by Lynn Abbey
“Which point?” Bec demanded.
Cauvin had yet to answer Bec’s first questions and didn’t get the chance to answer his last either because Soldt did.
“There’s no keeping secrets around sprouts,” Soldt said. “Send him—”
“I can so keep a secret! Tell me anything and, pain of death, I won’t tell anyone what you’ve said.”
“No need to attract attention. I’ve used Lord Torchholder’s maps before. They’re good. We’ll be done before sunset. Let the boy stay here—unless he’s the wandering type.”
“I’m not!” Bec insisted. He would have given the toes on his left foot to unravel the mysteries of Grandfather’s map with Cauvin and Soldt, but he knew the difference between possible and impossible. He met Cauvin’s eyes with a silent plea that all his past misadventures be forgotten.
“It would be simplest to leave the boy here, if you trust him,” Soldt said, acknowledging Cauvin’s authority where Bec was concerned, but clearly inviting Cauvin to agree with him.
“If all goes well,” Cauvin said with a tone that was far from agreeable. “And if it doesn’t, he’s a boy outside the walls with an old man who should have died yesterday.”
Soldt scowled at Cauvin. “Best for you, lad, that you shed the habit of borrowing trouble. If the boy’s not safe here, then he’s not safe anywhere.”
Bec held his breath, fearing an outbreak of Cauvin’s legendary temper. All the signs were there: shoulders rising, neck thickening, lips going thin and pale, eyes, too. But Cauvin didn’t shout. He cupped his hand beneath Bec’s chin and made sure that their eyes were locked as he said—
“Count yourself lucky, sprout, and don’t do anything to shame us.”
“Not a single thing,” Bec agreed, nodding free of Cauvin’s callused hand. “I’ll get the ink and parchment and write down more of Grandfather’s stories.”
“Grandfather?” Soldt laughed.
It Poppa had asked about Soldt, Bec would have said, No, he’s not the one, he won’t buy stone, but stone wasn’t the question. Soldt had flanked Cauvin’s temper, he’d gotten Bec a day of freedom, and he thought it was funny that Bec had called the great Lord Torchholder “Grandfather.” No doubt about it, Soldt was a man to be reckoned with—a man who created changes. Bec felt it when he led them to the weathered cupboard where he’d stowed the parchment and ink.
Sometimes grown-ups talked in names and places, as though their words couldn’t be heard by anyone whose head stopped short of their eyes and sometimes they talked with “he‘s” and “she’s,” “there’s” and “later’s” that had no meanings by themselves. Bec endured both of those times while Grandfather sketched a map. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d been able to get a glimpse of the words Grandfather wrote between the lines.
Cauvin couldn’t make head nor tail of a map no matter what was written on it; he’d never have thought to block Bec’s view. Soldt, on the other hand—Soldt who’d been so helpful a few moments earlier—kept himself between Bec and the map like a dog guarding its bone. Bec sidled right; Soldt did the same. Bec sidled left, so did Soldt. Then he snatched up the parchment before the ink could possibly be dry.
With the map hidden from Bec’s curiosity in the inside flap of Soldt’s fancy leather scrip, the two able-bodied men linked arms to carry Grandfather away from the cellar. They didn’t reconstruct Grandfather’s wooden bed, but arranged blankets on the remains of a broad-sill window overlooking the city and the sea, then set Grandfather atop them.
“The boy will serve until we get back,” Soldt assured Grandfather without asking Bee. “Is there anything we can bring you?”
Grandfather winced as wrapping the blankets tight around his legs though the day had warmed, and Bec planned to shed at least one of his three tunics soon. “A new body? One without holes.”
Soldt laughed, but Bec didn’t think the joke—if it had been a joke—was funny, and neither did Cauvin. Cauvin spun on his heel, crunching hard through the gravel toward Sanctuary. Soldt had to break into a run to catch up.
It took that long, no longer, for Grandfather’s eyes to close and his hand to lose its grip on the blanket wound over his hips. Bec called “Grandfather” just loud enough for a waking man to hear. When Grandfather didn’t rouse, Bec tiptoed closer. The sounds of breath reassured him, though he’d hoped for better. Yesterday, when he’d lain in bed pretending to hurt worse than he did, Bec had set himself to recalling every word of Grandfather’s long, rambling tale of Sanctuary’s history. He thought he had made the story his. He’d hoped to show off a bit and get a second chance to learn the passages where his attention had slipped.
