The Last Stormlord s-1 Read online

  A wealthy man, and wealthy men bought what they wanted.

  Fear fluttered at the edges of Terelle's thoughts for the rest of the evening. She still felt his hand on her breast, bruising her as he enjoyed her shock. Just thinking about him made her stomach churn.

  At last the final dirty dishes and mugs were delivered to the kitchen and Opal indicated she could go to bed. Feet dragging with fatigue, she walked down the passage to the courtyard once more, on her way to the servants' stairs. Merch Putter was walking in front of her, on his way out after his time upstairs with one of the handmaidens.

  Donnick opened the gate for the merchant, but before the man stepped through, he turned to press a tinny token into the youth's palm. And that was when they all heard it: a shrill keening, like a fingernail being dragged down a slate. No, more than that, a screech so horrible it shrieked of danger, of death on the move. Terelle had never heard such a sound before. She was terror-struck, rendered motionless. The merchant flung himself back into the courtyard, plunging sideways into the potted pomegranates.

  Garri, on the other side of the courtyard, yelled "Zigger!" He dropped the bundle of dirty tablecloths he had been carrying and ran towards Donnick. "Close the gate! Close the blasted gate!"

  But Donnick stood rooted, his mouth gaping foolishly at Garri, as if the danger was coming from his direction.

  And the zigger flew into his mouth.

  Terelle glimpsed it as a black blur the size of a man's thumb. The keening stopped abruptly, replaced by the shriek of Donnick's agony. He clutched at his throat and a gush of blood spewed from his mouth like water from an opened spigot. His screams faded into a choking gurgle. He fell to his knees, staring at Terelle, begging her for help she could not render. He clawed at his face, jammed his hand into his mouth, clutching for something he could not reach. She stared, appalled. His blood was splattered over her feet but she couldn't move.

  Time slowed. She saw past Donnick through the gate to where a man stood on the opposite side of the street, his face muffled in a scarf. He held a zigger cage in one hand and a zigtube in the other.

  She thought, her calm at odds with her shock, I suppose it's Rosscar and he meant to kill Putter. Her terror dissipated into numbing vacuity. Donnick fell sideways, his body twitching uncontrollably.

  She moved then, to kneel at his side and stroke his arm, as if she could bring comfort.

  Garri came to stand beside her, patting her shoulder in clumsy sympathy. "Go inside, Terelle. Nothing you can do here."

  She stammered an irrelevance that suddenly seemed important: "He's from the Gibber, like Vivie and me. He tells me stuff. About the settle where he was born. His family." She started to tremble. "We must be able to do something-"

  The steward shook his head. "Lad's already dead. His body just don't know it yet."

  As if he heard the words, Donnick gave one last shuddering spasm that arched his back from the ground. His gaze fixed on Terelle's face, speaking his horror, his terror, his pain. When he collapsed it was with brutal finality. His eyes glazed, blank with death. The zigger crawled out through his open mouth and paused. Terelle hurled herself backwards, half sprawling as she levered herself away on her bottom, whimpering in fear.

  The zigger sat on the plumpness of Donnick's lip, blood-covered and sated, purring softly while it used its back legs to clean its jagged mouthparts and brush the human flesh from its wing cases. Terelle's trembling transformed to shudders, racking her whole body.

  "Kill it!" she begged, clutching at Garri's ankles. Do something, anything, please…

  "I dare not, lass. That there beetle is a trained zigger, worth more tokens than I earn in a year, and someone'd blame me, sure as there's dust in the wind. 'S all right, though," he said, lifting her to her feet. "Won't hurt us. It's eaten now and won't want to feed again. In a while it'll fly back to its cage. That's what they're trained to do." He glared out through the gate to where the zigger's owner still waited, but didn't challenge him. With a sigh he turned back to her. "Go wash, child. Use the water in Donnick's day jar."

  She looked down at her feet. Blood ran stickily down her legs and into her slippers. Shuddering, she kicked them off. Mesmerised, unable to stop herself, she stared at the zigger again. She wanted to flee, but couldn't bring herself to turn her back on it. Next to the gate, Merch Putter vomited messily into the pomegranate bushes.

