The Last Stormlord

by Glenda Larke

  Shale looked at the two huge corpses. A myriapede and a packpede. Both all white. They had been bludgeoned, battered until their carapaces were cracked and broken. “They were attacked,” he said, dumbfounded. “I mean, it’s like they were… murdered.”

  “Yeah, well, they were white, so who cares? You want the job or not?”

  He nodded, stricken. “Who owned them?” he asked.

  “Don’t know. Don’t care. Must have been a ’Baster, though. They are the only ones who use white animals. And there’s all that red embroidery on the carapace.”

  And Feroze had not turned up at the gate.

  Shale laid a hand on the shuttered eyes of one of the beasts, and the anger he’d felt towards the Alabaster melted into grief.

  He spent what was left of the day at the knacker’s, toiling over the remains of the pedes. By sunset, most of the segments had been scraped clean. “Tomorrow there’ll be more work for you if you want it,” the knacker said as he paid him that evening. “Got to get the meat out of the feet and send it off to the fish growers. Day after that, you can help unpick all that blasted stitchery and lay out all the segment pieces for the ants to clean.”

  “All right,” Shale said and felt like a traitor. They had to have been Feroze’s animals. As he slipped the token the knacker had just given him into his purse, a packpede flowed past. An enforcer directed the beast, and another rode the end segment. In between sat a line of roped men, shoulders hunched in hopeless defeat.

  “Outlander waterless,” the knacker said, seeing Shale’s interest. “You want to make damned sure you get work every day, grubber, or you’ll end up like them, too. Thrown out onto the Sweepings half a night’s ride distant, without any water and forbidden to return. Not much chance any of ’em will make it through tomorrow.”

  “That’s horrible,” he protested, looking at the men as they passed.

  “Hmph! People are asking why Scarcleft babies should be killed instead of the outlanders. You and I know the answer to that one: Scarcleft babies don’t do the dirty work—but try telling that to someone whose wife’s told she’s got to scrape their babe out ’fore it’s born.”

  Shale was about to turn away, sickened, when he saw that the first prisoner, the one riding behind the driver, had turned his head to stare at the remains of the pedes. His robe had been stripped from him and he wore only a loin cloth. Even in the dimming light of dusk, Shale recognised him. The face may have been battered and bloody, and the white skin of his body may have been covered with abrasions and purple bruises, but it was unmistakably Feroze.

  The Alabaster turned his face away as the pede moved on, gathering speed.

  The knacker turned to pay the next worker. Shale waited until neither of the men was looking his way, then picked up a flensing knife and slipped it inside his tunic before strolling away into the palm trees. Out of sight of the knackery, he raced after the pede. He had not the slightest idea what he was going to do. He just knew that this man had tried to help him, and he had to do something or Feroze was going to die.

  Just before they reached the last of the bab palms, he became aware of the run of water starting down the irrigation slot. They were watering the grove, or part of it. With a half-formed thought of stopping the pede, he reached out and seized the water, lifted it from the channel and skeined it through the air above. There was a scream of anguish from several of the grove owners as they realised their allotment was being stolen.

  “Thieves! Water thieves!” someone yelled.

  Others began shouting, but no one knew what to do. The enforcer on the packpede drew rein. He looked back over his shoulder to see what was happening. A grove worker ran up to him waving his hands in distress. “Enforcer—some bastard’s stealing our allotment!”

  The man swore and slid from the pede, shouting to his companion at the rear to join him. As he tied the reins to the nearest palm tree, Shale wheeled the water past the pede and then away through the trees. The two enforcers ran after it, shouting contradictory advice to each other. The pede stayed where it was, and so did the men on its back. There was little they could do, as each prisoner had his wrists tied tightly to the mounting ring bolted to each segment. One, however, immediately started to work at the knots with his teeth.

  Shale might not have had a coherent plan to start with, but he could not have asked for a better chance. He climbed onto the back of the packpede and worked his way along, slashing the twine that tied each of the prisoners. “Run!” he told them. “Try to get back into the city!”

