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.