The Last Stormlord

by Glenda Larke

  Further down, on the buildings of the waterless inhabitants of the city’s lowest level—the thirty-sixth—there was neither paint nor studs. Nor much greenery sprouting from rooftop pots, either. Terelle let her gaze linger for a moment on the crumbling bricks and palmleaf weave of the walls there and felt a familiar touch of fear.

  To be waterless…

  There could be no worse fate. Once it had been hers and could well be again if she didn’t order her life wisely. She had been born without water allotment, owed none by any settle or town or city, all because at the time of her birth her father had been both landless and unemployed.

  She drew a ragged breath, unbalanced even at the thought. I won’t let it happen again. Useless to rely on Madam Opal or on Vivie, and certainly useless to think of her father, almost faceless now in her memory, who had sold them both. Never again, I swear it, she told the lurking dark. But I’ll earn a living my way, not Vivie’s way.

  As she watered the last fruit tree, she kept back a finger-breadth of water in the bottom of the bucket, which she then poured into the sun pattern pressed into the clay of the flat rooftop. Her sacrifice to the Sunlord, the giver and taker of life. For a moment she knelt there in the heat of full sunlight, watching the rivulets spread outwards to fill the indentations. Greedily, the Sunlord sucked up the water.

  “Lord of the sun, help me,” she whispered, but she couldn’t frame the words to specify her wants, even as the water began to vanish. Why would the Sunlord listen to a snuggery child? He, who was so great you couldn’t even gaze at his true face as he moved across the sky? She addressed his emissary instead. After all, Gridelin the Watergiver was supposed to have once been human, until he was raised into the glory of eternal sunfire. Watergiver, intercede for me, she prayed, her eyes screwed up tight. I need to escape snuggery service.

  When she opened her eyes again, only a damp patch remained. She watched its edges contract. Like magic, she thought. People said that was proof a prayer had been heard.

  But, the coldly sensible part of her head said in return, that doesn’t mean the prayer will be answered.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Scarpen Quarter

  Scarcleft City

  Opal’s Snuggery and the Cistern Chambers, Level 32

  Terelle shifted to the shade and just in case the Sunlord withheld his aid, she schemed. Or tried to. Trouble was, nothing came to her. No sudden revelation, no miraculous idea. Her eyes watered with threatening tears. She rubbed at an eyelid, and then regarded the wetness there resentfully. No one else she knew ever shed tears when they wept. Tears only came to others when they had grit in the eye, or smoke. It was just a silly habit she had, absurdly pointless. Water wasn’t supposed to be wasted.

  A soft rhythmic drumming and tinkle of harness turned her attention to the street once more. A lone rider travelled downlevel past the snuggery, mounted on a myriapede hack, his face hidden by the brim of his hat. People in the street scattered out of his way. Nobody wanted to argue with a pede. Even the smaller hacks were taller than any man and had mouthparts as long and as sharp as scimitars.

  When Terelle stuck her head through the balustrade to see the rider better, she realised his mount was a particularly fine one: the segment scales were a burnished winered, edged with gold tassels. Two feelers, inlaid with gold wire in intricate patterns and each as long as three men lying end to end, touched the walls on either side of the street as the pede passed by. The embroidered saddle and gem-studded reins were richly ornate. The rhythmic undulations of its eighteen pairs of pointed legs—three pairs to a segment—did not miss a beat as the animal flowed down the steps. On its second segment, within reach of the rider at the front, were tied several zigger cages and a zigtube. Terelle’s heart skipped a beat.

  Ziggers…

  No, don’t remember. Don’t remember any of it. Think about something else.

  So she wondered who this Scarperman was who rode with his zigger cages so openly displayed. Ziggers were expensive to own and even more expensive to train. Yet despite his display of wealth, the rider himself was plainly dressed. The white desert tunic over loose pants gathered in at the ankle and the broad-brimmed palmubra hat woven of bab leaf were standard garb for desert riders. He wore no jewellery, nothing that drew attention to him, but the self-confident certainty with which he rode gave him an aura of power.

  Perhaps, she thought, he wasn’t a Scarperman. Perhaps he was a Reduner caravanner, travelling far from the quadrant he acknowledged as his own.

