by Glenda Larke
“Terelle.”
“An outlandish, meaningless name. Take her with ye. I want her imprisoned in the manor, far away from the Borderlands, where we can keep an eye on her. She can’t possibly make her way home from there.” He was speaking to his sons, but he was looking at her. He enjoyed her knowing his plans. He liked seeing the fear in her eyes.
“We get to go home?” Rubric was grinning. Jet looked pleased.
“Tell everyone ye are taking her to see the Pinnacle. I’ll send a message to him later. Doubt he’ll actually want to be meeting her, but it be his decision. No paint-powders, so she’s harmless—but keep a close watch anyway.”
“She may be harmless, but waterpainting isn’t,” Rubric warned, switching his speech back into Khromatian. “Mother won’t like it.”
Bice replied in the same tongue. “Your mother is always fussing about something. Once ye reach the manor, put Terelle in the tower. She’s not to meet anyone but us. Choose guards who don’t speak the Quartern tongue. We don’t want too many people to know about her.”
Jet looked doubtful. “A lot of the men already know who she is.”
“I know. Best we spread it around that the fire was started by these foreigners, that Russet was killed and Terelle injured. We want a way of explaining her death later.”
Rubric frowned. “We are going to kill her?”
“No, of course not,” his father said impatiently. “We don’t have to do anything. She’ll die because she was painted. Torn in two by her inability to do what the power of the painting wants her to do.”
“It won’t kill her on the way home, will it?” Jet asked.
“Hardly. She might even last a year or two past the time portrayed in the painting.”
Terelle clenched her jaw tight, wishing she hadn’t understood this last exchange. You utter bastards. You’re enjoying this, aren’t you? I now absolutely understand why my mother left this place.
She raised her chin and glared at Bice. “You’re making a big mistake. Do you think the Cloudmaster will take my disappearance lying down after the others reach home?”
“And do ye think that will worry us? Your Cloudmaster has less power than a salt-dancer if he can’t bring water to all the Quartern.” He added a sentence or two in Khromatian, something about clearing out all the water that had been dumped on the house, then turned on his heel and left.
Jet and Rubric exchanged glances. Jet grinned. “Good to be going home, eh?” he said in Quartern. “Been a whole season since I saw Azure. Hue will be in a spitting rage—he gets to be staying here mending a few broken ribs. Let’s get this waterpainter tucked away out of sight, shall we? We can put her in the salt store for the time being. No windows, good stout door.”
He said that bit about going home deliberately, Terelle thought. Well, they’re not going to cow me. I’ve been imprisoned before and I escaped then. I can do it again.
She started plotting. It was better than thinking about the bleakness of being alone. About Feroze.
At least I have some of my things in my pack. I wonder if I can steal back my paints? They will be somewhere in the baggage. And I have to contact the Alabasters somehow. They’re the only people who can get me back across the Borderlands.
When the two young lords led Terelle away, Eden Croft stepped out from inside the stable where he had been hiding. I must be crazy, he thought. Why did I do that? I should have walked off, not stayed to listen. None of my business what men of the upper pales do. And no dust-blower lass from across the bog is any concern of mine.
And yet… his wife would say differently. Had a tongue on her, his wife, and she didn’t mind using it. She was keen on family, and damn proud that her husband was a Grey. Of course, there’d been one devil of a hullabaloo about one of them running off with the heir to the Pinnacle. Eden had been ten or so, and he remembered it clearly. Erith Grey’s immediate family had not come out of it at all well. The father had been brutally beaten by members of the Verdigris clan and was never the same man after that. Erith’s brother had been forcibly conscripted to serve along the northern borders and he’d never come home.
It hadn’t paid to rub the Verdigris family up the wrong way back then. Still didn’t.
Sheer curiosity and a spur of the moment decision had prompted him to step into the stable through the broken door and listen. It had been a daft thing to do.
No, he didn’t think he was going to mention it to the wife.