  They were quick to obey. Around them there was no one to notice. Shale still controlled the water, twirling and flicking it through the grove at a distance, and the enforcers and the grove workers were keeping it in sight, trying to discover who was manipulating it. Fortunately, it didn’t occur to any of them that the culprit did not have to be in close proximity to the water.

  Shale freed the last of the Gibbermen and reached Feroze. “You will have to take this beast and flee,” he said as he slashed the cords binding the man. He thrust his water skin into the saddlebag. “Take this,” he said, “it’s full. You may make it to Breccia, if you are lucky.”

  “Come with me,” Feroze mumbled through his swollen mouth. “We’ll both go.”

  Shale hesitated. The temptation was almost overwhelming. Then he shook his head. “Two of us would never make it. There’s only one water skin. I’m not sure whether I could steal water from a long distance away; I’ve never tried. Maybe you can tell the Cloudmaster about me, though.” He dug out his purse. “Take this as well. You might need tokens when you get there. There’s not much.” He shoved it into the saddlebag.

  Feroze grabbed his arm as he was about to drop to the ground. “Thank ye,” he said simply. “I’ll not forget. In Alabaster, we say that a cloth given is returned embroidered. Remember that, and remember my name. Feroze Khorash.”

  Shale nodded. “Good luck.” He slid down from the pede and ran back towards the knacker’s yard. He needed to return the flensing knife before it was missed, and then he wanted to manipulate the water further away through the grove, to give Feroze more time to escape.

  He didn’t look back. The rest was up to the Alabaster now.

  He returned to the city without trouble some time later, wryly reflecting that he was back where he had started. He had just given Feroze all his water tokens. He would have to sell another book to pay for food and lodging for the night and to buy a new water skin. Fortunately, he was now more experienced and he knew someone who would offer him a better price for a book.

  Later that night, with tokens rattling in a second-hand purse, he made inquiries about how to get to Breccia and found out that it was going to cost forty tokens to join a passenger caravan of pedes. He could save a little every day because he stole his water, but forty tokens was impossibly remote.

  The next day, after putting in a full day at the knacker’s, he investigated the possibility of working as a pedehand on one of the caravans leaving Scarcleft, only to find too many others had the same idea. Day by day, the city was becoming more and more dangerous for a waterless outlander, and they were all trying to leave. There was no place for Shale.

  He thought of selling the gold bracelet or the jasper to raise enough tokens to buy a passenger seat, but when he went to Illara for advice, she told him to lie low. “The enforcers are cleaning out this cesspit,” she warned. “People who deal in stolen property are vanishing, Jasper. Wait a while.”

  “They’re not stolen,” he protested, bending the truth a little.

  She snorted. “It doesn’t matter how you got them. What matters is what folk will believe.”

  She was probably right at that. And then he realised—although the bracelet was still safely tucked away among the things he had paid to store—the bloodstone jasper had been at the bottom of his purse. The same purse he had given to Feroze.

  He cursed himself.

  It had been his last link to Citrine, and now it was
gone.

  He tried not to be unrealistic in his hopes. Feroze might die. The man had not even had a robe or a hat as protection against the sun. If he did manage to reach Breccia and talk to the Cloudmaster, he might not be believed. Taquar was one of them, a ruler, a high rainlord, a friend perhaps.

  As the days passed and there was no sign of anyone coming to look for him, his hopes faded.

  Then, fifteen days later, he was in trouble again. He was looking for work one morning when he came face-to-face with a group of uniformed enforcers accompanied by someone he guessed to be a reeve. He looked away and went to walk on by, but the reeve stopped him with a curt, “Wait, you.” He unrolled a parchment he carried, looked at it, looked up at Shale and said, “This is the one. Arrest him.”

  Shale didn’t wait to hear anything more; he took to his heels. He was young and his quick reactions gave him a head start. He made straight for the twisted alleyways around the market area. He pelted up the street, skidded around the first corner to his right and hurdled a pile of refuse in the middle of the lane.

