The Last Stormlord s-1

by Glenda Larke

  "I saw the notice on the door," one of the handmaidens piped up. "It said it was done by order of Highlord Taquar."

  "There was a man standing guard outside," Vivie added. "He wore a blue uniform I haven't seen before."

  Opal swore. "That is ridiculous. Where are we going to bathe? Where will our laundress wash the linens and clothes? We'd have to go right to the other side of the level! Garri, go to Reeve Bevran and find out what is going on, and all you girls, go back inside. Your skins will blemish if you stand around in the sun like this."

  As the girls began to disperse, Garri pointedly rubbed his knee and cleared his throat. More than forty days had passed since the night Donnick had died, but he still complained he could not walk up and down steps without pain.

  Opal pursed her lips. "Oh very well." She glanced around and caught Terelle's eye. "Child, you go. Ask Reeve Bevran to explain what is going on. And don't forget to wear a palmubra. I don't want a dark face to lower your first-night price. Scarpen men prefer pale girls, and don't you forget it." She turned back to Garri. "I don't know what to do with you. If your joints are so bad you can't do your job, then why should I be paying you tokens? Tell me that."

  Garri glared at his employer. "Because I'm the only person in this establishment who knows a troublemaker when one comes to the gate and who remembers every troublemaker who ever came to the gate. And when are you going to get a replacement for Donnick, eh? Tell me that!" Terelle grabbed up a hat and left the snuggery without hearing Opal's reply. Arguments between her and Garri were legion and she had no wish to hear another.

  As the doorman at the Cistern Chambers opened the gate to Terelle, he was already saying the words to deny her entry. "The reeve is not seeing anybody-" Then he saw he was addressing Terelle and said ungraciously, "Oh, it's you. You've come to play with Felissa, I suppose. She's upstairs in the house."

  Terelle hung up her palmubra and headed to the door that led to the reeve's house adjoining the chambers. Fortunately for her errand, just at that moment Bevran came out of the entrance to the Cistern Chambers and saw her. "Ah, Terelle. It's only you. Come to see Felissa?"

  "No, Reeve. Not really. Madam Opal sent me. She wants to know why the women's baths are closed."

  He sighed and it seemed to Terelle that his shoulders slumped in sympathy with the sound. "Everyone has been hounding me about the same thing." He gave a reluctant smile. "You are the only one clever enough to get in. Tell Madam Opal that all baths below the tenth level are closed till further notice, on the orders of Seneschal Harkel, in the name of Highlord Taquar."

  Terelle blinked, astonished. "All?"

  He nodded.

  "But why?"

  "To conserve water."

  "We can't bathe?"

  "Not unless you use your normal water supply, no."

  She thought about that, frowning. "But that's silly. Rinse water from the baths is sold to the livery for the pedes; it's not wasted. Soapy water is used to wash clothes. And then it's resold. That's what I was told, anyway."

  "Yes, to the smiths and the stone polishers and the metalworkers, for use in their trades. I know. But some is lost each time, too. Scarcleft must reduce that waste now, because there is not enough water coming in from the mother cistern. Bathing and washing clothes are not deemed essential. It is a wise decision."

  "But the upper levels still have their bath houses. What's so special about uplevellers?"

  He gave a slight smile. "Ah, still the Terelle who thinks that life should be fair and wants to argue the case!" He reached out and tilted her chin up. "Don't ever lose those illusions, child. Hold on to those dreams." He turned her around to face the gate. "Now go and tell Opal what I have just told you."

  "Who are those men in the blue tunics?" she asked.

  "They are called enforcers. It is their job to see that all the new water laws are obeyed. Especially as the highlord is away for some time."

  "Highlord Taquar? Is he? Why?"

  "Gone looking for new stormlords in the Gibber, or so I heard. That's the wind-whisper, anyway. The seneschal, Harkel Tallyman, manages Scarcleft now, backed by the enforcers. And there's the highlord's rainlords as well, of course, to help at the House of the Dead and to check on water matters. Oh, you'd better tell Opal there's a reward offered to anyone who turns in water-wasters to the enforcers. You snuggery girls need to take care."

