The Last Stormlord

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Scarpen Quarter Breccia City Level 2 and Level 3 Ethelva came out of Granthon's study carrying a tray. The food in the dishes was hardly touched and she stopped a moment to regard it with the eloquent arch of an eyebrow. From his seat at the dining table, Nealrith saw the look and pursed his lips.

"Still not eating?"

"Barely nibbling. Nealrith, he can't go on like this."

Senya, on the other side of the table, next to Laisa, looked up from her food. "Is Grandpa dying?" she asked.

"He is certainly not well," Ethelva replied. She put the tray down and slipped into her own seat at the table.

"I suppose we should be grateful he still lives," Laisa said. "When we returned from the Gibber, I thought he was about to take his last breath any moment-yet here he still hangs on, making clouds, shifting storms. One has to admire his stubborn tenacity."

Ethelva murmured, her voice full of pain, "He's not eating enough to restore the energy he expends."

"If he takes too much, he vomits," Nealrith said.

Senya pulled a face. "Oh, horrid," she said. She dabbed at her lips with her napkin.

Laisa washed her fingers in the lemon water of the finger bowl. "Senya is right, Nealrith. This is not a subject for the dinner table."

Nealrith's face tightened, but he did not comment. Instead he said, "A finger bowl is a waste of water, Laisa. Please instruct the servants not to put them on the table." He turned back to his mother and added, "Father told me today that he has decided to reduce still further the supply of water to the Gibber and the White Quarter."

Laisa gave a sigh of satisfaction. "That decision was long overdue. He has been wasting his energies on them far too long."

Ethelva dropped the bread she had been about to eat. "Watergiver have mercy," she murmured. "That decision will have cost him more than any of you can possibly understand." She glanced at the closed study door, as if she wanted to go back to him, but Nealrith placed his hand over hers.

"No, Mother. You, too, need to eat."

She took a deep breath and turned back to him. "All right, all right. And Nealrith, there is something else-"

"Yes?"

"You aren't going to like it."

"There can't be anything much worse than the thought of 'Basters and Gibbermen dying of thirst."

"That's not going to happen overnight," Laisa said carelessly. "Many will have enough water in their cisterns for a year or so. They will just have to stop irrigating the groves. What is it you want to tell us, Ethelva?"

"Granthon has decided to draw up the succession declaration this week. He has asked Mikael to prepare it."

Nealrith stared at her in silence for a long time. Even Senya was stilled. When he finally spoke, his tone was flat. "And it is not me."

"No."

"What?" Laisa looked shocked, then furious. "Why, how dare he-"

"It is his privilege," Nealrith said tightly. "But the Council of Rainlords can overturn his decision after his death if they wish. Who is named?"

"Taquar."

Nealrith paled. "Taquar? No, Father wouldn't do that. Not Taquar!"

"Oh, goody," Senya said, oblivious to her father's shock. "If Taquar's going to be the next ruler of the Quartern, maybe you will let me marry him!"

At first Nealrith didn't take in her words. He was still staring at his mother. "He wouldn't do that, surely. Taquar? The man is despicable! He has the morals of a waterhall rat. He runs Scarcleft like it was one of the punishment quarries. Did you know he has introduced enforced abortion? And I heard he is nailing people-alive-on the city gates for water theft! And dumping Watergiver knows how many others out in the desert to die. By all that's holy, Father would give the Quartern to such a monster?"

"He's not a monster!" Senya said hotly. "Those are just stories to scare people into conserving water."

Laisa's eyebrows shot up and she turned her head to stare at her daughter.

Ethelva, as pale as her son, sat unmoving. "He does think harsh policies are the only ones that will work in the times to come, Nealrith. Since you all returned from the Gibber without a potential stormlord, we will return to a Time of Random Rain once your father has passed away. He does not think you could, um, cope with the kind of decisions that would have to be made."

"See, Taquar's not a monster!" Senya cried, heedless of Laisa's frown. "He's only doing what has to be done."

