The Last Stormlord (24 page)

He had started at the top of the tray, working his way downwards. For a long time she could see no sense in what he did, and the way the powder reacted with the water was odd. It stayed where it was placed. Nothing sank. When a colour did bleed into another, it was intentional.

And then, in a flood of revelation, she saw what he was painting. There was a doorway in a wall. A broom resting against the daub. A heap of used bab husks piled up. A palm roof with a ragged edge. It was a representation of the building and the wall across from where they sat. A picture.

She had never seen such a thing before, not like this, not in any medium. In the Scarpen, pictures were woven into mats and cushions, cut into or painted on pottery and ceramics—but those pictures were always stylised. They were reality disguised as shapes and designs, two-dimensional, symbolic, precise, offering form and shape and, most of all, pattern. They never offered the suggestion of movement; they were never a raw representation of what existed. Never anything like this. They weren’t
alive.

She saw the way the shadow of the broom fell across the wall, the patterns of light and shade in the discarded husks, the dustiness of the street in front of the doorway. She saw the sunlight as it hit the wall; she could see the haziness of it, knew the dryness of it. It had depth, as if she could step into it. It had immediacy, as if the door was about to open and someone was going to step into the street. She could feel the heat, smell the dust, sense the weariness and poverty of the occupants. Here was the emptiness of a life felt, rather than seen, the portrayal of the husk rather than the contents.

The old man laid aside the pots and the spatula to survey the finished work.

The ache inside Terelle welled up into longing. She felt as if she was suspended in time, on the edge of some momentous point in history, and she had only to take a step to make it happen.

And then she became aware that someone was staring at her, even as she stared at the painting on the water. She turned her head. There was a man standing in the middle of the street. People pushed their way around him, and a passing packpede loaded with palm pith even brushed his elbow; he didn’t notice.

She knew instantly that he was from the White Quarter. There was, after all, no mistaking a ’Baster. They were as white as the great saltpans of their own quadrant. Startlingly white, with skin that never burned or blemished in the sun, and white hair that never changed colour, from birth to old age. Their eyes were always the palest of blue, almost colourless, their lips and cheeks bloodless. There were some who said ’Basters did not have blood in their veins, but water.

He was middle-aged, this ’Baster, dressed in their usual garb: a white robe with tiny round pieces of mirror sewn on in red embroidery. The mirrors sparkled when they caught the sunlight.

His gaze was so intent, so intrusive, that Terelle scrambled to her feet, staring back.

Time continued to hang, snagged on the moment—the magic of the painting, the power of the stare, the ache within Terelle responding to something potent in the air around her.

It was the ’Baster who sent time spinning on. He made a gesture of blessing with his hand and walked away. Sunlight caught in the mirrors, a myriad of flashing sparks winked, and he was gone, lost into the crowd.

And the old man spoke for the first time, using a thickly accented and clumsily worded version of the Quartern tongue she found hard to follow. “He smelled your tears. As did me. Which be why I came. Those, ye cannot be hiding from likes of us, Terelle.”

She turned back to him, terror flooding her senses. “How do you know my name?”

He shrugged. “Who else ye be? Ye your mother’s daughter.”

It was a comment that made no sense. She opened her mouth to protest, but he gestured at his painting and said, “Watch.” He lifted one side of the tray an inch from the ground, and then dropped it back down again. The water shivered, sending ripples through the colours. Terelle expected the paint to run and mix, the picture to disappear, but that did not happen. The ripples died away, and the painting remained, exactly as it had been when he had finished it.

Her eyes widened. “How…”

“Waterpainting be art,” he said. “Secret of art be in paint-powder. That can learn.
Magic
of the art, ah—that must be born in blood of artist.

“Watch again.”

She lowered her gaze from his face back to the tray.

He picked up one of the spoons and splashed some colour on the dusty road in the painting. Then another colour and another. This time, his work was slap-dash. Colours blended without real outline, edges blurred. He was painting a woman, but it was mere suggestion: a dress of indeterminate style and shadowed drabness, a face that was turned away so no features were clear, hair that was half-covered with a carelessly flung scarf. Even the shoes she wore were obscured by the length of her skirt.

Afterwards, Terelle was not sure how it happened—or, indeed, what happened. She was looking at the painted figure, admiring how a few touches of colour could suggest so much and wondering why he had used such a different technique to paint the woman, when the surface of the water blurred and shifted. Although she had not seen the old man touch the tray, the colours moved, and then re-formed. The blur focused; edges sharpened.

And the formless woman was formless no longer. Her dress was grubby and drab, and she had evidently just stepped out into the street from the house. Her shoes were woven palm slippers; her scarf was hardly more than a tattered rag, hastily donned. She had a puzzled expression on her face, as though she had forgotten why she had stepped outside.

Terelle’s jaw dropped. How had the painted figure changed so? Had the details been hidden beneath the paint, to be released by the artist’s movement of the water? Impossible, surely.

She looked across at the house opposite, the real one—and nearly screamed.

There was a woman there, dressed just as the woman in the painting was, with the same look of puzzlement on her face. Behind her the door was still swinging. She shrugged, turned and went back into the house.

Terelle looked down at the painting. The figure was still there, poised to move but caught in the stasis of paint.

“
How—
” But she did not know what to ask. “I saw
that
woman,” she said finally, pointing at the painting. She gestured with her hand across the street. “She was
there
. The real woman. And the painting changed. To fit—to
fit
her.”

The old man smiled. It was an expression not of friendliness but of sly pleasure. “Things change. Sometimes one thing be preceding another; sometimes not. And sometimes ye determine the order, if ye wish.

“Watch again.”

