Jasper swallowed his irritation and hid a scowl. He liked Ryka, but it would have been nicer to have been asked rather than told.
Nealrith continued, unheeding. "Another gap is in your ability to protect yourself. If you can't kill the rainlord way, then you need to learn swordplay. That's where you come in, Kaneth. I want you to teach him."
"Sword or scimitar?"
"Both."
"There's a difference in the way you use them?" Jasper asked.
Kaneth nodded. "Scimitars work better for slashing, and slashing works better when you are riding a pede. But Rith, why don't you ask a professional sword master? I may be both skilled and experienced, but like any rainlord, I rely on my water skills in a real fix."
"Because I don't want too many people to know that Jasper is special. Nothing must get back to Davim that would make him wonder if Jasper and Shale are the same person. Give your lessons inside Breccia Hall-the reception room is big enough."
Kaneth shrugged. "All right." He grinned at Jasper. "Don't worry, I do know the basics. It'll be fun. Granthon doesn't want me out looking for Reduner marauders any more anyway, and teaching you beats spending my time checking for leaks along the tunnel."
"Good," Nealrith said. "I will take the mornings for water skills. You two share the afternoons. Work out a schedule and get back to me. And you'll have religious classes and driving lessons on alternate days."
Jasper brightened. "Oh! I can learn to drive a pede?"
"Well, I wasn't talking about a donkey." When Jasper looked blank, he added, "It's a rare animal they use a lot for carrying loads in the land across the Giving Sea. They have some in Pediment." He smiled suddenly, banishing his habitual look of worry. "Let's go down to the hall stable. I want to show you something."
They all left the room together, but Kaneth and Ryka headed home while Nealrith led Jasper through a network of courtyards, archways and passageways to the stables. When they arrived there, Jasper looked around with widening eyes. There were six myriapedes, each with its own immaculate stall. Several stable boys were busy grooming one of the animals while it tore and masticated a mixture of saltbush and desert root, its numerous pairs of mouthparts audibly grinding and ripping the vegetation into smaller and smaller pieces.
Waterless damn, Jasper thought, these pedes live better than even Palmier Rishan did back in Wash Drybone!
"Some of our animals are out being used, of course," Nealrith said. "And our packpedes are always stabled outside the city walls. Anyway, this is the beast I want you to have a look at." He pointed to the end stall, where a half-grown male myriapede looked out over the door of its stall. "He's for you."
"For me to ride?"
"More than that-he's yours."
Jasper blinked in amazement. "To own? You're giving me a pede?"
"Not me, personally. Every rainlord has his own, bought with Quartern taxes. This one will be fully mature in about two years, but he is ready to be ridden and trained now."
"You bought it for me?"
Nealrith's gaze flicked away as if he was embarrassed. "Er, no. Not originally. I bought it for Senya. But she has shown no interest in it and does not want to learn to drive. Tomorrow morning, be here at dawn and you can have your first lesson."
Jasper turned back to the pede. He extended his right hand, slowly, towards the animal's mouthparts, giving it time to accustom itself to his smell. The feelers whipped forward, the sensitive tips seeking him out, running over his face, his hands, his clothing.
"Thank you," he said to Nealrith, his delight shining through the restraint of his reply. "I have never really owned anything before. Unless you count my clothes, of course." And once I had a piece of bloodstone.
He was stroking the pede and saw neither the pity, nor the ache that immediately followed it, on the highlord's face. "Why do you think the Gibber folk are darker skinned and poorer than Scarpen city folk?"
Ryka's question stymied him, as her questions often did. She stimulated and challenged him, goaded him to think, really think about things, especially about why the Quartern was the way it was.
"I don't know," he said, feeling foolish because he had never thought about it before.
"History, Jasper. History. Listen: once, when the Giving Sea was no more than a gully, our ancestors, yours and mine, were outlanders who came here from the places on the Other Side. When they came, they pushed out the folk who were here first, forcing them north."
He was astonished. "You mean Reduners once owned the Scarpen?"
"The Scarpen and the Gibber. Most Scarpen folk won't believe that, but I think it is true. The people who came, they wanted the wealth of the land-the minerals and the gemstones-and they were willing to fight to get it. There were many more of them than there were Reduners, and in those days the Reduners had neither pedes nor ziggers. Back then, there was always water to be found, because it rained at certain times of the star cycle, and the gullies and washes ran with water every year for tens of days at a time without fail. Even in between the rains, there were pools to be found. There was no need of stormlords, or so the myths and legends say.
"Then something went wrong. We don't know what. The rains began to disappear, year by year, yet the Giving Sea rose up and flooded the land between us and the places we had come from. The waterpriests tell us it was punishment for our sins. On the Other Side, cities were washed away by the ocean. People there died in the thousands, their cities ruined and drowned. For a long time, we aren't sure how long exactly, we were cut off. Here the land was so dry that many-perhaps most-people died. Those who were left became nomads, copying the Reduners. They adapted. This became known as the Time of Random Rain.
"But most of our history was lost. Life was hard. The only memory people held on to, because it was important to them, was that once they had been miners and traders in minerals. They called themselves by the names of the rocks and the stones and the gems, so that they would never forget. Gibber folk were, I think, more miners than traders; Scarpen Quarter folk more traders. It was from Portennabar and Portfillik that the ancient routes ran across what is now the Giving Sea to the Other Side.
"It was during the Time of Random Rain that the Reduners-then living in the dunes-tamed the pedes and ziggers they'd found there. Because of those, they dominated the Quartern and built a culture based on slavery of the conquered. The Time of Random Rain lasted until the Watergiver came and taught some water sensitives how to be stormlords and rainlords."
"How do we know the Watergiver was real?"
"The waterpriests have religious texts that tell the story. They say the texts were inspired by the Sunlord and therefore must be true." She smiled slightly. "That's an argument based on its own circular logic, of course, but don't tell them I said that. How are you enjoying your religious classes, by the way?"
He pulled a face. "Not much. I-I find it hard to believe all the things Lord Basalt tells me. He says I should have faith, but he doesn't really explain things. Then he gets angry if I ask why." He considered the matter. "Terelle always used to make libations to the Sunlord. I thought it was a waste of water. She said it was easier to believe than to question and that it made her happier to believe than to doubt, but for me it's the other way around."
"If there is one thing I have discovered," she said, "it's this: it is impossible to force belief on yourself. It doesn't work, any more than someone with a deep faith can suddenly throw it all away because someone asks them to. Nealrith never doubts. You doubt all the time. And so do I. Kaneth doesn't think about it and isn't interested. By the sound of it, Terelle doesn't think about it much, either-but she does the opposite: she accepts. There is room for us all, but unhappily, the really religious feel obligated to save the endangered souls they are sure the rest of us have, without realising how impossible it is to believe when you just don't. I am not sure who is to be most pitied, those troubled by our damnation or we who have to live believing we end with death."