"Like enforced abortion?" Nealrith stood up abruptly and strode off, but in the doorway he turned once more to look at the three women at the table. "Senya," he said, and his voice was so suffused with pain and anger it was unrecognisable, "you will never marry Taquar while I am alive. Never." He turned and left the room, his back rigid with fury.

Ethelva looked down at her plate, grieving.

"It's not fair!" Senya wailed. "I'm never going to be allowed to marry anyone! There are no rainlords of my age."

"On the contrary," Ethelva said, "I've heard there are several among the water sensitives your parents found in the Gibber."

"Gibbermen? You would have me marry a Gibberman? They are dirty! They never bathe! Besides, that lot of water sensitives are only children."

"And you are not?" Laisa asked. "The eldest of those lads is but two years younger than you. Anyway, you have just turned twelve and you're far too young to think of marriage. If you think I would support this absurd desire to marry Highlord Taquar, you are quite mistaken. He is your father's age, older in fact, and thoroughly unscrupulous. The only thing that could possibly be said in his favour is that he does not run after silly little girls. So I am quite sure this foolishness never came from him."

Senya glared, then threw her napkin on the floor and ran from the room. Laisa calmly selected a piece of the pede steak from the chafing dish, dipped it into the sweet pickle sauce and ate it.

Across the table, Ethelva glanced at her in distaste. "Is that all you can say? Nealrith needs you now," she said. "This will have shattered him."

"Nealrith brought this on himself by his foolishness. He is weak. We all know that. I do not approve of what Granthon wants to do, of course, but I appreciate why he has deemed it necessary." She wiped her fingers on her napkin. "I would suggest, though, that you try to dissuade him from doing it, Mother Ethelva. For the moment Granthon dies and Taquar rules the Quartern, the present highlord of Breccia is a dead man."

Ethelva started in shock. "Wha-what do you mean?"

"Watergiver save me from you all. You are worms burying yourselves in the sand thinking you'll be safe! People won't be happy with Taquar's rule once we run short of water, and the discontented will look to Nealrith for leadership. Taquar will not tolerate such a rival. You don't play with a man like him, unless you are prepared to face the consequences. If you want your precious son to live, and for all of us to be safe, you had better persuade Granthon to rethink his plan. In the meantime, I trust he does not intend to make this succession document public." She rose, shaking out the wide sleeves of her dress and smoothing down the skirt. "Permit me to take my leave. I have an appointment with my dressmaker for the final fitting of the dress I am wearing to Kaneth and Ryka's wedding tomorrow."

With regal composure, she went out, leaving Ethelva alone with her knowledge that Granthon had indeed every intention of making the succession issue public.

Feeling bereft, she said to herself, "Oh, merciful Sunlord, where did we go wrong?" This, Ryka thought, is going to be the most ridiculous ceremony there ever was. Neither of us wants to wed, and yet we are having the largest wedding since… I guess since Nealrith and Laisa married.

She looked at herself in the polished mirror stone with mixed feelings and wondered who had decreed that wedding dresses had to sweep the floor. No one ever wore such a silly garment at any other time. She preferred leggings and tunic. Lowleveller women wore tunics and short breeches to save on material and make work easier; uplevellers wore skirts to mid-calf. Yet every woman wanted to wear a dust-gathering heavy curtain around her legs when she married. She'd heard it said that a woman down on Level Forty made a living renting out the only wedding dress on the whole level.

Sandblast, but it was heavy and confining. And the wrong colour for her, too. Wedding yellow made her look sallow, as if she'd just had a good dose of desert fly fever. Turning to look at her profile, she snorted. She didn't belong in this elaborately woven garment or the silly frothy veil; she looked like someone pretending to be something they were not, and failing miserably. Her legs were her most attractive asset-long and perfectly proportioned, with a hint of muscular strength-and they were hidden. Her only other physical asset was her luxuriant light brown hair streaked gloriously blonde, and Beryll had just covered that with the veil. But not her face. No, her face had to be exposed to the critical crowd: long nose, nondescript eyes that had to squint to see better, too prominent a jawbone, an atrocious number of freckles even though she was careful to always wear a palmubra.

