Stormlord rising

CHAPTER NINE

Scarpen Quarter Scarcleft City On his second full day in the hall, Jasper decided to test just how much freedom he had. When he left his room in the morning, the two men on guard outside fell in behind him, marching in step in silence. They followed him to breakfast. Later, they waited outside the stormquest room while he and Taquar cloudshifted. When he went outside to the roof gardens of the hall, two more men fell in step behind. Four of them, discreetly watching everything he did, listening to every conversation he had, even though the only people he spoke to were the gardeners and servants.

After lunch, he left the hall for the streets of the city, and his escort expanded as four of the seneschal's water enforcers joined them. Jasper's previous experience with enforcers had been unpleasant, and these strengthened his mistrust. The men formed a wall around him and gave him the impression they reveled in pushing people on the street out of his way with the shafts of their spears. "Just guarding you," one said with an ill-concealed sneer. "Looking after your security, your safety, your wellbeing, m'lord."

"There's no need to be so rough," Jasper protested, painfully aware of their contempt for outlanders.

"Stormlord," the overman among them replied, "we've been told to make sure no one approaches you. In case of assassination. M'lord."

"Assassination? Who in their right mind is going to assassinate the only stormlord the Quartern has?"

"Reduners might, m'lord."

"And just how many Reduners are there in the streets of Scarcleft? If you see any, you have my permission to protect me. In the meanwhile, my orders to you are to treat the people in the streets with respect."

The man looked at a point somewhere over Jasper's head, his face impassive, and said, "Stormlord, it's the highlord gives us the orders."

"Watch what you say," he snarled. "Taquar is not the Cloudmaster yet. And he won't be until the Council of Rainlords agrees that he is. Is that clear? In the meantime, he may rule this city, but I am a stormlord of the Quartern. I would suggest you don't forget it!"

The man barely hid a smirk. "I serve Lord Taquar." There was a lengthy pause, long enough to be an insult, before he added, "My lord."

Painfully aware that he was friendless in Scarcleft, Jasper narrowed his eyes but said nothing.

"If the stormlord wishes to make a purchase, we can do it on his behalf."

Jasper let the matter ride. It was between him and Taquar, not him and the enforcers. "All right, let's just walk. I want to see the damage done to the city by the earthquake."

"Of course, m'lord."

When he returned to Scarcleft Hall, it was time for the afternoon session of watershifting. When that was over, he headed back to his own rooms, accompanied by a different pair of hall guards. Frustrated, he tackled one of them. He was young and, if his awkward manners were any indication, awed by being assigned to look after the stormlord.

"What's your name?" Jasper asked.

The man shifted his weight from foot to foot, rather like a child in need of an outhouse. "Er, Dibble Hornblend, m'lord."

"Dibble?"

"A nickname, m'lord. My friends think it amusing. A dibble is used for boring holes."

"Your friends think you are boring?"

"I think it was more they thought me good at digging holes for myself. Getting into trouble, that is, m'lord."

"Ah. What are your orders about me, Dibble?"

"To keep you safe, m'lord."

"How?"

In an apparent agony of embarrassment, Dibble grasped his sword hilt, then removed his hand, looked at it as if he'd never seen it before, and finally clasped both hands behind his back.

Jasper took pity on him. "Perhaps you should just recite your specific orders."

"To never permit anyone to be alone with you, to prevent the approach of strangers, to be at your shoulder with at least one other guard at all times within the hall, and to have no less than eight guards outside the walls, m'lord."

"Would it be all right if one day I go for a ride in The Skirtings?"

Dibble looked appalled. "Oh! Er… I shouldn't think so, m'lord. You could meet some of those marauding red bastards out there."

Of course, silly question.

"I would like to see the damage done to Scarcleft Hall by the earthquake, Dibble. I understand it was worst around the room where that waterpainter girl was confined. Can you show me the place?"

"No, m'lord. I don't know where it is."

