Stormlord rising

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Scarpen Quarter Warthago Range "Lord?" Iani's voice spoke into the darkness.

Jasper jumped. Would he ever get used to a man of Iani's age and experience calling him "lord"? He sighed. Maybe it was just as well they all did. It reminded him he wasn't Shale the Gibber grubber anymore and, spindevil take it, he still needed to be reminded. Often.

"Are the men in position?" he asked, wondering if anyone would hear the waver in his voice. The panic. Probably not. He was good at hiding his feelings. An expert at displaying a cool calm to the world. His father and Lord Taquar had done that much for him.

He smiled at the thought and felt better.

"Feroze says we're all ready," Iani said. Near him, there was laughter as Gibbermen on pedeback teased one another as if the thought of death was far from their minds.

The timing of their attack would be all wrong, though. They had wanted to hit the Reduner camp immediately after the flood passed down the wash, but he'd miscalculated the speed of the floodwater build-up. His fault-he was the stormlord, yet he had not expected the hill slopes to drain off so quickly. The surge had followed hard on the heels of the zigger attack, instead of later, at dawn, as they'd intended.

The men had not been in position; and now the scramble down the wash after the Reduners would be a nightmare of slipping and mud and falls and bruises. Iani and Feroze had pressed to go ahead, feeling that it was better to attack while Davim's forces were still reeling from the effects of the water rush, before they had a chance to regroup at the mother cistern. "We have to grab every advantage," Iani had said, "because they outnumber us and are better armed and more experienced. And right now they are confused and suffering."

Jasper swallowed his reservations and nodded to Iani.

"On your signal," the rainlord said.

Around him, his personal guard mounted their pedes, their excitement and their fear tainting their water with the same sweaty sourness he smelled on himself. He turned his attention to the remnants of cloud overhead, forcing them a little higher. A light shower was to be the attack signal to his troops scattered on both sides of the wash.

He swallowed, still nauseated, as the rain started again. He didn't expect any more ziggers, but some of his men could soon die anyway, because he asked them to fight. They were no match for seasoned Reduner warriors. You couldn't make an armsman out of an artisan in a matter of days.

Men dying at his request: it seemed an obscenity; a disaster compounded by his mistake with the timing of the flood. He pushed back the doubt as Dibble turned their mount down the slope toward the remains of the Reduner camp. He was Jasper Bloodstone. Stormlord. Cloudmaster. He knew what he was doing.

Mind you, it was so dark he doubted Dibble had any idea where the pede was putting its feet, but never mind, the beast seemed to know. Its flow down the slope was as smooth as wine from the calabash and surprisingly quiet. Those on foot were far less comfortable with the descent. Behind him, Jasper heard the slither of stones, the sounds liberally studded with only half-subdued curses.

Irritably, he pushed away the rain drifting into his eyes, and directed it to where the Reduners were. From every side now, he could hear his men and their pedes pouring downward into the wash, rivers of men and beasts taking the easiest course. He reduced the cloud cover to allow the starlight to shine through, and a little later he spotted the camp, or what was left of it. To his chagrin he realized all of the Reduners were already mounted-apparently they'd decided to leave without waiting for the morning.

Hearing their attackers, the Reduner pedemen whirled the beasts around with flicks of their reins and goaded them into fast mode. Their feet slashed through the mud as they flowed away into the darkness, back down the gully toward the cistern.

With whoops and yells, Jasper's pede-mounted men followed, leaving those on foot behind. Dibble pulled back into the middle of the pack, not wanting to expose Jasper to the dangers inherent in being among the leaders. Even so, for a moment they were racing at breakneck speed among the rocks and the mud of the wash. Jasper gripped the segment handle to the front of his saddle pad, something a more skilled rider would never have done.

The rush ended abruptly in a swirling mass of pede bodies, of screaming men and the clash of weaponry as the Scarpen leaders caught the slowest of the Reduner pedes. Jasper drew his scimitar. His personal guard, on their own myriapedes, tightened the circle around him, beating off any mounted Reduner who came near. Someone screamed.

