The merchant turned a florid crimson, wheeled, and stormed out of the garret. His boots thundered down the rickety stairs in the back of the cooper's shop.
"Which is why I ask to be paid in advance," said Heliz to empty air, a nasty smile breaking across his face. He turned back to the study lamp with the note, examining the paper. The other side of the note was perfectly usable, and even the side the message was written on could be salvaged with a little scraping.
Another footfall on the landing, this one just as heavy, but firmer and more assured. Heliz did not need to reach for the door. Lumm the staver owned the garret, the barrel shop beneath it, his own quarters and the small yard behind the building. He was a good-natured man, a tolerant man, and as far as Heliz was concerned, an ideal landlord. Lumm the staver was also as unlearned as the rest of the town's population, and left the linguist to his studies. Unless he was trying to be friendly. Unless he was trying to be helpful. In which case the larger man was a royal pain. But still, he was the landlord, and it paid to cozen him.
"What did you say this time?" said Lumm, managing to wrap the entire sentence in a sigh.
"It is not my fault if people write bad news," said Heliz, "Basic rules for translators-you don't blame the speaker for the words."
"It was something you said, I'll bet," said Lumm, mild irritation in his voice. "I found him at the Unicorn, you know. Told him you knew your letters. Figured you could have gotten a bit more out of him, say, writing a letter back. You passed up an opportunity."
"I don't need the sad cases you find in taverns, thank you," Heliz said in a mild tone. "I just wish to be left with my studies. Without interruptions."
"It seems to me…" said Lumm.
Heliz shook his head. "I am not some flat-back girl, Master Lumm, and I do not need you to serve as my monger."
"What I want," Lumm began, more strongly than he intended, then stopped. He took a deep breath. "I want a tenant to pay his rent. And I don't feel right taking silver buttons in trade."
Despite himself, Heliz's thin hand went to the buttons on his travel-stained robe. When he had left the tower, the entire row of buttons, thirty in number from hem to collar, had been silver-now all but three were replaced with wooden fasteners.
Still, the linguist said, "Do you think I should sit in the courtyard and scribe for anyone with the proper coin?"
"If it will pay your room and board, what of it?" said Lumm, his voice calm again, his eyebrows raised to make his point. "Another thing. The neighbors are complaining. You're boiling rags again."
"I'm making paper," said Heliz. "It's a necessity for my craft."
The landlord held up a protective hand. "So you told me, and I said you could do it, but it kicks up a stench that makes even the Hillers sit up. You might want to wait for the day afore market day. That's when most of the hogs are slaughtered and your stench won't be as noticed." Lumm was at the desk now, looming over the volumes and notebooks.
"I'll take that under advisement," said Heliz, but his eyes tracked Lumm's hands as they moved over the scattered notes and pages.
"So many different ways of writing," said Lumm, admiring the various scripts.
"Different languages," volunteered Heliz, hoping the man would soon grow bored and return to his drinking. "Different alphabets, often alien and mutually exclusive syntaxes. Some languages include more vowels, some do without them, some indicate tense by umlauts and carets…"
Lumm touched the small open notebook and Heliz's words died in his throat. "These are interesting. Poetry?"
Heliz reached out and grabbed the booklet from out in front of the stunned Lumm. Despite himself, the larger man staggered back, as if threatened.
Heliz held the small notebook to his chest. "Sorry."
"And what was that about?" said Lumm, truly irritated now. "It's not as if I can read your damned poems."
"I'm sorry," said Heliz, suddenly realizing he was in very real danger of losing his quarters. "They're not poems. They're words. Powerful words. Dangerous words."
Lumm's face clouded. "Dangerous? You mean like spells? Don't care for magic around here."
Heliz shook his head. "Not spells. I mean, not quite. These are the words that spells are made of. Wrapped at the heart of all spells are parts of these words, or at least cognates." He looked at the cooper, but only got a blank, puzzled look. "Um, similar words that sound like them. These words of power are the building blocks of the world. Using them, even unknowingly…" Heliz's face clouded for a moment in memory, but he shook it off. "Speaking them can be dangerous, in certain circumstances. Sorry if I startled you."
Lumm tried to look as if any of that sunk in. "But they're not spells," he concluded.
Heliz thought about trying to explain again, then said, "No. They're not spells, though a spellcaster might be interested in them."
Lumm looked at the linguist for a long moment. "People don't like spellcasters much in Sanctuary."
"I know," said Heliz, letting out a relieved sigh that nothing had really sunk into the barrel-maker's thick-spackled skull. "That's one reason I came here. Less danger of some wizard wanting to take my work. Privacy for my studies. That and there are so many languages that people have used here."
"Hmmmpf," said Lumm, looking at the collection of writing, and dismissing it. Heliz let himself relax. "I'll leave you to your work, then. But I hope you stung that merchant enough to make the rent. I don't want any more buttons. I'm going back to the Unicorn. You want to come?"
Heliz managed a modest shrug that would only fool someone like Lumm. "I cannot. I have my studies."
Lumm shook his head and galumphed down the back stairs, taking most of the air with him.
Heliz was suddenly aware that he was still clutching the booklet tightly to his chest. Carefully he opened it, as if the words caught within could escape. There were about a dozen. A verb that softened the earth for plowing. An adjective that caused fire to ignite. A turn of phrase that helped lambs' birthing.
Words that any mage would slay for, if he knew they existed.
And a single word, a noun, that Heliz had spoken aloud only once. A word that had devastated his home monastery and killed every one of the other Crimson Scholars. There had been fifty of them, members of his order, in a hillside tower a day's ride north of Lirt, all led by his great-grandmother. He had grown up there. He had studied there. And he had researched and toiled in its great libraries. And he had discovered this word there. And after he had spoken the deadly word, the tower lay in wreckage at the foot of the hill, and only he managed to pull himself from the wreckage.
And he had fled to the most illiterate, backwards, unmagical spot he could find to avoid ever having to deal with it again.
Lumm stalked through the streets, heading back to the Vulgar Unicorn. He wasn't angry at the little scholar as much as confused. Why would anyone turn down a bit of coin, especially for a skill that didn't require any heavy lifting? This scholar was a good tenant as tenants go, but his mule-headed devotion to words completely bum-fundled him. If the lad would just get out a little, he wouldn't be so tightly wound.
Above Sanctuary, the sky grumbled a warning curse. The cloud cover was heavy and low tonight, such that the reflections of fire-pits could been seen illuminating the rounded bottoms of the clouds. It looked like a trickster's storm, more like a summer storm than a winter one. A storm that could drench the town in an instant, or could equally pass over Sanctuary for more promising locations. As Lumm looked up, a spidery thread of lightning crawled along the cloud base, followed by the deep toll of thunder. Definitely a summer trickster's storm.