Glenda Larke: Stormlord rising

He poured her some wine, imported from across the Giving Sea, saying, "Let me see if I understand you: Breccia City's rainlords decided to die fighting-a piece of monumental stupidity on their part. Typical of Kaneth Carnelian, of course, to indulge in heroically futile gestures, but I expected better of some of the others. Doubtless the city will have been thoroughly subdued in the time it took you to cross the desert to my gates."

"Doubtless," she agreed.

"Sandmaster Davim now controls both Qanatend and Breccia and has access to whatever water the two cities have. At a guess, you are now about to offer me the estimable young man, our only stormlord-in exchange for what, I wonder?"

She took the proffered drink in its imported goblet of blown glass, and he had to admire her aplomb. Newly widowed and having just ridden several days across a desert, dispossessed of all her wealth and much of her status, and still she could look at him coolly across her glass of wine and say, "What did you hope from all this, Taquar? Were you really so sun-fried as to bargain with this Reduner nomad and think he would do your bidding?"

He shrugged indifferently. "It could have worked. But he is an impatient, arrogant hothead. And greedy with it. I promised him free rein in the Red and White Quarters in exchange for water when and where he wanted it, but apparently it wasn't enough for him. I must assume he found out Shale ran to Nealrith?"

"Cloudmaster Granthon made sure he knew."

"Which prompted him to renege on my alliance with him, of course. I assure you, these attacks on the cities of the Scarpen were not my idea. Oh, I thought to threaten the other cities with the idea of Reduner attack, yes-but I want to rule a wealthy nation, not a huddle of ruined buildings and groves."

Laisa turned on him, her anger vicious. "You were out of your sand-stuffed mind! Do you think a rainlord can control a sandmaster, one whose thinking is as twisted as a spindevil wind? He dreams of returning to a Time of Random Rain, when the dunes managed without rainlords. You unleashed a force you can't control, you fool! And now we all have to suffer for it."

He felt the heat of his anger flood his face, but kept his temper under control. "I don't fear for Scarcleft. Unlike the late unlamented Granthon and Nealrith in Breccia, or Moiqa over in Qanatend, I believe in ziggers and a trained army. Every young man of this city can handle a pike and a scimitar or a sword. They can drive a pede or fight from its back. They can handle ziggers. They don't get their water allotments unless they undergo training sessions once a year. Davim would never take Scarcleft-but that is neither here nor there. You were wise to get Shale out of Breccia City. The idea of Davim getting his hands on our last stormlord at this stage does not bear thinking about."

"Pity you didn't think before you began all this," she retorted.

He ignored that. "The question is, what do you want in exchange for Shale?" He rubbed a finger around the top of his glass reflectively. "Of course, I could force you to tell me where he is, but bargaining is so much more civilized, is it not, my dear?"

She leaned back in her chair, both hands cradling her goblet. "And more rewarding, I think. You won't find my terms too arduous. Put simply: I want to be the wife of a highlord, with all the, er, panoply that entails, and I want my daughter to be the wife of the Quartern's one and only stormlord. That's basically it. The details can be negotiated later."

Taquar almost laughed. "Not quite the grieving widow, are you?"

She did not deign to reply, merely helping herself to a sweetmeat instead.

"What in all the waterless sands of the Quartern makes you think I would want to marry you, Laisa?"

She took the insult in her stride, shrugging. "I don't really care whether you want to or not, Taquar. I want the position. As Nealrith's wife, I've grown used to being pampered. I like the power I have as a rainlord, but I also like the extra that comes with being the wife of a city's highlord. I don't want to give it up. I'd be willing to let you have all the freedom you need, to do whatever it is you've always done. In return, I can run your household, be your hostess, share your bed if you want, or not if you don't."

He chuckled. "I do not need a hostess or another seneschal when I have Harkel Tallyman, and I have plenty of women for my bed."

"Harkel? I heard you were so enraged when he let Jasper escape to Breccia that you threw him in your deepest pit."

"I am a civilized man. He was ensconced in the tower for a while, deprived of all his normal luxuries. After half a cycle both he and I were fed up with the situation. He missed his luxuries; I missed his organizational skills. He is my seneschal once more, and vastly more subservient." He paused, suddenly thoughtful. "However, you do tempt me. My original idea was to keep Shale hidden. To have everyone thinking I was the one who shifted the storms, that I was the stormlord. Not possible now, of course, seeing everyone knows about the lad. But I will need someone to keep him in line. He is not going to take kindly to doing my bidding… Take on that job, and I might think about it."

She waved a careless hand. "I can manage a young man of his age."

"And then there is one slight problem you have neglected to mention, my dear. You are selling me a carpet with a flaw in the weave."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Oh, come now, Laisa. When I lost Shale to Breccia, I decided it wasn't such a bad idea. The Cloudmaster could teach him all he knew about making and breaking clouds. Once he'd learned, I had the means to entice him back.

"I did hear that he was cloudshifting, so I put the plan into operation. But then I heard a few windwhispers from our fellow rainlords. Shale Flint, or Jasper Bloodstone if you prefer to call him that, has only been shifting storms, and has needed Granthon's power to lift the water vapor from the ocean in the first place. He cannot do it on his own. Moreover, as far as I can tell-and I may be wrong because I cannot always sense far-distant clouds the way a stormlord can-no rain has fallen anywhere in the past few days. Which, I assume, means since Granthon died. Tell me, do I have the truth of it?"

Unfazed, she said, "Unfortunately, you do. However, Jasper told us you were the one who stole Granthon's storm. That makes you a very powerful rainlord, Taquar. It seems to me you have neglected to mention to other rainlords the extent of your abilities. I have the feeling there is a good chance, if you back Jasper with your power, that the young man will be able to do what is needed. Of course, it won't be enough water for everybody, but that can't be helped."

He sipped his wine, thinking. "Unhappily, the reason I stole a storm was because I couldn't make one. As it turns out I didn't do too good a job of moving a cloud a long distance, either. I lost the cloud I stole, remember? Let's face it, Laisa, I may be a damn fine rainlord, the best there is in fact, but I am nowhere near being a stormlord."

"Together the two of you may achieve something. Jasper's talents at moving water and sensing water are phenomenal. And he can extract vapor from pure water, just not from a salty sea. Anyway, we don't have a choice. We have to try. You have to try. Otherwise there's no rain and we are all in trouble. How long will Scarcleft's water last, Taquar?"

"Not long enough. All right, I'll try. And at least we don't have Granthon or Nealrith's highly developed moral sense to deal with anymore, do we, m'dear?"

"Exactly. But we do, unfortunately, have Jasper's. Extraordinary just how moral he is, considering he comes out of the Gibber. He can hardly have learned ethics from you, either, can he? However, with his nicely developed sense of duty, I think he can be persuaded it's necessary to work with you. He won't like it, but he'll do it."