The Last Stormlord

by Glenda Larke

  They prepared themselves by getting rid of anything that tied Shale to his past: the books, his clothes, the cloth bag. Then they made paint-powder in different shades of red and wrapped each in red cloth.

  “I’m in trouble if an enforcer speaks to me in the Reduner tongue,” Shale said. “I know all the more common words, and I understand quite a bit, but that’s all.”

  Russet grunted. “Scarpen folk be too arrogant to learn other tongues,” he said, dismissing Shale’s concerns with an airy wave of his hand.

  He has to be the most irritating man I’ve ever met, Shale thought.

  As far as he knew, no one was aware that Russet’s room had an extra person. Terelle had no need to buy him water, and whenever his water-senses told him there was anyone around, he spoke only in a whisper and avoided using the communal outhouse at the end of the hallway. The secrecy was tiresome but bearable. When Vato warned Terelle the search had started in their area, Russet announced that if the enforcers took Shale, he—Russet—must be free to paint him out of trouble. With that, he disappeared with his paints and trays.

  “Oooh!” Terelle cried after he’d gone. “Sometimes I want to push his face right into the middle of one of his paintings while the paint is still wet! He’s leaving us to face the enforcers alone, the—the sand-blighted misbegotten son of a—”

  Shale grinned sympathetically as words failed her. “It doesn’t matter. We can do this alone. At least we know he would do his best to help you afterwards if anything went wrong.”

  They heard the commotion in the street first. People wailing, shouts. It was past midday, though, before Shale sensed strangers coming up their stairs. “A party of six. All men,” he said.

  Terelle tensed. “Is it them?”

  “Probably.”

  “I’m scared,” she whispered.

  “Don’t be. We’ve rehearsed all this. And we have got rid of everything that ties me to Taquar.” That wasn’t quite true. Hidden in the hem of his tunic was Lyneth’s bracelet, but he wasn’t going to remind her of that. “How do I look?”

  She surveyed him critically. “Like a Reduner. But belt on your scimitar.”

  He grabbed the weapon up, cursing himself for forgetting it, and did up the sword belt. She reached up to arrange his red braids so that some fell in front of his ears and were clearly visible.

  They left the door open and were therefore forced to listen to the sounds of their neighbours being bullied. Terelle paled. Shale smiled encouragement, but she didn’t look any happier.

  When the enforcers and a reeve arrived, she was calmly counting tokens into Shale’s outstretched hand. The paint-powder was on the table, with several of the cloths untied to show the heaps of colour.

  She looked up as the men appeared. “Yes?” she asked.

  They ignored her question and all of them entered the room. Four of them began searching, throwing belongings around without care. The reeve and the enforcer in charge stood either side of the doorway.

  “Your name and work?” the reeve asked.

  “Terelle Grey, apprentice waterpainter. I live here with my, um, grandfather, Russet, who does the waterpaintings for the upper levels.” She dug into her pocket and pulled out the uplevel pass Russet had left with her.

  The reeve looked at it, then passed it back and turned his attention to Shale.

  Shale stared back, with arrogant calm, or so he hoped.

  “And who are you?” the reeve asked.

  “Evrim, caravanner of Dune Pebblered,” Shale said, imitating a heavy Reduner accent.

  One of the searchers slashed the pallets so that he could feel through the teased fibres inside. Terelle winced when she saw what he was doing.

  “Why are you here?” the reeve asked Shale.

  “Trading,” he answered.

  “We buy red paint from his dune,” Terelle added and indicated the powder on the table in front of her. “And is it really necessary to make such a mess?” An enforcer had started to rake through the ashes in the hearth, sending up billows of dust.

  “I didn’t know there was a Reduner caravan in,” the enforcer by the door said. He had been watching his men, but now his gaze held Shale’s.

  Shale glared. “You spy?” he asked suspiciously. “Spy on me?” His hand dropped to the handle of his scimitar.

  Terelle looked horrified. She made an involuntary gesture of negation.

