The Last Stormlord (15 page)

“I
am
careful,” he said at last.
How to care for her when I won’t even be here?
A lot could happen in a year. “You will come on this… quest?” he asked.

“Of course. I am the Cloudmaster’s to command, as are we all. Perhaps he is even right.” He did not sound as if he shared the belief. “Anyway, I can look for Lyneth at the same time, can’t I?”

Nealrith suppressed another sigh. “Yes, of course.”

I know what that darkness is
, he thought.
The future. It’s our future. Our vision is obscured because we can’t see solutions to present problems. All we do is clutch at dim possibilities. And that could doom us.

Oh, Watergiver forgive me, what if Taquar and Kaneth are right?

Nealrith ran a finger down the line on the map. “About these eastern washes,” he said to Kaneth, “we won’t get to the last of them until a full year hence.”

“I’ll organise for supplies to be there for you on time,” Kaneth said. “Water included, but—”

He didn’t finish what he was going to say. Ethelva entered and waved aside their greetings, saying, “Granthon wishes to see you both. Now.”

The two men exchanged glances and headed for the door. When the lady Ethelva used that sort of tone, it was best to obey first and ask questions later.

“I bet he found out I made a mess of my marriage proposal,” Kaneth said, swallowing a sigh.

“Don’t tell me Beryll turned you down?” Nealrith asked in surprise.

“Beryll?” He blinked. “You can’t think I was wanting to marry
Beryll
Feldspar, surely? She’s not a rainlord! Besides, she’s barely seventeen, if that.”

“You don’t mean you proposed to
Ryka
Feldspar?”

Kaneth glowered defensively. “What’s the matter with that?”

“Well, um, nothing. In fact, if that’s what you did, it’s the wisest move you’ve made involving a marriageable female since you were twelve. But Beryll’s the empty-headed, pretty one.”

“Thanks. Nice to know you have such faith in my judgement. But the point is academic at best; Ryka turned me down. In fact, she as good as told me that I have done a superb job of earning her absolute contempt.”

“Oh.” Nealrith digested that, bemused. “I thought you were friends.”

“So did I. I was wrong. Her esteem for me is somewhere around the level of what she would give to a sand-tick on a pede’s arse.”

When they entered Granthon’s room, it was to find the Cloudmaster lying on his divan. Although his cheeks and eyes were sunken, his expression was alert. And annoyed. To Nealrith’s surprise, Kaneth was right; Granthon had choice words to direct at the rainlord and they all concerned his ineptitude at proposing to Ryka.

Even more surprising, Kaneth offered no excuses, and when he was dismissed he was uncharacteristically subdued.

“You were hard on him,” Nealrith remarked as he closed the door after Kaneth’s departure.

“No more than he deserved.”

“I doubt he
intended
to be turned down or tried to make sure he was.”

“He must have trampled on the woman’s feelings. Ryka is not a fool, and I thought I had impressed upon her that she has a duty to marry properly.”

“You spoke to her about this?”
Sands
, he thought,
even after all these years, Father still surprises me. I never thought he would intervene in such personal matters.

“Not lately, no. But years ago I made it quite clear to her that her duty lay with a rainlord. Or I thought I had.” He fixed a sharp gaze on his son. “I expect you to see that the match goes ahead. And soon.”

“
Me?
How do you expect me to do that?”

“I will order both of them to go with you on this Gibber expedition.”

Nealrith stared at his father in disbelief. “Are you
serious
?”

“I want you to have plenty of rainlords with you. You may have need of them.”

Granthon reiterated, at length, just how careful he wanted them to be if they found any potential rainlords or stormlords, while Nealrith groaned inwardly. He had thought the trip to the Gibber Quarter already offered every unpleasantness possible, but he began to wonder if he’d been overly optimistic. Now that the journey included persuading a woman known for her plain-spoken stubbornness to marry a man she apparently despised as husband material—with some justification, given Kaneth’s history—it was shaping up to be even more of a nightmare.

