Ryka looked steadily at the floor, but heat spread from the back of her neck into her cheeks. Shame. Anger. Helplessness. She wasn't sure what was uppermost. Humiliation, perhaps, and not just because the Cloudmaster's family was listening, but because she couldn't imagine a worse humiliation, than marrying a man she loved who didn't care for her and would be rubbing her nose in his faithlessness every evening. What would he do: bed her then go off to his snuggeries? Or the other way around? She felt sick.
Granthon continued, "Now go into the next room and talk to one another, and don't come back until you have a solution that involves an attempt to bring another stormlord into the world. Is that clear?"
She and Kaneth glanced at each other, silently communicating their reluctance to even discuss the subject. Then Kaneth turned his gaze to look at the Cloudmaster. "The fault is mine. And I will not compound my errors by forcing myself on a woman who does not want me."
Granthon's eyes narrowed, but he did not comment.
"Would you really countenance such a thing, Lord Granthon?" Kaneth asked. "Since when did the Cloudmaster advocate rape?"
Nealrith winced. Senya smirked. And Granthon levered himself out of his chair in rage. "You think to play with me on this matter? It is the future of the Quartern we speak of here! Go discuss this, the two of you, and before you come back, think on this. If you will not marry-or set up a viable relationship in a home together-then one of you will be cast out of the gates as far as a pede can ride in three days, without water and away from a road. And the choice of which one of you that will be will rest on the selection of the shortest straw of two in my hand. Is that clear?"
Ryka felt the colour drain from her face. He would kill a rainlord-and never mind which one-just to make a point? And in such a cruel way: death by thirst. Neither she nor Kaneth had the kind of power that could retrieve water from the city over such a distance.
When he stared at her now, she could see none of his weakness, just the harsh look of a ruler who was determined to help his land the best way he knew how, no matter the cost to others.
There were no choices left, and she knew it. She tensed to control the shiver that threatened to skitter down her spine.
She exchanged another glance with Kaneth, saw his compassion, and said, "Yes, it is clear. And we don't need time to think about it. I will do as you ask."
"Kaneth?" the Cloudmaster asked.
He nodded abruptly.
"Good. Then I will expect to see you living under one roof within ten days. Nealrith, show them the door." He slumped back against the chair, suddenly once again an old, tired man. Outside the door, a servant came to show them out but Kaneth waved him away irritably. Ryka was already at the top of the stairs, where she had frozen, her attention caught by what she saw as she glanced over the banisters to the hall below. There was a new waterpainting set into the floor.
It measured perhaps ten paces long and seven wide, and it showed a young woman riding a black pede crossing a white landscape. The pede's many feet kicked up a white cloud as it went. The woman was dressed plainly, in travelling clothes, a palmubra hat on her head, her cloak billowing out behind her. Heat shimmers rose into a cloudless sky. All the immediate landscape was flat, featureless and white; in the distance, a range of blue and grey peaks rose, capped with white. They seemed to float in the sky, impossibly distant, yet appearing solid and real at the same time.
"That's new," Kaneth said at her elbow. He sounded upset, and she knew he was glad to find a neutral topic of conversation. "There used to be a picture of the clouds over Warthago Range, which was more appropriate for a cloudmaster's villa, I would have thought. This looks too, um, too personal. Although I'm damned if I know where it is. I've never seen a range like that one."
"I don't like it," she said, shuddering, not sure if it was the painting or the Cloudmaster's anger or the commitment she had been obliged to make that was making her so fearful. "In fact, I don't like waterpaintings."
"Why not?"
"They are too powerful. They… dominate the room they occupy. And you are right. This one is too personal. That has to be a real portrait of someone. And she looks…" She searched for the right word. "She looks haunted."
He glanced down at the painting again. "No, not haunted. Hunted. She looks hunted." He turned back to Ryka. "And I don't know why we are talking about a damned painting when we should be talking about what we are going to do."
She didn't look at him, but started on her way down the stairs. "There's nothing to talk about. We have to go through with it." She strove to sound cool, insouciant. "All we have to do is decide what we opt for: marriage or just a liaison."
"Marriage," he said.
She waved a careless hand, trying not to read anything into the choice. "As you wish."
Inside she wanted to weep.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Gibber Quarter Wash Drybone Settle Shale kept his promise to Taquar.
He told no one he had been tested and had passed the test. He even explained away all he had previously said to Mica. "I was making that up 'bout knowing which bowls had water in them," he said. "I wouldn't have known, no way. I did know the rush was comin' down the wash that time-I saw the grey things in the sky, that's all. Clouds. Anyone could tell the rush would come down after that."
Mica looked relieved, willing enough to believe the lie in place of the more inconceivable truth. "I'm glad there's not somethin' funny 'bout you. I was worried 'bout what Pa said. 'Bout the rainlords not liking anyone to meddle in their business."
"Yeah," said Shale. "Me, too."
In his heart, though, Shale wasn't sure he was doing the right thing, lying to Mica. The oddities of the conversation with Taquar had soon come to haunt him. First the rainlord had said a water sensitive was valuable and that Shale was in no danger, then he'd said water sensitives had been snuffed. First he had said no one in the rainlords' caravan would harm him, then he had told Shale it would be dangerous to tell any of the rainlords that he was a water sensitive.
The inconsistencies worried him, but by then the caravan had gone, leaving nothing except the unreality of the memory. He could not even ask anyone in the settle about just what a stormlord was, because no one knew. When a small Reduner caravan passed through a couple of weeks later, collecting the settle's resin, he asked several of the servants about stormlords, but the answers were unsatisfactory. "A Scarperman," he was told. "The sandmaster of the Scarpermen," another added. "The stormlord breaks the clouds to bring rain to the waterholes." But none of them had ever seen a stormlord, although they had all seen it rain.
Shale couldn't make sense of it. If a stormlord was a Scarperman or a sandmaster or powerful enough to bring rain-well, Shale was sure he was none of those things. Just knowing about water was a far cry from breaking clouds to make water fall from the sky. He continued to mull over the question, keeping his uncertainties to himself.
In the meantime, life went on. His caution stopped him from trying to sell the jasper to any of the caravanners or telling his father about it. He had a feeling he might need the tokens it would fetch at some future date. For now, he continued to wander the plains collecting resin.
Mica worked in the bab groves or the clay pit or the stone quarry, wherever there was casual work to be done that would earn them a few tokens to buy water and food. Marisal sold her embroidery-and perhaps her services as well-directly to the caravans, and then lied to her husband about how much she was paid. Galen did little except drink away as much of their earnings as he could.