The Last Stormlord (17 page)

And she came away convinced of two things about Amethyst that she had not known before. The dancer had been born waterless, and at one time in her life she had sold her body for water.

Terelle knew the signs.

Scarpen Quarter

Breccia City

Breccia Hall, Level 2, and outside the city walls

“But I want to go!”

Rainlord Senya, granddaughter of the Quartern Cloudmaster and eleven years old, came close to stamping her foot. She was stopped only by the memory of her grandmother telling her that when she behaved in such a manner she resembled a myriapede in heat. The comparison was unpleasant, so she tried not to stamp and not to grit her teeth, either. Her restraint, however, made no difference to her mood.

“I am
sick
of being cooped up in the palace. It’s been almost a year since Mama and Papa left, and in all that time you haven’t allowed me to go
anywhere
. Papa would let me go if he was here.”

“I doubt it,” her grandmother said evenly as she looked up from the gemstone she was carving. “Your father gave precise orders before he left for the Gibber. He said you weren’t to be allowed out of Breccia Hall except under rainlord escort. None can be spared to take you to the Gratitudes festivities until we all go this evening. That will have to suffice.”

“But it’s much more fun in the afternoon. They have a fair, and games. Tonight is just all the religious stuff.” In parody, she mimicked the high-pitched wail of Lord Gold, the Quartern Sunpriest: “ ‘Praise be to the Watergiver for our water! Praise him, praise her, praise the whole darn parcel of sun-dried water prophets!’ ”

Ethelva’s face tightened, but she said nothing.

“Why can’t someone go with me this afternoon? Rainlord Merqual would take me.”

“Your grandfather has sent Lord Merqual to investigate a water theft from the tunnel that supplies the dye-makers’ street on the twenty-eighth level. It is a very serious matter.”

Senya flounced into the chair next to Ethelva and glared at her. “Why do I have to be bothered with guards anyway? I can go with a servant. I am quite safe in Breccia, surely.”

“We do not know that.” With a sigh Ethelva laid her carving aside and took her granddaughter’s hands in hers. “Senya, my dear, it is time you started to think a little more deeply about things.”

“What do you mean?”

“Think: twenty or so years ago there were six other young rainlords or potential stormlords around your father’s age, besides Taquar and Kaneth. None of them made it to twenty-two. Not one. I don’t mean to scare you—no, I take that back. I
do
mean to scare you. I want to scare you silly because you don’t seem to have the sense to know when you are threatened.”

“By
who
? No one has ever tried to hurt me! None of those people were murdered. They just had stupid accidents and things. Falling down stairs. Getting lost in the desert. Getting sick.”

“Let’s just say that we don’t want any of those things to happen to you.”

Senya pouted. “I am so
bored
! There is nothing to do here. I should have gone with Papa and Mama—”

“That’s a change,” Ethelva remarked, releasing her hands. “Before your parents left, you said you wouldn’t want to set foot on the Gibber Plains for all the water in a mother well.”

“I don’t
want
to exactly, but anything would be better than sitting around doing
nothing
.”

“Then work on your water sensitivity. Senya, you are growing up to be a very indifferent rainlord. No one comes into full powers unless they work at it; you know that. You hardly ever do the exercises.”

“Oh, what’s the point? I’ll never be allowed to do any of the interesting things that a rainlord can do. If you are so worried about my safety, why don’t you have someone teach me the rainlord way to kill? Then I could protect myself!”

“It is no light thing to learn to kill, child. That is reserved for men and women who have proved they can control their talents and who understand the implications of using those same talents to destroy life.”

For once, Senya recognised that she had gone too far. Contritely she knelt on the tiles beside her grandmother’s chair; sensibly she changed the subject. “Grandmama, Mama has always said that if they find a stormlord, I must marry him. Because there’s only one other unmarried female rainlord, Ryka, and she’s too old and useless anyway. Besides, she can’t see past the end of her nose.” She looked up woefully. “I won’t have to marry someone from the Gibber, will I? They are horrid! I have seen them down in the market sometimes. They are always dirty and ragged and they have funny accents. Annas says that they beat their wives and get drunk on amber—”

“Annas is very silly, my dear. You should listen to your teachers, not your maid. There are good men and bad men in every quarter, and you may rest assured that no one is going to marry you off to someone who will beat you.”

“I don’t want to marry anyone who’s dirty, either. In fact, I think I already know who I want to marry. I want to marry Taquar.” She stood up and pranced around the room as if listening to music only she could hear.

“
Taquar?
”

“Yes. Why not? He’s not married. I did think of Kaneth, because he’s fun, but he’s not really rich like Taquar. Taquar commands a city. I think I would like that. Everyone says Scarcleft is much more beautiful than Breccia. Besides, he is fearfully handsome, and… mysterious.”

“He’s also older than your father.”

“Thirty-seven. That’s not so very old.”

“Too old for you. Listen, Senya, if you go up on the roof you can watch the festivities from there. Ask the servants to rig up a piece of silk to keep off the sun.”

Senya pulled a sour face. “It won’t be the same.”

“No, it won’t. But it is all I can offer, and at least it is safe.”

Senya gave a heavy sigh and left the room dragging her feet, a picture of weary gloom.

“Giving you problems?”

Ethelva turned in her chair and smiled as her husband entered. It was an effort not to show her concern at his weakness, not to jump up and offer him an arm as he made his way carefully across to his chair. “Yes, in a way. I have come to know her better, without her father or mother around.”

Granthon did not sit as much as lower himself into the chair. “And you find that upsetting?”

“I’m afraid I do. I had no idea she was so—so manipulative. Or so,
petty
with it.”

