“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.”

  “If Demwor hires you, which is unlikely, and if we have occasion to see each other again—also unlikely—then yes, I agree, I won’t mock you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “To your face, anyway,” she said. Only she was grinning in a way that said that indeed no harm was intended.

  I’m going to hide my face from everybody, thought Runnel. And my name. People find the one offensive and the other ridiculous. And I had to come all these miles to find out about it.

  They walked in silence for a little while. Then Runnel could not contain it. “What’s wrong with my face?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “You’re not handsome, you’re not ugly.”

  “What makes you say I look proud?”

  “Well it’s the whole thing. The expression.”

  “What about the expression?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, sounding exasperated. “You just do. Like you’re a statue.”

  “What’s a statue?”

  “How can I explain it if you—a statue is made of stone or metal or clay, and it shows a person’s face, only it doesn’t move, it just stays exactly the same.”

  “I move my face. I talk. I smile. I move my eyes. I nod.”

  “Well, stop doing it, or you’ll drop the jar.”

  “Did you have to fill it completely full?”

  “Do you want me to carry it now?”

  He would not have a girl carry something because he could not. “I can do it.”

  “You want to know what’s wrong with your face? I’ll tell you. Right now you were annoyed with me—for filling it so full, then for offering to carry it. But nothing showed in your face. You moved your mouth, you moved your eyes, but you didn’t show anything you were thinking. It looks like you think you’re better than me. Like you don’t have to bother feeling anything about me.”

  “Well, I was annoyed. I can’t help what my face shows.”

  “And you’re annoyed now, and it still doesn’t show.”

  Runnel made a monstrous face. “How about now?”

  “Now you’re ugly. But it still doesn’t look like you mean it.”

  It was a shocking thing to learn about himself. “Why didn’t anybody ever tell me?”

  “Probably because they thought you were proud and didn’t like them, so why should they tell you anything?”

  “So why are you telling me?”

  “Because I saw you knocked in the dirt by Wesera, and you looked thirsty and miserable. Your face looked proud, so I thought that meant you had spunk. Now you say you aren’t proud, so that must mean you don’t have spunk, so…no, we said no mockery, so…I believe you. I believe you can’t help it. But you know what helps? Ducking your head. Makes you look humble. Hides the stiffness. Do that a lot, and people won’t want to slap you around.”

  “Do you want to slap me around?”

  “Two answers to that. No, because you’re carrying my water for me. And no, because I don’t care enough to slap you, and I’m never going to, so if that was your first test to see if you could get close to me—”

  He was sick of her assumption that he had some interest in her like that. So he walked faster and moved briskly ahead of her.

  “Watch out, slow down!” she shouted. “You’ll drop it, you’ll break it, you’ll spill it!”

  Water was sloshing and splashing, so he did as she asked, and she was beside him again.

  “So you don’t like me,” she said. “I get it.”

  “I like you fine,” he said. “You helped me. I just don’t want anything from you except a chance at a job so I can get some of these moneys or coins or whatever you call them. And maybe, just maybe, a drink of this water after we get it to wherever we’re going.”

  “Well, that would be now, because we’re here.” She led him to a doorway in a large, high stone wall.

  She stopped outside the door and whistled—a bit of birdsong, it sounded like. She grinned at him, and said, “Lark.”

  The door swung open, and for a moment Runnel thought it was magic. But no, there was a tall stupid-looking man pushing it outward, and Lark flounced through saucily. “Let my boy in, will you?” she said to the man.

  Runnel flashed with anger for a moment, but then realized that she was just playing, and besides, just now his only hope of a drink and a meal was her. At least she was letting him in. She could have said, Take the waterjar and get rid of this boy, and he could have done no more about it than with the men on the cargo raft. He was inside. That was a good thing. So he said nothing, just followed her through the door and into the courtyard.

  She led him to a stone structure about the height of a man and half more, with stone stairs winding around two sides of it. She motioned for him to climb the stairs behind her, and when he got to the top, she had already opened a small trapdoor in the roof of the thing. “Pour it in.”

  He did.

  She took the empty jar from him. “I’ll carry it now.”

  “Now it’s empty,” he said.

  “Believe it or not, this is the time when people are most likely to break the jar. Once it’s empty, it feels light, and you get careless. Only I’d be the one in trouble, not you. So I carry it down. Now move on down out of my way, Runnel, or I’ll mock you.”

