Was that why he had taken it into his head to walk over the Mitherkame to this place? It must have been.

  The hand on his shoulder relaxed. “It’s not a light thing, serving a mage,” he said, as Runnel turned to face him. The man was tall and swarthy—a man of the south, like some of the travelers that had passed through Farzibeck.

  “So you’re no man’s prentice?” asked Demwor.

  “We’re all farmers in Farzibeck,” said Runnel.

  “No smith? No harness maker?”

  “We make our own harnesses. We work in stone and wood. We drink the water Yeggut gives us, and we eat what Yeggut makes to grow from the earth. I’ve heard of prentices because some of the travelers have them, but I couldn’t figure how they were different from slaves.”

  “The difference,” said Demwor, “is that the master pays for the slave, but to take a prentice, the father pays the master to take him. That’s how useless prentices are, and why Master Brickel will never, never, never take a prentice.”

  “That’s good news to me,” said Runnel, “because I’d never want to be taken for a prentice.”

  “Just so you understand,” said Demwor. “We’d hire you as a servant only. Base labor, you understand. There’ll be manure, there’ll be slops, there’ll be backbreaking work with stone, there’ll be burdens.”

  That described the life of everybody in Farzibeck, including the stones, which they had to haul out of their fields every spring, after the winter heaved them up to snag the plow. “I’m not afraid of work, sir.”

  “Then I have only one more question,” said Demwor. “How do you feel about stone?”

  Feel? About stone? What was he supposed to feel about it? “I’m in favor of it for walls,” said Runnel, “and against it for soil.”

  Demwor chuckled. “You have a proud face,” he said, “but a humble wit.”

  “The face is not my fault,” said Runnel. “Nor is my wit, since I was born with both, and both are humble enough, sir.”

  “What I ask about stone is simple. Have you worked in stone? Have you built with stone? Have you shaped it?”

  “Is it required? Because I can learn if you want. But no, I’ve never worked stone. We just find it and make barriers sometimes, to slacken the floods of spring in a heavy snow year. And the foundations of our hovels are of stone pressed into the earth. But I’ve never actually helped to build such, since no hovel has been built since I’ve been big enough.”

  “It is not required,” said Demwor, “and we don’t want you to learn it.”

  “Then I won’t,” said Runnel.

  “Because if you think you can try to learn magic from Master Brickel, I can tell you that you will be detected, and it will go hard for you.”

  “Magic?” said Runnel. “How can I learn magic? I’m no mage.”

  “Just remember that,” said Demwor, “and you won’t get this house into trouble.”

  “The house? Your master is a stonemage.”

  “No, lad,” said Demwor. “My master is the stonemage. The only one permitted to enter Mitherhome. The only one allowed within this whole valley. And he is sworn never to learn new magics, beyond what he knew when he came here. Stonemage he is, but not a rockbrother, and especially not a stonefather. He’s a cobblefriend, which is all the power needed for the work he does here. That is why the watermages of Mitherhome pay him so handsomely, and provide him this house—because he hasn’t the power to do us harm.”

  And suddenly it became clear to Runnel. Demwor didn’t work for Brickel, he worked for the Mithermages. Yes, he saw to the affairs of Brickel’s household and hired the servants and paid for the food, but he was also Brickel’s overseer, making sure Brickel did not break the terms of his oath. Without even meeting him, Runnel felt a little sorry for Brickel.

  But not too sorry. Because here the man lived with wealth—servants, a garden courtyard ten times larger than the hovel where Runnel’s huge family slept, all the food he needed.

  “Sir,” said Runnel, “my aim in life is to earn enough to eat and a place to sleep and maybe a little of this money everyone wants so much. So Lark is safe, and you are safe, and your master is safe, and your city is safe from my ambition, because I’m little and ignorant and hungry and tired. But if you take care of the hungry and tired, you’ll find me big enough to do whatever work you need, and I’ll only get bigger, because all my older brothers are as tall as soldiers, and so is my father, and my mother isn’t tiny by any measure.”

