by Glenda Larke
Taquar halted the pede in front of the entrance and slipped down. Shale was so tired, so stiff, that he fell rather than dismounted. The rainlord had to grab his arm to stop him crashing to the ground.
"Take a good look, Shale. This is going to be your home for quite a while. Can you feel the water?"
He nodded.
"What do you think this place is?"
He thought about that. "It's got a cistern. A big 'un. There's water comin' into it all the time-and goin' out, too."
Taquar smiled in satisfaction. "It's the mother cistern for one of the Scarpen cities. A tunnel takes water from here to my city, Scarcleft."
Shale looked blank. "Tunhill?"
"Tunnel. Like an underground slot. A slot big enough to walk through."
"Like a mine adit?" Shale asked, brightening. "I seen those. There's lots of old mines near the settle."
"Exactly. Except our tunnels are round."
The rainlord unstrapped his pack and the two cages of ziggers from the back of his mount, passing the latter to Shale to carry. "You know what these are, what they can do?"
He nodded.
"Then be careful." The rainlord turned and walked to the entrance. There was no door, just a large grille across the opening. Taquar stood in front of it for a long while, not moving.
He is concentrating, Shale guessed, vaguely aware of water moving, but against a background of so much water, he could not be sure what was happening. He was astonished to see the grille rise, apparently by itself, and disappear up into the rock. It grumbled as it went, slowly, in spasmodic shifts. When it was fully open, Taquar walked inside and gestured for Shale to do the same. "Leave the ziggers on the floor near the wall," he said. He strode across the flat floor of the cavern, the pede ambling after him, to where there were several troughs. He unplugged a spigot on the cavern wall and Shale blinked as water streamed out. He stepped back uneasily. It seemed a careless way to deal with water. The pede dropped its head to drink.
"While we are here, the care of my pede is one of your chores," Taquar said. "Do you know how to groom one?"
He nodded again, still wide-eyed. Such odd jobs had earned him and his brother tokens from Reduner caravans.
"What about cupping blood from a pede for the ziggers?"
Shale nodded yet again. It was easier than talking.
"You've done it before?"
"For Reduners. They all have ziggers."
"Good. Come with me into the inner rooms." Taquar closed the spigot and went to open a door on the far side of the cavern. Shale put the ziggers down carefully and followed him through the doorway into a smaller cave.
Light filtered in from a long thin crack high overhead. Shale looked around: several raised platforms with folded-up bedding, four chairs, a table and a pot-belly stove-more items than in most homes of Wash Drybone Settle. Taquar took out his flint and tinderbox to get a flame going.
"Those are beds," Taquar said when he saw Shale staring at the platforms, "to sleep on. It's better than a pallet on the floor." He indicated a recess in the wall. "That's the deep-earth privy. You'd probably call it an outhouse."
Shale nodded, but he had a hard time containing his astonishment. All the hovels along the top of the Drybone wash had shared a single outhouse, and privies in the settle were always built outside, in the garden, not inside the house. He sniffed cautiously, but couldn't smell anything. Still, he thought it stupid to put an outhouse in the room you wanted to live in.
"When you use it," Taquar said, pausing to apply the flame to the wick of a lamp on the table, "wash properly afterwards."
Shale's eyes widened further. Wash?
Taquar didn't notice his amazement. He continued, "The door on the left opens to the storeroom. This one here"-he picked up the lamp and walked to another door on the right-"goes to the waterhall." He stepped through, beckoning Shale to follow. The sense of water was suffocating.
At first Shale couldn't see anything in the dark. Then, as his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, he saw that they were in another huge underground cavern. He'd seen such things before, below the surface of the Gibber. There was no direct opening to the outside world, and beyond the feeble light of the lamp and the light that entered through the door, there was only darkness. Close to where they stood, he could see the edge of an underground expanse of water, the surface of which was as smooth and as black as a starless sky. He gaped, overwhelmed.