Sunblast! What's happening? In the darkness, it was hard to grasp the larger picture. Everything was fragmented, immediate, imminently dangerous. Small pieces telling him nothing of the progress of the larger battle. He glimpsed a pede laden with six or seven of his men ride down a slow-moving Reduner pede with a single driver. Gibbermen attacked the man with a mishmash of implements and makeshift weapons. The Reduner pedeman impaled the driver with his chala spear, and slashed the man behind with his scimitar, opening up a bloody gash on his leg. Jasper gripped his own blade tighter and yelled at Dibble to guide their pede closer. When the guardsman was slow to obey, Jasper in frustration gathered a ball of water from the pools left by the rain and flung it in the face of the Reduner. The warrior faltered, blinded. One of the Gibbermen took advantage of the moment and stabbed him with a bab cutter. As the man fell, another Reduner driver came to his aid. His pede carried six chalamen, and several Gibbermen disappeared from the back of their pede with spears in their bodies.

Jasper gave up trying to follow the fight and concentrated on his small part. He grabbed water from wherever he could find it, shooting it like darts into ears and eyes and open mouths. Dibble, grinning, controlled their pede to keep his stormlord on the edge of the battle.

The predawn air was filled with sound, every cry and clash grating along Jasper's heightened nerves. The screams of men in intolerable agony. The wailing ululations of terrified pedes. Shouted orders no one could hear or understand. The rolling scream of ziggers released from a falling cage. Howls of desperation from men who knew they were about to die. Cries of triumph from others who knew they were about to prevail. Insanely, Jasper wanted to yell, to tell them all to stop, to be silent so he could think. So he could do something more than just fling water around.

And then, above it all, the boom of an Alabaster horn, signaling a retreat. "Oh; Watergiver's mercy," Jasper thought. "We've lost." And he hadn't even used his scimitar.

He looked around to sort out what had happened. Someone had a lighted brand. A few of the slow Reduners had been killed and their pedes captured, but-from the look of it-only after they had inflicted casualties out of all proportion to their numbers. Jasper drew in a sharp breath. The death of such experienced marauders came only at a high price.

He could hear Iani shouting orders and cursing at the top of his voice, his anger directed at those mounted Scarpen forces who were following the Reduners escaping down the wash. Even though Feroze had sounded an immediate retreat, many of those exhilarated by their supposed victory had not obeyed.

As light crept into the valley, Jasper surveyed the bodies of the men who had died where he had been fighting. They looked so young, so vulnerable. So very, very dead. Limbs and guts and organs and clothes in a horrible bloodied mix, like a knacker's offal heap. Scimitar slashes. They were messier than swords or spears.

And these had been people he knew. He felt his stomach constrict, radiating pain. Those who had followed the Reduners did not return. Their missing water, the empty spaces they left behind, were further wounds to Jasper's soul.

This was what it was to lead men to war. Surprisingly, the pain was bearable. It was the intensity of the pressure, not the pain, that made Ryka groan and drive her nails into the palms of her hands. The effort involved was so concentrated she wondered how she could ever survive it. How any women ever survived it. When she said as much, in between the spasms, one of the slave women tending her laughed and patted her hand.

"Everyone of us is here because our mothers pushed us out into the world. You'll survive this. You'll even do it again one day in all probability."

"Pedeshit! Never!" she cried as the next crushing wave came to submerge her.

When that one was over, and her head collapsed back onto the sacking, the same woman-what was her name again?-said with added satisfaction, "The next push will do it, I think. The baby's head is ready to pop into the world, poor wee mite."

Sunlord damn it, she just wanted this over. Anina, that was her name. And the other woman was Maida. Ryka concentrated on feeling grateful that not only had the only people at the cistern been slaves from Qanatend, but that two of them were women who had delivered babies before. She hadn't quite understood why they were there and the Reduners not, but they were part of the Reduner army. Davim and his forces were ahead of her, invading the Scarpen. And they had dragged slaves along in their wake, then left them behind at the cistern. Camp followers, Anina had called them. Something about being there if needed. As whores. Or to nurse the wounded. Or something. Ryka tried to feel grateful, and she was, truly grateful. But right then it was hard to think of anything except how she would survive the next surge.

When it came to consume her, she cried out-in real pain this time-and then was lost in a torment-lacerated world where the war didn't exist. A boy, one of the women said. Ryka was too tired to care, let alone be glad. He lay curled in the crook of her arm. Red and squashed-looking, and not really much like a person. More like a kitten without fur. And tiny, although she supposed he was larger than a kitten. He'd certainly felt larger than a kitten.