"You look lovely," Beryll said cheerfully at her side, as she contemplated the mirror image.

"Liar."

"All right, not lovely. Wrong word. But… interesting. Intriguing."

"Stop trying so hard, Beryll. You are making me sound like an unusual rock formation. I'm not pretty or even attractive, and right now I look horrible. A bit like a rockslide, come to think of it."

Beryll screwed up her face at her sister. "You are so hard to compliment sometimes, Ry. I thought you would be happy today, marrying the man you love, but you look as if you are going to his funeral. Or your own."

Ryka's expression tightened to match the lump in her throat. "He's only marrying me because he has to," she pointed out. "Think about that sometime, Beryll. Think about how that makes me feel."

"He'll come to love you," Beryll replied with her usual youthful optimism. "After all, I do, and I can't think of many reasons why I should, because there's nothing you and I seem to agree about. Except maybe that Kaneth is gorgeous, at least to look at." She tapped her buttocks with both hands meaningfully. "Stand him up on a pede with the reins in his hands and I just melt. He's not only the best pedeman in the whole Quartern, but he's the most delicious to look at, too."

Ryka blushed, which was odd. She had not thought she was the blushing sort. "I wish you were happier about this, Kaneth," Nealrith told him as they waited in the temple for the waterpriests and the bride to arrive.

"So do I," Kaneth agreed morosely. "I've always liked Ry, you know that. And she was the one who changed, not me. In fact, I suppose in the back of my head I always had the thought that if I was going to marry anyone, it would be her. I always wanted a-a sensible woman to raise any offspring of mine. It's one thing to have a pretty, empty-headed doxy in your bed, but you want quite another person to raise your sons and daughters. If there are any."

"Do you have reason to doubt your fertility? Is that why it took my father's intervention to bring you to your wedding?"

"No. That was just-I don't know, laziness, I guess. A disinclination to spoil my fun. I'm not a particularly good man, Rith, for all that you stubbornly believe otherwise. Perhaps Ryka has the right of it when she calls me immature. But unlike Taquar, I took care not to burden any woman with a child I wasn't prepared to be a father to. Ironic, isn't it? He's tried so hard and it's got him nowhere. The Sunlord has a sense of humour, after all." He turned to look at the archway through which the waterpriests and Ryka would enter the courtyard. "Are brides ever on time?"

"Not that I know of. Laisa kept me waiting so long I thought she'd changed her mind and run off with Taquar. Kaneth, may I ask, you aren't thinking of circumventing my father's orders are you, by not consummating the marriage?"

"Neither of us are that sandcrazy. We both know this has got to be real. He's placed someone in my household, hasn't he? Two of my servants resigned last week for no reason I could discern. Finally got them to admit they'd been offered a job at Breccia Hall, and hardly had they vanished than two more were knocking at the door with just the right qualifications."

"Water sensitives. Not my doing, I assure you. They'll be hanging outside your bedroom door until you two convince them your marriage is real."

Kaneth grimaced. "I thought as much. I don't suppose it will do much good to protest the distasteful intrusion into our privacy?"

"I'd take your word, you know that. But Father won't."

"I feel as I did when we were at the academy and on probation after some prank or other."

"You deserve it. I heard you were at the Level Three snuggery last night." Nealrith shook his head in a troubled way. "For someone who purports to know women, you can be exceptionally silly sometimes."

"I was just settling up my tab there and saying goodbye to the girls," he protested. "That was all."

Nealrith rolled his eyes in disbelief. "If you are wise, you will devote some time to convincing Ryka that you didn't just marry her to save your water and your wealth. And you'll stay away from snuggeries and that pretty hussy on the sixteenth that you've been sharing with those rich gem merchants from the fourth."

"Dammit, you appear to know a heap about my personal affairs, Rith."

"This is my city. It's my business to know what all the influential people are up to, and that includes both you and the gem merchants. Ah, hush up, here's your bride."