He settled back into his seat. “She is beautiful. More so even than her mother. And like many beautiful people, she has been spoiled.”

“I fear it is more than that.”

He didn’t answer, waiting for her to explain, but she said, “I can’t explain it, Granthon, because I can’t put my finger on it. There is just something
lacking
in her. And it disturbs me greatly.”

“She is a child yet. Younger perhaps than her years. Irresponsible. Sooner or later events will catch up with her and she will have to grow up. Then she will come into her own.”

“I hope you are right. Waterless soul, I hope so. The child wants to marry Taquar! The man would eat her for breakfast and not even hiccup.”

“I’m right. You’ll see. It is not Senya we should worry about. It is who is going to sit in my place when I am gone.”

She stared at him, and her heart plunged. She knew him well enough to know she would not like whatever he was about to tell her.

“I had another letter from Nealrith today. They still haven’t found a child who shows stormlord promise. There’s not going to be a stormlord ready to step into my shoes, Ethelva, even if we find a youngster who could become one with training. Someone has to rule this land in the interim.”

“Granthon, we both know there won’t
be
a Quartern if there is no stormlord. How can any of us live if there is no water? And how can there be water if there is no stormlord to bring it? If you die, we all die.”

“No. That’s an oversimplification.” He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thighs. “If there is no stormlord calling up storms and placing them exactly where they are needed, there will be rogue storms instead, dropping rain at random, the way it used to be. Without a stormlord, there will still be rain, sometimes, in some places, and rainlords can track it. Some people will survive.”

“But not all,” she said flatly.

“No. As far as I can discover from my reading, our population is about twenty times larger than it used to be in the Time of Random Rain.”

“You’re telling me nineteen in every twenty will die?”

He did not answer.

“And what happens on the route to such a catastrophe? Can you imagine it, Granthon? People will not go willingly to their deaths. It will be hell, and it won’t be the gentle who survive.”

He gave a grim smile. “Not a place I would want to live in.”

She failed to appreciate the humour in his irony. “So—who?”

“Nealrith is not up to it,” he said bluntly.

She was silent.

“I love our son; you know that. But I can’t blind myself to what will be. Nealrith is a good man, a gentle man. But the time after I have gone will not be a place for gentle men. Decisions will have to be made about the water we have in storage. About who will live and who will die. It will be the time for a hard man who has to make hard decisions. Nealrith… is not that man.”

She felt the space inside her body contract, as if her own water was already disappearing.
This is a mistake
, she thought.
Don’t make it, Granthon. Don’t destroy our son.

“Taquar Sardonyx,” he said, answering her unspoken question.

She shrivelled still further. “Nealrith doesn’t deserve that. You know they hate one another. Taquar lusted after Laisa, but Nealrith was the one who married her.” Her thoughts added an uncharitable:
Because Laisa thought Nealrith, not Taquar, would be the heir to the Quartern.

“I know.”

“Have you mentioned this to Senya, by any chance?”

“No, of course not. Why?”

“She—she has her eye on that man.”

“I would not wish Taquar on any woman, let alone a child.”

“But you would wish him on the land?”

“He’s the only person I can think of who could pull it through the turmoil to come. He has vision, Ethelva. And courage. He sees reality, not dreams. We need his pragmatism and the wisdom of his solutions.”

“Have you told him?”

“Not yet. But I have left documents in case I fade out before they all return from the Gibber.”

She paled but continued the conversation doggedly. “As a matter of interest, what makes you think that once Taquar held administrative power he would ever relinquish it to a new stormlord?”
Can’t you see what kind of man he is?

“Perhaps he wouldn’t have to. He could continue to rule, and the stormlord—please Sunlord that we find one—could bring rain. Ethelva, I
can’t
ask Nealrith to take on a cloudmaster’s task. It would kill him. He hasn’t the… the cruelty for it.”

Incredulous, she asked in dismay, “You’d put your land in the hands of a man you believe to be
cruel
?”

His answer was barely above a whisper. “Yes. Taquar is not gratuitously cruel, you know; just sufficiently callous to enact the solutions needed for some to be saved.”

Before she could answer, the Breccia Hall seneschal, Mikael, entered the room and cleared his throat. They turned to look at him, relieved at the interruption, knowing it had saved them from a bitter argument that might have scarred their affection for each other.

“Your pardon, master,” he said, “but there is a delegation of Reduners at the gates. They have set up camp outside the walls and sent you this.” He held out a scroll cylinder.

Ethelva and Granthon exchanged glances.

“Doubtless it is just an update of the places in need of rain,” Ethelva said, not believing her own words.

Granthon scanned it quickly and then started to translate it aloud for the benefit of Ethelva and the seneschal. “The representative of the Sandmaster of the Tribes of the Scarmaker bids the esteemed Cloudmaster of Quartern greetings and may his water be plentiful, with—”

“Yes, yes,” Ethelva said. “Let’s dispense with the flowery bits.”

“Then there’s nothing much else. He wants me to grace his encampment, being reluctant to cause me any discomposure by venturing to Breccia Hall, and so on, and so on.” He gave a cynical laugh. “They care little for my discomposure, of course; they just hate to enter anything with solid walls and a roof.”

“Oh, my dear,” Ethelva said in concern, “for you to go all that way, when you have to sit through the religious ceremonies this evening—”

“I am not decrepit yet,” he said mildly. He turned to Mikad. “Have a pede and driver made ready for me, with a chair saddle. I’ll take ten men from the guard. In the meantime, send water to the Reduner camp. One dayjar for each man and beast. Do that every day they are our guests.”

The seneschal bowed and retreated.

Ethelva looked at her husband in concern. “You didn’t even ask how many of them there were before ordering the water! Granthon, we cannot spare—”