by Glenda Larke
"I'm not. These are for you to study, so you can paint them. Paint them dead. I wanted you to have a look at them alive first."
She quelled her revulsion and bent to look. Mindlessly, the ziggers flung themselves at the bars, trying to get to her, their drilling mouthparts whirring obscenely as they slavered. She jerked away, remembering that night in the snuggery. Remembering the blood. Remembering the death of a youth with a kind heart and simple mind.
"I have an idea," Jasper continued. "From something a man said to me while I was in Breccia City, just after the Reduners came. He said ziggers are attracted to lantern light… and later I saw it myself. Dead ziggers, burned against the hot glass of a lantern, or seared by candle flame and sizzling in the candle grease. My idea won't kill all the ziggers, but it might get rid of a great many of them, without the slightest danger to our men. I'll kill a few of these later, so you know what they look like after hitting the lantern. Tomorrow you'll come down the wash with me, to a point just above where I think the Reduners will camp two nights from now. I want you to be able to paint the place accurately."
She nodded but didn't speak.
He grimaced wryly. "We need all the help we can get, Terelle. Nothing will change the fact the Reduners have more warriors than us. Seasoned warriors. While our men are salt traders, or potters, or gem cutters, or grove croppers."
He's scared, she thought. But he'll never show it. "How much painting do you want me to do?"
"An awful lot by the day after tomorrow."
At Jasper's request, and using his money, she had scoured the Scarcleft markets before they'd left, buying all the painting materials and ingredients she could find. He'd been planning ahead, of course; being the Cloudmaster when she just wanted a friend; being a stormlord when she wanted someone to put his arms around her and tell her he cared.
"Terelle," he said after she'd been silent a while, "we don't seem to talk anymore. What's wrong?"
She settled her expression into bland indifference. "Well now," she said thoughtfully, "that might have something to do with the fact you're always so busy. Or not around. Or it might have something to do with your apparent preference for that spoiled brat Senya." Oh, Watergiver take it, I never meant to say that. Her face felt hot in spite of the cold night air. She stood up abruptly and left the tent. Behind her, Jasper was wrestling with himself, wanting to call her back. But to say what, exactly? "Terelle, I didn't want to bed Senya." "I only did it once." "I know I bedded her, but I don't like her, not really." "I'd much prefer to take you to bed, but you've got to understand, everyone says I have to marry Senya."
He sighed. At least he hadn't been stupid enough to give voice to any of those sentiments. He didn't know much about women, but he had a fair idea not one of those excuses would have been well received.
Damn it all to waterless hell. I'm the Cloudmaster, and I still can't have what I want.
***
"Can you tell if they've already moved from the cistern?" Terelle asked. It was a strain keeping the conversation neutral, but they were both doing their best. She sneaked a look at Jasper where he stood, holding the reins of the myriapede, looking down the wash. She wondered what it would be like to fit the curves of her body to his… and stopped the thought abruptly.
"I have them in my mind," he said. "I feel them coming, like a horde of-of bugs tramping their way up the stem of a plant. A long line of them coming up the wash toward us. They will camp at the lower camp tonight, and just around that bend there tomorrow night. You'll have to finish the paintings before their first scouts arrive, probably around mid-afternoon tomorrow. We'll need to be gone by then, but we'll leave everything in place. I will come back at night with some of the Gibbermen and rainlords to light the lanterns. Their sentries will spot them."
She nodded again.
He walked over to unload the pede, extracted a lantern and placed it on a rock, well away from the trail. "There's your first one."
"Won't their scouts notice any of these?"
His smile was playfully artless. "I'm assuming they won't find them because your paintings will have ensured the future is that they don't."
Her stomach lurched. Unable to joke about waterpainting power, she went to fetch her painting things and began to prepare the first of the trays, blessing the extravagance of buying thirty of them in Scarcleft.
"I can do all the motley bases now for the trays I have," she told him, "but I won't be able to paint until I see what everything looks like at night. Jasper, are you sure the ziggers will be attracted by the lanterns?"
