At last Chaven straightened up and nodded, then slipped through the open doorway. Chert hurried down the stone corridor after him holding the fading coral lantern. The physician paused in front of a hanging so bleached by age and dotted with mildew that the scene embroidered on it had become invisible, a thing weirdly out of place in such a damp, windowless, almost unvisited spot. For a moment Chaven hesitated, his burned fingers hovering in midair as though he would once again ask Chert to turn around, but then impatience got the best of him and he pulled back the hanging and ducked beneath it, making a lump under the ancient fabric. A moment later the lump disappeared as if the physician had simply vanished.

Despite a superstitious chill at the back of his neck, Chert was about to investigate, but something else caught his attention. He made his way as silently as he could down the corridor and past the hanging to the base of the stairs. He muffled his lantern, dropping the passageway into near-darkness as he stood, listening.

Voices, coming from somewhere upstairs—were Chaven’s servants keeping the up house in his absence? Somehow Chaven did not think so.

A disembodied moan, quiet but still piercing, made Chert jump. He looked around wildly but the corridor was still empty. He hurried back to the hanging and pulled it aside to discover a hidden door, ajar. The noise came again, louder, the muffled wail of a lost soul, and Chert summoned up his courage and pushed the door open.

Chaven lay in the middle of the floor, writhing as though he had been stabbed, surrounded by rumpled lengths of cloth. Chert ran to him, turned him over, but could find no wound.

“Ruined…!” the physician groaned. Though his voice was quiet, it seemed loud as a shout to Chert. “Ruined! They have taken it…!”

“Quiet,” the Funderling hissed at him. “There is someone upstairs!”

“They have it!” Chaven sat up, wild-eyed, and began to struggle in Chert’s grasp like a man who had seen his only child stolen from his arms. “We must stop them!”

“Shut your mouth or you will get us killed,” Chert whispered harshly clinging on to the much larger man as tightly as he could. “It might be the entire royal guard, looking for you.”

“But they have stolen it…I am destroyed…!” Chaven was actually weeping. Chert could not believe what he saw, the change that had turned this man he had long known and respected into a mad child.

“Stole what? What are you saying?”

“We must listen…. We must hear them.” Chaven managed to throw the Funderling off, but his look had changed from sheer madness to something more sly. He crawled across the room before Chert could get his legs under himself; a moment later he had snaked out under the faded hanging and into the corridor. Chert hurried after him.

The physician had stopped at the stairwell. He touched his lips to enjoin the Funderling to silence—an unnecessary gesture to someone as frightened as Chert was, both by the danger itself and Chaven’s seeming madness. The physician was shaking, but it seemed a tremble of rage, not anything more sensible like a fear of being caught, imprisoned, and almost inevitably executed.