by Glenda Larke
The weather for the next two days kept them confined to the bivac. By the third day, which dawned sunny and warmer, Dibble was wholly recovered and Elmar was well enough to travel. The linen wagon departed that morning after Rubric and Umber had used their power to clear the worst of the drifts all the way to the top of the pass. Immediately afterwards, Terelle and Umber, as the translators, found themselves in the middle of an argument between Lord Jade and Jasper. Jasper was quietly insisting that Jade send her servants back to Verdigris Manor, and that she surrender her paints to Terelle’s care until they reached Breccia.
“I don’t trust you,” Jasper said. “It’s as simple as that.”
“Terelle took my choices away,” Jade said. “What can I do to harm you?”
“I’ve no idea,” he conceded, “but I don’t know you well enough to trust you. And you’re a waterpainter.”
Jade turned to Rubric for support, but he advised her to do as Jasper asked. “We don’t need the servants,” he said. “And you weren’t going to use your paints anyway.” He turned to Jasper with a murderous look. “My mother is a healer. She doesn’t go around hurting people.”
“I’m glad to hear it, but I don’t know you well enough to trust you, either.”
In the end Jade capitulated, and it was a smaller party that headed off down the mountain towards the Southern Marches.
The next four days of the descent were wet and blustery and unpleasant riding. They were worried about Elmar whose leg had developed an infection. Lord Jade agreed to help him with her healing, and Terelle gave her the paints back so she could use them, then observed the process close-up. Afterwards, wordlessly, Jade surrendered the paints to her once more, anger raging in her gaze. With all that, plus the worry and more inclement weather and the lack of privacy in the bivac, the conversation Terelle both ached and dreaded to have was never initiated.
It wasn’t until they were crossing the lower slopes of the Slew Pale towards the border of the Southern Marches that the weather changed. They had a sunny day riding under a blue sky, the air was warm, the alpiners had a spring in their step. After their midday rest, Jasper told the others to ride on, as he and Terelle would walk for a bit.
When they were alone, Jasper came and sat next to her on the rock she had chosen. She pulled off her cap and spread her hair over her shoulders, enjoying the feel of the sun.
Vivie would scold me and say I’ll get freckles…
“I think Elmar is going to be all right,” she said. “It’s wonderful what waterpainting can do. But Lord Jade told me afterwards that she thought his injuries weren’t caused by a rock fall. How did he really get hurt?”
“Jet and company. They literally bumped into one another. And, of course, Jet recognised them. Umber and I—fortunately—rode up just as they were getting tucked into a fight.”
She looked at him in horror. “What happened to Jet and the others?”
“They’re all dead.”
“All of them?” Even now some things still had the power to shock her. Men she had known and travelled with, gone.
“We threw all the bodies into the ravine. We couldn’t leave anyone alive to say what had happened. They attacked Elmar and Dibble.”
“Jet’s dead?”
“Yes, I’m glad to say. That was personal. Do you remember the groom, Eden Croft? He told his wife what happened back in Marchford, she told the Greys and they told me.”
“Sweet waters, how can you look his mother in the eye day after day without flinching?”
“Easily. Especially once you told me about your broken nose. His father didn’t tell him to do that—he did it all by himself.”
“Are—are you ever going to tell Jade or Rubric?”
“No, we’ve all decided never to mention it. Better that way, surely. We’ve been lucky they didn’t spot the alpiners we loosed.”
She was silent, absorbing it all. You’ve changed, grown tougher. And I wish you’d tell me what you’ve done to me…
“Don’t ask me to feel sorry, Terelle. The Commander of the Southern Marches declared war on me when he murdered Feroze and the other Alabasters. You’d be dead too, if Russet hadn’t painted you. It’s my duty to get you safely back to the Quartern. It’s my duty to get Rubric and Jade there too, now, in the hope that I can save our land, and I’ll do whatever it takes.”
“Do you think they’ll help us?”