  The reeve’s men followed, and one of them—a young man of about his own age—could run like wind whistling up the wash. A quick glance behind told Shale that he was in trouble: the man was gaining. It was only a matter of time. He raced on, shoving people out of the way.

  At the next corner, instead of dashing on down the street, he swung hard to the left, vaulted a wall and crashed across the tops of some sandgrouse cages stored in the yard beyond. By the time his pursuer had realised where he’d gone, Shale was already climbing the wall on the other side. He jumped down, knowing he had only a few seconds to disappear unseen. A frantic glance around told him he was in another street, and luck was with him. There was a waterseller’s cart laden with supply jars and a number of people milled around helping themselves to the water. It looked as if they were stealing it. Which didn’t make sense, but he had no time to think about it. He raced up a set of stairs on his right, hoping that they would lead to some kind of hiding place.

  At the top, he swung into a hallway and tripped over something on the floor before he noticed it was there. He took another few steps and then stopped, realising that there was only a blank wall ahead of him. On his right there were archways that overlooked the street, on his left a number of closed doors. There was only one person in the hallway, a girl—young woman?—of about his own age. She was standing looking at him with an odd expression on her face that he couldn’t read.

  “Can you hide me?” he asked. “Please?”

  She stared at him, wordless.

  “I’m desperate. Please.” In his urgency, he couldn’t think of the right words to say to persuade her.

  She opened her mouth to speak but was then distracted by something behind him. He whirled to see what it was and glimpsed a man crawling across the tiles of the sloping roof of the building opposite. The fellow looked as scared as Shale felt.

  He looked back at the girl. Already he could hear sounds of running feet below, people shouting. He could feel the water of his pursuers. Someone would soon think to come up the stairs. He glanced at the closed doors to the side. Useless to try hiding behind one of those if the girl was only going to give him away.

  “Please,” he whispered. “Otherwise I could be a prisoner for the rest of my life.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Scarpen Quarter

  Scarcleft City

  Level 36

  Earlier that morning, Russet had told Terelle he wanted her to do a painting for him. “Out in the hallway,” he said, “where the light be better.”

  “A picture of what?” she asked.

  “Oh, anything ye can see. Cover the water with layer of motley first, then picture on top.” He shoved a pot into her hand. The paint powder it contained was a bruised purple colour.

  “Motley?”

  “Special mix. All colours in one.”

  He nodded and flapped his hands at her in a gesture of dismissal. She knew better than to ask questions; they were never answered.

  She set up the materials in the hallway and got to work. As she covered the water with the powder, she tried to remember why this reminded her of something. She sighed, reflecting on how little concerning Russet made sense to her. And she hated the way his eyes followed her about as she painted or ate or cleaned the house. The gaze was not prurient or even speculative; he just watched her as if he wanted to know everything about her. He studied her, as a pede auctioneer might study the animals he was about to sell or a palmier would study the trees in his grove to make sure they thrived.

  “He’s not as bad as Huckman,” she told herself, not for the first time. The trouble was, she was no longer sure that was true.

  She painted the view from where she sat: a puzzle of interlocking rooftops, patterns in light and shadow, thatched fronds and clay pantiles, uneven daub walls with holes for windows. She worked steadily for the rest of the morning, striving for a combination of reality and suggestion, trying to convey the heat, and the aura of poverty and dilapidation and of timelessness.

  Neighbours came and looked, spoke a few words, and moved on. When she was painting she tended to be vague in her replies, and most of them had become accustomed to that. Only when she was cleaning the paint spoons in sand did she realise that Russet now sat on his coloured mat peering over her shoulder watching her work.

  She jumped and laughed nervously. “I didn’t know you were there,” she said.

  His sharp green eyes, small now with age, examined her picture. “Interesting perspective,” he said. “I be doubting anyone will ever want to buy a picture of rooftops.”

  She shrugged. “I did it for myself. You did say to paint anything.”

