by Glenda Larke
She felt the color rush from her face.
"There's nothing nice about what's going to happen here. There's nothing nice about what they'll do to us if they win."
"No," she whispered, "I know." She reached out and took his hand in hers. For a moment they lay in silence, neither of them looking at the other. "What about taking all the water in the cistern?" she asked. "You can do that, can't you? Leave them to thirst or surrender or retreat."
"Wouldn't work. The cisterns just keep filling up from the mother wells, through pipes deep in the hillside."
"And you're saying we're within their zigger range."
"Yes. They release a few every now and then. No pattern to it. Hard to detect them. People are dying."
Something in her chest tightened at the thought.
"They are testing our courage, to see how long we can remain here without flinching." He sighed. "At least they won't send them our way at night anymore. They learned their lesson there. But we are at an impasse now: they can't use the drywash trail to Scarcleft and we can't take the fight to them unless we are prepared to lose a lot of bladesmen-there's no cover on the slope. The moment we come down over this rim, they'll throw every zigger they own at us. I could gamble they don't have many left, I suppose. If we come down through the wash, the moment we emerge at the base, they will be waiting for us. We'd walk into a wall of spears-" He stopped and swallowed. "I find it hard to ask men to die, Terelle."
"And yet you ask me to kill them."
"Yes." He stared at her, expressionless. "You, and everyone here. This is an army. This is a war."
She met his stare, but in the end it was her gaze that fell. His message was clear. No exceptions.
He slid back down from the crest and dusted off his clothes. "Let's go back to the camp."
"Why not just stay here, blocking the way?" she asked as they walked back to the tents. She had to lengthen her stride to keep up, realizing once again how tall he had become. "Sooner or later he'll give up. Let him go, Jasper. All the way back to the Red Quarter. After all, wasn't that what he was going to do as part of his bargain with Taquar?"
"The game has changed now. He knows who challenges him. He knows I can't let him go back to the Red Quarter. He would be a spear in our side, just waiting for his next chance. He would conquer the White Quarter and raid the Gibber Quarter. Besides, he needs to kill me. I can control the water of the whole of the Red Quarter… how can he let me live? I can stop him getting random rain, and he knows it. He knows Taquar has lost control of me. If I don't go down that slope after him, he'll just wait until he has the opportunity to attack us; if not here and now, then later."
"What about waiting to see if Vara Redmane turns up?"
"She is more likely to attack those warriors he left at home. It always was a long shot, and I'm guessing she won't care about us. I reckon she'll try and take back her own dune, the Scarmaker, while his men are here."
"Will his men be short of food?"
"They are hunters, Terelle. And these ranges are full of mountain goats and deer. Truth is, I don't know what to do."
"Sneak down the slope at night?"
"You can't sneak on scree. And if we went down the wash, it would have to be in a narrow column. We'd be killed too easily emerging at the foot. We don't have anywhere near the training or experience his men have. We may have killed a few hundred the other night with our trickery and rainlord power, but they still outnumber us by far. Waterless hell, Terelle, I'd beg you to draw Davim dead, if you knew what he looked like."
"Archers?" She was desperate.
"We do have a couple of hunters who can pierce a windhover at a couple of hundred paces-but they have less than fifty arrows between them."
She wasn't surprised. Bows and arrows were rare throughout the Quartern because there were no suitable trees to make them, and the taboo against cutting down a tree was formidable anyway.
They reached the camp and Jasper flung himself down on the mat under the shade of one of the awnings. A bladesman came to offer him a drink, but he waved the man away irritably and said, "Davim has a weapon that could bring me to my knees like nothing else could."
She waited for him to explain, but he said nothing. The bleak look in his eyes told her what he meant. She'd seen that look before. "Oh, blighted eyes. Mica. You think Mica might be down there?"
He shook his head. "I don't think so, I know it."
She stared at him, her stomach churning in shock. "How?" she asked in a whisper.
"I can sense his water, of course. Oh, he's changed, and I can't sense him as well as I can sense you, but I am aware of his presence. Of his water. That's really the only way I can describe it."
