Stormlord rising s-2

by Glenda Larke

  "I owe him everything. I grew up as poor as a pebblemouse in a sand patch. My father spent any tokens he could get us t'earn for him on raw amber. He was slurped nine days in every ten. My mother was the settle whore, sleeping with any caravanner who passed through-"

  She stared at him. "Settle? You are Gibber born?"

  He stared back, his surprise evident. "Of course! Surely y'knew that? How else would I speak the Quartern tongue so well? And I reckon I don't sound like you city-dwelling fancy-hats from the Scarpen, neither."

  "I thought you must have been taught by a Gibber slave. Davim certainly collected enough of them."

  "Taught by a Gibber slave? I was a Gibber slave!"

  "Davim enslaved you and yet you still serve him?"

  "In the Gibber I starved! I was cold and hungry, or thirsty and hungry. He took me and made a man of me. He taught me t'fight. T'stand up for meself." He rose, agitated, and waved a hand around at the tent and its contents. "Look at all this. I'm comfortable, Garnet. In the Gibber, we froze at night. Froze with rumbling bellies. I'm somebody now. I own things. People respect me, fear me-"

  "You think all this is what makes a man? Davim just had you whipped, scarred you for life, and you bore it. He made you kill your friend to prove your loyalty when you were a child. And probably the only reason he not only didn't kill you, but made you the Master Son, is that he needed your water sensitivity because he had so little of his own. Is any of that the mark of a man to look up to? You want to be like him?"

  "I'm the sandmaster's chosen heir. Davim wouldn't give such a place of honor to a man unworthy of his respect. Had he died in the siege of Breccia, I'd be sandmaster now. If I live longer than he does, that's what I could become."

  "Don't be a sun-fried fool, Ravard. Do you think you'll still be Master Son once his own sons are grown? I hear he has several. If any of them are water sensitives, Davim'll have half a dozen spears plunged into your back the moment it suits him. If Chert had been the one who had water talent, he'd be the one sitting in this tent, not you."

  That name, she'd heard it somewhere before. Presumably on the rainlord search through the Gibber to find water-sensitive children…

  And then memory hit her like a slap in the face. She lumbered to her feet, staring at him, searching his face. "Dear pools within! Chert… That was the name of the palmier's son. Oh, what a sun-shriveled fool I am. Sunlord save us all, you're Shale Flint's brother! That's why Kher Davim made you so loyal to him, not just because you are water sensitive!"

  He was silent then, his speech stolen by her words.

  "Why didn't I see it? There's even a bit of a resemblance! Your skin and hair are so red that I never dreamed you weren't born Reduner, dryhead that I am." No wonder something had puzzled her when he'd been speaking to Davim. His accent. And Davim had called him an outlander. She'd been stupid to be sidetracked by his color; even her own hair and skin showed signs of a reddish stain.

  "Shale Flint," she continued. "Shale Flint of Wash Drybone Settle. He had a brother, an older brother, called Mica."

  The wary look he gave her then was a mix of worry and outright shock. Again, she was reminded of how very young he was. Young, and surprisingly vulnerable. Pedeshit, she thought, dismayed. I've been bedding Jasper's bleeding brother. Oh, Sunlord's balls. How will I ever explain that?

  "What's it matter now who I was?" he asked at last. "Yes, I had a brother. He's probably dead. You knew him? Shale?"

  "That's Jasper's real name."

  "Whose-? You mean the stormlord? You truly are sun-shriveled!" He laughed again, but the laugh soon faltered and died. "You're lying."

  "No. Why should I?"

  He stilled. The venom in his next words made her shrink away from him. "You lie. Shale was no stormlord!"

  He whirled away from her to where his scimitar hung in its scabbard from the central tent pole.

  She jumped to her feet, her heart pounding. Sunlord save me from this sun-fried idiot of a man!

  He slid the blade out and grabbed her by the waist, twisting her back up against him so the blade lay against her throat. "Say you're lying!"

  She eyed the family-sized water jar in the corner of the tent. It was closed tight. No help there. She said, "The way I heard it, you weren't a water sensitive as a child, either. Shale was-is-now more than he was. So are you."