Am I supposed to love him? she wondered. Watergiver help me, I wish I had paid more attention to-to all that domestic stuff. It had always seemed so boring in comparison to her books, or to a ride into The Sweeping, or talking to the outlanders in the foreigners' market.

Her lack of attention had caught up with her. Taking a closer look at his crumpled face, unexpectedly she found herself smiling.

She was stroking her son's tiny cheek with a finger when she heard a sound she could not identify. Loud, rushing, frightening. She had heard it before, somewhere. Here, it felt out of place. What was that? She wanted to jump to her feet, to run out of the cistern cave where they lay, but everything hurt when she tried to move too much.

Beside her Anina sat up, her eyes wide in the lantern light. The noise outside was louder, more invasive. Growling its way down the wash in the dark like a runaway meddle of pedes. Or a hillside on the move. Or-

"What is it?" the woman asked, her fear a tangible thing, reaching out for comfort.

Ryka felt a fleeting amusement. She was as weak as a day-old pede wobbling after its mother, and the woman was coming to her for assurance?

"Water," she said, lying back down and holding her son against her body. She could feel it in her mind now; water on the move, tumbling, bucking, churning. "Water on its way down the wash."

"How do you know that?"

"I've heard it before. In the Gibber. I hope there's no one out there."

The woman shook her head. "No. None of us, anyway. We were all asleep here in the cavern. But why would there be water in the wash?" She shook a puzzled head. "The Cloudmaster never sends water this way. Qanatend rain falls in the valley behind the cistern, much higher in the mountains. The water seeps down into caves. The cistern intake pipe taps it there. I know that because we've all been looking for a way to escape the valley without those red bastards seeing us. Haven't had any luck because the caves don't go anywhere. I doubt there's been water in this wash since, oh, since the Time of Random Rain."

Ryka forced her mind to think. "Perhaps the stormlord has just drowned a lot of Reduners."

They stared at each other, thinking about the implications. Outside, dawn was beginning to tinge the sky and simultaneously they turned to look. Nothing visible moved, but there was no doubt that water was tumbling down the gully; to Ryka, the roar was unmistakable.

When Anina spoke again she said softly, "Garnet, I think we had better get a hiding place ready for you and the babe, just in case. Unless you want to give up on the idea of running away."

"No, of course not. I just need time to rest."

"I will fix a pallet for you behind the oil jars in the storeroom. If any Reduners return, you can hide there. You will have to keep the baby quiet, though."

"Storeroom?"

"Not a room exactly. It's just another cave off this cavern. A small one, over there." She pointed. "You'd be less obvious in there, and the Reduners never fetch and carry the stores. They leave that to us."

Ryka was overwhelmed with a surge of fierce protectiveness, laced with intense rage. No one must hurt her child. She would not allow it. Shaken by the rawness of her response, she tried to joke. "Maybe it's just as well he sounds like a mewling pebblemouse. No one would think it a baby's cry. I'll be gone as soon as I can, though."

"Where?" the woman asked. She pushed a lock of hair behind one ear. She was forty years old and still beautiful, except for the bruised look in her eyes that spoke of recent tragedy endured and survived-and still raw. "Don't you think we'd all be gone from here if we could? But the sandmaster's army is up there somewhere in the gully, and below us there are only more of the bastards in Qanatend. You can't leave the gully, you know. The Warthago is too rugged."

"I have the pedes. In fact I could take some of you. Oh-the pedes! The Reduners mustn't find them. Can they be hidden?"

"Where? If the Reduners return, they'll be crawling all over the place. I'll just say they belonged to a Reduner who left them behind because they were too small. If that doesn't make sense to them, we can all plead ignorance. Slaves aren't expected to know stuff. And if they think they belong to someone, no one will touch them." She brought the lamp close to look at the sleeping child. "Have you thought of a name for him yet?" she asked.

"Khedrim," Ryka said.

Anina stared at her in surprise. "That's a Reduner name!"

"Yes. He-he is named after a lad who died."

A child who was sent after me by those who thought I was just a pregnant woman who would never fight back. "I botched the timing," Jasper admitted to Terelle after he returned to camp to do the day's stormshifting. "I guess I did a good job of throwing water, though."