  He gave an odd smile that didn’t make any sense to her. “Ah, I did, yes? Serves me right.” He glanced around, as if to make sure they were not overheard. “I be taking your lessons one step further. Show ye how to move the paint.”

  “What paint?”

  “The motley. To make painting… different. To add an element. Or elements.”

  “I don’t understand.” But her heart thudded uncomfortably. She realised now. Motley—that was how he had started the first painting she had ever seen him do, the one that had changed. She had thought the colour was indigo.

  “Watch. Watch very carefully.” He picked up a paint spoon and dropped some sienna brown on the ridge of one of the roofs. Using the paint skewer, he swirled it gently to define the shape he wanted, then added a touch of umber, some ochre, a spot of yellow. A few more deft strokes and she could see the shape of a large bird perched on the ridge of the roof. When he put down the spoon and skewer, however, the painting was still unfinished, with the details of the plumage, head and beak left vague. He sat and gazed at the picture, his hands loosely clasped in his lap.

  She thought she identified the moment when something changed, when the merest of shivers rippled the water beneath the paint and the surface moved. There was a shifting of colour, a blurring around the bird, a darkening of the reddish tiles. She tried to isolate the detail and yet watch the whole too. Even so, she almost missed the precise moment when the blurriness sharpened and the indefinite impression of a bird became something else: a scavenger hawk, every line sharply defined. It coalesced out of the splash of browns, becoming a real portrait of one of the birds that soared around the city waiting for the moment when something died. Its shadow deepened the colour of the tiles next to it, yet she was sure he had not painted its shadow at all.

  “That’s impossible,” she said softly, knowing that it was not, for he had just done it.

  He gave a quiet laugh that chilled her to the tips of her fingers. “Just as stormlords moving clouds be impossible, to the commoner.”

  “You used the colours in the motley,” she said. “You took the colours you needed and pushed them up through the paint, mixed them with the colour you had already added, to make the detail of a painting on top of mine. How is that possible?”
<
br />   “The affinity of water and man,” he said. “Water is the key, always. Hook paint to water and move the water.”

  “Only sensitives can move water,” she said.

  “No, child, only rainlords and stormlords and waterpainters move water. Stormlords move the sea, rainlords a cistern, ye and I—a few drops in a tray.”

  “I’m not water sensitive.”

  “Never said ye were. I said ye can also move water. Fact, we do more even than stormlords, for we be moving the paint as well. If it be motley powder. Tomorrow, ye learn how to make motley. All colours in one mix. Special resin keeps each separate.”

  She shook her head. Her tongue was dry against the roof of her mouth and her skin felt stretched tight. “Is that what all this is about? You think I can move paint and water?” She meant: Is that why you have taken me in and compelled me to stay?

  “All Watergivers who cry water can move water,” he said. “And ye are your mother’s daughter.”

  She was swept with panic. “You knew my mother,” she whispered, confirming what she had long believed, though not knowing why the thought shattered her so. “And you knew my name. How? Who am I?”

  Once again he casually dismissed her need. “Be of no matter. Matters ye be learning how to change a painting. I want ye to put another hawk there, on the roof, beside mine. The way I did it.”

  “I can’t do that!”

  “Ye can and ye shall.” He dashed several more spoonfuls of paint-powder on top of the painting, in the shape of a similar bird. Then one scrawny arm reached out and took hold of her wrist. She stared at the marks that covered his hands and forearms. She had once thought the patterns were just painted on; she knew better now. The marks were permanent. “Look deep into the painting.”

  The power in his voice reverberated through his arm and into her body. “Connections,” he whispered. “Water to water, life to life. Look deep. See beneath to layers of colour. See bird there, bring to life. Not with paint spoon, but using your mind. Connect to water, Terelle. Each grain of colour be floating in bubble of water. Take the grains ye need, the colours ye want, float them up. Re-form them, make your bird with your mind, see its colours, cruel beak, taloned claws, yellow eye, each feather. Move the colours, move them…”