by Glenda Larke
He took a deep breath, trying not to think too much. There was no way out now, until he reached Scarcleft, five or six days’ walk away. The only light was a pinprick in the far distance. He remained still for a moment, sensing the water: ankle deep, flowing gently in a straight line for as far as his senses would allow him to perceive.
Blighted eyes, he thought, how many people are there in this city of Scarcleft that they need more than this amount of water all day, every day, flowing into their cisterns?
He allowed another moment to try to detect any other forms of life anywhere ahead, but there were none. Not even the smallest of sand-leeches, as far as he could tell. He started to walk towards that far-off star of light.
It enlarged as he approached, going from a pinpoint to a shaft falling as a half-moon on the brick floor of the tunnel. His bag hung at the end of the twine, waiting for him. He was glad to dress. Naked and stripped of any material possessions, he had felt not only chilled but vulnerable.
His cold fingers had trouble striking the flint to the tinder, but he finally lit the lamp and placed it on the walkway. Then he hauled himself up the ladder to the top of the shaft. It was a moment’s work to reach through the grating and manoeuvre the wooden cover back into place. He was far too much the son of the Gibber to have been comfortable leaving water exposed to the sun and wind-blown sand, or to any small desert creature seeking the dark and a drink.
Down in the tunnel again, he began his long walk to Scarcleft.
Now he could see what he was doing, he used the walkway built along the side. When he was tired or hungry, he stopped. He slept fitfully at intervals, stretched out on the walkway in the smothering dark with the lamp extinguished. When he awoke it was always into panic at the utter blackness, and the panic remained until his fumbling with flint, striker and tinder produced enough of a flame to light the lamp or a candle.
He passed other maintenance shafts, where light filtered in through cracks or knot holes in the wooden covers: tiny slivers of light visible from far, far away if he turned out the lamp and walked in the darkness. He had little idea of the passing of time. Disconnected from the rest of the world, he felt as if he was the only person left alive, destined to walk this straight line in the dark forever.
He’d hoped the tunnel would turn into a slot and he would simply emerge at the end of the journey into the light and the open air. A silly idea, on reflection: all this water was precious and had to be protected, of course. And so, at the end of the tunnel, he was left staring at another grille, trying to see into the darkness beyond.
The light cast by the meagre stub of his sole remaining candle did not show him much. His water senses told him that there were a number of cisterns in the room and that water ran from one to another. A waterhall, he guessed. Those same senses told him that the room was empty of people. The grille had a door, but it was locked. He had come so far only to be stopped by more iron bars; he would have been better off trying to walk to Scarcleft in the desert heat above ground, stealing water from the maintenance shafts as he went.
And now what, anyway? This was Taquar’s city, and the rainlord was here somewhere. If a strange youth was found in the tunnel, would Taquar be told?
His heart jerked, his breathing quickened. He would not allow himself to be taken again. He slid down to sit on the walkway right where he was, back hunched up against the curving wall. Surely there had to be someone in regular attendance in the waterhall. They couldn’t just let water run like that all the time without checking on it, could they? They had to make sure cisterns didn’t overflow, perhaps even divert the water into different tunnels from time to time. He had read enough to know a little about how water distribution worked in Scarpen cities. It was just a matter of waiting.
He ate some of his food, refilled his water skins, checked how much oil there was left in the lamp—not much—and watched while his last candle burned itself into oblivion and dropped him into suffocating darkness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Scarpen Quarter
Scarcleft City
It was several hours before someone opened the entrance to the waterhall and two liveried men entered with torches, which they set in wall brackets. They were followed by a man and a woman, who came in chatting to one another.
“… so I said to him he ought to report the family. That kind of behaviour borders on misuse of allotments,” the woman said as she led the way, heading off to the left. Shale remained where he was, silent and still.
“Will he, do you think, Reeve Dennil?” the man asked.
“I don’t know. He’s fond of his sister and the fact that she may be a water-waster is not going to make any difference. So I reported her to the enforcers myself. Sandblast it, every single person in the city has to try to cut water consumption still further, or we starve. The farmers are complaining the bab fruit won’t be plump next harvest. A tenth of the trees have already died. And it near broke my heart when Highlord Taquar ordered more pedes to be slaughtered. Sorquis, we need this spigot opened till sunset. But close two and seven first.”
This last remark was addressed to one of the men carrying a torch. He nodded his acquiescence and bent to fiddle with something at the end of one of the cisterns. “Do you want it opened full turn, Reeve?”
Shale stood up, hoisting his bag onto his shoulder. “Excuse me,” he said loudly, “but could you let me out of here?”
All four people turned in his direction, spigots and conversation forgotten.
“Watergiver above! There’s someone in the tunnel!” exclaimed a servant, seizing a torch from the wall and approaching the grille.
The reeve followed and peered at Shale by the light of the flames. “I’ll get the key,” she said finally.
“Shouldn’t we call the highlord first?” the man asked, his voice hostile. “He can only be a water thief, surely.”
“I think you had better let me out first,” Shale said hurriedly, submerging his fear under a plaintive whine made all the more convincing by its truth. “I don’t want to foul the water and I need to—you know…”
“He’s only a lad. I’ll be back in a moment,” the reeve said.
