by Glenda Larke
Only then did she feel her way along to where she had seen the outer wall crumble. Fine dust particles still hung in the air, making her cough. She could feel it in her nasal passages, in her throat, abrasive, choking. If she looked upwards, she could catch glimpses of stars where once there had been a windowless wall. The outer side of her room no longer existed.
She stared into the darkness at her feet and could just make out a slope of rubble extending downwards. It was steep and unstable, and she couldn’t be sure how far it went or where it went or how safe it was, but she held on to the image she had in her mind of her shadow on a wall on the thirty-sixth. She would escape unhurt. She must. Gingerly she slid a foot outwards onto the tumble of mud-brick blocks.
She could not see more than a few paces, and if there were holes she could fall into, if the debris was precarious, if one small misstep meant a fall to instant death—well, she had no idea.
Don’t think about it, you sun-shrivelled idiot. One step at a time. Don’t think.
Most of the time she crept backwards on all fours, hampered by her pack, feeling with hands and feet for secure places that would take her weight. Once she started a landslip and almost went with it, whimpering in terror; only a piece of firmly wedged stone pillar kept her from a worse fall. All the while, she imagined that there would be a hue and cry, that guards would loom up out of the darkness to catch hold of her. But there was no one. She could hear shouts and screams and cries for help in the distance, but close by, there was only the silence of an eerie solitude. Sandblast it, what had happened?
When she finally scrambled upright on flat ground, she could see a little better. The dust had mostly settled, and there were torch flames and lamps casting light from doorways at the bottom of a set of steps going down to the next level. She continued on, to find herself not far from the sun tower of the Sun Temple on Level Three. It must have lost a few bricks from the top because the edge silhouetted against the sky was jagged.
There were people about, but no one paid attention to her. A woman staggered past with blood in runnels down her face; a man stood, dazed, covered in dust; two or three people grouped around someone lying on the ground. Further along, a family sat huddled together, rocking to and fro like one entity, crying in one voice.
Terelle started to jog, her bundle bumping on her back, intent only on distancing herself from Scarcleft Hall. Speed was not possible; the street was littered with the debris from fallen walls and buildings. A few homes were on fire, the flame-lit scenes a cameo of tragedy and destruction—but Scarcleft’s mud-brick structures were strongly built, and with walls as thick as a man’s arm was long, most had suffered no more than overturned furniture and broken dayjars. In less-fortunate dwellings there had been deaths. She saw the body of a boy crumpled in his mother’s arms. The woman sat in her gateway, rocking back and forth, and her cries skirled through the smoky night air.
Terelle averted her eyes and hurried on.
On the twentieth, water was flowing out of a break in the level’s cistern. Reeves and their enforcers were organising people with water jars and other containers to salvage what they could. Terelle ran through a puddle, wetting her bare feet, and shuddered at the waste.
The thirty-sixth level was ablaze long before she arrived. Many people had fled the city altogether, and she glimpsed them standing about in the groves beyond the open gate, waiting for the flames to die down. Within the walls, a few hardier inhabitants tried to salvage what they could—whether their own belongings or other people’s was not clear—and a few had simply decided to stay put in order to guard the little they had. The number who fought the fire was smaller still. There was not much point. The larger mud-brick buildings would probably not burn, no matter what happened, while the lean-tos and shanties made of woven palm leaves could never be saved.
Terelle hesitated a moment. The sensible thing to do was follow the exodus and leave the city. To wait out the end of the fire. Yet something turned her feet the other way, towards Russet’s room. She had no idea of what she would find and no idea why she felt the need to be there right then. Her feet were leaden, yet they moved of their own accord, past the pot-seller’s stand where pots lay in shards, past the corner where the whores usually advertised their wares with deft glimpses of leg or breast, past the rag-pickers’ lean-to, which was now no more than ash, to the building where she and Russet had lived. A group of looters ran by, wearing pilfered clothing over their own garments and carrying a cooking pot; by the smell, they had lifted it straight from the stove.