  Terelle hesitated on the doorstep, remembering the clamour in the snuggery courtyard. "Everyone is going to be very angry about the new law," she said.

  She looked back to meet his eyes, and knew he thought the remark impertinent. She turned away so he wouldn't see her flush.

  It's true, though, she thought stubbornly. People will be angry-and they will blame the reeves. The days flew by, too fast for Terelle. Each one brought her closer to her first bleeding, yet did not seem to offer her a way out of the snuggery. Her evenings were a torment spent trying to evade the attention of men who expressed an interest in her first-night.

  Almost a full year after Donnick's death, and not long after her thirteenth birthday, she found out exactly where Arta Amethyst the dancer lived: the tenth level, a prestigious address for someone not from one of the better-known families. Terelle had never been as high as that in the city, but she was determined to see the arta if she could.

  She chose her time carefully, selecting early morning before most of the snuggery was awake. She took all the tokens she had, which were pitifully few when she counted them, and put on her best tunic, of mauve-dyed cloth with embroidery around the neck, and matching leggings. A swathe of purple silk tied with a bow at the back belted the outfit. Opal had been paying much more attention to what Terelle had been wearing lately and had started to replace her drab brown clothing with more expensive garments. Terelle didn't like to think about why.

  She left the snuggery unseen, via the back delivery gate. It was too early to knock on Amethyst's door, so she ambled from level to level, enjoying the chance to look about. She soon realised how little she knew about life outside the snuggery walls. She'd had no idea, for example, that on the twenty-seventh level there was a salt market where many sellers were 'Basters from the White Quarter, dressed in their strange garments adorned with mirrors. Or that on the twenty-third level, inns and snuggeries were used exclusively by traders from outside the Scarpen Quarter. Or that Level Eighteen had streets consisting entirely of jewellery shops. Or, that from Level Fifteen upwards children went to temple schools run by waterpriests. Or that on Level Fourteen there was an outdoor market in a square where it was possible to buy goods from across the Giving Sea, things she'd never dreamed existed. She lingered there, fascinated by the oddly dressed men who sold everything from strange foods to board-books. When they spoke, their accents were so thick she could scarcely understand. They came from lands with names like the ringing of wind chimes.

  One of them, a young man with a beard and gingery hair-both attributes proclaiming his origins outside of the Quartern-delighted in teasing her when she stopped to look at his goods. He was selling necklaces and bracelets and rings and she thought them the most beautiful things she had ever seen.

  He called her "lovely lass" and bantered with her, trying to entice her into buying.

  "What are they made of?" she asked.

  "Why, little love, they is corals, black 'n' red 'n' white corals o' the sea. Things that grow in the sea 'n' leave these lovely skel'tons behind when they die. And sure 'tis a lovely thing to be gracing a neck as long 'n' smooth as yours, my sweetling."

  "I've never seen the sea," she said wistfully. "Is it as beautiful as they say? Does it go on forever? Is it really made all of salt water?"

  "Lovely? Sure! Go on forever? Why, not so! Else how could I live on the other side of it? And yea, 'tis salt all right. Too salt for the drinking of."

  "They say there are lands across the sea where plants grow without being watered. Is that true? Do you live in a place like that?"

  "Sure I do! There's g
rass and trees and bushes and no one ever waters them except the sweet God in heaven. Ah, lass, it's not a dust hole like your land here, where a decent man finds it hard to get a drink of water, even. And where is it you're from, my precious?"

  "From a snuggery on the thirty-second level."

  The merch in the stall next door guffawed. "A snuggery, eh? Would have thought you a little young for that trade, girl!" He turned to the coral seller and added, "Watch it, lad, she lives in a whorehouse. She'll have the pants off yer before yer say yer name."

  The first man looked revolted.

  Terelle reddened in humiliation and turned away. She would not be a whore. She wouldn't.

