by Glenda Larke
He was interested, she could tell. Intrigued. She said softly, “There’s no need for you to put up with being ridiculed or despised. There are other places to live. Come with me back to the Quartern. You can marry and live an ordinary life.”
He didn’t quite believe her; his gaze was wary. “Well, maybe not ordinary if you are a stormlord,” she amended. “That puts you at the top of the uplevellers. Richer, more revered. You can move clouds, right? And make clouds? Even from salty water?”
“I suppose so. Though here we don’t usually need to do that. It is not considered proper for Watergivers to interfere with God’s weather unless folk are in danger. You know, from flooding or avalanches or something.”
“We are in danger of dying of thirst. And you’d be happier in the Scarpen Quarter, really.”
He was silent.
“You could be totally yourself.”
“Stop it! You people are—”
But he couldn’t finish the sentence. She guessed the word he had been about to say was “barbarians,” and that he had halted himself when he’d realised how ridiculous that would sound.
He threw himself out of the room, and she heard him clattering down the stairs. She raised an eyebrow and waited. A moment later he sheepishly reappeared.
“I thought it was too much to hope you’d forget,” she said as he shut and barred the door.
Alone again, she crossed to one of the windows. She’d flung Russet’s plaid over the windowsill, anchoring it inside by squashing the end between the bed head and the wall. The remainder flapped outside in the breeze. She placed it there every day, bringing it inside at dusk to put around her shoulders in the cool of the evening when she closed the shutters. So far, no one had commented, or thought to wonder why she did it. It was her hope that Elmar and Dibble would see it.
If they returned.
If they ever found her.
She wasn’t relying on them, though. Every day she watched the world through the windows, studying the movement of people and farm animals until she thought she knew the routines. Part of every day she spent unravelling the wool of one of the thick knitted blankets on her bed, then plaiting it into strings and finally replaiting the strings into rope. She disguised the absence of part of the blanket by making her bed herself every morning.
The rope itself she hid under the bedclothes, blessing the fact that there was no way she could be surprised at the task of making it. Not only was the unbarring of the door noisy, but she usually heard the footsteps on the stairs.
Later that day, as she was about to finish her rope, she heard someone coming, a light step that was definitely not Rubric’s. By the time Lord Jade entered, Terelle was sitting in her chair, reading.
Standing in the doorway, her expression haughty, Lord Jade looked formidable. “Leave him alone. You unsettle him.”
“He’s old enough to make his own decisions.”
“He’s not even twenty.”
“He’s hardly a child. He’s a soldier for pity’s sake! A man who’s had to kill other men.”
“He’s not a—!” Lord Jade stopped, stricken.
“He is a man. Don’t tell me you don’t know that. Not after how you have helped him over the years.”
“He’ll be happier if you don’t tease him with the absurd.”
“Pardon?”
“The idea of going to your barbarian land? It’s impossible.”
Surprised he’d mentioned it to his mother, she said, “On the contrary. You’re a mother trying to protect a child, but he’s old enough to make up his own mind.”
“And do you really think his father will allow that?”
“Why should Rubric listen to his father? Come to think of it, why should you listen? Do you love Bice? Is he good to you? Is he good for you? Time to take a stand, don’t you think? Your children are grown, you have a way of earning your own living. You can even paint your way to freedom.”
“How dare you make insinuations about my family! Who are you to talk to your elders like that?”
Terelle interrupted her with a burst of laughter. “Don’t be ridiculous, Jade. Can you think of a single reason why I should respect anything at all about you? You keep me a prisoner here, shut in a single room, believing that I’ll one day die, horribly. You haven’t done anything at all to earn my respect. Or even my good manners. Yes, you healed me, but your son was responsible for the injury in the first place.”
The woman stared at her in shock, then walked out of the room, barring the door behind her.
Well, Terelle thought, I guess I just sabotaged any idea she might have had of teaching me about waterpainting. Let’s see if I have at least got her to think about things.
That night Terelle didn’t close her shutters. She sat at the window late, watching and waiting while the activity around the house and stable ceased, the gleam of lamplight dimmed and vanished, doors closed and bolts were shot.
