The Last Stormlord s-1 Page 6

  He stared at her.

  She kept her arms folded and glared back.

  He said, "I take it that you are going to say no?"

  "Did you doubt it?"

  He looked uncomfortable. "Er, yes, I did. I thought that if the Cloudmaster ordered it and seeing the Quartern needs stormlord children-"

  "Oh, so you don't really want to marry me. You just want my children. Lovely proposal."

  He paused. Then, "Why do I get the idea that whatever I say, it will be the wrong thing?"

  "Maybe because you're finally thinking straight. Granthon didn't speak to me about this, you know. As least not lately, and not naming you. And anyway, what difference would it make if he had? I am an inadequate rainlord at the best of times. You could marry Beryll and have just as much chance of talented children."

  "I don't want to marry Beryll! I want to marry you."

  She arched an eyebrow in disbelief.

  "Curse it all, Ryka, you know the fix we are all in. We need stormlords, and we all have to make sacrifices-"

  She gritted her teeth, her rage close to overwhelming her. "So marrying me would be a sacrifice, would it? Wonderful. I suppose giving up all your snuggery handmaidens would be a terrible sacrifice indeed. No, wait a moment. I don't suppose your idea of sacrifice goes quite that far."

  He flushed, but she couldn't tell if it was anger or shame that put the colour in his face. "Ryka, I am willing to do whatever it takes to bring more water to the Quartern. And you should be, too. This is not about us-it's about the possibility of our children becoming the saviours of us all."

  She made a sound of exasperated fury. "That's something you should have been thinking about ten years ago, Kaneth Carnelian. But no, you were having too much fun. And only now you are having an attack of guilty conscience?"

  "All right, I admit it. I haven't been a model rainlord. And I always thought that if anyone was going to have stormlord children it would be Taquar or Nealrith, and I could leave it up to them. Well, for whatever reason, they haven't, and that leaves us, you and me. Ryka, I have been-well-yes, er, I do like women. I love women. I love bedding them. But the kind of women I bed aren't the kind I want to be the mother of my children. In fact, you and I, we-"

  "Oooh!" She clenched her fists, quelling an almost overwhelming desire to punch him on the nose. Or better still, lower down. A lot lower down. "So I am good enough to have your children, but I'm not someone you'd ever want to bed? 'We' nothing, Kaneth Carnelian. There is no 'we' and there never will be!"

  She turned on her heel and wrenched open the door, only to find herself face to face with Beryll, who'd had her ear pressed to the panelling. Ryka hissed at her in fury and stalked away.

  Beryll, eyes bright with interest, watched her go and then turned her attention to Kaneth. "You are such a dryhead," she said. "You really messed that up, didn't you? Maybe you should think about marrying me instead."

  "Marry an eavesdropping brat? Beryll, you are impossible. And you shouldn't listen at doors." He shouldered past her, grabbed up his palmubra in the hallway and let himself out.

  Beryll grinned and made her way upstairs again. Back in her room, Ryka plonked herself down at her desk and picked up her pen to continue the translation. Only this time, she dug the chitin nib into the flax paper with such force the ink spattered.

  "Go away," she said when Beryll entered.

  Beryll ignored the request. "Ryka, you're sandcrazy. You're twenty-eight-where do you think you are going to find another marriage partner at your age?"

  "Why should I want one? What's so marvellous about being married? I can be perfectly happy unmarried. I can even have children if I want." She dabbed furiously at the ink spatters with her sleeve.

  Beryll came and sat on the edge of the desk, looking interested. "Oh?"

  "What I ought to do is have a child with Taquar. There'd be a much better chance he would have a stormlord offspring. His water sensitivity is as strong as it gets in a rainlord."

  "I thought you didn't like Taquar."

  She shrugged. "I wouldn't have to live with him. But he's handsome. I am sure he'd be a good lover. From what I've heard, he's just as experienced as Kaneth."

  "I can't believe you just said that! Ryka, what's got into you? I know you and Kaneth argue a lot, but you once told me you liked it that way, because he was one of the few people who had the brains to think things through. A man who didn't have a hypocritical bone in his body, I think you said."

