Stormlord’s Exile

by Glenda Larke

  She wanted to protest, to say that the pendant might be stolen on the journey, that it was too valuable, but he stopped her words with what he said next. “When you return,” he said, “the first thing we’ll do is marry. And I don’t care what anyone else says.”

  His hand slipped from her neck to her lips, tracing the curve of her smile, and then trailed down to the fullness of her breast, the touch light and exquisitely tantalising. Without shifting his gaze from her face, he flipped the bar on the door with his free hand. Then he lowered his head to kiss her, and she had no opportunity to say another word.

  Not once in the next sandrun did she give a thought to Lord Gold or leaving Breccia or anything other than how much she loved Jasper Bloodstone.

  “The insolent mongrel!”

  Lord Basalt was pacing his office in the Sun Temple, apparently unable, in his rage, to sit.

  Laisa, listening, knew better than to interrupt.

  “How dare he walk out on my sermon.” He marched across the large room, turned on his heel at the window, and strode back the way he’d come. “Humiliating me before the faithful. An insult to the Sunlord! And this man dares to wear a martyr’s stone around his neck, flaunting its holiness, when he himself is without faith!”

  Laisa, whose immediate thought was that Basalt had been abominably rude to Jasper first, still said nothing.

  “How can I chastise him in the manner he deserves for his lack of respect to the one true faith and its Sunpriest?”

  As this appeared to be a genuine question, she ventured a reply. “I think you already did. The remainder of your sermon was very much to the point, even if he wasn’t there to hear it. I’m sure someone will relate the salient points to him. However, you’re right if you’re thinking it difficult to, er, chastise the Cloudmaster. You can’t do much to the only stormlord we have. I suggest you turn your attention to the only woman he apparently cares for. If today is not enough to send her on her way—and I suspect it will be—then I think you ought to consider something more persuasive.”

  “I’ve been working on gathering evidence of the sorcery component of waterpainting in general.”

  “I assume it’s against the dictates of the one true faith, but is it against Scarpen law to use sorcery?”

  “Black magic is illegal. It’s the same thing,” he added dismissively.

  From what little she’d heard about black magic, Laisa thought it little more than a desperate attempt by superstitious people to influence events, with about as much success as could be achieved by crossing one’s fingers for luck.

  “It is one of the few crimes which can be tried by the Council of Waterpriests. The guilty party can be tried in absentia and the penalty is death,” he continued. “There hasn’t been a case for over a hundred cycles, so the law has been highly successful in stopping it.”

  She blinked at his remarkable logic, but didn’t comment. Instead, she said, “In that case, I think you have the perfect method of chastising the Cloudmaster, don’t you? He would be most upset if his lover was… threatened with such a substantial penalty. It would, I think, make him amenable to being more than reasonable.”

  “It’s not so easy. Convincing evidence must be presented and the verdict must be agreed upon by three-quarters of the council.”

  She waved her hand in airy dismissal of his objections. “Threats, my lord. Threats. You don’t have to actually proceed. I have every confidence in your ability to persuade.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Scarpen Quarter

  Breccia City

  Breccia Hall, Level Two

  It was so lonely without her. So solitary.

  By all that’s holy, why is it when I like and trust someone, we’re always parted? In his family there’d been Citrine and Mica. Among the rainlords, Nealrith, Kaneth and Ryka. Within his staff, Dibble and Elmar. All of them had gone, one way or another. And now, Terelle. Terelle, who was part of the person he was. Jasper calculated, not for the first time, how long she’d be away and had to admit that it could be as long as a full cycle. A year without her, and only fifteen days of it had gone by.

  He sat at his desk and contemplated the letter Iani had sent him. When he reached the part about the enforcers, it wasn’t reassuring. Harkel Tallyman, he read, frowning over Iani’s shaky writing, and his enforcer officers were all found guilty of crimes against the people of Scarcleft and sentenced to life imprisonment in the punishment quarries. I checked and they are all still there. I wonder if it is some of their underlings who have turned up in Breccia.