There wasn’t a lot of time. One look at Grandfather, and Bec knew that even if the old man survived through tomorrow or the next day, he wasn’t going to last out the winter, especially if they didn’t find some place warm and civil for him to live.
That was Cauvin’s problem, or maybe Soldt’s. Bec’s problem was to keep trouble from finding him the way it usually did. (Bec never looked for trouble, no matter what Momma, Poppa, or Cauvin said.) He checked Flower’s hobbles, approaching her cautiously lest she decide to get ornery when Cauvin wasn’t around to calm her. The mule nibbled a handful of grass Bec offered her, even though it was no different from the grass between her feet. He scrounged windfalls and tinder for a fire, which caught on the second attempt.
When he’d finished settling Momma’s stewpot where it would heat but (hopefully) not boil over—and a pot of water, too, for tea—Bec had done all the chores he knew to do. He thought about smashing bricks, but a few practice swings convinced him that, today, trouble had set itself up in Cauvin’s big hammer. That left him with the ruins themselves, a sprawling tangle of cracked walls and rubble several times the size of the stoneyard.
Bec didn’t know how old the ruins were, but its bones had been picked clean. A few bits of bright paint clung to some of the inside walls, and there was one room where, beneath the leafy bits and dirt, the floor was made from tiny stones—each no bigger than his thumbnail—that formed portraits of the Ilsigi gods. Bec knew They were the Ilsigi gods because Their names were written—with Imperial letters—in bright, stone chips beside each portrait.
Father Ils had two eyes, not a thousand, and looked like Grandfather; all old men looked like one another. The god pointed at the largest, almost intact wall. Having nothing better to do (and hoping that trouble was content to stay with Cauvin’s mallet), Bec set about examining every exposed brick and swath of plaster he could reach. He found nothing of interest on the wall, but the hollow sound and sinking feeling he got when he stood on a particular section of the floor captured his attention.
On hands and knees, the boy soon marked out a hollow square. Moments later he’d retrieved a chisel from the cart and not long after that he’d pried up a board covering the hollow. The wood crumbled in his hands and crawly bugs scrambled away from the sudden light Bec brought into their world. A true son of his mother, the first shapes Bec identified were black, round and flat … coins! He tapped one with the chisel to satisfy himself that beneath the crust the coins were … silver shaboozh!
Bec was rich with ten shaboozh, each larger than the Rankan soldats Cauvin had brought back from the seamen’s place. He couldn’t wait to see the look on Swift’s face when he brought the coins to be cleaned and changed.
The coins weren’t the only treasure in the foot-deep hollow, though Bec judged them the only part that would interest adults. Also in the hollow was a snake’s shed skin. The snake had been thick as Bec’s wrist and longer than he was tall. Beneath the snake skin, Bec found a goblet, now broken, that had been blown from astonishingly blue glass; and a string of glass beads—each different from all the others. The string was in worse shape than the wood. It disintegrated as soon as Bec touched it.
The coins were more valuable—too valuable to keep. Swift would turn them into padpols which would disappear, too. If Bec wanted a token to remember this day,
the bead would be the best choice, better than the sharp glass fragments. He tucked one of the beads—a pretty white one marked with blue-green swirls—in his sleeve hem where it would be safe until he got home.
Poppa was proud that they never went hungry or cold, but Bec’s clothes were all sewn from drab homespun, and the stoneyard house was drab, too. Color was precious. Bec snatched up a whole handful of glass beads.
There were other things in the hollow, though even Bec wouldn’t call them treasures: a lamp that looked more like a shallow bowl than a proper lamp, or maybe call it a shallow bowl with an oil lamp bulging out of it. At the very bottom, Bec found a handful of clay-wrapped tubes.
Points of polished stone protruded from the tubes. Bec knew his stones; Poppa had taught him. Most of them were agates, one was dark and shiny obsidian, and one was green, greener than springtime apples or any stone Bec could name.