“I don’t know about Lord Jade yet, nor Umber either, but Rubric will. You do know that he’s a woman, don’t you?”
She gave him a quick look. “Yes. Except he’s not. I mean, he’s not trying to deceive anyone. He’s a man to himself, and therefore he’s a man to me.”
He shrugged. “That’s fine with me. All I want is another stormlord.”
“How did you know?”
“His water. It’s, um, not shaped right inside.” He sighed. “Sometimes I know things about people I’d rather not be aware of. I like him, you know, and I hope he’ll stay in the Quartern.” He paused. “And now there’s something else I have to tell you. I don’t know how to say it so that it won’t hurt. There is no way.”
“When I mentioned we were to marry, you looked as if I’d struck you. Have… have you committed yourself to marrying Senya?”
“I—” He choked and cleared his throat. “Worse.”
Sunlord save us… Sorrow scored her heart, robbed her of breath. She couldn’t speak. She pulled back a little, removed her hand from his.
“Terelle, I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I intend to do just that. I didn’t bed Senya while you were gone, you must know that.”
“You’ve married her already.” A flat statement of fact. She didn’t need his confirmation. Sunlord help her, it hurt. “Why?”
He had difficulty forming the words. His voice sounded thick. She ducked her head so she didn’t have to look at him.
“When Senya came back to Breccia, she was expecting my child. After the baby was born, I married her. It’s a girl, Amberlyn.”
Each word hammered her thoughts. She swallowed. I will not cry. I won’t.
He plunged on. “Senya’s not interested in Amberlyn, so I’ve been caring for her. There was a time when I’d have done anything to undo what happened—but I can’t say that any more. I love Amberlyn; she’s my daughter and she always will be. But none of that is the real reason I married Senya.”
“You mean—you mean there’s more?” The words half strangled in her throat. What could be worse?
He nodded miserably. “Laisa talked to Lord Gold about you and your waterpainting. He decided you were a blasphemous heathen using sorcery.” Briefly he sketched all that had happened before he’d left Breccia.
She stared at him in horror. “Are you telling me I can’t even go back to the Scarpen? That I’ll be killed if I do?”
“No, no. It is part of my bargain that charges against you are not pursued. Besides, I’m still the Cloudmaster and Lord Gold has gone to live elsewhere. When we go back, I want Terelle Grey, waterpainter, to have her rightful place in the Quartern, acclaimed for the part she’s played and will play to bring us water. We could live in Scarcleft. I—I’d like to have Amberlyn with me, too. If ever I set eyes on any of them again—Laisa, Senya or Lord Gold—it’d be too soon. Terelle, please, please tell me that you can forgive me.”
She stood up abruptly, tears wetting her eyelashes. “Of course. But, blighted eyes, this is all too much. Give me time, please. Let me think. No answers now. No discussion now. Just… oh, withering pebbles and sand, I can’t think.”
He rose to face her, and she was grateful he didn’t touch her. “I never wanted to hurt you. Never.”
“I know. I know. But maybe we were never supposed to be together. You’re the Cloudmaster. An upleveller lord. Senya is—”
He snorted. “I’m a settle brat, with a drunk for a father and a whore for a mother. I’m just me, Shale Flint. Never lose sight of him, Terelle. Please. He’s what I am unde
r this shell.”
“You’re also the father of a child I didn’t give birth to. I don’t want to discuss this. Not yet. Let’s catch up with the others.” She walked away to where her mount grazed.
“I love you,” he said to her retreating back.
“I know.”
He came forward to hold her stirrup. She hauled herself up into the saddle and looked down on him. The tears on her lashes still hadn’t fallen, and his face blurred. “And I love you, too. I didn’t stop loving you when you bedded Senya, so it would be illogical to stop loving you because she had a child as a result. But right now, I just can’t handle talking about this. I’m sorry.”
She turned her alpiner and headed down the road after the others.
That was when the tears started to fall.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Khromatis, en route to the Borderlands
White Quarter, Samphire
“What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?”