Taquar gave a faint smile. "You'll get used to it, in time. Water flows into this lake from the mother wells, which are deep in the Warthago Range. The inlet pipe is over there."
He pointed. Shale could not see it in the dark, but he felt the flow.
"Over there"-Taquar pointed to the opposite side-"there's another pipe, through which water is siphoned off, to the tunnel that runs to Scarcleft. There's an overflow pipe there, too, which also runs down to the tunnel, just in case the lake level rises too high. Not that that happens these days," he added in disgust. "We in Scarcleft do our utmost to conserve water, yet are treated the same way as those cities that squander their water-wealth! I've had to adjust the siphon several times over the past year because the water entering has lessened."
"Scarcleft's a settle?" Shale asked, struggling to understand.
"Of sorts. If you were to walk to Scarcleft from here-without stopping from sunup to sundown-it would take you six days or more. And it is a very large settle, called a city." Taquar's tone implied he expected Shale to retain all this information because he wouldn't be told again. Then the rainlord reached into the darkness behind him and picked up a bucket, which he filled to the brim from the lake.
"One thing I will not tolerate, Shale, is filth. And you are a filthy child. You are going to wash, using soap, and I am going to shave your head. Then I am going to burn that smock of yours. I have several sets of clean clothes for you. You will wear them, and you will keep them clean. You will brush your hair-once it grows again-every day. You will clean your teeth every day. Every day you will use a bucket of clean water for washing. When you have finished with the water, you will pour it into the pede trough. Those are orders. Understand me?"
Shale stared at the rainlord in amazement, one part of him horrified. "Use w-water for washin' m'body?" he asked. "Every day?"
"That's right." Taquar's voice was as hard as iron, making it clear there was to be no argument. Without pausing, he went on, "Right now, you will wash, dress in clean clothes, then you will eat, and only then can you go and rest. This evening, after you have napped, we will begin work."
Shale did not dare ask what kind of work.
The twist of fear inside made him feel as if his father was still there, haunting him.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Scarpen Quarter Scarcleft City Level 36 After a few weeks on Level Thirty-six, Terelle knew everyone who lived or worked nearby. She and Russet lived on the upper floor of a mud-brick building. Lilva, a gaunt, mean-minded woman who rented out the sexual favours of her son and daughter, lived in the room next door. On the other side was Cilla, who wove bab-leaf sleeping mats for sale, and next to her, Rhea, the wife of a thief who was missing most of the time. Directly below them on the ground floor was old Ba-ba the humpback, bent double with swollen joints, who made and sold sinucca-leaf paste for whores-and for respectable married women, too-to prevent pregnancy. His wife, Fipiah, a buxomly handsome woman at least twenty years younger than him, was known to fix any problems that arose when the paste failed to do its job.
Sometimes she "fixed" more than she intended; twice Terelle had seen women enter Fipiah and Ba-ba's rooms only to see them leave as bodies wrapped in palm-leaf shrouds. Both times, Terelle had expected someone to make a fuss. Both times, the body was quietly carted away and nothing was said. Terelle had made sacrifices of water for their souls. It wasn't right that anyone should vanish into death without someone telling the Sunlord to look out for them on their journey to eternal life within the glory of His sunfire.
Next
to Ba-ba and Fipiah, there was a family of stone-breakers who sometimes found work mending roads on the higher levels. In a lean-to in front of them was Qatoo the madman, who had a habit of stripping off all his clothes and jumping up and down on top of them, wailing, until his ten-year-old son came and led him away. The boy earned his living as a catamite for the pede grooms who lived in the stables outside the walls, men rich by the standards of the Thirty-sixth because they had regular jobs and water allocations.
The waterseller on the street outside, Vato, was the same man who had spoken to her on her first visit to the level about the cost of filling a dayjar. One of Terelle's duties now was to buy water from him every morning. She obtained the latest gossip at the same time, which she then relayed to Russet. Vato, who made daily journeys to Level One, was known as a good source of the kind of information that kept the inhabitants of Level Thirty-six alive: whether there was going to be a raid that day, perhaps, or whether the enforcers were looking for anyone in particular.
