by Glenda Larke
“But—”
“There are no ‘buts,’ Jet. Your behaviour has been reprehensible and your way of thinking disgusts me. Now go.”
“I know what Father would want,” he said, drawing his sword. “He’d tell me to kill this barbarian, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
“Then you’ll have to go through me,” Rubric said. He raised his blade into a fighting stance.
Terelle frowned, concentrating hard to understand the conversation when the impassioned words were uttered so fast.
Jet’s expression was one of amused contempt. He strode across the breadth of the room towards his brother, saying, “I’ve got better things to do with my time than fight my pathetic little sister. Get out of my way, little girl.”
Rubric hurtled at him in a rage. Jade shrieked at him, without effect. At the last moment, Jet realised Rubric was in earnest and parried the stroke heading for his chest. Terelle spun on her heel, thinking to head for the door, but Jade was blocking her way. Terelle grabbed up the nearest chair instead, using the upholstered seat as armour for her chest. She pointed the chair legs at Jet.
Jet feinted and Rubric lunged, to be disarmed by a clever twist of Jet’s blade which sent the sword spinning through the air to hit the far wall. “White-hot anger is never the way to win a fight,” said Jet, mocking.
Turning his back on Rubric, he advanced on Terelle, only to find she was already running straight at him, still clutching the chair. Before he could decide how best to deal with chair legs, she was on him. The force of her attack bowled him over flat on his back. His sword jammed into the wood of the seat and, as she fell, her full weight crashed down on him with the chair between them. The blade bent, twisted, then snapped.
To complete Jet’s humiliation, Rubric used his waterlord skills to dump the water from the paint trays and the ewer on his brother’s face.
For a long moment no one moved.
Jet lay on his back with the chair on top of him, as if he couldn’t believe what had just happened. Rubric looked shame-faced as he calmed down. Terelle stared at the water trickling across the floor. I wonder if I will ever get used to folk being so careless about wasting it.
“It’s almost dawn,” Lord Jade said to Jet, her tone still without compromise. “Collect your men and leave.”
Drying himself with his water talent, Jet climbed to his feet, broken sword in his hand. For a moment Terelle wondered if he’d defy his mother, but in the end he headed for the door. As he passed his brother, he flung the broken sword at him and snarled, “Don’t bother coming back. And I promise you, this half-breed cousin of ours will never cross the border to the Quartern alive. Father and I’ll see to that.”
Terelle picked up another chair defensively and positioned herself behind Lord Jade, but Jet let himself out without looking at her and slammed the door behind him.
Jade turned to face Terelle, who took a deep breath and replaced the chair at the table, right side up. “And so all along you lied about the possibility of wrecking the house?” the woman asked, her tone heavy with loathing. “And now you’ve wrecked my family instead.”
“Your family was wrecked long ago,” Terelle replied, more comfortable with speaking Khromatian now that the immediate danger had passed. “And you know it.”
“You’re rude and ill-mannered. As it appears we have to travel together, I’ll endeavour to be civil, but don’t ever expect me to forgive you. We’ll leave tomorrow.” She turned to Rubric. “You should know me better than to think your warning was necessary. And Jet was right about your temper. Learn control, or you’ll be the next one breaking noses.” She turned on her heel and left the room.
Terelle and Rubric eyed one another warily.
“Are you mad at me, too?” she asked.
He walked over to retrieve his sword. “I love my mother; never doubt it. And I’ll defend her over you any day. But I hate my two brothers, despise my father and loathe my grandfather who runs this whole muck pot of a country.” He snorted. “We Verdigris are the slag heap of a family on top of the midden. You know what? I’m glad to go. But it’ll be a long time before I forgive you for involving my mother. Do you think my father will ever forgive her? It’s not in him.”
“It’s not her fault she’ll have to go to the Quartern.”
“That won’t count with the rotten bastard.” He slid his sword back into his scabbard.
