Chapter 5: Ask the Stone

The nursery arch groaned under its crown. Ilan stood with his right palm flat on the haunch, where the arch sprang from the wall, and each groan climbed his forearm and lodged behind the elbow. The corridor smelled of warm pennies and wet brick. The crack in the crown ran a hand's length, thin enough to hide under a thumbnail, and grit had been sifting out of it since he came in. Two dressed offcuts that Bram's lads had wedged under the haunch lip the night before groaned with it, new stone taking a load it had not been cut for.

"Eleven," Sera said.

She sat on an upturned crate beneath the crown with the load screw between her boots: a brass spindle on a cast foot, its plate wedged against the stone, its dial lit by a hooded lamp. Ink ran to her second knuckle. She had come at first light with the machine and a slate, had given her name once, and had asked for nothing. Above her head a chalk line crossed the arch, and beside it she had written the word noon in square letters.

"And the stop?" Ilan said.

"Fourteen. If the dial reads fourteen at noon, I write stop on this arch and nobody goes under it." She did not look up from the dial. "Some people already live under it. They ought to know the number."

"I'll tell them."

"Then tell them something true. Keep working."

He kept working. The haunch was the trouble: a pale block of living stone that took the crown's thrust and passed it down into the foot of the wall. Its seat was a hand too narrow for the job. All the load crowded into a strip the width of his palm, and the grain along the edge had begun to crush. Widen the seat and the load would spread. He wanted a hand's breadth on either side, no more, and he could see it in his head like a line on a sheet.

He leaned on the stone and asked for it.

The bond had never refused him. It had closed seams and reseated loose courses, and each time the stone had given with a small warm sigh. Now it went dense under his palm, like a jaw setting. He pushed harder. The pain came up the bone of his arm to meet the aches he had carried in from Brickfall, the ankle, the bruise under his shoulder blade, and they joined into one bar of heat from neck to hip.

"Is it moving?" he said through his teeth.

"Not yet."

He pushed. A flake the size of a fingernail popped from the edge of the seat and hit his boot. The haunch groaned, lower this time, and the sound went down through the floor and into his knees.

"Twelve and a half," Sera said. "Thirteen." She set her pencil on the slate. "That's worse. Whatever you're doing, the arch is carrying more."

"I know."

"Then you need a reason to do it again."

He did not have one. He took his hand off the stone and found it would not close. The fingers curled halfway and stopped, and he had to open them with the other hand and rub the knuckles until blood came back. Sera watched him do it. She did not look away, and she did not look kind. She looked like a woman reading a dial.

Everything the bond had done for him so far had been mending. A seam sealed. A course set back in the bed where it had always lain. Each was a form the stone already remembered, and it had let him put it back. A seat a hand wider was a form it had never held. He could restore what had been. He could not order it to be something else, and every pound he had spent shoving had gone straight into the crack. Mason, the next rung up, was said to shape stone to a plan. He wanted that rung, and he did not have it.

"It won't take an order," he said.

"No."

Ilan laid his palm on the haunch again, softly, as a man puts a hand on a horse that has bitten him.

"Where does the weight go?" he said aloud.

"You're talking to it," Sera said.

"It's the only one in the room who knows." He shut his eyes. "I'm going to ask, and it's going to hurt."

"Then test it." She bent to the dial. "I'll call the numbers."

\* \* \*

The stone answered in pressure, and the pressure answered in pain.

The first answer ran down his right arm in a line, from the heel of the palm to the elbow, and he knew it for the haunch's own load, passed through him as a bolt of cold iron passes heat. Down the block. Into the foot. Out across the wall, into a hollow that sat under the haunch like a hand cupped under a heavy bowl. The load went there, and it did not stop in the wall. It leaned into the hollow, because the hollow was an alcove, and the alcove was soft.

He took his hand away, breathed, and put it back.

"What do you want?" he said.

Warmth tugged at him. It came from the left side of the corridor, then the right, a drawing-out like a thread pulled through cloth. It was heat from the alcoves along both walls, the little hollows where the residents slept, and the stone wanted it. He could feel the draw in his own teeth. Then pressure again, flat and broad across his chest: the corridor floor, kept open, no rubble, no braces, no door pulled to. After that came the third answer, and it dug into his right shoulder and spine with a patient weight, a bar laid along his back and bolted down. The haunch would settle into its seat while it set. A share of its load would settle in him.

"Thirteen," Sera said. "It's sagging back. You stopped shoving."

He opened his eyes. Sweat had run into his collar. Warmth from people who slept there. A corridor held open by hand. A piece of a stone arch hanging off his spine until it learned to stand. Nobody had taught him to ask a wall for its price. The stone had taught him in a quarter hour, and Sera's dial had checked the answer.

On the crate by the door sat two lengths of spruce prop, each a forearm shy of the crown. They were the last cut timber on Bram's cart after the grey wagon had taken the rest. He wedged one under the haunch's lip and leaned on it with all his weight.

