by Glenda Larke
"I found out yesterday that I don't have to take water out of a zigger to kill it. And you know what? I think rainlords have got so used to doing things the one way, the same way, year after year, that they have forgotten just how powerful water is. I will take no risks that I cannot handle. None, I promise."
She looked over her shoulder to make sure Senya was asleep and dropped her voice to a furious whisper. "Jasper, if you are going after Nealrith, remember this: you are much more important than he is. Let it be, for all our sakes."
"He's your husband! The father of your daughter. How can you be so uncaring?"
"Don't be a fool. I care. I am the wife of a city's ruler. I do not give that up easily, believe me. But I am first and foremost a rainlord and a pragmatic woman. What happens to Nealrith is of no importance when compared to what happens to you. He would be the first to say so. And if you were to die rescuing him, he would never forgive you the stupidity."
"You have made your point," he said. "And I know it, anyway."
Behind her, Senya stirred and raised herself on one elbow. "Is it morning?" she asked sleepily.
Laisa ignored her. "I don't suppose I can stop you. You can't go back to the same tunnel we used before, you know. It doesn't have an opening into the city."
"I know." He would have to use the tunnel that supplied the cistern with its water. The entrance to that, a lidded hole, was in the middle of the cistern roof, out of reach. And there was no ladder, either.
He opened both the doors with care, his mind focusing on the water beyond. It was odd to stand there and look into the water, knowing that if his concentration slipped it would come crashing into the room. His forehead furrowed, he pushed the wall of water away with his power until the level in the centre of the room rose. When it was close to touching the roof, he stopped. Laisa stood beside him in the doorway, studying his handiwork.
"Ingenious," she said, her respect reluctant.
He dived sideways into the water, using part of his concentration to keep the lantern dry, even though he himself had to get wet because he needed to swim upwards to reach the manhole in the ceiling. Once there, he found it wasn't easy to open up the cover from underneath. His sword hindered him; his saturated clothes became heavier by the moment; the lighted lantern in one hand was an encumbrance. He began to sink.
Idiot, he thought. Use your power.
He made a pillar of water and pushed it against the lid until it flew open. He surfaced once more, reached up and placed the lantern on the floor of the supply tunnel, and hoisted himself out. He looked back down into the cistern to make sure that Laisa had shut the door to the room, before allowing the water to find its own level once more. Sitting on the edge of the hole, he removed the water from his clothing. When he was dry once more, he stood up and raised the lamp to look around. The door to the Cistern Chambers of the thirtieth level was directly opposite him. Leaving the cistern lid lying where it had been tossed by the pillar of water, he went to try the handle.
The door was unlocked. Back in the room, Laisa remarked, "That man is a great deal stronger in power than we have been giving him credit for."
Senya pouted. "He's a sunfried Gibber grubber. And I don't want to marry him!"
"You fool!" Laisa exclaimed. "Have you no common sense?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"Jasper is your future, you stupid child. Alienate him and you're lost, because your power is barely scraping through to rainlord level. It won't get you anywhere, and neither will your looks if all you ever do is whine and complain and pout." Restlessly she paced the floor. "Can't you see? It doesn't matter if he was once a Gibber brat. It doesn't matter if he doesn't know how to use a fingerbowl or doesn't want to wear perfume. What matters is that he is the only person approaching stormlord status in the Quartern. Power, Senya, power. That's what it's all about. With power you can have wealth and comfort and riches and control. Without it, you might lose all those things. Marry him and you will have power."
"Comfort? Riches? We have already lost those things," Senya wailed. "We're stuck in this room hiding and scared, and by now there's probably Reduners in my bedroom pawing all my things. Jasper's a nobody-worse than a nobody! He's going to die, just like Daddy and Grandpa! And then where will we be?" She dissolved into a storm of weeping.
Her mother made no effort to comfort her. The man who lay in front of the Cistern Chamber's main door to the street wore a tunic with a reeve's insignia. He had been speared in the back. Jasper was overwhelmed with the stench; the man must have been dead some time, lying out in the heat until nightfall.
