by Glenda Larke
When you are older, I shall laugh about this with you, she thought, and tell you what a brave boy you were. She touched his cheek with her fingertip and added a moment later, Please let that be true.
They had no way to tell how much time had passed, but suddenly there was the sound of hurried movement, shouted orders from outside, followed by silence. She waited a while longer, then peeked over the top of the jars. The small cave was empty, and although she couldn't see anyone in the waterhall, she felt sure there were people there, crowding at the entrance. She could no longer feel the presence of the pedes, so she guessed they had pushed the beasts outside the better to accommodate themselves.
"I'm going out to see what's happening," she whispered to Anina.
The woman nodded, but her face was a portrait of a fear so deep-rooted, Ryka wondered if she could even speak. She patted her arm and left.
The waterhall was still crammed with warriors, but now they were only at the front, standing in rows, facing away from her. Preparing to advance, she assumed, as soon as they were given the order.
And then the picture splintered as though they had all entered the heart of the spindevil wind. A huge rope of water, twirling and howling, touched down in front of the cave to scatter men and zigger cages and pedes, shooting out slivers of white as it passed. One of these shot into the cavern and came to rest near Ryka's feet. She bent to touch it. It was ice. For a moment she crouched, unmoving, staggered by the thought anyone could do this. Outside, the sun, now low in the sky, was still hot; the land still burned with the heat of the day. How could it happen? She'd seen ice before; in the deep of the desert at night sometimes the dew froze, or the stopper in a dayjar iced up. But never in the heat of the day.
There was no time for thought. The wind and water entered the hall, blowing men before it like grass seeds in a gale. She turned and plunged back into their hiding place, drawing Anina and Khedrim into her arms, wrapping them all in the cloth and the coverlet. Khedrim started to wail in earnest, but that was the least of their worries. No one was in any condition to hear him or, if they did, to care.
Men crowded into the store cave again, screaming in terror and pain. Ice hit the walls over Ryka's head, shattering and sprinkling them with shards. The wind rocked the row of jars, and several of the empty ones smashed. Fortunately half of one of these broken vessels came flying through the air, only to wedge firmly between a full oil jar and the wall, forming a shelter protecting them from the worst of the other flying debris. Ryka dragged up some dregs of power and used it to ward off flying ice and water.
Anina sobbed endlessly, and Ryka could hardly blame her.
Jasper, she thought, if I ever get out of this alive, I will wring your neck for scaring me to death.
Just when she thought they might live through the stormlord's version of a spindevil wind, a ferocious gust made a man stagger into one of the oil jars, sending it reeling into another to create a chain reaction. Several jars smashed and suddenly there was bab oil everywhere.
Ryka leaped up, Khedrim clutched to her chest, to save him from being drenched in oil. She slipped almost immediately and sprawled, flinging herself onto her side to avoid crushing Khedrim. He woke in terror and immediately started bawling with surprising volume. And at that precise moment, the wind stopped. It didn't die away, it simply vanished. People began to pick themselves up off the floor. Into the sudden silence, Khedrim cried, the insistent squalling of an outraged newborn. Heads swung her way, disbelieving stares sought her out.
She scrambled up, horrified. The more she tried to quiet Khedrim, the louder he yelled. Someone came pushing through the crowd of armsmen, and Ryka found herself looking up at Ravard.
For a long moment he was speechless, with rage or surprise she couldn't tell. She stood, joggling Khedrim to quiet him, but he would not oblige. He was dripping with oil, and so was she.
"What the sandblasted withering shit are you doing here?" Ravard asked at last.
"Running away from the Red Quarter?" she suggested. "And having a baby."
He opened his mouth to say something else, but no words came out.
Outside, people were calling for him.
Finally he said through gritted teeth, "Stay here. I'll deal with you later." He turned and was gone.
Ryka loosened her clothing and gave Khedrim the breast to quiet him, even as she looked for Anina. To her shock, the woman was lying as still as death in the oil. A pointed shard of pottery jutted from her breast. Her eyes stared sightlessly upward, an expression of surprise on her face.
