by Glenda Larke
“Both. Combined.” He added for Elmar and Dibble’s benefit, “We have a Traders’ Council and a Miners’ Council.”
“I’ll see to it,” Messenjer said. He looked shaken.
The Bastion tried to smile, but the curl of his lips was more sad than joyous. “When she was here, Terelle spoke thoughtless words in haste, but they were words said from the heart, and they’ve eaten into my certainty ever since. She asked me why Khromatis should still be called our home after so long. It was ridiculous, she said. In her words: ‘I don’t feel the least bit like a person from Khromatis even though my parents grew up there.’ ”
Messenjer paled. “My lord!”
“Yes, Mez, I hear ye. But Feroze is dead. He’s dead because we trusted people who despise us. And I think it’s time we change. Time we challenge what they’ve done to us.”
Messenjer was outraged. “It’s God’s will! And we shouldn’t speak of such things in front of outsiders.”
“God’s will? I wonder. However, ye’re right about one thing; this doesn’t concern outsiders. Elmar, Dibble, the city is yours.”
Elmar bowed his head. The interview was over.
After the two Scarpen armsmen had left, the Bastion interviewed Briass and the other three Alabasters, one by one. As he had expected, they confirmed Elmar’s story. When the last of them had left, he sat slumped in thought. Then he looked up at Messenjer. “Ask the scribe to be attending me, please. I want to be telling the Cloudmaster about this.”
When the mine manager gave him a look indicating the depth of his continued unease, the Bastion shook his head at him. “People who don’t change stagnate, Mez. It’s time we looked to the Quartern.”
“Ye haven’t asked the advice of the councils yet!”
“Do I need their permission to be writing to a fellow ruler about the fate of his prospective bride? How’d ye feel if I knew Errica was in danger but didn’t tell ye? Lord Jasper has a right to be knowing.”
“Then it’s up to Elmar or Dibble to be telling him.”
“They’re not men who think in terms of letters. They serve their stormlord in the way they best know: action. The letter is my task. When ye’ve brought me the pen and ink, go make your preparations to call the councils.”
Messenjer left without another word. The Bastion sank back against the cushions, remembering the past: that other world when he had been young and in love, and his wife had held in her arms the only child they were ever to have.
She’d looked up at him tenderly, not knowing that one day he would walk away from her and his son, to serve a larger master. “Can we name him after my grandfather?” she’d asked. “He was a wonderful man, and I miss him and his wisdom.”
And so they had. They’d called their son Feroze, after her grandfather. It was a bonus that it fitted so well with his own family name, Khorash.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Khromatis
Marchford to Verdigris Manor
Terelle was utterly miserable.
She would never get used to riding an alpiner. After pedes, they seemed such inadequate animals. So ridiculous, only a single person being able to comfortably ride at a time. And all the food they ate, just to carry one person with a minimum of baggage. Besides, riding one made her so sore. Her mount was on a leading rein, so she didn’t have to do much, but she wasn’t used to riding with her legs spread out on either side of a beast. She was jolted and bumped and bounced until she wanted to scream. Each time she dismounted—awkwardly because there were no mounting handles—her buttocks and thighs felt as if they were on fire. And this was only the first day of her journey. Waterless skies, how would she survive?
And that was another thing, the skies weren’t waterless. They dripped water like a cracked pot, for long periods at a time. Rain. It was one thing to know it existed, quite another to experience it—dripping down her back and off her nose. Running down inside her boots. Soaking everything. Water falling from the sky and running away into the soil, nobody caring enough to catch it in containers, everyone cursing it… Didn’t they know how lucky they were?
Fortunately, before they’d left Marchford, Rubric had seen Terelle’s cloak and decided it was totally inadequate for the journey. He’d replaced it with something called a mantle, made of wool that was matted and slightly oily. The water tended to run off it and at night its warmth was welcome.