  “No, no,” the enforcer said hurriedly. His right hand hovered around the hilt of his weapon, but he did not look happy at the prospect of a fight against a Reduner.

  “We have no quarrel with you,” the reeve said to Shale. “Finish your business, pedeman, and be on your way.”

  Grateful for the reputation Reduners had for being quick and deadly in battle, Shale took his hand away from the scimitar. He drew himself up and folded his arms instead. “Reduner warrior never leave woman alone with rakui men!” he said. “I wait!”

  The reeve and the enforcer exchanged glances. The reeve shrugged. “We’ve finished anyway,” he said.

  Terelle and Shale waited in silence while the men filed out. When they heard them descend the stairs, Terelle let out the breath she had been holding.

  “Oh, you—you—dryhead! I thought I was going to die of fright! What if he’d pulled his sword?”

  Shale grinned at her. “At least it never occurred to him that I was the Gibber youth they were looking for.”

  “And what does rakui mean?”

  “Not sure. It’s an insult of some sort.”

  She rolled her eyes at him. “You’re impossible. I’d better check on Lilva and anyone else who’s around. If I don’t, they’ll only come here to find out how I am. Behave yourself.”

  She left, closing the door behind her. He sat down at the table and stared at his hands, which seemed to have suddenly developed a tremor, wondering if he’d been out of his mind.

  Russet was out again on the day the Breccian rainlords arrived in Scarcleft.

  Terelle was painting, while Shale watched. She was seated on the old man’s mat near the open door where the light was best, while he sat at the table and wished he still had his books.

  As she gently tapped powdered colour from an application spoon onto the surface of the water, he asked, “Have you ever met an Alabaster?”

  She finished what she was doing before she replied. “An Alabaster? I once saw one up close. The day I first met Russet.” She frowned. “Russet said something odd about that. He said that he, the Alabaster, was drawn to me because of my tears. I weep tears when I feel sad, you see. Russet said the Alabaster felt them. And the Alabaster, he raised his hand in blessing towards me. I don’t know why.”

  Shale thought about that. “You shed tears when you don’t have something in your eye? I’ve never met anyone else who did that.”

  “I think it is how Russet found me. From a distance, no one would know I was not Gibber. You have to be close up to realise my eyes are green. It was my tears that betrayed me.” She sounded matter-of-fact. “Maybe it is something that these people from Khromatis do. Waste water on grief.”

  He was silent for a moment, pondering. It was the first time she had actually acknowledged that she was indeed one of Russet’s people. “If the Alabaster realised that—” He paused, thinking things through. “Maybe if you were to ask one, they might be able to tell you more about who you are. Or at least about who the mountain people are.”

  “You could be right. Only there aren’t any Alabasters around any more. I guess they got to hear what happened to that man you told us about. What was his name?”

  “Feroze Khorash.”

  “You believe he’s dead, don’t you?”

  He nodded abruptly, not wanting to think about it. “Terelle, if Highlord Nealrith comes, please say you’ll come with me to Breccia.”

  She was silent so long, he knew something was wrong. “What is it?” he asked.

  “Russet won’t let me go. Whatever it is he plans, he needs me for it.�
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  “He can’t stop you.”

  “Shale, he can shuffle up a future in which I don’t go with you to Breccia. He can paint you out of my life. He might have already done so. He has certainly already influenced my future.”

  He stared at her, trying to think through the implications, not certain if he believed what she was trying to tell him.

  She started fiddling with her paint jars, turning from him so he could not see her face. “You don’t understand, do you? He controls me through his waterpainting. He has concocted his version of the future and placed me there, doing the things he has planned for me. I don’t think I even had a chance to refuse his offer of apprenticeship. I didn’t realise it then, of course. And now I want to choose another way, I can’t. He’s taken away my choices, Shale. I don’t have any. I think I never did.”

  Something inside him lurched painfully. “You’re trapped inside his paintings?” he asked, incredulous.

  She continued. “In a way. They pull me. I know that I want to go with you. That I ought to go. That I will be safer with you, better off in Breccia. I know all those things in my head, but I don’t feel that I want to go. Just the opposite. I am being drawn to a different future. The one he has painted.” She looked away from him and back at her painting. “I can’t go with you, and I’m sorrier than I can say.”