"But they are tribesmen in that camp, not slaves," she protested. "They wouldn't bring slaves, surely, to fight a war-they couldn't trust them."
"He's not a slave. He's one of their warriors."
"You can't know that."
"He was playing a game of chala, down there, in front of the cistern, with other Reduner warriors."
Her eyes went wide with shock. "You mean with the heads? He-? Oh, Shale."
"I don't suppose Davim could be sure I was watching, but it was a message for me anyway. He was hoping I'd recognize Mica. I didn't, of course, not his face; he was too far away and he's a man now, anyway. I couldn't even work out which of them he was, but he was there. I-I recognized his water, moving back and forth." He picked aimlessly at the mat under his feet. "Funny, when I was a boy in the Gibber, I didn't realize I was beginning even then to know people by their water, but I was. And his-the feel of it, rather than the shape-it came back to me."
She continued to stare in horror. He said it with an unemotional flatness, as if it didn't matter. But oh, it did. She knew the last time he had seen his brother they had stood side by side and watched as Sandmaster Davim played chala with their baby sister.
"You think-you think he did it deliberately? Mica? To hurt you?"
"I hope not. I would not have thought he would become so-so cruel. But Davim? He knew there was a good chance I was watching. He sent me this, through a messenger under a wrapped sword of truce, the same day." He fumbled in his belt pouch and extracted a piece of parchment which he handed to her.
She unfolded it and read the words. They were written in a rounded childish hand, in ungrammatical Quartern tongue. To Stormlord Shale Flint. Come down. Mica Flint go up. Same time. Pass each by. Then no war. Reduner go dunes. You stay Scarpen. So swear Sandmaster Davim, Dune Watergatherer.
You not come, Mica die.
Terelle shook her head as she read it. "That's, that's vicious!" She raised her eyes to look at him. "You can't do that. And he knows you won't. You go to him, he'd kill you and then we'd all die of thirst."
"And the Reduners would emerge as the survivors. Yes, I know."
"He's just trying to hurt you by tormenting you."
"He's succeeding."
"You said Mica wasn't a slave. Davim's not going to kill one of his men just to spite you."
"Of course he would, if he wanted. He killed my sister to teach me a lesson. The people of Wash Drybone are just so many Gibber sand-leeches to Davim, to be slaughtered or enslaved. He's never thought of any of them as people."
She was silent, unable to think of anything to say to help him. She felt cold all over. If Jasper led an attack down the slope, he could end up killing his brother.
He stood up and began striding about under the shelter, crumpling his palmubra, fiddling with a pede prod, refusing to look at her.
Terelle felt something rip inside her; what had once been a certainty tore from its shelter to become doubt. This is what we are fighting… a sandmaster who deals in humans as if they were salt blocks, to be bought and sold and used-or discarded or destroyed at a whim. A whole land is at stake. We have to do something, anything at all to stop this…
Aloud she said, "How could Mica go from slavery to being a Reduner warrior?"
He shrugged. "He
proved his loyalty. Somehow. I don't want to think how." He paused before continuing.
"When I was younger, I had a daydream. The same dream, all those years I was Taquar's prisoner, and all the time I was in Breccia, too. I was going to rescue Mica. I believed Mica would never become one of the Reduners, he was too kind, too gentle. I knew he must be a slave, and one day I could save him, and we'd be together again. But now I know he's down there, I remember other things. How he didn't always stand up for me against our father. That he often took the easiest way out. That he kept silent. And I've thought maybe the easiest thing for a slave to do is to join his master."
His voice garnered roughness with every word. "If that happened, how can I condemn him for it? He was only fourteen or fifteen when he was taken. It doesn't make me love him any less. It just makes it so much harder for me to… fight them."
Tears came into her eyes. Sandblast it, she thought. She wanted to ease his hurt, but had no idea how. Inside her, doubt corroded the validity of her past decisions, making them seem childlike.