It was a kind gesture from Rubric. This youngest cousin of hers was a puzzle. He spoke rarely, even to his brother. If she’d had to describe him, she would have called him watchful. His eyes were never still, his head was often cocked as if listening to distant conversations, his whole posture was vigilant and guarded. He was also beautiful in a way neither of his brothers were. More elegant in action, his toned muscles sleeker, his features more refined, his lips fuller, his tattoos more intricately done as though he’d cared for the artistry. He turned the heads of women without even trying to catch their attention. It was the combination of hard male strength and refinement that was so attractive, she decided. That and the streak of compassion she hoped she’d detected.
That’s a dangerous thought, you stupid female. He is probably the one who slid his blade into Feroze when the poor man wasn’t expecting it…
“I thought your waterlords stopped it from raining,” she grumbled to him.
“Only if the rain is unseasonal or excessive,” he replied. “If it didn’t rain often, how could the plants grow? Besides, it’s tiring to move rain just because we don’t want to get wet.”
She had no answer to that.
Ten people made up their party. Besides Jet and Rubric, there was a groom to care for their mounts—not Eden Croft, unfortunately—five armed guards, none of whom spoke the Quartern tongue, and a woman called Mauve who did. Terelle wondered why Mauve was there, until the first time they dismounted to rest the animals and relieve themselves. When she made her way into the bushes for some privacy, Mauve followed her.
“You could at least look the other way,” she said to the woman sourly.
Mauve shrugged. “All right, but I’m a waterlord, so don’t think ye can move an inch without me knowing it.”
The words dismayed her. How was she ever going to search the baggage for her waterpaints if she was watched every moment of the day? Sunblast it, escape was impossible. Rubric and Jet were Watergivers of some kind, probably at least as powerful as Jasper. They could all track her water. They could ride alpiners; she couldn’t. She had to ride with them, learn all she could and watch for opportunities, especially for any way to recover her paints. A waterpainter with paints and prepared to take the risks that went with shuffling up had myriad ways to outwit a stormlord.
As she walked back to the alpiners, Mauve trailing her like a trained pede, she reflected that things could have been worse. No one had made another attempt to kill her. She was sure it would not have been difficult now. The constant need to travel towards the place where Russet had painted her was gone; he’d told her the truth when he said that if he died, she’d be free. The feeling was extraordinary. Only once the compulsion had been stripped away did she realise how much it had dragged her down over the years. It had lurked there, just under her skin, a constant irritant she could never banish.
And now? The Khromatians’ mistaken belief that she was invulnerable to sudden death was the only thing keeping her alive. The irony of that forced a wry smile from her.
When she and Mauve rejoined the others, Rubric gave her a sharp look. “What’s so funny?” he asked.
“I haven’t had someone watch me pee since I was two years old,” she said. “What a humiliating task you have given Mauve, watching me in my most intimate moments. Have you all no shame?”
He reddened as she’d hoped he would. What she didn’t expect was the twitch of a smile at the corner of his lips, as if he appreciated her attempt to embarrass him. “Ye have a way with words,” he said.
Jet was less appreciative. He glared at her. “Be respectful
to your betters,” he said.
She glanced around. “My betters? I see none.”
As if he sensed that bandying words with her would be undignified, he stalked away to attend to his mount.
“A way with words indeed,” Rubric said softly. “I can see this is going to be an interesting ride.”
It had stopped raining, so she took off her mantle to shake it, only to find the water flying away from it in a shower of droplets. She blinked in surprise and looked at Rubric. His lips twitched as he dried the rest of her clothes.
She blushed at the casual intimacy of it and looked away.
Just before they mounted to ride on, she walked over to the track, bent down under the pretext of adjusting her boot and placed a tiny piece of mirror in the dirt at the side, just as she had done all along the way, especially whenever the road divided. The bundle of mirror pieces had been one of the things she had placed in her pack before leaving her room.