His tone was flat, but she knew the depth of his self-inflicted pain. It was there in a tightening around his eyes, in a remoteness in his gaze and a drop in the register of his voice. Most people might not have noticed his moods, but she read him as well as she could read her waterpaintings.

"It was your first battle," she said cautiously.

He cut her short. "It was the first battle for many of us. But I am the stormlord and the only thing that passes for Cloudmaster, thanks to you. I am not supposed to sit dumbly on a pede like a block of salt and do nothing except chuck water at the enemy."

"No. You're right," she told him with rising ire. "You are a stormlord. The stormlord. You are supposed to stormshift and sit in Breccia City governing the water matters of this land. You aren't supposed to rush about waving a scimitar, especially when you don't really know much about using it. If you do more good throwing water about, then that is exactly what you ought to do. I am sure it is safer. You are too important to risk your life. Dibble was quite right not to allow your pede into the heart of the fighting."

"That's such-such a girl thing to say. You don't understand."

They glared at each other.

"To most people in the Quartern," he said at last, "I'm too young to rule. To them, I'm not another Granthon. I don't have the validity of Nealrith, either, even when they considered him weak. They might not have liked Taquar, but they respected him. Me-I'm too young. A Gibber urchin at that. I have to prove myself worthy. Otherwise, how can I rule? And today I made a mistake of timing. I saved a few lives chucking water about, it's true, but my mistake cost more lives."

"And rulers prove themselves worthy by acting like idiots with a sword?" she asked, throwing her hands up in exasperation. "Such a boy thing to do. Anyway, it is Iani and Feroze who are supposed to be in charge of the fighting. And have you also considered how many people you saved with our deception that killed so many ziggers? I don't understand why you want to fight, or rule, for that matter. Your value is in your stormbringing abilities. Why not let someone else govern?"

He stared at her, amazed. "You don't understand, do you? Yet you just said it yourself-I am a valuable commodity. Don't you see, Terelle? Whoever rules would also gain control of me, and of my power-by law. I've endured years of not being my own person. I didn't like it. I'd rather do the controlling myself."

"What about if someone like… oh, Iani, for example, ruled?"

"Wash-stones, Terelle, he's half-mad. He used to be obsessed with Lyneth. Then Taquar. Now it's Davim. To get revenge for Moiqa's death."

"Well, one of the others, then."

"They are all playing their own politics. If Nealrith were alive…" He sighed. "Yes, I would have served him, gladly. Or Lord Ryka. Because they were wise and they had a way of seeing all the facets of something. Yet others thought Nealrith weak and Ryka headstrong, so maybe I'm not much of a judge of people."

"Never mind." She grinned at him. "I am. And I would follow you anywhere if that's what you wanted."

Her grin was so infectious he couldn't help laughing. "You must be biased. I use your skills to cover my weaknesses, and hide your talents from everyone while I take the credit, and you can still say that?"

"Sun-fried idiot." She said it fondly enough for him to have no doubt of her affection.

"No. The wisest thing I ever did was-" He stopped short, flushing.

She felt sure he had been going to say, "to love you." Oh, Shale, can't you just say it?

He looked so tired, so dejected, she changed the subject. "What happens now? About Davim, I mean."

"We think he will have hunkered down at the cistern. He knows he can't get past us without losing a lot of men, so he'll wait for us to go to him. Of course, he could head for the Red Quarter too, but we all think his pride won't allow that. If he looks weak, more Reduners will join Vara Redmane's rebellion."

"Are you sure there is no other way through the Warthago? They found a route before-could they do it again somewhere else?"

"I'm here this time. If they do that, I will know."

"By sensing their water?"

He nodded. "Luckily Iani knows this track to Qanatend better than anyone. He agrees Davim means to make a stand at the cistern. He will have all the water he needs there, and although we will be attacking from above, which has got to be an advantage, he will have his back to the cliffs behind the cistern. No one can come in from behind, or the sides."

"Could he ambush you on the way to the cistern?"

He grinned at her. "Not a chance."

"Oh. Rainlord power again. I keep forgetting. Where are our forces now?"

"Down where Davim's were. I just came back here to see if you had done a waterpainting for today's stormbringing. And to tell you-and the rest of the camp here-to move down the wash after us." He raised his eyes to meet hers. "I need you, Terelle."

