She eyed him with a curl of her lip; Jasper gave her the same flat stare he'd used on uppity settlefolk. Life in Breccia City, he decided, was not going to be so different from what he was used to, after all.
"I am sure we will," he said, and knew he lied. "So, have you had second thoughts about supporting Taquar as the next ruler of the Quartern?" Ryka asked, handing Kaneth a wet towel. They did not bathe any more; water was too precious. A wet towel was all they allowed themselves. Even the public baths were closed.
He stripped off the last of his undergarments and stood naked, wiping himself down.
Watergiver help me, she thought, trying not to show her appreciation of the muscular curves of his thighs and buttocks. Why does his body excite me so? I feel like a silly eighteen-year-old lusting after the local hero.
Maybe he was the hero at that. The pikeman, Elmar Waggoner, had told her with open admiration all the details of the fight in the waterpainter's room. Kaneth had cleverly made the best use of his water-powers and defeated a much larger group of attackers to save them all. But it hadn't been pretty. Battle, she guessed, rarely was, in spite of the written epics that told stories of glory. She shivered at the thought of the blind men Kaneth had left behind.
"Second thoughts?" he asked. "No, I haven't. And I won't, not until Jasper starts bringing in rain-soaked clouds. Nothing has changed, Ryka. Not yet."
"Don't be silly, of course it has! We have evidence that Taquar has connived at murder and kidnapped children. And this is the man you want to rule this land? Are you mad? You and Granthon both?" She faced him, hands on hips, enraged. "Kaneth, how can you?"
"How can I what? I'm not doing anything, except trying to get the sand out of my hair."
"Don't play games with me! You have been backing Granthon in this, against Nealrith, who is supposed to be your best friend. You've been agreeing with the Cloudmaster that Taquar is the best person to rule the Quartern, but now we know he most certainly is not. Blighted eyes, Kaneth, we have evidence to suggest he took Iani and Moiqa's daughter and imprisoned her for years, until she died. And this is the man whom you would have rule us?"
"We don't know that about Lyneth, not for sure. And even if it is true, what choice do we have? I don't like it, you know. Do you think I don't know how much I have hurt Nealrith by what he sees as disloyalty? But the alternative is a bloodbath in the streets, with our people battling one another over a water jar."
"Rubbish. People are more sensible than you give them credit for. And for all that I don't particularly like priests or their reliance on a Sunlord who palpably lost interest in our welfare after sending us the Watergiver a thousand years ago, we in the Scarpen are a people who believe in what our religion promotes: generosity and compassion and sacrifice and rules designed for the greater good."
Kaneth shook his head. "We are a land of hypocrites who cynically manipulate rules based on the inherent inferiority of each level of the city to the one above."
"That's a horrible way of looking at life."
"It's honest."
"Tell me, if we did have a baby on the way, and the child was born without water sensitivity, what would you do if Taquar-as ruler of the Quartern-decreed such children should be slaughtered for the greater good of us all? Would you oblige him?"
"You're being ridiculous. That would never happen."
"Wouldn't it? Have you heard some of the things the man has been doing to keep the number of water drinkers at a minimum in Scarcleft?"
"He's unnecessarily unpleasant, I agree. Nonetheless, Nealrith should impose some sort of tough regime here. But he won't, which means we could all be dead by the end of the next star cycle, long before Jasper comes into his powers. Ryka, we have to be tough. Quite frankly, it's my belief that rainlords are the only people who should be producing children now. We ought to be enforcing a no-child policy on everyone else, until such time as we have a competent, strong stormlord in Breccia Hall. Or more than one stormlord."
"And just how would you do that? Drag pregnant women into the waterhalls to be stripped of their babies, the way Taquar does it? He's murdering the unborn, Kaneth! And often inadvertently killing the mothers as well."
"They were warned. He told them what would happen if they chose not to dose themselves with sinucca. And they should know by now that Taquar is a man who keeps his word about things like that."
"Accidents happen to any woman! I can't believe you would countenance-"
He raised his voice to interrupt her. "It's either unborn children or a whole city!"
"I don't believe that." She blinked, hating the feeling at the back of her eyes of tears that would never fall. To express her rage, she threw the clean wet towel at him, hitting him in the face. "It's not going to happen that way!"
He plucked the towel away and used it to wipe his back. "All right then, if you want to believe in the innate goodness of a mob of thirsty people, go ahead. But they will still die, Ryka. You will still die. Because our water won't last so long if we keep sharing it with a new generation of children."
"You're a monster, just like Taquar. And to think I thought you had a kind heart! Here's something you had better believe, Kaneth Carnelian. I will not bed you ever again. We are done with trying to have a child. And I am done with you!"
She didn't give him a chance to reply. She ran into their adjacent bedroom, slamming the door behind her, and flung herself down on the bed to bury her swollen and aching eyes in the pillow.
I don't love him, she thought. I can't love a man like that.
But if she didn't love him, why did she feel this way? His hardness hurt her so.
She lay still, steadying her breath. Because you always will love him, her inner voice whispered. In spite of everything. There's no reason; it just is.
Slowly she slipped her hand down to cover her lower abdomen and feel again the presence of a tiny bundle of water.
It's nothing, she thought. I'm imagining it. I'm not even late yet. It's nothing.
And then, It can't be right to be cruel, can it?
She punched her pillow with impotent rage until her anger and confusion faded into grief.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Scarpen Quarter Breccia City Breccia Hall, Level 2 Every night, before going to bed, Jasper-as he now thought of himself-extinguished his lamp and went to stand on the balcony of his room. There, bathed in starlight, shivering with the cold of the desert night, he thought of Terelle. It was a ritual, pointless in itself, yet providing a way to remember her, even if the memory brought the pain of grief. He had hinged part of himself to her, to the thought of her. He did not know if it was love-there had not been much love in his life and he was not sure that he would recognise it-but now she wasn't there and he was diminished, just as he had been diminished by Mica's absence, by Citrine's death. Her absence hurt.
He heaved a sigh. There were so many things he didn't want to think about.
For fifteen days he'd studied with Nealrith. The exercises were more precise and detailed than those Taquar had taught him; unfortunately, they'd had as little success. To kill by drawing out a living creature's water sounded simple; after all, it was just a movement of water, and he could do that. But first he had to separate the water from the living tissue.
They started with flies. All he had to do was remove a drop of water. Half a drop, in fact. And he couldn't do it. His ability to move and shape and manipulate plain water did improve, but he could no more extract water from a fly than he could raise a rain cloud from the sea. Ryka and Kaneth were in the highlord's rooms when Jasper arrived for his morning lesson with Nealrith the next day. He hesitated with his hand on the door when he heard his name mentioned.
"… not as strong as you hoped?" Kaneth was asking. He sounded incredulous.
"The initial problem remains," Nealrith replied. "He cannot extract vapour from anything as salty as the sea. He can't take the water out of an orange, and he can't take it from blood and tissue."