“Aid you?” Merolanna shook her head. The duchess was looking her age now, confused and even a little weary. “By the gods, I swear I understand none of this. Tiny people out of an old tale. What could we do to help you? And what information could you give us?”

“For one thing, Duchess,” said the queen gently, as if to a restless child instead of to a woman many, many times her size, “we believe we can tell you what happened to your son.”

“Are you sure?” Opal asked. “Perhaps you’re still too tired.”

His wife, Chert noted, seemed to be having second thoughts.

“No, Mistress,” Chaven protested, “I am much recovered. In fact, I am ashamed at having let myself go so far last night.” He did indeed look rather embarrassed. “I count you even better friends for your kindness, indulging me at a bad time.”

“But, are you truly…?” Opal looked at the physician, then at her husband, as though she wanted him to intervene. Chert was quite happy to sit with a sour smile on his face. This messing about with mirrors had been her idea, after all. “Will you really do it here? In our home?”

Chaven smiled. “Mistress Opal, this is not some great, dangerous experiment I will perform, only the mildest bit of captromancy. Nothing will damage your son or your house.”

Son. Chert still wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but kept his thoughts to himself. Just in the months since Flint had come to them, the boy had grown another handspan, and now he towered over Chert. How could you consider someone your son who first of all didn’t belong to you, whose mother and father might be alive and living nearby, and who in a few years would be twice your own size?

Ah, I suppose it isn’t the height but the heart, he thought. He looked at the boy, sitting sleepy-eyed and faintly distrustful, curled in his blanket in the corner he had made his own. At least he’s out of his bed. These days Flint was like some ancient relative—asleep most of the day, barely speaking. The boy had never been talkative, of course, but until the moment he had woken up from his weird adventure in the Mysteries the vigor had practically sprayed off him like a dog shaking a wet coat.

“What do you need, Doctor?” Chert couldn’t help being a little curious. “Special herbs? Opal could go to the market.”

“You could go to the market, you old hedgehog,” she said, but her heart wasn’t in it.

“No, no.” The physician waved his hand. He looked a bit better for a night’s sleep, but Chert knew him well enough to see the hollowness behind the façade of the ordinary. Chaven Makaros was not a happy man, not remotely, which made Chert even more anxious. “No, I need only Mistress Opal’s mirror and a candle, and…” Chaven frowned. “Can you make this place dark?”

Chert laughed. “Can we? You forget, you are a guest in Funderling Town now. Even what we usually walk about in would seem like deep dark to you, and what you think is ordinary light makes my head ache.”