The Last Stormlord (58 page)

He remembered Galen, blinded by avarice and drink. Remembered Citrine, seeing only the beauty of a piece of bloodstone in her last happy moment of life. What had Taquar called the gem? The martyr’s stone. The familiar knotted feeling welled up inside him. The same feeling he had every time he thought of Citrine. Or Mica. Or of the burden he carried: to be a stormlord. To save a land from thirst. The burden of responsibility.

The true horror of being a stormlord.

“Jasper Bloodstone,” he said.

“We call that the martyr’s stone.” Nealrith sounded dubious. “I hope that’s not a prophetic choice.”

“It’s a better name than the one I had.”
Shale Flint the Gibber boy was a dupe. I have to leave him behind.
The man who would cope with what was to come was Jasper Bloodstone. That was the face the world must see. A man who wouldn’t trust again so foolishly.

Nealrith shrugged. “As you wish. And now we must start your exercises. The ones Taquar would not teach you, because they enable you to kill in the rainlord manner. If you can master these, you will not have any trouble in extracting fresh water vapour from salt water. But before we begin, I want you to meet my wife, Laisa, and my daughter, Senya. She is younger than you are, fifteen. I hope you will be friends. Come, I’ll take you through to my private rooms.”

Shale blinked, trying to assimilate the difference between private rooms and the one they were in. The extravagance of any family having so much space shocked him. He followed Nealrith, momentarily overwhelmed, reflecting wryly that Jasper Bloodstone had a lot to learn before he stopped being Shale Flint.

He remembered how Mica had spoken of Laisa’s beauty with awe—and of her desirability with a more basic crudity. She was everything that Mica had said she was: sensual and lovely. Her eyes, though, were knowing, and there was no gentleness in her gaze as she welcomed him to Breccia City.

“There is much riding on your shoulders, young man,” she told him. “I trust you have the fortitude to take on such a burden. I have always found Gibber-grubbers to be more feckless than hardworking, myself.”

“I am sure we will have no complaints with Sh—Jasper,” Nealrith said. “Jasper Bloodstone.”

Laisa’s eyebrows shot up. “A gemstone from a Gibber rock, eh? Well, we will see.”

The girl at her side giggled. Shale was damned if he was going to blush; he was Jasper now. He switched his gaze to her without colouring up. Senya was shorter and less elegant than her mother, but her face was just as beautiful. Right then, though, as her amusement faded, lines of distaste marred her prettiness. He recognised that look. He’d seen it on the faces of some of the settlefolk when they looked at the washfolk of the shanties.

“This is Senya,” Nealrith said. “I trust the two of you will be good friends.”

She eyed him with a curl of her lip; Jasper gave her the same flat stare he’d used on uppity settlefolk. Life in Breccia City, he decided, was not going to be so different from what he was used to, after all.

“I am sure we will,” he said, and knew he lied. “So, have you had second thoughts about supporting Taquar as the next ruler of the Quartern?” Ryka asked, handing Kaneth a wet towel. They did not bathe any more; water was too precious. A wet towel was all they allowed themselves. Even the public baths were closed.

He stripped off the last of his undergarments and stood naked, wiping himself down.

Watergiver help me,
she thought, trying not to show her appreciation of the muscular curves of his thighs and buttocks.
Why does his body excite me so? I feel like a silly eighteen-year-old lusting after the local hero.

Maybe he was the hero at that. The pikeman, Elmar Waggoner, had told her with open admiration all the details of the fight in the waterpainter’s room. Kaneth had cleverly made the best use of his water-powers and defeated a much larger group of attackers to save them all. But it hadn’t been pretty. Battle, she guessed, rarely was, in spite of the written epics that told stories of glory. She shivered at the thought of the blind men Kaneth had left behind.

“Second thoughts?” he asked. “No, I haven’t. And I won’t, not until Jasper starts bringing in rain-soaked clouds. Nothing has changed, Ryka. Not yet.”