She knew he wasn't referring to her help with his stormbringing. He meant he needed her to fight. After the day's cloudbreaking, Jasper sought out a group of the wounded who had earlier been brought up the wash to the flatter land at the top of Pebblebag Pass. I may not know what orders to give, he thought, but at least I can show I care.

To his surprise, one of the wounded greeted him with effusive thanks. "You saved m'life!" he exclaimed. The Gibberman turned to others lying beside him. "Look!" he said, holding up his roughly bandaged arm. "There I was with a witherin' useless arm, 'n' m'scimitar dropped, with this hulkin' Reduner fellow about t'spear me through, and all of a sudden he gets squirted in the mouth with a stream of water. He chokes, can't see an inch in front of his arse-red nose, and is scared witless as well. So all of a sudden I had time t'get me bab blade outta my boot and slide it 'tween his ribs 'stead of him gutting me! M'lord, that was a sight I'll remember the rest of me life!"

Jasper smiled at him, and wondered if that was really what a battle was all about. Saving the life of the men around you, by doing the best you could. Throwing water about might not be the stuff of heroic stories to be told around a campfire, but it meant everything to that man.

He had done something after all. He walked away, his shoulders straighter. Without thinking, he headed to where Terelle was painting, his renewed sense of hope prompting him to seek her out. Halfway there, he stopped. How could he give her hope-or himself hope-when there was none? Not for them. She had to leave to rejoin Russet. He had to marry the right person to produce a new generation of stormlords.

I have no right to seek her out when I can offer her nothing.

Struggling against his desires, he went to join Senya and Laisa for a meal. He sat there, hating himself for the hypocrisy of his polite conversation, for the false smiles he bestowed on Senya, for the empty lies of their every interaction. And when later he saw Terelle pass by, glance at them and then turn away, he grieved. When they rode further down the wash after the Reduners, they found the bodies of the men who had disobeyed the signal to retreat. They had been beheaded and disemboweled, left to bloat in the sun. The heads were missing. Insects crawled on the coagulated blood of their necks. Most of them wore the garb of Gibber folk.

Jasper swallowed back his vomit and gave the order for two of the rainlord priests from Breakaway to stay behind and extract their water in homage. He wanted to stop his imagination, halt his memories, but instead he heard the echo of laughter, the bravado of young men before battle pretending they were immune from death. They had been giggling, by all that was waterholy. Perhaps these were the very same men. Perhaps not. Either way, his decisions had brought them to this moment.

He rode on, staring straight ahead.

They camped that night at the lower of the two Reduner camps and the next day most of them rode on to camp within sight of the Qanatend mother cistern. In the evening, they found out what had happened to the missing heads. They were being used as balls in an impromptu game of chala played in front of the cavern that held the water cisterns.

Jasper, lying concealed with Iani, saw the beginning of the game. As soon as he realized what they were using for a ball, he rolled over onto his back and looked at the sky instead. Did Davim organize the game to remind him of Citrine? Probably.

Sandblast the sick bastard.

Faintly he heard the laughter of the players, wafted to their ears on an updraught. Warriors who can laugh at what they do. To teach me a lesson. Oh, pedeshit, what sort of men are they?

And then, just when he felt there was nothing worse that could be done to him, he felt it. The familiarity of water he recognized.

Mica. Mica was one of the players.

And his world fell apart yet again. "Men are dying, Terelle. Ziggers. We have to do something, and soon." Which was why Jasper had brought her here to look, of course.

It was her first glimpse of the cistern. She was lying on a slope, just below the ridge. She'd cautiously raised her head over the rise to peek down at the scene below. From where she lay, the ground sloped steeply downward in a tumble of gray scree. The thousands of loose stones were inert enough now, but the whole slope looked unstable enough to slide down to the flatter land in front of the cistern if a single pebble was disturbed by as much as the scampering of a mouse, although Jasper assured her it wasn't as precarious as it looked.

She and Jasper were on the right arm of the crescent-shaped slope. The left arm was a steep cliff cradling the mother cistern of Qanatend. Terelle could see the entrance, far below. The grille had been smashed, and pedes and people-small enough to be unrecognizable-came and went through the cavernous gap, carrying dayjars and water skins for refilling.

