The Last Stormlord

CHAPTER FOUR

Scarpen Quarter Breccia City Feldspar House, Level 3 "Ryka, Ryka, come quickly!"

Ryka Feldspar looked up as her younger sister Beryll came skidding across the terracotta tiles into the room, grinning with a mixture of delight and mischief. "Quickly, change out of that horrible tunic thing and wear something pretty, for pity's sake. Your Destined One is here! Talking to Papa."

Ryka pushed away the document she had been translating and looked short-sightedly at Beryll, who was already rooting through her wardrobe. It shook alarmingly under the onslaught.

"What are you doing?" Her newest silk outfit, intended to be worn for the first time at the annual Temple Gratitudes, came sailing through the air and only her quick reflexes stopped it from overturning the ink jar. "Beryll, please! Stop and tell me what's going on."

Her sister's head ducked down into the cupboard, her voice muffled as she rummaged through footwear. "Lord Kaneth Carnelian is here, asking to see you. Mama way-laid him and sent me to tell you to dress nicely."

She looked at Beryll blankly. "Uh?"

Her sister emerged triumphant, waving a pair of embroidered slippers. "He's come as a suitor, you dryhead! Oh, Ryka-how did you manage to get ink all over your fingers? You'd better wash."

Ryka laughed, unbelieving, and went to return the dress to the wardrobe. "Whatever he's here for, it's certainly not as my suitor. He might have an eye on you in a year or two, perhaps, if he wanted to marry a Feldspar. But I doubt he'll ever marry. He likes his women pretty and plentiful and playful, does Kaneth."

And he likes snuggery jades, too, from all accounts, she added sourly to herself.

Beryll laughed. "He's too old for me. At least thirty-five. Besides, I'm not a rainlord. You are. And so is he. Two rainlords: more chance of a stormlord child. Mama says there's a rumour that the Cloudmaster ordered Kaneth to marry if he wanted to continue to receive a rainlord allowance from the Quartern's coffers. The only other unmarried rainlord female is Senya Almandine and she's a child, so what does that tell you?"

Ryka stilled, and the silk slid to the floor, unheeded. "Are you serious, Beryll?" she asked at last. "Cloudmaster Granthon ordered him?"

"After a fashion. Marry, or find tokens in short supply."

She felt the colour drain from her face and abruptly sat down again.

"You have a dowry you didn't even know about!" Beryll crowed.

"Even though I'm so low in talent I'm only a cat's whisker from being a mere reeve?" She pursed her lips, her anger growing. If Kaneth really was coming to propose, then he had a cheek! Suddenly willing to marry her because he needed a rainlord's allowance from the treasury? She'd have something to say about that.

"Maybe so, but you're the best the Quartern's got for Kaneth." Beryll grinned, enjoying her sister's discomfort. She did a little dance, scooped the outfit from the floor without breaking step and thrust it at Ryka with a flourish. "Like it or not, you're getting married!"

"Not if I can help it!" She snatched the dress and threw it back into the wardrobe with scant respect for its fragility. "I am certainly not wearing that to meet Kaneth. Spindevil take it, Beryll-we grew up together and if he doesn't know exactly what I look like by now, then he's a lot more dense than I thought." She refused to even glance in the polished surface of the mirror stone, and stalked out of the room, exactly as she was. She couldn't believe Kaneth was thinking of marriage to her anyway. The idea was ludicrous.

Plain Ryka, the other girls had called her in their younger years. The boys, still too young to appreciate her long legs and golden hair, had been even less kind. They'd taunted her with names like mangle-gangle or fumble-tumble, because a combination of short-sightedness and dreaminess meant she tended to trip over things a lot. Kaneth had been one of the worst of her tormentors.

When they were all older, the girls had-more kindly-encouraged her to improve her looks with powders and paints, but she'd always known the results were absurd. She was too solid of body, too mannish in the way she moved, too tall, too… un-dainty. Moreover, she had a habit of creasing her brow when she squinted to see better, which gave her an unjustified reputation for bad temper. As time passed, the boys, young men by then, had simply drifted away, indifferent, to marry others. And Ryka had shrugged and got on with her life. At least her eyesight didn't hamper her reading; it was only when things were more than a pace or two away that they started to go blurry.

Now, as she took the stairs two at a time on her way down to the reception room, Beryll following her, she frowned again, not caring if she appeared forbidding. By the time she entered the room where Kaneth waited with her parents, she felt thunderous and guessed it was obvious. She ignored the signal of her mother's desperately fluttering hands, and glared at Kaneth.

Her father said, "Ah, there you are. Kaneth has something to say to you. Come, my dear," he added, taking his wife's arm and ushering Beryll out at the same time, "we'll leave them to talk things over."

Kaneth, who had also risen, came across to her saying, "Sorry to disturb you. Your father said you were busy translating some Reduner scrolls for the Cloudmaster."