“Don’t be silly, of course it has! We have evidence that Taquar has connived at murder and kidnapped children. And this is the man you want to rule this land? Are you mad? You and Granthon both?” She faced him, hands on hips, enraged. “Kaneth, how can you?”

“How can I what? I’m not doing anything, except trying to get the sand out of my hair.”

“Don’t play games with me! You have been backing Granthon in this, against Nealrith, who is supposed to be your best friend. You’ve been agreeing with the Cloudmaster that Taquar is the best person to rule the Quartern, but now we know he most certainly is not. Blighted eyes, Kaneth, we have evidence to suggest he took Iani and Moiqa’s daughter and imprisoned her for years, until she died. And this is the man whom you would have rule us?”

“We don’t know that about Lyneth, not for sure. And even if it is true, what choice do we have? I don’t
like
it, you know. Do you think I don’t know how much I have hurt Nealrith by what he sees as disloyalty? But the alternative is a bloodbath in the streets, with our people battling one another over a water jar.”

“Rubbish. People are more sensible than you give them credit for. And for all that I don’t particularly like priests or their reliance on a Sunlord who palpably lost interest in our welfare after sending us the Watergiver a thousand years ago, we in the Scarpen are a people who believe in what our religion promotes: generosity and compassion and sacrifice and rules designed for the greater good.”

Kaneth shook his head. “We are a land of hypocrites who cynically manipulate rules based on the inherent inferiority of each level of the city to the one above.”

“That’s a horrible way of looking at life.”

“It’s honest.”

“Tell me, if we did have a baby on the way, and the child was born without water sensitivity, what would you do if Taquar—as ruler of the Quartern—decreed such children should be slaughtered for the greater good of us all? Would you oblige him?”

“You’re being ridiculous. That would never happen.”

“Wouldn’t it? Have you heard some of the things the man has been doing to keep the number of water drinkers at a minimum in Scarcleft?”

“He’s unnecessarily unpleasant, I agree. Nonetheless, Nealrith should impose some sort of tough regime here. But he won’t, which means we could all be dead by the end of the next star cycle, long before Jasper comes into his powers. Ryka, we
have
to be tough. Quite frankly, it’s my belief that rainlords are the only people who should be producing children now. We ought to be enforcing a no-child policy on everyone else, until such time as we have a competent, strong stormlord in Breccia Hall. Or more than one stormlord.”

“And just how would you do that? Drag pregnant women into the waterhalls to be stripped of their babies, the way Taquar does it? He’s murdering the unborn, Kaneth! And often inadvertently killing the mothers as well.”

“They were warned. He told them what would happen if they chose not to dose themselves with sinucca. And they should know by now that Taquar is a man who keeps his word about things like that.”

“Accidents happen to any woman! I can’t believe you would countenance—”

He raised his voice to interrupt her. “It’s either unborn children or a whole city!”

“I don’t believe that.” She blinked, hating the feeling at the back of her eyes of tears that would never fall. To express her rage, she threw the clean wet towel at him, hitting him in the face. “It’s not going to happen that way!”

He plucked the towel away and used it to wipe his back. “All right then, if you want to believe in the innate goodness of a mob of thirsty people, go ahead. But they will still die, Ryka.
You
will still die. Because our water won’t last so long if we keep sharing it with a new generation of children.”

“You’re a monster, just like Taquar. And to think I thought you had a kind heart! Here’s something you had better believe, Kaneth Carnelian. I will not bed you
ever
again. We are done with trying to have a child. And I am done with you!”

She didn’t give him a chance to reply. She ran into their adjacent bedroom, slamming the door behind her, and flung herself down on the bed to bury her swollen and aching eyes in the pillow.

I don’t love him
, she thought.
I can’t love a man like that.

But if she didn’t love him, why did she feel this way? His hardness hurt her so.

