by Glenda Larke
As though he knew what would happen before it occurred. Ravard’s fury grew.
Sunlord save us, Ryka thought. He’s reading Ravard like words on a scroll. Those tiny pieces of water. Ravard doesn’t have a chance. She should have felt joy; instead she was overwhelmed with a sense of the stupid pointlessness of it all.
She forced herself across the room to the family jar, reeling under the combined effects of her bruises, her aching head and her broken bone. She knocked the lid off but couldn’t find her power to use the uncovered water. Sliding down to the base of the jar, she looked back at Jasper.
“You do it,” she said. “I can’t.”
Even as she spoke, he was pulling the water out. When he had all of it up in the air he flung it at the fighting men. Ravard didn’t see it coming. Kaneth did, and flinched, distracted. Ravard’s dagger slid into Kaneth’s upper arm, tearing open his tunic sleeve and opening up a shallow cut on his biceps. And then they were both spluttering and blinking under the deluge.
“Naughty man!” Kedri shouted at Ravard. “Naughty!” He ran with surprising speed across the room. Everyone moved to grab him, but Ravard was the closest and he was the one who succeeded in swinging the boy up into his arms, dropping his sword in the process. Ryka and Kaneth and Jasper all stopped dead. Ravard stepped back. He still held his dagger. To Ryka, it hovered appallingly close to Kedri’s wriggling body.
“Keep your distance,” Ravard said.
Kedri, facing him, pounded him on the chest with his tiny clenched fists, crying, “Naughty, hurt Dada!”
Guyden used everyone’s moment of distraction to ram the back of Jasper’s knees. Jasper staggered and fell onto his back, and Guyden punched him in the stomach. Jasper doubled over in pain. Some of the water rose up in the air and rushed towards Guyden. He twisted away, but the water followed him. Guyden fought, but his fists passed through it. It was like fighting the wind.
Ryka screamed at Ravard, “What are you going to do? Kill a child? Is that the kind of man you are?”
Jasper staggered to his feet, not even looking at Guyden. “Mica. Remember Citrine. She was his age…”
Behind him, Rubric stepped into the room. He grinned at Guyden. “That’s me doing that, not Jasper. Shall I stop?” Guyden glared and lunged at him. Rubric sidestepped, jamming the water gag across his face again. Guyden gasped, breathed in water and choked.
“The first of our army is here,” Rubric said to no one in particular. “They’re hunting the valley for the remnants of Ravard’s men now.”
Kaneth wiped his face dry with a hand. He still held his sword at the ready. “It’s over, Kher Ravard. Your men lost the battle and turned for home. There’s just you now. You and Guyden. And we have two stormlords in this room.”
“You’re lying,” Ravard spat the words at him. “You’re both lying.”
Kaneth shook his head. “They’re not coming, your army. I swear, on the honour of Uthardim, the real Uthardim. It’s over. And the young man playing with water at the moment is not Jasper, but the fellow behind him, Lord Rubric Verdigris. Now put the boy down before one of us kills you.”
“He’s my son!” Ravard clutched the squirming child tighter.
Kaneth’s rage flared in his eyes. Ryka knew his fear for Kedri was the only thing keeping him from slicing Ravard to pieces right then. On the other side of the room, Rubric released his hold on the water, and it found its own shape and level, flowing away to soak into the carpets. Guyden gasped and coughed, then rolled over and vomited. No one took any notice. Jasper and Ryka waited for Kaneth’s explosion of ire.
Instead, he turned to Ryka. “You’re hurt. Did he do that?”
“No. I fell off a pede and broke my collarbone.” She touched the rip across her neck. “This was a feeler. The rest is just bruising. Give me a week or two, and I’ll be all right.”
“Why you—” Ravard began, realising for the first time that her injuries were not severe. He let out a breath. “I should have known. You never give up. But I still have Khedrim.”
The point of Kaneth’s sword shivered as his hand shook in anger. “Ask him,” he said. “Ask Kedri who his father is.”
Guyden made a feeble abortive move to sit up and passed out instead. No one else moved, waiting to see what Ravard would do. Unexpectedly, he collapsed to his knees. The dagger fell from his hand. He was panting, drawing in great gasps of air.
