"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 was 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.