"The Other Side?"
"The outlander countries on the other side of the Giving Sea. They keep growing, getting bigger and bigger. More people born each year. But we can't do that. Our population has to stay the same because there is no water to spare." He gave a disgusted grunt. "And still there are people who can't see that truth. Idiots who will have more children than they should, even though they know the extra ones will be born waterless and that most of them will end up on the lowest level, one step away from death by thirst. I have no patience with those people. Not with the poor who breed like pouched mice because they can't be bothered to stop, nor with the rich who try to buy a place for their extra children. They have no right to take away my water-the water of a hard-working citizen. The waterless, rich or poor, are the curse of this land. They live by thieving; they are either poor and diseased and useless and filthy, or rich and useless parasites."
Shale felt he was standing on shifting sand. He looked straight at Taquar. "I was born waterless," he said.
There was a long silence. Then, "Yes. So you were. And I thank the Watergiver you were born, but it does not change my opinion. A succession of stormlords have been too weak to make the birth of waterless progeny a crime, as it should be. Instead they just deny the children water allotment. Where is the good in that? It takes the crime away from the parent and punishes those born through no fault of their own."
"I didn't know it was possible to-well, to stop the children coming. My mother never knew how. Most of them died, anyway."
"Of course there are ways! But why are we talking of such matters? Monetary policies and the lack of birth laws are no concern of yours."
No concern of yours.
As he remembered that conversation, Shale knew that Taquar did not ever think of him as being a cloudmaster one day, ruling as Granthon did. The rainlord was not teaching him the duties of a ruler. What Shale knew about those things he gained from his reading or the academy teachers.
He wasn't sure exactly what Taquar did intend, but he suspected the highlord thought he, Shale, was going to be doing little more than move storms all his life.
Maybe I don't understand all I read, or what I am taught, he thought. But I am not as stupid as Taquar thinks, either. I am sure I'm not. As they were about to eat their midday meal, Shale felt the arrival of people outside. Not a few, but a large group. "Men and pedes," he said urgently. "Coming up the slope."
Swiftly Taquar was on his feet, his hand going to the loaded zigtube he had put down on the table. "Wait here," he rasped and went out.
Shale, however, followed, pushing his water senses outwards. He felt most of the pedes and men stop at the bottom of the slope. Two men riding myriapedes continued up towards the grille.
He saw them arrive. Two dune tribesmen. Reduners.
Shale began to unravel. Breathing became an effort. His hands felt clammy. His stomach churned.
They dismounted and the first man gave his reins to the second. "It is time," he said to Taquar without greeting. "I want to meet him."
The way Taquar held himself told Shale that the rainlord was angry, but nothing of the emotion came through in his voice. "As you wish," he said smoothly. "Perhaps you will join me for a meal?"
As the highlord manipulated the grille, Shale saw the Reduner more clearly. Red-skinned, lean, hawk-nosed, his red-stained braids poking out under the cloth extensions of his woven cap, he was a striking man. His red-dyed tunic was lavishly embroidered in matching thread in a panel down the front. Even though he wasn't large, he held himself tall; everything about him spoke of power and prestige.
Taquar turned to Shale. "Help the servant clean the pedes," he said abruptly, indicating the animals. "Get them food and water."
But Shale couldn't move. He was pinned to the wall by a welter of emotion and memory.
"And who is this?" the first man asked, eyeing him with an intense gaze as he entered the cavern. Something told Shale the question was redundant; the man knew exactly who he was.
Taquar ushered the Reduner towards the living quarters. "Shale Flint," he replied. "He does the chores around the place for me. We live simply here," he added, "but I can offer you the finest of Scarpen pickles and preserves, and some bread I brought from Scarcleft." He looked back over his shoulder as they entered the inner room, frowning his disapproval at Shale's lack of response to his order. "Get to it, lad."
Shale moved then. The Reduner servant wordlessly handed Shale the reins of his pede, making it clear that he did not intend to indulge in idle conversation now they were alone. Shale made himself busy, while the man tended to his master's pede. It was a magnificent creature, larger than most, the deep red-black colour of the darkest of rubies. Shale stared at it with covetous eyes before turning to the servant's pede. He worked without thinking, calming the turbulence of his thoughts in the steady cleaning and polishing. Antennae first, for without the sensitivity of clean feelers it was purblind. Then the head and mouthparts, next the thorax, brushing out the irritating grains of sand caught in between or under the segments. Next he fetched the herbal polish and began to work on the segments themselves, shining them till they gleamed. Alongside him, the man worked on similar tasks but said nothing, often deliberately turning his back. It didn't take Shale long to realise he was being snubbed.
He was still wondering about that when he came to the fifth segment on the pede he was cleaning. Like all the others, it was carved with pictures. And as Shale ran the polishing cloth over the carvings, the pictures seemed familiar. A pede being pulled out of some kind of sinkhole.
He stared. Everything stopped: his heart, his breath, his throat.
He had last seen those pictures close up, with his cheek pressed down into the carvings as the pede-the very same pede-had flowed across the desert in the heat of the day with its burden, a boy still bathed in his sister's blood.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Scarpen Quarter Scarcleft City Level 36 A few weeks before her eighteenth birthday, Terelle was buying water from Vato when a man raced past and almost knocked her water jars flying. Several armed men pounded after him, followed a moment or two later by riders on a myriapede. The driver and those seated behind him were zigtube-wearing enforcers.
"What is all that about, at this time of the morning?" Terelle asked Vato, grateful that she had saved the jars from being smashed.
"There's a lot of raids lately. Be careful, lass. That fleeing man was Wilsent the beggar from Dung Street. He's a water thief. Used to be a beggar on the uplevels, but they've got a lot stricter now. It's hard to even go upwards any more, let alone beg there." He frowned unhappily. "And water goes up in price again tomorrow."
"Not again! Why?"
"Not enough water coming in from the Warthago Range, why else? Same old story: Highlord Taquar says the Cloudmaster isn't making enough rain. That he's old and dying." He shrugged. "But he's been dying for the past four years or more. People say Highlord Taquar has to do something because he's the heir, you know. The Quartern heir. Did you know that? Granthon announced it ages back. What nobody cares about is that we waterless are always the first to suffer. After the cats, that is." He spat, shedding his own water to show the depth of his contempt.
"Cats?"
"People don't keep pets when times are bad."
She thought about that. It had been a long time since she had seen a cat. The idea that people killed their cats rather than feed them, or worse, that they killed them for the cupful of water they could obtain if they took the body to one of the houses of the dead for water extraction, appalled her more than anything else he'd said. She felt ill, sick in the stomach and heartsick in spirit.