The Last Stormlord (45 page)

He thought of selling the gold bracelet or the jasper to raise enough tokens to buy a passenger seat, but when he went to Illara for advice, she told him to lie low. “The enforcers are cleaning out this cesspit,” she warned. “People who deal in stolen property are vanishing, Jasper. Wait a while.”

“They’re not stolen,” he protested, bending the truth a little.

She snorted. “It doesn’t matter how you got them. What matters is what folk will believe.”

She was probably right at that. And then he realised—although the bracelet was still safely tucked away among the things he had paid to store—the bloodstone jasper had been at the bottom of his purse. The same purse he had given to Feroze.

He cursed himself.

It had been his last link to Citrine, and now it was gone.

He tried not to be unrealistic in his hopes. Feroze might die. The man had not even had a robe or a hat as protection against the sun. If he did manage to reach Breccia and talk to the Cloudmaster, he might not be believed. Taquar was one of
them
, a ruler, a high rainlord, a friend perhaps.

As the days passed and there was no sign of anyone coming to look for him, his hopes faded.

Then, fifteen days later, he was in trouble again. He was looking for work one morning when he came face-to-face with a group of uniformed enforcers accompanied by someone he guessed to be a reeve. He looked away and went to walk on by, but the reeve stopped him with a curt, “Wait, you.” He unrolled a parchment he carried, looked at it, looked up at Shale and said, “This is the one. Arrest him.”

Shale didn’t wait to hear anything more; he took to his heels. He was young and his quick reactions gave him a head start. He made straight for the twisted alleyways around the market area. He pelted up the street, skidded around the first corner to his right and hurdled a pile of refuse in the middle of the lane.

The reeve’s men followed, and one of them—a young man of about his own age—could run like wind whistling up the wash. A quick glance behind told Shale that he was in trouble: the man was gaining. It was only a matter of time. He raced on, shoving people out of the way.

At the next corner, instead of dashing on down the street, he swung hard to the left, vaulted a wall and crashed across the tops of some sandgrouse cages stored in the yard beyond. By the time his pursuer had realised where he’d gone, Shale was already climbing the wall on the other side. He jumped down, knowing he had only a few seconds to disappear unseen. A frantic glance around told him he was in another street, and luck was with him. There was a waterseller’s cart laden with supply jars and a number of people milled around helping themselves to the water. It looked as if they were stealing it. Which didn’t make sense, but he had no time to think about it. He raced up a set of stairs on his right, hoping that they would lead to some kind of hiding place.

At the top, he swung into a hallway and tripped over something on the floor before he noticed it was there. He took another few steps and then stopped, realising that there was only a blank wall ahead of him. On his right there were archways that overlooked the street, on his left a number of closed doors. There was only one person in the hallway, a girl—young woman?—of about his own age. She was standing looking at him with an odd expression on her face that he couldn’t read.

“Can you hide me?” he asked. “Please?”

She stared at him, wordless.

“I’m desperate.
Please.
” In his urgency, he couldn’t think of the right words to say to persuade her.

She opened her mouth to speak but was then distracted by something behind him. He whirled to see what it was and glimpsed a man crawling across the tiles of the sloping roof of the building opposite. The fellow looked as scared as Shale felt.

He looked back at the girl. Already he could hear sounds of running feet below, people shouting. He could feel the water of his pursuers. Someone would soon think to come up the stairs. He glanced at the closed doors to the side. Useless to try hiding behind one of those if the girl was only going to give him away.

“Please,” he whispered. “Otherwise I could be a prisoner for the rest of my life.”

Scarpen Quarter

Scarcleft City

Level 36

Earlier that morning, Russet had told Terelle he wanted her to do a painting for him. “Out in the hallway,” he said, “where the light be better.”

“A picture of what?” she asked.

“Oh, anything ye can see. Cover the water with layer of motley first, then picture on top.” He shoved a pot into her hand. The paint powder it contained was a bruised purple colour.

“Motley?”

“Special mix. All colours in one.”

He nodded and flapped his hands at her in a gesture of dismissal. She knew better than to ask questions; they were never answered.

She set up the materials in the hallway and got to work. As she covered the water with the powder, she tried to remember why this reminded her of something. She sighed, reflecting on how little concerning Russet made sense to her. And she hated the way his eyes followed her about as she painted or ate or cleaned the house. The gaze was not prurient or even speculative; he just watched her as if he wanted to know everything about her. He
studied
her, as a pede auctioneer might study the animals he was about to sell or a palmier would study the trees in his grove to make sure they thrived.

“He’s not as bad as Huckman,” she told herself, not for the first time. The trouble was, she was no longer sure that was true.

She painted the view from where she sat: a puzzle of interlocking rooftops, patterns in light and shadow, thatched fronds and clay pantiles, uneven daub walls with holes for windows. She worked steadily for the rest of the morning, striving for a combination of reality and suggestion, trying to convey the heat, and the aura of poverty and dilapidation and of timelessness.

Neighbours came and looked, spoke a few words, and moved on. When she was painting she tended to be vague in her replies, and most of them had become accustomed to that. Only when she was cleaning the paint spoons in sand did she realise that Russet now sat on his coloured mat peering over her shoulder watching her work.

She jumped and laughed nervously. “I didn’t know you were there,” she said.

His sharp green eyes, small now with age, examined her picture. “Interesting perspective,” he said. “I be doubting anyone will ever want to buy a picture of rooftops.”

She shrugged. “I did it for myself. You did say to paint anything.”

He gave an odd smile that didn’t make any sense to her. “Ah, I did, yes? Serves me right.” He glanced around, as if to make sure they were not overheard. “I be taking your lessons one step further. Show ye how to move the paint.”