  Demwor burst into laughter. “I’ve never heard such a sales pitch—and from such a serious face, too. I take you at your word, boy. What’s your name again?”

  “Runnel, sir.”

  “Start thinking of what you want to change it to,” said Demwor.

  “I won’t, sir.”

  “We can’t have the stonemage’s servant with a watername, lest the people think he’s mocking them.”

  “He’s not my father, he hired me is all,” said Runnel. “So no one with half a wit will think he’s responsible for my name.”

  “But he hasn’t hired you, and he won’t, with a name like that.”

  “Then I thank you for the water, sir,” said Runnel. “But I didn’t come here to be any man’s slave, nor to give up my name neither.”

  “Who said anything about a slave?”

  “It’s the owner of a slave who gets to change his name, sir,” said Runnel. “I know that because the three old servants in Farzibeck were given new names when they were taken captive in war.”

  Demwor shook his head. “So that pride in your face isn’t all illusion, is it? Too proud to change your name in exchange for a job.”

  “Not proud, sir,” said Runnel. “But Runnel of Farzibeck won’t die here to have a waterless coward rise in his place.”

  “Waterless coward?” said Demwor. “Farzibeck—it’s in the mountains, is it?”

  “West of here, along the Utteroad,” said Runnel. “Just beyond the pass over the Mitherkame.”

  “So you’re named Runnel out of piety. You serve Yeggut?”

  “I come here to find I may be the only one who does,” said Runnel.

  Demwor put a hand on his shoulder once more, and Runnel flinched, but the hand was kindly this time. “You’ll do, I think,” said Demwor. “A boy from a mountain village, with a watername that means devotion, not ambition. Yes, that’s better. You were right to stand your ground and not give up the name.”

  Demwor patted his shoulder and walked back toward the house.

  Lark wasn’t having that. “Is he hired then, sir?”

  “Yes,” said Demwor.

  “What’s his wage?” she demanded.

  “Same as yours,” said Demwor.

  “That’s not right!” she shouted. “I’ve worked here two years already!”

  “But he carried the waterjar full.” And Demwor was gone into the house.

  Lark was furious. “Drown him and all his kittens,” she muttered fiercely.

  “He hired me,” said Runnel.

  “At far more wage than you’re worth,” she said.

  “If you like, I’ll give you part of it, since you brought me here.”

  For a moment her eyes lighted up. And then she backed away. “I won’t have no man thinking I owe him.”

  Runnel shook his head. “Your precious treasure is safe from me,” he said. “I owe you, for bringing me here.”

  “I thought you’d almost ruined everything when you refused to change your name.”

  “It turned out all right,” said Runnel.

  “How did you know it would?” she asked.

  “I didn’t.”

  “So you meant all that?” She seemed astonished.

  “It’s my name,” said Runnel.

  “You are the most ignorant person I’ve ever known. What’s a name?”

  “You guard your purity,” said Runnel, “and I guard mine.”

  Her eyes and nostrils flared and she swung as if to slap him, but then she didn’t actually hit him. Nor, however, did he flinch. “Don’t you ever dare to compare your name with my purity, as you call it. Someday I mean to earn my dowry and marry, not be some kitchen slut making coin on the side or winning favor from the master or the steward. Purity is the only treasure that a poor girl has, which is why I took this job, because people leave me alone, which means I have hope. While your name—it’s not famous, it’s not important, it’s worthless. So don’t you dare compare them again, ever!”

  She stalked away from him, into the house, leaving him to finish his water, which he did.

  What’s worthless to you might not be worthless to me, he said silently. But he couldn’t help feeling disappointed. Somehow he had managed to lose her friendship after all. It would be just like home.

  He leaned against the cistern and closed his eyes. He had a job. He would be paid money. He had no idea what money was worth, but he was being paid the same as Lark, and she believed it was enough that she could save up a dowry.