  To save on flax paper, Iani had written the continuation crossways over the previous lines. Jasper turned the sheet sideways and puzzled over it some time before he worked out what the highlord was saying. When he did, it unnerved him. After Taquar’s defeat, these men were locked in several rooms within Scarcleft Hall as a temporary measure. Sometime during the next few days, the men in one room vanished, some twenty or so of them. By the time their escape was noticed, there was no sign of them. They must have left the city. Maybe the men seen in Breccia were some of these. My belief is that someone let them out.

  He sighed.

  Sandblast you Iani; you could have told me this earlier. He’d already ordered his guard to arrest anyone suspected of having once been an enforcer, but the days had gone by and no one was found, not even the man with the missing nose.

  Jasper turned his attention to other troubles.

  Stormshifting was not on his agenda that day. He had enough paintings for just over a full cycle if he delivered one storm every three days, and this was a day he had allotted to spend on the administration of the city. He began to deal with a heap of petitions, few of which he was able to do anything about. There weren’t nearly enough staff to help him. The unpalatable truth was that Highlord Nealrith’s seneschal, his scribe, his actuary, his registrar and other key functionaries of Breccia, had been killed, along with all the rainlords and most of the reeves. The educated uplevellers who would once have stepped forward to fill such posts were mostly dead as well, or had gone to live elsewhere.

  Immersed in problems, he almost didn’t notice the knock at the door. “Come in,” he said, his mind still on the document he was perusing, an appeal from a metal merchant complaining about the state of the caravan routes to the White Quarter.

  Laisa entered, smiling at him in a way that instantly aroused his suspicions. She was dressed in dusty riding clothes and carried a palmubra. “Just thought I’d drop by and tell you we caught that band of water thieves who were raiding the tunnel to the north.”

  “Excellent news. They weren’t Reduners, were they?”

  “No. Breccia folk. Six men and three packpedes they had rented from Portennabar. The guards are questioning them now.”

  “Thanks for your help.” Weird, that. He’d found himself turning more and more to Laisa for help. Her advice was often sound, and she used her considerable rainlord skills to prevent theft, track leaks and to do many of the mundane tasks once done by city reeves. Jasper still didn’t trust her, but he didn’t know what he would have done without her, either.

  She perched on the edge of his desk. “Finances bothering you again?” she asked, waving a hand at his accounts.

  He nodded.

  “You’re too generous with the tax tokens you collect, especially when there’s hardly anything coming in from the Red Quarter now. People don’t value what they get for free. They waste it, for a start.”

  “Don’t be silly. Nobody is wasting anything.”

  “I don’t understand why you’re still rationing at below a dayjar per person per day when our cisterns are full.”

  “Because it will be a long time before they are full again, and so I have told all the Scarpen cities. My next storms go to the Gibber and then the White and Red Quarters.”

  “Your choice, I suppose.” She shrugged. “Another piece of news. Senya should be here tomorrow.”

  He winced. “Don’t expect me to be overjoyed.”
/>
  “Nothing’s changed, Jasper. You still have to have stormlord children. And you have a better chance of doing that if you marry a rainlord.”

  “She’s a lousy rainlord and I told her before she left that I have no intention of marrying her.”

  “Well, we’ll see.” She slipped off the table. “I am going to have a bath.”

  “Don’t waste water.”

  “I never do.” She grinned at him, and left.

  Irritated, he turned his attention to how to pay the workers for the replanting of the bab groves. A cat rubbed against his shins. He lifted it onto his lap and patted it, but his thoughts were elsewhere.

  Late the following morning, after a celebration at the smelters to mark their first firing since the sacking of the city, Jasper was met by Breccia Hall’s seneschal as he entered the main doors. He’d had to upgrade Cottle Chandler from junior steward, and the man had about as much idea of how to run a building the size of the hall as Jasper did, but he did his best.

