by Glenda Larke
“You appeal to me about as much as those ziggers in the cage.” She waved a spoon to where one of the beasts had climbed up the bars and was gazing at her with sharp beady eyes—more like a bird’s eyes than an insect’s—smelling her with its waving antennae and slavering at her taste on the air. She thought of it burrowing deep into the soft tissues of her eye, spreading its acid as it went, feeding on her flesh.
“You’ll get used to me, and them, too.” He tapped the cage top and the zigger fell from the bars to the cage floor, where it spun on its back, legs flailing. For a brief moment it could have been just an ordinary beetle, but then it flipped right side up and snarled at her, as if blaming her for its indignity.
“They are as much a part of a Reduner warrior,” Ravard said, “as the scimitar at our belts. Without ziggers, we are not warriors and must have the status of a servant. On the Watergatherer, I own more ziggers than anyone but the sandmaster, as is my right.”
Ryka snorted. “Owning those monsters is nothing to be proud of.”
Once again he took no offense. He held out a hand to her. “Come,” he said, “it’s time we left.”
She snatched up her bundle of books without taking his hand, so he grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the door.
“What are those?” he asked.
“Books,” she said.
He laughed. “Books? You want t’take books with you? Woman, there are better things t’do with your time on the dunes than read.”
“Like what?”
“Weaving and sewing and tent-making and cooking and fetching water. And sharing my pallet. Womanly things. Your job is t’look after my comfort.” He looked contemptuous. “We don’t have women warriors as you Scarpen folk do. It’s unnatural. A woman is not built for such things.”
“No? They cart water, bear children, dig for roots, cook over open fires in the heat while they are pregnant, and lots of other things suitable only for weaklings, eh?”
“You don’t know the strength required for a warrior.”
She looked at him brightly. “No, of course not. Funny, though—I did hear there was a Reduner woman warrior of considerable skill who has outwitted Davim himself. What was her name now? Redmane? Yes, that’s it. Vara Redmane. Old woman, too, I heard.”
She expected him to be angry, she didn’t expect him to flush; but he reddened enough for her to be aware of the darkening of his cheeks and neck. Embarrassment or anger? She couldn’t tell.
He changed the subject and asked, snappishly, “What’s in the books?”
“They are histories, myths of the past, that sort of thing.”
He snorted. “We have storytellers for all that. You have no need of books.” He pulled the bundle from her and tossed it on the floor. “Come.”
“Just because you are an ignorant barbarian who doesn’t know how to read or write his own name, doesn’t mean there’s no value in it!”
Without warning, Ravard slammed her up against the wall. Her head rang as it hit the stonework. He leaned in against her. His arm pressed her back as he snarled, “Don’t you ever despise me for what I am. Being different doesn’t mean being ignorant! Not reading or writing doesn’t make me a fool. Just ’cause you read your bleeding books, doesn’t mean you know a sandflea’s piddle about anything. You with your city upbringing have no right t’despise me ’cause I had a different life when I was a young ’un. Y’understand me?”
Weakly, she nodded. She had feared him from the moment they had met, but this was the first time he had terrified her.
“Sorry,” she said unsteadily. “You are right. It doesn’t make me wise, or you stupid.” And that’s the truth. Especially the bit about me being wise.
He released her, opened the door and gestured her through to where the guard stood outside in the passage, but then turned back into the room. When he joined her, it was to thrust the bundle of books into her arms.
I don’t understand you, she thought, surprised. I don’t understand you at all.
Ryka rode with the female slaves, fifteen of them, all now belonging to Davim’s dune and mounted on the same packpede. A Reduner drover guided the beast from the front segment, and another took the last seat at the back. None of the women were roped as the male slaves were. The men had their hands lashed together at the wrist, the rope then threaded through the handles screwed into every segment.
As they rode away from Breccia heading north, Ryka gave a sour smile. The Reduners didn’t trust the men, but it had evidently never occurred to them a woman among their slaves might not only know how to drive a pede, but had also accumulated several years of desert experience doing just that. If she could steal a pede, she could drive it.