When she looked back as they moved off, she could see the mirror piece twinkling in the meagre sunlight. However, it would probably be twenty days or more before Elmar and Dibble even made it back to Marchford, if they ever did, or could. If they had even reached Samphire safely in the first place.
If. If. If.
For the next three days, they rode fast on the flat roads of the lower river valley, bypassing the towns and staying in wayside inns. Mauve not only shared her room, but slept in the same bed as well, to make sure she didn’t try to sneak away during the night. Whenever Terelle tried to find out more about her, or have any kind of conversation that was not necessary, Mauve refused to answer. In the end she gave up and ignored the older woman, looking through or past her as if she had no physical presence at all. A petty revenge, but at least she felt she’d won a small battle.
I’ll show them, she thought. They can’t cow me, and they can’t control me even though I am a prisoner. And just to confuse Mauve she spent the fourth day grinning in apparent delight every time she saw her watching.
After the third day, the terrain changed. Towns dwindled to villages, the inns were further and further apart. They slowed as the road grew steeper. Still following a river, the track began to climb past farms of steep fields where farmers tended orchards and goats and similar animals she had never seen before, covered in wool rather than hair. Later, the farms alternated with forests of trees. Not that she’d had any idea what a meadow or a forest was until she’d seen one. She hadn’t even seen trees that tall before, let alone so numerous and varied. All that green. Dibble was right; the scenery was bilious.
They started to sleep in what the Khromatians called bivacs. Apparently anyone could use them, although they were built by the military for armsmen on the march or officials on the Pinnacle’s business. Basic structures constructed beside the track, they were little more than walls and a roof to keep off the rain. Most of them did have a privy at the back, although she sometimes decided she’d rather not use it.
They bought fresh food from the farms they passed, simple fare that she ate heartily. Under Rubric’s tutelage she was even beginning to understand how to ride the alpiner without bouncing like a bag of bab fruit on the back of a handcart. At times like that she thought him genuinely kind. But trust him? No, that would have been a step too far.
On the morning of the day after their first bivac, she was overwhelmed with the oddest feeling that she was returning to a place she’d seen. The flow of the river, the way the grass rippled in the wind, mountains in the distance… then she realised. This was where Russet had painted her. They didn’t stop. As they rode past, she thought she felt the last traces of the magic of his painting as tiny flickers of unease, so light they slipped away into nothingness.
Further down the road they passed a manor house on a hill overlooking a bend in the river. The alpiners were walking at the time and she glanced at the building in mild interest. It was by no means the only manor they had seen, and she would have dismissed it from her mind if Rubric had not ridden up beside her and said, using Khromatian as he usually did, “That’s the Kermes family house.”
She didn’t reply, but studied it with more interest. Elegant, she thought. So different from Scarpen houses always joined to the next. And then, My grandmother was born here. Grew up here. I suppose my mother came here too, sometimes. I wish I’d known her. I wish I’d known them both.
Rubric said, “I wasn’t born when Russet and Sienna Kermes vanished. But I do know it was a great scandal in their family, and ours too. A dark secret everyone tried to hide. Then you came to tear it all open, and now it seems my grandfather shouldn’t be the Pinnacle, but you should.” He chuckled as if that amused him. “And you don’t even speak the tongue of the land properly! Did you really expect to be made welcome?”
“I didn’t even know I was in the line of succession. Who lives there now?”
“Oh, another branch of the family. You didn’t know?”
“No. Russet never told me.”
“You must be missing him.”
She almost laughed. Instead she shook her head. “I didn’t like him. Why should I miss him?”
He blinked in surprise, as if that had not occurred to him.
“I seem to be extraordinarily unlucky in my relatives. Do you like yours?” she asked, shooting a look at Jet. Although he was not in earshot, she wondered if Rubric would reply.
He didn’t. Instead, that same play of secretive amusement twitched his lips. More, she thought, for himself than for her.
