"The man on the roof?" Shale asked. "What happened to him?"
"Nothing. He climbed down again." At his words she had gone as white as salt.
Russet looked up sharply. "What man?"
What she said next did not make sense to Shale. "I pulled Vato out of the motley and put him on the roof."
"Sand-witted!" he exclaimed. "Ye foolish frip-didn't ye understand what be happening if ye shuffled?"
"No. No, I didn't!" She was almost shouting at him. "I didn't. I don't. I don't even know what it is to-to shuffle. Perhaps you had better explain something for a change. How is it possible?"
"I told ye once, sometimes be possible for us to fix the future."
"Us? Just who is… us?"
Shale was acutely uncomfortable. He hadn't the faintest idea what he had walked into and wasn't sure he wanted to know. He stood next to the door, still holding his bag, barefoot and feeling out of place.
"People like us."
Shale thought about that. Who were they, these people? He had never seen anyone dressed like the old man. His clothes were wrapped around him rather than made to fit; the colours of the cloth were startlingly vivid, the weave rough and knotted. His arms and hands were covered in red-brown tattoos, patterns of swirls and waves that were possibly only the beginning of designs hidden under his wrap. And Shale had never seen anyone with eyes that colour-except the girl.
She was striking. Dusky-complexioned enough to be from the Gibber, but different, too. Already taller than most Gibber women. And more… he searched for a word. Regal. Something about the structure of her face, the inner strength in the gaze. He shuffled his feet in embarrassment. "Er, I, um, I'm sorry to have disturbed you," he said. "And thank you, um, Arta, for hiding me. I'll go now."
That switched their attention to him immediately. Terelle said nothing, but Russet came forward, smiling. It was not a smile that gave Shale confidence in his benevolence.
"No, no, Gibberman, ye will not. Going out there when reeve's men be looking for ye? Enforcers, no?"
Shale nodded dumbly.
"Seneschal Harkel of Scarcleft Hall-his men. They keep looking all day. You leave tonight."
"But I have to find work," he said.
"No one take ye today, not when Harkel's men be asking about ye." The mockery was back; the old man was laughing at him.
"They don't know my name."
The man's shrewd eyes pierced him with contempt. "Gibber youth wearing noble livery? They find ye."
He looked down at the clothes he was wearing, a tunic and breeches Taquar had given him. "Livery?" he asked stupidly.
"That's right. Worn by servants in Scarcleft Hall."
"No one else has remarked on my clothes."
"Not too many lowlevellers know uplevel livery. I be one of them. Reeves and enforcers too. They have the name ye use by now." He chuckled, a high-pitched sound that grated on Shale. "Safer staying here." He was still grinning, his small, ageing eyes disappearing into the filigree of wrinkles on his cheeks and eyelids.
He turned to Terelle. "Give him meal, while I be finding out what I can." He picked up a length of coloured cloth and wrapped it around his head, took up a staff of wood and went to the door. "Take advice, Gibberman: be here when Russet comes back, eh?" The sharpness of the warning was reinforced by the hint of malice in his tone. The man was not sympathetic; he was gleefully amused at Shale's predicament and left chuckling.
Terelle went to the pot that had been keeping warm at the back of the fireplace and ladled out some of its contents into two bowls. She gestured towards the table and chairs. "Sit down, why don't you?" She sounded distracted, not really interested in whether he stayed or not.
"He won't sell me to them, will he?"
That got her attention. "Russet? No. He hates all Scarpermen, particularly anyone connected with the rainlords and water sensitives. Do you want some amber?"
He shook his head. "I have my own water." He sat down at the table, and she sat opposite.
She pushed a plate of yam biscuits towards him. "Help yourself."
He took one and picked up the spoon in his bowl. "I'm sorry about your painting. I didn't see it when I came around the corner. Will you be able to do it again?"
"It doesn't matter."
He struggled on, knowing he sounded inept. Spoken words did not come easily to him. "I-I want to say thank you, for doing what you did. That was brave."
She waved a dismissive hand. "Who are we, we waterless, if we can't help one another?" She still seemed preoccupied, and he was perversely offended.
"Is that old man your grandfather?"
"What makes you say that?"
"You look like him."
"You think I look like him?"
Her eyes blazed at him, and he knew he had just said something stupid. The man was old and wizened; of course it would hardly be flattering to be compared to him. "Um, no, of course not. Not really. I mean, he's old. And you're-but-"
"But what?"
"It's your eyes; you have the same eye colour." Now that he had her attention, he rather wished he didn't.
"Not everyone with the same colour eyes is related."
"No, of c-course not," he stuttered. He bent over the food and ate, wishing she would stop looking at him as if he was a sand-leech.
"What's your name?" she asked.
He opened his mouth to say Jasper, and then closed it again. Pointless to continue the lie; the reeves weren't stupid. They were looking for Shale. He thought he knew what had happened. The waterhall reeves had told the highlord what had occurred in the waterhall. Taquar had gone to check if he was still in the Scarcleft mother cistern. When he'd found him missing, he had instituted a thorough search of Scarcleft. And he wasn't going to give up until Shale was found.
"My name's Shale," he said.
"What do they want you for?"
"It's a long story."
She shrugged, accepting the rebuff as if she didn't care. "I am the apprentice of Russet the waterpainter."
"He sells waterpaintings?" he asked, intrigued.
"Uplevellers commission them for their hallways; some have even built special recesses into their floors for them."
"Why?"
"Why, what?"
"Why would someone want such a painting?" The thought of water being wasted like that was repugnant to him.
She stared at him blankly. Finally she said, "Because they are beautiful. Because they stir the senses. Because a good painting can speak to you, can say many things about life, about the world, about your place in the world. Like… poetry. Or dance."
He thought about that with a sense of wonder. People paid to have their water wasted? Just to make something beautiful or interesting that had no purpose?
"You don't know what I'm talking about, do you?"
He shook his head.
"Watergiver's heart! Is the Gibber really such a wretched place that its people have no-no soul?"
"We have beautiful things in the Gibber," he said defensively. "My mother used to embroider. And the potter in our settle made designs on his pots. But they made useful things first. Making them beautiful afterwards never used any extra water."
She stared at him some more, one eyebrow raised as if in disbelief, and then looked away to continue eating her meal. He took his cue from her and bent over his bowl. He didn't think he liked her much. She made him feel clumsy, as if his body was too large for grace and his tongue too stupid to make sense of his thoughts.
They ate the rest of the meal in silence.
When Russet came back, he was rubbing his hands in a self-satisfied way, a gesture that disturbed Shale even more than Terelle's flat stare. "Have something to show ye," he said to Shale. "Look!" He reached into a fold of his wraps and withdrew a piece of rough parchment. He unrolled it on the table and showed them both.
Shale stared at it. It was a picture of a youth, a Gibberman. Underneath, there was writing he had no trouble deciphering. REWARD for the capture ALIVE AND UNHURT of the above Gibberman, aged 17 or 18. Anyone delivering this youth UNDAMAGED and in GOOD HEALTH to any reeve or water enforcer will, if waterless, receive honorary water allotment for life, otherwise a reward of 5,000 tokens.