She already knew that the house remained unguarded at night. The Verdigris family didn’t fear attack and they didn’t fear robbers, either. Wondering about that, she decided there really wouldn’t be much point in robbing a waterpainter’s house. The painter could always paint the stolen items back again and the thief would be obliged to bring them back.
When she guessed everyone was in bed asleep, she attached the rope to the bed frame and flung the rest out the window. The tower was too high for the rope to reach the ground, but all it had to do was get her as far as the roof of the storey below; after that she would find a way down. She had to. She swung herself up onto the window sill. In her money pouch she had her tinderbox and a candle. Over her shoulder was slung her water skin. The tray from under her water ewer was stuffed down the front of her tunic. Barefoot, she paused on the ledge, steeling herself for the worst part of her climb: scrambling over the edge.
Deep breaths, Terelle. You can do this.
One leg, then the other, feet scrabbling desperately to find a toehold roughness of the stone, hands grimly gripping the rope. Prayers, to a god she wasn’t sure existed, that the rope was strong enough. Heart somewhere in her throat, beating like a Gibber war drum as she unhooked the fingers of one hand to move her grip down. She hung there until she could gather enough courage to move her other hand. Or a foot. One at a time.
Oh, wither it, I hate this.
Finally, her feet hit the roof below. Quickly she half slid, half scrabbled down the slope to the guttering. Bracing herself against the gutter itself, she looked over the edge. The ground was a long way down, and a glance was enough to tell her both the creepers along the wall were far too flimsy to take her weight.
She edged herself back, and half-crawled, half-scrambled towards the back of the house. Here, the first storey below extended further behind the house than the second storey she was on—and there was a ladder attached to the wall separating the two roofs. Once she was down on the lower roof, a look over the edge revealed a large water barrel on the ground below. A drainpipe ran down the corner of the house between the roof gutter and the barrel.
Taking a deep breath, she swung herself over the edge and shinned down the pipe, scraping her hands and knees on the way, to land on top of the barrel.
Down on the ground a moment later, she leaned against the wall, knees wobbly, waiting for her pounding heartbeat to subside. Once she was in command of herself again, she went off to explore, fear replaced with a thrill of excitement. After all the days of inertia and all the time she had spent helpless at the mercy of others, the feeling of taking charge of her own destiny was exhilarating.
She flitted from window to window, from door to door, looking for one that was not barred. When a small entry door at the back of the house yielded a little to her push, she risked a shove and the faulty latch pulled out of its slot. Again her heart thumped and goosebumps prickled. She paused to listen. All was silent. Inside, she found herself in a scullery that gave on to the deserted kitchen. She tiptoed through to nearby rooms, finding the cool-ro
om, pantry and meat larder, stillroom and cellarage, before she found what she was looking for: the room where Jade received her patients.
She entered, closing the door behind her, lit the candles on the mantelpiece and looked around. A waterpainter’s room. Everywhere she looked, there was the paraphernalia required for the art. Paint pots and labelled powder jars, trays and water, paint spoons and cleaning cloths, mortar and pestle, rolls of finished paintings. She wouldn’t need the tray from under the ewer; she needn’t have brought her own water.
Lighting some more candles, she set to work.
So engrossed was she in the joys of painting again, so focused on her one chance to free herself, that if there were any signs she was in trouble she never heard them. The first she knew was when the door burst open to slam against the wall.
She spun, a paint spoon sailing out of her hand to land on the polished wood floor leaving a splash of vermilion like a spray of blood.
Jet. Jade. Rubric. Standing there in the doorway, frozen in their consternation.
For a moment she didn’t move, either. Fear glued her there, mouth open, paint pot in one hand, eyes staring, breath halted. And then she felt it, the horror reaching into her to seize her water, tendrils tugging deep inside. Someone was trying to kill her the rainlord way. She flung herself under the table, as if she could stop the process by putting the wood of the tabletop between her and Jet. It was him, of course. She sensed his rage in the clutching wrench of magic.