They all stared at him.
Kedri pushed his way out of Ravard’s arms and sat down with a thump on the carpet in front of him. “Don’t like you!” he said, glaring.
Ravard grabbed at the boy’s shoulder before Kaneth could get to him.
“Hurt Dada!”
Perspiration poured from Ravard’s forehead. He looked at Jasper. “I’m a water sensitive,” he protested in shock. “You can’t kill me like this.”
None of them moved. None of them understood.
Ryka was confused. She felt Ravard’s water leaving him. She felt it being pulled. He’s right. We can’t do this.
His face began to change. His cheeks sank, his lips thinned. His skin glistened. Rivulets of sweat dripped from him. His breath came raggedly, the dragging intakes of a dying man. His fingers thinned and clutched at empty air. Ryka looked at Jasper, shocked. Only to find him looking at her, equally appalled.
It was Kaneth who realised the truth. He said firmly, “Kedri!” The boy turned his gaze from Ravard to his father. “Stop it, son.” Kaneth’s tone was gentle, but firm. He stepped forward and picked Kedri up. “No more, all right?”
Ravard made no move to stop him. He was gasping for air, for life. The pull on his water vanished; they all felt it go. He still knelt on the carpet, gulping deeply, his head bowed.
Kaneth ignored him to focus on Kedri. “Dada’s hurt not so bad. See? Just a little blood now.”
“Naughty man.”
“Yes, I know. Now how about you go back to bed, eh? Tell you what, just for tonight, you can sleep in Mama and Dada’s bed, all right?”
The boy nodded enthusiastically. “Want!”
Kaneth walked to the door that led to the main bedroom. He paused just before stepping through, and his gaze swept the room.
They stared at him, all of them silent. He was calm, half-smiling, all his anger leeched away, his exhaustion real but his stress assuaged. First, he asked Rubric to find someone who could strap up Ryka’s arm and tend to her injuries. When the stormlord left, he addressed the others. “I found out today what really matters. Ry, Jasper, I think I’ll leave Ravard’s fate for you both to decide. Ry, because you were the one he hurt; not me. Never me, because you are by my side still, and we have Kedri.” The smile he gave her made her shiver with love for him. “Jasper, because he’s your brother. And you’re the Cloudmaster of all the Quartern.” One side of his mouth quirked up. “And do dry out the carpets before you leave, won’t you?” He lifted the canvas door and stepped through with one last look at Ryka.
Still stunned, she looked back to where Ravard was hugging his stomach in agony. Kedri did that? But not even a stormlord could steal a water sensitive’s water. Sunlord save us, what is this son of ours?
Jasper took the dipper hanging on the wall over the water jar, filled it and gave it to Ravard. “Mica, drink. You have to drink to replace the water he took.”
Ravard took the dipper and drank deeply. “Khedrim?” he rasped finally. “It was Khedrim?”
“So it seems,” Jasper said, taking Ravard’s weapons and throwing them outside the tent. “It certainly wasn’t me.”
“Nor me,” Ryka said, swallowing her shock.
Ravard was stricken. All the fight, the hate, the passion had drained from him. “All I wanted… was… t’love him.”
Ryka shook her head, speechless. She looked away from him, to Jasper. “I think this is your decision.” She gave a slight smile. “For once, I have nothing to say.”
She turned her back on them both and went to join her husband and son.
Red Quarter
God’s Pellets
The two brothers stared at one another. Pale-faced, Guyden crawled to prop himself up against a tent pole and was ignored by them both.
Ravard, recovering, raised the dipper in salute. “So, you give me water now, ’n’ kill me later?” He drank again, draining the vessel.
Jasper took it to refill, then gave it back to him. “What do you want, Mica? I doubt that there’s a man alive who will follow you as tribemaster now.”
“I will,” Guyden said suddenly. He pulled himself to his feet. “I’ll follow you.”
“Sit down!” Jasper growled at him, waving his sword in his direction. “Otherwise I’ll stuff water down your throat.”