When Opal sent a party of professional searchers into the level looking for Terelle, Vato warned her they were coming. She spent three days hiding in a storeroom that Russet rented several streets away. The searchers made no less than five visits to Russet's room, two of them in the middle of the night, before they gave up. None of Russet's neighbours would admit to ever having seen Terelle, even when offered money.
"Vivie must have told Opal about you," she said to Russet. She was so annoyed with her sister that she felt like cracking a water jar over her head.
After that, Russet anonymously sent Opal water tokens every week. Vivie sent word back-in a letter addressed to Terelle at Russet's room, showing that nobody had been fooled-that the snuggery owner would be placated as long as the payments continued.
Russet smiled with smug gratification. "Ye not worth much to snuggery, eh?"
For the time being, Terelle was safe-although remembering Huckman, she avoided all caravans from the south that passed through the level. Half a year passed and for the average dweller on the thirty-sixth level, the situation worsened. Raids and arrests became a daily occurrence as laws tightened. No waterless woman was allowed to have children now; the enforcers came to every lane, dressed in their blue uniforms with a swirl of sand glued on the breast to symbolise their office, and read the proclamation. The following week they were back, scouring the streets for visibly pregnant women and demanding proof that both they and their unborn child were entitled to water allotments. If they couldn't produce proof, or if they couldn't show that they or their husband had regular employment, they were taken away.
Some never returned. Some came back the next day, pale, bleeding and no longer pregnant.
One morning, Terelle watched the husband of one such woman buying some herbs from Fipiah to stop the bleeding. Terelle said to Vato, shocked, "I saw his wife last week. She was at least two-thirds of the way into her pregnancy!"
"Yes. My wife was with her last night. Says that like as not, she'll die."
"It wasn't her fault! A woman can't always prevent a baby. I know that from the snuggery. Is it the Cloudmaster who makes such terrible laws?"
Vato shrugged. "He's certainly the one who doesn't send us enough water. But it's our very own highlord who has the decision on how to make water last. Taquar Sardonyx the Splendid, of Scarcleft City, who else?"
"Then he is wicked!"
Ba-ba, spreading his sinucca leaves to dry on his doorstep, heard her indignation and waggled a crippled finger at her. "I heard say he's been away, and it's Harkel the seneschal been runnin' things. And he's a right proper bastard, no mistake. But wicked? Are they, child? Either of 'em? Tell me this, by what right does a woman bring a child into a world when she has no water for him? That's a crime as heinous as murder, for the child is born to die-or to steal life-givin' water from someone else. You mark my words, m'dear, if folk are let do what they will, then there'll come a day when Vato here goes uplevel to find the reeves won't sell him a drop for us. Not a drop, 'cause there won't be no more water. Taquar does what he has to, and he's right. 'Tis fools like the Cloudmaster in Breccia City with their bleedin' hearts that'll bring us to a thirst that can't be quenched."
"You silly old fool," Vato told him, "one day Taquar is going to throw people like us out into the Sweepings. We're the dregs of the thirty-sixth. Who cares 'bout us?"
"They need us workers," Ba-ba protested. "We do the dirty work for 'em. The dangerous work. That's why they nivver cut off our water altogether. They could if they wanted. They could stop you from sellin' it to us, for a start!"
"Yeah, well, it might happen one day," Vato shook his head. "I've heard tell hoarding water is punishable by desert exile now, and we both know what that means."
"I don't," said Terelle.
"Dumped far out into the Sweepings or the Skirtings," Ba-ba told her. "And yesterday I saw some waterless illegals from other cities being chucked out the city gates under penalty of execution if they return. Good riddance, I say!"
Vato glared at Ba-ba, but he didn't notice. Terelle turned away abruptly. She and Russet were waterless illegals born elsewhere. True, Russet had work of sorts-he sold his paintings to uplevellers-but she didn't know if that counted as regular employment entitling him to a water allotment. Certainly he didn't collect one. She gave a worried frown as she walked up the stairs to their room.
