcome peasants setting up housekeeping on his front doorstep.

Staying to the shadows, freezing at every unfamiliar sound or movement as though he really were a rabbit, Chert made his careful way across the inner keep beneath the rising moon, its great yellow bulk becoming smaller and colder as it climbed the sky. A lone bell in a residence tower was chiming midnight when he reached the Eddon family’s ivy-covered chapel on one corner of the Throne hall. It was the only place he could think of to come for what he needed. But even after almost being blown to flinders by a cannonball and being thrown in a sack and kidnapped, the worst part of his day’s work was still ahead. He had to climb to the roof.