“I had to paint her. If I hadn’t, she could have worked out a way to paint something to undo what I was doing or to prevent my escape, or something. I couldn’t risk it. It’s not as bad as it looks. She’ll have to go to Breccia, but then she can return here, I promise. If that’s what she wants.”
He didn’t comment. Instead he sighed and asked, “Tell me, how the blighted hells did you get out of the tower?”
“I made a rope and climbed down a ladder and a drainpipe. How did you know I was down here?”
“Jet woke up and sensed you. He woke Azure, and Azure woke Mother and she told me. A rope and a drainpipe, eh?” He raised an eyebrow. “Now that’s not bad—for a girl.”
“Oh? I can’t say I was overly impressed with your manly efforts as an armsman.”
“I thought the water was a nice touch.”
She stared at him and then started to laugh. “Rubric, in another time and another place and under other circumstances, I might have liked you.”
“Likewise. Terelle, take my advice, go on up to the tower and barricade yourself inside until such time as you see Jet ride out, all right?”
She nodded soberly. “I think that might be a good idea. In fact, would you mind escorting me there?”
Elmar stared at the pass ahead of them, a hollowed-out scoop between two mountain peaks. Heaped on either side were piles of what he now knew was snow. Mist seeped through the gap like fingers blindly seeking to clutch passing travellers. It had snowed the night before, a first for him and Dibble, and when they’d woken up that morning and ventured out of the bivac, it had been into a soft white world. The starkness of the mountains and rocks was mellowed by their white blanketing and sounds were muted. Snow made the stunted trees more resplendent than grotesque.
“What did that last wagoner say about the next bivac?” he asked Dibble. “I imagine the wind sweeping through that pass would freeze our balls off overnight without one.”
“Should be there any minute now. Has blankets, but firewood scarce.” Dibble looked miserable.
Desert chill was bad enough, but this icy air was something else. It seeped into Elmar’s cheeks and froze him from the inside out. It chapped his lips and numbed the tips of his ears and the end of his nose. Putting one foot in front of the other in the snow was exhausting. It was a long while since they’d been able to hitch a ride; wagons didn’t travel in bad weather, unless they could afford their own waterlord to push the snow aside and dry out the road. He spared Dibble a glance, careful not to show sympathy. If there was one thing he knew, it was when to be a friend and when to be the overman in charge.
Dibble saw the look and pulled himself together. “We’re losing the light,” he said, his tone carefully neutral.
Elmar looked up at the sky. The peaks and the pass had all disappeared, cloaked by cloud. Lower down, mist wisped across the face of the rocks and the gnarled trunks of the trees. A capricious wind whooshed and gusted down the slopes, only to die and leave the air still, awaiting the next freezing blast.
“We won’t be able to see the road soon,” he predicted, his own disgust barely under control. Give me the Quartern any day. Dry heat and no ridiculously lavish excess of water. “Almost enough to make me want to worship the Sunlord. How are we off for food, Dibs?”
“You can choose between dinner tonight and breakfast tomorrow morning, but you won’t get both. Elmar, what’s the matter? You’ve been as scratchy as a pebblemouse in a sand patch ever since you woke up this morning. You should be feeling happy as a frog in a dayjar. We must be almost there.”
He stifled a sigh. “I’m fine.” He wasn’t though; he was worried. Travelling was one thing; deciding how to rescue Terelle from a place he knew nothing about was another.
Trudging on, he childishly enjoyed stomping pristine snow into muddy slush, even as the road ahead disappeared into a white nothingness. Damp began to bead on his coat as the air around them blurred.
“Is that a building ahead?” Dibble asked.
But when Elmar looked, the mist swirled thicker and he couldn’t see anything. He ducked his head and plodded on. In the end they missed the bivac altogether. It was set a few paces off the road to the right, half-buried under a thick layer of fresh snow, and they passed it in the mist. Luckily a gust of wind sweeping through the pass cleared away a patch just as Elmar looked back. He glimpsed the unmistakable shape of the chimney about two hundred paces behind. Stopping dead, he called to Dibble, now slightly ahead of him. “Hey!” he said.