  “Then you’d be an oathbreaker.”

  “Your back will be to me, so I can mock you without breaking the oath.”

  “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?

  Silently he finished drinking, watching her closely. Watching her face, how she cocked her head to watch him drink, how there were tiny changes in her face reflecting whatever thought she was thinking. He realized that he had always been able to judge other people’s moods by what their faces showed. It had never occurred to him that nobody could judge his.

  He thought of the stupid man at the doorway. How did Runnel know the man was stupid? Because of the slack-looking face, the way his grin seemed to have no purpose in it. From his size, he might have been set at the door to guard it. But from the apparent lack of wit, he was there just to open and close it, this being the full extent of his skills.

  What if he wasn’t stupid? What if his face simply was slack, and he was actually quite keen-witted?

  The stupid man’s face showed him a lackwit; Runnel’s own face showed him proud and aloof. Lark’s face showed her to be friendly, quick-witted, but also earnest.

  “So when you look at me like that,” she said, “what are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking that I wish I knew how to make my face as clever and generous as yours.”

  She blushed. “I would slap a man if he said such a thing to me,” she said.

  “Why?” he asked, genuinely puzzled.

  “Because when a man says such things to a woman, he wants something from her.”

  “I don’t,” he said. He held up the half-empty beaker. “Already got what I wanted.”

  He felt a hand on his shoulder and immediately began to drop toward the ground, so when this person shoved him down he wouldn’t fall so far.

  But the hand didn’t shove him, and Lark greeted the owner of it with a smile. “Demwor,” she said, “I want you to meet this lad. His name is Runnel, he’s from the mountain village of Farzibeck, he carried a full jar for me the whole way without spilling any, and he doesn’t want to get under my skirt.”

  “Yet,” said a soft, deep voice. Runnel tried to turn to see the face from which it came, and found that the hand held him fast.

  “He’s a different sort,” she said. “I think he might be worth it.”

  “I think he must be a fool,” said Demwor, “to let you talk him into carrying a full jar.”

  Only now did Runnel realize that she must have meant to spill out some of the water before carrying it herself. He glared at her, then realized that perhaps it didn’t look like a glare. Perhaps none of the looks he gave people meant anything. What if he always looked the same.

  But she smiled benignly at him. “I didn’t know you then,” she said. “And besides, you were strong enough to carry it full, because you did.”

  “Who told you we were looking to hire someone?” asked Demwor.

  “What, are we?” asked Lark.

  “No,” said Demwor.

  “Then it’s a good thing I didn’t promise him anything except a drink of water and an introduction to you.”

  So that was it. Another trick. Only now he had water in him, so it wasn’t as bad as the first one. Except he was even wearier now, and still had to go out and find a meal and a job.

  “You don’t like him?” asked Demwor.

  “Of course I like him,” she said. “Do you think I’d bring somebody I hated? What if you did hire him?”

  “What I’m asking,” said Demwor, “is whether the two of you are going to make a baby here at Lord Brickel’s expense.”

  Lark looked at Runnel with a cocky smile. “I told you that’s what men always think of.”

  “Sir,” said Runnel, “I work hard, and I learn as fast as anyone, and I keep my word.”

  “Whom did you run away from?”

  “Nobody that will miss me,” said Runnel.

  The hand tightened on his shoulder. “The name of your master.”

  “No master, sir,” said Runnel. “My father and mother. But I’m the ninth son. As I said, I’ll not be missed.”

  “No mother will come weeping at the gate, complaining we kidnapped her little boy?”

  “No one will notice I’m gone, sir.” Except Father, Runnel thought. He won’t have anyone to beat. Still, there was no point in saying that. If he mentioned that he had ever been beaten, Demwor would think it was for good reason and assume he was a troublemaker.

  “So why did you come here?”

  “Because where else does a ninth son go?” he asked. And realized, finally, that it was true. No one had ever explained it to him, but that, as much as his proud face, was why none of the village girls ever looked at him. What did he have? The farm would go to one of his older brothers. His sisters would be married out. One of his brothers had married a girl with a prosperous father—the dowry was his farm. But the next brother would expect to get Father’s farm, in due time. What would any of the younger boys have? He had known this without knowing he knew it.