  "Remember that whining sound," Garri said, "and if you ever hear it again, take cover and hide your face. It's the wing cases sawing 'gainst each other in flight. Makes the victim turn his head, so all his soft bits and holes-eyes, nose, throat, ears-are facing the bleeding little bastard." He glanced at Merch Putter. "Go, Terelle. I'll take care of this, and tomorrow I'll report it to the highlord's guard. That's all I dare do."

  "Would it-would it have made a difference if Donnick had closed the gate?" she asked.

  He drew in a heavy breath. "No, I don't suppose so. It would've flown over the wall, wouldn't it?"

  Just then the zigger spread its brightly veined wings and flew off, heading straight towards the cage held by the muffled figure on the other side of the street. Garri bolted the gate behind it, as if it was a departing guest.

  Terelle fled towards the servants' rooms, leaving a line of bloody footprints across the courtyard. It was hot up on the flat roof of the snuggery. Terelle pulled the day bed into the shade cast by the adjoining wall of the snuggery's uplevel neighbours, but the heat of the afternoon shimmered in the nearby sunlight, dragging her water from her with its ferocity. She sat cross-legged on the woven bab ropes of the bed, a stone mortar jammed against her shins while she pounded the pestle. When the rubyleaf powder was fine enough, she added water to make a paste. She puzzled over the oddity of how something green could end up staining things red-brown. She failed to come up with a satisfactory answer, but anything was better than remembering the way Donnick had died the night before. Or the words Huckman had murmured in her ear and the way he had squeezed her breast.

  She considered instead what Vivie had said about them stealing water as children in a Gibber settle. Now that she thought about it, she dimly recalled sneaking out at night to fill jars from the wash when the water came down like a meddle of running packpedes. She remembered taking water from the open stone channels, too. What were they called? Slots, that was right. They had them here in Scarcleft as well, to irrigate the bab groves outside the city walls.

  But most of all, she remembered being scared. Scared of the dark, scared of being caught by the reeve. Scared of Pa if they failed to return with water. Scared of his shouting.

  She frowned, thinking back. She could remember the settle, every detail. She could have described each crack in the walls of their house, or the shape of the stains on Pa's baggy trousers, or the patterns on the water jars beside the fireplace and the way the water in them iced over on cold nights. Her memory of events had faded, but the place was imprinted on her mind, as unchanging as carvings in stone. Other people don't remember things the way I do. Why not? It worried her.

  She wondered if forgetting the unpleasant happenings had been deliberate, the desperation of a child who had not wanted to remember. But she was no longer a child. Her future had challenged her childhood; Huckman's hand on her breast and Donnick's death had banished it forever.

  "Oh good, you're ready." Vivie clambered onto the rooftop, fanning herself. She sank down on the day bed with a heartfelt sigh and leaned back so that Terelle could rub the paste into her scalp and comb it through the strands of her hair. She is so like a cat, Terelle thought. Wanting to be stroked all the time. Vivie demanding to be pampered was among her earliest memories.

  "I hear Rosscar fled the city this morning," Vivie said, closing her eyes. "Opal's grinning like a frog in a day jar."

  "What? Why?"

  "Rosscar's pa, the oil merchant, paid Opal not to tell the highlord's guard how Donnick died. Luckily for Rosscar, Garri hadn't got round to reporting it. Opal will be in a good mood for
days. She made a heap of tokens."

  "But… what about Donnick?"

  Vivie shrugged. "Makes no difference to him."

  Upset, Terelle tightened her lips and tried not to think about it. Luckily Vivie lost interest in the subject. The heat of the afternoon mired conversation anyway. The monotonous click of cicadas sunning on top of the wall was comfortably familiar and it was pleasant not to be at the beck and call of every girl in the snuggery, helping to primp and preen them for the evening, running here and there fetching things, finding lost items.

  If only she could forget the night before.

  "That's good," Viviandra murmured as Terelle's fingertips massaged her scalp. She stretched, enjoying the first breath of a breeze that promised to cool the desiccating heat of the afternoon.

  "It's been long enough, I think. You want shiny highlights, not bright red hair."

  "Bit longer won't make any difference. It's so good just lying here with nothing to do."