  As he passed, he looked up, enabling her to see his swarthy face. She knew then that he was no Reduner. She’d seen him once before in the street, in fact, and the warden mistress had told her who he was: Taquar Sardonyx, one of the rainlords of the Scarpen Quarter and Highlord of Scarcleft City.

  Why does he need ziggers? she wondered. As highlord, he answered to no one but the Cloudmaster, in Breccia City. As highlord, he had the power of life and death over every citizen in Scarcleft and controlled every drop of the city’s water, of her water. As a rainlord, which all highlords were, he could kill or torture with his power, without ever having to resort to ziggers. He was known to be relentless in his pursuit and punishment of water thieves. As a rainlord, he took the water from the dead.

  Like Donnick. Oh, Donnick.

  Cold grey eyes did not flicker as his gaze met hers and then moved on. There could be nothing to interest him in a child poking her head through a snuggery balustrade, but she shivered nonetheless.

  “Terelle! What are you doing out there in the sun without a hat?”

  Startled, she jumped, bumping her head on the railing. Garri the steward had come into the courtyard below and was now frowning up at her, his face pinched into a picture of long-suffering.

  “Weeding the pot plants,” she lied. “I’ve finished now.”

  “We’ve bought a tenth of water and Reeve Bevran said they would channel it an hour before dusk. That’s now, and everyone’s too busy to attend to it. Go up to the Cistern Chambers and meet him.”

  “Me?” Garri had never before shirked the supervision of the channelling of water. However, he was limping heavily as he crossed the courtyard, and then she remembered the way Rosscar had kicked him the night before.

  He stopped to stare at her, his heavy eyebrows drawn into one of his many expressions of disapproval, which were generally accompanied by a mutter under his breath such as: “Why is it I have to tell everyone everything twice?” This time it was: “Yes, you! Get up to the chambers and meet the reeve before he gets tired of waiting. And take a hat!”

  Terelle nodded and ran down the stairs into the house, pausing only to grab a palmubra from the stand by the door to the courtyard. Garri was waiting by the gate to let her out. “Remember,” he said, “one tenth, already paid for. Make withering sure the Karsts next door don’t siphon any off. Here’s the snuggery seal. Bevran will show you how to press this into the wax to seal the cistern cover afterwards.”

  Terelle hid a smile and slipped through the gate into the street. Garri had maintained an acrimonious feud with the Karst family’s steward for so long, no one remembered how it had started. She hurried up South Way to the chambers that housed the supply cistern serving their level. The gateman let her into the courtyard where Reeve Bevran was already waiting. He smiled a greeting as he raised a questioning eyebrow. “Terelle? You are coming with me? Where’s Garri?”

  “Limping,” she said.

  Bevran grinned. “For him to admit it, it must be bad.”

  She grinned back. “He didn’t say a word.”

  “Ah. And he trusts you to do this, little one?”

  “Would you cheat us, Reeve Bevran?” she asked pertly.

  He tapped her on the nose. “Mind your manners, or you’ll come to a dry end.” He gestured her inside and led the way downstairs to the water tunnel. At the entrance, he picked up a lighted lantern and said, “Take your shoes off and put on a pair of these.” He indicated a pile of rough-woven sanda
ls. “We don’t dirty the tunnel with street sandals. And keep to the walkway. We don’t tread where the water runs.”

  Her daydreams had never included the possibility that she, a Gibber-born snuggery girl, would ever tread the sanctum of a water tunnel. She gazed around in awe at the ancient brickwork, as neat now as the day it was fashioned by unknown workmen. The reeve’s oil lamp flickered and their shadows danced on the curve of walls interrupted only by a brick path built along one side of the tunnel. Only the bricks at the bottom were damp; she had expected it to be wetter.

  “I don’t see you as often as I used to,” the reeve said. “You don’t come to play with Felissa as often.”

  “I’ve got more chores now,” she said. Her regret stirred; she liked his daughter and would gladly have knocked on the Bevran gateway more often if she’d had the time.

  “Ah.” He cleared his throat in an embarrassed fashion. “Hmm. Er, Madam Opal hasn’t got you working in one of the upper chambers, has she?”