"Could you find out?"

"Of course, my lord."

However, when Jasper asked him about it later on that evening, Dibble looked agonized, finally blurting that the damaged part of the hall was still dangerous, and no one was allowed entry. It sounded logical enough and Jasper might have believed him, except Dibble was a poor liar and blushed red as he said it.

Jasper concealed a sigh. "Very well. Never mind," he said, and retreated to his room. In the middle of the night, after lighting a lantern, Jasper ruffled his hair and flung open his bedroom door, the lantern clutched in his hand and an anxious expression fixed on his face. The two guards on duty outside his room immediately sprang to attention.

"I heard a noise at the shutters," he told them. "Take a look and see if anyone is there, will you?"

They crossed the room, opened the shutters and stepped out onto the balcony. While they were staring into the darkness of the roof garden on the level below, looking for a nonexistent intruder, Jasper formed water from the large jar in the water-room into a human shape, then whisked it out into the passage, out of sight.

"Can't see anything, my lord," one of the guards said a moment later. "Likely a cat, or such."

"Probably." Jasper shrugged. "All right, never mind."

Before either guard moved, he swept the water down the passage past the door. In the dim light cast by a candle lantern outside, it could have been a person. The guards shot out of the room to investigate.

Jasper grinned. He had whisked the water out of sight through one of the passage's unshuttered window slits. When the guards disappeared around the corner, he pulled the water back inside and replaced it in his water-room. He then took advantage of the men's absence to head off in the opposite direction. By the time the guards returned they would find the door firmly shut and Jasper nowhere to be seen. If he was lucky, they would assume the stormlord had returned to bed.

He knew vaguely where he wanted to go. He had asked the odd question, listened to servants and workmen, and from the outside he'd studied the damage to the hall and matched it up with what he knew of the interior. Terelle had done the damage herself; he was sure of that, and it would have been greatest where she was imprisoned-otherwise, how had she escaped? The thought amused him. Taquar had poked a stick into an ants' nest when he imprisoned Terelle the waterpainter, and he'd been bitten.

After one or two false forays into empty bedrooms, he found the room soon enough. As he shone the lantern around, he was surprised to find it looked as if it had not been touched since Terelle left. There was a gap in the outer wall. One of her paint trays was upturned on the floor; the chair and desk lay toppled over; a candle had rolled from its holder. A painting, freed from its tray, had rolled under the dust-blanketed bed, and another was crumpled on the covers.

He righted the desk and put his lantern down. Then he picked up the painting from the bed and gently unrolled it onto the desktop. It was already torn, as if someone had roughly opened it prior to this, but the scene was still recognizable: the entrance to Russet's rooms down on the thirty-sixth level, with the profiled shadow of Terelle herself on the wall. Smiling to himself, he let the painting curl up again. He picked his way over the debris, dust eddying around his feet with every step, to the missing wall, and looked down on the starlit repair work.

Workmen had already cleared most of the tumble of mud bricks and rubble below. New bricks were stacked ready to put in place. He could see the shadowy outline of ladders and bab trunks lashed together as scaffolding.

As he gazed, he tried to imagine what it had been like the day Terelle had looked down on the destruction of the earthquake and risked her life to escape. He thought about her, the turn of her head, the scornful way she would look at him if he said something stupid.

I miss you, he thought. Sandblast, but her absence hurt.

He turned to go, then remembered the second painting sticking out from under the bed. It was a portrait of a woman standing outside a door down on Level Thirty-six. He recognized it; Terelle had shown it to him. She'd said Russet Kermes had painted it to show her the power of waterpainting. He'd told her it was payment for the soul of an artist, payment for her. She'd thought he was mocking her, an unpleasant habit he had, but she'd changed her mind later.

That painting and the way it had changed had been the bait for the trap Russet had laid for her. It had intrigued her and she'd been snared. Jasper sighed and flung it away in distaste.