"Ziggers use their sense of smell as well as their eyesight, especially at night, or that's what the Scarcleft guards say. Someone will have to be here to provide the enticing smell to bring them in, first. A few rainlords and me. Live bait. We'll wait beyond the lanterns. With luck, they'll be confused by the lights before they ever find us."
"If they do like to sizzle themselves on lanterns, won't the Reduners know that and not use them at night?"
"They used ziggers the night they attacked Breccia, so I think they will here, too. They'll expect to lose some, but I reckon they think most would rather find something to eat than butt heads with a lantern glass."
She shuddered just thinking of him being bait for ziggers. "Tether a pede here," she said. "It'd be safer. I think someone once told me that they feed off pedes in the wild."
"Yes, and a few ziggers wouldn't harm them. But there won't be just a few, there'll be thousands. I won't kill pedes. If any get past the lanterns, we rainlords can deal with them."
"You shouldn't risk yourself. This land depends on you. We all depend on you."
"I can't ask people to do what I will not do myself."
"You're more important than they are."
"I know that."
"Then-"
"Forget it, Terelle." His tone implied he would not listen to anything else she had to say on the subject. She suppressed a sigh as she squinted up at him from where she knelt in front of her tray. "How many ziggers do you think they'll release?"
"Believe me, there's no way you can paint as many as they have. Just portray as many as you can. However many die will mean less for them to use elsewhere."
She nodded, and started to fill her trays while he watched. "Sh-er, Jasper," she asked after a moment, "I've been meaning to ask you, did you ever hear from the rebel Reduners in answer to your sky messages?"
"Vara Redmane? No, but then how would they reply anyway?"
"Can you feel them, the way you feel those forces coming toward us?"
He smiled at her. "I wish I could say yes. But at that distance, it's tough. There are waterholes and camps-those have enough water for me to locate and they don't shift, either. But people moving from place to place?" He shook his head. "Not unless they were really bunched together like Davim's forces. I sent the message for her to the area that she was supposed to be hiding in, far to the north. I heard that much about her ages ago, before Breccia fell. Oh, and I did send another message visible to all the dunes once Davim was on his way."
She looked up, interested. "What did you say?"
"That Davim's warriors were on the move, coming to attack the Scarpen and now would be a good time for rebels to try to attack him from the rear if they wanted their freedom. If they wanted me to bring water to their dunes."
"But Davim will have seen those messages, too."
"Perhaps. Though I did wait until he was already on his way up the wash." He made a gesture of irritation. "It's so difficult to know what to do, or what effect any of it has had. I can't even tell if they have read the messages! Not all that many Reduners ever learn to read." He shrugged, summing up his inadequacies. "I miss Lord Ryka. She knew so much more about them than anyone else. In the end I sent out messages in the Quartern tongue as well as Reduner. I thought if Vara Redmane, or any of the tribes, had contact with Scarpen slaves, there would be a chance of one of them understanding and passing the message on."
"So
we just have to hope someone in the Red Quarter is stirring up trouble for any forces Davim left behind."
He nodded. "I have to go back to the camp. I am leaving a couple of guards with you. If you need anything, ask."
She smiled a farewell.
As he turned and walked away, wind whistled up the drywash, scurrying the dust along like the sweepings of an invisible broom, but it wasn't the wind making her shiver. It was fear, and the knowledge that she was twisting the future of the men coming up the wash to suit those waiting for them at the top. She painted all night and into the next morning. Each time she completed a picture, she checked it carefully to see if she had the details right: the exact way each lantern or lamp sat on the ground, the configuration of the stones at its base, the scratches on that particular lantern. Then she shuffled up the ziggers into the heart of the suggestive blotches she had already sketched in: hundreds of them in each picture. Dead or dying ziggers, grouped around each lantern, their wings frizzled against the heat of the glass. And then she moved on to another tray. When she had finished a number of them, she came back and cut the picture from the first ones, their purpose already defined, their power already stamped, for better or for worse, on the future. And so on to a different lantern, in a slightly different place-and another picture.
