The Last Stormlord (49 page)

Except the street wasn’t safe.

The old man took up a paint spoon and started to apply colour to the area near the doorway. He worked quickly, almost carelessly, not worrying too much about detail or clear-cut edges. He was painting two figures, both men, and the arm and shoulder of a third, who was standing off to the left. The two full figures stood in the shadow. One could only be seen in profile. He was a lean man wearing nondescript riding clothes; his face was clearly defined, and his features were vaguely familiar to Shale. The other man, taller and more muscular, was reaching out to pull the bell. His face was also sharply depicted. The third man, whose arm and shoulder only were pictured, was wearing what appeared to be a uniform. Livery.

Terelle frowned, and the frown deepened as ripples advanced across the surface of the painting and it began to change. For a moment, Shale thought that Russet had knocked the tray, but the painter was motionless.

The painted figures were changing, clarifying. The edges sharpened. Shale gasped.
How had the waterpainter done that?

“Highlord Nealrith Almandine of Breccia,” Russet said, pointing to the man painted in profile.

“How do you know what he looks like?” Terelle asked, troubled.

“Met him. I did paintings for Breccia Hall.” Pointing at the painting, he turned to address Shale. “Now Nealrith comes in answer to Amethyst’s message. Other man pulling the bell: Kaneth Carnelian, warrior rainlord. Two rainlords—ye be safe, no?”

“Taquar mentioned Kaneth to me. I don’t think Taquar likes him much. But how is putting them into a painting going to ensure they come?” Shale asked, not bothering to hide his scorn. He had to believe that the man could alter a painting without touching it, because he had just seen it happen; he’d manipulated the water, obviously. It was quite another thing to think that a painting could influence the future.

Russet turned fierce eyes on him. “Ye lords be not only ones with water-powers. Watergivers of my people—once Russet Kermes be finest of them—bring more than water through space
and
time, by painting.”

“Are you trying to tell us the rainlords Nealrith and Kaneth stand right now at Amethyst’s gate?” he asked.

“If they be in Breccia, yes. But they must be riding here first, no?” He waved a hand at the picture. “I put future into paint, they obey. No choice.”

Shale was still scornful. “Then why get Amethyst to write a letter?”

“Quicker, better, if they have reason to be coming. Letter give them good reason—to find new stormlord.” He turned back to Terelle. “Ye must practise this art, over and over. But remember, ye get what ye be asking, so no more watersellers on roof. Understand?”

She appeared troubled, but she nodded.

He continued with his instructions. “Art not accurate, nothing happens. Must be having much detail right. Ye be blessed with waterpainter’s memory—yet detail not always desirable.” He indicated the painting in front of them. “Nealrith and Kaneth’s face in detail. Door perfect detail. But only suggestion of lords’ tunics. Back view of Breccia guard’s uniform.”

“Why?” Terelle asked.

“If paint tunic in detail for Nealrith, but he be not owning tunic like that? What then? Maybe he be delaying trip till he get one. Suggest what ye not know; detail what ye do. Understand?”

“I think so.”

“And then?” Shale asked. “What then? There is detail there now. The tunics and trousers, the guard—”

“Water to water—my water, to water in the tray, to water in Nealrith and Kaneth—plus power of a Watergiver. That be all I need. I picture them both at Amethyst’s gate. Picture them, move water and the paint to make it so. Who servant be, what clothes Nealrith and Kaneth wear, that decided by what possible, what probable.”

He gestured at the painting once more. “I paint dark blue tunic, brown trousers. Common colours. Power of water decides which blue tunic in Nealrith’s wardrobe. Same with trousers. He be wearing them day he knocks at Amethyst’s door. I not make it so—it just be so, and therefore be so in painting.” He raised his eyes to look at Terelle. “Power of water, artistry, waterpainter, all working together, that be real power. Can do many things. Can kill. Can enslave.”

The wilted bastard
, Shale thought,
he’s like Taquar. He wants power, but finding it, he’d misuse it.
If he was so powerful that he could bring Nealrith to him across the fissured land of the Scarpen Quarter, then why was he just a waterpainter on the thirty-sixth level of Scarcleft, living hand to mouth in a miserable rented room?

