She did not know what to do. She wanted to step away from him, wanted to express her revulsion, but was held in place by terror, by an upbringing that had taught her not to cheek her elders, to be respectful to those in positions of power and to pander to men who came to enjoy favours. One certainly didn't slap their faces. But when his tongue pressed against her teeth, seeking entry to her mouth, she clenched them hard. He stopped the kiss immediately and stepped back.
"I-I don't know what-what you mean," she faltered. It was a lie; of course she knew what he meant. She had spent seven years of her childhood listening to handmaidens talk of their nights; she had lived another four next to a woman who daily rented out her children as whore and catamite. She knew exactly what he meant.
"No? Hmm. You will understand soon, I promise you," he said, releasing her. He folded the letter and tucked it away in his pouch. "I suspect Shale is far too decent to abandon you, my dear. I should not worry too much if I were you."
"And what am I to do in the meantime?" she asked, sharpening her fear to asperity with an effort. "Sit here with nothing to do all day while I grow up?" Silently she blessed the obvious: Vivie had not told him her real age.
"I certainly do not trust you enough to let you loose."
"Could you at least let me have my waterpaints? Then I could do some paintings for you, for the palace. It would give me something to do. I am very good, you know." Watergiver's heart, I sound like a wheedling brat.
He laughed outright. "I was correct-you are an extraordinary girl. And I wonder if you are as young as you say you are. I do not think I have been spoken to like this in years, not since Amethyst in her younger days. Very well. I believe everything that was in Russet's room was brought here. I'll see if the paints can be located, and I'll have them brought to you. You can paint to your heart's content, if it keeps you happy."
For a breathless moment the name Amethyst hung in the air between them, then she said woodenly, "Thank you, my lord."
He laughed again. "I'll visit every now and then," he promised and left her, without taking away the chair and table.
She collapsed onto her bed and gave way to gasping sobs. Her emotions had been rent and then flung in all directions. There was joy that Shale was safe in Breccia City, fear that he would indeed be idiot enough to take notice of her letter, terror that Taquar would torture her to death or simply kill her "to tidy things up," tremulous delight that she would have her paints once more and therefore-perhaps-a way of escape.
And through all that tumult of reaction, she could still feel the slide of his fingers up and down her hair. The taste of him, of his lips, his tongue. The smell of him, of his lust, lingered in her nostrils. Taquar was as good as his word.
That afternoon, Terelle's waterpaints, together with eight picture trays and some of her personal belongings, were delivered to her prison. When she unpacked, she fingered the mirror Vivie had given her and choked with unexpected emotion. She had not thought about it since she had run out of Russet's rooms, yet now that she had it back, she felt a wash of tenderness for her sister and for a childhood that no longer existed.
At the bottom of the bag, there was a scroll of paintings.
Russet's portraits of her future, all of them. Taquar's men had brought her the very paintings that trapped her within Russet's plans for her life. She had her waterpaints and the possibility of freedom. She had Russet's painted future for her. Surely there must be something she could do to escape both of the men who sought to command her life.
It was only later, when she began to think about how to do it, that she realised liberty was not going to be as easy as she had first thought.
You can't put yourself into the future, Russet had said. He was right, she found. She did try. She tried to shuffle up a picture of herself standing on the thirty-sixth level-and nothing happened. Nothing at all. Her sharpened image did not appear; the paint did not move. It remained static; it looked lifeless; it felt dead. She could not influence her own future, at least not by projecting herself there.
What else could she do?
Kill Taquar.
The thought was suddenly there in her head. Paint him dead.
Picture him lying on the ground with a gaping wound in his chest, lots of blood. Leave his clothes indistinct, but make his face detailed. And then shuffle the future up to make it real.
Russet had never confirmed that it was possible to kill with waterpainting, but he had not denied it, either, when she had asked. And it would be so easy to try. Would they let her go if Taquar was dead? Possibly. She could save Shale from Taquar's clutches, for certain.
But to murder a man, any man?
She shivered, the icy finality of that thought going right through to her heart. It would be so… cold-blooded. So deliberate.
I will think about it. She'd have to be very certain before she did something like that.
She contemplated Russet's paintings. Maybe she could change her destiny if she altered them, changed the background, for example, or removed all trace of Russet by scraping off the paint or painting over the top? She tried that on one of them but could not shuffle up anything. The shuffling had been done, and the future was fixed, no matter what she did to the paint.
She thought of altering her appearance, her real appearance. Scarring her face, perhaps. Cutting her hair very short so that she never looked like the woman in the paintings. But when she thought of doing that, the magic asserted itself and her stomach roiled and her hands shook. She would never be able to do it.
She thought of just destroying them. Tearing them up. Setting fire to them. But what if that killed her, as Russet had said? She remembered Shale had put his foot into the painting of Vato up on the rooftop, ruining it, and Vato had not been hurt. But then, the damage to the painting hadn't stopped him from climbing up onto the roof, either.
Besides, she thought, maybe these paintings are all that is keeping me alive right now. If Russet hadn't painted my older self, maybe the enforcer would have caught up with me and killed me. Or maybe Taquar would have killed me after I wrote that letter. Instead, he was keeping her, apparently for the day when he would regain control of Shale and be able to use her as a hostage, to assure Shale's good behaviour.
She sighed, rolled them up and put them away.
She started on an ordinary waterpainting instead, something she thought Taquar might appreciate: a portrait of himself riding a myriapede, as she had first seen him from the roof of the snuggery, a lifetime ago. She thought she captured the essence of the man welclass="underline" his pride, his sensual menace, his handsome arrogance, his assurance. The magnificence of his mount. The image was engraved on her mind, down to the last details, so that part was not hard. More difficult was the challenge of eliminating the fear she felt creating his painted image.
While she worked on the portrait, she pondered what other pictures she could paint to benefit her future.
Useless just to paint the door to her prison swung open and an empty room beyond. That might mean anything: that she was moved to another part of Scarcleft Hall, for example. She thought about depicting Russet's room and then shuffling up into that picture something that was now with her-her clothes, perhaps. After all, if her clothes were on the thirty-sixth level, she would be, too, wouldn't she? Then she thought of other scenarios that might account for her clothes being down in the thirty-sixth-and her imagination supplied a few unpleasant possibilities.
When she finished the portrait, she left it on the floor next to her dayjar. If Taquar came back before she was ready for him, at least she had something inoffensive to show him.