Guyden sat down abruptly—but only after Ravard made a gesture for him to do so.
“Give me back my pede,” Ravard said, “water, food, my weapons. And I’ll leave.”
“To do what?”
“What you’ve all said—it’s true, isn’t it? It’s all over? You’ve won.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t pity me. I couldn’t bear that.”
Jasper shrugged. “All right, but please don’t ask me to kill you. I’m not going to live with that for the rest of my life.”
“If what you say is true, about the battle…”
“It is.”
Ravard’s gaze flickered briefly to the door Ryka had used. “I—I lost everything I ever cared about t’night. I’m despised by the people I wanted t’love. I’ve no plans t’upset your world. Not any more.” He swallowed. “I believed in something, and it came t’nothing. I tried t’make it happen, but I know now it’s not going t’be. You’re too strong for me, for us. You either got t’kill me and Islar or let us go. Your choice, littl’un.’ He looked across at Guyden. “Are you all right, lad?”
The youth nodded, but there was fear lurking at the back of his eyes.
Jasper asked quietly, “If I let you go, then what?”
The reply was a long time coming.
“There’s no going back, is there?” Ravard may have phrased the words as a question, but both of them knew it wasn’t. It was a truth. “So… let’s say I’ll ride out into the unknown. A wanderer. A hunter. A fossicker of gems, perhaps. And see where it all ends for me.” He shrugged. “I really don’t care.”
“I’ll ride with you,” Guyden said.
Ravard smiled faintly. “Two pedes,” he told his brother.
Jasper shook his head. “I can’t set you free to roam the Red Quarter, Mica.”
“Understood. There are other parts of the world.”
“I can have men escort you to the coast. There are lands enough on the other side of the Giving Sea—”
“No. I’m not a man for soft, water-filled city dwellers and a roof over my head. I’ll go north.”
The Burning Sand-Sea. “That’s certain death.”
“Been there, have you?” he mocked. “I’ll take my chances.”
They stared at each other.
Then Jasper nodded. “Don’t ever come back, Mica. I can’t vouch for what would happen if you did.”
Ravard stood, still groggy, and walked over to Guyden. The young warrior scrambled to his feet, his eyes shining with a mixture of admiration and resolution. Ravard draped an arm around his shoulders to support himself. “Shale, right now I think I need t’sleep. If you’ve more natter, can we make it later?”
Jasper nodded. In his heart, he didn’t think he had anything to say. Not any more.
Ryka let the canvas door close behind her. Kaneth was lying with Kedri, the child’s head supported in the crook of his good arm. He’d wound a makeshift bandage around the biceps of the other.
“He’s asleep,” he said. He edged out from under his son and stood. “Gods, Ryka—I was terrified I’d lost you. Both of you. Are you really all right? I rode back feeling your pain and despair. And then—sweet water, Ryka, my touch on you was all wrong. I thought you were dying!”
“I was unconscious.”
The ache in him: it seared her senses. She came to stand within the circle of his arms and for a long moment they didn’t move. Her chest tightened under the weight of her love. She was the first to speak. “You should get all those cuts seen to properly.”
His lips brushed her hair. “So should you. I have to go now and straighten out the mess outside. So many people are dead, Ry. And they weren’t armsmen.”
“I didn’t feel them coming. It happened on my watch.” She started to sketch the details of how Ravard had smuggled himself and his men inside the valley.
He placed a finger over her lips. “We do our best. That’s all we can ever hope for. Our best, and it will never be perfect.” He touched her cheek in understanding, in love. “Lie down and wait for the healer. You’ll feel better with your arm in a sling, and a pain draught. You have blood on your hair—did you hit your head?”
“I have a colossal headache.”
“Make sure you tell the healer that. I have to make certain all is well outside. Stay here with Kedri, while I check.” He looked back at the sleeping boy and shook his head in profound wonder. “We have a lot of things to discuss about that little lad.”
Kedri looked so small and normal, lying there. He’d found his thumb and was sucking it. “What are we going to do?” she whispered. “Not even stormlords can do what he did.”
“I think—be grateful. And watch him very, very carefully for the next few years.” He gave a lopsided smile. “We will have our hands full, methinks.”