  "I'll kill you!"

  "I've seen him, Ravard. Mica. I've spoken to him. He told me how Davim killed Citrine, pitted her on a chala spear-"

  "Shut up!"

  She twisted in his grasp, pushing his arm and sword away, and he let her go. She stood facing him, her arms crossed protectively over her abdomen. "You can't run away from the truth forever. You know what happened. You were there. You know what Davim did. What you didn't understand was why."

  When he didn't reply, she risked continuing, even as she edged closer to the water jar. "He and the Highlord Taquar planned it. Taquar came to your settle with the other rainlords, remember? He tested Shale-"

  "He didn't! He didn't! Shale was never tested."

  "He was. Taquar did it in secret and realized what Shale was. He told Davim, and the two of them planned for you and Shale to be taken. Taquar took Shale, Davim took you. I suppose he wanted to use you to force Shale to cooperate if need be, but then he realized it would be even better if you were on his side. Shale would do anything to save you."

  He struck her then, the blow coming out of nowhere, the flat of his hand slamming into her cheek. She staggered back against the water jar. The lid jabbed into the small of her back. She turned to lean into it sideways and, even with her head ringing, managed to ease the lid off as she clutched at it for support. At least now she had access to water.

  "You're lying," he said, the words, thick with venom and contempt, ripping out of him. "How could you know any of this, anyway? You're just a Scarperwoman who cheated on her husband with the first handsome bladesman who passed her way."

  Briefly she considered telling him she had been there, in his settle, the day Shale had been tested. No, too risky, she told herself. It might jog his memory, or he might guess I am a rainlord and I want that to be a nasty surprise when I need it.

  She said nothing.

  He raised his hand again. She refused to shrink from him, saying, "You can hit me all you like. You don't scare me and it won't change a thing. Davim used you. Taquar told him he had found a boy who had a good chance of being a stormlord, and it amused him to turn a stormlord's brother into the supposed heir to the Scarpen's worst enemy."

  He heard her, and she knew her words hit home. He wasn't stupid. He was thinking the same thoughts, but just didn't want to listen to them. Waggling his scimitar in her face, he growled, "Don't say another word, or I kill you. Baby or not, I kill you."

  Ryka, she thought, take the hint. This is the moment when it would pay you to keep your mouth shut.

  He stared at her a moment longer, recognized she was not going to say anything more, then plunged out of the tent, shouting orders. She listened and heard him give the instructions for a dawn departure.

  So be it. And I will be right behind you, Mica Flint.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Red Quarter Dune Watergatherer and further south Ravard was busy most of the afternoon and night, supervizing preparations for the journey. About three sandglass runs before dawn, he entered her room. He was carrying an oil lamp and placed it on the box. Then he sat down on the lid beside it.

  She made no pretense of being asleep. "There was no need to hit me," she said, her contempt undisguised. "No man of stature ever does such a thing." She rolled over and sat up to stare up at him. "You go to kill or capture your brother. He spoke of you with nothing but affection. He worried endlessly you might have died. What kind of man are you?"

  He refused to meet her gaze. Then, after a long silence, he said, "I'll speak to Sandmaster Davim 'bout this. We'll bring Shale back with us, to the dunes. He'll become one of us-a Reduner Kher. He'll be our storm
lord, if indeed that's what he is. We can still have our random rain and yet know we need never thirst if things go wrong."

  At least he was openly believing her now.

  "Have a care, Mica. Davim has his own plans and if he thinks you will thwart them, he will have you killed." And you know nothing of your own brother if you think he would join you in such a plan.

  In an unwitting echo of her thoughts, he said, "You know nothing of our ways. Nothing!"

  "Your ways?"

  "Yes. Mine. I lived in hell once, son of a sot and a whore, starved and thirsty-and did any Scarpen lord care then? Did any stormlord send us more water? I hated that life. We were worse than slaves. Here on the dunes, when I was a slave, I had food in my belly, water in my skin, and a chance t'better myself. A chance t'become a man, a warrior, not some waterless scum living on the fringe of a settle begging for drink. Davim gave us a new life."

