by Glenda Larke
Laisa swallowed back her anger and sank into a chair opposite her daughter. “Senya, what you did was not—not wise. It will have repercussions you won’t like.”
“Only because it wasn’t successful. That fool of a priest. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I have another plan. Look!”
She opened up one of the jewellery boxes in front of her and took out a small onyx perfume vial. Holding it up to show her mother, she asked, “You know what this is?”
“Perfume?”
Laisa took it from her. She was about to open it when Senya said, “Poison! It’s triple-concentrated keproot. Put a drop of the unconcentrated liquid in a censer and burn it, everyone in the room feels relaxed and happy. Put five drops of this concentrated stuff into someone’s drink, they won’t taste it, but they’ll stop breathing within a quarter-run of a sandglass.”
“That—that sounds dangerous.”
She shrugged. “It is.”
“And Scriven gave this to you?”
She nodded happily. “Apparently hunters use it in animal baits.” She picked up a necklace. “Have you seen this one? I found it in the Level Four market. I think it used to belong to that stuck-up Sattie Marker. Do you remember her? She died in the siege. I always liked it.” She smiled. “And now it’s mine.”
“That’s—that’s nice. Senya, I think you had better go and stay with Taquar for a while. Until this whole affair blows over.”
“No.”
“Senya—”
“No. Taquar was so nasty to me last time we met. He said he wouldn’t bed me if I was the last woman alive in the Scarpen.” She pouted. “I won’t go. Jasper’s not going to do anything to me.”
“Lord Umber is not quite so forbearing, and Terelle is his cousin.”
“Who’s going to listen to him?”
“He’s a stormlord, you fool!” Her anger threatened to overwhelm her calm.
“He can’t do anything to me. I’m the Cloudmaster’s wife. Besides, Lord Gold will protect me. This is all his fault.”
Laisa was speechless. Despair was a tight knot in her chest alongside the fury, and nothing she could say, at least nothing that Senya could understand, would make it go away. She could see all that she had rebuilt on the ruins of her world crumbling.
“We’ll talk again in the morning,” she said and rose to leave. On the way out she took the key to the outer door of the apartment and turned it on the outside. The maid was hovering. “Senya has gone to bed,” she said. “You may retire yourself.”
The maid happily disappeared towards the servant quarters; Laisa, swallowing back her nausea, headed towards the seneschal’s rooms. She had orders for him, and they were all about limiting Senya’s freedom. Opening up her clenched hand, she looked at what she held: the onyx vial. She desperately wanted to throw it away, but knew she wouldn’t. Just in case.
She continued on her way. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she heard Nealrith weeping.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Red Quarter
God’s Pellets
“No. No, no, no.” Vara, hands on hips, her mouth pulled into a mulish line, glared at Jasper and Rubric and Ryka.
Kaneth and Cleve, on the other side of the stone camp table, exchanged glances. Shading them all, a thick red canvas in two spaced layers kept off the worst of the midday heat, but it was still stifling.
That’s one not-so-good thing about this valley, Ryka thought, her mind wandering because she didn’t want to absorb the import of Vara’s words. No breezes, the way there are out on the dunes.
“Never,” Vara said, just to make sure they all understood.
Ryka subdued a desire to throw something at the old woman. Ten days since Guyden had ridden out, and only now Vara was being difficult. Preparations were complete for their army to march. Forces from friendly southern dunes were gathering to the south of Dune Watergatherer, awaiting Jasper’s cloud messages to advance on Ravard’s forces from that direction. Allied armsmen from more northerly tribes had been riding in, arriving at God’s Pellets in small groups for days, until the arrival of the Watergatherer army on Dune Koumwards had finally cut off the stragglers.
Some were well armed, well mounted and well stocked, others woefully ill-prepared. There had been headache after headache of logistics. She’d hardly seen Kedri, as she wrestled instead with pieces of parchment covered with figures and names and amounts—supplies, men, armour, weapons, pedes, food, water panniers. She’d struggled to have it all at her fingertips so that armsmen were fed and clothed and armed appropriately, pedes were fed, groomed and accoutred. And now it seemed their assumption that they could use water from the Source as a weapon was in jeopardy, if Vara had her way.
