Nice to see my family hurrying to my aid. Chert could only hope that the silence of the other members of the large Quartz clan augured more open minds.

“Strangers in the Mysteries?” Bloodstone shook his head in apparent amazement. “Big folk hiding from their rightful lords here in Funderling Town? What madness have you brought to us, Chert?”

“Your concern has been noted,” said Cinnabar, sounding as though he meant the opposite. As Magister of his own Quicksilver family and one of the most important leaders of all Metal House—most thought he would someday replace old Quicklime Pewter as one of the four Great Highwardens, the most exalted of Funderling honors—he was a good ally to have. On top of everything else, he was also fair and sensible. “Perhaps,” he said now, “we should see if any of the other Magisters or our noble Highwardens have questions before we start shouting about shame and tradition.”

Scoria, Magister of the Gneiss family since his father was lifted to the rank of Highwarden, stood up, his thin face full of fretful anger. “I wish to know why you took in this newest upsider, Chert Blue Quartz. The rest is beyond my understanding, but this seems simple enough. He is a criminal and the king’s regent searches for him. If he is found here we will all suffer.”

“With respect, Magister,” Chert said, “the physician Chaven is a good man, as I said. He was also one of King Olin’s most respected advisers. If he swears that the Tollys have murdered people to seize the throne, and will murder him as well to silence him—well, I’m only a foreman, a working man, but it seems more complicated to me than merely saying he’s a criminal.”

“But that doesn’t change the risk we’re in,” pointed out Jacinth Malachite, one of the few female Magisters. “Chert, many of us know you, and know you as a good man, but there’s a difference between doing a deed of good conscience on your own and dragging all Funderling Town into a quarrel with the castle’s rulers…”

A noise like wet sand rubbing on stone interrupted her: Highwarden Sard Smaragdine of Crystal House was clearing his throat. Unlike the Magisters, the Highwardens did not rise to speak; ancient Sard remained shrunken in his chair like a sack of old chips and samples. High on the wall above his head the Great Astion, seal of Funderling Town, gleamed like a star buried in the stone. “Too many questions here to go about it in such a backward way,” rasped Sard. “Which questions are the most important? That must be answered first. Then we will move our way down, layer after layer, until we have reached the bedrock of the whole matter.” He waved a spindly arm. “What do the Metamorphic Brothers think? Has this…incursion…into the sacred Mysteries angered the Earth Elders?”

Chert looked around, but it seemed nobody at this hastily assembled meeting of the Guild had thought to bring along any of the order. “They knew I went down into the Mysteries in search of my…in search of the boy, and they knew I brought him back up.” The Metamorphic Brothers did not know everything that had happened down there, of course, and Chert didn’t intend to tell the entire story to the Guild, either; as Opal liked to remind him, there was such a thing as having too much trust in your fellows. “They knew the little Rooftopper went down part of the way with me. The only thing that they seemed worried about was that somehow this all seemed to match some of old Brother Sulfur’s dreams.”