  "Ah. I take that last one back, for sure."

  Beryll cocked her head and considered all that had happened. Then her eyes widened. "Oh, my. You-oh my sandblighted wits-you're in love with him!"

  Ryka rolled her eyes towards the ceiling. "With Taquar? Nonsense!"

  "Stop being deliberately obtuse! Why didn't I see it? And don't deny it; it's written all over you. You're in love with Kaneth Carnelian."

  She opened her mouth to deny it, then thought better of it. Her shoulders slumped. "Is-is it so obvious? He wouldn't have seen, would he?"

  "I'm sure he went away convinced you loathe everything about him, right down to his delightful eyelashes. But Ryka, I don't understand-"

  Her sister laid her work aside. "Oh, Beryll, think about it for a moment. You heard everything, after all. He doesn't want me! He wants his pretty snuggery handmaidens with their simpering ways. I'm large and clumsy and shortsighted. Ryka the reliable, good for a stimulating argument every so often. Kaneth doesn't bed women like me. He doesn't even look at me as if I am a woman! And he never has. All he wants now is a mother for his children, someone who will do a good job while he's off having fun with his jades."

  She rubbed at her ink-stained fingers. "But I-I love him. I've loved him ever since we were half-grown kids playing water tricks on the priest in religious class."

  Beryll tilted her head, still not understanding. "But why? What is it about him that is so loveable? All right, so he is witty and funny when he wants to be. And he's the best flirt I've ever met. Gorgeous to look at-not dark and mysterious like Taquar, but all muscles and that dimpled smile… oo-er. But you, you're Ryka Feldspar the scholar; how can you be in love with a man who has spent most of his life pinching the bottoms of snuggery girls? Father said the Cloudmaster thinks you have the best mind in Breccia. What can you possibly see in a lightweight nipple-chaser like Kaneth Carnelian?"

  Ryka, suddenly tired of keeping secrets, wanted Beryll to understand. She said softly, "There is so much more to him than most people see. More than he sees in himself. But I see it. I see the man he could be, if only he would believe in himself. Have you ever noticed that he never shirks on his duties to Breccia? Who is it that Highlord Nealrith turns to when he needs a job done well? Kaneth! Every time."

  "You sure that isn't just wishful thinking? Because you find it hard to believe anyone with such a charming smile can be no more than an overstuffed prick?"

  "That's horrible. Don't be so vulgar."

  "Then tell me what you really see in him."

  She stood and went to look out of the open shutter of her window. "So many things. His parents weren't even water sensitives, did you know that? They were artisans from one of the lower levels of Pediment City. Horrid people. I met them once when I was about, oh, eight, I suppose."

  "How did that happen?"

  "He was being granted rainlord status. They had to sign papers relinquishing their rights to his water or his earnings. He and I were standing with some of the other students in the academy courtyard when his father came stalking up and told him-in front of all of us-that his powers were an aberration that would never last because he was just a no-good layabout from downlevel Pediment. Kaneth tried to be polite, but his father cuffed him over the head and told him not to get too uppity because one day he'd be back on the lowest level, where he belonged, without any of those fancy-pancy water-powers he had no rights to. And he wasn't to come home when that happened because none of them would help. His mother stood there and nodded. It w
as horrible. Kaneth went as white as a 'Baster and didn't say a word."

  "But that was years ago! He can't have been more than, um, fifteen, if you were eight. He's a man now, not a youth."

  "Yes, but I think one part of him believed the horrible things they said, believed he had no right to be a rainlord, believed that his water sensitivity would never last, because it was an aberration. None of his family had ever had the slightest sensitivity as far back as anyone could remember. They had never even been reeves. And there's always been something peculiar about his powers, too. I remember when we were at the academy, he could tell if someone added or removed a single drop of water from his dayjar. That's a skilled stormlord's talent. Yet he couldn't always find a hidden dayjar full of water right under his nose, something even a mediocre reeve could do! Everyone teased him, of course. So he never took being a rainlord, or his powers, seriously."