Just to make sure there was nothing else he'd missed, he knelt to look under the bed. And found another portrait, this one half-dislodged from its now empty tray. It portrayed Taquar lying on the ground, his head at an odd angle like a broken doll. An ugly wound in his chest and an inordinate amount of blood made it clear she had intended to paint the highlord dead.

But Taquar was still alive. Had her magic failed her? Or had she never tried to shuffle it up? He rolled the painting up, remembering her smile, her laugh. I loved her, he thought, and grieved as he tried to come to terms with the knowledge he'd probably never see her again.

"So," said Taquar, "you came here."

Jasper spun around, shocked. He had been so engrossed in his memories he'd been unaware of the highlord's approach. "How did you find me?" he asked, gathering his scattered wits.

"My guards keep me informed. And as you know, it is easy enough for people like us to track a moving body of water. You are the only person up and about. You even have an added advantage over me. You can tell who a person is by their water." He looked around the room. "So you came here."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Why not?"

Taquar stood, waiting for him to say something else, but he kept quiet. With growing certainty, Jasper knew his silence was a victory. There was nothing Taquar could do to him now, nothing. He smiled in the darkness, picked up his lantern and walked to the door. As he passed Taquar, he shoved Terelle's painting of him into his hands, saying pleasantly, "Perhaps she wasn't as fond of you as you like to think," and walked back to his room.

The next night, he was dismayed to see that the sentry outside his room was not a hall guard, but an enforcer. "You're going to marry Taquar?"

Jasper stared at Laisa and then started to laugh. She had come to the stormquest room just after lunch on his fourth full day at the hall and was now seated, swinging an elegantly crossed leg, in one of the upright chairs. He'd been looking at the chart Cloudmaster Granthon had given him, pinpointing all the water catchment sites and detailing how to recognize each using his water-sense.

"Is that so amusing?" she asked.

"Marriage to Taquar? I wish you joy of that!"

"It makes good sense," she said, defensive.

He thought about it. "Perhaps. I'd watch my back if I were you, though. Have you told Senya?"

"No, not yet. Why?"

"Nothing. She may be a little dismayed." The sidelong looks and flirtatious smiles Senya had been giving the highlord since they arrived in Scarcleft had not escaped his notice.

Her brow wrinkled. "She has a mild infatuation for him, it's true. She'll soon grow out of that."

"Not, I suspect, soon enough. When is the wedding?"

"We have asked Lord Gold to perform the ceremony next Sun Day. Nothing elaborate, given my recent widowhood."

Jasper stared at her. "Lord Gold?" he asked. "The Quartern Sunpriest-that Lord Gold? He's here? Someone told me he died in the fight for Breccia!"

"Oh, the old one. Yes, he did. But his underling escaped."

"Ah." He added flatly, "That would be the last High Waterpriest, I suppose. Lord Basalt."

"Yes. As the most senior of the waterpriests, he became the new Lord Gold when the old one died. He is making the Sun Temple here in Scarcleft the main seat of the one true faith. I believe he slipped out of Breccia before the fighting started with all the regalia in his baggage. He says the old Lord Gold sent him. I wonder if that is true, myself. I suspect he fled the moment he heard Kaneth give the warning that the Reduners were attacking. As a rainlord, he had a good chance of avoiding the Reduners. He's a conniving, money-grubbing sneak if ever there was one."

"Takes one to know one, I suppose. A nasty little man, I agree."

Laisa ignored the insult. "He's already insisting on donations from the faithful to make the temple on Level Three suitable as a place of worship for a Sunpriest." She snorted.

He grimaced inwardly. The man was a religious fanatic, lacking both compassion and tolerance. Worse, he loathed Jasper. In Breccia, he had been tasked with Jasper's religious education, and had developed a deep-and justified-suspicion of the sincerity of the new stormlord's religious convictions. He was not a man Jasper had any wish to meet again.

When he didn't reply, Laisa added, "You and Senya must give some thought to your own wedding."