Out in the darkened city, there was an odd smell in the air, all-pervading: a strong mix of rot, cooking meat, smoke and acridity. Jasper coughed as he stepped into the street, but there was no one to hear him. He stood still for a moment, pushing his water senses ahead. It was difficult; at a distance, all water tended to merge. Was that a man in a nearby house or someone walking in the street parallel? He couldn't tell.
He sent his powers back to the cistern to change water to vapour-easy enough when he was not dealing with salt water-then wisped it out through the doors and into the open air. A cloud formed, white and damp and thick. He wrapped it around himself as he descended towards the lowest level, so that he trailed mist like an ethereal spirit from another world or a shimmering sand-dancer, perhaps, walking the deserted streets.
When he reached the thirty-seventh level, he took an outside staircase going up to a rooftop. Even though there was no light, he sensed there were people there, including children. That, he decided, ruled out the possibility of Reduners. Nonetheless, he was cautious and paused before setting foot on the walled flat rooftop. His lamp revealed a couple and two children aged about six and eight. They were huddled together sleeping, well wrapped in rough bab-fibre blankets against the bitter cold of a desert night. All Scarpen people, by their colouring. No one to fear. He released some of his hold on the vapour, allowing it to disperse and become less obvious in the night air.
They feared him, though, when he woke them. They stared, their eyes round and terrified, their arms clutching at one another. "There's no need to be frightened of me," he said softly. He held the lantern up so that they could see his face. "Do you know who I am?"
The man shook his head.
"I'm a rainlord," Jasper said. "I've come because I want to know what is happening in the lower levels of the city."
"Rainlord!" The man looked shocked. He knelt, scrambling out of his blankets. "Please, m'lord, don't stand there like a practice butt for the spearing. They may see you!" He spread the blanket out on the rooftop. "If the lord'll sit hisself-" He turned to his wife. "A drink, a drink!"
She rose to obey, too shocked to speak. Jasper knew enough to be aware that he must accept the water they gave him, no matter if they could ill afford to spare it. He sat and inclined his head in acceptance. "Your name?"
"Chellis, rainlord, shoveller at the smelters, outside the walls."
Jasper gave a swift look around. There was no furniture, none. Just the blackened mud-bricks at one end of the roof that served as a fireplace, the four dayjars, the woven sleeping mats that doubled as shelter from the sun when strung from balustrade to balustrade. A man so poor he could only afford a rooftop for his family, but at least he had water entitlement. He worked, and he had the right to live on the thirty-seventh level.
"I want something other than water," Jasper said softly. "Information. I want to know everything that happened today."
In the end, Jasper was surprised to find out just how much the man did know. The townsfolk had found numerous ways to exchange information, the linked houses and common rooftops having become news routes. Streets were left to the Reduners, but the townsfolk commanded the rooftops, and those who could read and write would throw a note across the road to the house opposite, passing on information.
The first part of the attack had been bad, even though they'd had warning. When the ziggers came, Chellis an
d his family had pulled the bab matting over themselves. Successive waves of ziggers buzzed them for the next few hours, defeated by the tough matting. Eventually they left the petrified family alone to find easier prey.
By mid-morning of the next day, Chellis had heard Reduners in the streets, shouting in their strange accents. One of them came up the stairs and dragged Chellis out to help clear the streets of bodies, and that was what he'd done for the rest of the day. It had been a horrible job. Not everyone had heard the warning. Not everyone had heeded it. Many of the dead were his neighbours, people he had known all his life. Many were children, killed when ziggers entered windows through open shutters.
The corpses had to be piled up on the back of packpedes and carted outside the city, where they were burned on a pyre.
Jasper felt sick. "Oh-oh, sweet water, that's what I can smell!" Human flesh cooking.
Chellis nodded, then continued with his tale. He told of how he had seen fighting, of how he had seen the last of the city's guard overwhelmed by frightening numbers of Reduner warriors and their ferocious mounts in the streets of the city itself, right to the walls of Breccia Hall. "Must of been rainlords there," he said. "I saw Reduners fall with the water sucked out of 'em. Saw 'em with dried-up eyes-hundreds of 'em, as blind as sand-leeches in their holes. The Reduners kill 'em, y'know, the blind ones. Slaughter 'em, their own tribesmen."
