Scream of Stone Read Free

the senate and that he enjoyed the social aspect of his position but wasn’t much interested in the work itself. Surero had heard that Horemkensi spent less than one day in twenty at the canal site.
    “Is that them?” a woman asked, and Surero’s attention was pulled back to the disgraceful scene before him.
    Three men pulled a cart loaded with small wooded kegs. Surero winced. The kegs had been the last of Surero’s contribution to the canal. Packed more tightly than it could be in a sack, the smokepowder was more effective. They were too big for the holes he’d watched them dig, and there was a pile of unfinished lumber too close by. He’d thought—he’d hoped, at least—that they would move the lumber before setting the smokepowder, but the cart clattered to a stop at the edge of the row of holes.
    “Is it safe here?” a man in a silk robe, his eyes lined with kohl and his too-soft hands wrapped in a fur muff, asked the pale woman next to him.
    The woman shrugged and Surero shook his head. They both looked at the alchemist, obviously interested to hear more, but Surero could only swallow and grimace. He turned away from them and watched the workers—bored, tired, and dirty—unload the cart. They seemed careful enough with the kegs of smokepowder. They must have seen them explode before, but of course they had no idea how and where to place them.
    Surero made a series of fast calculations that calmed his racing pulse for at least a dozen heartbeats. The viewing stand, set up on a hill overlooking the enormous trench,
    was far enough away so that even if the effects of the badly-placed smokepowder kegs were worse than Surero feared, the crowd of spectators would not be killed.
    Which was more than could be said for at least two dozen workers.
    “Are they undead?” another woman asked. “They look normal enough to me, though they could bathe, couldn’t they?”
    Surero took a deep breath and held it. Word of the zombie workers had trickled into Innarlith. Rumors turned into an open secret and then a simmering debate. Everyone seemed to have an opinion on the use of animated corpses for manual labor, but no one was willing to take a stand either way. The only concession Surero was conscious of was that the zombies were kept away from the viewing stand. He could tell that a good portion of the spectators were disappointed by that. They came to see death in all its forms.
    The men began to drop the kegs into the too-shallow holes, and Surero knew the people who had come to the viewing stand that day would see more death and destruction than they’d bargained for. He considered trying to do something, but he felt paralyzed. His legs refused to carry him off the wooden steps of the viewing stand. He couldn’t draw in a breath deep enough to shout a warning. He wasn’t sure if his inaction came from fear or resignation. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself. Not with Devorast gone and Marek Rymiit still ensconced in Innarlan society. He didn’t know how much tolerance anyone might have for him. He brewed beer and was good at it. He made a reasonable living. He tried to forget the canal, but he couldn’t. He tried to stay away from it, but he’d made the trip to the viewing stand in the overcrowded coaches with the rest of the impotent onlookers time and again, every time left horrified by what he saw, every time more aware of how much farther away from Devorast’s careful attention to detail Horemkensi had allowed things to get.
    Even his considerable skill as an alchemist wasn’t enough to attract Horemkensi’s attention to Surero. He’d been replaced by Horemkensi’s own man, an alchemist who had early on thrown in his lot with the Thayan. The alchemist’s name was Harkhuf, and when Surero had first encountered him some years before, he was nothing but a minor seller of even more minor potions—healing draughts and snake oils—to the tradesmen of the Third Quarter. Surero had often joked that