  She was young, and might be counting on ten years or more to build up what she wanted. But he was even younger, and could work longer before marrying. As a farmer, he had only just started doing men’s work, and not yet the full range of that. But here, he would learn everything and grow into whatever jobs were too hard for him.

  Lots of hard work. Years of it. Why was he so excited?

  It was because he would be with a stonemage. What did he care if he was only a cobblefriend and not one of the higher orders? He might even see magic done.

  Meanwhile, there were practical benefits. Like this cistern. He could feel how it worked inside—the water in the tank above seeped right through a porous stone that trapped anything that shouldn’t be in it. It was slow for the water to seep its way through the rock, but all impurities were removed—ironic that the purest, cleanest water in Hetterferry should be in the stonemage’s house.

  The porous stone was a surprise, though. He had never known rock like this, not in any of the outcroppings he had climbed. He wished it were outside the cistern where he could get his hands on it. If only he were a stonemage so he could understand how the filtering worked.

  Dangerous thought. He must not wish to be a stonemage. He had taken an oath not to become one. If Demwor hadn’t made such a fuss about how he shouldn’t be one, he wouldn’t be wishing he could be one right now.

  It didn’t matter. Mages were magical people, not ordinary farm boys. Mages could go out into the world in the shape of their beloved—beast mages as the beast they favored, elemental mages in bodies of stone or wind or water, lightning or sand or metal. They could not be confined, not the ones with real power. Runnel imagined himself as a stonemage like Brickel, his new master. He could walk the earth in a stone body, and then what weapon could harm him?

  I hope I can see my master in his stoneshape. Or must he keep such things secret, because Demwor was here to watch?

  “Runnel,” said an impatient voice. “What are you doing?”

  He opened his eyes and saw Lark standing there again.

  “Finishing my water,” he said.

  “Without the beaker in your hand? What do you do, suck it up through your ears?”

  Don’t be angry with me, he wanted to say. But he hesitated, and she talked again.

  “Do you think you’re going to live out here in the garden? Come with me. I’m supposed to show you your room.”

  Runnel dutifully followed her into the house. She walked briskly, so he scarcely had time to notice the different rooms or try to guess what they were used for. His family’s hovel was one room, with a chimney at one end. He had no idea why so many rooms would be needed; they did not look convenient for sleeping, there was so much furniture in odd shapes. Tall boxes with doors all up and down them. Tables with cloth covering them, and so bumpy that you couldn’t possibly get any work done on them. Until he realized that they were really huge, wide chairs, and the cloth was there to cover the wood so it wouldn’t hurt to sit a long time. Cloth, just to dress chairs and make them soft! No one in Farzibeck would even have understood it.

  They went up a flight of narrow wooden stairs. “Why didn’t we use the wide stairs in the front?” asked Runnel.

  She didn’t answer.

  He sighed. So much for the hope that she might forgive him for what was, after all, an unintentional offense.

  “Always use these stairs,” she finally said. “The front stairs are for the master, Demwor, and guests. Servants use the back stairs.”

  So decency and good order had prevailed over temper. She didn’t want him getting in trouble because she never told him about the stairs rule. That was almost…compassionate.

  Up two, three flights, to the very top of the house. And then up another even narrower stairway to a room where the walls and roof were the rafters.

  He had never climbed so high inside a building. Farzibeck had only one barn as tall as this, and he wasn’t allowed inside it. He had gone once anyway, with a group of his brothers, but they wouldn’t let him climb a ladder and he hadn’t wanted to anyway. It’s not that he was afraid of heights—he could climb as high as he wanted, outdoors. But going up the stairs he felt as though he were climbing right up into the air, leaving the solid earth too far behind him.

  Three floors between him and the earth, each one shakier than the one before. He felt as though the house were swaying. He hated the feeling. “We have to sleep up here?”

  “Too proud?” she asked pointedly.

  “Too scared,” he said. “What holds us up?”