She lay still, steadying her breath.
Because you always will love him
, her inner voice whispered.
In spite of everything. There’s no reason; it just is.

Slowly she slipped her hand down to cover her lower abdomen and feel again the presence of a tiny bundle of water.

It’s nothing
, she thought.
I’m imagining it. I’m not even late yet. It’s nothing.

And then,
It can’t be right to be cruel, can it?

She punched her pillow with impotent rage until her anger and confusion faded into grief.

Scarpen Quarter

Breccia City

Breccia Hall, Level 2

Every night, before going to bed, Jasper—as he now thought of himself—extinguished his lamp and went to stand on the balcony of his room. There, bathed in starlight, shivering with the cold of the desert night, he thought of Terelle. It was a ritual, pointless in itself, yet providing a way to remember her, even if the memory brought the pain of grief. He had hinged part of himself to her, to the thought of her. He did not know if it was love—there had not been much love in his life and he was not sure that he would recognise it—but now she wasn’t there and he was diminished, just as he had been diminished by Mica’s absence, by Citrine’s death. Her absence
hurt
.

He heaved a sigh. There were so many things he didn’t want to think about.

For fifteen days he’d studied with Nealrith. The exercises were more precise and detailed than those Taquar had taught him; unfortunately, they’d had as little success. To kill by drawing out a living creature’s water sounded simple; after all, it was just a movement of water, and he could do that. But first he had to separate the water from the living tissue.

They started with flies. All he had to do was remove a drop of water. Half a drop, in fact. And he couldn’t do it. His ability to move and shape and manipulate plain water did improve, but he could no more extract water from a fly than he could raise a rain cloud from the sea.

Ryka and Kaneth were in the highlord’s rooms when Jasper arrived for his morning lesson with Nealrith the next day. He hesitated with his hand on the door when he heard his name mentioned.

“… not as strong as you hoped?” Kaneth was asking. He sounded incredulous.

“The initial problem remains,” Nealrith replied. “He cannot extract vapour from anything as salty as the sea. He can’t take the water out of an orange, and he can’t take it from blood and tissue.”

“The waterhall reeves said he lifted a whole cistern of water when you asked him to!” Kaneth’s protest was comically indignant.

“They shouldn’t have been talking about it, but yes, he can. However, that was pure water. Father thinks Jasper’s flaw is a result of coming too late to training.”

“Sunlord save us. What does that mean for our future?”

“I’ve thought of trying to work out a way we can use my rainlord strength to give him the added boost he needs, just in case Father dies. After all, any of us can extract fresh water from salt.”

Kaneth gave a wry laugh. “Yeah. A cupful at a time. With a little luck, you should be able to water a pot plant or two.”

“Maybe Taquar could do better,” Nealrith said, acknowledging a bitter truth. “He’s stronger than any of us, that’s obvious. And he always was good at making vapour when we were students. Perhaps if he could be persuaded to work with Father to stormbring…” His voice trailed away unhappily.

“His price would be more than you want to pay,” Ryka said.

“No. It is one we
should
pay,” Kaneth contradicted. “What is more important than cloudmaking? You’re right, Rith. He
was
good at pulling vapour out of water. But useless at keeping it together, I remember. Do you recall that time he lost control and his cloud condensed all over the ceiling at the academy? Water dripping everywhere, and old Master Rockdale was furious.”

“Granthon did ask him last year if he would help,” Nealrith said. “Before we knew what he was up to, of course. He refused.”

“He
refused
?” Ryka was astonished.

“Said his skills weren’t up to it,” Nealrith said wearily.

“More likely he just didn’t want to spend his time so tediously,” Ryka said.

There was a long silence, broken finally by Kaneth. “So we have found ourselves a talented mover of water, and he is flawed. Waterless skies!”

“Poor Shale,” Ryka said softly. “What a burden for him. Ah, Jasper, I should say.”

There was a sudden silence, then a whisper he didn’t hear.