He left, heading out to check on the alpiners he and the other groomsmen had released from the stables into the home paddock when the house caught fire. He had some explaining to do about why he hadn’t been there, helping to calm the animals spooked by the flames.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Scarpen Quarter
Breccia City, Breccia Hall
Warthago Range, Begg’s Caravansary
“I’ve looked everywhere in his apartment for an extra key or a stray painting,” Senya said. “It’s easy enough to look. He pretends to be glad I’m taking an interest in the brat, but if I come, he leaves. The nurses don’t take any notice of me when I’m not with Amberlyn, so I go through all his things. Do you know he doesn’t have much? Anyone would think he was still a Gibber grubber! His clothes are practically rags and he doesn’t even own so much as a ring. I’m fed up with looking. The paintings must all be in the stormquest room, and we both know where he keeps the key to that. There were piles and piles of paintings on the shelves there.”
Laisa, reclining on the divan in her apartment, nodded. “Yes, dear. I’m sure you’ve tried hard. I think I might have the solution to getting the key. The seneschal’s office is supposed to have duplicates.”
“Oh, so we can just ask Chandler for the key then?”
“No! We don’t want Jasper to know we were in there. I’ve told Seneschal Chandler I’m going to check that every door in the hall has a key, and that he has a spare, and that they both work. I told him I’d do it myself because we didn’t want just anyone to have access to all the rooms. He thought it a good idea.”
Senya laughed. “You’re the highlord! He couldn’t say no, even if he wanted to.”
“Exactly. Today, I spent a very boring day looking at the linen cupboards, the pantries and the cellars. Unfortunately, Chandler thinks it his duty to accompany me. He regards the security of the hall as his special domain, with the keys as the symbol of his office.” She rolled her eyes. “Tomorrow, Jasper leaves early for a Rainlord Council meeting in Scarcleft and won’t be back for a few days. Chandler and I will start upstairs and come to the stormquest room in due course. The next room we come to will be yours. I’ll have the bunch of keys, including the one to the stormquest room. I’ll slip it off the ring and pass it to you when the seneschal is distracted. Hide it. When we move on to the next room around the corner in the passage, you run out, unlock the stormquest room, and then run after us, waving the key and saying we dropped it.
“In the evening, we’ll both retire early, dismiss our maids—and take a look at what’s inside that room.”
“But how will we lock the door again?”
“We’ll take care to leave everything the way we found it and hope Jasper will think he failed to lock it properly.”
Senya clapped her hands, smiling happily.
Laisa, regarding her, experienced a moment of profound misgiving.
The first part of their plan was executed smoothly. Senya obtained the key without Seneschal Chandler having any idea it was gone. Laisa continued to accompany him, checking other doors, chatting about minor problems pertaining to Breccia Hall as they proceeded. After a while, however, she began to be uneasy about how long Senya was taking to bring the key back. By the time they’d checked all the bedrooms on that storey, there was still no sign of her.
“I think we’ve finished here,” the seneschal said. “Shall we go up to the next storey?”
“Yes, but tomorrow, I think, if—”
Just then Senya appeared, the k
ey dangling from her hand. “You should be more careful!” she said, glaring at Chandler. “I found this one on the floor! And I had to come all this way, running after you.”
The seneschal looked astonished. “I didn’t drop a key!” he protested and held out his hand to take it. “Which room is it for?”
Laisa stepped forward hastily and took it from her instead. She looked at the label. “Senya’s,” she lied and slipped it onto the ring. “My fault. I must have been careless. Here,” she said, giving it to the seneschal, making sure the position of the errant key was lost to his gaze as the keys bunched up. “We’ve done enough today. I am sure we both have other things to do.”
As the seneschal started down the stairs, she ushered Senya away in the opposite direction. “What took you so long?”
