She rose and moved forward automatically, her mind still crying out against the truth she did not want to accept. A lamp burned inside, and he waved her over to the table. He was not wearing his colourful wrap, but threadbare worker's clothes. To be inconspicuous, she guessed. She dumped her bundle on the floor and sat down on one of the two chairs; the backs of both were broken. There was a deep gouge in the table, too, a scimitar slash gone awry. There were waterpaintings there as well, rolled up and tied with twine.
"I came back," he said. "I be thinking ye'd come."
"You knew I'd escape tonight?" she asked, bewildered.
"Painted ye escaping. I painted ye here, too."
"It was so long," she said, and the words sounded distant, unemotional, as if someone else had uttered them. "I thought you must be dead because you didn't paint me out of there."
"Oh, but I did," he said. He undid the twine and unrolled a painting. "See?"
She spread it out on the table, and the colours sprang into life under the lamplight. A barbed mixture of relief and renewed horror shredded any remaining equilibrium as she stared. "You did this? You did this deliberately?"
He had painted a street by night, and a good part of the building portrayed had crumbled into the roadway. She was in the painting, only her face clearly lit, as she clambered over the darkened rubble. "What did you do?" she barked at him, aghast.
He shrugged, his small green eyes mocking her. "Nothing. Nothing without you. No longer be having power to start a quake. Told ye once, not be easy to influence non-living objects."
"A quake?"
"A ground-shaking, hard enough to be bringing buildings down. In Variega mountains it be common enough." He grimaced and gestured at the painting. "Painted immediately after ye were taken."
"What do you mean, you didn't have the power to start the earth quaking? I felt it. It tossed me on the floor, and then the walls fell down." It wasn't my fault. He did this.
"Told ye-be painting this soon after ye be taken. Nothing happened."
She took a deep breath, trying to still the helpless fluttering of a heart that didn't want to hear the truth he would eventually tell her. "You just said you painted me here. Wasn't that enough?"
He shrugged. "Ye be imprisoned. Couldn't be answering the call."
She thought: He's lying. He tried lots of things and none of them worked. Until I did my painting. It was me.
He continued, gesturing at the painting, "So I be thinking of this. A quake with ye escaping."
She was silent, sifting through a jumble of thoughts, wondering which one to pick up and say.
"I be old, end of my days," he said suddenly. He sounded sullen, reluctant to admit an approximation of the truth. "Gratitudes be five days back, so must be hundred and fifty days ago since I paint the quake. My power be too weak. Nothing happened."
"Until tonight. Why now?"
"Ye be painting something. Ye must have. With your power in your waterpainting, my poor effort be made real, too… be method of your escape. Ye did, yes? Ye be painting something. The fools let ye have your paints."
She was silent.
He changed the subject. "We must go now, tonight. Leave Scarcleft. They be hunting me down since that day. Tomorrow they be hunting ye too. A myriapede to ride, supplies-everything be arranged at livery outside the walls." When she looked incredulous, he added, "It be a standing arrangement. Just in case."
"Can we go to Breccia?"
"No. No, it's time ye be going home. To Khromatis. Ye be a Watergiver, now true waterpainter. Time to claim what be yours."
No hint of asking her first. She remembered the pull that had drawn her back to this building, to Russet. There was more than one way to imprison a person.
"Claim? Claim what? What exactly is mine? And just who are you to me?"
He considered her carefully; she guessed he was assessing her stubbornness. She put on her best stubborn look. He shrugged, capitulating. "Ye be my great-granddaughter. Your mother, Sienna, my granddaughter. Her mother, Magenta, my daughter. She married the Pinnacle."
"Who is…?"
"The Pinnacle be… well, ruler. I be father-in-law to most powerful man in Khromatis, so had power myself. But Magenta died. Then your mother, my granddaughter Sienna, be running off. The silly frip! She be her father's heir-Pinnacle one day if she be winning approval of Watergiver Council. Instead she thinks herself in love. Man have no powers. An eel-catcher. A wanderer. A nothing. Erith Grey. Pah!"
His anger at something that had happened so long ago was still enough to make his hands shake. Terelle stared, mesmerised by the way the patterns on his skin, lit by the lamplight, moved with each tremble as if they were living creatures crawling down his arms from under his wrap.
"Sienna's father, the Pinnacle, furious. Pinnacle's heir must be marrying someone of power, get children of power." He shook his head, part in anger, part in puzzlement. "She and lover, they left mountains without permission. That be forbidden. They reached White Quarter, me at their heels. Wanted to bring her back. But some 'Basters gave them passage across the salt to the Gibber. I caught up with them there."
"You killed him, didn't you? You killed my father!" She was certain of it.
He shrugged. "Be him or me. And I be waterpainter."
"But why?" she asked, outraged. "Why go after her like that anyway? You ended up being responsible for the deaths of them both!"
"She family. Her behaviour shamed me. Ye not understand-I be revered as great waterpainter of our time. But be getting old. Powers lessening. For family to have position, must be power in next generation, no? Sienna have that power. She was stormshifter. What you call stormlord, and she threw it all away."
"Because she wanted to marry an ordinary man? So what?"
"Not just that. She not be wanting power. She refused to study. I chased her to bring her back. Find her in the Gibber. She told me she be having baby, a girl she be going to call Terelle." He glared at her. "We be naming our children with colours. Match a child to their real colour, then they be the finest of waterpainters. But the name Terelle? Means exile. Nothing to do with colour. Her way of telling me she never be coming back."
She shook her head, distraught, touched for a moment by the love of a mother she had never known. Unable to speak, she gestured with a hand that he was to continue.
He said, "The eel-catcher fight. He died. I be making sure of that with my painting. She fled into storm she made-"
"And you never found her."
"No."
"So why didn't you go back to Khromatis?"
"What be point? My powers vanishing, Sienna gone, Pinnacle blaming me. So I keep looking, hoping she be still alive and one day I find her in a place where I painted her. I be travelling all over the Quartern looking. Gibber first, then Scarpen. And one day I be lucky: I followed your tears. You be having the look of her: proud and stubborn."
Terelle's outrage poured from her. "You killed my parents! You can't think to take me back so that I can restore you to your position of power. That's ridiculous."
He didn't answer.
"What do you think would happen, anyway? That they'd welcome you back after so many years? What, almost nineteen years-no, I suppose more like almost twenty, all told? And then what? They'll make me the next Pinnacle? Do you think your people would allow a woman from the Gibber to lead them? I am nothing! I'm not really a Watergiver; I know nothing of your people or your customs or your language. And I don't care to learn!"
"Ye be having great power; that be enough. Terelle, not be safe here for you. I painted ye at nineteen-after that, ye have no protection."
"I'd be safe in Breccia."
"Ye know, ye not be having much choice." The smile he gave her was self-satisfied.
"Your paintings have no power any more," she pointed out, but her heart was thumping, and she feared she was wrong. "You can no longer trap me in them. They weren't enough to stop Taquar taking me prisoner. They weren't enough to free me."