Stoneheart by Charlie Fletcher Read Free Book Online Page B

it. It pinged dully.
    “You’ll use your bit of glass, will you?”
    Edie concentrated savagely and nodded.
    “What does it do?”
    “It glows when there are gargoyles around, and they fly away when they see it. It’s powerful.”
    He pinged it again. She began to feel silly holding it out. He put her down suddenly.
    “Frightened a lot of gargoyles with it, have you?”
    “Yes. No. One. Just now. The one that was sniffing after you. It came after me, and I held it out and it flew away.”
    The Gunner looked at the rain falling out of the black rectangle over their heads.
    “And why did you hold it out? Did you know it was powerful?”
    “It gets hot when they’re about. It gets bright. It senses them….”
    “And it’s a weapon, is it?”
    “It must be. It flew away.”
    “That why you got it out?”
    “No. I got it out because I couldn’t think what else to do.” The Gunner’s smile was getting on Edie’s nerves. “Anyway. Why doesn’t matter. It worked.”
    “Was it raining?”
    “What?”
    “When you thought you defeated the mighty gargoyle, was it raining? Had this rain just started?”
    Edie thought. And nodded.
    “Wasn’t your glass. Your glass is just a warning stone. Not a weapon.”
    “But it flew away!”
    “It flew away because it’s a gargoyle. S’what a gargoyle is. Just a jumped-up waterspout. A really ugly bad-tempered waterspout. That’s its purpose. When it ain’t raining, it can go where it likes, but soon as the first drop hits the roof of its building, it’s got to go. Vengeance and spits don’t mean a thing to it. It’s got to do what it was made for, same as everything else does. It can’t deny its First Purpose. It’s got to do what the maker intended.”
    George coughed.
    “The Maker? You mean God?”
    The Gunner laughed and shook his head, sending an arc of rainwater spinning away from himself.
    “Don’t know anything about gods. A makers just the bloke what makes us. I told you mine certainly wasn’t any shape of a god, not Jagger. He was just a soldier himself, fought in the Great War, come out alive with a head-ful of what he’d seen, and making-hands to help others see a bit of it too. The gargoyle’s maker was probably some medieval stonecutter with a foul mouth and a belly full of sour beer, more’n like. ‘Makers make the made, and the made must follow their makers meaning.’That’s how it goes. It’s how it’s always gone.” He turned to Edie. “Your glass didn’t save you, so don’t try it again. Rain stopped play, or it’d have had you. It’s not a weapon. It’s a warning, no more, no less. Now we’ll be going. Goodbye.”
    He snapped his fingers at George.
    “Come. We can move fast and safe while it’s raining, and we got a lot of city to cross before we make the river.”
    “Why are we going to the river?”
    “Asking the wrong question again. Just come.”
    George threw a glance at Edie. She was standing in the rain, looking down at the glass in her hand. Two steps would have taken her under the shelter of the overhang at the lip of the ramp, but she didn’t seem bothered. She looked bedraggled and sad and a little like a puppet with some of its strings cut.
    “Why can’t she come?”
    “I told you. She’s a glint.”
    Edie looked up. There was a flash of lightning above, and in that flash she flinched. And for an instant, and only a very short instant, George thought she looked much younger and less certain. She pocketed the glass and wrapped her arms around herself, as if she had suddenly noticed the cold.
    “But I still don’t know what a glint is !” she said, frustration straining the edges of her voice.
    “Glints is uncanny. And what we got to do is going to take all the canniness I can muster. Glints is bad luck. Sorry, but that’s the truth on it. Now we got to go.”
    “Okay,” she said. “Go. Fine. But I’ll follow you.”
    “Don’t,” said the Gunner, and strode off up the ramp.
    She waved George