“If that were so, you could be a stormlord and supply us with storms,” he said aloud. “All you’d have to do is paint rain.”

Russet looked disconcerted and did not answer.

Looking at him now, Shale thought the old man didn’t look powerful; he looked sick. When he rose to his feet, he staggered and almost fell.

He leaned against the wall for a moment, flexing stiff joints, and then said, “One such painting a day from ye, Terelle. Harmless portraits. House gecko falling off shelf, that sort of thing. I be going to lie down for a while. We need more white paint. Mix some.” He gathered up his colourful wrap, tucked in the ends firmly about him and disappeared back inside the room.

Shale said in a whisper, “He’s sun-fried.”

“No, he’s not,” she said quietly from where she sat. “I can do it, too.”

He stared at her. She was not looking at him; her eyes were downcast, as if she was ashamed. She continued, “I can do what he did. Make the details of a figure come up through the painted picture by manipulating the tiny spots of paint below, fashioning them using the power of the water. I don’t know how. But I can.” She lifted her eyes to meet his, and they were pooled with misery. “You remember that man on the roof?”

“Of course.”

“I did that. I didn’t believe anything would happen, you see, so I painted a suggestion of him up there. Vato the waterseller. Then I pulled the details up through the paint and made him—no, not
him
: his future—I made his future real. I made his future to be sitting on the roof. And a few moments later, he was there, perched on…” Her words trailed away. “It’s something that happens when the water and paint passes through the picture. It is as Russet said: a combination of water, art and the mind.”

Shale sat still, saying nothing. Was it possible? He had seen the man on the roof. And Terelle believed it.

She went on, “I spoke to him about it yesterday. The waterseller. I asked him how he came to be on the roof. He said he just had this urge to climb up there, and so he did. He didn’t know why, and he was helpless to resist. If he’d fallen, it would have been my fault. And people stole his water while he was away.” A tear ran down her face. “I didn’t know it was going to be like this when I became Artisman Russet’s apprentice. Is it evil to do this sort of thing, Shale? To ensure a particular future?”

He thought about that before replying, and after a long silence said, “If what you say is true, then yes, I think it is.”

She looked so woebegone, he felt compelled to add an explanation. “If putting a person into a painting has forced him to do something that he would not have done willingly, it is evil. Imagine how such power could be used. Or misused. You could make a painting of someone giving you a costly gift, which he would then proceed to do, whether he really wanted to or not. Would that be any different from stealing his water tokens?” He had to turn away from her grief. “I wouldn’t trust Russet’s motives, not for a moment. Leave him, Terelle.”

“How?” she whispered. “I am waterless. I don’t have the skills to steal water like you do. Without him I have nothing.”

He flushed. He had been unaware that she noticed his surreptitious thefts, drop by drop, of water from water jars or the steam from cooking pots in the neighbourhood. His own misuse of power. He said hastily, “You have a skill now. You can paint on water. And you know how to make the paints. You could make a living.” He hesitated. “Terelle, you couldn’t make it rain with your painting, could you?”

“I did think about that. But what if I just made a stormlord’s cloud drop its water in the wrong place? We’d be worse off, not better. Russet told me it’s hard to influence something inanimate, anyway, unless a person or an animal is involved in the process. To make it rain in a particular place would be tough; to influence a stormlord to drop his rain would be easier.”

He thought about that and then said, “Terelle, come with me to Breccia.”

Her whole face lit up, but her smile vanished as quickly as it had come, to be replaced by a haunted look that tore through his heart.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“I can’t. Besides, you don’t even like me.”

His flush deepened. “I never said that,” he protested. The look she gave him then told him he had failed her. She had wanted him to say something else, but what? He had no idea. He rushed on. “You should leave. I don’t trust Russet. He’s… not a nice man. He is using you. I don’t know why, but I do know that much.” He added, “I know about being used.”

She considered that. “You think he and Highlord Taquar are the same?”