“What paint?”

“The motley. To make painting… different. To add an element. Or elements.”

“I don’t understand.” But her heart thudded uncomfortably. She realised now. Motley—that was how he had started the first painting she had ever seen him do, the one that had changed. She had thought the colour was indigo.

“Watch. Watch very carefully.” He picked up a paint spoon and dropped some sienna brown on the ridge of one of the roofs. Using the paint skewer, he swirled it gently to define the shape he wanted, then added a touch of umber, some ochre, a spot of yellow. A few more deft strokes and she could see the shape of a large bird perched on the ridge of the roof. When he put down the spoon and skewer, however, the painting was still unfinished, with the details of the plumage, head and beak left vague. He sat and gazed at the picture, his hands loosely clasped in his lap.

She thought she identified the moment when something changed, when the merest of shivers rippled the water beneath the paint and the surface moved. There was a shifting of colour, a blurring around the bird, a darkening of the reddish tiles. She tried to isolate the detail and yet watch the whole too. Even so, she almost missed the precise moment when the blurriness sharpened and the indefinite impression of a bird became something else: a scavenger hawk, every line sharply defined. It coalesced out of the splash of browns, becoming a real portrait of one of the birds that soared around the city waiting for the moment when something died. Its shadow deepened the colour of the tiles next to it, yet she was sure he had not painted its shadow at all.

“That’s impossible,” she said softly, knowing that it was not, for he had just done it.

He gave a quiet laugh that chilled her to the tips of her fingers. “Just as stormlords moving clouds be impossible, to the commoner.”

“You used the colours in the motley,” she said. “You took the colours you needed and pushed them up through the paint, mixed them with the colour you had already added, to make the detail of a painting on top of mine. How is that possible?”

“The affinity of water and man,” he said. “Water is the key, always. Hook paint to water and move the water.”

“Only sensitives can move water,” she said.

“No, child, only rainlords and stormlords and waterpainters move water. Stormlords move the sea, rainlords a cistern, ye and I—a few drops in a tray.”

“I’m not water sensitive.”

“Never said ye were. I said ye can also move water. Fact, we do more even than stormlords, for we be moving the paint as well. If it be motley powder. Tomorrow, ye learn how to make motley. All colours in one mix. Special resin keeps each separate.”

She shook her head. Her tongue was dry against the roof of her mouth and her skin felt stretched tight. “Is that what all this is about? You think I can move paint and water?” She meant: Is that why you have taken me in and compelled me to stay?

“All Watergivers who cry water can move water,” he said. “And ye are your mother’s daughter.”

She was swept with panic. “You knew my mother,” she whispered, confirming what she had long believed, though not knowing why the thought shattered her so. “And you knew my name. How? Who am I?”

Once again he casually dismissed her need. “Be of no matter. Matters ye be learning how to change a painting. I want ye to put another hawk there, on the roof, beside mine. The way I did it.”

“I can’t do that!”

“Ye can and ye shall.” He dashed several more spoonfuls of paint-powder on top of the painting, in the shape of a similar bird. Then one scrawny arm reached out and took hold of her wrist. She stared at the marks that covered his hands and forearms. She had once thought the patterns were just painted on; she knew better now. The marks were permanent. “Look deep into the painting.”

The power in his voice reverberated through his arm and into her body. “Connections,” he whispered. “Water to water, life to life. Look deep. See beneath to layers of colour. See bird there, bring to life. Not with paint spoon, but using your mind. Connect to water, Terelle. Each grain of colour be floating in bubble of water. Take the grains ye need, the colours ye want, float them up. Re-form them, make your bird with your mind, see its colours, cruel beak, taloned claws, yellow eye, each feather. Move the colours,
move
them…”

His voice murmured on, saying words that no longer had individual meaning but built an entire idea. Her mind was not her own; she felt drugged; and yet she saw the bird. She saw it, beneath the paint. Under the painted roof tiles. And she moved it upwards.

The second bird sat on the roof ridge in the painting, next to the first.

She shuddered, cried out in denial. “You did that! It wasn’t me!”

“Was ye,” he said, and she hated him. She hated his manipulation. She hated what he had done, and why. Her heart told her that this was something he had done not for her, but for himself.

“Who are you?” she asked. “
What
are you?”

“One day I be telling ye. But not yet.”

“And
why
?” she asked. Remembering the woman who had appeared in both the street and his painting at the same time, her gaze flew upwards to the rooftop, but there were no hawks sitting there.

He followed her gaze and smiled. “Be long way to go, child, journey we be making, ye and me. At journey’s end, ye know exactly who ye be and
what
ye be. And when I die, your future be yours to choose. That’s what ye be wanting, no? Ability to choose your own fate. Then ye no longer be saying life not fair.”

He’s mocking me
, she thought.
Laughing at my childish desire for fate to be both impartial and just.

He stood up, hitching his wrapped robes about him as if he was chilled, and walked back into their room. She stretched, needing to unwind, to feel the tension dissipate from her muscles and tendons. Finally, when she reached a semblance of normality again, she looked down at the painting once more. The hawks were still sitting there, side by side, Russet’s better-made than hers. His bird regarded her with a living intensity in its yellow eye, all predator, with a predator’s hunger—and impartiality. She could almost hear it telling her: Life isn’t fair. It is harsh and unkind and cruel.

Why couldn’t she accept that?

Because even if it’s true, it’s not acceptable,
she thought.

Against her will, she found herself drawn into the painting again, entangled in its strands of light and dark, aware of the colours beneath the superficiality. She heard a whisper in her mind:
You could do anything. You could make life fair
. Her inner desire manifesting itself. Tempting her.