Stonefather

“Mock me all you want, I don’t care.”

He shambled down the steps and headed for the door in the garden wall. The tall stupid-looking man was still standing there.

“Wait,” she said. “Are you really angry?”

“I’m not angry, I just need to get a drink of water and a bite of food and a job, and it’s obvious it’s not going to happen here.”

“Why, because I teased you?”

“Because you teased me after you promised not to,” said Runnel. “You don’t keep your word.”

She grabbed his shirt and pulled him back. She was strong.

She got right in his face. “That was not mocking. That was friendship. Haven’t you ever had a friend?”

He almost made a sharp retort, but then he realized: probably not.

“Mocking you is when I make fun of you in front of people you care about, so it shames you. And I’ll never do that, because I took an oath, and because I don’t do that to people anyway. How did you get to be this old without knowing anything about people? Were you raised in a cave?”

No, I was raised in my father’s house.

She tugged again on his shirt, and he followed her to the other side of the cistern where he had just poured the water.

Down low, so she had to stoop, there was an opening, into which she set one of several beakers that stood on a table nearby. She placed it carefully in the middle of a circle etched in the stone base of the opening, and then pressed on a block of stone beside it. Immediately water started trickling into the beaker. It was steady, and the beaker filled faster than Runnel would have expected from the amount of flow.

She let up on the stone she had pressed, and the flow stopped almost at once. She handed the beaker to Runnel.

Runnel took it solemnly. It was a giving of water, and so he murmured the prayer of thanks, then offered it back to her.

“Oh, I forgot, you come from a pious village,” she said. “Look, this doesn’t mean we’re married or anything, does it?”

“It means I’m grateful for the water.” Then Runnel brought it to his mouth and began to sip, letting it fill and clean his mouth before swallowing, making sure not to let a drop spill, not even to dribble down his cheeks. The feeling of slakethirst was so strong it took a while for him even to notice the flavor of the water.

“It tastes like a mountain spring, straight from the rock,” he said. “It tastes clean.”

“Of course,” she said. “The water we pour in above seeps through stone, just like a mountain spring.”

“I never heard of the watermages needing stone to purify their water.”

“Of course not,” said Lark. “But my master won’t let them purify his water. He insists that he’ll draw his water from the same fountain as anyone, and filter it himself, without watermagic touching it.”

“Why?” asked Runnel.

“Oh, you don’t know, do you?” she said. “My master is Brickel. The stonemage of Mitherhome.” She said it as if Runnel should know all about it.

But the only thing Runnel knew was that there were no stonemages in Mitherhome. He said so.

“It’s true there are none in Mitherhome,” said Lark. “You can see we’re in Hetterferry, across flowing water from Low Mitherhome. But he’s still the stonemage of Mitherhome. The one they allow to live nearby, in exchange for keeping their walls and bridges and temples in good repair. Keeping the stone from cracking and crumbling, repairing the damage from ice and snow in winter. Even the watermages of Mitherhome need stonework, and that means a stonemage, if you want things made of stone to last, in the presence of so much water.”

“You serve a mage?” he said. “Then why aren’t you proud?”

“Because,” she said, lowering her voice, “he’s a stonemage. They need him here, but they keep constant watch, lest he start trying to bring other stonemages here. Because they need one stonemage to keep their city in repair, but too many stonemages could bring the whole thing toppling down and break open the sacred Mitherlough.”

“Why would stonemages do that?”

“Maybe they have cause,” said Lark. “All I know is, people don’t get in my way because they know whose servant I am, and that he’s a powerful man, and no one dares offend him. But nobody wants to befriend him, either. So. . nor have I any particular friends in Hetterferry.”

“Except among the servants here.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, yes, we’re one big happy family.”

“So why do you work here?”

“Because I was an ignorant farm girl when I came here and could find no work. And Master Brickel could find no servants worth anything. I knew nothing, but I worked hard and learned fast. I get coin and I save some and send some home to my family. My brothers are paying a teacher to learn them their letters, from the money I send. So you see? I’m a servant here, and they can hire a servant there, and my brothers will have a chance to be clerks, maybe.”

“And what will you have a chance to be?”

She looked at him like he was insane. “A servant in a mage’s house. You think I don’t know how lucky I am to be here?”

The only question in Runnel’s mind was: Will I be as lucky?