Ba-ba the humpback and his wife, Fipiah, Lilva and her family, Cilla the mat weaver, Qatoo the madman and his son—all were grouped together at the foot of the stairs that led up to the top rooms. Ba-ba looked furious, his wife resigned. Qatoo was naked, as usual, but for once his son was not nagging him to wear his clothing. Instead the lad sat, shaking and wide-eyed with fear, with his arms wrapped around his thin body. Their lean-to—ignited by a flying spark—was burning; a few meagre belongings were piled at the foot of the stairs. The son sat between their most precious possessions: their two dayjars. The rest of the group, still shocked by what had happened, watched the lines of flame consume the sinucca leaves Ba-ba had hung out across the street to dry. The main building remained untouched.
It was Cilla the mat weaver who saw and recognised Terelle first. She gave a toothless grin and said, “My, look who’s back. You wanna watch it, girl, you and that old man. You are bad smells to the enforcers, and they’ll come sniffin’ around at your stink again before long.”
“Is he here?” Terelle demanded. “Russet?”
“Oh, ay, he is that,” Lilva said with a shudder. “Poor Vato died, flattened when part of a building fell on him over there”—she waved her hand at some rubble down the street—“but that bastard of a waterpainter came sneaking back tonight, as untouched as can be, first time we seen him since you left. Came in just after the shaking stopped.”
“Vato died?”
“Squashed as flat as a bab fruit sat on by a pede. Saw it happen.”
For a moment Terelle could not move. Vato.
No, it’s just a coincidence. I mean, it’s been almost half a year since I painted him and Shale trod on his likeness.
She went up the stairs, her cloth clamped to her nose to filter out the flying ash. Her feet were driven by an urgency she couldn’t comprehend, and her mind was mired in incoherence.
Only once she was outside Russet’s room did she come to a halt. Only then did her understanding flood back and her thoughts become her own.
Her shadow was cast on the wall. She had thought to paint herself in the light of dawn, but it wasn’t the sun that cast the shadow, it was fire. She had painted a picture illuminated by flame. In reality, her shadow danced on the wall, writhing in tune with the burning of a palm-woven building behind her.
Sweet waters, she thought, and panic saturated her mind. I did this? I caused the buildings to fall, the fires to start? This is what I drew! Oh Sunlord, forgive me, how many people did I kill tonight?
Her panicked horror brought her to her knees. No. No.
The door in front of her opened, and Russet was standing there, framed by the dim light in the room behind. “Well, don’t just be grovelling there like a sanctimonious waterpriest,” he said irritably. “Come in. Safe enough here. For now, anyway.”
She rose and moved forward automatically, her mind still crying out against the truth she did not want to accept. A lamp burned inside, and he waved her over to the table. He was not wearing his colourful wrap, but threadbare worker’s clothes. To be inconspicuous, she guessed. She dumped her bundle on the floor and sat down on one of the two chairs; the backs of both were broken. There was a deep gouge in the table, too, a scimitar slash gone awry. There were waterpaintings there as well, rolled up and tied with twine.
“I came back,” he said. “I be thinking ye’d come.”
“You knew I’d escape tonight?” she asked, bewildered.
“Painted ye escaping. I painted ye here, too.”
“It was so long,” she said, and the words sounded distant, unemotional, as if someone else had uttered them. “I thought you must be dead because you didn’t paint me out of there.”
“Oh, but I did,” he said. He undid the twine and unrolled a painting. “See?”
She spread it out on the table, and the colours sprang into life under the lamplight. A barbed mixture of relief and renewed horror shredded any remaining equilibrium as she stared. “You did this? You did this deliberately?”
He had painted a street by night, and a good part of the building portrayed had crumbled into the roadway. She was in the painting, only her face clearly lit, as she clambered over the darkened rubble. “What did you do?” she barked at him, aghast.
