The Last Stormlord (55 page)

Once on the tenth level, however, she was lost: she had never been at that end of the level before. It took time to find her way through a maze of shops and residential streets to Amethyst’s lane.

When she arrived at the gate, she found it ajar.

She hesitated, then gave it a tentative push with her fingers. It swung wider to reveal the small unroofed outer courtyard. She looked around. Jomat was nowhere to be seen, and the house was deathly quiet. A faint, unpleasant smell drifted on the air. The main door to the house also stood ajar. She tiptoed into the entrance hall, only to trip over Jomat because she was looking around instead of down.

He lay on the flagstone floor, obviously dead. He had been sliced open across the abdomen and lay in a pool of foul-smelling liquid. A sagging hole penetrated layers of yellow fat, and his guts spilled out in an obscene tangle. His hands still clutched at them, as if he had tried to tuck them back where they belonged. His face was frozen in a dying rictus of surprise and betrayal and pain. He had not expected to die, and his unbelief was still there in the eyes that stared sightlessly at her.

She gagged and had to cover her mouth and look away. Highlord Nealrith wouldn’t have done this, would he? But if not, then who?

She dithered. Should she flee? But where to? She had expected help, and now there was none. And then her next thought:
Amethyst.
Where was the arta?

Oh, please, let her be all right!

Without thinking too much—because if she did, she knew she’d be too terrified—she ran up the stairs two at a time. Once again she found an open door. There was no one in the outer chamber, no one in the sitting room. She ran through into the bedroom. Amethyst lay on the canopied bed, her hands clasped at her waist. She appeared to be sleeping. Terelle approached, her heart hammering in her throat, the roaring rush in her ears blocking sound. It wasn’t until she was at the edge of the bed, looking down, that she saw the knife. It was angled upwards from below Amethyst’s left breast, jammed in as far as the hilt. But there was hardly any blood. If she had not been so unnaturally still, Terelle might have thought that she still lived.

A slight sound broke through her shock, bringing her back to a sense of her own danger. She raised her eyes from Amethyst’s body and saw a man emerging from the adjoining water-room. He was wiping his sword on a towel, which he then casually dropped on the floor. The weapon he kept in his hand. He was tall and lean, a handsome man, with dark hair neatly tied at his nape. His eyes were a deep grey and held an intensity that made her instantly fearful. She knew who he was: Taquar, Highlord of Scarcleft.

“Let me guess,” he said softly, “you must be Terelle.” She nodded, unable to do anything else in the face of his menace.

“Are you alone?”

She nodded again and looked down at the bed. “Did she kill herself?”

“No, I did that. She knew she was about to die, so she attacked me with that knife. Brave, but futile. Why are you here?”

“I came to see Amethyst,” she whispered. “The door was open.” She began to back away.

Casually he reached into his cloth belt and withdrew an object he had secreted there. He brought it up until it was level with his shoulders and pointed it in her direction. “And do you know what this is?”

She halted, the last of her courage draining away. “It—it’s a zigtube.”

“It is also loaded. Hear that whining? All I have to do is tap this little catch here, twice”—he indicated the spot—“and the barrier between the zigger and freedom will drop, and the zigger will fly out. You know what will happen then?”

Donnick the doorman, clutching at his throat, writhing on the courtyard paving, taking time to die.
She nodded again.

“They can follow you around corners, did you know that? Bloodlust drives them. They go for the soft parts of the body. Your eye, perhaps. Or maybe up a nostril and straight into the brain, and as they burrow, they exude their toxins. No one has ever been able to tell us if it is painful, but I assure you, it has always looked that way to me. The victims just go on screaming until they die. Is this the way you want to end your life, Terelle?”

She shook her head, incapable of any other movement.

“Then kneel on the floor—slowly—and put your hands behind you.”

She hesitated, then shook her head. “You’re going to kill me, just like you killed Amethyst.”