"Yes. And Beryll said you've been ordered to marry."

He looked taken aback. "News travels fast."

"And that you have me in mind."

"Blighted eyes, Ryka, can't you at least let me do the asking?"

She folded her arms. "All right. Go ahead."

"I was thinking of something more romantic. You know, out under a flowering orange tree or something. A stroll on the rooftop."

"Don't be ridiculous. This is me you're talking to, Kaneth. Ryka Feldspar. Tell me you have suddenly developed an overwhelming passion that necessitates a romantic proposal doused in the scent of orange blossom and I shall laugh in your face."

"You are not making this easy for me."

"Why in all the Scarpen should I? You are only proposing because you've been ordered to."

"There's more to it than that-"

"So I was informed. Cloudmaster Granthon threatened to cut your allowance."

"Er, well, yes, but-"

"But nothing! We fight like a couple of horned mountain cats every time we meet, you chase every female who bats her eyelids at you and you sleep with anyone who will have you, and then you expect me to fall into your arms because you take the trouble to arrange a romantic interlude for a proposal? I can only assume you are out of your sunfried mind. Have you been going outside without a hat on your head?"

He stared at her.

She kept her arms folded and glared back.

He said, "I take it that you are going to say no?"

"Did you doubt it?"

He looked uncomfortable. "Er, yes, I did. I thought that if the Cloudmaster ordered it and seeing the Quartern needs stormlord children-"

"Oh, so you don't really want to marry me. You just want my children. Lovely proposal."

He paused. Then, "Why do I get the idea that whatever I say, it will be the wrong thing?"

"Maybe because you're finally thinking straight. Granthon didn't speak to me about this, you know. As least not lately, and not naming you. And anyway, what difference would it make if he had? I am an inadequate rainlord at the best of times. You could marry Beryll and have just as much chance of talented children."

"I don't want to marry Beryll! I want to marry you."

She arched an eyebrow in disbelief.

"Curse it all, Ryka, you know the fix we are all in. We need stormlords, and we all have to make sacrifices-"

She gritted her teeth, her rage close to overwhelming her. "So marrying me would be a sacrifice, would it? Wonderful. I suppose giving up all your snuggery handmaidens would be a terrible sacrifice indeed. No, wait a moment. I don't suppose your idea of sacrifice goes quite that far."

He flushed, but she couldn't tell if it was anger or shame that put the colour in his face. "Ryka, I am willing to do whatever it takes to bring more water to the Quartern. And you should be, too. This is not about us-it's about the possibility of our children becoming the saviours of us all."

She made a sound of exasperated fury. "That's something you should have been thinking about ten years ago, Kaneth Carnelian. But no, you were having too much fun. And only now you are having an attack of guilty conscience?"

"All right, I admit it. I haven't been a model rainlord. And I always thought that if anyone was going to have stormlord children it would be Taquar or Nealrith, and I could leave it up to them. Well, for whatever reason, they haven't, and that leaves us, you and me. Ryka, I have been-well-yes, er, I do like women. I love women. I love bedding them. But the kind of women I bed aren't the kind I want to be the mother of my children. In fact, you and I, we-"

"Oooh!" She clenched her fists, quelling an almost overwhelming desire to punch him on the nose. Or better still, lower down. A lot lower down. "So I am good enough to have your children, but I'm not someone you'd ever want to bed? 'We' nothing, Kaneth Carnelian. There is no 'we' and there never will be!"

She turned on her heel and wrenched open the door, only to find herself face to face with Beryll, who'd had her ear pressed to the panelling. Ryka hissed at her in fury and stalked away.

Beryll, eyes bright with interest, watched her go and then turned her attention to Kaneth. "You are such a dryhead," she said. "You really messed that up, didn't you? Maybe you should think about marrying me instead."

"Marry an eavesdropping brat? Beryll, you are impossible. And you shouldn't listen at doors." He shouldered past her, grabbed up his palmubra in the hallway and let himself out.

Beryll grinned and made her way upstairs again. Back in her room, Ryka plonked herself down at her desk and picked up her pen to continue the translation. Only this time, she dug the chitin nib into the flax paper with such force the ink spattered.

"Go away," she said when Beryll entered.

Beryll ignored the request. "Ryka, you're sandcrazy. You're twenty-eight-where do you think you are going to find another marriage partner at your age?"

"Why should I want one? What's so marvellous about being married? I can be perfectly happy unmarried. I can even have children if I want." She dabbed furiously at the ink spatters with her sleeve.

Beryll came and sat on the edge of the desk, looking interested. "Oh?"

"What I ought to do is have a child with Taquar. There'd be a much better chance he would have a stormlord offspring. His water sensitivity is as strong as it gets in a rainlord."

"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.