  He was shocked by her certainty. By the fact that she accepted it. “That’s coercion. It’s not right. It’s worse than slavery.”

  She was silent.

  “What future has been painted for you?”

  “I’ve seen pictures of me in what is probably the White Quarter, and also in a green place, where water flows on the land. Maybe it won’t be so bad. If I am his kin, if he takes me back to where I belong, at least I’ll find out about my real mother and father. Perhaps I have other family—”

  “It’s not right to be forced.”

  “No. But I can’t help myself.”

  The words were whispered, despairing, so unlike her that he was shocked. “Yes, you can! Remember what Russet said? He said that he thought he couldn’t find your mother because she resisted the pull of his waterpainting! It must be possible to resist, to pull away, to stand against it. Otherwise he would not have believed she could do it.”

  “He was talking about my mother, not me. She was powerful in these water arts, or so he has implied. I’m just an apprentice.”

  “I can’t believe that you are just going to give up! You?” He stood up and came over to where she was still seated on the mat. “You struggled so long to find a way to escape the snuggery and now you are just going to allow yourself to be enslaved again? By someone you don’t even like? Terelle, you’ve got to fight it!”

  His passion broke through into his voice and she looked up at him, startled. He dropped to his knees beside her. “Terelle, I’ll speak to Highlord Nealrith. Maybe he can help. What if you do your own painting? There’s got to be a way!”

  “I can’t paint myself, remember? And Russet’s so much more powerful than I am.”

  “Is he? If that was so, then he wouldn’t need you so much! Terelle, don’t give up. Please—” He stopped, astonished by his own reaction to being parted from her. It mattered. He couldn’t bear to lose another person. Especially not Terelle. He opened his mouth to protest further but didn’t have the words to express what he wanted, what he thought. All that would come out was a pathetic, “Please don’t give up. Not like this.”

  His passion had shaken her, he could see that. She looked at him uncertainly, then her eyes filled with tears. And suddenly she was in his arms, crying, and he was patting her awkwardly on the back.

  He took a deep breath and forced himself to say the things he had been holding inside. “Terelle, other than Mica, you’re the only friend I’ve ever had. I thought after Taquar that I’d never trust anyone again.” He was grateful she had her face buried in his shoulder and was not watching him as he stumbled on, wading through a welter of raw emotion. “For nearly four years I never spoke to anyone but Taquar, and that not often. So if I’m not making sense, I’m sorry. I’m not good at saying things. But I want to tell you I don’t want to lose you. And that I’ll look after you, if I can. You’ll never want for water, I swear. And I’ll keep you safe.”

  She pulled back then, to look at him, wiping her face with the back of her hand. She managed to appear amazed and bemused and delighted, all at the one time.

  “But you’ve got to fight Russet’s power first. I can’t do that for you,” he added.

  And something died in her expression, even as she said, “I’ll try. I promise I’ll try.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Scarpen Quarter

  Scarcleft City

  Scarcleft Hall, Level 2

  The seneschal of Scarcleft Hall, Harkel Tallyman, was a thin, small-framed man, nondescript in appearance and deceptively harmless in his manner. As a consequence, he was often overlooked. Yet after the highlord himself, Harkel was the most powerful man in Scarcleft, maintaining his position through a network of spies, assassins, thieves, blackmailers, water sensitives and informants. Trusted with the running of the city when Taquar was absent—which was frequently—his loyalty to the highlord was unswerving and unquestioning.

  It had surprised him, then alarmed him, when it took so long to find Shale the Gibber youth. He had grown unused to failure. He had been at fault, he acknowledged to himself; he hadn’t taken the search seriously enough at first, assuming the enforcers would soon find one lone young man, newly arrived and naive in the ways of the city.

  The last time he had been face-to-face with Taquar, he had seen a deep anger in the rainlord’s eyes, the first directed his way in more than ten years. It had unsettled him. He knew Taquar better than anybody, and he knew just how utterly ruthless the rainlord could be when cold rage overtook careful strategy as his driving force.