Ryka cursed, long and hard. The woman could have been safe, hiding with the other slaves, but she had come back to help.
Oblivious, Khedrim sucked hungrily until, sated, he fell asleep again. There was nothing she could do for Anina, so she walked away with him in her arms into the main cavern. The Reduners-at least those who were alive and relatively unhurt-were all gone. Injured warriors were sprawled on the floor, some unconscious, some with broken limbs, along with many bodies. There was nothing left of the zigger cages, or the ziggers.
Outside, after some sort of lull, the battle had been rejoined. Keeping close to the cavern wall, she peered out. A glance told her it would not be easy to sneak away. The fighting surged immediately outside the cavern, with the Scarpen forces pressing the Reduners closely. If she did venture out, she would be in danger of being trampled by a pede or cut by a stray antenna, not to mention killed by someone from the Scarpen forces. Her oil-saturated clothing was a traveling tunic of Laisa's, but it had long since been stained red by the sands of the quarter. Her skin and her blond hair were red. The middle of a battle was not the place to start arguing your allegiance.
Damn, she thought. Wearily she slid down the wall into a sitting position. She ached everywhere, uncomfortably aware she was still bleeding from the birth and that her exhaustion was worse after using her water-powers.
Jasper, you had better win this battle because I don't want Ravard to come for me…
And where the blighted hells was Kaneth? Please let him be all right. It was every man for himself. Ordinarily the Reduners would have made short work of an army of shopkeepers, bab pickers and resin collectors, but Davim's men were no longer the proud, undefeated marauders they had been a day or two before. The Scarpermen and their allies smelled victory and fought with a tenacious spirit. Jasper, far from being safe at the far side of the flat ground, found himself imperilled by the ferocity of the fighting around him.
Sandblast them, he thought, they are out to kill the stormlord. He had taken advantage of the lull during the parley to eat as much as he could force down his throat. He could manipulate water again, but he suspected his renewed power would not last long.
He stood up on the back of his pede and tried to keep himself above the worst of the fighting. He plucked water from the cistern and threw it at those who came at him, leaving their destruction to the guards around him. Laisa, next to him and still giving the appearance of being coolly unruffled, blinded Reduners by sucking the water from their eyes.
Aghast, he saw Dibble fall, and then another of his personal guard, and another. His pede, driverless, reared in anger when a Reduner thrust a spear between its segments. Jasper tumbled and sat down hard on the saddle. He saved himself from a further fall to the ground by grabbing for the mounting handle. Someone cut the man down from behind, and the spear was dislodged.
A Reduner driver on pedeback, tall and well-muscled and young, fought his way toward him. The man wielded both spear and scimitar and wreaked havoc among the bladesmen and pedemen tasked with keeping Jasper safe. The ordeal inside the cavern had not cowed this warrior. His robe was wet. His face was bruised and bleeding. His nose was broken. Yet he manipulated his steed with a finesse not many could achieve in normal circumstances. He alternated between scimitar and spear, slashing and stabbing with grim intent. When he wasn't using the scimitar, he held it in his mouth, blunt side inward. When he wasn't jabbing with the spear, he use
d it as a stave to ward off attack. Both weapons were red with blood; men died under the feet of his mount. He was terrifying.
They had not crossed weapons, though Jasper had first glimpsed him earlier through the shambles of battle. Now he was close.
Jasper threw water at him. The warrior appeared to sense it coming. He ducked and the water splashed harmless across his shoulder. When Laisa turned her attention to him, he spoke to his pede and a feeler whipped through the air in her direction. She saw it coming and threw herself sideways. The serrated edges of the feeler tore through her clothing and she fell to the ground.
The Reduner reared his pede, throwing himself forward until his face was cheek down on the beast's head. He yanked hard on one of the reins and yelled something to his mount. The animal pivoted on its back feet, and as it turned, its feelers swung out in a wide slashing arc, ripping at everything within range. Men fell, Scarpermen, Gibbermen and Reduner alike; pedes scattered.
Jasper and the man were left alone in the center of a cleared space.