"That bears nothing," Sera said. "Thirteen and a half. That's a stick."

She was right, and he knew it before the spruce split with a dry crack. The two offcuts under the lip were all the stone the arch had. He had six blocks in a yard and no way to set a single one before noon.

Ilan looked at the splinters on the floor. He looked at the crown, with its hair of grit.

"Yes," he said, to the stone and to no one else.

\* \* \*

Fen stood where the corridor met the outer hall, in the strip of lamplight, as if he had been waiting there for an hour.

He was moss-skinned, broad in the shoulder, and he held his hands pressed flat against his thighs. Behind him two more residents stood against the wall, not touching each other, not speaking. One was tall and bent at the neck. The other was no taller than Ilan's chest. Neither had given a name. Neither had come into the lamplight until now.

Ilan took the lamp from the nail and held it low so it would not blind anyone. His ankle sent a bright line up the shin when he put weight on it. He stopped three paces off.

"Fen," he said. "The arch is cracked. I can mend it, but it wants a price."

"Wants a price," Fen said. "Wants a price."

"It wants warmth out of the alcoves. For as long as it takes to set. Maybe a day."

"Warmth out. A day."

He looked past Fen at the two. "It also wants the corridor open. Nothing across it. Nobody shut in." He kept his voice level, and kept each sentence short enough to be carried. "I can't do this if you say no. I'm asking if you'll give it."

Fen's mouth worked. He gave the words back one at a time, as if he were setting them on a shelf.

"If you say no. Say no."

"Yes," Ilan said. "Say no, and I stop. I'll find another way."

"Another way," Fen said. Then, after a while: "Give it. Give it."

Ilan could not tell if that was agreement or an echo. He turned the lamp toward the two behind.

"I'd like your answer too," he said. "If it's yes, stand in the corridor, where it has to stay open. If it's no, stay where you are."

For a time nobody did anything. The vent in the wall breathed its mineral warmth. Water ticked somewhere in the dark.

The tall one moved first. It came forward and stood in the middle of the corridor floor with its feet planted. The small one followed. They did not look at him. They stood as two posts stand.

"Thank you," he said. It came out rough.

The alcove under the haunch was last. A pallet of rags lay in the hollow, and on it sat the oldest of them, folded so far into the dark that the lamp found them last. Their shoulders were grey with age. Their eyes were open and on the haunch above.

"I need your warmth too," Ilan said. "Yours first. This is your room."

The old one looked at him for as long as it took him to say it. Then, very slowly, they turned their face to the wall.

He waited. The face did not come back.

"That's a no," Ilan said, to the room and to the grey back. "I said I'd stop, and I have. Your alcove stays as it is."

"Then the seat sets slow," Sera said, without lifting her head. "Fourteen is still fourteen."

"I know. The stone can have the rest from me." He turned to the tall one and the small one. "If it leans toward that hollow, pull them out. Don't wait for me."

"I'll keep the corridor as it is," he said to the room. "And I'll ask you before I change it again. All of you."

"Ask you," Fen said. "Ask you."

Ilan counted them aloud, from habit. "Fen. Two in the corridor. The old one. Four under this arch." He looked at the chalk line. "Five. Sera."

"Five," Sera said, from her crate, without lifting her head.

\* \* \*

He laid his palm on the haunch and let go of everything but the question.

Warmth left the other alcoves first. It pulled out of the walls in a long, slow draw, and the corridor cooled behind it, all but the hollow under the haunch, which stayed warm and shut. The stone wanted more than the others gave, and he gave it his own: heat out of his chest and arms until his fingers went white to the knuckle. Ilan's right hand grew hot. The heat did not belong to the stone, and it did not belong to him. He held it and passed it on.

The haunch took it. Under his palm the grain loosened and began to settle a finger's width, spreading the load through itself. A line of fire ran from his shoulder into his hip.

"Twelve," Sera said. "Eleven and a half."

The bar laid itself along his spine. It came down in stages, each one heavier than the last: a sack, a barrel, a cart wheel set across his shoulder blades. His knees bent. His back, from the bruise to the base of the skull, filled with something that was not pain yet and soon would be. He braced his forearm on the haunch and breathed through his nose.

"Eleven," Sera said. "Eleven. Ten and a half."

The corridor floor pressed up against his boots. He held it. The two residents stood on it, tall and small, and behind him Fen murmured "Ten and a half, ten and a half," as a man learns a prayer.

Then the third thing opened its mouth.

The foot of the haunch was settling into the wall, and the wall was giving it room. The room it gave was the alcove. Ilan felt a sag in the stone beneath his hand, a slow lean toward the old one's hollow.

He had three things in his hands and strength for two. The arch, so the crown would stand. The corridor, so the nursery's children would have a way out and a way in. The alcove, with the old one in it, whose face was turned to the wall.

"Sera." His voice scraped. "How long?"

"The dial is dropping. Another minute." She was on her feet. "Ilan. How long can you carry it?"

"Less."