  Terelle took no notice. She started to wash away the rubyleaf paste, taking care to catch the water afterwards. "Vivie, why didn't we have a water allotment when we were kids?"

  "Hmm? Oh, Pa lost his rights to land in the bab grove. Don't know why-a debt, maybe. And he couldn't find regular work."

  Terelle took the comb and began to tease out the tangles. "Tell me about my mother."

  Vivie sighed. "I have told you, countless times."

  "No, you haven't. I don't know anything."

  "You know everything I know. Father found her out on the plains when he was prospecting." She counted off the facts on her fingers, not bothering to conceal her impatience. "He guessed she'd been abandoned by a caravan. Her name was Sienna. She was dressed oddly, in colourful fabric. She spoke a strange language. Pa wanted her; he took her, she lived with us and later she had you and then she died. What more is there to tell?"

  "You were eight or so then. She must have talked to you."

  "Terelle, she could hardly speak our tongue! What could she say?"

  "Where do you think she came from?"

  "I don't know. I don't think anyone knew. And she couldn't tell us."

  "Sienna is not a Scarpen name. Or a Gibber one. I've asked lots of people about that."

  "Maybe she came from across the Giving Sea. Though we lived a long way from the sea."

  "Was she happy?"

  "Was anyone ever happy living with Pa? He made my ma bitter and unhappy by taking a second woman. He killed your ma because he was too mean to call the midwife when you were born." She was matter-of-fact, rather than angry. "Terelle, I scarcely knew her, and what I did know I've mostly forgotten. Looking back on it, I think she was weak and ill most of the time. Maybe because of her experience out on the Gibber Plains? She didn't say much, but then she probably didn't have the words anyway." She stood up. "I'm going to the baths now; do you want to come?"

  Terelle shook her head. The women's bath house was a gossipy place, abounding with stories, and normally she loved it there. This time, though, she wasn't in the mood. "I'll clean up here," she said.

  Vivie smiled her thanks and left, her scent floating behind her. She had spent days concocting a personal fragrance; Terelle found it over-sweet.

  She poured the rinse water onto the fruit trees. Watering them was her job, and sometimes she used cooking water cadged from the kitchens or dirty wash water from the bedrooms. Her allotment of pure water for the plants she sold to the street waterseller for tokens, and used those to buy items in the bazaar. At first she'd thought she was being clever, saving water like this and getting money to spend on herself, but now she was wiser. Opal knew perfectly well what she was doing and in fact intended for her to do just that. It was a lesson for every child to learn: water was life; water was wealth. You didn't throw away old water and you didn't waste drinking water. Ever.

  As she watered a kumquat already coming into fruit, she glanced down over the balustrade. Below, the lowest four levels of the city of Scarcleft merged into one another, the outer walls of one building forming the boundaries of the next a step below. From this angle, the city looked lush, each terrace and roof crowded with potted plants: dwarf figs and apricots and quandongs, melons and peppers, herbs and spices, keproot and hemp. The rock-hard daub of the stepped streets between the houses was brown, as were the high windowless walls of mud-brick on either side, their sun-baked clay as hard as iron. Gates set into the walls were brilliant patterns in the drabness. Painted with family colours and symbols, heavily studded with gemstones, the gates varied from the garish scarlet paintwork and amethysts of the snuggery to the subtle combinations of ochre wash set with smoky quartz on a nearby potter's house.

  Further down, on the buildings of the waterless inhabitants of the city's lowest level-the thirty-sixth-there was neither paint nor studs. Nor much greenery sprouting from rooftop pots, either. Terelle let her gaze linger for a moment on the crumbling bricks and palmleaf weave of the walls there and felt a familiar touch of fear.

  To be waterless…

  There could be no worse fate. Once it had been hers and could well be again if she didn't order her life wisely. She had been born without water allotment, owed none by any settle or town or city, all because at the time of her birth her father had been both landless and unemployed.

  She drew a ragged breath, unbalanced even at the thought. I won't let it happen again. Useless to rely on Madam Opal or on Vivie, and certainly useless to think of her father, almost faceless now in her memory, who had sold them both. Never again, I swear it, she told the lurking dark. But I'll earn a living my way, not Vivie's way.