Odd, Bec thought. Odd that anyone would have rolled a pretty green stone in clay before stashing it in the hollow. He found a flat spot on the fallen wall, picked up a handy smashing stone from the ground, and began pounding at the clay—which proved harder to chip than he’d expected, almost as if it had been hard-baked in a kiln.
Determination was the key. Bit by bit, the brown clay flaked and revealed that the green stone was a signet stone, cut with shapes that might prove to be letters once the rest of the clay was gone. Bec pounded carefully, satisfying his curiosity.
Poppa had a signet stone—not a tube, more like a half-opened flower carved from a bit of soft marble. The three Ilsigi letters cut into the broad part of Poppa’s seal didn’t fully spell a word or have any meaning that Bec had been able to unravel; still the seal was precious. Whenever a wealthy patron came to purchase stone, Poppa would melt a great puddle of red wax onto parchment, then he, the patron, and witnesses called from the street would all slap their signets down on the puddle before it cooled to make a contract.
Momma, of course, wrote the contract—in Rankene, unless the patron insisted on Ilsigi. She could write Ilsigi, though she didn’t like to. She could have used the signet, too. Poppa kept it hidden atop one of the rafters, where thieves wouldn’t find it, but Momma knew where it was, and so did Bec.
Someday, she said, it would be his.
Or, maybe, Bec would make his mark with the apple green stone, now further exposed and revealing the beginnings of the head of what might be a horse, or even a dragon! A dragon was better than three Wrigglie letters that weren’t part of his name.
Bec brought down his smashing stone and loosened a large clay chip. It was a dragon—he’d uncovered a wing!
“Boy! Boy, what have you found in there?” Grandfather’s shout struck the back of Bec’s head.
Bec turned around. He was alone in the room—alone as far as he could see. There was at least one wall, maybe three, between him and the ledge where Cauvin and Soldt had settled Grandfather. No way that Grandfather could have seen him open the hollow. For that matter, it didn’t seem right that the old man could hear him pounding clay off the seal or that he could yell loud enough for Bec to hear him. Which meant he’d been imagining things again. That happened; when trouble didn’t trip Bec up, his imagination did.
He resumed pounding.
“Boy! Bec! What are you doing? Come here!”
Bec spun around. He was still alone, still convinced that Grandfather couldn’t possibly see him or shout loud enough to be heard, but his curiosity had a new target. Leaving the signet behind, he wandered toward the window ledge.
Grandfather was wide-awake and waiting. “Don’t you come when you’re called?” he demanded, using a tone that would have set Cauvin on a tirade and didn’t please Bec much, either. “What have you found?”
Bec had questions of his own. “How do you know I found anything?”
“When a boy wanders off and isn’t heard from for a respectable length of time, then I safely surmise that the boy has found something that holds his interest.”
Bec wasn’t sure what a safe surmise was, but it might explain why Momma seemed to come looking for him whenever he least wanted to be found. He vowed to remember Grandfather’s wisdom—and to make noise from time to time. In return for the wisdom, he said, “I can show you. I found some stones. I’ll go get them. Wait here.”
He scampered off, chiding himself: Where else is Grandfather going to wait? He can’t walk! …
Bec had snatched up the green stone, the obsidian, and two agates from the hollow when he heard a thump and a following noise that could have been a moan. Breaking into a run, Bec found Grandfather sprawled on the ground. He dropped the stones and raced to the old man’s side.
It wasn’t easy—Grandfather might be little more than skin and bones, but he was still bigger and heavier than Bec, and though he tried to hide it, Grandfather was in a lot of pain. His breath rasped and caught when Bec, hunched on his hands and knees, tried to lift him from below—the way he’d lever a stone out of mud.
“My staff … boy—” Grandfather wheezed. “Hand me … my staff.”
Bec obeyed and between his efforts and Grandfather’s grasp on the staff, they got him back onto the blankets and the windowsill.
“I’ve made fire. There’s water heating, and stew. I can make tea,” Bec offered.
Grandfather went to shake his head that he didn’t want tea and nearly fell off the sill again. Not wanting to take chances, Bec stood himself at Grandfather’s shoulder, ready in a heartbeat—in less than a heartbeat—to catch the old man before he fell.