She knew none of the other women on the pede and none of them indicated that they had any inkling of who she was. Listening to their chatter as they rode, she gathered they were all women from the lower levels, all but one chosen for their looks and youth. The exception was Junial, a plump older woman, kidnapped, or so she said, for her baking skills. Nine of the younger ones were snuggery girls resigned to their fate; five others—inexperienced girls between fourteen and twenty—were dull-eyed with fatigue and the memory of horror, or weepy in their despair. Some bore the external marks of the abuse they had already suffered because they dared to resist: bruised faces, black eyes, cracked ribs.
Rage gathered in Ryka. Sunlord forgive me, but if I had the power I’d kill every single warrior here…
There were a hundred or so of them, every one a seasoned fighter, so it was hardly a sensible objective. And Ravard she could not kill with her water-powers, not if he had the usual skills of a tribemaster.
The Escarpment dropped out of sight behind them as the pede caravan pushed its way in single file up the track toward the Warthago Range. She glimpsed Elmar on the pede ahead of her and thought with vicious enjoyment, Leaving him alive was another mistake you Reduners have made. Her next thought was one she tried not to think about at all. What if Kaneth never recovered from his injury?
How the Reduners regarded him was puzzling. In the stable, he and Elmar had been given a stall to themselves. Now he was not roped and was being kept separate from the other slaves, including Elmar. He rode behind a couple of warriors on a myriapede. When they stopped to rest at midday, a bladesman brought food to him. Another gave him a water skin. Both men treated him with deference.
Ryka watched, mystified. What the blighted eyes is going on? She looked across at Elmar where he sat with the other men on the ground, still roped together. He shot an unhappy glance at her and she guessed he was aching to get to Kaneth’s side. When Ravard strolled up to Kaneth and sat beside him to eat his own meal, Elmar appeared positively sick. Ryka didn’t blame him. She looked away and tried not to think too much.
* * *
They traveled north from Breccia all day. Every now and then they passed one of the inspection towers, obese brick giants that strutted in lines across The Sweepings. Their midday rest lasted several runs of the sandglass, until the sun had settled a little lower in the sky and the burn had gone from its rays. The pedes then rose of their own accord, shaking the sand out of their segments and swinging their heads around in search of their owners as if to say it was time to move on.
Ryka saved some of her own food and, choosing a time when none of the warriors was looking, fed titbits to the mount she rode. She studied its carvings carefully so she could recognize it again, even in the dark. Then she spent the few moments before they mounted up rubbing the soft tissue where its head joined the first segment behind. The animal rasped its purring approval of her touch and gazed at her in short-sighted adoration. You never knew when a friendly pede would be an asset.
Shortly afterward, the beast’s driver shooed her away, and they were on their way once again.
They passed through the first of the caravansaries without stopping, and it wasn’t until the sun slipped below the rugged spur of the Warthago Range that they halted for the night alongside one of t
he inspection towers. In the shadows of dusk, the warriors untied the men and set all the slaves to work, the women to prepare the food and the men to unburden the packpedes, groom the animals and erect tents. To Ryka’s horror, several of the warriors smashed the wooden cover and the iron grille over the shaft and bade the women haul up water from the underground tunnel. All her years as a Scarpen rainlord were assailed by their action. Hard-earned water—pulled from the sea by the sacrifice of Cloudmaster Granthon—now defiled, opened to the elements and stolen by invading travelers. They cared nothing for the damage they did, for the destruction they would leave behind. Breccian water meant nothing to them. As a rainlord, it was her duty to prevent both such thefts and any damage to the tunnels that would lead to silting. Having to stand and watch it happen galled her.
“Your second night alone,” Ravard whispered in her ear as she stirred a cauldron of food over one of the fires. She didn’t react and he walked on.