  “Lord Senya has arrived back,” Chandler said. He blushed furiously as he spoke, mystifying Jasper. “Lord Laisa asks that you meet with them both in her quarters. Oh, and Lord Gold is there too, m’lord.” His expression conveyed warning, but that was not much help when he uttered no words of caution.

  Jasper’s stomach churned nonetheless. Sunblast them. When Basalt and Laisa got together, the outcome was never good. Smoothly, without the slightest sign of consternation, or so he hoped, he said, “Present my compliments and say that I’m dusty and I’ll join them once I have cleaned up.”

  “Lord Laisa did seem to think it was urgent.”

  Quickly he sent his water-sense ranging over the city. As far as he could tell, everything was as it should be, so he said, “I’m sure it cannot be so urgent that I have to drop everything immediately. I wish to wash and I’ll be there when I have.”

  Chandler looked as if he wanted to say something further, but then thought better of it.

  “Is there something the matter, seneschal?”

  The man cleared his throat, embarrassed. “Nothing urgent, m’lord. I think you had better see for yourself.”

  Jasper felt as if doom was sitting on his shoulder. He cleaned up and changed and was about to leave his apartments when his glance alighted on his sword hanging in its scabbard by the outer door. Normally he would not have worn it inside the hall, but Chandler’s edginess made him uneasy. He strapped it on with no anticipation of using it, but rather with the idea that it made him appear more authoritative, and walked the short distance to Laisa’s apartments.

  Ara, Laisa’s dour maid, opened the door, ushered him into the reception room and quickly disappeared to leave the four of them alone. Lord Gold was standing by the window, wearing the overly ornate robes of his office, his face etched with an expression of distaste. Nothing new there. Laisa was as serene and as beautiful as ever, faultlessly dressed, also as usual. Senya, however, glowered at him in murderous rage from where she was seated in an armchair.

  She was fat. Her face was plump, her arms more rounded than he remembered. Her waist—she didn’t even have a waist. And then—oh, Sunlord save him. A moment of incomprehension dissolved into shock as he finally grasped the cause of the changes. She was pregnant. Worse, she looked as if she was due to give birth any minute.

  For a moment he couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.

  And then thoughts tumbled through his mind without order or coherence. It wasn’t his. This was a trap. He’d have to marry her. No, he couldn’t. He wouldn’t. It was Taquar’s. No, Taquar couldn’t have children. Maybe that was a lie. It could be someone else’s. Anyone’s. But the timing would be about right… No, he wouldn’t marry her. Ever. She’d planned this. Oh, weeping shit, Taquar planned this. But why? What possible benefit could that bleeding bastard of a rainlord have thought to derive from Senya having a baby? His baby? It didn’t make sense.

  The three accusing faces stared at him, then Laisa said coolly, “I think, Lord Gold, that his shock is a mark of his guilt, don’t you?”

  Jasper took a few more steps into the room. “Shock is just that, no more, no less.” He fixed his gaze on Laisa. “Why have you kept this a secret all this time?”

  “I wanted your little snuggery whore gone first. So that you can devote all your attention to the problem at hand.”

  “Problem?”

  “Yes. An innocent, unmarried girl is pregnant. And you have no choice about the solution, as we all know you’re the father. You have to marry her. As you can see, it’s not only a matter of necessity, it’s also a matter of some urgency.”

  He turned his stare, as cold as he knew how to make it, to the Sunpriest. “Lord Gold is not involved in this and I don’t know why he’s here. In fact, I suggest he leave.”

  Basalt did not move. “I’m guardian of the morals of this city and I will see that right is done.”

  “I asked for him to be present,” Laisa said. “Marriage is a matter for the one true faith.”

  He hesitated, wondering whether to make an issue of the Sunpriest’s departure. Loathing the man as much as he did, he found it anathema to think Lord Gold was about to be privy to this humiliating situation. But was it worth it? He resisted a desire to stuff water down all their throats and spoke to Senya instead. “What do you want, Senya?”

  “To be the Cloudmaster’s wife,” she said, without hesitation. “This baby is your daughter.”