Terelle woke to the outraged words, uttered just outside the bivac by Lord Jade, of all people. For almost ten days—ever since they’d left Verdigris Manor—the woman had hardly spoken to anyone unless the words were essential. But now, at last, something had aroused her to passion. Terelle rolled off the grubby straw pallet and emerged into the dawn light, bleary-eyed.
Jade, hands on hips, was addressing Jasper, who could hardly string a sentence together in Khromatian. The others were attending to their normal morning chores. The smell of hot porridge drifted past from the roughly built rock fireplace.
Terelle smiled at Jasper and said, “She asked you what in God’s name you were doing.” She looked around and was unable to see that he’d been doing anything at all.
“Ah. I thought it might be something like that. Tell her I’m collecting some water to save the lives of thousands of people in Alabaster in the coming weeks.” He waved a hand at the sky in explanation.
Above, bruised-purple clouds gathered, moving in from the direction of the mountains. Terelle relayed the message.
Jade glared at them both in rage. “He’s stealing from us!”
Jasper’s reply was mild. “I asked Dibble to chat to some of the farmers yesterday along the route. They all say it’s been a very wet season this cycle, and they’re worried about the pastures failing to bloom, the crops going mouldy and the sheep getting foot rot, whatever that is. They’re all wishing the rain would stop and have sent a request for waterlord intervention. So I’m stopping it. I’m taking the clouds to Alabaster with us. I doubt that it’ll make much difference to anyone in Khromatis in the long run.”
Jade stalked off after Terelle had translated, her back stiff with outrage, muttering something about sacrilege. Rubric and Umber, back from washing at the stream, both studied the clouds and, Terelle guessed, the feel of the way the water was moving, because they gave each other an amused look, followed by Umber’s, “Can I help?”
Jasper grinned. “Of course!”
Intrigued, Terelle regarded the men while they pulled water vapour across the sky, and played—on a sky-wide palette—with the clouds they made. As ever, boys will be boys, she thought, hiding a smile of delight, and wondered how many farmers would notice the astonishing number of vulgar-shaped clouds in the sky that day.
When they passed the border stone to the Southern Marches, still trailing the thunderclouds after them like a dark frown on the face of the sky, they also left the main road. Under Umber’s guidance, they took to the back paths as far as possible from Marchford in order to avoid the remote chance that Hue and Bice might sense Jade nearby. The tracks were lonely and the farms they passed appeared oddly empty of farm labourers. Still more strange, no one was on the road. They passed no carts, no alpinermen, no trudging workers. Umber frowned as they rode, remarking that he’d never seen fields look so unattended.
“No Alabasters,” Jasper observed. “Interesting.”
Terelle gave him a quick look, but he didn’t say anything more. That night they camped in a small wood next to a stream, but the next night, they decided to eat an evening meal and stay at a ramshackle wayside hostelry. The owner informed them in outraged tones that his two Alabaster servants had run away, but if they were prepared for the service to be slow, they were welcome.
As they were about as close to Marchford as they were going to get, it was no surprise to anyone when Lord Jade announced over dinner that she wanted to see her husband and sons.
“Jet will have already told him that you’re on your way to the Quartern,” Umber said calmly as they sat at a table eating a plain and tasteless supper, a meal which led them to believe the cook had been one of the runaways. Terelle sat close to Jasper and murmured a translation into his ear. When another platter of food was delivered to the table by their host, they all fell silent.
“If you go to see Lord Bice,” Umber continued when the man had retreated to the kitchen, “he’ll in all probability try to stop you from going to Breccia. Physically. I think you know how difficult that’d be for you. Possibly fatal. I wouldn’t do it if I was you.”
Rubric nodded in agreement with Umber. “He’s right, Mother. Best we don’t go there, really.”
Abruptly, Lord Jade stood up. For a moment Terelle thought she was going to argue the point, but then all her courage seemed to leak away and her shoulders slumped. “I’m going to eat my meal in the room,” she said. She took her plate of food and walked to the stairs.
