by Glenda Larke
For a moment Taquar was torn between cursing her and laughing at her audacity. She had turned his misfortune into her profit and that was hard to forgive, even though he would have done exactly the same thing had their positions been reversed.
“So what’s the situation?” he asked. “What changed to bring you here earlier than anticipated?”
“Let’s get you out first. We have to reproduce Terelle’s waterpainting exactly, which means you must wear the red clothes, and one of these men must wear Lord Gold’s vestments, and we have to paint the name ‘Shale’ on the rocks over there.”
“What’s the matter with bringing a sledgehammer and knocking the lock to pieces?”
“I have no idea, but I suspect something would go wrong. Because we’d be working against the magic, instead of with it.”
He snorted with disbelief.
She said softly, “You haven’t seen what I’ve seen. Terelle Grey and her waterpaintings have done things that I would not have thought possible. Tell me, when you imprisoned Terelle in Scarcleft did you give her back her paints just before the earthquake?”
He stared at her. “You can’t be saying…” He went cold, remembering the painting she had done of him dead.
“I think we are very lucky that she’s such a moral person. She painted something intended to free her from Scarcleft Hall and it brought down walls. That made her a great deal more cautious, which is just as well for us. I suspect if I’d come up here with a sledgehammer and tried to get you out by breaking the lock, something would have happened to stop us.”
“How are you intending to open the grille if not by breaking it open?”
“With a picklock, of course. One of this disreputable band is an expert, apparently. Now go and put on those dreadful red clothes.”
He obliged, noting with enjoyment that she watched him as he changed. “And once I’m out of here?” he asked.
“We set an ambush for Iani. If Senya has done as I asked, he’s on his way here to check on you. When he’s dead, you head back to Scarcleft. Amberlyn will already be there, thanks to Jasper.”
“Amberlyn? Sunblast it, Laisa, tell me what the salted hells all this is about.”
By the time he was fully dressed, she’d updated him with a broad summary of events.
He came back to face her through the grille, not sure that he liked this overly confident Laisa. She’d become too independent for his taste, too forceful. He said, “One can’t ambush a rainlord.”
“Iani’ll be alone because he dare not bring anyone else here. I have people ready to move up behind him. He won’t be able to turn back, and if he comes here, we’ll be waiting for him. Not so much an ambush as a trap.”
Struggling with his illogical fury, he said, “May I remind you he’s a rainlord and not all that easy to kill?” He was amazed at the intensity of his desire to strangle her for no reason other than her efficiency.
You’ve been too impotent for too long, he told himself.
“It’s only Iani,” she replied. “Don’t tell me you fear that silly old crippled man, because I won’t believe it.”
“Fear him? Hardly.” Savagery surged somewhere within his chest, needing gratification. “But he can turn on those following him and dry them to dust and bone.”
“There are two water sensitives among them; he can’t take their water.”
“And what if he doesn’t come at all? He may not believe Senya.”
“Possible. In which case we’ll have to go to him. It would be more complicated, doubtless, but we can find a way to kill him. We have to infiltrate his city with the enforcers and then seize the key places anyway. Once we have Amberlyn, any resistance will collapse.”
“We can’t let Jasper go to Khromatis.”
“No. I’ve already sent a letter to him, to tell him you are free, Iani is dead and you have Amberlyn.” She smiled at him. “A little premature, but he’s not to know that. I’ve sent the letter to Samphire with a couple of trusted caravanners. It should arrive immediately after he does.”
“You can’t be sure he’ll get it before he leaves for Khromatis.”
“No.”
“That’s a weakness of your plot.”
“Perhaps, but my men are fast.”
“Will he believe what you say? That’s the second weakness.”
“Oh, I wrote the letter in such a way that he will have no doubt I am familiar with this place. That’s all I need to convince him that he’s in enough trouble to come back immediately.”
She grinned at him. “Stay here while I get everyone arranged the way the painting was done.”
It was galling to know she had planned everything without consulting him, especially when, if he was honest, her plan was a good one. He needed to get back to Scarcleft. Iani needed to die. They all needed Jasper back, and the only way to be certain of that was to threaten his daughter. The man was sandcrazy; how could he ever think that it was wise behaviour for the Quartern’s only stormlord to risk himself in a hostile land they knew nothing about?
As he waited, Taquar pondered his future. With Amberlyn in his care, he could force Jasper to water only the cities of the Scarpen that he authorised, which meant that he wouldn’t be tired all the time because of the cloudmaking. Yes, this could work—as long as Jasper returned.
As she painted Shale’s name, Laisa was intrigued to find she didn’t have to think about the right way to do it. It was as if something was guiding her hand. Similarly, when she went to give instructions to the men about where to stand, she found it unnecessary. They were already in position, without any guidance at all. If she’d needed confirmation of the power of waterpainting magic, she certainly had it now.
When the painted word was ready she nodded to the picklock to open the door in the grille and a short while later Taquar stepped out of the cave, a free man.
“Is there anything you want to take with you?” she asked.
“Not a thing,” he said. He didn’t look at her, didn’t smile, didn’t thank her.