“When I went back to the passage, the maid was washing the flagstones in front of the stormquest door! I couldn’t unlock it in front of her, so I had to wait.” She shrugged sulkily. “I don’t see why we can’t just be open about it anyway. What’s the point of being the highlord, or the Cloudmaster’s wife, if we can’t do whatever we like?”
Laisa didn’t even try to answer.
After dinner, when all the servants were either busy or having their own suppers, the two of them slipped into the room and barred the door. They’d brought a lamp and Laisa quickly stuffed the draught snake along the bottom of the door so none of the light would show in the passage. The shutters were already closed tight.
“I’ll light the candles,” Senya said, heading towards the candelabrum on the table.
“No!” Laisa said. “Nothing must change in here, not even the height of burned tapers. We’ll have to make do with the lamplight. Perhaps it’d be better if you sat down at the table and watched. Maybe you can come up with some good suggestions?”
“There must be at least a hundred paintings on the shelves,” Senya pointed out as she sat. “Maybe he just hid it in full sight, mixed in with the others.”
“Possible. Although I suspect they may have hidden the one we want very carefully.” She looked around. No cupboards, no chests, no carpets. Much of the furniture and ornamentation had been destroyed during the Reduner occupation. Fortunately the invaders had never found the original stormshifting maps; Jasper had carried those away to safety.
The floor was laid with flagstones and there was nothing to suggest any of them had been lifted in the past couple of hundred cycles. She bent to look at the underside of the table, the map lectern, the sofa and the chairs. Nothing. Methodically she began to check each shelf, even looking inside every board-book and studying every map and painting.
Two runs of a sandglass later, she’d been through every one of Terelle’s paintings and replaced them exactly as she’d found them. Senya was snappishly bored. “I’m freezing in here. Why don’t you look on top of the shelving?” she asked. “Some of them don’t go all the way to the ceiling.”
Laisa, who had already glanced up there and noted there appeared to be nothing on top, nodded. Anything to placate Senya. “Good idea,” she said and dragged a chair across so she could take a better look.
The surface was still too high for her to see anything, so she began to run her hand along it. She was about to complain of the dust, when her fingers encountered a raised surface. “There’s something here,” she said softly. She stepped down from the chair and began to pile books up on the seat, taking care to remember which shelf they came from and in what order.
Senya smiled. “Told you so.”
Laisa climbed up on top of the books and looked. “It’s a flat piece of slate, I think.” Inserting a fingernail under one corner, she levered it up. “And something underneath it.” Carefully she laid the slate to one side. “A painting, right-side down.” She wiped the dust from her hands onto her dress, lifted the painting with exaggerated care and brought it to the map table.
Senya examined it, her interest avid. “Is that a mother cistern?” she asked.
They were looking at a painting of a cave. The entrance was protected by an iron grille, and the door in the grille was standing open. Taquar was there, face shadowed by a palmubra, dressed in a garish red outfit, but still vaguely recognisable. Five other men were portrayed only from the back, one wearing the yellow robes of the Sunpriest’s office, and four dressed in the uniform of Scarcleft guards. To the left of the cave a word was painted on the rocks in large white letters: Shale.
“If it is, I’ve never seen it before.” Thoughtfully, Laisa placed a finger on the mountains in the distance. “This scenery means it has got to be up in the Warthago somewhere. But it can’t be a city’s cistern because Taquar would mess with the water.”
“What about a caravansary cistern?”
“Risky. Who knows who might happen along and let him out?”
Senya looked up with a puzzled frown. “What does the painting mean, anyway?”
“As far as we know, a waterpainting can be either be an ordinary painting or a magical one. We don’t know how Terelle makes it magical, but if she does, what is portrayed becomes reality sometime in the future.”
“So this is a painting she did of Taquar to make sure he was imprisoned in this particular cistern?”