Her gaze sought Kaneth. Excused by his captors from the chores, perhaps because of his injuries, he sat alone on a rock, looking peaceably at the colors in the sky. No one seemed to care when she strode to his side, not even Ravard.
He looked up when she arrived and greeted her with a simple “Hello.”
She greeted him, feeling oddly uncomfortable as she sat down nearby. He looked weary and was, she suspected, in considerable pain. She said, “Have you thought of escaping? Of stealing a pede and riding to one of the other Scarpen cities?”
He blinked in a puzzled way. “Why?”
“Because here we are slaves!”
“Slavery is not allowed.”
She curbed her frustration as best she could, striving for an even tone. “The Reduners don’t follow our laws. I am a slave. So are you. They are taking us to the dunes. If you want to be free, you must escape.” She looked over her shoulder. No one was looking their way. Ravard had his back to them, directing some of the slaves where to put his tent. Never having raised a tent before, they were clumsy and inefficient. Ravard was yelling at them.
Kaneth frowned. “I have a headache. I don’t think I can ride anymore tonight. I want to sleep. And nobody’s said I am a slave.”
She hid her dismay, “The rest of us are, believe me. We Scarpen folk, I mean. Doesn’t that worry you?”
His frown deepened, as if he was trying to work through a problem. “Slavery—I thought—I thought there was no more slavery. I don’t remember there being slavery.” He gazed at the Scarpermen. “That’s why they were roped?” The question was as innocent as a child’s.
She nodded. “We are all slaves. We folk from the Scarpen Quarter—as you are.” When she looked around again, Elmar glared at her and then mouthed the words she had no trouble deciphering. Don’t trust him!
Kaneth did not notice. He looked at her, troubled. “The drovers say they know me. That I was born of the dunes, a long time ago…”
“That’s not true.”
Watergiver’s heart, Kaneth. How can you not know who you are? She desperately wanted to jog his memory. She wanted to tell him his name. She wanted to place his hand on her abdomen so that he could feel his son move under his palm…
Instead, hoping that she might be able to stir a memory, she said, “Ravard wants me to share his bed—”
Her heart sank still further as he smiled pleasantly at her. “That’s good. He’s a handsome man.”
Ryka felt as if she’d been stabbed through and through. Speechless, she rose to her feet. He ignored her as he gazed at the sunset and the light fading from the sky.
“What are you wasting your time talking to him for?” Ravard’s voice asked from behind her. “You won’t get much sense out of him, y’know.”
She turned, smiling faintly to hide lacerating pain. “So I discovered. You were right. His head’s stuffed with sand.”
“Come, have something to eat.” He led her toward the campfire, sat her down on one of the many boulders scattering the area and seated himself beside her. She was uncomfortably aware of his proximity. A woman came to push a bowl of food into her hands, and she toyed with it, but ate hardly anything. “Relax,” Ravard said. “I don’t bite.” He nibbled her ear.
“Don’t start what’s not going to be finished tonight,” she told him, keeping her voice low.
He shoveled some food into his mouth. “Don’t worry. I don’t break promises. But you seem so sad tonight. I shall keep you company. Would it not be good to fall asleep in my arms?” He nuzzled at her cheek. “Nothing more.”
“I don’t trust you.”
“I don’t break my promises,” he repeated. “And my men expect to see you share my tent.”
She glanced around, to see both Elmar and Kaneth watching them. Elmar looked away, frowning; either upset or angry, she wasn’t sure which. Kaneth smiled at her gently with benevolent interest, and it was Ryka who looked away.
“It would be good to fall asleep in the arms of someone who loved me,” she murmured. “But you do not.”
“Never mind. Tonight you can lie next to me and pretend I am your lost husband, the father of your child. Another night after this one to grieve, and then you’ll begin a new life on my pallet. You’ll start t’be a dunes woman.”
Nauseated, she glanced back at Kaneth, but he had already looked away, bestowing that same smile on everyone. It devastated her, that fickle smile.
She had never felt so alone.
