Runnel began to find excuses to be in the kitchen during dinner, then took any excuse to carry this and that into the great hall. This way he could see the visitors, even though he heard less than he did when he listened in the cellar. Gradually, he transformed his own role until he waited in the room throughout the meal, ready to carry messages, run errands, or carry away finished bowls and platters. He remained absolutely silent, except when he had to deliver a message from the kitchen.
At first Demwor seemed irritated with him, until Runnel came to him one morning and began to ask him about the things Lord Brickel’s visitors had spoken of the night before. In the process of asking him questions, Runnel made it obvious that he had memorized most of the conversation— and his questions were about the very things that seemed to be hinting at stonemagery. “Come to me anytime with your questions,” said Demwor.
So Runnel was now welcomed in the great hall — by Demwor, anyway. The more Runnel was able to repeat the conversations of the night before, the more Demwor left him alone in the room with Lord Brickel and his guests.
Runnel’s weekly coin was doubled.
He felt guilty for his double betrayal. For he was, indeed, spying on Lord Brickel. But he wasn’t spying as well as Demwor wanted. He always reported the kinds of things Demwor himself used to hear. But he never reported when Lord Brickel and his visitors slipped and revealed more than they meant to. So he was taking Demwor’s coin under false pretenses.
As Demwor began to let Runnel do all his listening, Runnel would catch Lord Brickel gazing at him now and then, studying him. Each time Runnel tucked his head into a properly servile position, hiding the arrogant expression that he now knew his face always bore. Runnel assumed that Lord Brickel knew he was Demwor’s spy; he also guessed that Brickel was pondering just how stupid Runnel might be and how much could be said in front of him.
Gradually, as Runnel’s reports to Demwor omitted anything unusually incriminating, Lord Brickel grew more candid with his guests. They would glance at Runnel, but Lord Brickel would only smile. He could never speak aloud about Runnel’s new role as ineffective spy, in case Runnel was not an ally but merely obtuse; still, it was clear to the guests that Lord Brickel did not regard him as much of a danger.
As high summer came, the visitors became more common, sometimes two or three in a week, and sometimes overlapping their visits. Meanwhile, Demwor was often out at night, pursuing his own business, relying on Runnel’s report the next morning to tell him what was said in the great hall.
One of the guests was a dealer in marble named Stokhos, and it was plain he was important — the other two visitors and Lord Brickel himself attended to his every word, and he was full of inscrutable sayings that must be codes that only stonemages could understand. If Demwor had been in the room, the very meaninglessness of their conversation would have made him suspicious, and Lord Brickel’s interview with him the next day would have been difficult. Runnel would report none of the oddities. But he would remember them, and try to make sense of them later.
In the midst of the conversation, Stokhos arose from the table to piss into the fireplace; with Demwor gone, they all did this, as if it were some kind of offering to the stone, or perhaps just marking themselves as belonging here, like dogs that peed their way around the fields and fences of Farzibeck. But when Stokhos rested his bare hand against the hearthstone, he suddenly stopped, dropped his tunic back down to cover himself, and turned to face the others.
“When did this come to life?” he asked.
The words were too plain, and Lord Brickel glanced at Runnel nervously. Runnel tucked his chin and looked at the floor.
Footsteps told him that the guests were all going to the hearth and touching it.
“Alive all the way down to the heart,” said Stokhos. “I didn’t think you had it in you, friend.”
They called Lord Brickel “friend,” and Runnel had long since guessed that by this they were giving him his title cobblefriend, the lowest degree of stonemage — but still a true mage, and not just a worshipper of Tewstan.
“Currents hide under still water, brother,” said Brickel, who alone seemed not to have risen from the table. The title “brother” implied that Stokhos was a rockbrother, the middle degree of stonemage.
“So you do your work under the very gaze of the birds of heaven?” asked Stokhos — which, Runnel guessed, meant, You practice stonemagery here in the house with Demwor watching?
“The nest is twigs, but the bird still builds it in a sturdy tree.” To Runnel, that meant: I have to live in a wooden house, but that doesn’t mean the stone parts can’t be connected to the deepest living rock.