  She turned, leaning back against the window frame, to look at her sister, her gaze brimmed with pain. "Oh, Beryll, if only he could have loved me. I could have made him believe in himself. I could have shown him who he really is, what he is capable of, because inside him there is such a man."

  Beryll blinked, openly mystified. "He just asked you to marry him! Or he would have, if you had given him half the chance. So why didn't you say yes?"

  Ryka glanced at her. "You can't understand why?"

  "No, I can't!"

  "Then I can't explain it to you. Right now, I would rather marry anyone else other than Kaneth Carnelian. Anyone."

  "Ryka," Beryll said seriously, "if they are so desperate to find new stormlords, you may have to."

  The two sisters exchanged glances, and it was Ryka who looked away first.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Gibber Quarter Wash Drybone A boy dug in a patch of sand in the drywash. A vertical crease between his eyebrows indicated the intensity of the concentration he applied to his task; this was not play. He was digging a hole, using only his hands and a short stick earlier stripped from the centre of a bab palm frond. Sensibly, he had chosen a dip where a boulder offered shade from the morning sun. A straggly saltbush had put down roots there, but the rest of the wash was a barren riverbed of stones and sand, a gully recessed into the gibber plain, a crack slashed across the flat face of the earth.

  The boy was scaled with dirt, the grime as much part of him as his dark eyes or the strong square fingers that scrabbled in the sand. The rigid skull cap on his head was only matted hair, once brown, now darkened with the accumulated dirt of a lifetime. His skin, golden brown at birth, now blended into the background of the land. His feet were bare, the soles so thick and hard that the heat of the sand meant nothing to him. There was little left of the smock he wore. It had once belonged to a much larger child; now it hung in tatters and hindered him as he worked.

  He didn't know his true name. His father, Galen Flint, had once sworn that his younger son was as useless as a heap of shale, and ever since he had been known as Shale, the most worthless lad in the settle. If he'd ever had a name before that, he could not remember it. However, thanks to the settle's reeve, who taught the boys their numbers, and a chance remark from his father that he was a year younger than his brother Mica, he was able to guess his age to be around twelve or thirteen.

  He was desperately thirsty and scraped at the dry soil with the determination of a desert animal. As the hole went deeper, the sand dampened. He drew in a deep breath, willing the water to come, wanting a drink so badly he could feel the taste of it on his tongue. Finally, when the hole was about as long as his arm, water began to seep into the bottom. When the level was several inches deep, the seepage slowed and Shale stopped digging. He waited patiently for the sand to settle and the water to clear. Then he inserted a hollow grass stalk he had brought with him and used it to suck up the moisture. It was gone in two or three mouthfuls, and he had to wait again for the hole to refill-and repeat the process several times more-before he had drunk sufficient to satisfy his thirst. He then filled in the hole to preserve whatever moisture remained from the power of the sun.

  Then he shied like a startled pede.

  Somethin's botched. He blinked, unsettled, not knowing why he had startled, or why that thought had suddenly popped into his head.

  Somethin's real broke.

  He sniffed at the air, but what he sensed had nothing to do with smell and it raised the hair on his arms. He clambered nimbly up the side of the wash, even though it was three times his height, to stand at the edge of the plain.

  The Gibber stretched to the horizon in all directions, a flat tableland, with small stones strewn across a shiny, crusted surface of gleaming deep mauve. Here and there a few tiny plants survived on moisture that condensed from the air at night. There wasn't much: saltbush, spiny beggarchild and gummy plant. None grew more than a few inches in height, preferring to creep along the ground rather than reach towards the desert sun. The earth in between glistened with tiny fragments of purple and pearl-coloured mica as if the plain was sheened with starlight. All that was normal, but he spared a moment to envy his brother as he absorbed the scene: he would have liked a name like Mica, named after something so shiny. By contrast, the rock shale around his settle was always so grey and dull and dirty.