Laisa frowned in thought. “No, it can’t be, surely. Lord Gold was with us when they took him off to imprison him, remember? And she’s painted Taquar outside the grille, free. I wonder why? I would have thought—no, of course, that’s it. This has yet to come true. It’s her way of keeping him imprisoned, because no one could free him unless they reproduce this scene, and that would never happen exactly this way unless it was reproduced by someone who had seen the painting. Only she and Jasper know, so they are the only ones who can do it.”
Senya looked confused. “But what’s to stop someone finding him by accident and breaking open the grille without bothering with all this silly stuff?”
“If they were able to do that, then this scene would never happen. So the magic won’t allow his release any way except this one.” She tapped the painting. “Clever.”
“But we know now,” Senya said, smiling as she began to understand.
“There are maps here, and cisterns are always marked. Let’s see if we can find this particular one.” Trying not to change the position of anything, Laisa hunted through the maps for the ones she wanted, then spread them out on the table side by side. “Look for one that’s neither on a caravansary route, nor supplying a city.”
It was Senya who found it. Her finger jabbed at a triangle deep in the Warthago. “Here. It’s a caravansary, but there’s no trail to it. Look.”
Laisa peered at the tiny writing next to the triangle. Landslip, Cycle 1-958, she read. Further below, there was a tiny symbol of a hut, used to denote caravansaries. Beside it were the words Begg’s C. “I remember my father speaking of this,” she said softly. “Begg’s Caravansary. It was on the route between Pebblebag Pass and Breccia. There was a massive landslide and a whole caravan was lost, back before I was born. The slip was so bad they had to change the route, so the caravansary was no longer used either. Senya, I think you’ve found the place.”
“And we have the painting of how to get him out of there.”
“Yes. Or rather, a painting to make sure he doesn’t get out of there until all these conditions are met. If we want him to be free, we have to replicate this picture. Someone wearing Sunpriest’s garb, four men wearing Scarcleft guard uniforms, the word Shale written on that rock there—and Taquar wearing red.” She laughed. “That’s a lovely touch. Terelle’s, I bet. She knows he’d not be seen dead in a ghastly suit of bright red like that if he could help it. The little jade. I almost like her at times.”
Senya glared. “She’s horrible.”
“Actually she’s made it nicely easy for us. None of these people have their faces painted; they could be anyone. We can use those enforcers of mine, the ones I rescued from Iani. Easy enough to find someone to sew new Scarcleft guard uniforms for them. We don’t
even need Lord Gold. We can borrow one of his robes. We’ll have to plan it very carefully so that neither Iani nor Jasper hear a wind-whisper about it.”
She studied the details of the painting, memorising it all. When she glanced up again at Senya, she was smiling.
“But then what?” Senya asked. “I mean, when we have Taquar free again—what happens? Iani rules in Scarcleft—so who will support Taquar’s return? He doesn’t have an army or a city or anything. I don’t suppose he even has his money any more. Iani stole everything. How will he take care of us?” She pouted. “I’m the Cloudmaster’s wife here. I have money and power and now people are beginning to be nice to me. And you’re the one married to Taquar, not me.”
“My dear, I don’t suggest that you involve yourself with Taquar again. You’re right: here you have everything you’ll ever need. I, on the other hand…” She pondered her predicament. To be the wife of the highlord in prosperous Scarcleft, or to be the highlord of a ruined city with destroyed groves like Breccia? It would take ten cycles before Breccia would be back to what it had been, with a great deal of hard work in between. Worse, Jasper supervised every move she made to be sure she was fair. Fair! She snorted.
“I want to swap this tedium for what I had with Taquar. A rich life, living in Scarcleft.” But even as she said the words she felt her own doubt. In Breccia she had power and the potential for even more…
“Yes, but how can you do that? Iani rules there and Jasper will never allow it.”
“If Taquar gets out, Iani will die. Taquar will see to that. And we have the means to persuade Jasper to support Taquar’s rule in Scarcleft, I promise you. But not yet. This must be timed exactly right. We must strike the moment we hear that Terelle is on her way back.”