He shrugged, his small green eyes mocking her. “Nothing. Nothing without you. No longer be having power to start a quake. Told ye once, not be easy to influence non-living objects.”
“A quake?”
“A ground-shaking, hard enough to be bringing buildings down. In Variega mountains it be common enough.” He grimaced and gestured at the painting. “Painted immediately after ye were taken.”
“What do you mean, you didn’t have the power to start the earth quaking? I felt it. It tossed me on the floor, and then the walls fell down.” It wasn’t my fault. He did this.
“Told ye—be painting this soon after ye be taken. Nothing happened.”
She took a deep breath, trying to still the helpless fluttering of a heart that didn’t want to hear the truth he would eventually tell her. “You just said you painted me here. Wasn’t that enough?”
He shrugged. “Ye be imprisoned. Couldn’t be answering the call.”
She thought: He’s lying. He tried lots of things and none of them worked. Until I did my painting. It was me.
He continued, gesturing at the painting, “So I be thinking of this. A quake with ye escaping.”
She was silent, sifting through a jumble of thoughts, wondering which one to pick up and say.
“I be old, end of my days,” he said suddenly. He sounded sullen, reluctant to admit an approximation of the truth. “Gratitudes be five days back, so must be hundred and fifty days ago since I paint the quake. My power be too weak. Nothing happened.”
“Until tonight. Why now?”
“Ye be painting something. Ye must have. With your power in your waterpainting, my poor effort be made real, too… be method of your escape. Ye did, yes? Ye be painting something. The fools let ye have your paints.”
She was silent.
He changed the subject. “We must go now, tonight. Leave Scarcleft. They be hunting me down since that day. Tomorrow they be hunting ye too. A myriapede to ride, supplies—everything be arranged at livery outside the walls.” When she looked incredulous, he added, “It be a standing arrangement. Just in case.”
“Can we go to Breccia?”
“No. No, it’s time ye be going home. To Khromatis. Ye be a Watergiver, now true waterpainter. Time to claim what be yours.”
No hint of asking her first. She remembered the pull that had drawn her back to this building, to Russet. There was more than one way to imprison a person.
“Claim? Claim what? What exactly is mine? And just who are you to me?”
He considered her carefully; she guessed he was assessing her stubbornness. She put on her best stubborn look. He shrugged, capitulating. “Ye be my great-granddaughter. Your mother, Sienna, my granddaughter. Her mother, Magenta, my daughter. She married the Pinnacle.”
“Who is…?”
“The Pinnacle be… well, ruler. I be father-in-law to most powerful man in Khromatis, so had power myself. But Magenta died. Then your mother, my granddaughter Sienna, be running off. The silly frip! She be her father’s heir—Pinnacle one day if she be winning approval of Watergiver Council. Instead she thinks herself in love. Man have no powers. An eel-catcher. A wanderer. A nothing. Erith Grey. Pah!”
His anger at something that had happened so long ago was still enough to make his hands shake. Terelle stared, mesmerised by the way the patterns on his skin, lit by the lamplight, moved with each tremble as if they were living creatures crawling down his arms from under his wrap.
“Sienna’s father, the Pinnacle, furious. Pinnacle’s heir must be marrying someone of power, get children of power.” He shook his head, part in anger, part in puzzlement. “She and lover, they left mountains without permission. That be forbidden. They reached White Quarter, me at their heels. Wanted to bring her back. But some ’Basters gave them passage across the salt to the Gibber. I caught up with them there.”
“You killed him, didn’t you? You killed my father!” She was certain of it.
He shrugged. “Be him or me. And I be waterpainter.”
“But why?” she asked, outraged. “Why go after her like that anyway? You ended up being responsible for the deaths of them both!”
“She family. Her behaviour shamed me. Ye not understand—I be revered as great waterpainter of our time. But be getting old. Powers lessening. For family to have position, must be power in next generation, no? Sienna have that power. She was stormshifter. What you call stormlord, and she threw it all away.”