Ryka opened her mouth to translate Vara’s emphatic refusal for Jasper, but he forestalled her. “I think we all understood that. But I’d like to know why. She does know that using the water from the Source doesn’t diminish the amount in the cave? More just flows in to replace it.”
Vara didn’t wait for Ryka’s translation. Glowering at Jasper she was off again, words flowing from her too fast for him to catch the meaning, her hands thrown around expansively, just missing Jasper’s nose.
When she finally faded to a halt, Jasper, now in need of a translation, raised an eyebrow in query.
Ryka took a deep breath. “She says the water is sacred. Sent to us by the Over-god. She believes that for generations this valley was hidden to the people of the red dunes to punish them for their violence and their practice of slavery. Just when the Over-god was thinking of relenting, Davim rose up with his ideas of random rain. He reinstated slavery and went to war. However, the Over-god is merciful.”
She paused, eyeing Kaneth.
“And then?” Jasper asked.
“The god sent Uthardim to show the good people of the dunes where to find water and to lead the enlightened tribesmen to victory.”
“Right,” said Jasper. “So what’s the problem?”
“Well, she says, there is always a…” she hunted for the right word, “a caveat. A catch. For victory to be granted when the odds are against you, you have to show both your faith in the Over-god, and your appreciation of the life he has bestowed on you. The valley is a holy place and the water is sacred. It is granted to save life, not to take it. If you use this water as a weapon during the war, the way you used water up in the Warthago when you fought Davim, then you will be cursed, your cause will be lost and this valley will be hidden from you, with the water lost once more.”
When Jasper opened his mouth to object, Ryka laid her hand on his arm to stop him, but it was Kaneth who actually halted his words. “She’s right,” he said.
Ryka blinked. Kaneth, usually so prosaic and cynical and unspiritual, was agreeing with Vara Redmane? No, that’s the Uthardim of his amnesia speaking, she thought. And Kaneth is a better man for having that mystical side now, never forget that.
“We don’t use the water to kill,” Kaneth said to Jasper. “And that’s final. No more discussion. The water of the Source is sacred.”
Ryka caught Jasper’s expression—frustration edged with anger—but he shuttered the look and nodded his assent.
A wise decision. If Vara’s Reduners lost their faith in Uthardim and their mythology, they would lose the will to fight. Still, Jasper was worried, and rightly so. If neither he nor Rubric could use the unlimited water at hand, then they’d have to take water from the tribes. She wondered if Vara would let them take the replacement supplies from the Source after the fighting was all over.
If they won.
And during the fighting, wouldn’t it slow them down to bring water from the twenty or thirty different waterholes on the next couple of dunes? Of course it would! Some of them might even have their water stirred up, which would make it inaccessible to Jasper. Vara was insisting he enter the battle with one hand tied behind his back…
The determined old woman, having won her fight, hobbled away oblivious to the consternation she’d le
ft behind her.
Kaneth sat on the rock slab of the table. “Let’s run through this one more time. Jasper, you were up on the top knob earlier today; what did you think?”
“Ravard’s in position.”
“He’s waiting for us. He could besiege us, but that’s not the way of the Reduners, as we discovered in the Scarpen and as I am sure Cleve would tell us.” Jasper smiled in his direction. Cleve had established a reputation for impatience and love of action. The remark was friendly enough, but the young warrior scowled.
You should be more careful of that volatile warrior, Jasper, Ryka thought. Cleve tended to be edgy around the two stormlords; he regarded her and Kaneth as true Reduners, stained red as they were and with their knowledge of the language and customs, but Jasper and Rubric would forever be outlanders, no matter that they’d come to help.
“He’s flaunting his presence,” Jasper continued. “Riding his men up on their pedes to the dune tops, lining them up to look at God’s Pellets. We may not be able to see them, but he knows I will feel their water.”
