Free Scream of Stone by Philip Athans Page B

seemed anxious to say something else, but Devorast just went on digging.
    “Thank you, Fador,” Surero said.
    Fador nodded and scurried back up the trench wall, laughing.
    “Well,” Surero said to Devorast when Fador was finally out of earshot, “I guess the word is spreading.”
    Devorast, seeming to reply to an entirely different question, said, “The zombies won’t lie about horseshoes.”
    Surero stood staring at Devorast, who went on digging for some time.
    “The zombies…” the alchemist finally said, lifting his shovel to dig. “I’ve been thinking about that.”
    18_
    3 Mirtul, the Year of the Unstrung Harp (1371 DR) The Sisterhood of Pastorals, Innarlith
    Surero didn’t mind standing in line with the rest of them for a bowl of soup and a crust of bread. It gave him a chance to look at Halina. She had changed since last he saw her,
    some four years before. She had aged, but in a way that flattered her. The tired, almost simpering girl had not so much hardened, but solidified—no, he thought, that is a terrible choice of words to describe a woman so beautiful.
    “I’m sorry,” he said when finally he stepped in front of her, a dented pewter bowl in his hands.
    She looked at him with a curious expression, as though she recognized but didn’t remember him.
    “You have no need to apologize, Brother,” she told him. “The Great Mother smiles on all her—”
    “No,” he interrupted, blushing when he saw the brief flash of anger that passed through her otherwise forgiving blue eyes. “Now I must say I’m sorry.”
    He smiled and bowed his head and the hardness was gone from her eyes, replaced once more by a searching gaze.
    “Your voice is familiar to me,” she said.
    “We have spoken before, though it was long ago,” Surero said. “I have thought about—”
    “Have you thought about other people who might like a bowl of soup, mate?” a pungent old woman who stood three people down from him in line called out. She was answered by a general shuffle and air of impatience.
    Halina dropped a ladleful of barley soup into his bowl then turned to one of the younger acolytes behind her and asked, “Would you take my place, please? I must excuse myself for a moment.”
    The younger woman stepped into her place and took the ladle from her hand without the slightest hesitation. Something in that simple exchange made Surero’s heart skip a beat. He couldn’t even begin to keep the smile from his face. When she turned and looked at him again, Halina was even more puzzled.
    “Why are you smiling?” she asked as she stepped from behind the table.
    He nodded for her to proceed in front of him, and as she led him to a table in the far corner of open courtyard of Chauntea’s temple in Innarlith, he replied, “I’m sorry, Sister.”
    “You apologize a lot,” she told him as they sat. “You don’t have to call me ‘Sister.’ My name is Halina.”
    “Surero,” the alchemist replied. He realized that the accent he’d remembered—one he’d heard many times since in his imagination—was, though not gone entirely, softened. He wondered if she had made an effort to lose it, but thought it would be rude to ask.
    “And where have we met, Surero?’ she asked.
    Surero put a hand to his beard and said, “It was four years ago, I believe. You served me soup then, too.”
    “I serve a lot of soup to a lot of people who have felt the sting of being brushed aside, and the ache of hunger that inevitably follows.”
    Surero managed to stop smiling when he said, “I hope, Halina, that I can help you now the way you helped me then and help all these people every day.”
    “I hope so, too, Surero,” she said, but he could tell she didn’t believe him. Her eyes changed the subject before her words did. “You didn’t have a beard then.” He blushed and she added, “You look better without it. I should like to see you again without it.”
    Surero was thankful for that beard when he felt his cheeks blaze with