Jasper nodded neutrally. "Oh, I will. I will. A lot of thought."

She gave him a sharp look, but changed the subject. "Where's Taquar?"

"I have no idea. After he has brought a cloud out of the sea, he leaves me to do the rest. I am moving a cloud as we speak."

"That's impressive skill-to do it without any signs of stress."

"Moving water is not my problem."

"Taquar has been very secretive about whether you are having any success. That's why I decided to drop by today and find out for myself."

"We have two sessions a day," he said, not seeing any reason why she should not know. "Whatever he can bring out of the ocean, I can shift. Unfortunately, it is about half of what Granthon achieved, even at his sickest. Taquar finds it exhausting. He really isn't a stormlord."

"Ah. That explains his bad temper, I suppose." She was examining her nails as if they suddenly fascinated her. Without looking up, she said, "He told me he was insisting you fill the Scarcleft mother cistern before you send water elsewhere."

"That's right. He is quite vociferous on the subject."

Her sharp gaze stabbed at him. "Taquar may be too exhausted after your sessions to sense where you send the clouds, Jasper, but I am not. That cloud you are manipulating as we speak is heading off to the northeast, outside the Scarpen. At a guess, you are going to make it rain in the White Quarter."

Sandblast, of course she would feel the cloud; she's not a bad rainlord. I should have thought of that. "Sometimes the clouds wobble across the sky in unexpected ways."

She dismissed that excuse with the contempt it deserved. "Are you mad? Taquar may not have sensed it, but he does have two rainlords in the city's employ, quite apart from waterpriests. True, they are old men, and not particularly talented, but they are experienced. And there's our new Lord Gold. Sooner or later they'll wake up to what is happening, especially if Taquar asks them to watch out for it. Anyway, his reeves will tell him the level of water in our waterhall is not what he expects. You, of all people, should know what he is like. You don't thwart Taquar with impunity."

"So? Without me, his clouds go nowhere. I am the only person who can move them, just as he is the only person who can make them, and only then if he has my help. He's hardly going to kill me. Or even risk making me so furious I won't cooperate."

Laisa gave another snort. "As if you would do that. He reads you like a scroll. You haven't the guts to cut off water to the people of the Scarpen by refusing cooperation."

"Exactly. I won't cut off water-to the people of the Quartern."

She stared at him for a little longer, then shook her head. "Don't come running to me when you rile Taquar, Jasper. There is a point beyond which I won't risk my neck. You are playing a very dangerous game with a very dangerous man."

"Laisa," he said with a sigh, "there's a point beyond which you won't risk a broken fingernail."

Her eyes narrowed, but she didn't waste any breath on a reply.

After she had gone, he continued to work on sketching out a comprehensive program of water distribution. His biggest problem was that Taquar could not raise much water vapor. He tired too quickly. Their clouds were small.

His second problem was what to do about Qanatend and Breccia, both now in the hands of the Reduner warrior armies. And he had to include Portennabar in the problem, too; the port might still have had its freedom, but it received its water via tunnels from Breccia. Just thinking about it all was enough to make him feel ill. If he sent storms to the Warthago catchments for those cities, the Reduners would benefit, continue their occupation and steal water to send back to the Red Quarter. If he didn't send storms, the people who thirsted first would be the Scarpen inhabitants, not the Reduners.

He sighed, regretting the limitations of even a stormlord's power. The only way to move large amounts of water, from a distance and over long distances, was through stormshifting clouds. Moreover, to change clouds into water was fiendishly difficult without cooling them first, and it was tough to send the clouds high enough to do that without being aided initially by the updrafts along the slopes of the Warthago Range. Even clouds for the other quarters had to be lifted over the Warthago first, then moved to wherever they needed to be broken.

Always the limitations…

If the Sunlord wanted to help us, why the withering winds didn't he just send us regular rain in the first place? The people from across the Giving Sea say it rains all the time there!

