Chert sat up in bed, panting, sweat beading on his face even in the midst of a chilly night. Opal made a grumbling sound and reclaimed some of the blanket, then rolled over, putting her back to her annoying, restless husband.

Why should that face haunt his dream? Why should the grim noblewoman who had commanded the Twilight army—who in actuality had regarded Chert as though he were nothing more than a beetle on the tabletop—rail at him about the gods? She had not even really spoken to him, let alone made accusations that were so painful it felt as though they had been chiseled into his heart and could not be effaced.

I can’t even protect my family—it’s true. My wife cries every evening after Flint has fallen asleep—the boy who no longer recognizes us. And all because I let him go dashing off and could not find him until it was too late. At least that’s what Opal thinks.

Not that she said any such thing. His wife was aware of the weapon her tongue could be, and since that strange and terrible time a tennight gone, she had never once blamed him. Perhaps I am the only one blaming me, he thought, perhaps that is what the dream means. He wished he could believe that were true.

A quiet noise suddenly caught his attention. He held his breath, listening. For the first time he realized that what had awakened him was not the fearfulness of the dream but a dim comprehension of something out of the ordinary. There it was again—a muffled scrabbling sound like a mouse in the wall. But the walls of Funderling houses were stone, and even if they had been made of wood like the big folks’ flimsy dwellings, it would be a brave mouse indeed that would brave the sovereign territory of Opal Blue Quartz.

Is it the boy? Chert’s heart flopped again. Is he dying from those strange vapors we breathed in the depths? Flint had never been well since coming back, sleeping away most days, speechless as a newborn much of the time he was awake, staring at his foster parents as though he were a trapped animal and they his captors—the single thing that tore most at Opal’s heart.

Chert rolled out of bed, trying not to wake his wife. He padded into the other room, scarcely feeling the cold stone against his tough soles. The boy looked much as always, asleep with his mouth open and his arms cast wide, half on his stomach as though he were swimming, the covers kicked away. Chert paused first to lay a hand on Flint’s ribs to be reassured by his breathing, then felt the boy’s forehead for signs that the fever had returned. As he leaned close in the darkness he heard the noise again—a strange, slow scratching, as though some ancient Funderling ancestor from the days before burning were digging his way up toward the living.

Chert stood, his heart now beating very swiftly indeed. The sound came from the front room. An intruder? One of the burning-eyed Twilight folk, an assassin sent because the stony she-general now regretted letting him go? For a moment he felt his heart would stutter and stop, but his thoughts kept racing. The entire castle was in turmoil because of the events of Winter’s Eve, and Funderling Town itself was full of mistrustful whispers—might it be someone who feared the strange child Chert and Opal had brought home? It seemed unlikely it was someone planning thievery—the crime was almost unknown in Funderling Town, a place where everyone knew everyone else, where the doors were heavy and the locks made with all the cunning that generations of stone-and metal-workers could bring to bear.