Pim had always carried the heaviest load. That was the first thing he knew about himself, before he knew his own name properly, and before the stair had let him up. He knew it the way you know your own shoes are yours. If a stone was too big for two men, it was the right size for him, and if nobody else wanted it, that was the best reason to pick it up.
So when the mason said the stones for the north footings had to go up to the wall-foot by the end of the day, and asked who would take the big block by the cellar door, Pim put his hand up before anybody else could open their mouth.
“Me,” said Pim.
Harrow looked at him over the top of the cellar steps. He had been standing there with his cap in one hand and his other palm flat on the stone, counting, the way he always was, and his face went through several things at once when he saw the boy’s hand in the air. It was not a face Pim liked. It was the face the carters made when a horse was going to fall over in the shafts and they had not yet decided whether to help it.
“That’s a block for two men,” said Harrow.
“I can do two men,” said Pim. “I’ve got the pole.”
The block was a squared slab of dressed limestone, grey and rough at the edges, about the size of a bread-oven door. It lay on the cellar floor at the foot of the steps, where the masons had dragged it out of the old footings, and it had been sitting there for three days because nobody had been able to shift it. Pim walked round it twice. He put his hand on its top edge, and felt the cold coming up out of it, and felt the weight in it, sitting down deep in the rock as if the stone had decided to stay where it was.
“It’s a good one,” said Pim, approvingly.
He got the pole under it. The leather pad went up against the stone, and he hunched his shoulders, and felt the weight come on. It was a big weight. It came down through his collarbone and his shoulder-blades and into his spine, and then it went down his legs into the floor, and the floor took it back. He heard Harrow say something behind him, sharp and quick, and then he did not hear anything, because he was lifting.
The block came up.
It came up off the cellar floor with a groan that Pim felt in his teeth, and then he had it on his shoulder, and the pole was bearing down on the bone, and the whole of his small thin body had gone very stiff and very hot and very careful. He could feel every ounce. He could feel the shape of the stone and the way it wanted to slide, and he kept his feet planted and let the pole take the slide, the way he had learned to do on the fourth stair when he was six and the stones were too big for him.
He began to walk up the steps.
Nine of them. He counted. He always counted. The cellar steps were narrow and worn and the stone was cold under his bare feet, and he went up them one at a time with the block on his shoulder and the pole creaking under it and his breath coming hard through his nose. On the second step the weight shifted and he corrected it with a little hitch of his hips. On the fifth his left shin, the bruised one, bumped against the tread and sent a sharp pain up to his knee, and he gritted his teeth and went on. On the seventh the block slipped again, and he heard someone gasp below him, and he thought, that’s Harrow, and he did not look round.
He reached the top step and stood there for a moment, swaying, with the stone on his shoulder and his eyes shut.
Then he walked out into the yard, to the place where the masons had stacked the footings, and he set the stone down. He did it very carefully, bending his knees and letting the pole slide down his back and onto the flags, and the block came to rest with a sound like a bell struck softly. Pim let go of the pole. His hands were shaking. He looked down at them and was surprised to see that they were bleeding a little at the palms, where the wood had bitten.
“Nine,” said Harrow, behind him.
He had come up the steps slowly, with his hand on the wall and his face white and drawn. He stood in the yard now and looked at the stone, and then at the boy, and his mouth worked for a moment before he said anything.
“That’s the heaviest load I’ve seen carried on those steps in thirty years,” said the mason at last. “And I’ve seen men carry more than they could bear, to prove they could. You didn’t need to prove anything, boy. The stone didn’t ask you to.”
“I know,” said Pim.
He sat down on the edge of the flags, because his legs had started to tremble, and he wiped his bleeding palms on his shirt. It left red streaks on the linen. He did not mind. He had been dirty all his life, and blood was only dirt that had got in a hurry.
“A stone carried by somebody who wants to be useful,” said Pim, “is always heavier than a stone carried by somebody who’s being paid. I’ve noticed that. The paid ones put the stone down as soon as they can, and the useful ones keep hold of it until they fall over. That’s the difference. It’s not the weight. It’s the wanting.”
Harrow looked at him for a while.
“Who’s been paying you?” he asked quietly.
“Nobody,” said Pim.
“Since when?”
Pim thought about it, honestly, the way he thought about everything. He was not good with numbers, not the way the clerk was, with his ranges and his pencil. But he was good with counting things he had done, because he had always kept the count for himself, carefully, on the stair.
“Nine days,” he said. “I think it’s nine. I’ve been cutting a tally on the stair every time I carried something, one for each load, and I’ve got nine on the fourth step and one more under the bowl, where the Watch can’t see it. That’s nine days of carrying with nobody saying thank you.” He held up his fingers, and counted them off one by one, and got to nine. “And there’s a tenth, but that one was the load I was carrying when I woke, so it doesn’t count. It was already mine.”
Tallow had come up behind them. He had heard the last part through the cellar door, and he had his notebook open on his forearm and his pencil lifted, and his face had its usual look of fretful precision.
“Nine days,” said Tallow, writing. “Carrier’s shares. Owed by the Hold to the Carry seat, from the first morning of the carrying.” He paused. “I’d give you eight to ten, child. The count’s not clean.”
“It’s nine,” said Pim, firmly. “Not eight. Not ten. The tenth was mine already, and you can’t put it in the Hold’s book, because the Hold didn’t give it to me.”
Tallow looked at him for a moment, then at the notebook, then back at the boy. Then, quite deliberately, he crossed out the range, and wrote nine, and underlined it.
“Nine,” said Tallow. “Entered.”
Harrow had taken out his cord. He walked back down the nine steps of the cellar stair, slowly, with the cord running through his fingers, counting each knot as he went. He came up again. He stood in the yard with the cord coiled in his hands and looked at the boy with an expression Pim had not seen before, a sort of hard, bright, astonished respect.
“Four hundred and twelve,” said Harrow. “That’s the steps you’ve carried stone up today, boy, every one of them, from the first load of the morning to this one. It’s the same number as the paces round the wall. It’s the first honest number I’ve had in this Hold, boy. It’s the first one I’ve counted and not had to check twice.”
Pim beamed. He could not help it. He had not been praised by anybody for carrying a stone since he was a small child in a yard with a broken lintel, and the praise went through him like warm water. Then he remembered what the praise was for, and his face fell, and he looked up.
“Can I be paid for it?” he asked. “In bread?”
“You’ll be paid in bread,” said Harrow, “if the cook has any.”
“She’s always got some.” Pim got up from the flags. He felt stiff and sore and slightly dizzy, and the linen bandage on his shin had come loose at one end and was trailing in the dust. He did not fix it. He walked across the yard, in his bare feet and his torn shirt, toward the gatehouse, where the prince was standing in the doorway with his hand bandaged in its sling and his face drawn with some concern, looking at the boy as though he had been watching the whole thing from the start.
Pim stopped in front of him and tipped his head back to look up at his face.
“You’re the wrong height,” said Pim, “and I’ve counted your share, too. It’s nine days, Highness. You owe me them. And I’d like them paid now, please, while I’ve still got the load on my mind.”
Idrin opened his mouth. He looked at the boy, and then at the stone in the yard, and then at the clerk with his notebook. Pim could see him doing the sum, and getting no answer.
“I have no treasury to pay you from,” said Idrin.
“No,” said Pim, with perfect and unbothered confidence, “I know. That’s exactly how the stair came to be counted.”