Kaneth turned.

Oh, blast, he thought and his stomach lurched oddly. She looked like a corpse all fancied up for the taking of her water at the funeral ceremony.

The emotion he felt, taking him by surprise, was pity. "She's ugly," Senya said to her mother in a whisper heard by everyone within a radius of five or six paces.

"Hush," Laisa replied, pinching her daughter's arm.

As rainlords, they had front-row seats along the curving balcony. It overlooked the temple's ceremonial court where weddings, funerals, prayers and services took place. Ethelva was seated next to Laisa, but Granthon had not come. Lesser dignitaries sat at the back and had poor views of what went on, in spite of the heavily raked seating. By contrast, Senya and her mother could see everything.

They sat in the shadow of woven bab shades. Kaneth, Nealrith, Ryka and the waterpriests stood in the full sunlight on the bare beaten earth below, and were not permitted even to wear a hat. They had to be exposed to the full light of the Sunlord, of course. Senya did not envy them. It was hot and airless down there in the courtyard, and she'd heard that even the priests fainted sometimes.

Recessed in the centre of the court, in the full sun, was a long, narrow tiled pool, now empty. Under the stern eye of the robed waterpriests, Kaneth, then Ryka, came forward and each poured half a dayjar into it at either end. The other half of the dayjars, Senya knew, would have been donated to the priesthood. Everyone knew that the priests took care of their own first, even though they all received a water allowance from the city.

Covetous parasites, her mother called them.

Deserving servants of the Quartern, spending hours praying in the sun for our wellbeing, was the way her father put it.

Senya eyed the water from Kaneth and Ryka intermingling in the middle of the pool and dwelt on the symbolism with a prurient fascination that would have shocked her grandparents.

Next came the ceremonial words that began with a long and tiresome speech from Lord Gold, the Quartern Sunpriest, on the sanctity of vows made before the Sunlord in his temple. Senya fidgeted. Finally, Ryka and Kaneth vowed, before the Sunlord above, to cherish one another. Lord Gold then linked them by wrapping a yellow cloth around their clasped hands as they stood on either side of the pool. Then he stepped away, joining a group of lesser waterpriests in the shade. Kaneth and Ryka remained where they were, hands joined over the water, not speaking. They had to stay like that until the water-their sacrifice to honour the Sunlord and invoke his blessing on their marriage-had evaporated from the pool. Only then would they truly be wed.

Bored, Senya glanced around to where Highlord Taquar sat at the end of their row. Because of the way the balcony curved, she had a good view of the interesting planes of his face. He was perhaps darker than she liked, but that made him interesting, too. Forbidding. Mysterious. Dangerous. And so-ooo handsome.

He looked her way, smiled and winked. Then he rose and threaded his way through the other guests to the exit. Her heart thumped faster. He had smiled at her.

"Mother," she whined, "do we have to wait until all that water's gone?" "Sunlord be thanked that's over," Ryka said. "I swear, I thought that water would never dry up. My nose must be as red as a ripe bab fruit, being out in the sun for so long."

"I never understood why those in the ceremonial courtyard are not permitted palmubras," Kaneth replied.

"Me, neither. As though wearing a hat indicates impiety."

"And discomfort and worship must go hand in hand."

"Exactly."

They fell silent, until she looked around in desperation to find something to say. "You swear this is all new?" she asked with a wave at the room furnishings.

They had compromised on where to live. Ryka had agreed to move into Carnelian House, as long as all the bedrooms were totally refurbished and rearranged. She would not, she had informed him, sleep where he had once bedded his succession of hussies. Rather to her surprise, he'd swallowed the humiliation of that with good grace, even though the new furniture had taken fifty days to be made and he'd been compelled to beg the Cloudmaster for an extension of the deadline for their marriage.

"I swear," he said. "In fact, this used to be my sitting room."

"And no hussies in the house in the future. You want to be unfaithful, you do it somewhere else. And now, let's get this over and done with. I am going to need you to unlace this stupid dress for me, unless you'd prefer me to ring for a maid."