The large flat clearing in front of the cavern filled the valley from one side to the other. Split by the gully of the wash, which also cut back into the slope, the flat area was cupped inside the base of the crescent. Right then it was cluttered with scarlet awnings, pedes, cooking fires, a few tents-and armed tribesmen. The men wore their deep red robes, the hems to mid-calf, over trousers of red. She knew these same men had played a game of chala with the heads of the men they had killed, just two days earlier. Jasper hadn't told her that, but she had heard it nonetheless.

She turned her attention to the drywash. Water still lurked in rocky crannies of the gully, where the curves of the valley sides offered partial shade. The rest of the flood had long vanished down the slope toward Qanatend. Downwash, the valley sides were not so steep, and many warriors were camped on the slopes as well. A glance was enough to see that it would be hard for warriors to climb up the wash unseen; Jasper's men could ambush them from both sides.

The Reduners went about their daily business as if they did not know they were being watched, but their spears were never far away, their scimitars swung at their sides, their daggers remained thrust through their belts. A few guards stood around, apparently with nothing to do, but they spent their time looking upward. Terelle didn't need to be told that they were waiting for the first sign of a Scarpen charge.

"Could a rainlord kill the Reduners from here, by taking their water?" she asked, as if it were an everyday thing to speak so casually about how to take the lives of men.

Jasper shook his head. "Too far. And even then-it is the hardest of all water abilities. People don't want to die. They hang onto their water simply by the act of living. I'm told it's very exhausting to kill that way." After a moment, he added, "It might possibly be less tiring to do it my way, I suppose."

"What's that?" she asked.

"To hold water over their nose and mouth until they die. Or stuff it down their noses. I can shape water and I can push water. I can push it into a man's open mouth with such force he cannot close his mouth to stop it. Or I can push it against his eyes or into his ears. I've learned a thing or two in the past couple of days when we met some advance scouts. The trouble is, it takes concentration. I can only kill one man at a time, focusing everything I have on a single man, not wavering as I watch him die."

She felt the color rush from her face.

"There's nothing nice about what's going to happen here. There's nothing nice about what they'll do to us if they win."

"No," she whispered, "I know." She reached out and took his hand in hers. For a moment they lay in silence, neither of them looking at the other. "What about taking all the water in the cistern?" she asked. "You can do that, can't you? Leave them to thirst or surrender or retreat."

"Wouldn't work. The cisterns just keep filling up from the mother wells, through pipes deep in the hillside."

"And you're saying we're within their zigger range."

"Yes. They release a few every now and then. No pattern to it. Hard to detect them. People are dying."

Something in her chest tightened at the thought.

"They are testing our courage, to see how long we can remain here without flinching." He sighed. "At least they won't send them our way at night anymore. They learned their lesson there. But we are at an impasse now: they can't use the drywash trail to Scarcleft and we can't take the fight to them unless we are prepared to lose a lot of bladesmen-there's no cover on the slope. The moment we come down over this rim, they'll throw every zigger they own at us. I could gamble they don't have many left, I suppose. If we come down through the wash, the moment we emerge at the base, they will be waiting for us. We'd walk into a wall of spears-" He stopped and swallowed. "I find it hard to ask men to die, Terelle."

"And yet you ask me to kill them."

"Yes." He stared at her, expressionless. "You, and everyone here. This is an army. This is a war."

She met his stare, but in the end it was her gaze that fell. His message was clear. No exceptions.

He slid back down from the crest and dusted off his clothes. "Let's go back to the camp."

"Why not just stay here, blocking the way?" she asked as they walked back to the tents. She had to lengthen her stride to keep up, realizing once again how tall he had become. "Sooner or later he'll give up. Let him go, Jasper. All the way back to the Red Quarter. After all, wasn't that what he was going to do as part of his bargain with Taquar?"

"The game has changed now. He knows who challenges him. He knows I can't let him go back to the Red Quarter. He would be a spear in our side, just waiting for his next chance. He would conquer the White Quarter and raid the Gibber Quarter. Besides, he needs to kill me. I can control the water of the whole of the Red Quarter… how can he let me live? I can stop him getting random rain, and he knows it. He knows Taquar has lost control of me. If I don't go down that slope after him, he'll just wait until he has the opportunity to attack us; if not here and now, then later."