  She hurried upwards, stopped now on every level by an enforcer asking what she was doing there, as if the higher one went, the stricter the enforcement of rules. It was a further humiliation to realise how easily they recognised her as being from a lower level. Perhaps her clothes betrayed her; the weave of her tunic was coarse compared with the clothing she saw around her. Fortunately, her explanation-that she had a message for Arta Amethyst the dancer about a new student for her classes-was accepted, and each time they sent her on her way, with a stern warning not to linger.

  The way they looked at her, as if she was grubby and worthy only of contempt, brought back memories better forgotten: her stepmother Mauna, Vivie's mother, looking her up and down and saying, "Well, not sure anyone would want to buy a water-waster, but we don't want a useless rag like you in this house soakin' up our water, that's f'sure. You were born to a caravan whore, and it's a whore you should be." The words had cut deep, though not as deep as her own father's acquiescence. Vivie had wanted to leave the settle, but Terelle hadn't, and she'd pleaded with her father to let her stay. "Sell her as well," he'd told his wife. "Don't mind if Vivie wants to stay, but I've never been sure I fathered this one anyway." Terelle may have forgotten much of her early life in the Gibber, but she had never forgotten those words.

  Useless. Whore. Water-waster. Never been sure I fathered her anyway.

  And now, fuelled by rage, her own resolution: I will not be a whore.

  She would never give up. If Yagon hadn't sired her, then good. She didn't want to be the daughter of a man who would sell his children. She blinked back tears, those unwelcome water-wasting tears, and continued on her way.

  It wasn't as easy to see Amethyst as she had hoped. The steward of the dancer's house opened the door in answer to her pull on the bell, but refused her entry. "The arta is not in need of new students." A flat, uninterested remark uttered in bored tones.

  But Terelle had come too far to turn back. Quickly she put her foot in the door, a strategy she had seen executed often enough by troublemakers at the snuggery. "Then I will dance in the street outside the door till Arta Amethyst comes to see," she said. "It will take only a few moments. If she says I am not good enough, I will say thanks and leave quietly."

  The steward was silent for a moment while he leaned forward and peered at her in myopic appraisal. Terelle's dislike of him was instant. His gaze lingered around the level of her breasts. He was short and plump, with a round protruding stomach that started not far under his chin and a small thick-lipped mouth now pursed in disapproval. Sweat trickled down his face to pool in the folds of his neck. "Wait here," he said finally and eased her foot out of the door with his own. "I'll ask."

  He was gone so long she thought he wasn't coming back, but when the door opened again, it was to let her in. "The arta has very charitably given you some of her precious time. This way."

  He laboured upstairs, breathing noisily, while she trailed in his wake. He smelled, a sourish smell of un-washed armpits and greasy hair. At the top he had to catch his breath before ushering her into a large room with a smoothly tiled floor. At one end of the room a dancer stood dressed in her practice clothes. Standing alongside her there was another woman who held a dance flute.

  Amethyst had been famous for many years, but Terelle hadn't considered what that must mean: the dancer was no longer youthful. Even though there was a suppleness about her still-her body moved like one much younger-it was a shock to see from her lined face that she must have been forty or more.

  Terelle went down on one knee, acknowledging her reverence of Scarcleft's greatest dancer. Amethyst looked her up and down without moving. Then she said, addressing the steward, "You may go, Jomat. Come back in a quarter of a sandglass run. Get up, child. Where are you from?"

  "Madam Opal's snuggery. On the thirty-second. But I don't want to be a handmaiden. I want to be a dancer."

  Amethyst digested that, inclining her head to acknowledge that in those few words Terelle had told her all she needed to know. She indicated the flautist. "What music do you want Meriam here to play?"

  "Loskin's 'Desert Wind.' " She had designed a short dance to fit that music. The routine incorporated many of the most difficult steps and contained all that Amethyst needed to see in order to judge her standard. She had been prepared to dance without music, and it was a relief to know that would not be necessary.

  Amethyst nodded to the woman and waved her hand at the centre of the room. "Your chance, child."