He could hold the alcove open and let the corridor go. The walls would close and the passage the children would use would pinch down to a crack. The old one would keep a home, and the little ones would have a trap. Or he could hold the corridor and let the hollow shut.

He tried to hold all three. The bar across his back doubled, the edges of the world went white, and a cry cracked out of his chest.

The alcove slipped first. He felt it go through his palm like a coin through a hole in a pocket.

"No," he said. "Wait. Wait."

It did not wait. The hollow narrowed from the top. The mouth still stood wide enough for a body, and two shapes crossed the lamplight at a run, as he had told them to. The tall resident and the small one went into the narrowing mouth, reached in, and hauled. The old one came out of the alcove backward, grey shoulders first, one hand dragging along the closing edge. Behind them the stone closed over the pallet and the rags and the wall.

It shut on the hand for a moment, and the hand came away cut.

"Corridor's open," Sera said fast, one hand up on the arch's face. "Arch is at nine. It's holding. Ilan. Now."

He could not have said what she meant. He opened his hand. The haunch stayed where it was, settled, and the pale block stood on a seat the width of a palm and a half, and the groan of the arch stopped, like a bell hand laid on a bell. The load he had been carrying stayed with him.

His knees went. The floor came up. Someone caught his coat at the collar and dragged him, boot heels scraping, clear of the spring and into the lamplight, and a hand he took for Sera's slapped his cheek once and went away.

The last thing he knew was the warm mineral smell, and a number. Nine. He tried to count it against the people in the room and could not make the sum come out.

\* \* \*

He woke to the smell of onions.

A lamp stood on the floor beside him. His coat had been rolled for a pillow, and his boots had been taken off, and his back felt as if it had been dropped from a roof and left where it landed. Bram sat on a crate with a bowl on his knee and a spoon in his fist.

"There he is," Bram said. "Eleven hours. You'd have cost me a fortune at an inn. Stew's tuppence, but the onion's thrown in, because I'm sentimental. Eat."

"The arch?" The voice came out as a croak.

"Standing. Stop mark's off the chalk, rubbed out. She wrote holding on the crown with her own hand. Square letters. Put a date." Bram fed himself a spoonful and chewed it fast. "Then she packed her brass thing and went. No goodbye."

Ilan lay still. Holding. In her own hand, on a number she had earned by test. He could feel the haunch from where he lay, a dull weight along his back, bearing its share.

"And the yard?" he said.

The spoon stopped. Bram's patter never stopped in mid-sentence unless something was wrong. He looked at the bowl.

"Half the blocks are gone," he said.

"Which half?"

"The three nearest the gate. A Brickfall cart came into the lane about the second hour. Yard plate on the shaft and no name on the board." He put the spoon down. "Two men, flat caps, a ramp. My lads thought it was mine."

"Did they speak to anyone?"

"They didn't have to. They loaded like men with every right." Bram's mouth went flat. "A ring and a number stamped on the tailboard. No name."

A ring and a number. Ilan knew the shape from Crane's blocks, something like a Ledger seal, and could not say what it meant. The stone had cost him a day, an alcove and a hand, and now three of the six blocks he had bought with his father's drafting set.

He tried to sit. His elbow gave. His right hand lay on the floor like a glove someone had dropped, and the ankle woke up and told him about the day before.

"Don't," Bram said. "I'll find the cart. I know every carter on the quay."

"Every one who'd talk."

"That's most of them, if I buy the beer."

"By morning it's in a wall." Ilan got his good hand under him. They looked at each other. The bill between them was the one neither had written out, and he found he was no longer sure which of them was waiting for it.

Then he saw that Bram was looking past his shoulder, into the corridor, and the hand holding the bowl had gone stiff.

"He's been there since the lamp burned down," Bram said. "Won't leave. Won't come closer. I offered him stew."

Ilan turned his head on the coat.

Fen stood at the foot of the pallet, outside the circle of light, with his hands pressed to his thighs. He was looking down at Ilan, and the moss along his shoulders had gone the color of old brass.

Ilan could have gone then. He could have hauled himself up the wall and let Bram cart him down the lane after three blocks and a plate with no name.

But Fen had come to the foot of his bed for something.

"Fen," Ilan said. "I'm here."

Fen's mouth worked. He took a long breath, and his hands lifted from his thighs and fell back.

"Lio," he said.

Ilan waited. Nothing came after it. He waited longer, and no more came.

"Who's that?" Bram asked. "Is he asking for a person?"

Ilan did not answer. He knew no Lio. He had gone through every clerk, breaker and borrower in Greywake in his head, and this one had no hook to hang on. He pulled the sketchbook from the coat under his head. His right hand would not close on the pencil, so he took it left-handed and wrote the name across the corner of a page in a hand like a child's.

He looked at it for a long time. Somewhere under the letters, in the part of him that had learned to count the living in the dark and had gone on counting after the dark took him, a number rose up one short and would not go back down.

"Lio," said Fen, above him.