“She’s not going to run away to your father, is she?” Umber asked Rubric.
He shook his head. “No. In her heart, she knows better than anyone what would happen.”
“Then why…?” Terelle asked.
“She wants an excuse not to go to him, so she feels less guilty. She was raised to do her duty. Marrying and obeying my father are all part of that.” He sighed. “That’s Watergiver families for you! Why else did Russet make such a fuss about his granddaughter running away?”
Poor Mother. I wish I’d known you.
Later, as Jasper and Terelle made their way upstairs, he said quietly, “An unhappy waterpainter could do a lot of damage.”
She nodded, miserable. “I know. I’m hoping she’ll want to stay in the Quartern of her own free will. She may never forgive me, though, which is sad. She could teach me so much.”
“Is it even possible she’ll want to stay?”
They halted outside the cubbyhole she shared with Jade. “I grew up with many women who’d settled for second best because there was no alternative. They made the best of what life dealt them because they had no other way to live. No skills, no money, no benefactor. The cage was comfortable, usually—but it was still a cage. Lord Jade’s no different, for all that her cage was luxurious. She still bruised herself against the bars, without even realising they were there. Once she sees them vanish, she’ll be a lot happier, you’ll see.” I hope.
The next night they spent at Grey Manor as a guest of Umber’s father. Gelder greeted them sourly, immediately berating Umber for lending Jasper his best alpiners and tackle. Umber grinned amiably and let it flow over him, although Terelle caught a glimpse of burning resentment in his gaze. She liked Umber and thought him slow to anger, but this wasn’t the first time it had occurred to her that, once roused, his temper would be formidable.
Only when he had exhausted his ire on his son did Gelder turn to Lord Jade, Rubric and Terelle. “You’re Sienna’s daughter, I suppose,” he said, looking Terelle up and down in scorn. “Caused a great deal of trouble to my family, your silly frip of a mother.” He shifted his gaze to Lord Jade and Rubric. “And who, by God’s lost voice, are you?”
“Lord Jade Verdigris,” Jade snapped, “and this is my youngest son, Lord Rubric, as I am sure you can guess from his tattoos. My husband always did say the Greys were ill-mannered farmers, and I can see he spoke the truth.”
Gelder looked torn. From the look on his face, he would have liked to toss Lord Jade out of the house, preferably into a midden hea
p, but common sense recommended being obsequious to the wife of the Commander of the Southern Marches. He opted for the latter. He gave orders for rooms to be prepared and a meal cooked, and then said, “I do humbly apologise if my hospitality is lacking. Half our household staff were Alabasters and they disappeared three nights ago. Along with most every other Alabaster in the land.”
“What do you mean?” Jade asked, her gaze flying to his face in startled surprise. “Disappeared?”
“They just upped and left in the middle of the night. Most of them. And not just mine, either. Everyone’s. Organised it was—there was an unusual number of packpedes in the Marches, because a huge delivery of iron ore and several other overdue shipments of various things came in at the same time. They unloaded, but when they went back they ferried Alabasters to the border. Ungrateful wretches. They’ve all gone home. Some say war’s on its way.”
“That explains the empty fields,” Umber murmured while Terelle translated to Jasper. “Khromatis is in trouble.” He gave Jasper a sharp look. “Sometime, ye’ll have to tell me why ye aren’t at all surprised.”
Shortly after Jasper entered his bedroom that evening, Terelle knocked on his door. When he opened it, he stood in the doorway, not saying a word. His body ached, just to look at her. She was so beautiful, so composed. He stared, unable to give voice to his longing.
She said, “I’m sharing with Lord Jade. The atmosphere is as cold as that bivac up near the pass.” Her head tilted in unspoken enquiry.
“Huh,” he said, and tried to think of something intelligent to say.
“I thought I’d look for something a little warmer.”
His lips twitched. “Did you now? Come in, come in—I’ll, um, put another log on the fire, shall I?” he asked, shutting the door behind her.