“I’m sorry,” he confessed, finger-combing dust and leaf bits from Grandfather’s wispy hair. “They told me to watch you, and I didn’t. I’m sorry—and I’m sorry that you hurt. I’ve got a coin—a shaboozh; I’ll take it to Mother Sabellia’s fane—Cauvin will. Her priests will accept it, even though it’s an Ilsigi coin. They’ll say prayers for you.”
“A kind thought, boy—but save your shaboozh for yourself. I’m dying—putting it off as long as I can, but there’s only so much a man can do when he’s sucked himself full of Dyareelan poison.”
“Poison!” That was a detail Cauvin had neglected to share. “Does it hurt?”
“Mercifully, no. The dead feel no pain, Bec, take comfort from that when your time comes. But the poison consumes me, nerve by muscle. Each time it takes a bite, I feel the loss. Each time I strain myself, I pay the price.”
“When you shouted for me to come here, was that a strain? I should’ve been here. I shouldn’t have wandered off. I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t shout, boy, and shouting’s no worse than talking or breathing or eating. I died five days ago.”
Without thinking, Bec retreated, leaving Grandfather to support his own weight against the wall. “I—I don’t understand. You’re alive.” He could see Grandfather breathing, blinking, “You’ve got to be alive; you can’t be dead. Dead people don’t—don’t breathe. They can’t eat or drink.”
Grandfather grinned. “They shouldn’t, should they? But they used to. Your father’s old enough. Ask him about the seasons when dead men held the Shambles.”
“Dead men?” Bec couldn’t help himself; he put his longest stride between himself and Grandfather.
“Don’t be frightened, boy, those days will never return. I will lose my battle with death, but not before I’ve finished what I’ve started.”
“What’ve you started?”
“Nothing that concerns you. Show me those stones you dropped.”
Warily, Bec retrieved them, never turning his back on the old man. “I found them in a hole next to a wall. I’m cleaning them off. I’ll keep the green one and maybe sell the others,” he proudly told Grandfather as he dribbled the stones into a large, gnarled hand, which immediately closed over them.
“Would you desecrate a tomb and sell the bones you found within?”
Bec replied, “Not ever!” Without hesitation.
“Then you must put these back where you found them.”
“
Whoa!” Bec complained. “It was just a little hole, not big enough for burying anything in. And, anyway, these’re stones—” He’d decided that Grandfather’s eyes must not be seeing clearly. “Not bones. Stones that weren’t ever alive.”
“True, but the family who put them in that hole are almost certainly dead. You have dug up the bones of their tradition, young Bec; put them back.”
Grandfather reached out with his hand, but Bec refused to meet him halfway.
“What kind of tradition?” he demanded. “A good kind, or a bad kind, like with the ’Reelan’s?”
“A good kind, the kind that holds families together.”
Bec took the signet stones onto his palm and studied them skeptically. “How?”
“In the old days—the very old days when I was young—it was the custom—and had been since Emperor Naihikaris decreed it at the Founding—to bury the dead in open fields far outside the city walls. Those with fortune, prestige, and the proper inclination built small, open galleries over their graves which they visited once a year, on the new moon of the vernal equinox (and gods help them all if the ground had not hardened from the winter thaw by then!).
“One supper a year, Naihikaris thought, was more than enough time spent with ancestors. But Naihikaris was an orphan, and his four sons outlived him; he knew nothing about grief or mourning. The citizens loved him as the font of glory; they obeyed him, and they defied him. They buried their dead in the open fields, but they dug reliquaries inside their homes: small pits about so big—” Grandfather framed a familiar shape with his hands. “When a woman dies, a piece of her jewelry is interred—not the precious kind-that gets passed along—but the everyday sort; or some domestic item more cherished than valued. When a man dies, they wrap his personal seal in clay. For a child, a favorite toy—unless the child were so young that its name hadn’t yet been written in the rolls; those they bury inside their houses. You can be sure that several times a year the cache you’ve found was opened and everything within was passed from hand to hand through the family. When you hold the signet your father once held, it is very much like having a piece of him in your hand—”