Sometimes she "fixed" more than she intended; twice Terelle had seen women enter Fipiah and Ba-ba's rooms only to see them leave as bodies wrapped in palm-leaf shrouds. Both times, Terelle had expected someone to make a fuss. Both times, the body was quietly carted away and nothing was said. Terelle had made sacrifices of water for their souls. It wasn't right that anyone should vanish into death without someone telling the Sunlord to look out for them on their journey to eternal life within the glory of His sunfire.
Next to Ba-ba and Fipiah, there was a family of stone-breakers who sometimes found work mending roads on the higher levels. In a lean-to in front of them was Qatoo the madman, who had a habit of stripping off all his clothes and jumping up and down on top of them, wailing, until his ten-year-old son came and led him away. The boy earned his living as a catamite for the pede grooms who lived in the stables outside the walls, men rich by the standards of the Thirty-sixth because they had regular jobs and water allocations.
The waterseller on the street outside, Vato, was the same man who had spoken to her on her first visit to the level about the cost of filling a dayjar. One of Terelle's duties now was to buy water from him every morning. She obtained the latest gossip at the same time, which she then relayed to Russet. Vato, who made daily journeys to Level One, was known as a good source of the kind of information that kept the inhabitants of Level Thirty-six alive: whether there was going to be a raid that day, perhaps, or whether the enforcers were looking for anyone in particular.
When Opal sent a party of professional searchers into the level looking for Terelle, Vato warned her they were coming. She spent three days hiding in a storeroom that Russet rented several streets away. The searchers made no less than five visits to Russet's room, two of them in the middle of the night, before they gave up. None of Russet's neighbours would admit to ever having seen Terelle, even when offered money.
"Vivie must have told Opal about you," she said to Russet. She was so annoyed with her sister that she felt like cracking a water jar over her head.
After that, Russet anonymously sent Opal water tokens every week. Vivie sent word back-in a letter addressed to Terelle at Russet's room, showing that nobody had been fooled-that the snuggery owner would be placated as long as the payments continued.
Russet smiled with smug gratification. "Ye not worth much to snuggery, eh?"
For the time being, Terelle was safe-although remembering Huckman, she avoided all caravans from the south that passed through the level. Half a year passed and for the average dweller on the thirty-sixth level, the situation worsened. Raids and arrests became a daily occurrence as laws tightened. No waterless woman was allowed to have children now; the enforcers came to every lane, dressed in their blue uniforms with a swirl of sand glued on the breast to symbolise their office, and read the proclamation. The following week they were back, scouring the streets for visibly pregnant women and demanding proof that both they and their unborn child were entitled to water allotments. If they couldn't produce proof, or if they couldn't show that they or their husband had regular employment, they were taken away.
Some never returned. Some came back the next day, pale, bleeding and no longer pregnant.
One morning, Terelle watched the husband of one such woman buying some herbs from Fipiah to stop the bleeding. Terelle said to Vato, shocked, "I saw his wife last week. She was at least two-thirds of the way into her pregnancy!"
"Yes. My wife was with her last night. Says that like as not, she'll die."
"It wasn't her fault! A woman can't always prevent a baby. I know that from the snuggery. Is it the Cloudmaster who makes such terrible laws?"
Vato shrugged. "He's certainly the one who doesn't send us enough water. But it's our very own highlord who has the decision on how to make water last. Taquar Sardonyx the Splendid, of Scarcleft City, who else?"
"Then he is wicked!"
Ba-ba, spreading his sinucca leaves to dry on his doorstep, heard her indignation and waggled a crippled finger at her. "I heard say he's been away, and it's Harkel the seneschal been runnin' things. And he's a right proper bastard, no mistake. But wicked? Are they, child? Either of 'em? Tell me this, by what right does a woman bring a child into a world when she has no water for him? That's a crime as heinous as murder, for the child is born to die-or to steal life-givin' water from someone else. You mark my words, m'dear, if folk are let do what they will, then there'll come a day when Vato here goes uplevel to find the reeves won't sell him a drop for us. Not a drop, 'cause there won't be no more water. Taquar does what he has to, and he's right. 'Tis fools like the Cloudmaster in Breccia City with their bleedin' hearts that'll bring us to a thirst that can't be quenched."
"You silly old fool," Vato told him, "one day Taquar is going to throw people like us out into the Sweepings. We're the dregs of the thirty-sixth. Who cares 'bout us?"
"They need us workers," Ba-ba protested. "We do the dirty work for 'em. The dangerous work. That's why they nivver cut off our water altogether. They could if they wanted. They could stop you from sellin' it to us, for a start!"
"Yeah, well, it might happen one day," Vato shook his head. "I've heard tell hoarding water is punishable by desert exile now, and we both know what that means."
"I don't," said Terelle.
"Dumped far out into the Sweepings or the Skirtings," Ba-ba told her. "And yesterday I saw some waterless illegals from other cities being chucked out the city gates under penalty of execution if they return. Good riddance, I say!"
Vato glared at Ba-ba, but he didn't notice. Terelle turned away abruptly. She and Russet were waterless illegals born elsewhere. True, Russet had work of sorts-he sold his paintings to uplevellers-but she didn't know if that counted as regular employment entitling him to a water allotment. Certainly he didn't collect one. She gave a worried frown as she walked up the stairs to their room.
She entered their living quarters and put the water jars into the storage slots. Russet was there at the fire, heating up some resin over burning seaweed briquettes.
"Ye go bazaar this morning," he said, not looking up from his task. "Abel the bigger's shop. Buy eight sea urchin skeletons, sort used for purple dye."
Terelle hid a sigh. She had thought her apprenticeship would start with painting; instead she laboured to produce the paints while Russet did the artwork. She had also learned that it was no use complaining, or even asking Russet what he planned for her. He told her nothing about himself, either. After the half-year she had lived with him, she knew no more than she'd told Amethyst or Vivie. He paid her an allowance, gave her food, bought her water. He gave her orders, which he expected her to obey immediately, yet he never scolded. He never had to: all he had to do was look at her with his sharp little eyes, as green as her own, to have her scurrying to do his bidding. One part of her feared him, even though he never gave her overt cause.
He had strung a curtain of bab-leaf matting across one corner of the room, given her a pallet to sleep on there, and never violated her privacy once she retreated behind the curtain. When his eyes did linger on her body, it was with a shrewd assessing look, not with lust.
And still she feared, with an uneasy, uncomfortable feeling, that all was not well. That Russet Kermes the waterpainter was not to be trusted. She hated the feeling, knowing that she should be grateful to him. He had saved her with his generosity. Why could she not like him in return? Why could she not trust him?