The scholar took a lantern from the tabletop and led Chert out of the high-ceilinged observatory and down a succession of corridors and stairways. Chert had been in Chaven’s house before, of course, but not often, and he had little idea where they were now except that they were traveling downward. For a moment he became fearfully certain that the man was taking him to the secret door Chert himself had employed when Chaven lived here, that he knew exactly who Chert was and what had brought him here, but instead, when they had gone down several floors, the little physician opened a door off the hallway with a key and beckoned him inside. An object covered with a cloth stood in the middle of an otherwise empty table, like an oddly shaped corpse waiting burial—or resurrection.

Okros removed the cloth with careful fingers. The mirror was just as Chaven had described it, but Chert did his best to look at it as though he had never seen it or heard of it before. Carved hands, the fingers spread in different arrangements, alternated with crude but compelling eyes around the dark wood of the frame. The curve was there, too, just enough of a convexity to make the reflection slightly unstable to a moving observer: in fact, it was disturbing to look at it for more than a few moments.

“And what exactly did you wish to know, my lord?” Chert asked carefully. “It looks like an ordinary…that is, it looks as though it is…unbroken.”

“Yes, I know!” For the first time, Chert could detect a hint of something strange under the physician’s words. “It is…it does nothing.”

“Nothing? I’m sorry, what…?”

“Don’t pretend you are ignorant, Funderling.” Okros shook his head angrily, then calmed himself. “This is a scrying glass. Surely you and your people did not think I would send for help to deal with an ordinary mirror? It is an authentic scrying glass—a ‘Tile,’ as they are sometimes called—but it remains dead to me. Do you still pretend ignorance?”

Chert kept his eyes on the glass. The man was not just angry, he was frightened somehow. What could that mean? “I pretend nothing, Lord, and I am not ignorant. I just wished to hear what it was you wanted. Now, what more can you tell me?” He tried to remember Chaven’s words. “Is it a problem of reflection or refraction?”

“Both.” The physician seemed mollified. “The substance seems intact, as you see, but as an object it is inert. As a scrying glass, it is useless. I can make nothing of it.”

“Can you tell me anything of where it comes from?”

Okros looked at him sharply. “No, I cannot. Why do you ask?”

“Because the literature of scrying glasses, and the unwritten lore as well, must be applied to that which is known, to help discover that which is unknown.” He hoped he didn’t sound too much like he was making things up (which he was): Chaven had told him a few facts and a name or two to drop when the occasion seemed to warrant, but there was no way of knowing ahead of time precisely what Okros would want to know. “Perhaps I could take it back to the Funderling Guild…”