“Did you hear that too?” Dibble asked. He was looking towards the pass. The road rose steeply just past the bivac, then dipped again, so they could see nothing of the track ahead even as the mist began to clear.
“No. What? I just wanted to say we passed the bivac.” He pointed behind him. “It’s back there.”
“I thought I heard something ahead.”
Elmar cocked his head to listen, but the mist dampened sound. When riders burst over the crest, they were already on top of them, taking him by surprise. He glimpsed alpiners, armsmen, spears, alpiner breath on the cold air; heard the snorting, the jingle of harness, the swearing of startled men. He flung himself to the side, but the lead mount shouldered him anyway, sending him staggering. Dibble leaped the other way and tumbled awkwardly.
Alpiners propped and reared and veered around them. One of the riders failed to keep his seat and crashed to the ground.
“What the wilted hells do y’think you’re doing, you water-wasting scum!” Dibble yelled in shock.
Elmar could have throttled him. He had used the language of the Quartern. Then he realised it was even worse than he’d thought. The man Dibble had singled out to swear at was Lord Jet Verdigris.
Thoughts poured through his head in a jumble. Jet’s a stormlord… he’ll recognise us… I’m dead… we’re both frizzling snuffed… and I don’t have my blighted sword. He already knew there was no escape route. To the left of the track, a steep slope tumbled down to the icy mountain torrent. To the right, behind the bivac, a rock cliff slick with ice and snow formed a barrier wall. It was fight—or nothing. He moved with lightning speed. He flung off his cloak and yanked his pack from his back to heave it at Jet.
Caught unawares and still trying to calm his spooked mount, perhaps not yet fully understanding who they had run down, Jet was hit in the face by the flying pack. He lurched half out of the saddle, and the alpiner reared to toss the waterlord the rest of the way to the ground. Before Elmar could get to him, another rider pushed his mount in front to protect his lord. Elmar, knowing what Jet could do with his power, ducked and rolled under the animal. A hoof caught him painfully in the shin, but he uncurled on the other side and cracked Jet on the skull with the heavy end of his staff.
He had no time to see how effective the blow was. The rider pulled his mount around to shoulder him away from the fallen lord. Elmar backed away, just avoiding the swish of a blade past his ear. A glance around told him the rest of the riders were gaining control of their mounts. Two who’d evidently ridden on in the initial rush were now stationary down the track, mist swirling around them. They had two pack alpiners and they blocked the escape route downhill. That makes, um, ten of them altogether.
Someone yelled, “It’s those blasted barbarian salt-lovers!”
We’re shrivelled.
He glimpsed Dibble standing on the other side of the track, his back to a wall of mist which covered the edge of the road and the steep fall into the ravine.
He fluttered a hand signal to Dibble and then eased his fingers into a good grip on his staff. On the other side of the mounted man, Jet was dragging himself to his knees. Sunblast. We’ll be so much carved-up meat by nightfall.
Dibble didn’t fail him. He brought his staff up under the alpiner closest to him, whacking the beast in the delicate underbelly and raking the end, hard, towards its rear. The poor animal screamed and bucked. Its rear hooves slammed into another mount. In a moment the riders were once again in chaos. One alpiner backed over the edge of the road and disappeared soundlessly with its rider into whatever lay below. Another man lay senseless on the track bleeding from the head, although whether Dibble or a hoof had been responsible, Elmar didn’t know.
While the man shielding Jet with his mount was distracted by the commotion Dibble had achieved on the other side of the track, Elmar smacked his mount on the rump with the staff. The animal slewed sideways, eyes rolling. Using the end of the pole, he then jabbed Jet hard in the stomach. The Watergiver doubled up, enabling Elmar to thwack him over the back of the head, hard. This time he made no mistake. The man was out cold. Three down. Two spears from different directions sailed through the air. He ducked, just avoiding being impaled by the first. The second ripped through the flesh of his upper arm. He glimpsed Dibble being downed on the other side of the road, but couldn’t be sure if he was killed or not.