I'm going to die, Jasper thought. Unless I think of something quick. He raised his scimitar into a defensive position and drew as much water as he could from the cistern with what remained of his power. I'll throw the lot at him, knock him from his pede…
The response was sluggish. He felt as if he was hauling a recalcitrant pede, not water. He panicked. He was tired, so tired. No, this is more than that. What the salted wells is he doing? And then realization: He's a reeve. He's fighting me with water skills. The man couldn't move water, but he could resist it.
When the pede whipped its feeler around at Jasper, fear clogged his thoughts. He jerked back, thinking he was going to be sliced open, but the animal stopped short of hitting him, and gently touched his face with the tip. Only then did Jasper notice the feeler on the other side was broken. He looked into the animal's myopic eyes. It was stroking him, a pedeic sign of welcome to a friend.
Jasper jerked his head up to look at the rider and was overwhelmed with a sense of recognition. It wasn't Mica's face he recognized, but his water. The features were those of a hardened Reduner marauder: sharpchiseled, calculating, stained red-that man he did not know. But the inner self? That was Mica; that hadn't changed.
And he was swinging his scimitar in a sideways slash that was about to remove Jasper's head from his shoulders.
Worst of all was the recognition in those cold, dark eyes. Mica Flint knew exactly who he was going to kill.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Scarpen Quarter Warthago Range The battle swirled back and forth. Attack, retreat. Retreat, attack. Slash, parry. Parry, slash. Reduner killed. Alabaster triumphant. Scarperman killed. Reduner victorious. A patterned chaos; a chaos with patterns of life and death. Deadly, desperate and bloody. Always bloody.
And always ugly.
The ugliness of the smell. The stink of voided bowels, of urine, of vomit, of guts spilled and trampled. Pede shit, pede piss. The sweet, strong stench of human blood. The ugliness of the noise of battle. The grating scream that wouldn't stop. The harsh sobbing of human beings in pain. The bubbling gasps of men without lungs trying to breathe, the animal grunting of men without guts trying to go on living, the whistling breath of men with pierced windpipes. The guttural horror of the death rattle, that awful final sound of air expelled, never to be replaced. Each sound distinct, whether soft or loud, and each layered in its own special abomination.
And now, for Jasper, another ugliness. His brother was going to kill him. Mica. Mica who had loved him. Worried about him. How could it ever have come to this?
It was the pede that saved him, Mica's pede. It brought a feeler down hard across Mica's arm and the stroke went astray.
"Mica!" Jasper cried. "It's me-Shale!" And to make sure he was heard, he shut out the battle. He enclosed them in their own little world: he ringed them with water, a wall of water, with just Mica and him and their pedes inside. Sounds muted, and the men outside drew back, fearful. Yet the wall was nothing more than water, easily breached.
Mica recovered from the pede's blow and, cursing, swung his scimitar up again for another murderous slash.
Jasper flung up his spear to parry the blow that was coming. "You used to protect me," he said.
The words were inane, yet they penetrated, and only then could he see the boy that had been Mica in this man, this Reduner. There, on his face, a brief look of worried uncertainty once so typical of Mica as his resolution wavered.
Yet when he spoke, his voice was firm, the words those of an adult. Jasper recognized the voice, heard the slur of the Gibber accent, although it was no longer so pronounced. "I know. And you have t'die. I'm sorry, young 'un. But that's the way it's got t'be. We have t'go back to random rain. And my name is Ravard now," he said. "Kher Ravard." He lowered his scimitar slightly and Jasper read a brief flash of compassion in those dark eyes, even though the line of his mouth and jaw told him there was no wavering of the determination.
Still, it was hard to believe he was in danger, so he ignored it. "I almost didn't know you," he replied. And it was true. Without the pede, would he have ever recognized this tall tribesman with the red face and hard eyes? The effect was accentuated by the newly broken nose, still bleeding, and the bruises on his cheekbone. "You've grown…"
Sand-brain. Can't you think of anything sensible to say? He blurted out what was uppermost in his mind. "How could you, Mica? How could you join Davim's marauders? After what he did to us?"