"What about waiting to see if Vara Redmane turns up?"

"She is more likely to attack those warriors he left at home. It always was a long shot, and I'm guessing she won't care about us. I reckon she'll try and take back her own dune, the Scarmaker, while his men are here."

"Will his men be short of food?"

"They are hunters, Terelle. And these ranges are full of mountain goats and deer. Truth is, I don't know what to do."

"Sneak down the slope at night?"

"You can't sneak on scree. And if we went down the wash, it would have to be in a narrow column. We'd be killed too easily emerging at the foot. We don't have anywhere near the training or experience his men have. We may have killed a few hundred the other night with our trickery and rainlord power, but they still outnumber us by far. Waterless hell, Terelle, I'd beg you to draw Davim dead, if you knew what he looked like."

"Archers?" She was desperate.

"We do have a couple of hunters who can pierce a windhover at a couple of hundred paces-but they have less than fifty arrows between them."

She wasn't surprised. Bows and arrows were rare throughout the Quartern because there were no suitable trees to make them, and the taboo against cutting down a tree was formidable anyway.

They reached the camp and Jasper flung himself down on the mat under the shade of one of the awnings. A bladesman came to offer him a drink, but he waved the man away irritably and said, "Davim has a weapon that could bring me to my knees like nothing else could."

She waited for him to explain, but he said nothing. The bleak look in his eyes told her what he meant. She'd seen that look before. "Oh, blighted eyes. Mica. You think Mica might be down there?"

He shook his head. "I don't think so, I know it."

She stared at him, her stomach churning in shock. "How?" she asked in a whisper.

"I can sense his water, of course. Oh, he's changed, and I can't sense him as well as I can sense you, but I am aware of his presence. Of his water. That's really the only way I can describe it."

"But they are tribesmen in that camp, not slaves," she protested. "They wouldn't bring slaves, surely, to fight a war-they couldn't trust them."

"He's not a slave. He's one of their warriors."

"You can't know that."

"He was playing a game of chala, down there, in front of the cistern, with other Reduner warriors."

Her eyes went wide with shock. "You mean with the heads? He-? Oh, Shale."

"I don't suppose Davim could be sure I was watching, but it was a message for me anyway. He was hoping I'd recognize Mica. I didn't, of course, not his face; he was too far away and he's a man now, anyway. I couldn't even work out which of them he was, but he was there. I-I recognized his water, moving back and forth." He picked aimlessly at the mat under his feet. "Funny, when I was a boy in the Gibber, I didn't realize I was beginning even then to know people by their water, but I was. And his-the feel of it, rather than the shape-it came back to me."

She continued to stare in horror. He said it with an unemotional flatness, as if it didn't matter. But oh, it did. She knew the last time he had seen his brother they had stood side by side and watched as Sandmaster Davim played chala with their baby sister.

"You think-you think he did it deliberately? Mica? To hurt you?"

"I hope not. I would not have thought he would become so-so cruel. But Davim? He knew there was a good chance I was watching. He sent me this, through a messenger under a wrapped sword of truce, the same day." He fumbled in his belt pouch and extracted a piece of parchment which he handed to her.

She unfolded it and read the words. They were written in a rounded childish hand, in ungrammatical Quartern tongue. To Stormlord Shale Flint. Come down. Mica Flint go up. Same time. Pass each by. Then no war. Reduner go dunes. You stay Scarpen. So swear Sandmaster Davim, Dune Watergatherer.

You not come, Mica die.

Terelle shook her head as she read it. "That's, that's vicious!" She raised her eyes to look at him. "You can't do that. And he knows you won't. You go to him, he'd kill you and then we'd all die of thirst."

"And the Reduners would emerge as the survivors. Yes, I know."

"He's just trying to hurt you by tormenting you."

"He's succeeding."

"You said Mica wasn't a slave. Davim's not going to kill one of his men just to spite you."

"Of course he would, if he wanted. He killed my sister to teach me a lesson. The people of Wash Drybone are just so many Gibber sand-leeches to Davim, to be slaughtered or enslaved. He's never thought of any of them as people."

She was silent, unable to think of anything to say to help him. She felt cold all over. If Jasper led an attack down the slope, he could end up killing his brother.