“He wants us to come to them,” Kaneth said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes. We would be at a disadvantage either way, of course. In a siege we might win, because they’d run out of water before we ran out of food, especially if we ate our pedes. If we attack them…” He paused, then enumerated some of the problems. “At a fast pace it’s five sandglass runs across the plains. All his men and pedes would have to do is wait and rest. Once at the dune, to get at him we’d have to ride up the steepest slope, while they rained spears down on us. Or ziggers. Or both. Our pedes would be exhausted. We had been planning to move blocks of water from the Source to Dune Koumwards to hurl at them and their ziggers as we attacked. But now Vara has said her piece and you agree with her.” Jasper shrugged as if to say he didn’t like the implications.
A wave of sick dread hit Ryka as she imagined the slaughter. Ziggers. “Locating and bringing water from waterholes of the other dunes will tire you,” she said.
“Yes, I’m afraid so. It will limit the amount we’ll have at our disposal. It’s a tough dune, or so it seemed to us when we crossed it,” Jasper continued. “Higher than any of the others. With deeper valleys and steeper slopes. More vegetation, too; I suppose because there are no tribes to graze their pedes on it. The pedes get their feet tangled in the vines.”
“That’s true.” Kaneth shot a look at Ryka. “The men have a vulgar Reduner name for it.”
“I’ve heard. ‘A woman’s intimate furrows’ would be a polite translation, I believe.”
Jasper grinned.
“You used water in the form of clouds when you fought Davim before. Why can’t you do that now?” Kaneth asked.
“I had the help of a waterpainter, for a start,” he said, his grin vanishing, his voice suddenly harsh. “One of the many things she did was kill thousands of ziggers before we even began. Better still, I didn’t have to worry too much about precision because her magic guaranteed it for me.”
“We’re stormlords, not miracle workers,” Rubric added in support.
“In the Warthago battle, I used water from the cistern and ice from the clouds,” Jasper said. “The enemy was bunched together, confined by the rugged walls of a narrow valley and therefore vulnerable to attack. Pulling water out of the cistern into that confined valley created a wind I could use. Here, if I drop ice on them, they can just ride off in a hundred different directions. Most would escape unscathed. In fact, they know what to look for now. They’d probably scatter before I even began. Rain alone is not a weapon.” The steady stare he gave Kaneth was one of foreboding. “What about your sand shifting? Can you bring down the dune with them on it? And do it before the ziggers start coming?”
The silence that followed was uncomfortably long. Then Kaneth said, “I don’t know. A small sandslide is all I’ve ever accomplished. The one that demolished Davim’s camp was barely thirty paces wide. It’s not something that I have much control over.”
“You had better be a quick learner, my lord,” Jasper said with a snappishness normally foreign to him, “for I won’t stand still and see good men slaughtered because the water of the Source is denied to Rubric and me. That is too much to ask. We’ll do our best with water from waterholes, but if disaster is looking us in the face anyway, I make no promises.”
“You will not take Source water to kill! If that’s your intention, then I don’t want you here.”
Ryka was aghast. “Kaneth!”
“I mean it. This is the Red Quarter, and we will respect their ways, or leave. Is that clear?”
Another long silence followed. Then Jasper sighed and nodded.
“Swear to it, both of you.”
Jasper and Rubric exchanged a look. “No water for killing will come from the Source, I promise,” Jasper said. He sounded grim.
He’s not sure we’ll win, Ryka thought. Her chest pained her at the thought.
“We have to avoid a frontal attack,” Kaneth said. “I’ve no wish to be suicidal. Cleve and I have discussed this at length with Vara and some of the other more experienced warriors. We’ll leave tonight at sunset, by the northernmost canyons, invisible to their sensitives because of the rock between us, or so I hope. Jasper and I go east with half our force. Rubric, you go west with Cleve, Vara and the other half. I’m giving you a driver and a bodyguard who both speak good Quartern. We mount the front slope of Dune Koumwards at dawn, to the east and west of the bulk of Ravard’s forces. Then we ride inwards, attacking him from both directions along the top of the dune—two mandibles coming together to slice them up.”