"Oh, I think I have plenty of experience in undressing women," he said dryly, "as you so frequently remind me." He hesitated, then continued, "Ryka, I don't like this. It's not something that should be got 'over and done with' like taking a dose of kalo oil for indigestion. I've never taken a woman against her will, and I sure as the sands are hot don't want to start now. Especially not with you. I value your friendship too much, for a start, but even without that-" He shook his head unhappily. "It's distasteful, and I object to the position you have been placed in."

"There's someone waiting outside the door, isn't there? Granthon's man? A water sensitive waiting to see if we mingle our water today?"

He nodded apologetically. "I'm sorry. Um, we could fake it."

He sounded doubtful, though, and she shook her head. Blighted eyes, the idea that he could die, thrown out into the desert, because of her foolish scruples gave her the shivers. "No," she said, more forcefully than she intended. Modulating her tone, she added more quietly, "We are not going to take such stupid risks."

"You don't deserve to have your first experience forced on you like this. We could probably fool the fellow-"

She blinked at him in startled surprise. "You're scoffing me!"

He stared back. "We could try-"

"Not that! No, I mean-you can't possibly think this is my first experience, surely!"

"Why, y-" He stopped and reddened in embarrassment as the silence lengthened; her eyebrows were raised so high they disappeared under her fringe. "Er-I guess not."

"I'll be damned. You did. Kaneth, I'm twenty-nine years old!"

He was silent.

"You arrogant, condescending, ridiculous male! You can bed women from one end of the land to the other, but I am expected to forgo all such pleasures simply because I am a woman?"

"Well, you made such a fuss about my pleasures-"

"Not the fact that they occurred but that they were so promiscuous, so blatant and-and-so commercial!"

"I grant you that no one can say you were blatant. I have no idea who you favoured. Can I ask why you didn't marry him?"

"Who?" she asked, puzzled, and then started to laugh when she realised what he was thinking, but there was a bitter edginess to her mirth. "You really are impossible! Whatever makes you think there could only ever have been one? You have insulted me in just about every possible way in the past few moments. Am I so unattractive that you can't imagine anyone wanting to bed me? Should we wait until it's dark, perhaps, so that you find all this more… palatable because you can't see the body in your bed?"

"Oh, shit!" He turned away from her, throwing his hands up in the air, then spun to face her again, anguished. "Blighted eyes, Ry, why is it I have a genius for spewing forth turds instead of sense when you are around? You are the last person I want to hurt and yet I have an aptitude for doing just that. Forgive me, please. What I said was thoughtless and insulting, you're right. And I am a fool."

She took a deep breath, torn between loathing and loving him. "It's just as well I have a sense of the ridiculous, isn't it?" she asked at last. "Or that water sensitive outside the door would be running back to the Cloudmaster with a tale to tell. Even now, he's probably wondering just why we are standing on opposite sides of the room."

"We can rectify that," he said diffidently and rounded the bed to stand in front of her. "I have a mind to rid you of that cumbersome garment, for a start. Ry, we may not be lovers, but I would very much like to bed a friend. To build something worth keeping, especially if we have children. I can't think of anyone I would prefer to bear a child of mine than you, you know."

"I can live with that, I suppose." The words were ungracious, sharpened by her need to have him look at her as a lover, not as a necessary wife or prospective mother. She tried to soften them with a smile, but it came a shade too late to be convincing.

He held out a hand to her and struggled on. "I don't really want to wait for dark," he said. "I've always wanted to see your legs without the benefit of clothing. I don't think there's another woman in the Quartern who can match them."

She raised an eyebrow. "Lord Kaneth, are you attempting to charm me?"

"Er… yes. I guess I am. Trying to charm the breeches, um, the dress off you. Ry, I do think we can make this work, if we try."

She took his hand. "Especially as the alternative is a little grim, eh? All right, let's give that spy outside the door something to think about." And she lifted her face to receive his kiss, hoping he would not feel the wild beating of her unruly heart.