  "No, he didn't. Whatever he gave you was for himself, not you. But Chert he killed and he made you do it for him. That is not the work of a man who cared for either of you."

  "You know nothing! And how d'you know so much about Shale anyway?"

  She stayed close to the truth. "I'm a teacher. When he came to Breccia, he needed schooling. I was one of his teachers."

  He came and knelt beside her. "Garnet, Mica is dead. He died right here on the dune."

  "No, he didn't. He's you. He's still there inside you."

  "What d'you know about it? Mica died of ill-use as a slave. He was whipped and kicked and humiliated." He took hold of her face in both hands and held it steady, a hand-span from his own. "You know what that's like? A lad of fifteen, passed around like a skin of amber, for everyone to do what they liked with."

  She tried to look away, but he gripped her tighter, his thumbs digging into her cheeks. "A slave, used up the backside till there was nothing more left of him. Oh, nothing special. In Davim's tribe the warriors do it with everyone when they are new-men, women, children. And then they stop. And you're grateful 'cause they stop."

  Words jerked out of her in revulsion. "Oh, waterless soul."

  "I don't need your pity. 'Cause that's when Davim came and took what was left, and made me. Ravard. Warrior. Kher. He taught me t'be a Reduner; t'have pride in who I am. If Shale comes looking for Mica, he won't find him. And I reckon if I go looking for Shale, I won't find him in this Stormlord Jasper, neither. Reckon once you start sleeping in a bed under a roof and eating all that fancy fodder, you become one of them. Scarpen folk, water-soft flesh and flint-hard hearts."

  She raised a hand to cup his cheek, as gentle as he was not. "And yet in your tribe you do not have slaves."

  He shrugged. "If folk don't want t'join us, I don't want them. Other tribes can have them if they like, but not here. That's not weakness; that's strength.

  "I don't want any more conversation from you t'night. Nor do I ever want t'hear the name Mica again, on your lips or anyone's. I am Ravard." He bent to kiss her and she acquiesced, drawing him down on top of her.

  No more than what thousands of women have done through the ages, she thought. Selling our bodies in exchange for safety. Or to avoid something more unpleasant.

  It could have been far, far worse.

  But still: Jasper's brother?

  In her heart she couldn't bring herself to hate him, or even to hate what he did to her. He was a tormented man, and she thought in the end perhaps she suffered less than he did. Later, in the bustle of the impending predawn departure, Ryka took advantage of the lack of guards around the camp to dig up her stash of food and take it down to where the young pedes were corralled near the waterhole. The transport water jars for the war party had already been filled, and the camp guards had long since been called in to help, so there was no one to question her about where she was going or what she was doing.

  She had to make several trips carrying the things she would need: panniers, water jars, bridle and saddle, blankets. She used her senses and avoided people as much as she could, but no one cared what she was doing anyway. The women were both busy and silently grieving with the knowledge their menfolk were riding to war. The men thought it beneath them to concern themselves with the affairs of women.

  The war party left before it was light.

  Ryka watched them go, then sought Khedrim and told him in execrable Reduner she would look after the young pedes that day. Better, she told him, that he help around the encampment because all but the very young and the very old men would be gone. He nodded, yawning, and went back to his pallet.

  She slipped away in the dark to the pede yard, where she finalized the packing. Once everything was done, she rode Blackwing down to the waterhole. Keeping an anxious watch behind her, she used her power to fill the water jars, then headed south, her shadow springing into existence as the first ray of the sun tipped over the horizon onto the plain.

  Blackwing flicked his antennae this way and that, sometimes reaching back to touch her in protest. It was the first time he'd been ridden any distance, the first time he'd carried a load, the first time he'd been separated from his litter mates.

  "Ah, Blackwing," she murmured, "I'm not sure you are really big enough for what I am asking of you, you poor little thing."