She was assailed with that all too familiar feeling: Taquar was not a forgiving man and she was sandcrazy to want to have anything to do with him.
He walked over to where the men were waiting, down at the ruins in front of the cave. One of them gave him a broad grin. “Good to see you again, m’lord. Reckon we need you back in Scarcleft so as we lot can go home.”
Uneasily, she stared after him. And made up her mind: she was never going back to Scarcleft to stand at his side again.
They waited out the rest of the day in the ruins below the cistern. There was no sign of Iani. Taquar paced to and fro and practised his swordplay with his enforcers. Laisa watched, aware that his impatience was barely under control, troubled to see how much his damaged knee slowed him down and limited his flexibility.
That night he led her into the ruins, stripped her naked and took her there, on the ground, his passion brutal and uncaring. She matched his desire the first time, even gloried in his need, but by dawn, she was bruised, aching and sore. He left her where she was without a word and went to wash at the trough. There was a finality to what had occurred, and she knew it. She picked herself up, dressed and leaned against the wall, eyes closed, thinking of all the things in her life that might have been, had she made different choices.
Mid-afternoon, while she was watching Taquar where he sat drawing patterns on the earth with a stick, his head swung up to look down the track. “It’s time,” he said. “We have company coming. Get those saddles on.”
The men scurried to obey without even looking her way. And I’m the one who’s been paying them this past year, she thought. What a fool you are, Laisa Drayman.
She attuned her senses down the track but still could not feel the approach of water. “How many?” she asked Taquar.
“Only one pede. Too far away to say how many people.”
He mounted the driver’s saddle of her pede without asking, then, to further wound her feelings, did not wait for
her to mount but rode away. By the time she and the rest of the men were ready, he was already out of sight around the first bend.
Fuming, she scrabbled up on to one of the other pedes. “Catch up,” she shouted in the driver’s ear.
Taquar looked back just the once. The grille to the cistern cave stood open. I am free. Waterless soul, he would never let anyone confine him again, in any way. You will pay for this, Jasper. You will pay for the rest of your life. And no matter what you do, you will never see your daughter again, unless it suits my purpose.
He read the road ahead as if it was a picture unfolding before his gaze. One man alone on a pede, riding at a steady pace, oblivious to Taquar’s approach. Iani, he assumed.
Vengeance, at last.
Iani, finally aware that someone was riding towards him. Iani, deciding to halt. Iani dithering while he wondered what he ought to do. Iani, turning back—perhaps because he sensed there was not one pede descending the trail, but many. And stopping again, because he felt riders following him from below.
Taquar rounded the bend and saw the rainlord halted in the track ahead of him. A killing rage surged in his blood and he rejoiced. This was what it was like to be alive, to be Taquar Sardonyx, highlord, rainlord—and free. Laughing, he drew the sword he had borrowed from one of the men—his men—and urged the pede into fast mode. His flaming passion to kill this man ripped through him, every nuance of it a pleasure. He saw the look of shock on Iani’s face and revelled in it.
And then his headlong attack came to an abrupt end, as if he’d ridden into a stone wall. The pede dropped in full gallop, crashing to the ground with a suddenness that sent him flying over its head. He had a horrified glimpse of the earth coming up to meet him before he slammed into the ground. At the last minute he managed to twist his body slightly to take the brunt of his fall on his shoulder. He tucked his head in and rolled, breath driven from him, sword lost, in panicked acknowledgement that he had miscalculated. Iani had taken the water from his pede. The man might be crippled with a weak hand and leg, but he was both rainlord and warrior.
Taquar scrambled to his feet, gasping but alert. A spear came hurtling at him. He ducked and the spearhead seared his neck in passing, furrowing a shallow cut. Smiling, he pulled the water from all the legs on the far side of Iani’s pede. Two can play at this game, you spitless bastard.
The animal toppled before Iani could throw another spear, and he tumbled with it. Taquar found and scooped up his sword, then leaped onto the carapace of the helpless pede. He looked down on Iani where he lay with his crippled leg twisted at a weird angle, bone poking through the skin. With leisurely contempt, Taquar jumped down to the wounded man, barely aware of the pain of his own bruises.
“I think your life is over, you shrivelled shell of a human being. I am taking it all back—my life, my freedom, my city.”
Iani levered himself up into a sitting position. He gripped his leg above the break, as if that could stop the pain and raised his gaze to stare at Taquar. “Shrivel you! There are others who will bring you down, you wilted excuse for a man.”
Casually, Taquar flicked the tip of his sword across Iani’s cheek, opening up a cut. “We’ll see about that. Personally, I think I have all the water I need in my jar, while yours is stone dry. Shall I play with you for a while, do you think?” He trailed his sword point across Iani’s cheek to the corner of his eye. “What do you think it would be like to be blind?”
“That’s enough, Taquar.”
Laisa, the words snapping out of her in the imperious tone he hated.
One part of him had been aware of her approach with the rest of the men and pedes, but he had dismissed them all as unimportant. He didn’t look at her. “Or shall I ruin your good hand?” he asked Iani.
“End it!” Laisa again.
