really needed to come up with an explanation. A good explanation. One that didn't involve the Wild Magic.
'I'm, uh, cleaning out your cistern, goodsir. It's full of garbage, you see, and, well, there are rats…'
'I know there are rats! Their squeaking keeps me up half the night— but will the Council do anything about it? No! They say it isn't on public property, so it isn't their responsibility! You're not from the Council, are you?'
'Me? No, I'm just… me,' Kellen said. 'But I really want to clean it out,' he added hastily.
The man in the window stared at him for a long moment, as if attempting to judge just exactly how crazy Kellen was. 'You ought to have work gloves,' he said after a moment. 'Wait there.'
He withdrew from the window, leaving Kellen staring after him, wondering what he ought to do. After less than a tenth-chime, the man returned with a pair of heavy leather work gloves in his hand.
'I knew I still had these somewhere. Mind you put them back on the front step when you're finished for the day.'
He tossed them out the window. They landed at Kellen's feet.
'Yes, goodsir,' Kellen said meekly. 'Ah, goodsir? I'm going to have to come back tomorrow. And maybe for a few days. To finish.'
'Well, see that you don't come too early,' the man said, and closed the window firmly.
Well, he's an odd one, Kellen thought to himself, going to pick up the gloves. They were a little small, but he was able to force his hands into them. They made the work go a lot easier, and he was careful to leave them just where the man had said when he'd done all he could for the day.
I wonder who he is? Kellen thought as he left.
THE next day Kellen came back just after Second Morning Bells wearing his oldest clothes, with a pick and shovel and some burlap bags he'd taken from the gardener's hut at the bottom of his garden. Even a garden that was home to nothing but gravel required constant tending, Kellen had discovered, and the tools were going to come in handy.
The gloves were where he'd left them the night before, and he put them on and set to work.
As Kellen dug, he sorted his 'finds' as best he could—rotting garbage (which went into the bags), clean garbage (broken pottery, small bits of wood or bone), which he could use when he filled in the cistern again, and large unidentifiable things, which would have to be hauled away somehow, unless he could manage to break them up into small pieces with the pick or shovel. It was hot, dirty work that kept him stooped over, and he didn't dare step down into the cistern to work from there. Not yet, anyway. He had no idea how deep it went, and even though he was now wearing heavy work boots, he had no desire to slice his foot open on a piece of rusty metal or glass that had been steeped in rotting garbage.
It certainly explained why the cistern hadn't been cleaned out before now. If the Council wouldn't pay to have it done because it lay on private land, the land's owner would have to pay someone privately to do it, and Kellen could hardly begin to imagine how much someone would charge to do this work. A lot, probably. More than someone down here had, almost certainly.
At least most of the big stuff seemed to be near the top, where he could hook it with the pick and drag it up.
'You! Boy!'
Kellen heaved his latest 'find'—a tangled mass of bailing wire—to the edge of the cistern, and looked toward the house. The man who had given him the gloves the day before was looking out the window at him again. This time the tunic was red, its sleeves spotted with old ink stains.
'Yes, goodsir?' Kellen said politely. He assumed the man was a 'good-sir,' and not a 'gentlesir,' for all his aristocratic looks. It was not unknown for Mageblood to appear elsewhere in the City—that was where lowborn Mages came from, according to Mage Hendassar. Perhaps this man's sire or grandsire had been a Mage on the wrong side of the blanket. It did happen, though hardly as often as the wondertales claimed.
'I suppose you're going to dig all 'day?' the man said.
'Yes, goodsir, I think I am,' Kellen said, glancing down at the cistern. With the largest of the objects removed, he could now see that the cistern—a stone circle about six feet across—was full of an inky black sludge starting about three feet below its lip. Kellen had no idea how far down it went.
'And I suppose you didn't bring any lunch with you?' the man asked waspishly.
'No, goodsir,' Kellen admitted sheepishly. He'd forgotten about that until just now.