Once more she looked at the picture, afraid this time of what she would see. He drew out a knife and used it to separate paint from the edge of the tray, as if he was loosening a bab-fruit pie from its dish. Then quite casually he picked up two corners of the painting and lifted it. It came up whole, like a sheet of cloth, dripping water. He rolled it up and handed it to her.

“Keep it,” he said, “to remind ye of day ye met Russet Kermes the waterpainter. Sever painting from water, though, ye kill its soul.”

She took hold of it, amazed that it showed no signs of falling apart or even cracking. It was supple and strong. “It is…” She had been going to say beautiful, then realised that would be a lie.

The painting was not beautiful. It was intense, even savage. It reeked of anger against the poverty of the life it portrayed. “Remarkable,” she finished lamely.

This time his smile was sardonic. He said, “It be payment.”

She was suffocating as if choking on the dust of a desert spindevil; she felt unstable, as if the power of the wind had swept her feet from under her. Desperately she wanted to touch ground, to feel that there was something solid beneath her feet.

“Payment? For what?”

“For soul of artist, Terelle. Payment for
ye
, of course. What else?”

Scarpen Quarter

Scarcleft City and Breccia City

The unsuccessful search for a stormlord was over.

Now that Taquar had returned to Scarcleft Hall, evening was the time when he pushed aside any thought of his duties or his worries over water and indulged himself. Sometimes he would venture out to a high-level snuggery or a public house where there were dancers and musicians. Sometimes his pleasure was more cerebral and he would read in his library, or more active and he would spend time sparring with his master-of-swords.

No one dropped by without an invitation, so when the steward came to him one evening with the news that there was someone to see him, he was surprised. When it proved to be Ryka Feldspar, he was utterly astonished.

He rose to his feet, put what he hoped was an urbane smile on his face and said, “Rainlord Ryka! This is an unexpected, um, pleasure. What brings you to Scarcleft? Or perhaps even more to the point, what brings you to my abode at this time of the night?” He turned to look at the steward, still hovering in the doorway, and said, “Refreshments. Some of our best amber, perhaps.”

The steward bowed and departed. Taquar waved a hand towards a chair and schooled both his expression and tone to perfect neutrality. “Take a seat.” Her broad shoulders trembled slightly, which interested him. Ryka? Scared? That wasn’t in character. He’d always thought her about as nervy as a bab palm on a windless day.

She sat, but still didn’t appear to be at ease. “This is difficult to talk about,” she murmured.

“You intrigue me.” He couldn’t imagine what had brought this usually self-assured, arrogant woman to him, at night what’s more, which was definitely broaching the etiquette for an unwed woman. He didn’t like her and never had, but he had never cared enough to make that clear to her. He wondered if he was about to regret his lack of bluntness. She wanted a favour of him, that much was clear, one that she dare not commit to the written word.

“I shall speak plainly,” she said after an uncomfortable pause. “Granthon is pressing Kaneth and me to marry because we must have more stormlords. He is right about that, of course, but why he imagines that someone with limited rainlord skills such as myself would ever give birth to potential stormlords is beyond me.”

“It is puzzling,” he agreed.

She gave him a sharp look but continued. “I do not want to marry Kaneth. You are the only other unattached rainlord.”

He just caught himself in time to curtail an undignified desire to gape. “Waterless heavens, Ryka. You are not—surely—suggesting that you and I should wed?”

“Hardly. We would be scratching each other’s eyes out before the ceremony was over. But I did wonder if—”

He raised an eyebrow when she paused, genuinely puzzled. And she blushed.

“—ifachildofoursmightnothaveabetterchance,” she said in a rush.

He wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. “
What?
”

She took a deep breath. “If a child of ours—yours and mine—might not have a better chance. Of being a stormlord, I mean. We wouldn’t have to marry, or anything. Or even live together.”

For the first time in years, someone had truly astonished Taquar Sardonyx. This staid, no-nonsense woman, who was normally so sensible that he found her profoundly boring, was sounding like an overly romantic girl of seventeen with a sandcrazy idea in her head. He could barely contain his distaste. “You’re out of your mind,” he told her.

“Why?”

“I
beg
your pardon?”

“Why is it so unthinkable? You know we need stormlords. You are hardly shy about your numerous liaisons, so what difference will one more make to you?”

“My liaisons aim to be pleasurable. I can’t imagine anything less to my taste than to bed Ryka Feldspar because she wants to placate the Cloudmaster! I have not the faintest desire to bed you, Ryka. I have always found your snappish character and lack of femininity as unattractive as your face and as dull as the way you dress.”

When she flushed, he took no notice and continued, “Anyway, what do you propose? Taking a room downlevel somewhere and popping up here every night until such time as you are pregnant? You might have to wait a long time, my dear. To the best of my knowledge, I have never fathered a child, and I haven’t taken precautions to prevent it for the past fifteen years. Nor, I imagine, have many of the women involved. Why do you think the Cloudmaster hasn’t pressured me into a wedded state?”

He allowed a tinge of amusement to suffuse his tone. “As much as it saddens me to point this out to you, I fear I am destined never to have offspring. I
had
thought this fact was a matter of vulgar gossip throughout the Scarpen Quarter. It seems I was wrong, which pleases me, I will admit. Foolish pride, I know, but a man does not like his sterility to be a matter of common knowledge.”

While he’d been speaking, she had slowly risen to her feet, her face reddening and then draining of colour until she was as white as a ’Baster.

She stood staring at him, unable in her embarrassment and humiliation to speak. Finally she managed a strangled, “Then I have been wasting time for both of us. My apologies.”

He inclined his head. “Accepted. Ah,” he added with deliberate heartiness, “here are the refreshments—”