He was still mulling over the best course of action when he heard Senya's voice, shrill with indignation, outside, arguing to be let inside.

"You can't go in there like that," Jasper heard a guard say. "The stormlord is cloudshifting-he needs to concentrate."

"I need to speak to him!" she snapped. "Is Lord Taquar there, too?"

"He left some time ago. If you wait, the stormlord will attend to you when he has completed this cycle of rain."

"He doesn't know I am here!"

"He always knows when someone comes."

She took a deep breath as if to berate him still further, so Jasper opened the door. He inclined his head politely. "Senya. Please come in."

She entered, her ruffled feelings evident in the irritable way she tilted her chin.

"What's the matter?" he asked. He indicated the chair Laisa had vacated. "Sit down. Did you come for a lesson on how we go about cloudshifting?" He waved a hand to take in the shutter flung wide to display a distant view, the book spread out on a lectern close to the window and the table strewn with maps and instruments.

She looked at them vaguely with a complete lack of interest. "It's Mother," she burst out. "She's going to marry Taquar!"

He nodded. "Yes, I know."

"You knew? Why didn't you tell me?"

"It was up to your mother to do that-as I see she has."

"How can she do it? Papa is only just dead! And Taquar! If anyone should marry Taquar, it's me."

"He's a good deal older than you," Jasper said reasonably, "and your parents have always hoped you would marry me."

"But you're a nobody from the Gibber! And I'm the daughter of a highlord, from a long line of stormlords and highlords. Just as Taquar is."

"Actually, from what I understand, Taquar was a nobody from Breakaway. And his mother was from the Gibber. But that's not really the point. The point is that he's childless. The whole point of your marriage-or mine-is to produce water-sensitive children with the potential to be stormlords."

"There's nothing to say you would have stormlord children," Senya said. She looked him up and down. "I don't want to marry you. I think you're ugly and stupid and you behave like a-a-lowleveler. I hate you."

Expressionless, he considered her words. "And if the future of the Quartern depends on having more stormlords?"

She stamped her foot. "I don't care. Why should I care about what happens years hence? While you are alive, we are all safe. Why should I have a meddle of half-Gibber brats just in case one of them is a stormlord?"

He inclined his head. "Good point." He stood up straight, his smile deliberately warm and encouraging. "Why don't we forget the whole thing then?"

Ducking her head, Senya looked at him through her eyelashes. "But Mama says I must-and so does Taquar-"

"No one can persuade me to marry if I don't want to," he said. "No one can force me to do anything. If I don't want to marry you, I won't."

"Can you talk to them?"

"I will. I promise. Don't worry about it, Senya. You may not get to marry the person you want, but I swear you'll never have to marry someone you hate."

She blinked, and he suspected she was disconcerted. He went to the door and opened it politely for her to leave. "Thank you," she said in a small voice, as if she was wondering why she felt so dissatisfied.

Once she'd gone, Jasper went to the window and looked out. He stood very still, sensing the water in the sea, feeling its presence: overpowering, seemingly endless.

"Terelle," he murmured aloud. "Oh, blighted eyes, how I wish you were here!"

There was nothing he wanted to do more than ride after her, wherever she was. Nothing he would like more than to rescue her from Russet. He would even have killed the old man to do it.

But he held a secret inside, where it gnawed at him from within, eating away his esteem, his hope, his future. He had analyzed his abilities, he had studied all Granthon, then Taquar, did when he helped them to raise clouds from the sea. And beyond all whisper of doubt, he knew the crucial foundation on which to build the ability necessary for that task was absent from his mind. Somewhere in his childhood he had missed the moment to develop the basis for the skill, and so it had atrophied and vanished. He could boost Taquar's power to effect the change but the technique-the magic-was all the rainlord's.

I am never going to be able to change salt water to pure water vapor.

Which meant he was forever tethered to a man he despised. For the rest of my life…