  The word “daughter” hit him like a plunge into cold water. It gave life and reality and substance to someone whose existence he had not yet fully registered, let alone acknowledged. A daughter. A rainlord would know the gender of her own child. He could probably confirm it himself, if he wanted. Suddenly it was not just a concept, but a flesh and blood child to be considered. Very possibly his child. Probably his child. Abruptly, the idea that someone else might raise any offspring of his came to appall him. The thought was more than he could bear.

  “You despise me. Why would you want to marry me?”

  She shrugged. “For the position, why else?”

  “To cover your shame, child!” Basalt snapped. “To pay the price of your sin. That’s why you must marry without delay. And as for you, Lord Jasper, I am utterly shocked by your reaction. Have you no shame, either?”

  “Not much,” he admitted with honesty. “It was Senya who crawled into my bed without an invitation, after all, and at the time I did intend to marry her. I’ve only her word that I’m the father—I certainly was not the first to bed her.”

  Basalt’s repugnance for him increased, visible in his eyes, in the outraged way he drew back as if he was in danger of contamination.

  Well, good. I have managed to surprise him, Jasper thought with satisfaction.

  “That’s enough,” Laisa snapped. “I will not have my daughter’s moral character denigrated by—”

  “Oh, Laisa, don’t give me a load of pebbles and sand and expect me to swallow it! Try to tell me you have some sense of honour and I’ll throw it back in your face.”

  Basalt, who had been spluttering in his attempt to express his disgust, found his voice again. He pointed a finger at Jasper as he spoke, his spittle flying. “You dare to malign this delicate young woman with your filth? How dare you insinuate that Lord Sen—?”

  “Lord Gold!” Jasper bellowed.

  They were silent, but he knew it wouldn’t last. He lowered his voice, making no attempt to curb the fury in his tone. “I do not know why you are here. This is a private matter. Since when have waterpriests concerned themselves with the morals of the bedroom?”

  “You should be apologising to Lord Senya—”

  “Why? She wanted this. She planned for it.”

  “You—you are despicable!”

  “No, I’m honest.” He marched to the door and threw it open. “Leave.”

  “Jasper,” Laisa said, her calm apparently still unruffled, “I regret the need to say this, but I think you must hear what Lord Gold has to say before
you do anything precipitate.” She crossed the room to shut the door. “Sorry, but you really must listen. Firstly, your marriage to Senya is not the only thing we want.”

  He stood there, looking at her, his heart racing in growing horror. She knows she’s won, he thought. But what makes her think I will cave in so easily? What are they up to? Sweet water, save me… A nauseous certainty that there was going to be no way out shredded the last of his hope.

  “What do you expect to get out of this?” he asked at last.

  “I want to be Highlord of Breccia.”

  “Very well, tell me just how you intend to force me into a marriage I do not want and how you’re going to impel me to give this city into the hands of a woman with as few scruples as you, Laisa.”

  She turned to Basalt. “Perhaps you’d like to start by explaining what you’ve found out about waterpainters, my lord. And do try to be civil. There’s no need for this to become a brawling match to see who can shout the loudest.”

  Jasper, restraining a desire to wring her neck, gave Basalt a terse nod. “I’m listening.” They had to bring Terelle into this, didn’t they? The bastards.

  “My concern is ever with the spiritual well-being of the Quartern. As Lord Gold that’s my duty. It should also be yours.” He glared at Jasper. “One of the prerogatives I have as head of the Council of Waterpriests is to ensure that all forms of unholy magic are dealt with promptly and the perpetrators severely punished. These things do not come from the Sunlord, but from the evil existing in the world. They can be used to coerce decent citizens, and worse. All such forms of unnatural practices must be rooted out and banished, the very knowledge of them wiped from the minds of men.”

  Jasper glanced over to Senya. She was sitting calmly, watching him, her head to one side and a small smile on her lips.

  She smells victory too, he thought, and felt again that groan welling up inside. He made balls of his fists, digging his nails deep into his palm. “Please get to the point, Basalt. I know of no magic.”