  Hurriedly Terelle bunched up her tunic under the belt to shorten the skirt and give her more freedom of movement. Her voice wavered as she said, "I have called this dance 'Born Waterless.' "

  Her heart pounded. What if she stumbled?

  Don't think about failing, you idiot. You can do this.

  The woman lifted her flute and Terelle blotted out everything but the sound. Slowly she began to dance.

  The early passages of the music were written to echo the peace and beauty of a windless desert. Terelle turned the tune into movement that captured-or so she hoped-the early life of a carefree child, still too young to realise what lay ahead. The first toddling steps, the smiles, the unconscious grace of the very young. As the music changed, to signify the first gusts of wind and flurries of sand and to offer a warning of what might follow, Terelle changed the toddler into a growing child. The infant grace became the uncertain movements of a girl finding out that the world could be cruel and unfair, of a girl who sometimes thirsted. As the music built to the crescendo of a full desert storm, the girl became a young maiden, rebellious and thirsty, a cunning thief of water. Her steps became more intricate, full of passion and a love of life, interwoven with rage at life's unfairness.

  Gradually the desert storm faded, and so did the young woman, dying of thirst and despair as she yearned for something she could never have: the right to water. When the tune returned to the beauty of the stilled desert, Terelle's movements reflected her last vision of hope as she glimpsed an afterlife where thirst and inequality had no place.

  At the end of the piece, she unrolled from her crouch on the floor and raised her eyes to meet Amethyst's-and was unable to read the expression there. It wasn't that the dancer's face lacked expression; rather that it held too much.

  "Who taught you that dance?" she asked eventually.

  "No one. I mean, I made it up."

  "I see. Were you born waterless?"

  Terelle nodded.

  "Ah." Amethyst took a deep breath. "I could take you in. I could teach you, if you had the money to pay me, which I think you have not. But I would be wasting my time and your money."

  Terelle felt the shock of her disappointment as a physical blow, snatching her breath away. No. Oh no.

  "True, your dancing is good. You have been well taught, for a snuggery girl. But you must realise that Scarcleft doesn't support too many full-time dancers. Most dancers earn the bulk of their income some other way; usually through a snuggery or a personal financial arrangement with a protector. As whores, if you like. It is as good a word as any. To earn enough as a dancer to support yourself independently, you would have to be more than just good. You would have to be special. You are not special."

  The words battered her hope. You are not special. Good wasn't good enough. And there was that word again: whore.


  "I'm only thirteen," she said, and knew immediately that it was the wrong thing to say. She may have been a child in years, but being childish was a luxury she could not afford.

  Amethyst shrugged. "You will be better when you are older, of course. But you will never have the-the shining edge that makes a solo dancer. That indefinable something. It has nothing to do with looks, nothing to do with training. It is more than that. It is something you are either born with, or not. You were not."

  Terelle wanted to cry. She wanted to protest. She wanted to beg.

  She did none of those things. Instead she pulled her tunic down and retied her sash. "I'm sorry to have wasted your time, Arta."

  "Oh, but you did not waste my time, child. Not at all. Wait, I want to show you something. Meriam, play the same tune again."

  The flautist looked surprised but lifted her instrument to her lips. To Terelle's amazement, Amethyst started to dance, the same dance she had just been shown. She had remembered every step in its correct sequence, every nuance. Terelle watched spellbound. Every move was exactly how Terelle had envisioned it should be done. "Oh," she said when the dance was finished, "that was… beautiful. I could never have danced it like that."

  "No. But you wrote it that way." Amethyst came across the floor and took her by the shoulders. "You have been looking in the wrong direction, child, chasing water when you can make the vessel."

  "I-I don't understand."

  "You are not a performer of dance; you are a creator. That is where your skill lies."

  Terelle considered that. She had always thought that a performer was a creator, but she was not going to argue the point with Amethyst. "I'm not sure how that can help," she said finally.

  "Neither am I, exactly. The problem is that there is not much call for new dances. I will buy one piece from you every quarter, though. A dance of about the same length for five tokens."

  Terelle drew in a sharp breath. Enough water for five days just for a short dance! "That's… wonderful," she said at last.