Rubric yelled at him. “Stop it, you numbskull! You want to kill us all?”
She resisted, but still felt the tugs of his killing power until Jade snapped with all a mother’s exasperation for a wayward child, “Halt that this moment! You’ll make things worse!”
Slowly, cautiously, Terelle crawled out on the far side of the table and stood up. He can’t kill you anyway, not now. Have faith in yourself. In the magic. A few deep breaths quietened the thudding of her heart. One of them must have awoken and sensed me down here.
The three of them entered and spread out. Jade, untidily dressed, was carrying a lighted candelabrum. Jet was barefoot and had not yet done up the ties on his shirt. He held his sword in one hand and his unbuckled scabbard in the other. The murderous expression on his face reflected hate back at Terelle. Rubric, also barefoot and carrying his sword, wore only a nightgown. He was white-faced with shock.
For a moment she was puzzled at the extremity of their fear. Then it struck her. They thought she might have murdered them with her magic. Rubric had been worried Jet’s action would prompt her to shuffle up their death—if she hadn’t already done so. In disgust she flung the paint pot she was clutching onto the table. “I’m not like you,” she said. She waved a hand at the two trays on the table. “I don’t wantonly kill people. Come have a look. And no, you can’t undo it. I’ve already shuffled both pictures up.”
They moved as one to the table edge. Jet was still holding his sword as if he was looking for an excuse to run her through. Jade brought the candelabrum up to the first of the two trays Terelle had completed.
They wouldn’t know it, but both paintings showed the interior of the Breccian stormquest room. She had used the bloodstone pendant Jasper had given her as a holdfast in both. In the first painting, it lay on Jasper’s map table next to the picture of another painting in a tray depicting Jasper controlling a storm—one she had not yet painted, and would not until she was safely back again. It was—or so she hoped—enough to make sure she would return to Breccia healthy enough to paint. She couldn’t paint herself there, but she could paint her holdfast and her own artwork.
Jade frowned at it, not understanding, then moved the candelabrum onto the next tray. She stared at it, her two sons by her side, taking it all in but without the knowledge she needed to comprehend what it meant. She raised her gaze to meet Terelle’s across the table. “Where is this place?” Her voice quavered with dread.
“It’s the Cloudmaster’s stormquest room in Breccia. Breccia’s the main city of the Scarpen Quarter.”
With a crash, the candelabrum dropped out of Jade’s nerveless fingers onto the table. Terelle jumped. The candles blew out, but she didn’t need their extra light to see the woman’s shock.
“What have you done?” Lord Jade whispered. “By all that’s holy, what have you done?”
Jet stared at the second tray, which showed Jade and Rubric side by side inside the stormquest room of Breccia Hall. Then his head jerked up and he launched himself straight across the table at Terelle, sword raised.
“Die, bitch!” he yelled.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Khromatis
Low Plateau Pale, Verdigris Manor
Wilder Pale, on the road
Terelle stared across the width of the table between herself and Jet. It was too wide for him to reach her, so he leaped up onto the tabletop via a chair seat. Her first instinct was to stand still with her mouth wide open, but she conquered her paralysis and ducked to scramble back underneath. Jet could either come down and crawl after her or wait for her to come out. She hoped he was left looking foolish.
Head swivelling in panic, she watched for his descent from the table. I could have just stood there and let him skewer me, I suppose. My painting would mean he’d fail… She swallowed, knowing she lacked the courage. Just because he couldn’t kill her didn’t mean she couldn’t be hurt.
Then Lord Jade spoke. In freezing tones she addressed her son. “Have you quite finished, Jet? Is it possible for you to have a calm conversation on a serious topic, or are we always to be exposed to your histrionics?”
Terelle didn’t know the final word, but breathed a little easier anyway. There was no mistaking the tone.
His sword now sheathed, Jet jumped down and went to stand near the window. Indicating the trays, he said in a fury, “She painted both of you in her God-forsaken city on the other side of their land. You know what that means!”