“A justifiable deduction, but not necessarily accurate. I most definitely won’t kill you until I have Shale in my hands. And maybe I won’t even then. Maybe I could use you to ensure his cooperation. Is he fond of you?”

She met his eyes. “I’m hardly going to say no to that, am I?”

He gave a slight smile. “You
are
a surprising girl.” She clamped her lips together tightly to stop her chin quivering.

He took up the towel he had been using to wipe his sword and cut it into strips which he knotted together to make a rope. She watched him, waiting for a moment’s inattention, but his gaze flicked her way constantly, and the zigtube was now on the bed within his easy reach. When he’d finished the rope to his satisfaction, he used it to tie her hands together, leaving one end trailing down. Then he tied this long end around one of her ankles in such a way that she had to stoop slightly. Like that, there was no way she could run, or even walk without stumbling.

He tucked the zigtube away, saying, “Now we’ll go and sit downstairs while we wait for the seneschal and his men to return with Shale.” He gestured to her, indicating that she should precede him down the stairs.

She faltered a little but made it to the bottom. There, he sat in one of the chairs in the hall and indicated the floor in front of him. “Sit there.”

Wordlessly, she obeyed and for some time they sat in silence. He continued to polish his sword, using the throw cover of the chair he sat in. The reek of Jomat’s body wafted by intermittently. She wondered what had happened to Amethyst’s other staff: there had been a maid and a cook, she knew. She listened for sounds from the kitchen area, but all was quiet.

Amethyst
. Terelle wanted to grieve, but couldn’t; shock held her emotions immobile. “Why did you kill her?” she asked, her voice as thin as a child’s.

“She betrayed me. She betrayed me by helping Shale escape, when she should have told me about him.”

“And why did you kill Jomat? Amethyst thought he spied for you.”

“For Seneschal Harkel, yes. I just didn’t want anyone left alive who knows about my interest in Shale Flint.”

“So you
are
going to kill me. I would really rather you didn’t.”

He stared at her, surprised. Then he laughed. “You have backbone, I’ll give you that. How did you meet Amethyst? Who are you, Terelle? I’ve never met anyone with eyes quite like yours.”

“I came to Arta Amethyst to take dance lessons.”

“And how did you meet Shale?”

“We bumped into each other. Accidentally. He was running from some of the enforcers…” Her voice shook and trailed off.

“And you were living with a waterpainter, an old outlander. A relative of yours?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s an odd answer.”

“Well, I don’t know.”

He laid his blade aside and leaned forward. “Shale told you about what happened to him, didn’t he?”

“Happened to him when?”

“He told you about me.”

She shook her head. “I don’t even know who you are.”

“I think you do.”

She did not reply.

He picked up his sword and put the tip of the blade under her chin. He tilted her face upwards, forcing her to look at him. “I think you know very well. Don’t play games with me, Terelle, or you may regret it. How old are you?”

Instinctively, she lied. “Fourteen. Just last week.”

“You are tall for that age.”

“I can’t help it!” she wailed. Anything to convince him she was a child still. “I just keep growing!”

He laughed at her. “In another couple of years, you will be very desirable. There may be a place for you in Scarcleft Hall.”

“If you want a waterpainter.”

He smiled and went back to polishing the handle of his sword.

Scarpen Quarter

Scarcleft City to Breccia City

A circular depression, with a scree-scattered scarp rising on one side and a low natural rock wall on the other, formed a perfect camp site. The sun had just set, and darkness gathered in the depression like a dusky mist. No one would see the camp fires unless they climbed the surrounding slope and looked down into the scoop. Yet it could also be a trap, Shale realised, as their myriapedes flowed over the rim and he gazed down into the gloom.

He shivered slightly, aware that Scarcleft was just an hour’s ride away to the north and that Taquar was not the kind of man who would meekly surrender his ambition. Worse, a rainlord could track people by the water within them, especially out in the dry country of the Skirtings.