He sat down next to her again, arms resting on his bent knees, hands fiddling with his palmubra. "Terelle, I don't know how I can win this one alone. I know you don't like using your waterpainting power, but I don't see we have any choice. And I'm not talking just about killing ziggers."
She shied away from consideration of the ruins of her moral certitude, and spoke instead of practicalities, of what was-in theory-possible, or otherwise. "I don't know what to suggest. If I've learned anything, it is that I have to be very careful. I have to provide the means to make the painting real-otherwise the water-power may use a method I don't like. For example, if I painted all those Reduners lying on the ground down there dead, without also making it clear what killed them, the reality might be some catastrophe horrible enough to kill us all." Like an earthquake.
He nodded. "I understand. The lanterns were the means to destroy the ziggers, and so those paintings worked exactly as they should."
"And if we paint something that is simply impossible, then it won't happen."
"So it's no use painting my fifteen hundred men killing all of theirs in battle? It's just too remote a possibility-unless the painting also supplies the means."
"Even if I would do it, I don't think I could," she said. "I'd need to sketch an approximation of every one of your men. The Reduners wouldn't be so bad-wrapped up like that they all look alike." She frowned suddenly, deep in thought. "I wonder if we are looking at it from the wrong direction."
"What do you mean?"
"Maybe we need to be more-more creative. Think of new ways to-to-win." To kill.
Before she could tease the idea out into a more coherent thought, they were interrupted. An Alabaster man came riding down to the camp from the rim. Sunlight twinkled off his mirrors, blinding Terelle. She raised an arm to shield her eyes as Jasper leaped up and the rider cried out, "More ziggers! Help!"
The pede rattled to a halt, segments compacting. Jasper held out an arm to the Alabaster, and in one fluid movement the man had pulled Jasper up behind him and the pede was prodded into motion again. Terelle remained seated, taken aback by the suddenness of their departure.
Her thoughts jumbled, remembering dancing lights in Russet's rooms, remembering the glare of salt.
A glimmer of a smile began to play around the corner of her lips. "Now that's an idea," she said.
"What is?" a voice asked behind her, honeyed tones laced with something much more nastily pungent.
She jumped to her feet. "Lord Laisa. Just a-a thought. About how to fight Reduners."
Laisa came a step closer. "I am still trying to puzzle you out. Tell me, were you ever tested for water sensitivity?"
"Hardly necessary. Believe me, a snuggery madam would have spotted a water sensitive and sold her to the rainlords in less time than it takes a single sand grain to run through a sandglass." Which was true enough.
"Doubtless." Laisa's mockery was overt, nasty. "Yet there is something about you that troubles me." She shrugged. "I'm sure I've seen you before. You are certainly out of your true element here. Enjoy it while you may; it will not last."
She turned and walked away in her usual swirl of silks and subtle perfumes. How the salted damn does she do that? Even here! The best of clothes and the best of smells. The bitch.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Scarpen Quarter Warthago Range "So, are you going to marry her?"
Terelle stood facing Jasper in the privacy of his tent. It was dark outside, but a lamp illuminated the interior. She wasn't sure what had prompted her to ask that question right then. They both had so many more important things on their minds. Stupid. I'm such a child. I still want the world to be fair and just and right. But she wasn't able to help herself. Seeing him and Senya together like that, talking, laughing even-it had hurt her, a deeply visceral hurt that had no sense to it; it just was.
He said, level-voiced and apparently calm, "I'm sorry, Terelle. I can't lie to you about this. I won't marry Senya against her will, but I have no high expectations she will refuse when the alternative is a lower social position for her, less comfort, fewer servants."
She was silent, hearing part of what she wanted to hear: he knew exactly how shallow Senya was. He knew exactly what sort of woman she was becoming. And also hearing something she hadn't wanted to hear at all: he was still going to marry her.
"There's only one woman I want to marry," he said at last. "And she's not Senya. But I can't ask her because people demand I have stormlord children. If I don't, future generations will die."
Terelle stared at him, eyes widening as she finally understood. "Is that what all this is about?"