  Distant hills made humps along the horizon, and mirages moved in a shimmering dance in front of them. Nothing odd there: sand-dancers were always around in the heat of the day. And then his senses stirred once more, and his body tautened in response. His head was full of sensation, rough-edged and scratchy feelings that brought a thrill of excitement and a depth of unease.

  Water. It was water, water in pieces, all broken up into bits that wouldn't stay still. He knew the feel of water, but not like this. He frowned in bewilderment as he searched for the source. Then he found it. A smudge blurring the clarity of the open sky above the rounded bumps of land. A cloud. He'd seen those before. He'd even felt them, all bursting with water. But not like this. Not all mucked up and on the verge of shattering. And not when it wasn't expected. Anxious, he returned to the wash, hefted his resin bag onto his shoulder and headed down the path along the dry riverbed.

  The sun was directly overhead when he reached the top edge of the settle. Here the wash widened to contain two streets lined with houses, each with its walled garden. Both streets were no more than rock-hard earthen laneways running the same way as the wash. The garden walls had their sun-baked daub reinforced with stone, their only protection against the force of flash-flood stormwater that barrelled down the wash twice a year, as regular as the star cycle of the skies above.

  Mica was waiting for him there. "What you been doin', you little wash-rat?"

  Shale shaded his face with his hand, grinned up at his brother and shrugged. "Gettin' me some resin."

  "Pa's lookin' for us. He's as wild as a spindevil."

  Shale tensed. "Aw, Mica, what's he want now?"

  "Rishan the palmier offered him tokens to crush the shell of the packpede that died way back. Pa says we got t'do it. Reckons he'll buy some meat with the tokens."

  Shale found himself salivating just at the thought. It had been more than a year since he'd eaten meat. Gathar the butcher must have salted the dead pede. "You sure? Pa's more like to buy a calabash of amber and drink hisself stupid. I don't want t'work just so's he can belt me when he's slurped."

  "Nah, it's all right. Ma told old man Rishan to pay direct to her. But we best hurry 'n' get started. I been lookin' all over for you." He grabbed his brother's arm and hauled him down the main street. "Sooner we start, sooner we get t'eat some meat."

  Shale pulled himself free, then had to run to keep up. "Is Pa goin' t'help?"

  Mica snorted. "Not bleedin' likely, the waterless bastard. Don't worry, he won't lam into you for bein' late, not if he wants you t'work."

  Nonetheless they sped down the slope of the street to the lower end of the settle. Shale had rarely entered any of the houses to either side. Sometimes, when there was no one around, he would
try and peek through the water slits to see into the gardens. It was easy enough at the top where Gravel the reeve lived on one side and Rishan the palmier on the other. Their water slits were the widest because they were entitled to the most water when it came down the wash and the streets became rivers. However, the slits narrowed as the street descended the slope towards the bab palm groves planted in the wash below the settle. You couldn't see anything at all if you peeped through the narrow slits for the last houses, where Stipple the potmender and Shard the jobman lived. He'd tried.

  Emerging from the lower end of the settle, near the entrance to the underground cistern, he sent an anxious glance to the left-hand side of the wash, where a few sorry hovels huddled at the top of the bank. The first belonged to his pa, Galen the sot. Even from where they were, Shale could hear his pa shouting at his ma, Marisal the stitcher, although he could not make out the words.

  Mica made a face. "We gotta go tell him you're here."

  Ma, a thin, gaunt woman now heavily pregnant, stood outside the burlap curtain that was all the door the one-roomed hut possessed. To Shale, the contrast between her thin arms and legs and the bulge of her stomach was grotesque. He was vaguely sorry for the coming child: already unwanted and waterless, and the little grubber hadn't even been born yet.

  The boys slowed and sidled up to her, warily eyeing their father. Galen was small and wiry and tough. Years of drunkenness had blurred his mind and twisted his spirit, as well as added a tremor to his hands. He was sober now, though, an indication more of the state of his purse than of inclination. Unfortunately, sobriety did not always mean evenness of temper; both his sons knew that.

  He looked at Shale, his brow gnarled with anger. "Y'found him," he said to Mica. "Where you been this time, you spitless bastard?"