Stonefather

“No one in my village ever told me,” said Runnel. “They must be used to me, having seen this face since I was a baby.”

“Oh, and you think you’re not a baby now?” she said, with a bit of smile at the corners of her mouth.

“Now who’s the mocker?” asked Runnel.

“That’s different,” she said. “You really are small.”

“I can’t help being young. I’m growing, though — I’m taller than I was. I can work hard. I do what I’m told. I can’t help my face, but I can bow my head and hide it — see?”

He tucked his chin onto his chest.

“Couldn’t get much work done in that position,” she said. “But no use asking me for work, I haven’t any such thing in my gift. I’m a servant myself, though not a slave, thank the god, so I get a coin now and then, and the master couldn’t make free with me even if he wanted to, which he’s too old even to wish for, thank the god.”

“Then let me carry your waterjar for you, and you can let me ask your master for work.”

“It’s a great household, lad,” she said. “You wouldn’t speak to the master, you’d speak to Demwor, the steward.”

“The what?”

“The man who rules the servants, under my master. The man who keeps the counts. The guardian, the — you’ve never heard the word ‘steward’?”

“There’s not more than three servants in my whole village, and no house with two of them.” Runnel thought of each of them, all of them old, and belonging to houses once headed by men who went off to the wars and came home rich. They had been captured by the men’s own hand as spoils of war, which made them slaves by the decision of the gods. Now the men were long dead, and the servants were old, and hardly anybody cared that they weren’t free. The only reason Runnel knew was that when he was little, he asked why one of them had never married, and then the whole business of servants was explained to him, and the other two were pointed out as well.

And here he was, volunteering to be a servant himself. Only, like this girl, he intended to be one who was free, and made a — what was the word? A coin now and then.

“If you drop the jar, I’ll be beaten for it, free or not,” she said. “And no payment for you — I have no coin to spare. Nor kisses neither, in case you thought.”

“What?” he asked, dumfounded.

“In case,” she said. “You claimed not to be a baby anymore.”

“I wouldn’t just. . why would I?”

She narrowed her eyes. “And here I thought you weren’t really proud,” she said.

“I didn’t mean…” And then he gave up and hefted the jar out of the water. It was heavy. They never used such large jugs in Farzibeck, but that was partly because water was never very far away, and none of the houses used much water, and who could afford a jar this big?

He hugged it to his belly, and she eyed him critically. “Get a hand more under it in front. . yes. . no, lower, catch under the edge like. . like that. You don’t want it sliding through your arms to land on your feet.”

“Maybe I should balance it on my head,” said Runnel.

“You might carry a basket of feathers that way,” she said, “but you don’t have enough of a neck to balance water there. First your neck would break, then the jar.”

“Can we start moving?” he said. “Because I can’t hold this forever.”

The nasty woman who had shoved and threatened him had apparently stayed to gossip with other women. Now she saw Runnel carrying the jar, and she called out to the servant girl, “Ho, Lark, don’t you know that fine lordling will take what he wants from you and run away?”

“They only run away from you, Wesera!” Lark cheerfully called back.

“Don’t know how she thinks I could run anywhere, carrying this,” muttered Runnel.

Lark burst out laughing. “You really are fresh from the farm, aren’t you?”

“Why? What did I say?”

“No, no, I think it’s sweet that you don’t think that way. You really don’t, do you? And not because you’re too young, either. Now you know my name’s Lark, so what’s your 

name, since it seems I’m about to introduce you to Demwor and I ought to know it.”

“Runnel.”

“Is that because you peed yourself all the time as a baby?” she said. “Or is there watermagic in your family?”

“I didn’t choose my name,” said Runnel, embarrassed and a little angry. “No one mocked me for it where I lived.”

“I’m not mocking you!” said Lark. “I’ve just never — it’s the kind of name a man takes when he’s joining the service of Yeggut. The kind of name watermages give their children.”

“Half the children in Farzibeck have water names,” said Runnel. “It shows that your parents are waterfolk.”

“It’s a good name. It’s just that in Mitherhome they go more for ancient names or trade names or virtues. I’m not from here, either — my family farms to the east of here, and northward. I was named for a meadowbird that my mother loves to hear singing. So you can be named for a brook, and it’s no shame. I was just surprised.”

“Then let’s agree never to mock each other,” said Runnel, “so that even if it sounds like it, or looks like it, we’ll both know that no harm is meant.”