The man stared at Shale. His expression danced in the flame light, but there was no mistaking the suspicion in his tone. “How did you get into the tunnel? Have you been stealing water? Did you break into one of the inspection shafts? Where did you come from? What’s your name?”
Of all these questions, Shale decided to answer the last, and that with a lie. “My name’s Chert,” he said.
“Well, Chert, you little rat, you have a great deal of explaining to do. No one is allowed into any tunnel without a rainlord or a reeve at their side.” Outrage seeped through the words. “How long have you been in there? You’ve been contaminating our water, haven’t you?”
Shale hung his head. “I did my best not to,” he mumbled. “I, um, used the walkway.”
The man gave a grunt of disgust and continued to fire questions, which Shale did not answer.
It was several moments before the reeve returned with the key and opened the half-door in the grille. Shale had to stoop to walk through. As he straightened up, both the servants—at a sign from the reeve—went to grab his arms. Shale deliberately stumbled. At the same time he pushed at the water in the nearest cistern. A wave splashed over the edge onto the floor.
“What the—” The woman’s face was a picture first of incomprehension and then horror at the wastage. “How the salted damn did that happen?”
Distracted, both servants turned away from Shale, and in that moment of inattention, he was up and running. He raced between the cisterns, heading for the closest exit. It led into another room, empty of people, with several doors, all closed. He wrenched at the handle of the nearest as the two servants pounded through the doorway behind him. Their hands brushed the back of his tunic sleeve as he plunged into the sunlight.
Blinded by the sudden brightness, he sped on. He squinted, eyes wa
tering. A low parapet loomed in front of him. He sailed over it without hesitation. And fell, his heart lurching at the unexpected depth of the drop on the other side. His feet hit a flat surface hard, jarring his spine and driving his breath out. Fortunately, his followers thought better of making the jump, and when he was able to look up, it was to see them turning away from the parapet above to find another route down.
Gasping, he spared a moment to look around. He was on a flat area studded with fruit trees in pots. He dived into them, skidding between the plants as shouts of alarm rose on all sides. Glimpsing guards in uniform off to his left, he veered right. Then footsteps pounded behind. He dashed headlong through the greenery until his way was blocked by another parapet. He scrambled over this one, hung from fingers over another drop, then fell again. This time he landed on the bab webbing of an outdoor bed. Unable to keep his footing, he tumbled to his knees and bumped his chin on the bed frame. Swearing, he picked himself up and raced towards another low wall. This time the fall wasn’t so soft. He plunged straight into a kumquat tree in a pot, shattering both plant and container. Pain shot up one of his legs. For a moment, he lay on the spilled earth and pot shards, staring up at the blueness of the sky, too stunned to move, his chin aching, pain in his calf stabbing at him. He rolled over to look. His trousers were torn and his leg was bleeding, pierced by part of a branch. He pulled out a long splinter of wood, then wasted a moment clutching his leg above the knee, rocking to and fro until the pain subsided.
Only when he stood and grabbed his bag once more did he realise there was a body of living water nearby. He whirled to see a girl staring at him. She had been using a flat paddle to bang at a rug hung over a railing and the dust still drifted in the air, a puff of brown in the blinding sunlight. He stared back, shocked, trying to make sense of everything.
In a rush of understanding, he realised what he had done. He had not exited the waterhall building through its main entrance. He had gone out onto a balcony and had jumped onto a roof the next level down. He was not in a street at all but on the stepped rooftops of Scarcleft.
He remembered the woodcuts he had seen of the city, and with a sick feeling knew he must have crossed the roof of Scarcleft Hall, where Taquar lived. No wonder there had suddenly been so many people after him; they were guards. Taquar’s guards. He looked back to where he had jumped from: there was no one there. Yet. But he could hear shouts from above; they weren’t giving up the chase.
His head was throbbing with his sense of water. For an instant he floundered, struggling with the assault. Water was everywhere, in every direction he cared to turn. In jars, in people, in cisterns, running everywhere in lines beneath him, around him, all of it jostling for his attention. So much water, so many people, so much noise, so many new smells. He was under attack. He took a deep breath, pushed away the invasion of his senses and tried to concentrate on his immediate surroundings.
The girl did not move or speak, so he ignored her and began to run again. This time he looked before he jumped. The villa below had a stack of empty oil jars conveniently placed against the wall and he clambered down using those as a ladder. This house was two-storeyed, so it was easy. He took steps leading down to the next level two at a time, ignoring the throbbing of his wound. Blood stained his trousers, but the amount was not enough to alarm him.
The shouting behind intensified and spread out. He could hear the excited gabble of the girl adding to the din. This time, instead of running directly to the roof edge in front of him, he peered over the edge to his right. He looked down into a narrow street. There were houses opposite, their outer doors studded and coloured. And people. People walking, talking. And several people running, beating on doorways. He could hear the words they yelled: “ ’Ware, water thief! Up on your roof! Stop him in the name of the high reeve!”
Think, Shale.