“I’ll do my best,” he said when his father’s rambling finally came to a halt. He had a horrible idea he might lose a friend on this trip. He just wasn’t sure which one: Kaneth Carnelian or Ryka Feldspar.

Scarpen Quarter

Scarcleft City

Level 32 and Level 10

The snuggery courtyard, normally a place of still and quiet in the heat of the late afternoon, was filled with the sound of outraged voices. Terelle, who had been snatching a few moments’ sleep while she was supposedly folding linen in the upstairs storeroom, jerked into wakefulness. She hurriedly smoothed out the imprint of her head from the top of the pile of clean bedding and looked out the door.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

The mistress of the chambers, waking from a doze at her post at the head of the stairs, shook her head. “I don’t know. Go and find out and come back and tell me.”

Terelle gladly left her task half done and ran downstairs. Out in the courtyard five or six handmaidens were gathered around Madam Opal, Garri the steward and Linsia the warden mistress. Everyone was talking at once. Just as Terelle stepped out of the house, Madam Opal raised her voice above the din and snapped, “Quiet! All of you! I have never heard such a caterwaul. Warden Linsia, tell me—quietly and calmly if you can—just what happened.”

The girls all knew it did not pay to upset Madam Opal, and the silence was instant. Linsia, a plump middle-aged woman with a lizard-like stare, said primly, “I was taking these girls to the baths, madam. But when we got there, it was shut. There was a crowd in the street, so I asked someone what time it was going to open again. He said it wasn’t going to reopen. Not today, not ever. That the reeve had closed it down.”

“I saw the notice on the door,” one of the handmaidens piped up. “It said it was done by order of Highlord Taquar.”

“There was a man standing guard outside,” Vivie added. “He wore a blue uniform I haven’t seen before.”

Opal swore. “That is ridiculous. Where are we going to bathe? Where will our laundress wash the linens and clothes? We’d have to go right to the other side of the level! Garri, go to Reeve Bevran and find out what is going on, and all you girls, go back inside. Your skins will blemish if you stand around in the sun like this.”

As the girls began to disperse, Garri pointedly rubbed his knee and cleared his throat. More than forty days had passed since the night Donnick had died, but he still complained he could not walk up and down steps without pain.

Opal pursed her lips. “Oh very well.” She glanced around and caught Terelle’s eye. “Child, you go. Ask Reeve Bevran to explain what is going on. And don’t forget to wear a palmubra. I don’t want a dark face to lower your first-night price. Scarpen men prefer pale girls, and don’t you forget it.” She turned back to Garri. “I don’t know what to do with you. If your joints are so bad you can’t do your job, then why should I be paying you tokens? Tell me that.”

Garri glared at his employer. “Because I’m the only person in this establishment who knows a troublemaker when one comes to the gate and who remembers every troublemaker who
ever
came to the gate. And when are you going to get a replacement for Donnick, eh? Tell me that!” Terelle grabbed up a hat and left the snuggery without hearing Opal’s reply. Arguments between her and Garri were legion and she had no wish to hear another.

As the doorman at the Cistern Chambers opened the gate to Terelle, he was already saying the words to deny her entry. “The reeve is not seeing anybody—” Then he saw he was addressing Terelle and said ungraciously, “Oh, it’s you. You’ve come to play with Felissa, I suppose. She’s upstairs in the house.”

Terelle hung up her palmubra and headed to the door that led to the reeve’s house adjoining the chambers. Fortunately for her errand, just at that moment Bevran came out of the entrance to the Cistern Chambers and saw her. “Ah, Terelle. It’s only you. Come to see Felissa?”

“No, Reeve. Not really. Madam Opal sent me. She wants to know why the women’s baths are closed.”

He sighed and it seemed to Terelle that his shoulders slumped in sympathy with the sound. “Everyone has been hounding me about the same thing.” He gave a reluctant smile. “You are the only one clever enough to get in. Tell Madam Opal that all baths below the tenth level are closed till further notice, on the orders of Seneschal Harkel, in the name of Highlord Taquar.”