  “No. I’m not old enough.” Huckman the pedeman loomed in her thoughts. How much is your first-night price, child? How much will Opal sell you for?

  “Good.” He sounded relieved. “It is not legal for children. Remember that.”

  She was surprised at his tone and then realised with astonishment that he didn’t like the idea of her working as a handmaiden any more than she herself did. Sensing an ally, she blurted, “I don’t want to work in the upper rooms at all.”

  He stopped and turned to look at her, holding the lamp up high so that he could see her face. Once again he cleared his throat. “Oh, Terelle…”

  The regret in those words, coupled with his silence, told her more than anything Vivie had ever said. There was nothing anyone could do. Opal had watered her for five years; she was entitled to collect her dues.

  “Couldn’t the waterpriests—” she began in desperation, feeling the flutter of panic once more.

  “Bargains over water and water debts are not the affairs of priests, Terelle. Their concern is with worship of the Sunlord and his Watergiver. If they bothered themselves with petty concerns and neglected their prayers, who knows what could happen?”

  “What about rainlords, then? Don’t they have some say in water debts?”

  “Their job is to make sure that no one gets any water he is not entitled to. They would support Madam Opal. If she put you to work in the upper rooms before you reached your, um, womanhood, or if she forced you to pleasure men, you could protest, but she is entitled to have you pay off your water debt. You could work in the kitchens instead.” He paused and then added softly, “Come and play with Felissa whenever you want.”

  His unspoken words lingered: while you can.

  “Thank you.” The reply sounded small and weak in the echo of the tunnel. She blinked back treacherous tears. It wasn’t fair.

  He walked on and she followed, her thoughts rebellious. She pictured the snuggery kitchen, with its huge ovens and fireplaces, and Dauvrid the cook with his foul temper. The kitchen maid started work each day before anyone else was up; the scullery maid went to bed only when the last dish had been washed. Neither of them ever had a day off. And they worked for little more than water and their keep. No, she thought fiercely. I won’t do that, either. I won’t, I won’t. Not ever.

  “This is the first of the inlets to houses between the level-supply cistern and the snuggery,” Reeve Bevran said a moment later, and held the lantern up to show her the large metal sheet recessed into the floor of the tunnel. “Can you read the lettering on it?”

  “Bevran,” she said. “This is the cover for the inlet of your house.”

  “It is stamped with a wax seal, which tells me it has not been tampered with. When I buy water for my own family I have to get another reeve to open and re-seal the plate. When it comes to water distribution, we reeves must be above suspicion. Come, let’s go on. There are four more outlets you have to inspect before the snuggery’s: the Malachites’, the Masons’, the Karsts’, and the myriapede livery’s.”

  They stopped at each for Terelle to check the seal. When they finally arrived at the snuggery inlet, Bevran broke the seal and pulled the plate out, manoeuvring it to slip into a groove at the back of the hole.

  “There’s your snuggery cistern down there,” he said. “Take a look.”

  She peered into the hole. The glint of lamplight on water seemed a long way down.

  “Now we go back to release the water,” he said.

  “How can I be sure it won’t spill over the plate and be lost to us?”

  He smiled. “You are welcome to stay here and make sure. But believe me, the amount of water released at any one time is carefully calculated. Anything that overshoots the hole splashes against the plate and then drains back into your cistern.”

  She nodded. Simple, yet clever. “Who built them? The tunnels, I mean. We didn’t have any in the Gibber. Not that I remember, anyway.”

  “Well,” he began as they walked back, “the story goes that once upon a time, water fell from the sky just anywhere, at any time. Random rain, they called it. Sometimes there was too much water, sometimes not enough. Folk never knew where or when to plant because they never knew when the rain would come. People would die of thirst or be drowned in water.”

  “Drowned?”

  “Not able to breathe. Just as travellers sometimes choke on sand during spindevil storms. Anyway, then the Watergiver came, sent by the Sunlord himself. Some say he was a heavenly spirit, sent in the guise of a man. Others say he was just a nomad blessed with holy knowledge. One story says he got lost in the desert and walked into the sky, where the Sunlord taught him to control water and sent him back to teach us.”