His best chance lay not in a continued downwards descent. He had to lose his pursuers in the maze of housing by doing the unexpected—and they wouldn’t expect him to be on the other side of the street. He measured the distance with his eyes. Too far to make it across in a standing leap; he needed a run-up. He considered the mud-brick parapet that bordered the roof he was standing on. It was broad and flat on top: a pathway pointing directly to the house opposite.
He hurled his bag across the gap first, so that it landed on the flat rooftop across the lane, then hoisted himself up onto the parapet. He gave himself a long run-up, ignoring the narrowness of his chosen path and the steep drop on one side, then dashed along the top of the wall, arms pumping, legs sprinting. At the corner, he took off, flailing, his terror transforming time into a strangely lengthened interlude of silence and grace as he arced across space. The impression of slow motion ceased in a rush as his left foot landed on the parapet of the flat roof he was aiming for. He strove for balance—and lost. He grabbed for the parapet as he fell, and managed to hook his fingers over the top. His body slammed hard against the outside of the house, knocking the breath from him.
He hung there, above the street, partially winded, terror welding his fingers to the parapet. Dragging in air, he scrabbled with his feet for purchase, and found it: the top of a window frame. Inch by torturous inch, he moved his hands until he had a better hold. Then, pushing off with his feet, he managed to swing first one leg, then the other, up to straddle the parapet. From there he tumbled down onto the roof.
He was panting, bruised and bleeding. He lay flat on his back for a moment to recover, then stood and risked a peep down into the street. To his relief, no one was looking up. No one had seen his jump, or its near-disastrous consequences.
Hurriedly, he picked up his bag and limped across the roof to the opposite side, where potted fruit trees grew thickly. He glanced around, but there was no one to be seen. He took the opportunity to relieve himself into a potted fruit tree and catch his breath.
The roof of the house next door adjoined, so he crossed this as well, until he was looking down into a different street. This was more of a thoroughfare, thronged with people. He waited awhile, hoping for a period when there was no one around, but it never happened. As he waited, he managed to push his overwhelming awareness of water into the background, but he had trouble grappling with the size of everything. The houses, the city stepping down in stages below him, the crowd in the street, the volume of noise: packpedes clattering by, creaking handcarts, people chatting and laughing, the chanting of children reciting lessons somewhere.
He peeked down into the roadway again. If he waited too long, he might be found by another servant, so he decided to seek the anonymity of the crowd below, even if there was a risk he would be seen descending. He lowered himself over the side of the house to the top of an architrave above the entrance. From there it wasn’t too hard to clamber down using the decorative studs of milky quartz embedded in the double doors. He ignored the stares he was given from passers-by. As soon as he reached the street, he straightened his clothing and walked away. No one moved to stop him.
He soon discovered that his troubles were not over. People looked at him oddly as he passed. His leg had stopped bleeding, but the torn trousers and the blood attracted attention. Even his colouring was out of place: the people around him were more fair-skinned than he was, with hair that glinted gold in the sun.
He managed to descend several more levels before he was stopped. A uniformed man approached him to ask who he was and what he was doing there on Level Six. The man evidently knew nothing of the commotion Shale had caused on the roof, but still Shale panicked and ran, dodging through the crowd. He pelted on down through another two levels before he slowed to a walk once more, panting.
All he knew of the hierarchy of Scarcleft levels was that the highest were the most prosperous, but he didn’t need that kind of knowledge to know he was out of place. The house gates were too lavish with their decorative stone inlays, the people in the streets were too well dressed, and he received too many odd glances for him to feel that he blended in. There w
ere servants and delivery boys going about their business, but he didn’t look like them, either, not with a bloodied leg. The best he managed to do was find a quiet corner near a brass market where he was able to put a makeshift bandage on his leg using a spare undershirt from his bag. After that he did not attract quite as much attention.
He continued to wend his way downwards, hoping to get to an area that felt more familiar to someone brought up in the poverty of the Gibber. Out in the palm groves, perhaps. He’d read something once about cities having fringe dwellers and the waterless.
It was nightfall by the time he reached the thirty-sixth level. It didn’t take long for him to recognise it for exactly what it was: home for people similar to those who lived in the hovels outside Wash Drybone Settle. On a large scale of course, but the same for all that. He saw replicas of the house he had lived in, doubles of Marisal the stitcher, of Galen the sot. He glimpsed people who could have been family to Demel the widow and Ore the stone-breaker. Grubby thin children with hungry eyes not unlike the child he had once been.
He didn’t know whether to be relieved that Taquar’s harsh rule had not rid the world of the obviously waterless, or distressed that right here in a rainlord’s city were people as poor as his own family had been. He recognised the smell of poverty and hopelessness, of the dirt and the decay that wallowed in its wake. It had been there in Wash Drybone Settle. Here it was just bigger, dirtier, more violent.
I am not the only one Taquar has failed, he thought, depressed.
He looked around for somewhere to rest.
* * *
He slept that night behind a heap of discarded bab husks, his bag serving as a pillow.
In the morning, he sold one of the books for five tokens. He had no idea of its real value, but he had learned enough from the bargaining of Reduner caravanners to be aware that the Scarperman who bought it was probably robbing him blind.