She entered their living quarters and put the water jars into the storage slots. Russet was there at the fire, heating up some resin over burning seaweed briquettes.
"Ye go bazaar this morning," he said, not looking up from his task. "Abel the bigger's shop. Buy eight sea urchin skeletons, sort used for purple dye."
Terelle hid a sigh. She had thought her apprenticeship would start with painting; instead she laboured to produce the paints while Russet did the artwork. She had also learned that it was no use complaining, or even asking Russet what he planned for her. He told her nothing about himself, either. After the half-year she had lived with him, she knew no more than she'd told Amethyst or Vivie. He paid her an allowance, gave her food, bought her water. He gave her orders, which he expected her to obey immediately, yet he never scolded. He never had to: all he had to do was look at her with his sharp little eyes, as green as her own, to have her scurrying to do his bidding. One part of her feared him, even though he never gave her overt cause.
He had strung a curtain of bab-leaf matting across one corner of the room, given her a pallet to sleep on there, and never violated her privacy once she retreated behind the curtain. When his eyes did linger on her body, it was with a shrewd assessing look, not with lust.
And still she feared, with an uneasy, uncomfortable feeling, that all was not well. That Russet Kermes the waterpainter was not to be trusted. She hated the feeling, knowing that she should be grateful to him. He had saved her with his generosity. Why could she not like him in return? Why could she not trust him?
Always her thoughts returned to the same thing: how had he known her name?
"How much will the sea urchins be?" she asked.
"Two tinny each." He reached into his belt and extracted sufficient coins. "No paying more, although he sure to ask. Come straight back after; no loitering. Need purple for painting I make for merch on fourth level."
"Can I come with you?"
He shook his head. He had not taken her uplevel once, and she wondered if he ever would.
She said, "They say that there are enforcers on the streets looking for waterless outlanders."
His features sharpened in distaste. "Barbarians," he muttered. Once again he dug into his purse. "Here." He gave her a squashed piece of parchment, much folded and grubby about the edges.
"What is it?"
"Pass for an artisman's assistant. I bought. Anyone be stopping ye, show, yes?"
Relieved, she took the parchment, and her palmubra hat from the hook, and left the room. There was a skip in her step as she went down the stairs. She enjoyed the freedom of being out in the str
eets and no matter how many times she went to the bazaar, she always saw something new. Not even the thought that there might be blue-uniformed enforcers out looking for outlanders could dim her enjoyment, not with the parchment safe in her waist pouch.
The bazaar was a haphazard conglomeration of stalls, all roofed with bab-leaf thatch and separated into narrow alleyways. Goods spilled out on the ground or were stacked up to the thatching or even hung from a network of ropes that looped across the laneways. Away from the sun, it was cool and dim in the heart of the bazaar, and it was easy enough to lose one's way. The laneways smelled of spices, bab-palm oil, herbs and medicines-a tangle of odours and perfumes jostling for dominance. Gunny sacks of speckled fire-peppers, blue stamen spice, dried fruit and roots were jammed in with dried lizard skins, pebblemouse fur and fish bones. Globs of amber-coloured resin, for glues and turpentine and lacquer, were heaped up with shards of desert crystals said to cure bad luck, back ache and skin diseases.
And through it all came the sounds of stallholders enticing customers: "Look, madam, would you not like a ribbon for those lovely curls?" "Unguent to grow back hair on that bald head, merch?" "A shred of keproot to drive away your cares, broker?" "Ointment to whiten the skin, girlie?"
Terelle found Abel the bigger's stall tucked between a barber's shop and a fortune teller's. Abel sold sea produce: salted fish, pungent shrimp paste, fermented crab-meat, dried seaweed. In amongst seashells and cuttlefish skeletons-said to be nourishing food for ziggers-she found the urchins, but it took much bargaining before he would part with them for two tinnies each.