And perhaps there is a place for me there, too, he thought hopefully, even without my beloved patroness. Perhaps if I make myself noticed, I too will be lifted up.
Turning, the blessing forgotten, Matty Tinwright began to work his way out through the crowd, thinking of ways his own splendid light might be revealed to those in the new Southmarch who would recognize its gleam.
To her credit, Opal handled the discovery of a bleeding, burned man twice her size sprawling on her floor with no little grace.
“Oh!” she said, peering out from the sleeping room, “What’s this? I’m not dressed. Are you well, Chert?”
“I am well, but this friend is not. He has wounds that need tending...”
“Don’t touch him! I’ll be out in a moment.”
At first Chert thought she feared for her dear husband, that he might take some contagion from their wounded visitor, or that the injured man, in pain and delirium, might lash out like a dying animal. After some consideration, though, he realized that Opal didn’t trust him not to make things worse.
“The boy’s still asleep,” she said as she emerged, still pulling her wrap around herself. “He had another poor night. What’s this, then? Who is this big fellow and why is he here at this hour?”
“It is Chaven, the royal physician. I’ve told you about him. As to why...”
“Crawled.” Chaven’s laugh was dry and painful to hear.
“Crawled across the castle in darkness...to here. I need help with my...my wounds. But I cannot stay. You are in danger if I do.”
“Nobody’s in anywhere near as much danger as you, looking at those burns,” Opal said, scowling at the physician’s pitiful, crusted hands. “Hurry, bring me some water and my herb-basket, old man, and be quiet about it. We don’t need the boy underfoot as well.”
Chert did as he was told.
By the time Opal had finished cleaning Chaven’s burns with weak brine, covered them with poultices of moss paste, and begun to bind them with clean cloth, the wounded physician was asleep, his chin bumping against his chest every time she pulled a bandage snug.
Opal stood and looked down at her handiwork. “Is he trustworthy?” she asked quietly.
“He is the best of the big folk I know.” “That doesn’t answer my question, you old fool.” Chert couldn’t help smiling. “I’m glad to see the difficulties we’ve been through lately haven’t cost you your talent for endearments, my sweet. Who can say? The whole world up there is topsy-turvy. Up there? We have a child of the big folk living in our own house who plays some part in this war with the fairy folk. Everything has gone mad both upground and here.”
“Injured or not, I won’t have the fellow in the house unless you tell me he can be trusted. We have a child to think of.”
Chert sighed. “He is one of the best men I know, ordinary or big. And he might understand something of what’s happened to Flint.”
Opal nodded. “Right. He’ll sleep for hours—he drank a whole cup of mossbrew, and he can’t have much blood left to mix it with. We’d best get what sleep we can ourselves.”
“You are a marvel,” he told her as they climbed back under the blanket. “All these years and I still cannot believe my luck.”
“I can’t believe your luck, either.” But she sounded at least a little pleased. Better than that, Chert had seen in her eyes as she tended the doctor’s wounds something he had not seen there since he had brought Flint back home— purpose. It was worth a great deal of risk to see his good wife become something like herself again.
Chaven could barely hold the bread in his hands, but he ate like a dog who had been shut for days in an abandoned cottage. Which, as he began to tell Chert and Opal his story, was not so far from the truth.
“I have been hiding in the tunnels just outside my own house.” He paused to wipe his face with his sleeve, trying to dab away some of the water that had escaped his clumsy handling of the cup. “The secret door, Chert, the one you know—there is a panel that comes out of the wall of the inside hallway and hides the door from prying eyes. I closed that behind me and went to ground in the tunnels like a hunted fox. I managed to bring a water bottle that had gone with me on my last journey, but had no time to find food.”
“Eat more, then,” Chert said, “—but slowly. Why should you be hiding? What has happened to the world up there? We hear stories, and even if they are only half true or less, they are still astonishing and terrifying—the fairy folk defeating our army, the princess and her brother dead or run away...”
“Briony has not run away,” said Chaven, scowling. “I would stake my life on that. In fact, I already have.”
Chert shook his head, lost. “What are you talking about?”
“It is a long tale, and as full of madness as anything you have heard about fairy armies...”
Opal stood abruptly as a noise came from behind them. Flint, pale and bleary-eyed, stood in the doorway. “What are you doing out of bed?” she demanded.
The boy looked at her, his face chillingly dull. With all the things that had been strange or even frightening about him before, Chert could not help thinking, this lifeless, disinterested look was worse by far. “Thirsty.”
“I’ll bring you in water, child. You are not ready to be out of bed yet, so soon after the fever has passed.” She gave Chert and Chaven a significant glance. “Keep your voices down,” she told them.
Chert had barely begun to describe the bizarre events of Winter’s Eve when Opal returned from getting Flint back into bed, so he started again. His tale, which would have been an incredible one coming from the mouth of someone recently returned from exotic foreign lands, let alone the familiar precincts of Southmarch, would have been impossible to believe had it not been Chaven himself speaking, a man Chert knew to be not just honest, but rigorously careful about what he knew and did not know, about what could be proved or only surmised. “Built on bedrock,” as Chert’s father had always said of someone trustworthy, “not on sand, sliding this way and that with every shrug of the Elders.”
“So do you think that this Tolly villain had something to do with the southern witch, Selia?” Chert asked. “With the death of poor Prince Kendrick and the attack on the princess?” From his one brief meeting with her, Chert had a proprietorial fondness for Briony Eddon, and already loathed Hendon Tolly and his entire family with an unquenchable hatred.
“I can’t say, but the snatches of conversation I heard from him and his guards made them sound just as surprised as me. But their treachery to the royal family cannot be questioned, nor their desire to murder me, a witness of what really happened.”
“They truly would have killed you?” asked Opal. “Definitely, had I remained to be killed,” Chaven said with a pained smile. “As I hid from them in the Tower of Spring, I heard Hendon Tolly telling his minions that I was by no means to survive my capture—that he would reward the man who finished me.”
“Elders!” breathed Opal. “The castle’s in the hands of bandits and murderers!”
“For the moment, certainly. Without Princess Briony or her brother, I see no way to change things.” All the talking had tired the physician; he seemed barely able to keep his head up.
“We must get you to one of the powerful lords,” Chert said. “Someone still loyal to the king, who will protect you until your story is told.”