"I will need the water," he said.
She nodded, understanding.
"There are people everywhere," he continued. "There's a camp, a huge Reduner camp all the way along the grove. We've got to be quiet."
Laisa raised her head to look. "A diversion?" she suggested a moment later.
"Yes. Which direction do we have to go in?"
She pointed. "That way. Up the scarp, but at an angle, cutting across, towards the west. Not too close to the city wall. Our pedes are in a hidden gully near the top of the escarpment, about two hours' walk. Maybe more in the dark."
"There's no danger that they will have been found? No chance we will walk into a trap?"
She didn't bother to answer. It had been a stupid question, of course. She couldn't possibly know the answer to the first part, but they could sense a trap before it was sprung. They were water sensitives, after all.
He crawled to the edge of the roof and peered over. "We can jump down, no problem." He eyed Senya's skirt in distaste. "You should have worn travelling clothes; however can you run in a skirt?"
"I don't like trousers," she said. "I'm not a man."
"Get ready to jump and run," he said, smothering a sigh. "Don't wait for me. Laisa, can you take my pack and water?"
"They have to see you leave," Laisa said, pointing out the obvious as she took his things.
"They will. The sun's setting, but it won't be fully dark for a while."
And let's hope they don't kill the hostages anyway. They might, Jasper knew that. But he had no choice. He had to stay alive, in the hope that he would eventually find a way to bring water to the Quartern.
He reached out with his water-power and sucked some water out of the cistern. Carefully raising his head to peep, he sent the water in a thin line through the gloaming to one of the palms near a camp fire at the far end of the camp. Once it was there, he dumped it on the old palm fronds sagging from the bab palm's underskirt. One by one, under the sudden weight of water, the fronds snapped at the base and fell to the ground. Several Reduners sitting beneath the tree were hit, and the fronds were heavy. Someone yelled, and men shouted warnings as more sodden branches came crashing down. All heads swung in that direction. "Now," he said to Laisa and Senya. "Jump!"
They both obeyed. Jasper repeated his trick with another tree. This time, the fronds dropped into a camp fire, and there was a billow of smoke. Then he himself jumped and ran. Behind him, there was pandemonium as more wet branches fell and put a camp fire out. The line of tethered myriapedes baulked and twisted and reared, screaming their panic in ululating wails. The sound made the hairs stand up on Jasper's neck, but he didn't look back.
Even as he ran, heВ· pulled water out of the cistern, twisting it through the trees after him like a tail, just as he had done when he'd freed the Alabaster Feroze. There were more yells and answering replies; he'd been seen. He ran on, pursued by water, pursued by men. A spear whistled through the air, but it fell short. He dodged behind a tree and paused there while he assessed the pursuit. Just men on foot, he decided. No one was mounted. He turned the line of water and pounded a stream hard into the faces of the closest pursuers, the force of it knocking them off their feet. He drove the water into their noses and mouths and eyes and ears. Then he sent a twist of water, the length of several pedes, slapping into the faces of the rest of the men following him. They tried to duck and weave, but the water pursued them, whipping around and reforming after every stinging blow. The pursuit faltered as those behind ran into the men on the ground, their faces bruised, most of them barely alive.
Jasper called out to them from the gathering dusk, "Tell Davim that Cloudmaster Jasper Bloodstone is leaving Breccia now. Tell him that I still command the water of the Quartern." And he spun the water into a funnel, sending it gyrating into the midst of the Reduners, a wet spindevil that tore at their clothes and their weapons, that knocked them off their feet and flung them down like dust in a wind.
After that, there was no effective pursuit.
Jasper had lost sight of Laisa and Senya. He left the groves, put his back to the camp fires, kept the city walls far to his right and headed up the escarpment after the two women, following traces of their water. He hurried, but made no attempt to catch up with them. He was glad to be alone in the drylands again. No one demanding his time. No one asking him to do something. For a while, he could pretend to be just Shale the Gibber-born, out collecting resin, not the Quartern's last stormlord whose failure would mean the death of a land. Not a young man commanded to marry a girl-woman for whom he had little but contempt. Not a man who had killed one of the few people who had ever cared about him or a cloudmaster who had failed to be the saviour of the land.
He pushed those thoughts away to concentrate on this night world of the desert. He had no need of any light; the star-shine and his water-sense were enough. Once, he startled a pebblemouse and smiled at its frantic fright as it somersaulted head over heels, diving for its burrow. A little later, he came across a flock of night-parrots as they chewed their way through grass tufts full of seeds. They watched him warily with their huge eyes but never halted their incessant and noisy feeding.
I want to go home, he thought, and it was the Gibber he meant. And then he wondered at himself. What was there in the Gibber for him? What had he ever had there that was of value, except perhaps the love of his brother and sister-neither of whom was there any more? He didn't have a home.
One day, I will, I swear, he said to himself. A place where I belong, which is truly mine. I will build it myself, for me and those I love.
He paused to look back. Far below, he could see the camp fires of the Reduners. In front of the flames, he could see men scurrying about. Some were saddling pedes, others lighting torches. The foot of the escarpment was alive with moving flickers of red, the burning brands of the searchers. They were spreading up the hill like sparks scattered by a gusting wind. He could feel the water of pedes as well, but none were close as yet. He smiled. They were as obvious to him as an eagle in the noonday sky. They would never find him.
To his right, the city was mostly dark. He traced the outline of the waterhall at the top, then Breccia Hall, and thought of Nealrith and Kaneth and Ryka and Ethelva. He thought of Terelle the last time he had seen her, fleeing for her life through the streets of Scarcleft. He thought of Mica, enslaved. Or dead. He thought of Citrine, the piece of jasper clasped in her hand just before she died.
"Davim," he whispered. "You did this. You and Taquar. And one day you both will pay."
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Scarpen Quarter Breccia City Ryka wondered, not for the first time, if she'd done the right thing. She'd denied Kaneth her body, moved out of his bed, avoided him as much as possible. She had concealed her thickening waist to punish the man she loved. It all seemed horribly childish now. She could hardly remember why she'd done it in the first place.
Perhaps the baby in her womb, almost half grown now, would be a stormlord. Perhaps he might be the future of the land, and she ought to hide herself away to keep her baby safe. And what right had she to deny Kaneth the knowledge of his baby's existence? She'd been thinking all along that she wouldn't have to tell him, that he would realise. That he would sense the baby's water. But he never had. That had hurt, had made her even angrier with him. How could he not feel his own son, there under his nose?