All morning she was aware of people coming and going up and down the wash. Scouts to watch for the arrival of Reduners. Jasper, to check on her progress. Feroze the Alabaster, Lord Iani and Lourouth the Gibberman to check on the terrain-those three passed her by, discussing the positioning of their men, and hardly noticed her presence.
Laisa came once and watched her with shrewd eyes. She knelt by the tray Terelle was working on, staring. Then she said, "You're not what you seem, are you?"
"I don't know what you mean, Lord Laisa."
The rainlord used her forefinger to turn Terelle's face until their gaze met. "No one paints the same thing over and over-dead ziggers at that-just to record a history that has not yet happened. What are you hiding?"
Terelle jerked her head away. Sandblast it, she hated the way the woman tried to make her feel like a child. "Not as much as you, at a guess. Tell me, my lord, are you on the side of the Scarpen and Jasper now, or is it just a temporary thing? Will you betray him the first time someone offers you something better?"
Without answering, Laisa left in her usual swirl of silk and clink of jewelry, trailing her perfume behind her like the lingering musky scent of a horned cat.
***
Sometime around midday, Jasper laid a hand on her shoulder. "The first of their scouts is not far away," he said quietly. "I want us to be out of here soon."
She sat back on her heels and nodded. Shuffling, she decided, was exhausting. She finished the picture she was working on and stood, stretching aching muscles. Salted damn, but she was hungry!
"You've drawn thousands of ziggers," he told her. "Far more than I thought was possible. Congratulations." He gathered up the paints and trays. "Let's get you back to camp. You've done your bit; the rest is up to other people now."
It's not enough, she thought. No matter how many are killed here, it still won't be enough. They'll have more.
In spite of the heat of the sun and the warm blast of the wind, she felt cold, shrunken. Tomorrow, led by a handful of rainlords, Jasper's ill-prepared men would have to face a large army. He cradled her as he rode back to their camp. It should have felt good to be there, safe. His arms were strong, his muscles hard, his hold secure. Yet when he took a hand off the reins to brush hair away from her cheek in a gesture of care and concern, she would have liked to turn her face into his tunic and cry.
"You have tears on your lashes," he said.
"That happens to me sometimes," she mumbled. "So silly. Shale, be careful, won't you? Not because you're a stormlord and we need you, but because-because I don't want anything to happen to you. Please."
She'd forgotten to call him Jasper, but he didn't seem to mind because he grinned, that rare grin of his, which lit up his face from the inside. "I don't want anything to happen to me, either." He bent his head, and she knew he was about to kiss her. She wanted it so badly, she hardly knew herself. And then he withdrew. "Damn," he said softly. "We have company."
Feroze and Iani rode up with a group of their bladesmen, wanting to discuss more details of their plans for the next day, and it wasn't long before Jasper was suggesting she ride back to their camp in the pass without him. "Do you want me to send someone with you?" he asked.
Still reeling from her exhaustion, she was tempted to say yes. Instead, she shook her head. "No, I'll be fine. Really. You-you take care."
He nodded and changed before her eyes from Shale to Jasper, Stormlord. He seemed suddenly regal, greeting the men, giving orders, overriding her assurance she could ride back herself, and sending her on her way seated behind Iani's driver. As she looked back one last time to see the group listening to his every word, she knew they would never again sit on the floor side by side to play a game of Lords and Shells. They would never again feel young.
Tomorrow he would be a man who led his people to war.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Red Quarter and Scarpen Quarter Dunes and Warthago Range Ryka had never been so weary. Long days on the saddle under a hot sun had merged into one another, each spent dodging dune encampments and driving the two young pedes out of the way to avoid groups of riders. The quarter was alive with warriors on the move, riding between dunes and along dunes and across dunes to assemble at their agreed meeting point. She was always tense: straining her inadequate eyesight to glimpse riders, straining her unreliable water-sense to track approaching pedes and men so she could evade them, straining her own cumbersome body with too many hours on the saddle.
