“Highlord Taquar rules in Scarcleft. Not you.” The sneer in the voice of the enforcer was an insult in itself. He turned to the men behind him. “Take the youth. If anyone tries to prevent you, kill them.”
The enforcers moved forward as a block, one of them thrusting his pike across the table at Lord Kaneth to push him out of the way.
In an instant, Shale felt as if he had just been transported to the eye of a spindevil. The room exploded into a fury of action. Elmar swung his pike to slice into the arm of the enforcer threatening Lord Kaneth. Another blade flashed within inches of Shale’s cheek—Kaneth’s—and it sliced into the unprotected side of an assailant. Elmar swung his pike again, with lethal effect. One of the intruders fell, his head nearly severed by the pike blade, and blood squirted impossibly far, spraying everyone in the room.
Terelle was still on the floor. Every time she struggled to get up, someone trod on her.
Unexpectedly, Lord Kaneth jumped up onto the table and just stood there, no longer using his sword. Gadri was locked in hand-to-hand battle with another man; Soltar used his scimitar to hold off two others. The room was filled with noise: Terelle, still in the doorway, squealed as someone’s heel came down on her hand. A man who’d had his face slashed was screaming and trying to hold the edges of his cheek together. Metal dashed on metal; men gasped and grunted. Familiar smells mingled in an unfamiliar mix: sweat, blood, bodily waste. Someone was shouting orders—a thin man in the doorway—but no one could hear him. Certainly no one took any notice.
Entirely forgetting that he was wearing a scimitar, Shale grabbed at the nearest article he could find to use as a weapon: the iron spit from the fireplace. He swung it hard at the head of the nearest Scarcleft enforcer. The man dropped, groaning. Someone slashed out with a scimitar at one of the intruders, and more blood sprayed across the room, catching Shale in a swathe of droplets. His stomach heaved as he wiped his face on his sleeve. He headed for the door to help Terelle, reckoning he was reasonably safe. It was unlikely that Taquar wanted him dead.
Terelle had given up trying to haul herself to her feet and was crawling out of the door, wincing in pain. The thin man standing there wrenched at the arm of one of the Scarcleft enforcers. “Kill her!” he ordered and pointed at Terelle. Shale yelled at her to run. She took one look at the man bearing down on her, scrambled to her feet and fled, vanishing from Shale’s sight.
Another Scarcleft enforcer grabbed at him but then screamed, a hideous high-pitched sound. Shale saw something he would never forget as long as he lived: the man’s eyes shrivelled up like dried bab fruits in the sun, their water pouring down his face. The man sank to his knees, wailing and clutching at his eyes. Shale looked wildly around the room: Elmar and Soltar were still fighting on, apparently unharmed, but Gadri was down on the floor, lying in a pool of blood. A disproportionate number of Scarcleft enforcers were out of the fight, either wounded by pike or scimitar slashes, or clutching their eyes and moaning.
Lord Kaneth remained standing on the table, untouched, surveying the room with a cold gaze. When his glance met that of the thin man, still standing in the doorway, he roared at him, “Stop the fighting!”
Elmar and Soltar stepped back immediately, and their opponents looked at the thin man for guidance. He held up his hand in agreement. “The fight is ours, I think,” he said softly to the rainlord. “You are outnumbered. You are in our jurisdiction, Lord Kaneth, and I order you in the name of the Highlord of Scarcleft to surrender Shale Flint to me.”
“I think not, Harkel” Kaneth said. “Look around at your men. How many of them are still in fighting condition?”
Before Harkel could reply, the Scarcleft enforcer closest to Shale grabbed him in a headlock from behind. Shale gasped, choking, as the man’s arm tightened around his throat. The fellow had abandoned his sword for a knife, which now pricked Shale’s ribs.
The balance had changed, yet Harkel hesitated before he said, “Surrender, or the lad dies.”
Lord Kaneth smiled, unperturbed. “I suspect your orders were to take him alive and unharmed.”