"Have you seen the rainlord prisoner?"
"The highlord? They strung 'im up in a cage over the South Gate. Every time we went out with the bodies and came back in, we had to go under 'im. Could hear him moanin'. And I saw blood drippin'. Then by nightfall, didn't hear no more. Reckon he died."
Jasper shook his head. No. Not Nealrith. He refused to believe it. "Where are all the Reduners now?" he asked.
"Big camp outside the walls. Hear tell they don't like roofs over their heads, Reduners. Then there's a ring of guards along the city walls and a second ring around Breccia Hall and the waterhall. They haven't broken into Level Two yet. And none of us can leave the city 'cept under guard to work for them red bastards."
Jasper thanked the man for his information and hid some tokens from his purse under the mat he was seated on. As he stood up to go, Chellis pointed to his lantern. Jasper had turned the wick down low, but it still burned. "Careful with that, my lord. Don't know why 'tis, but the ziggers like the light."
"What makes you say that?"
"I saw a lot of bodies today, my lord. More than one should see in a whole lifetime, I reckon. Most of them had zigger holes. But time and again, I saw more ziggers burned up against a lamp glass than holes in the man that had held the lantern. So many of the little buggers! I reckon they got attracted by the light. Be careful."
"I'll bear that in mind. Thank you, both of you. You have served the Scarpen and Breccia well today." Formal language, suitable for a ruler. All he had to offer, but perhaps it helped.
Back on the street again, he headed for the fortieth level and the South Gate. It was exactly as Chellis had described: a cage swinging in the gateway, just high enough for a man to walk under without ducking his head. At this time of night, of course, the gate was closed. Several Reduner guards lounged by the postern, clearly visible in the light of the torches in the wall brackets. Harder to see, but present nonetheless, were the guards at their posts along the top of the wall, two men every thirty paces or so, silhouetted against the starlit sky. So many of them. And not, surely, because they expected attack from outside; these were to keep Scarpermen from leaving the city, to stop rainlords and reeves escaping.
To stop Jasper Bloodstone.
His lamp extinguished, his mist dissipated so he could watch, he flattened himself against the wall of a house at the corner of the street, until he was sure he had seen or sensed all there was to know nearby. The guards were inattentive, talking about the day's events in the language of the Quartern, describing how this one had died or how they themselves had killed. Laughing about the man swinging in his cage. One of them jabbed his chala spear through the bars. "Is dead, you think?"
"Dune gods prevent, hope not," another replied in a thick Reduner accent. "Sandmaster wanted bastard alive long time. Likes to see enemies in pain, not dead and dried, he does."
A third man stirred uneasily as he looked up at the cage. "I don't know 'bout that meself. What's t'stop this shrivelled water-waster from suckin' the water out of our eyes like he did with all th'others?" The accent was pure Gibber, not Reduner, which might have explained why the two Reduners were not speaking their own tongue. Jasper thought instantly of Mica, and the physical pain almost brought him to his knees.
But Mica would never have joined the Reduners. Never.
He stared hard at the man nonetheless, and was relieved to see he was much older than Mica would have been.
"Too weak," the second man replied. "Bleed them, make hungry, and lords too weak to use powers."
"Sandmaster Davim's not cruel just to hurt," the first man added. "This"-he waved a hand at the cage-"teach Scarpermen lesson they never forget: men of the dunes are powerful! Can put rainlord in cage like animal. Can rip out rainlord's tongue or throw away highlord's balls, no trouble."
Jasper's rage ploughed through him, to shred his fear into oblivion. He gathered the vapour, teasing mist around him like softened bab fibres onto a spindle. It swirled in damp eddies, laid its tendrils against his skin, coated his hair with moisture. The sensual pleasure of being in a cloud, of the feel of water in the air about him, of the unaccustomed dampness-it stirred his anger to a cutting fury. And he stepped out onto the open street.