Terelle blinked, astonished. “All?”

He nodded.

“But why?”

“To conserve water.”

“We can’t bathe?”

“Not unless you use your normal water supply, no.”

She thought about that, frowning. “But that’s silly. Rinse water from the baths is sold to the livery for the pedes; it’s not wasted. Soapy water is used to wash clothes. And then it’s resold. That’s what I was told, anyway.”

“Yes, to the smiths and the stone polishers and the metalworkers, for use in their trades. I know. But some is lost each time, too. Scarcleft must reduce that waste now, because there is not enough water coming in from the mother cistern. Bathing and washing clothes are not deemed essential. It is a wise decision.”

“But the upper levels still have their bath houses. What’s so special about uplevellers?”

He gave a slight smile. “Ah, still the Terelle who thinks that life should be fair and wants to argue the case!” He reached out and tilted her chin up. “Don’t ever lose those illusions, child. Hold on to those dreams.” He turned her around to face the gate. “Now go and tell Opal what I have just told you.”

“Who are those men in the blue tunics?” she asked.

“They are called enforcers. It is their job to see that all the new water laws are obeyed. Especially as the highlord is away for some time.”

“Highlord Taquar? Is he? Why?”

“Gone looking for new stormlords in the Gibber, or so I heard. That’s the wind-whisper, anyway. The seneschal, Harkel Tallyman, manages Scarcleft now, backed by the enforcers. And there’s the highlord’s rainlords as well, of course, to help at the House of the Dead and to check on water matters. Oh, you’d better tell Opal there’s a reward offered to anyone who turns in water-wasters to the enforcers. You snuggery girls need to take care.”

Terelle hesitated on the doorstep, remembering the clamour in the snuggery courtyard. “Everyone is going to be very angry about the new law,” she said.

She looked back to meet his eyes, and knew he thought the remark impertinent. She turned away so he wouldn’t see her flush.

It’s true, though
, she thought stubbornly.
People will be angry—and they will blame the reeves.

The days flew by, too fast for Terelle. Each one brought her closer to her first bleeding, yet did not seem to offer her a way out of the snuggery. Her evenings were a torment spent trying to evade the attention of men who expressed an interest in her first-night.

Almost a full year after Donnick’s death, and not long after her thirteenth birthday, she found out exactly where Arta Amethyst the dancer lived: the tenth level, a prestigious address for someone not from one of the better-known families. Terelle had never been as high as that in the city, but she was determined to see the arta if she could.

She chose her time carefully, selecting early morning before most of the snuggery was awake. She took all the tokens she had, which were pitifully few when she counted them, and put on her best tunic, of mauve-dyed cloth with embroidery around the neck, and matching leggings. A swathe of purple silk tied with a bow at the back belted the outfit. Opal had been paying much more attention to what Terelle had been wearing lately and had started to replace her drab brown clothing with more expensive garments. Terelle didn’t like to think about why.

She left the snuggery unseen, via the back delivery gate. It was too early to knock on Amethyst’s door, so she ambled from level to level, enjoying the chance to look about. She soon realised how little she knew about life outside the snuggery walls. She’d had no idea, for example, that on the twenty-seventh level there was a salt market where many sellers were ’Basters from the White Quarter, dressed in their strange garments adorned with mirrors. Or that on the twenty-third level, inns and snuggeries were used exclusively by traders from outside the Scarpen Quarter. Or that Level Eighteen had streets consisting entirely of jewellery shops. Or, that from Level Fifteen upwards children went to temple schools run by waterpriests. Or that on Level Fourteen there was an outdoor market in a square where it was possible to buy goods from across the Giving Sea, things she’d never dreamed existed. She lingered there, fascinated by the oddly dressed men who sold everything from strange foods to board-books. When they spoke, their accents were so thick she could scarcely understand. They came from lands with names like the ringing of wind chimes.