The arm at Shale’s throat went into spasm then hardened; the grip loosened. Water soaked Shale’s back and dripped onto the floor. One moment he was crushed against his captor’s chest, the next he was jammed up against something as hard and as uneven as a rough stone wall. He looked down at the enforcer’s forearm, and the hairs on his neck rose. The wrist that emerged from the sleeve of the uniform was as thin as a broom handle; white skin was now deep brown, like that of an animal carcass dried out in a desert sun. Water soaked Shale’s tunic and breeches. The knife in the man’s other hand dropped from rigid bony fingers. Shale yelped in shock and struggled, still caught in the man’s unyielding clasp. A pool of water widened at his feet. The man’s body, hard and almost without weight, bumped at his back. Horrified, Shale felt himself clutched in a lifeless embrace. The man had died wordlessly, before he could utter a cry, still standing.
“Our game, I think,” Lord Kaneth drawled, still calm. “Unless you wish to join your enforcer as skin and bone and a pool of water on the floor.”
In frantic horror, Shale thrust violently against the arm at his throat until the joints snapped. The body, a shrunken parody of a human being, released him and fell away into the water that had once given it life. Shale backed away, his revulsion total, his whole body shaking.
Seneschal Harkel stood motionless.
Lord Kaneth said softly, “Shame your men did not recognise me as a rainlord. There was no need for them to suffer this. Step into the room, Harkel. And tell your men to throw their weapons out of the door.”
Harkel did not move. Then, ashen, he looked down at his sandaled feet. From his ankles downwards, sweat was seeping out through his skin, to dribble onto the floor. “No,” he said in a strangled whisper. “Don’t do this.”
“Your choice.”
The seneschal’s face was ashen. “You’ll make an enemy for life in Taquar,” he warned, but his voice wavered.
“Is this the way you want to die?” Kaneth asked.
No one moved. All eyes were turned to watch the slow seepage of water from the seneschal’s feet. Even Shale felt a nauseated fascination: this was a slow version of how the other man had died. Repelled, he turned away, his stomach queasy.
The seneschal gave a harsh laugh. “Taquar will kill me anyway if I lose here.”
Kaneth shrugged. “It doesn’t make much difference to me,” he said casually. “I am happy enough to kill you all.” He smiled pleasantly at Harkel. “But then perhaps this is an easier death than the one Taquar will give you. Goodbye, Seneschal.”
“
No!
” Harkel took a deep breath. “No.” He gestured to the enforcers. “Do as he asks.”
Sullenly, those men still standing disposed of their weapons outside in the hallway.
Lord Kaneth jumped down from the table and said, “Outside, Shale.”
Shale tripped over his feet in his anxiety to leave the room. He looked along the hallway to the stairs, but Terelle had vanished—and so had the enforcer who had followed her out with orders to kill her.
Soltar followed him, bringing along Shale’s bundle. He stopped, briefly, to mutter a farewell and touch Gadri’s body in passing. Lord Kaneth left next, with Elmar guarding his back. He pushed the door closed, with all the enforcers and Harkel inside the room. There was no bar and no lock on the outside, but that didn’t faze Kaneth. He stared at the door for a moment, and the bab panels dampened and swelled until the door was jammed in place.
I’ll be pissing waterless
, Shale thought.
He used their water, the water of the dead.
He wanted to vomit.
“That should keep them in for a while,” Kaneth said, still coldly calm. “Soltar, Shale, Elmar, throw their weapons onto the roof of that building over there.” He was already walking away.
They did as he asked and then hurried to catch up. “You get your wish, Shale,” Kaneth said when they reached the bottom of the stairs. “We won’t be going uplevel. We’ll go straight out of the gates to the livery where we left our mounts. Fortunately, I already asked to have them loaded with enough water to get us back to Breccia.”
“I can’t go with you! Terelle—” Shale began, stricken at the thought of leaving her behind. “I have to find her first.”
Kaneth ignored his protest and, staggering slightly, turned to Soltar, saying, “It will be up to you to get to the tenth level, back to the dancer’s house. Think you can do it?”
“Yes, my lord,” the guard said, but he looked grim.
“As fast as you can. You have to tell Nealrith what happened here. Tell him I am going straight back to the rendezvous camp, and we’ll wait out the night there. If he doesn’t arrive by dawn, we’ll ride for Breccia.”