  “At the temple, the priests say he was the first cloudmaster.”

  “Yes. He taught those who followed how to suck up fresh water from the salt sea to make clouds. He showed them how to bring the clouds to the Warthago Range. Forced high by the hills, they break open.”

  “And when they break, the water falls out?”

  “Yes. They call that rain. Never seen it myself. It soaks into the ground. The Watergiver showed other sensitives—who became our first stormlords and rainlords—how to build wells in the Warthago Range and bring the water from them to Breccia City by tunnel. And that was how the Time of Random Rain ended.”

  “Why not just live in the Warthago Range if that’s where the water has to fall?”

  “The best place to grow bab palms is in the good soils at the base of the escarpment, that’s why. Warthago Range is just rock and stone and rough gullies.”

  “And the other cities?”

  “They came later, one by one. Scarcleft, Qanatend, Portfillik, Portennabar…”

  “Breakaway, Denmasad and Pediment,” she finished. “The eight cities of the Scarpen Quarter.”

  “Yes. And there it stopped, because there is a limit to how much rain can fall from the sky. The cloudmaster had to water the other quarters as well, you see.” He added sadly, “In all those hundreds of years, the tunnels have supplied every city with exactly the right amount of water. Until now.”

  Terelle drew in a sharp breath. His voice was grief-filled, as if he spoke of something past and done with, gone forever. In horror she realised that he was afraid. He was a reeve, by all that was holy! One of the men and women who controlled water, and therefore life. If he was scared…

  Apprehension rippled up her spine as they came to a halt where the tunnel ended in a stone wall. Bevran said, “Behind this wall is the cistern. Water enters it from the level above.” He pointed to a metal wheel in the wall above a spout. “When I turn this, you’ll get your water.”

  “But how do you know how long to let it run?” she asked.

  He reached into an alcove near the spout and removed one of the objects stowed there. “We use one of these.” He showed her a glass timer filled with sand. Etched into the glass were numbers: 1/10. “One extra tenth,” he explained. “I leave the valve open for the e
xact time that the sand runs. These timers are all made by the Cloudmaster’s glass-smith, guaranteed accurate.” Swiftly he turned the wheel and upended the timer. Water gushed out into the tunnel. “Of course,” he continued, “it’s more complicated when it is time for the quarterly free allotments to be dispensed. Then we have to make calculations based on how many persons in each household, how old they are and whether they have water allowances anyway. All that is a decision made by a committee of reeves.”

  She thought about that, then asked, “Who decided how much a day’s free allotment was to be in the first place? The Watergiver?”

  “Maybe. Certainly that was decided a long, long time ago and as far as I know the size of a personal day jar has never altered. Just as the amount of land under irrigation can never be altered, either. ‘Each man shall have his sip and no more, lest the sky run dry,’ ” he quoted. “Any extra has to be bought, and the buyer has to explain why he needs extra.”

  She wanted to protest at the injustice done to those who had no free allowance, who were born without an entitlement because of what their parents didn’t own or didn’t do. She wanted to ask about those who lost their entitlement because of a change in their status.

  But she didn’t. She knew better. Who was she to question a representative of a highlord? She was a snuggery girl, born waterless, the lowest of the low, and lucky to be alive.

  Instead she watched the water swirl out from the supply cistern and into the darkness of the tunnel.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Scarpen Quarter

  Breccia City

  Waterhall, Level 1, and Breccia Hall, Level 2

  In the half-darkness of the vaulted waterhall, the water was black-surfaced and motionless, a mirror to the lamps lighted by the servants. Of the sixteen oblong cisterns, separated one from the other by stone walkways, twelve were full to the brim and reflected the teardrops of lamp flame.

  To Nealrith Almandine—son of Granthon, Cloudmaster of the Quartern—the smell of water was overpowering. It doused any whiff of lamp oil, or any odour of sweat or dust or perfume that might have clung to his body or clothes. He shut his eyes and let its redolence seep into him: pure, cleansing, rejuvenating. For a moment in time he allowed himself to feel the connection: his body, the content of the cisterns around him. Water to water. Life—his life—calling to the source of all life.