Iani scrambled to his feet again. "You are ordering rainlords here? Not to Qanatend to help Moiqa?"
"Forgive us, Iani. Those are Granthon's orders. And he is right: his safety, and Jasper's, is of more importance than-"
But Iani didn't let him finish. Enraged, he hooked his hands under the edge of the table and heaved it upwards. Laisa leaped to her feet out of the way as dishes and mugs and food slid to the floor. Senya squealed. The table crashed on its side.
"More important than Qanatend?" Iani shouted at Nealrith. "Maybe you're right. But it's not just about Qanatend or my Moiqa! It's about all the other cities, too. And my Lyneth. It's about justice. And compassion. And children dying. It's about our honour!" He stood for a moment, gasping, then added, "I never thought I would live to see this day." And he walked unsteadily to the door and left the room.
Jasper, feeling foolish sitting where he was when his meal was on the floor, stood up. Senya, surveying the mess, put a hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle.
Laisa looked on dispassionately. "I'm surprised," she said. "I would not have thought he could do that with a crippled hand." She glanced to where Nealrith still sat. "You are a dreamer, Rith. Your awakening will be a rude one. To protect the whole tunnel system is impossible, you know that. We may be able to protect the mother cistern for a while with rainlords, but the many miles of tunnel? It is not possible."
"We may not have warriors like the Reduners, but we do have rainlords who can kill both men and ziggers. And who can sense men and pedes in the desert from afar. Davim will discover that rainlords are not to be trifled with if he comes here."
"If the rainlords are here."
"What do you mean?"
She turned on him in a swirl of flowing sleeves and skirt. "Do you really think that the cities of the Scarpen will give up their rainlords so easily in order to protect us?"
"Of course they will! Without a stormlord, they can't survive. They must protect us; they must save Granthon and Jasper-or they won't have water in the future."
"Tell people to think about the future when the present is threatening them, Rith, and see what happens."
"People are not so foolish," he muttered, as she walked away.
Jasper, righting a chair, was not so sure. He remembered the irrationality of the attack on Feroze, the Alabaster salt trader. Did it make any sense to condemn him to certain death and to kill his mounts simply because he was an Alabaster? Sooner or later everyone needed salt. He sighed. People can be so unbelievably stupid.
Nealrith clapped a hand to his back, adding, "Don't worry, Jasper. There's no way Taquar would countenance an attack on Breccia by Davim. He wants to rule here, rule a city, not a heap of smoking ruins. He will stop Davim. Or kill him if necessary. Anyway, I have a number of things to do right now. Orders to give. We are going to give priority to protecting the mother cistern and the tunnel and to keeping a watch. Your classes with Kaneth and Ryka will have to be put on hold. I need the rainlords. You can still take the religion classes, though, and I will get another swordsman to teach you, as well."
"I'd rather forget the classes with the High Waterpr-" Jasper began, but he was speaking to himself. Nealrith had already gone.
Senya smirked at him as she rose to go. "Don't you like religious studies, Jasper? I suppose that's because you Gibber folk are all heathens."
He watched her leave, not even bothering to reply, his thoughts elsewhere. Everyone was making decisions based on guesses. Who really knew what motivated Davim the drover? Or what he would do next? To even consider that the Reduner might take any notice of an instruction from Taquar was ludicrous. One thing Jasper did know: Davim took orders from no one. Nor was he a man to be scared by threats from the Cloudmaster.
He wondered if killing the sandmaster would solve the problem. Would the tribes go back to arguing with one another if they did not have his leadership? It was worth a try, although maybe Davim was grooming an heir. A son perhaps.
He sat down again in the chair he had put to rights. How could he know more than men like Nealrith and Granthon? It wasn't how things were supposed to be.
But I do, he thought, exasperated. They are wrong, and I am right, and no one will listen to me.
CHAPTER FORTY
Scarpen Quarter Scarcleft City Scarcleft Hall, Level 2 Terelle paced her room like a desert cat in a cage.
She could hardly believe that this had happened to her, and she had not the faintest idea of how much longer she would be able to stand it. Sixteen paces one way, fourteen the other. A bed, a chair, a rug on the stone-tiled floor. A closet-privy built into the corner. A dayjar, filled for her at dawn every day. And nothing to do. Nothing. It was worse than being a handmaiden in a snuggery and spending the day primping and preening, and she had always thought that was the most boring thing she could imagine.
She had been locked in the one room for not quite half a year-she wasn't sure of the exact number of days, but she knew it was close to one hundred and fifty-and she thought she was going sandcrazy. The fact that it happened to be the loveliest room she had ever slept in was irrelevant; it was still a prison. Her view of the world was what she could glimpse through the openwork carving of the locked shutters that separated her from the outside. If she placed her face to the carved holes, she could see the sky; if she pressed hard enough to indent the patterns onto her skin, she could just see the lower-level courtyard of the building, one floor below, with armed guards on patrol every hour of the day and night.
She knew where she was. Scarcleft Hall, villa of the Highlord of Scarcleft, Taquar Sardonyx. Just thinking his name was enough to conjure up an image of horror, the casual wiping of blood from a sword, the touch of his blade under her chin, the dagger driven so deep under Amethyst's breast.
She had done her best to fill her time, making up dances and performing them as she hummed the music; painting on the walls with paint made from bread and water and oil, coloured with fruit and vegetable juice-all from her food trays; unpicking the cover of her bed and then weaving it again with a different pattern.
The only distractions in otherwise eventless days were the delivery of water and the arrival of meals, but the servants responsible were disinclined to talk and were always accompanied by a guard. All Terelle's attempts to be friendly or to seek information were met with stony silence.
At first, her hope centred on Russet. He had already made paintings of her future, and they didn't include her being imprisoned in Scarcleft Hall, so surely that meant she was going to be freed. If he could just make a waterpainting of her free and somewhere else, then she could count on being released sooner rather than later. Or having an opportunity to escape. Or something. But as the days passed and nothing happened, she began to wonder if Russet was still alive. Perhaps he had returned to his room only to be arrested and killed. Perhaps once a waterpainter was dead, the magic of their paintings dissipated. Hadn't he once said something like that? That when he was dead, she would be free to do what she liked?
And free to be killed.
The thought that he might be dead was… what? Certainly not devastating in the way Amethyst's death had been. She hated him for the way he had tethered her with his painted magic, for the secretiveness that deliberately obscured her origins. She disliked the sly pleasure he took in other people's troubles. His death would not sadden her, but she grieved that it might sever the only connection she had to a distant family she had never known. Her thoughts of Russet's fate were not the worst that plagued her, though.
The worst moments of each day came when her thoughts returned-again and again-to Shale. Her last glimpse of him had been of his face, pale and grim, surrounded by a swirl of fighting men, a spray of blood dappling his skin and clothes. Apart from that, her most vivid memories of those moments were of the noise: the clash of blades, the heart-wrenching keening of wounded men, the confused shouting and grunting, the cold voice saying "Kill her."