Then, suddenly serious, he slipped easily into the Alabaster dialect of the Quartern tongue to say, “I’m sorry ye’re in this predicament. I’d go to the Quartern with ye, if it was allowed. But it isn’t, not for anyone. Ye were mad to be coming here, and that old man should have known that. Must have known that. Ye were wise not to like him.”
She gaped at him in amazement. “Did you have a hand in killing Feroze?” She had no idea why she blurted out the question just then. It had popped into her head, unasked and unconsidered; it suddenly seemed important that she know.
“No,” he said. Just that: no explanation, no excuses. Then he allowed his mount to drop back behind her again.
Sunblast it, Elmar, you had better come after me with some paints, because I’m wilted if I know how to get out of this mess without them.
They climbed on and up. It rained more, and grew colder, day by day. The trees were shorter, more stunted, more like the trees she knew from home. She learned to appreciate the muscular strength of the alpiners as they plodded upwards without complaint, fuelling themselves with grass or small plants every time they stopped. Each day they ate a handful of some special kibble the Khromatians gave them.
They’d left the Southern Marches and crossed the next ward called the Slew, to enter a ward called the Wilder Pale. Here the bivacs became more elaborate, with cover for the animals, and feed left for them in bins. The single room for travellers contained a fireplace and blankets. Although they lacked caretakers, all seemed in good order. Several times they passed through small villages scraping a living from woodcutting and hunting, and when they bypassed the manor house of the Commander of the Wilder Pale, guards rode out to collect a toll for use of the track, only to exempt them when they found the party was led by the Pinnacle’s grandsons.
After that, the valley they were in narrowed, the river grew more tumultuous, the forest more eerie. Short, twisted trees had trunks thick with moss and branches draped with lichens called old man’s beard.
The mountains frightened Terelle. These were nothing like the Warthago; they were so high they scratched at the sky with snow-topped edges, so stark their ridges were blades to cut the clouds. They glistened with wet black rock, their sheer walls wept water. They shut out the sun and funnelled the wind into freezing gales. Barren of people, they were wild with game, furry things she’d never seen before. Voles, the Khromatians said. Marmots, hares. The guards hunted and cooked them, stews of meat and roots that were thick and rich and
tangy.
One night it snowed. When they stepped outside in the morning the world was white, sounds curiously muted. She was dumbfounded. Nothing Russet had told her—and not even the glimpses of white on the peaks—had prepared her for the wonder and beauty and sheer impossibility of fresh-fallen snow. It melted quickly when the sun shone, taking with it much of her confidence. How could someone like Elmar cope with a world so different, so strange? She was expecting too much. She began to hope the two Scarpen guards wouldn’t try to follow her; this place would confound them even if they never met an enemy. Still, she stuck pieces of mirror into the bark of wayside trees, and worried she would run out of them.
Ten days after they’d left Marchford, they entered the gap between two peaks leading into the valley of the Low Plateau Pale.
At the top of the pass they halted and Terelle walked to the northern edge. It was a fine, clear day, and below she could see the flat floor of the valley spread out like a map. Tiny villages, threaded through with roads and stone walls, were so far away and small they could have been painted on a flat canvas.
“We stop in a bivac here tonight. We’ll be home by nightfall tomorrow,” Rubric said, coming to stand beside her.
“Where do you live?” she asked.
He pointed with his riding crop. “See that bunch of buildings to the left of the road? The ones with the orange roofs? That’s Verdigris Manor. You will die there one day.”
She rolled her eyes. He was like that, kind and helpful and pleasant, and then he’d throw her an upsetting statement or an unexpected remark. “So nice to be reminded,” she said. “You have a charm that’s all your own.”
“We own all the land you can see between the river and the mountain wall. We raise alpiners. See the herd?” She squinted against the slant of late evening light, to see moving dots in a walled meadow. “My mother manages the stud when we’re gone,” he added.
“I thought she was a waterpainter.”
“Yes. A healer.”