  The animal stopped then, and turned a questioning head, as if to say, "Do I have to go on still further?" Ryka gave a rueful laugh. She jabbed him with her prod, aware they mustn't drop too far behind because she had to bypass the Reduner forces while they were in Qanatend. If she was too slow, they would reach the pass through the Warthago first.

  The journey was not going to be a dew-coated stroll, not on a young pede with no idea of what it was supposed to do, and with a baby who could decide to be born any time at all. She was probably being foolish. She told herself she was taking the risk because Jasper needed to be warned an army was on its way. Just in case he hadn't been responsible for the messages. But in the end, she couldn't fool herself.

  Be honest, Ryka. This journey of yours has nothing to do with warning the Scarpen and everything to do with wanting to see Kaneth. You want him to be there when his baby is born. You don't care if he is Uthardim still, you don't care if he left you behind, you want him there.

  ***

  Mid-afternoon on that first day she felt a body of moving water behind her. Painfully aware of her inadequacies as a rainlord, she'd made a deliberate effort to be alert to her surroundings. Usually her concentration ended up telling her useless things like the presence of an eagle in the sky above. This time, though, it wasn't a bird. She'd just passed over the first dune south of the Watergatherer and the next was no more than a red line crimping the skyline ahead. She stopped Blackwing and turned to look back, but could see nothing. Her short-sightedness annoyingly blurred the line of the last dune into an amorphous mass of shades of red.

  About the length of a sandglass run later, Blackwing became restless, slowing down and balking if she prodded him. When he battered at her with his antennae, expressing his annoyance, she was forced to stop. He turned his head behind, his feelers swirling in the air. She guessed he scented another pede, and was rebelling at any notion she had of keeping ahead of whoever was following.

  Looking back herself, she could now see a puff of dust rising up into the air. She was being followed. Her water-sense told her it was a single pede, but she had no idea how many people were on it.

  She gave Blackwing a piece of dried bab fruit, hoping to put him into a good mood so he would move on, but he was stubborn. Spitless damn, she thought, you idiot lump of chitin! I might end up having to kill someone because of you. She dismounted and tried leading him, but he just dug his legs into the red soil and clicked his mouthparts at her in annoyance. Worried he might take it into his head to pull the reins out of her hands and flee, she clambered up again, cursing the sheer bulk of her pregnancy. He still wouldn't move.

  He was willing enough to wait, so they sat there in the sun and gradually the puff of dust grew larger and changed into a single fi
gure on pedeback. Her eyesight was such that the rider was almost on top of her before she recognized him or his mount: Khedrim on Redwing. Sunblast the boy.

  He drew up alongside and stared at her.

  With a sinking feeling in her stomach she saw he was clutching a zigger cage full of the murderous beetles keening their hunger. Her heart flipped over.

  "Khedrim, what do you think you're doing?" she asked.

  "You're escaping," he accused, apparently not noticing her Reduner had suddenly improved to almost faultless diction. "And you stole a pede. I went to help you and you weren't there."

  "So? Just go home, lad."

  "Grandfather told me to come after you. He's in charge now the tribemaster and the others have gone. Redwing showed me the way-she wanted to follow Blackwing. It was easy."

  "And they sent a single boy after me? Do they expect me to calmly return with you?"

  "What can you do?" he asked scornfully. "You're just a woman, and a slave. And you're having a baby. There's nothing you can do. Besides, I have ziggers." He waved the cage at her. The beetles screamed in anger. "And a scimitar."

  "Your grandfather told you to kill me?"

  "No. That's just to threaten you with."

  "And if I still say no?"

  An astonished look spread over his face. "But you wouldn't want to die!"

  "No, I wouldn't. However, I am refusing to go back with you. The question remains, then, are you willing to kill by releasing a zigger? Or several ziggers?"

  Astonishment turned to confusion. It had obviously never occurred to him this could be the outcome. "You're scoffing me," he said at last.

  "No, I'm not. I'm not going back with you. I am riding on."

  His reply was a wail. "You can't! I'd have to let a zigger out!" He looked as if he was about to weep.

  "Khedrim," she said as kindly as she could, "I am wearing the correct perfume."