About sunset, the remainder of the army they had left behind returned. Bloodied, weary, many of them wounded or carrying their dead—but victorious. In the lead was Vara, still alive, utterly triumphant, grinning to display the gaps in her yellowing teeth.
“Watergatherer won’t be bothering us again,” she said. Kaneth helped her clamber down to the ground. If he hadn’t supported her, she would have fallen. She felt frail and tiny in his grip, yet when she poked him with her bony finger, she still had the power to make him wince. “I’m going home to Scarmaker,” she said. “My dune is going to be the first one to have a woman sandmaster!”
He grinned back at her.
“What happened here?” she asked.
He was about to tell her when another pede was ridden past and he saw Cleve’s body strapped across the last of the segments.
“Ah, yes,” she said. “Died well, in the end. Leading the army. Had my doubts, I did, but he deserves a hero’s burial in the sands.” She fixed Kaneth with a look as sharp as a spear tip. “No doubt about it now, Kher. You’re the heir to my Makdim. You’re sandmaster of all the dunes. Heard people calling you that new word after what happened yesterday: Dunemaster. Dunemaster Uthardim of the Red Quarter. The man who commands all dune gods to do his bidding. No going home now, Scarperman!”
She straightened and hobbled away to her tent leaning on the arm of her driver, her wheezing laughter audible even above the wails of grief from those discovering loved ones returning lifeless across the back of a pede.
Kaneth turned—and saw Ryka standing watching him from the veranda of their tent, her arm in a sling and with Kedri clinging to her trousers. The boy laughed and waved to him.
Why would I want to return, Vara? I have everything I want right here… even a budding cloudmaster.
He didn’t even want to think about the trouble his son was going to give them on his way to manhood.
Two days later, at dawn, Jasper climbed the Great Knob to watch his brother leave. He’d given the pede, Chert, back to Mica, bestowed another mount on Guyden-Islar and allowed them to take one of the cleanskin packpedes they had brought to God’s Pellets. It carried panniers packed with plentiful supplies and water for their journey. He’d said goodbye, with no great hope that either of them would survive. No one had ever crossed the Burning Sand-Sea and returned.
“You always were a good littl’un, Shale,” Mica had said as he’d
mounted up, a momentary flash of satisfaction on his face as he noted which pede had been brought for him. But he hadn’t hugged his brother, or said any words of love, and neither had Jasper. Love was too long in the past to be resurrected.
Instead the next words were all Ravard’s, not Mica’s. “Look after the dunes, Lord Jasper. Don’t let that false Uthardim turn them into another Scarpen midden heap. This should always be a place where people are free to wander.”
“It will be. D’you ever remember Wash Drybone Settle? I’m going back there to live. I’ll make it better, I swear, all of it.” He knew Mica would know what he meant. A better place for boys to grow up, a place where children didn’t have to scrounge for their water, or fear their parents would sell them—one way or another—to a passing caravan.
And now, as he watched Mica turn his pede north towards the Burning Sand-Sea and pass beyond the world they knew, he felt hollow, bereft anew of something long since gone.
I wonder if you think to kill yourself, Mica. Well, there are ways a stormlord can make sure two men and their pedes don’t die of thirst, even crossing a burning desert. Whether you want it or not.
But then there was a limit too, and he had no idea how far the Burning Sand-Sea extended. He reconciled himself to never knowing if his brother survived.
Goodbye, Mica Flint. Remember me sometimes, just as I’ll remember you the way you once were.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Scarpen Quarter
Breccia City, Level Five
Breccia Hall, Level Two
“I’m ravenous.” Terelle’s head emerged from a tangle of bedding, part of which appeared to be on the floor, and the rest wound around her legs.
“I thought I took care of that last night,” Jasper said. He sounded smug.
If a pillow had been within reach, she would have flung it at him.
He’d arrived back in Breccia the night before. Alive. In one piece. Rubric was safe too, and the Red Quarter would eventually settle down under the rule of Kaneth and Ryka. Mica was gone from his life and Ravard had gone from the dunes.