“Yes. No. Taquar is cold. Calculating. Clever. Russet is none of those things. But he is sly.” He struggled to express what he sensed. “He is… greedy. Can’t you see the way he looks at you? As though you are—are something to eat. He wants something from you. You just don’t know what yet. I suspect, though, that what he wants is the same thing that Taquar wanted from me: power.”

“Russet has his own power.”

“Does he? Or is he growing weaker as the years go by? Is he perhaps watching his power diminish and wondering just how to survive? He hasn’t been truthful with you. It’s obvious you both come from the same place, wherever that is. You have the same eyes, and you say you have the same ability with waterpainting the future. He has spoken of your mother as if he knew her. Why won’t he tell you where he comes from?”

“I’m from the Gibber.”

“No, you’re not. I’ve never seen Gibber folk with green eyes like yours. I’ve never seen anyone with eyes like yours. Except Russet.”

She had started to clean up the paints, turning her back to him as she worked, flinging things noisily into the sand basin, wiping up splashes of paint on the floor with dried leaves. “You don’t know everything, Shale sand-grubber. In fact, I don’t think you know
anything
.”

As she began to scour the paint spoons with sand, he retreated, aware that he had just made her angry. He had only been trying to help and did not fully understand just where he had gone wrong.

Only much later, after they had been wrenched apart, did it occur to him that she had wanted him to say he cared for more than her welfare. She had wanted to hear him say that he cared for
her
. By then, it was too late.

Shale knew little about girls. There had been none around his own age in the shanties of Wash Drybone, and the girls who lived in proper houses in the settle certainly had nothing at all to do with the family of Galen the sot. Terelle didn’t simper or giggle as the settle girls often had, and he was grateful for that, but she did have the knack of making him thick-tongued and clumsy. He even found himself flushing simply because of the way she sometimes looked at him: with eyebrows raised and an expression that said, “You can’t really be as stupid as
that
, can you?”

He was never able to predict just what would prompt that reaction in her. She did it when he told her one of her paintings was pretty. She did it when he said that just because they didn’t like Jomat, it didn’t necessarily mean he was evil. She did it when he remarked that Nealrith was lucky because he was married to someone who must surely be the loveliest woman in all the Quarter. She did it when he said that he couldn’t see anything wrong with owning ziggers. Sometimes, the more logical the statement was to him, the higher her eyebrows went. Even when he tried to pay her a compliment, it could go awry. When he said one of her tunics suited her, she said scathingly, “
This?
You think I look good in
this
?”

Still, there were other times when he thought she was better company than Mica had ever been. She laughed more. She made him laugh. Without his being actively aware of it, she insinuated herself into his waking thoughts and night-time dreams, and the results were pleasant. Just thinking about her stirred his body. He found himself looking forward to her company. He was happier when she was in the room than when she wasn’t. He wanted to touch her but never dared.

One day he told her as much as he could remember about Mica and then asked, “Do you—do you think it would be possible for you to paint him? I mean, a picture where—where he and I meet up again, or something?”

She thought about that. “I don’t know what he looks like,” she said finally. “Even if you were to describe him… No, I’m sorry, Shale; I don’t think it would work. I’ll ask Russet, though.”

He nodded, resigned. He had not really expected anything else.

“You cheated!”

“I did not!”

Shale tilted his head in disbelief. “There were four shells in that hollow. You dropped another in and then transferred them. You could skip the lady’s hollow because of the purple shell, but you had to have five shells, which means the last one had to—”

She started to laugh. She had taught him how to play a board game called Lords and Shells, which involved trying to collect all your opponent’s shells from the many hollows on their side of the carved board and distribute them into your own hollows, using strategy that involved farsighted interpretation of how the game was going to go. They argued long and hard about just how much luck was involved and how much of the outcome was indeed due to planning; sometimes a single game would go on well into the night. It helped to pass the time. No, more than that, it was
fun
. And it was hard to get angry with Terelle when she tried to get the better of him by cheating. She would look so innocent and wide-eyed, he always knew she must have done
something
, but sometimes it was hard trying to work out exactly what. That, he decided, was one of the things he liked about her: she was never dull. Her company made the waiting, the necessity of his Reduner disguise and his virtual imprisonment bearable.