“Because she wanted to marry an ordinary man? So what?”
“Not just that. She not be wanting power. She refused to study. I chased her to bring her back. Find her in the Gibber. She told me she be having baby, a girl she be going to call Terelle.” He glared at her. “We be naming our children with colours. Match a child to their real colour, then they be the finest of waterpainters. But the name Terelle? Means exile. Nothing to do with colour. Her way of telling me she never be coming back.”
She shook her head, distraught, touched for a moment by the love of a mother she had never known. Unable to speak, she gestured with a hand that he was to continue.
He said, “The eel-catcher fight. He died. I be making sure of that with my painting. She fled into storm she made—”
“And you never found her.”
“No.”
“So why didn’t you go back to Khromatis?”
“What be point? My powers vanishing, Sienna gone, Pinnacle blaming me. So I keep looking, hoping she be still alive and one day I find her in a place where I painted her. I be travelling all over the Quartern looking. Gibber first, then Scarpen. And one day I be lucky: I followed your tears. You be having the look of her: proud and stubborn.”
Terelle’s outrage poured from her. “You killed my parents! You can’t think to take me back so that I can restore you to your position of power. That’s ridiculous.”
He didn’t answer.
“What do you think would happen, anyway? That they’d welcome you back after so many years? What, almost nineteen years—no, I suppose more like almost twenty, all told? And then what? They’ll make me the next Pinnacle? Do you think your people would allow a woman from the Gibber to lead them? I am nothing! I’m not really a Watergiver; I know nothing of your people or your customs or your language. And I don’t care to learn!”
“Ye be having great power; that be enough. Terelle, not be safe here for you. I painted ye at nineteen—after that, ye have no protection.”
“I’d be safe in Breccia.”
“Ye know, ye not be having much choice.” The smile he gave her was self-satisfied.
“Your paintings have no power any more,” she pointed out, but her heart was thumping, and she feared she was wrong. “You can no longer trap me in them. They weren’t enough to stop Taquar taking me prisoner. They weren’t enough to free me.”
The smile broadened, feral in its sly triumph. “Your fate be decided the moment I laid eyes on ye, foolish girl, and ye know it. Painted your future then, while I strong. Enough to make ye stay with me. Enough to point your feet in right direction—direction I want ye to take.”
“What if the paintings are already destroyed?” she asked. They were still in her bundle; she could burn
them.
“They aren’t, or ye’d be dead,” he said. “I told ye that. They be your future, Terelle. Into them, I put last waterpainting magic I truly had.”
She didn’t reply. She suspected he told the truth, but she would never really know for sure. Did Vato die because Shale planted his foot on my painting of him?
One thing she did know for sure: she had no choice. She already felt the tug of his paintings. She’d already experienced the penalty for resisting her future.
“Pick up your bundle,” he said. “We be leaving right now for White Quarter and Khromatis.”
Yet my mother resisted the paintings, I know she did.
That thought was followed by another, far more chilling. Rather than go back to Russet, her mother had become the mistress of a brutish Gibberman who would one day sell his own child into a brothel.
Then another thought, puzzling rather than frightening. If her mother had been a stormshifter, why had she stayed with a man like Yagon and lived in water penury? The explanation, when it came to her, was damning. It was Viviandra who had unwittingly given her the answer. “I think she was weak and ill most of the time,” she had said, speaking of Sienna.
Terelle’s mother, giving birth without a midwife, had died. Perhaps her resistance to the power of her grandfather’s paintings had left her too tired and ill and exhausted to live.
Terelle went cold with terror. If she chose to resist, she might die.
She picked up her bundle and followed Russet out.
In the doorway, she stopped to look back at the room. She and Shale had forged a friendship there. That link to him had been torn by her imprisonment, and the idea that it was about to be sundered entirely by her journey to an unknown land broke her heart.