“You are going to kill me, so what does a hand matter?” Iani batted the sword away from his face as he spoke. “Or an eye? Or anything else? Come to think of it, I’m not so enamoured of life that anything matters much any more. Not even Scarcleft. Take it, if you like. Take it all. I know you won’t be holding it long.”
Taquar swung his sword, intending to remove Iani’s nose, but the man flung himself flat on his back and the blade whistled harmlessly through the air. “I’m going to dismember you piece by piece,” he began, but Laisa interrupted.
“Oh, spindevil take you, Taquar, what are you doing? Kill him and be done with it!”
“Laisa,” Iani said from where he lay. “Might have known you’d be involved in this. You have a knack for choosing the losing side.”
“He took everything away from me,” Taquar told her. “And now I intend to make him pay.”
“Withering spit,” she responded, “what did you expect? You took his daughter from him.”
“I’ll do what I like,” he said, and slashed Iani’s other cheek. Iani gritted his teeth and jerked his head away.
Laisa raised her voice. “I’ll not stand here and see you torture someone,” she said.
“Try to stop me.” He drove his sword through the centre of Iani’s hand, pinning it to the ground.
Iani made no sound. Instead he turned his face to Laisa, still mounted on her pede. One side of his crooked mouth quirked up and he said, “You do it.”
Not understanding, Taquar shot a glance at Laisa, but she didn’t reply, and her gaze didn’t shift from Iani. Taquar turned his attention back to the trapped rainlord—only to find him lying motionless, water pouring from his nose and mouth and ears, draining away into the dust.
For a moment he couldn’t comprehend it. A rainlord could hold onto his water. Iani couldn’t be murdered the rainlord way… And then he did understand. He turned on Laisa, but she met his fury with icy calm.
“He allowed me,” she said calmly. “A brave man.”
“You bitch!”
“There was a time when you would never have considered torture worthy of you, Taquar.”
“There was a time when I hadn’t been imprisoned in a cave,” he snarled. He walked over to her mount, gesturing for the driver to descend so he could take the man’s place and climbed up onto the saddle. “Bundle up Iani’s body into a pannier,” he said to the man and prodded the pede away, heading down the hill slope. “And as for you, Laisa, you do anything like that again, and you’ll be the one tortured to an early death.”
“You can hardly stop me seeing my own daughter and granddaughter!”
The armsman in charge at the gate of Scarcleft Hall shone his lantern down on their party, doubt etched into every line of his face. “’Scuse me, Lord Laisa, but Lord Iani gave no orders ’bout you coming to the hall in his absence. I can fix rooms for your party at the inn on Level Five…”
“That’s what the man at the city gates suggested,” she said, “but I’ve a mind to see my daughter tonight.”
“’Pologies, my lord. ’Spect Lord Iani tomorrow and reckon he’ll see you then—”
Taquar, the hood of his cloak pulled up to shadow his face, turned away to murmur to Laisa. “Tell him yes, you’ll go to the inn, but you expect his personal assistance to see to your comfort there.”
Laisa made the request, her tone deliberately imperious. The armsman, a half-overman, agreed after some more initial hesitation, and a few moments later he was stepping outside the postern gate, accompanied by a lantern carrier. By then, Taquar had dismounted and was waiting for him. He took the man by the arm and at the same time pulled the hood down from his head so that both men could see who it was.
The lantern carrier gasped. The half-overman paled and stuttered, “L-l-lord Taquar!”
“I have something to show you,” he said. Without waiting for a reply he indicated the place where one of Laisa’s men had tipped the cloak-wrapped contents of a pannier onto the ground. “Unwrap it.”
The half-overman obeyed and the lantern carrier shone the light onto the desiccated remains thus exposed. It was undoubtedly a man.
“That gold bracelet,” the la
ntern carrier whispered, referring to the jewellery hanging on a chain around the neck of the corpse. “Lord Iani always wore that. And them’s his clothes.”
“It is Lord Iani,” Taquar agreed. “Or it was. Now you have a choice. You can order your men to open the gate and resign yourself to having me back as your highlord, or you and your lantern bearer die right here and now. And I assure you, your deaths will be in vain because I will return to Scarcleft Hall. In fact, I will sleep in my own bedroom tonight. Your decision.”
The half-overman and the lantern carrier exchanged shocked looks.
“He’s right. Your choice will make no difference to the outcome,” Laisa said. “You face two rainlords here. But we’d prefer to make this simple rather than messy. Better for everyone, don’t you agree?”
The half-overman swallowed. A long silence ended only when he found his tongue once more. “Of course, my lords. If you’ll wait just a moment, I’ll have the gate opened.” He looked up at the top of the wall where a guard was watching what was happening. “Armsman, open the gates for the highlord!” he called out.
“Wise decision. You’ll find my men of great use to you in your future duties,” Taquar said to the half-overman as they rode through the gate a moment later. “Please see to their comfort. And tell the seneschal and the overman I’d like to see them in my quarters immediately.”
“Perhaps,” Laisa added, “you’d see that Lord Iani’s remains are handed over to the House of the Dead for burial rites, and arrange for someone to show me to my daughter.”
