Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [122]
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