He saw a few tents before him, a couple of myriapedes and only two more people. One turned out to be Kaneth’s wife, another rainlord, but still, he had expected more. He had thought that the Highlord of Breccia, who was also the son of the Cloudmaster, would travel with a large escort.

Lord Ryka he didn’t remember at all, although she told him she was part of the group that had come to Wash Drybone. When he looked at her now, he wondered how he could have forgotten her. It wasn’t that she was beautiful but rather that she unsettled the space around her, like a spindevil wind. He liked her right from the start. She didn’t ply him with questions but set about finding him some better-fitting Scarpen clothes to wear and a meal to eat. Worried about Terelle, he wasn’t hungry but forced some food down to please Lord Ryka while they waited for the highlord. He arrived an hour later, together with Soltar, who had met him on the street as the rainlord was being escorted to the gate. He had only another four men with him.

And no Terelle.

Shale stared. Ten men and a woman. They rode from Breccia to Scarcleft with eleven people, and only three of them rainlords.
They don’t know Taquar
, he thought miserably.
And Terelle is still there, somewhere in his city.

“Come, Shale,” Kaneth said as the newcomers dismounted wearily. “You must meet Nealrith.” He led Shale forward to where Lord Ryka had just taken hold of the reins of Nealrith’s pede as he dismounted. “This is the man, Rith. Shale Flint. He tells me he’s from Wash Drybone Settle, Gibber Quarter.”

“Welcome, Shale. And good work, Kaneth. Although Soltar tells me we lost Gadri.”

“I’m afraid so. You didn’t see the young waterpainter woman, did you, the one Shale has been staying with? Terelle?”

“No. Was she supposed to come to Amethyst’s?”

“We were hoping,” Lord Kaneth said with a sympathetic look at Shale. “We thought she might have gone there for help, and to warn you.”

“I could have done with the warning. Soltar found me only after we left the arta’s house. Sunlord forgive me, I left Amethyst with Taquar.”

Even in the dim light, Shale glimpsed a haunted look in the rainlord’s eyes.
Taquar will kill her
, he thought with certainty.
And Lord Nealrith knows it. Yet he isn’t going to do a thing.

Nealrith turned his attention to him. “Wash Drybone Settle?” he asked. “We went there, must be four years ago now. I don’t remember you.” He gripped Shale’s shoulder. “Come, let’s go and sit down by the fire where I can see you better, and you can tell us the whole story.”

The guards brought them food and water as Shale recounted his history. When he skimped on the telling, trying to gloss over the details to avoid the pain of memory, it was Lord Ryka who teased the full tale out of him. Useless, he decided, to hide anything from her; she had a mind that could race ahead of his and a personality that would not rest until the truth was known. In the end, the only thing he didn’t touch on was what he knew about the power of waterpainting.

He said, by way of ending, “I think Lord Taquar’s the one who stole the storm that came down our wash. I believe he kidnapped Lyneth. And that it’s even possible he killed the other young rainlords who rivalled him.”

The rainlords exchanged startled glances. Lord Nealrith said, “He kidnapped
Lyneth
? What do you know of her? Dear sweet water, she’s not still
alive
, is she?”

Shale shook his head. “I shouldn’t think so.” He told them about the clothes at the mother cistern and how he had guessed who had once worn them. He showed them Lyneth’s bracelet.

Nealrith fingered it, his face ashen, and passed it to Kaneth. “I remember this. It was a present from Iani.” He looked back at Shale. “You will have to tell him of what you have learned, when you meet him. Lyneth’s father. And her mother, too, Lord Moiqa.”

Kaneth gave the bracelet to Ryka to look at, and she handled it with an expression of profound grief on her face. “No end is too horrible for that man,” she said at last, almost spitting out the words in her disgust. She handed the bracelet back to Shale. “None.”

Kaneth looked startled at her vehemence but didn’t comment. “It can’t have been a coincidence that Taquar was at the dancer’s house, can it?” he asked.