  At last, however, the fickle winds of luck were at last gusting Harkel’s way, and he was relieved to be able to go to the highlord with news of Shale Flint from several different sources.

  Taquar was going through a pile of paperwork when Harkel entered his room, but he pushed that aside immediately and acknowledged the seneschal with a terse nod. “What is it?”

  “A possibility, lord. One of my informants saw someone who may have been the Gibber youth, Shale, some time ago at a residence on Level Ten. Unfortunately, he only realised this more recently, when he saw one of the posters. I have put a watch on the house, and one of my men is courting the maidservant.”

  The rainlord did not move a muscle, yet Harkel was aware of how taut he was. How close to lashing out in a lethal rage. “Go on.”

  “My informant—his name is Jomat—is the steward for an arta, Amethyst the dancer. I understand that my lord is acquainted with the lady.”

  “Watch your tongue, Harkel.”

  Harkel’s mouth went dry. “Yes, my lord. I mean no disrespect. The young man was disguised as a Reduner. He came to Amethyst’s house with a Gibber girl who is an apprentice to the outlander waterpainter Russet Kermes. Her name is Terelle. It is possible that the boy is hiding in the waterpainter’s room. I have men out tracing the exact building, but I am treading carefully. The house must have been searched before, but somehow he was not found then. Perhaps he was warned. This time, we are being more careful.

  “Jomat tells me that shortly after seeing Shale, the dancer wrote a letter to someone. I had men inquire at the tenth level’s letter repository, and they found that it had already been dispatched to Breccia Hall, addressed to Lady Ethelva. I do not know if these two events are connected.”

  Taquar interrupted. “Yes. They are. Of course they are.” His fingers drummed on the desk, betraying unaccustomed agitation. Taquar continued, “Someone has given him good advice. He has applied to Breccia Hall for help.” Anger smouldered like a dampened fire about to break through. “I shall want everyone dead, Harkel. Except Shale.”

  “Including the dance
r?”

  “Especially the dancer. But don’t you worry about her. I’ll attend to that myself. First, we must make sure we have Shale safe. Do nothing until he is physically in your hands.”

  “I have another piece of news which may be connected. An informant in Breccia Hall sent a message to me via a myriapede rider. Highlord Nealrith has left Breccia with a small entourage. Eleven men altogether.”

  “Bound for Scarcleft?”

  “No one knows for sure, but my informant checked the amount of water the party took with them and the gate they left by. Both fit a journey to Scarcleft. And the timing is right for them to have left in response to the letter Amethyst sent.”

  “Ah. When are they due?”

  “My informant’s messenger travelled as fast as he could, but I don’t imagine that he is as much as a day ahead. It’s likely Nealrith and party will arrive sometime later today.”

  Taquar stopped his drumming. “He will probably go straight to Amethyst. She will then send for Shale. Nealrith will wait at Amethyst’s for him, and then they’ll leave.”

  “I could have my men intercept them at the gate. On the way out, I mean.”

  “Don’t be stupid. That’s too risky. Can you have forgotten you would be dealing with a rainlord of power? No, I think it is up to me to intercept Nealrith. You must go after Shale before the two of them meet. Follow Amethyst’s messenger to find out for sure where he is. Once you have Shale spirited away to Scarcleft Hall, kill the waterpainters, the messenger, anyone else who looks as if they know anything. I will deal with Nealrith and Amethyst.” He smiled. “You seem to have done something right in this matter at last, Harkel. Which is well for you.”

  Harkel stilled the fear that soaked him. “As you say, m’lord.”

  Taquar smiled yet again. “It is a pity that I am not yet ready for an open confrontation with Nealrith, but nonetheless, I shall enjoy thwarting him.”

  “Highlord—” Harkel hesitated.

  Taquar raised his eyebrows in question.

  “The boy’s abilities. I know he can move water—the reeves from the city’s waterhall told me that much. But I need to know if he can kill… in the rainlord manner.”