“Their water sensitives will feel us sooner or later, won’t they?” Rubric asked. “And deploy their forces accordingly?”
“I’m hoping we can confuse things. We’ll need a fog from you and Jasper. Not only can we can hide under it once the sun comes up, but it will baffle their sensitives. They don’t have rainlords who might be able to sort an army’s water from the water in the vapour of a fog.”
Jasper brightened. “It will confuse the ziggers’ sense of smell and sight, too.”
“This afternoon we sleep,” Kaneth continued, “while those who remain behind will pack the pedes and the panniers. It will be the last sleep we get in quite a while.”
“We’ll be fighting a battle tired, mounted on tired pedes,” Rubric said.
“I know that.” Kaneth was implacable. “Cleve, alert the men to the plan.”
As Cleve left, Jasper glanced over at Rubric and raised an eyebrow. “Think we can manage a thick fog?”
Rubric considered the statement. His eyes twinkled. “Guaranteed.”
Something about their exchange made Ryka uncomfortable. Two stormlords knew a lot more than she or Kaneth did about moving clouds… Sandblast them. They’re up to something.
Jasper saw her scepticism and said, “Ryka, I won’t use water from the Source to kill people. I gave my word. Excuse us,” he added to Kaneth. “There are some details Rubric and I need to work on. We have to give some thought to killing ziggers.” The two stormlords left together, deep in discussion.
Ryka contemplated her husband wordlessly.
“What should I have done?” he asked.
“Do you expect me to answer that?” she asked.
“No, not really.”
“Since when have you believed in sacred pools and Over-gods? In curses and legends?”
“I don’t. But I don’t underestimate how important such things are. I’m a Reduner now, Ryka. This land speaks to me. The sands speak to me. The water of the Source speaks to me. I feel these things, like a whisper in my soul. Is there an Over-god? I’ve no idea, but I know this place is sacred, and that the water here is our lifeblood for all the generations to come. Kedri will grow up here. And any other children we have.”
“Don’t I get a say in where we live?”
He smiled at her. “Do you think I haven’t asked you? I’ve not used words, true, but I’ve seen the way
your eyes soften when you see the shadows on the dunes, when the sun rises and sets across the plains, when the perfume of the flowers drenches the air. I’ve felt your love for this place, for the sands. I feel you in ways I can’t explain. I know your frowns and the way you tense and relax. You talk to me in a hundred ways you don’t realise.”
She swallowed, hearing the truth on his lips, loving it, thinking that the old Kaneth would never have known. “The little pieces of water…”
He nodded. “With you, it’s a joy. With others, it’s unsettling often, embarrassing sometimes, puzzling on occasion. I feel the anger and respect and dislike of others. It helps me anticipate problems, which is useful, but there are many times when I know too much that’s intimate about those around me. Things which shouldn’t be known. I’m beginning to get the hang of turning off my awareness,” he said. He gave a rueful shake of his head. “Ironic, really—if I’d truly listened to Guyden, I’d have known he was going to betray us.”
“You felt something?”
“He was afraid of me and he didn’t like me. I shut off the feeling. You can’t assume everyone likes you, after all, or that everyone who thinks you’re the arse on a sand-louse is also going to betray a whole tribe.” He smiled down at her. “Anyway, I do know that although you may hanker after your books and learning, you aren’t hankering for Breccia. You will have your books again, I swear it.”
When she was silent, pondering his words, he took up the thread of the conversation and sketched his dreams. “There’ll be a great city out there on the plains, with water coming from the Source. Not a city like those of the Scarpen, or a tribal encampment, either. A tent city of learning and culture for all Reduners, a place where it’ll still be possible to sleep under the skies, and sit around a campfire. A city that will move when the dunes come, as they do. You’ll build your schools there, Ry. Not of mud bricks, but of learning. You’ll teach again. And men and women of the dunes will come to be scholars, if that’s what they want.