Finally-how many days was it? She couldn't remember-she crossed the southernmost dune undetected. Ahead was the Scarpen; ahead somewhere was safety. And Kaneth. But her backtracking and detours had delayed her far too much. And so she rode on toward the Warthago Range, knowing that for her, the sand was running too fast through the glass. She bypassed Qanatend at night, stealing water from a pede livery outside the walls as she rode by. She hoped somewhere within were Ravard and Davim and their men, but she knew it was more likely they were still ahead of her, already pushing their way deep into the Scarpen.
The track upward was hard on the young pedes. They had never encountered such a steady climb and they fussed and clicked their anxiety. Whichever one she was riding would swing its feelers behind to flick her in irritation, sometimes grazing her skin on their spines. She found herself bribing them with treats more and more often, just so they would keep going. The second day past Qanatend was even worse than the first because she wasn't feeling well. She'd lost her appetite. Her back ached. No matter how she wriggled or squirmed, she couldn't find a comfortable way of sitting on the saddle.
And then the reason struck her. Oh, no. Not now. Then, aloud and even more anguished, "Nooooo." Her baby was on its way. And she was still short of the mother cistern. Blackwing, sensing her inattention, ambled to a halt and turned to look at her. She raised her head, pulled a face at him and gave him a prod between the segments. When he'd started up again, she turned her senses upward. Water, a lot of it. The cistern was only a couple of hours further on. Her powers were not sufficient to tell her what she would find there, not from this distance and not against a background of so much water. As hard as she tried, she couldn't sense people or pedes until she was dangerously close to them.
You have no choice, Ryka. Push on-and hope there are no Reduners there. Hope they are all still back in Qanatend. And perhaps you had better consider turning religious as well because a prayer or two might be in order…
A little voice that had been bothering her thoughts ever since she'd left the Watergatherer whispered, Do you really think the Reduners in Qanatend would leave their water supply unguarded?
You're a rainlord. You can do this, Ryka, she told herself, you know you
can.
She shouldn't listen to the little voices in her head; they never said cheery things, blast them. It never occurred to her that Kaneth had not stuck to their original plan. It did not cross her mind that, once he realized his group of escaping slaves was without a rainlord to tell them when they were in danger, he would decide it was safer to trek north to join forces with a woman fast becoming a legend: Vara Redmane. It was just after sunset, but there was still light in the sky as Jasper, Laisa and Lord Ouina of Breakaway silently led a group of Gibbermen down the slope, from where they'd left their pedes to the lanterns. Overhead, Jasper amassed waiting clouds to cloak the sky until the night had an eerie sombreness. The lack of star-shine reduced the normal exuberance of the Gibbermen to wide-eyed silence.
"A black sky," one of them had muttered earlier, eyes wide with fear. "Whoever heard of such a thing?"
"It's unnatural," his companion whispered. "It's like walkin' down an adit after your lamp blew out."
Even after Jasper had explained, they weren't any happier. Spooked by a darkness they had never known, they were like pebblemice caught out in the open, startled at every little sound, jumping at the sight of a scraggy bush looming up out of the shadows.
To Jasper's surprise, nothing went wrong even though the men were jittery. They dispersed to light the lanterns and camp fires. When they returned, he sent them back to the Scarpen camp, leaving the three rainlords behind.
"Now I know what it is like to be a decoy mouse, set in the windhover trap," Laisa said in Jasper's ear as they waited for the Reduners to react. "You had better be right about this, Gibber boy, because there is no way two of us can dry up thousands of ziggers."
"You won't have to," he said, trying to express a confidence that suddenly seemed absurd.
She asked, "Are you going to explain just what that little snuggery girl of yours had to do with all this?"
"No," he said. "I'm not. There's nothing to tell. The Reduners will see the lamps and fires; they'll think it's our camp. They will loose their ziggers, we will stand here on the far side of the lamps. The ziggers will home in on our smell, but be distracted by the light. They'll fry themselves. Once they start coming, we move away."