Mica stiffened. "Did to us? What did he do to us that hadn't already been done by our own? Beaten, starved, going to bed thirsty night after night, licking the dew off palm leaves just t'get enough water."
"Davim killed Citrine," Jasper snapped, outraged. "He threw her up into the air and caught her on his chala spear-"
"I remember. So what? One less snivelin' brat, what did it matter? She was a third child. She wasn't even s'posed t'have been birthed. She should never have been born!"
Jasper stared at him, appalled. "She was our sister!"
"She was thieving our water, when we didn't even have enough for ourselves. Soon enough she would've been sharing our food. A half-starved, snotnosed, half-wild animal like the other waterless brats of Wash Drybone. She would have growed up t'be another gormless bitch like Marisal, watching and simpering while her husband-pimp beat the hell out of his son. She was better off dead." He looked at Jasper in scorn. "And so you're the stormlord now. What have you done for the waterless of the Gibber, Shale? You going t'change it so bastards like Rishan the palmier don't steal the riches of the grove from those who work it?"
"Give me time-"
"Time. Ah, yes, time. The rainlords and stormlords ruled in Breccia City 'fore we stood up to piss, Shale, long before. And they did dry-boned nothing for the likes of us in the hundreds of years they had power." He leaned across from his pede to insert the point of his scimitar under Jasper's chin.
Jasper thought of lowering the water wall, of calling for help. But that would mean Mica would die…
Inside he ached.
Mica continued, apparently unworried about his own safety. "The poor of the Gibber won't get any richer while water-soaked priests and rainlords sit on their well-watered bottoms and sip their sweetened drinks. I've been to waterless hell and back since we were parted, you stupid tick. I've dragged myself up through the ranks to what I am now-the Master Son of Dune Watergatherer. I did that, not any water-sated bleeding stormlord."
They were interrupted briefly then. One of Jasper's guards and his Reduner attacker smashed through the water wall in a shower of droplets. They were so intent on their own fight they didn't even seem to see the two men and their pedes. A moment later they splashed back out, grunting and panting, with their scimitars still clashing.
Jasper hardly spared them a glance. "Mica, think! What about those innocents killed by Davim's men? The children? The women raped? Countless people died in Qanatend and Breccia City just because they were outside their houses! Zigger
s don't choose…"
"Where were those innocents-or their parents-when us two were growing up half-naked and starving and thirsty in Wash Drybone? Shivering all night long 'cause we didn't have nothing but a sack t'cover us? Tell me that! They didn't give a pede's piss then." His hate spewed out, hot and angry and twisted, all the more potent for its basis of truth. "Scarpermen came and took our resin, but what did we ever get back for it, you and me? Marisal sold her 'broidery for a pittance in tokens and never made enough t'feed us. She sold her body for water, a whore used by the Reduner caravanners and 'Baster salt traders. They used her and all the while they mouthed their pious sayings t'us kids. And in the end the only time the rainlords came t'see how well we did under their benevolent rule was when they wanted t'rob us of our talented brats." The point of his scimitar forced Jasper's chin still higher. "I will never be at the mercy of rainlords again, Shale. They doled out just enough water t'keep the tribes of the villages from dying, but never enough for us t'be free."
"You think it's easy to bring the whole of the Quartern water? I'm only one man! The old Cloudmaster was only one man! How the-"
Mica scowled and dug the blade point a little deeper. Jasper jerked back and pushed the blade aside.
He opened his mouth to speak again, but Mica interrupted. "Sandmaster Davim has showed us how. If we can't control a stormlord ourselves, then we go back to a Time of Random Rain-and so will everyone else. We'll see who heads the meddle then, won't we? Will it be a Reduner, d'you think?-or a Scarperman, used t'living inside his walls, with a roof over his head and a fancy 'broidered pillow under it?"
"You're not a Reduner, Mica. You're a Gibberman."
"That's where you're wrong. I've earned the right t'be a Reduner. And I'm not giving it up."
"You'll have to kill me to go back to a Time of Random Rain."