He was confused. "Pardon?"
"I thought it was some sort of silly Scarpen stormlord custom. 'Don't marry beneath you. Marry some upleveler rainlord's daughter because she'll make a regal consort. You can't possibly marry an outlander whore who was raised in a Scarpen snuggery.' I thought you were drinking at that scummy trough. And all the time it was just so you can father the right kind of children?"
He exclaimed, wounded, "Terelle, I don't give a sand-flea's piddle about uplevelers' daughters! I'm a Gibber brat from the poorest village on the Gibber Plains, spindevil take it! I care about you. Surely you know that."
"You haven't exactly said it-"
He was really riled now, and shouted at her. "Well, I'm saying it now: I love you! Is that plain enough?"
The silence following was as deep as the velvet darkness of a water tunnel. They both stood still, rendered immobile by the passion behind his words. "Oh," she said weakly.
"Well?"
"Well what? You've just this minute told me the way you feel means nothing!"
The look he gave her almost broke her heart. "It means everything," he whispered. "Everything. But I can't do anything about it."
"You idiot, of course you can, if we really want to marry each other! What's Senya's pedigree, compared to mine?"
Once again he was bewildered. "Huh?"
"How many stormlords and rainlords are there in her ancestry? One stormlord grandparent. Rainlords for parents. But me-from what Russet told me, my whole family on his side are either stormlords or waterpainters. That's stormlords, not rainlords. He doesn't use that word, but that's what they are. Water-powerful, the whole lot of them, including my mother and her parents. Sounds like a better lineage than your sulky brat Senya."
"You're a waterpainter, not a rainlord or a stormlord."
"So? Russet hasn't told me nearly enough, but he did tell me the Watergivers of Khromatis, such as he was once, are just as powerful as stormlords in their own way. Anyway, I think I could do by painting much of what a stormlord does. I already do, don't I? I could do things without working through you, too. I could paint a storm cloud bringing rain to the correct part of the Warthago Range. Or to anywhere else. Unlike you, I'd have to visit every place first, to get the picture fixed in my mind, and I'd have to return there often, in case the place cha
nged, but it could be done." She hesitated. "Although I'm just not sure what the larger results would be. If I made it rain here, using my magic, how would I know the water I used didn't come from, say, someone's cistern?"
He stared at her, and for once the thoughts warring in his mind were written on his face: hope, chagrin, delight, worry.
"I've been exceptionally stupid," he said at last. "I've been torturing myself, when the answer was under my nose all the time. If there are plenty of stormlords in your family, I don't have to marry Senya, or the other rainlord girl they found in the Gibber!" He grinned, but his grin faded when he saw her face. "You-you do want to marry me, don't you?"
The expression on her face didn't change.
"Terelle, I want to marry you. Terelle Grey. Not the waterpainter, just you. But I don't have a choice. I have to marry where I have a chance to have water-talented children."
She considered him seriously. "Jasper, I know most girls marry at my age. But I'm not most people. I don't want to marry so young. I certainly don't want to be forced to have a meddle of brats just to satisfy the nation's needs for stormlords. I'd like the-the luxury of time. And anyway, I'm not sure I want to marry someone who sought solace in Senya Almandine's arms the moment my back was turned."
"Pede piss! Are you going to throw that back at me for the rest of my life?"
"Probably."
"Ah." He pondered, then said, "I'd-I'd like to think you'd be around for the rest of my life so you could. Throw it back at me, I mean. I don't know what to say about what happened with Senya. I am not going to make excuses for myself. Is it-is it enough to say I don't want it ever to happen again? Terelle, could you at least say you love me?"
She tilted her head and considered him. "Well," she said at last, "you mean more to me than anyone else I've ever met. I can't imagine ever wanting to marry anyone else. I know when I think of Senya I want to wring her neck. I know I don't want to leave you. I know I will miss you while I'm gone. I know I missed you before, and worried myself sick about you. I know when I look at you I want all kinds of things one is not supposed to talk about in public. Is that loving someone?"