"What the-! Look!" one of the men said, in Reduner this time. He added a string of Reduner vulgarities Jasper remembered from his childhood.
Jasper smiled. He thickened the mist in front of him to obscure his form as he walked forward, leaving only a small hole unobstructed so he could see. "Smoke?" the Gibberman suggested, more puzzled than worried.
"Don't smell like no smoke."
The two Reduners exchanged agitated glances. The first of the mist trailed across their faces.
"It's wet!" one cried, and added something in Reduner.
Jasper's power poured through his anger to seize more water from the air, from the dew on the trees beyond the wall, from wherever he could find it. He had to stop them calling for help. His idea was as coldly merciless as it was clear. He couldn't take someone's water, but he could drown them.
They didn't understand at first, of course. Each had a ball of water clamped across his mouth and nose, and nothing, nothing would dislodge it. They tried to bat it away, scoop it off, scrape it from them, but their hands just ran through the water without effect. They didn't breathe it in either, because Jasper moulded it to hold its shape. They couldn't breathe at all.
As they sank to their knees, choking, eyes bulging, terror blinding them to anything except survival, Jasper cleared the vapour away so they could see him. "I will let you breathe," he said quietly, "but don't try to run or shout for help-or you will die. I am a rainlord, and you know my power." His voice grated in his ears, allowing no promise of pity. He peeled back the water from their faces and bundled it into individual globes that hovered by the cheek of each man. "I want you to lower the cage to the ground."
One of the men, gasping for air, reached for the loaded zigtube hooked into his belt. In one fluid movement, he had it pointed at Jasper. He tapped the side.
Nothing happened. "It's already dead," Jasper said. "I drowned it."
The man stared at the tube. It dripped water.
"Do you want to die that way yourself? Or would you rather end up a dried-out husk?" Jasper brushed the globe against the man's cheek, rolling it across his nose to the other side of his face. It left a trail of wetness behind.
The man trembled and shook his head.
"Then lower the cage."
They untied the rope from the wall and eased it through the pulley, a simple job for several men to do together. Their stricken gaze
flicked from water globe to the task and back again. Even in the cool of the night, they sweated. One tried to speak, so Jasper jammed the water ball in his mouth. It squashed, but he couldn't spit it out. Only when he choked did Jasper take pity on him.
"I told you not to speak," he said.
The cage reached the ground. Jasper stepped forward-and saw the horror in detail then. A man once. Tortured beyond comprehension until his humanity was blurred. Alive, yes, but not living. Existing only in a welter of hopeless pain.
The cage had no door; it had been soldered together. The space was too small for a grown man to sit or lie or stand. The thing inside could only hunch with his head bowed down. He still wore a tunic, but no trousers.
It was Nealrith… but not the Nealrith that Jasper knew. His eye sockets gaped, half-filled with congealed blood; there were no eyeballs. His lower face was swollen and torn. His mouth sagged open; there was no tongue. There was blood on the floor of the cage. A lot of it. And body wastes and a water skin.
Jasper knelt beside the bars.
"Rith?" he asked. His tone was assured, calm. He did not know how he could sound like that.
Hearing his voice, Nealrith started, but only barely.
"It's me, Jasper. I've come to get you out." Soothing. Reasonable. Lies.
Nealrith made a movement of his hand, a gesture of rejection.
"I'm all right, don't worry." Jasper knelt beside the cage. "You," he said to a Reduner, "bring one of the torches here." The tight fury in his voice had the man scuttling to do as he was bidden, especially as the water globe remained tethered to his cheek.
The added light revealed more injuries to Nealrith's body. The blood had dried, and his tunic had stuck to his skin, so it was impossible to see what had happened, but Jasper thought he knew anyway: the rainlord had been castrated. Or worse.
He raised his gaze to the three men cowering from him near the wall. "And you could laugh about this," he said. "What kind of men are you?" His voice was soft, yet his rage thundered from him, carrying the fullness of his fury. They knew better than to reply. He reached in and took Nealrith's hand. "I can get you out of here," he said. He had no idea how.