Terelle clambered out on the side furthest from him. Jade ignored him and turned to her in anguish. “Why? What you’ve done is unethical and cruel. You would force us away from our homes and family?”
Calmer now, Terelle answered directly in Khromatian. “Why not? That’s exactly what you Verdigris did to me.”
Jet made a sound of disgust, but Jade exchanged a long, wordless look with Rubric. At last she turned back to Terelle and waved a hand at the paintings. “This place is in the heart of the Quartern?”
“Yes. And if I don’t return home, people will thirst to death in time. They may anyway, if the Cloudmaster and I can’t bring them enough water.”
Rubric gave a sudden frown. “Wait a moment. Something’s not making sense here. Why didn’t I think of it before? If you’re so necessary in the Quartern, why are you here? They could have sent anybody.”
“I’m Khromatian. Lord Jasper was under the obviously mistaken impression that I might be welcomed by my family and you might listen to me. But you’re right—he would not have sent me under normal circumstances. My great-grandfather Russet waterpainted me here in Khromatis, so I had to come whether I wanted to or not.”
Rubric gaped. “Lord Russet painted you?”
“Then I can kill you,” Jet said. He sneered at her from the other side of the room. “We could have done that any time after Russet’s death!”
“Not any more. Now I really do have a painting that ensures my return.” She indicated the trays on the table.
“I don’t think so,” he said, suddenly gleeful. He pointed at the first of the trays. “Not if you mean that one. I know that jewel. You have it around your neck. I suppose it’s your holdfast.” He looked at his mother. “If I killed her now, then the effect of the magic of her paintings would lessen enough for you to avoid going to the Scarpen at all. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes, but you can’t kill her because the painting won’t let you,” Lord Jade replied impatiently. “Her future is to return to that place, because her holdfast is there.”
“We
can send it there with an Alabaster!” Jet said, his smile full of malice.
Terelle’s mouth went dry. Oh, sweet water. “But not just anybody can do that waterpainting on the table portrayed in the picture,” she pointed out. “There are no other waterpainters in the Quartern. None. I have to go home to do that painting.”
Jet looked at his mother. “You could do it.”
“Yes,” she said, “I could. But I’d have to be in Breccia first.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” he said, his grin triumphant. “You can do it here. And we can send it back along with the holdfast. The Alabaster we sent could replicate the scene. There’s nothing in what she has painted to indicate the picture is still floating on water, is there?”
They all looked at the first of the two waterpaintings on the table. What he said was correct; it could have been a dry painting dumped in a tray. And that’s not the worst. Terelle thought. I know what he’s getting at: a way to kill me right now. Then the magic would die and Jade wouldn’t even have to do the painting. The holdfast wouldn’t have to be sent to Breccia. Desperate, she shot a glance at Rubric.
His expression went from puzzlement to comprehension. “Mother, don’t! If you decide that’s what you will do, it frees Jet up to murder Terelle. And to do it right now. Don’t you see? Your intention would provide the magic with another way for the picture and Terelle’s holdfast pendant to get back to Breccia! If you agree to it, then Terelle would no longer be protected. Jet kills her, and it all becomes irrelevant anyway!”
Lord Jade stared at him. Terelle felt sick.
“Mother,” Rubric said. He’d injected a wealth of meaning into the single word, but Terelle wasn’t sure how to read it. “You can’t have the intention to go at the same time as you have the intention to thwart your going.”
Jade considered Terelle angrily, then fixed her gaze on Jet. “You are your father’s son. Now get out of here.”
“Pardon?”
“Do you know your mother so little?” She seemed to grow in stature, to become suddenly more imposing. Her voice was steely once more. “I’m a healer, sworn never to misuse the power of waterpainting. A healer, sworn never to kill or hurt or maim. And you would have me murder. Oh, it might be your hand on the hilt, but it’d be my decision that killed Terelle. You’re due to leave for Marchford. Rouse your armsmen and leave as soon as you’ve eaten and packed. Tell your father what happened here and why. Tell him Rubric and I are leaving for the Quartern and that we’ll take Terelle with us.”