Please don’t let there be another waterlord in this lot.
It was hopeless, he knew that. On foot, armed only with knives and staves, an injured arm… Watergiver save me. A spear grazed his leg, leaving a furrow of blood. A man dropped dead in front of him. A cloud of vapour burst forth in the air around his body.
What the—? For a moment he didn’t understand. Then he realised. He’d seen rainlord kills often enough, but never into cold air… A dead man’s water. A blossoming of vapour to signal death. But who—? He had no idea who’d killed the fellow.
Three dead and Jet out of it. Ignoring the blood, not yet feeling any pain, he swung his staff at an alpiner bearing down on him, swinging the wood across the animal’s nose.
Sunblast it, I hate hurting animals…
The alpiner reared, and the rider leaned forward, still in control, readying his scimitar for a slash. He never completed the stroke. A block of snow struck him from above like a boulder, knocking him to the ground. Elmar finished him off with his staff. What the pickled pede was going on? No time to work it out. Four down. No, five. He wanted to check to make sure the waterlord was dead, but Jet’s men—those who were left—kept him away. There seemed to be suspiciously few armsmen still mounted and fighting. Maybe Dibble had taken care of another one or two when he hadn’t been watching. No, Dibble was only just scrambling to his feet.
The flow of blood from his arm made his staff slippery. And another armsman was trying to ride him down.
He turned and fled. Just as the alpiner drew level, Elmar used his staff to vault out of the way. Pain shot through him from his wound, making him grunt. Plunging feet first into another armsman running towards him was pure serendipity. He stomped on the man’s head, breaking his nose and cheekbone. Good one, El. He turned to see what the mounted man was doing, just in time to see more snow, a lot more snow, fly through the air, hitting the man’s alpiner this time. Alpiner and rider fell. The rider appeared unhurt, but the moment he stood he sagged like wet paper and crumpled, dead, at Elmar’s feet.
Another explosion of warm water vapour into the cold air. Mounts were bolting in all directions and they all seemed to be riderless. The only men who were still mounted were the two down the track, and neither of them had moved. Dibble sat up, looking dazed. The two men on their feet were assailed on all sides by flying clumps of snow. They started running down the track, all thought of fighting apparently abandoned. The air was thick with chunks of white, but none of it hit Elmar, which seemed odd. Dibble, upright once more, someone’s sword in hand, was gazing around, his mouth hanging open. Elmar dodged a riderless trotting alpiner, its head flung up in terror as it passed, and made his way to Dibble’s side.
“You all right?” he asked, clamping his hand over his own bleeding arm, trying to stop the flow. The leg could wait.
“I think so. Head aches like sunfire. Might have cracked a rib, and my left hand is going to swell up like a melon, but I’m still alive. Thought I wasn’t going to be. What the sunblasted hells is going on? This snow stuff—is it normal for it to fly off cliff-sides and clobber people?”
Elmar laughed. “Somehow I don’t think so. Snow’s just water in another form. Reckon we have a rainlord around here somewheres, one who’s on our side.”
“Is Jet alive?”
“Unconscious at least. Maybe even dead. Won’t be bothering us for a while.”
“Did you see either of the other brothers?”
“No. No Terelle, either. Reckon we’re safe for a bit, though we’d better work out what’s going on. Work out why those two back down the track haven’t done a scarper too.” He stared in their direction, but the mist still swirled around them. “One of them the waterlord, you reckon?”
“Reckon so. Whoever they are, let’s hope they haven’t got us on their death list.”
Using his dagger, Dibble hacked some fabric from the clothing of the dead man next to him. Elmar sat down and Dibble knelt beside him to bind his arm.
Elmar didn’t take his eyes off the waiting riders. The light had faded fast but he could just make out the shapes of several bodies lying in the snow at their feet. The two running men, he assumed. He raised his gaze to stare at the riders as they urged their mounts forward. The mist blurred their outlines and curled around the feet of their alpiners in a way that could not have been natural.