CHAPTER NINE
Scarpen Quarter
Scarcleft City
On his second full day in the hall, Jasper decided to test just how much freedom he had. When he left his room in the morning, the two men on guard outside fell in behind him, marching in step in silence. They followed him to breakfast. Later, they waited outside the stormquest room while he and Taquar cloudshifted. When he went outside to the roof gardens of the hall, two more men fell in step behind. Four of them, discreetly watching everything he did, listening to every conversation he had, even though the only people he spoke to were the gardeners and servants.
After lunch, he left the hall for the streets of the city, and his escort expanded as four of the seneschal’s water enforcers joined them. Jasper’s previous experience with enforcers had been unpleasant, and these strengthened his mistrust. The men formed a wall around him and gave him the impression they reveled in pushing people on the street out of his way with the shafts of their spears. “Just guarding you,” one said with an ill-concealed sneer. “Looking after your security, your safety, your wellbeing, m’lord.”
“There’s no need to be so rough,” Jasper protested, painfully aware of their contempt for outlanders.
“Stormlord,” the overman among them replied, “we’ve been told to make sure no one approaches you. In case of assassination. M’lord.”
“Assassination? Who in their right mind is going to assassinate the only stormlord the Quartern has?”
“Reduners might, m’lord.”
“And just how many Reduners are there in the streets of Scarcleft? If you see any, you have my permission to protect me. In the meanwhile, my orders to you are to treat the people in the streets with respect.”
The man looked at a point somewhere over Jasper’s head, his face impassive, and said, “Stormlord, it’s the highlord gives us the orders.”
“Watch what you say,” he snarled. “Taquar is not the Cloudmaster yet. And he won’t be until the Council of Rainlords agrees that he is. Is that clear? In the meantime, he may rule this city, but I am a stormlord of the Quartern. I would suggest you don’t forget it!”
The man barely hid a smirk. “I serve Lord Taquar.” There was a lengthy pause, long enough to be an insult, before he added, “My lord.”
Painfully aware that he was friendless in Scarcleft, Jasper narrowed his eyes but said nothing.
“If the stormlord wishes to make a purchase, we can do it on his behalf.”
Jasper let the matter ride. It was between him and Taquar, not him and the enforcers. “All right, l
et’s just walk. I want to see the damage done to the city by the earthquake.”
“Of course, m’lord.”
When he returned to Scarcleft Hall, it was time for the afternoon session of watershifting. When that was over, he headed back to his own rooms, accompanied by a different pair of hall guards. Frustrated, he tackled one of them. He was young and, if his awkward manners were any indication, awed by being assigned to look after the stormlord.
“What’s your name?” Jasper asked.
The man shifted his weight from foot to foot, rather like a child in need of an outhouse. “Er, Dibble Hornblend, m’lord.”
“Dibble?”
“A nickname, m’lord. My friends think it amusing. A dibble is used for boring holes.”
“Your friends think you are boring?”
“I think it was more they thought me good at digging holes for myself. Getting into trouble, that is, m’lord.”
“Ah. What are your orders about me, Dibble?”
“To keep you safe, m’lord.”
“How?”
In an apparent agony of embarrassment, Dibble grasped his sword hilt, then removed his hand, looked at it as if he’d never seen it before, and finally clasped both hands behind his back.
Jasper took pity on him. “Perhaps you should just recite your specific orders.”
“To never permit anyone to be alone with you, to prevent the approach of strangers, to be at your shoulder with at least one other guard at all times within the hall, and to have no less than eight guards outside the walls, m’lord.”
“Would it be all right if one day I go for a ride in The Skirtings?”
Dibble looked appalled. “Oh! Er… I shouldn’t think so, m’lord. You could meet some of those marauding red bastards out there.”
Of course, silly question.
“I would like to see the damage done to Scarcleft Hall by the earthquake, Dibble. I understand it was worst around the room where that waterpainter girl was confined. Can you show me the place?”