  She looked at him as if he were crazy. “The walls of the house, the floors.” She touched one of the heavy rafters. “Huge beams of heavy wood.”

  “It trembles.”

  “It does not,” she said, as if he had just accused her of something.

  He tried to think of some rational basis for his discomfort. “It can fall. It can burn. I want to sleep outside on the stone flags of the courtyard.”

  “Do you want to shame our master by making people believe he doesn’t have enough rooms for his servants to sleep in?”

  “Who would know?” asked Runnel.

  She apparently had no answer, so she glared at him. “Take it up with Demwor. I took you where he said you should go.”

  She started for the stairs.

  Runnel hated that she was so angry with him. “Please, Lark,” he said. “If I do ask him to let me sleep in the courtyard—”

  She answered him scornfully before he could even finish his question. “What do you think happens to a servant who makes trouble on his first day?”

  Since he had never had a paying job, working for strangers, the fear of being dismissed from his position had never occurred to him. The most he had feared was a blow or two—he knew, from life with Father, that he could easily cope with that. But he could not take the chance of giving up this place.

  He didn’t even know whether this was a good place to work or not—there were probably reasons why this house did not have enough servants and needed to hire a stray freshly arrived from the mountains. It was his own problem that sleeping three floors above the ground bothered him. Other people did it. He would have to get over being such a mountain boy and learn to live in a town.

  As all this dawned on him, Lark’s expression showed such contempt for him that it was like a slap. “Whose face is proud now?” he asked her.

  She whirled her head away from him and went on down the stairs. He could hear the soft sliding of the soles of her bare feet on the wood. It was a sound he didn’t like. It made him shiver. Feet were meant to walk on grass or soil or hard-packed dirt or stone, not on trees sliced up and laid out sideways. It was unnatural.

  He surveyed the straw-filled tick that was apparently meant to be his bed. Even in the scant light coming into the attic through cracks in the eaves, he could see that there were fleas jumping on it. He had nothing against fleas, he just couldn’t imagine how they had stayed alive with no one else sleeping up in this hot space.

  Then it all came clear. Someone had been living up here until just recently. These were his leftover fleas. If he had happened along just a bit earlier or later, the job would have been taken.

  He wondered why his predecessor had been dismissed. He asked to sleep on the ground? Or he tried to learn magery? Or he spoke slightingly of Lark’s purity? Any of these offenses seemed near fatal, as far as Runnel could tell.

  Since it was still broad daylight outside, and he hadn’t eaten anything, and neither had anyone else, judging by the smells coming from a kitchen somewhere on the property, he figured he wasn’t meant to try to sleep right now, though he was tired enough. If he was to get along well here, he’d need to show himself a hard worker—that was about the only thing that could ever postpone Father’s wrath, so it was worth trying here.

  The trouble was, he had no idea what tasks he ought to do. Nor did he want to bother anybody with asking. But unless he asked, he’d…

  No point in thinking any longer. He headed for the stairs and set his foot on the second-from-the-top step and felt it tremble under him and all at once he was as dizzy as if he’d just spun in circles for a dozen turns, the way they all used to do as little kids, until somebody threw up.

  He sat on the top step. There was no railing. Going up had been easy enough—he only had to keep his eyes on Lark ahead of him, a sight that was engaging enough that he hadn’t really been aware of the drop-off on either side. Now, though, he had neither companion nor handrail nor distraction, and he was only able to make his way down the stairs by sitting on a tread, extending his legs to a lower one, then sliding his buttocks down to the next step.

  The rest of the stairs were much easier, since there was a wall on one side or the other, and a railing as well. But the house never stopped trembling, and Runnel never felt secure until he was on the ground floor.

  Which was foolish, he knew, since there was a cellar beneath that floor, so it wasn’t truly the ground under his feet even now. But being level with the ground seemed to be enough. Maybe it was just that the floor beams rested on stone foundations instead of wooden walls.