He stood up and began striding about under the shelter, crumpling his palmubra, fiddling with a pede prod, refusing to look at her.

Terelle felt something rip inside her; what had once been a certainty tore from its shelter to become doubt. This is what we are fighting… a sandmaster who deals in humans as if they were salt blocks, to be bought and sold and used-or discarded or destroyed at a whim. A whole land is at stake. We have to do something, anything at all to stop this…

Aloud she said, "How could Mica go from slavery to being a Reduner warrior?"

He shrugged. "He proved his loyalty. Somehow. I don't want to think how." He paused before continuing.

"When I was younger, I had a daydream. The same dream, all those years I was Taquar's prisoner, and all the time I was in Breccia, too. I was going to rescue Mica. I believed Mica would never become one of the Reduners, he was too kind, too gentle. I knew he must be a slave, and one day I could save him, and we'd be together again. But now I know he's down there, I remember other things. How he didn't always stand up for me against our father. That he often took the easiest way out. That he kept silent. And I've thought maybe the easiest thing for a slave to do is to join his master."

His voice garnered roughness with every word. "If that happened, how can I condemn him for it? He was only fourteen or fifteen when he was taken. It doesn't make me love him any less. It just makes it so much harder for me to… fight them."

Tears came into her eyes. Sandblast it, she thought. She wanted to ease his hurt, but had no idea how. Inside her, doubt corroded the validity of her past decisions, making them seem childlike.

He sat down next to her again, arms resting on his bent knees, hands fiddling with his palmubra. "Terelle, I don't know how I can win this one alone. I know you don't like using your waterpainting power, but I don't see we have any choice. And I'm not talking just about killing ziggers."

She shied away from consideration of the ruins of her moral certitude, and spoke instead of practicalities, of what was-in theory-possible, or otherwise. "I don't know what to suggest. If I've learned anything, it is that I have to be very careful. I have to provide the means to make the painting real-otherwise the water-power may use a method I don't like. For example, if I painted all those Reduners lying on the ground down there dead, without also making it clear what killed them, the reality might be some catastrophe horrible enough to kill us all." Like an earthquake.

He nodded. "I understand. The lanterns were the means to destroy the ziggers, and so those paintings worked exactly as they should."

"And if we paint something that is simply impossible, then it won't happen."

"So it's no use painting my fifteen hundred men killing all of theirs in battle? It's just too remote a possibility-unless the painting also supplies the means."

"Even if I would do it, I don't think I could," she said. "I'd need to sketch an approximation of every one of your men. The Reduners wouldn't be so bad-wrapped up like that they all look alike." She frowned suddenly, deep in thought. "I wonder if we are looking at it from the wrong direction."

"What do you mean?"

"Maybe we need to be more-more creative. Think of new ways to-to-win." To kill.

Before she could tease the idea out into a more coherent thought, they were interrupted. An Alabaster man came riding down to the camp from the rim. Sunlight twinkled off his mirrors, blinding Terelle. She raised an arm to shield her eyes as Jasper leaped up and the rider cried out, "More ziggers! Help!"

The pede rattled to a halt, segments compacting. Jasper held out an arm to the Alabaster, and in one fluid movement the man had pulled Jasper up behind him and the pede was prodded into motion again. Terelle remained seated, taken aback by the suddenness of their departure.

Her thoughts jumbled, remembering dancing lights in Russet's rooms, remembering the glare of salt.

A glimmer of a smile began to play around the corner of her lips. "Now that's an idea," she said.

"What is?" a voice asked behind her, honeyed tones laced with something much more nastily pungent.

She jumped to her feet. "Lord Laisa. Just a-a thought. About how to fight Reduners."

Laisa came a step closer. "I am still trying to puzzle you out. Tell me, were you ever tested for water sensitivity?"

"Hardly necessary. Believe me, a snuggery madam would have spotted a water sensitive and sold her to the rainlords in less time than it takes a single sand grain to run through a sandglass." Which was true enough.

"Doubtless." Laisa's mockery was overt, nasty. "Yet there is something about you that troubles me." She shrugged. "I'm sure I've seen you before. You are certainly out of your true element here. Enjoy it while you may; it will not last."

She turned and walked away in her usual swirl of silks and subtle perfumes. How the salted damn does she do that? Even here! The best of clothes and the best of smells. The bitch.