The Stone Underfoot

Iven's master made him sort the limestone by sound. A clear note meant useful stone; a dull one meant hidden weakness. In the Flint quarry, apprentices learned to hear before they learned to write. Iven could distinguish six beds of rock with his eyes shut, but he could not distinguish the footsteps of the men who collected another levy of boys for the river war. The rescued families carried their divisions into the supper beneath the leaking roof, but flour, roots, salt, and a borrowed pot made separate loyalties harder to maintain than the practical business of feeding children.

His older brother had gone with the first levy. Messages returned describing victories at places Iven had never visited, then stopped. Their father continued setting an extra cup at supper. Their mother put it away each morning before going to the crushing floor, where stone dust whitened her hair and wages were paid in tokens redeemable only at the quarry store. A useful piece of engineering could become an instrument of hunger through the pin inside the diversion gate, where Mara's attempt to restore a little stolen water exposed another person to punishment she could not prevent.

That afternoon a cart arrived carrying sacks of Reed grain. The foreman called it compensation for generations of stolen water. Iven saw blood on one sack and a child's sandal trapped beneath another. He said nothing. He was hungry, and there was no other grain. Later he divided his portion in two, imagining that restraint might make eating it different from theft. No council could negotiate with the wet seam above the quarry, whose widening crack threatened an island of displaced prisoners and brought four rescuers toward the same riverbank before they could agree to trust one another. What the flood had broken suggested the paired crossing and raised channel, a structure whose supports could be drawn on a tollhouse floor more easily than anyone could settle who would have permission to use it.

His master caught him drawing a bridge on a slate instead of tallying blocks. Rather than strike him, the old man studied the arch. 'Too much weight at the crown,' he said. Then, more quietly: 'They will ask you to build things that fall on people. Learn which part of the asking belongs to them and which part belongs to you.' Iven rubbed out the arch, but not the warning. For a little while, ancestry mattered less than the hauling rope across floodwater, as injuries determined the order of crossing and the rescuers counted both those who reached shore and those still missing.