  As she watered the last fruit tree, she kept back a finger-breadth of water in the bottom of the bucket, which she then poured into the sun pattern pressed into the clay of the flat rooftop. Her sacrifice to the Sunlord, the giver and taker of life. For a moment she knelt there in the heat of full sunlight, watching the rivulets spread outwards to fill the indentations. Greedily, the Sunlord sucked up the water.

  "Lord of the sun, help me," she whispered, but she couldn't frame the words to specify her wants, even as the water began to vanish. Why would the Sunlord listen to a snuggery child? He, who was so great you couldn't even gaze at his true face as he moved across the sky? She addressed his emissary instead. After all, Gridelin the Watergiver was supposed to have once been human, until he was raised into the glory of eternal sunfire. Watergiver, intercede for me, she prayed, her eyes screwed up tight. I need to escape snuggery service.

  When she opened her eyes again, only a damp patch remained. She watched its edges contract. Like magic, she thought. People said that was proof a prayer had been heard.

  But, the coldly sensible part of her head said in return, that doesn't mean the prayer will be answered.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Scarpen Quarter Scarcleft City Opal's Snuggery and the Cistern Chambers, Level 32 Terelle shifted to the shade and just in case the Sunlord withheld his aid, she schemed. Or tried to. Trouble was, nothing came to her. No sudden revelation, no miraculous idea. Her eyes watered with threatening tears. She rubbed at an eyelid, and then regarded the wetness there resentfully. No one else she knew ever shed tears when they wept. Tears only came to others when they had grit in the eye, or smoke. It was just a silly habit she had, absurdly pointless. Water wasn't supposed to be wasted.

  A soft rhythmic drumming and tinkle of harness turned her attention to the street once more. A lone rider travelled downlevel past the snuggery, mounted on a myriapede hack, his face hidden by the brim of his hat. People in the street scattered out of his way. Nobody wanted to argue with a pede. Even the smaller hacks were taller than any man and had mouthparts as long and as sharp as scimitars.

  When Terelle stuck her head through the balustrade to see the rider better, she realised his mount was a particularly fine one: the segment scales were a burnished winered, edged with gold tassels. Two feelers, inlaid with gold wire in intricate patterns and each as long as three men lying end to end, touched th
e walls on either side of the street as the pede passed by. The embroidered saddle and gem-studded reins were richly ornate. The rhythmic undulations of its eighteen pairs of pointed legs-three pairs to a segment-did not miss a beat as the animal flowed down the steps. On its second segment, within reach of the rider at the front, were tied several zigger cages and a zigtube. Terelle's heart skipped a beat.

  Ziggers…

  No, don't remember. Don't remember any of it. Think about something else.

  So she wondered who this Scarperman was who rode with his zigger cages so openly displayed. Ziggers were expensive to own and even more expensive to train. Yet despite his display of wealth, the rider himself was plainly dressed. The white desert tunic over loose pants gathered in at the ankle and the broad-brimmed palmubra hat woven of bab leaf were standard garb for desert riders. He wore no jewellery, nothing that drew attention to him, but the self-confident certainty with which he rode gave him an aura of power.

  Perhaps, she thought, he wasn't a Scarperman. Perhaps he was a Reduner caravanner, travelling far from the quadrant he acknowledged as his own.

  As he passed, he looked up, enabling her to see his swarthy face. She knew then that he was no Reduner. She'd seen him once before in the street, in fact, and the warden mistress had told her who he was: Taquar Sardonyx, one of the rainlords of the Scarpen Quarter and Highlord of Scarcleft City.

  Why does he need ziggers? she wondered. As highlord, he answered to no one but the Cloudmaster, in Breccia City. As highlord, he had the power of life and death over every citizen in Scarcleft and controlled every drop of the city's water, of her water. As a rainlord, which all highlords were, he could kill or torture with his power, without ever having to resort to ziggers. He was known to be relentless in his pursuit and punishment of water thieves. As a rainlord, he took the water from the dead.

  Like Donnick. Oh, Donnick.

  Cold grey eyes did not flicker as his gaze met hers and then moved on. There could be nothing to interest him in a child poking her head through a snuggery balustrade, but she shivered nonetheless.