Elmar interrupted, “But, Lord Kaneth, we can’t leave the highlord—”
“Yes, we can. And must.” He looked down at Shale. “If Taquar wants this lad from the Gibber so much that he sends his seneschal to get him, at the risk of starting a battle with the Cloudmaster’s guards, he must be important. Nealrith would agree with my decision. Soltar—go.”
Soltar threw Shale’s bundle to Elmar and left at a run.
“But what about Terelle?” Shale said, hanging back. Desperately he cast about for any sign of her water, but she must have been too far away, because he couldn’t sense her. “My friend. I can’t just leave her. I promised—”
Kaneth grabbed his arm and pulled him along. “Oh yes, you can. It will only be a matter of moments before they break down that door. Your friend is not important; you are. And she’s probably fine, anyway.” He was breathing heavily and stumbling, as if he had been running, but his hold on Shale only tightened.
“There was a guard after her,” Shale protested. “I can’t—”
“You can, and you will,” Kaneth rasped at him, all pretence of drawling good humour gone. “
Move
—and that is an order, Shale. Uttered in my capacity as a representative of the Highlord of Breccia City, and through him, the Cloudmaster of the Quartern. Do you understand me?” He pulled Shale after him, dragging him down the street.
Shale shook off Kaneth’s hand. “She’s important to me! Would
you
abandon a friend?”
Kaneth stopped. “Ah,” he said, “I see.” He drew in a ragged breath before adding, “Probably not. But
I
am not the Quartern’s best hope for any kind of future. Look, I’ll hunt for her. I promise. But later. Now your safety is all that matters, to her, to us, to this land. Harkel just convinced me of that. If Terelle has any sense, she will have headed straight for Amethyst’s house on the tenth. She will meet up with Nealrith and Soltar, and they will bring her with them when they come to meet us.” Then he repeated his previous question, even more sharp-edged this time. “Do you understand me?”
They stared at one another, and Kaneth’s stare was uncompromising.
Shale nodded miserably.
“If she doesn’t turn up there, then you have my promise I will look for her,” Kaneth added as they turned to push their way into the level’s crowded main thoroughfare.
Once they were slowed down by the throng, Elmar said, “We were damned lucky you were with us, my lord, or we’d have all been slaughtered like Gadri back there.”
“Thank Nealrith, not me. He was the one who insisted on having another rainlord along on this trip.”
Around them, the crowd swirled and a whisper started, brushing its way from person to person like the soft touch of a breeze. “Look, a Reduner!”… “Hey, isn’t that blood?”… “Who are they?”
Elmar made a menacing movement with his pike. “Make way for Breccia City’s highlord!” he cried, blithely promoting Kaneth. “Make way!” He poked an insistent beggar hard in the ribs with the shaft of the pike, and the crowd nervously edged back.
Kaneth gave a twisted smile. “Are you really a rainlord, young man?” he asked Shale.
“I—I guess so.”
“A stormlord?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Kaneth exchanged a glance with Elmar. “Strange how things turn out, eh, Elmar? One day both you and I might be on our knees before Shale here, pledging our allegiance to a new cloudmaster. Just as well it’s a whole lot easier to leave a city than enter it.”
“Not for me,” Shale argued. “They have been watching for me for weeks, and when they entered Russet’s room they were looking for a Reduner.”
“Ah. Yes. You’re right. They weren’t surprised, were they? Let’s find a quiet spot.” He turned into a dead-end lane stacked with seaweed briquettes. Several traders guarding the wares eyed them with open suspicion. Spattered with blood and armed, they didn’t look like customers.
Elmar bared his teeth at them. One by one they looked away as if they had far more interesting matters of concern.
Kaneth said, “Elmar, give Shale the pike to carry and exchange tunics with him. Shale, I’m sorry about this.”
“Sorry about wha—” He had the question answered for him before he finished it. Casually, Kaneth drew his sword and began to hack off all of Shale’s beaded braids.
“Ow!” Shale yelled.
“Sorry. It’s the quickest way. Then you can wear my palmubra to hide the rest of your red hair.” When the last of the braids was dropped into the dust at their feet, he dug his crumpled headgear out of his belt pouch and held it up. “Quick, get changed. Pull the hat well down to hide that red face of yours. Nothing much you can do about your hands. I’ll try to concentrate the guards’ attention elsewhere.” He leaned against a wall as he waited.