“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.
Bored, Senya glanced around to where Highlord Taquar sat at the end of their row. Because of the way the balcony curved, she had a good view of the interesting planes of his face. He was perhaps darker than she liked, but that made him interesting, too. Forbidding. Mysterious. Dangerous. And so-ooo handsome.
He looked her way, smiled and winked. Then he rose and threaded his way through the other guests to the exit. Her heart thumped faster. He had smiled at
her
.
“Mother,” she whined, “do
we
have to wait until all that water’s gone?”
“Sunlord be thanked that’s over,” Ryka said. “I swear, I thought that water would never dry up. My nose must be as red as a ripe bab fruit, being out in the sun for so long.”
“I never understood why those in the ceremonial courtyard are not permitted palmubras,” Kaneth replied.
“Me, neither. As though wearing a hat indicates impiety.”
“And discomfort and worship must go hand in hand.”
“Exactly.”
They fell silent, until she looked around in desperation to find something to say. “You swear this is all new?” she asked with a wave at the room furnishings.
They had compromised on where to live. Ryka had agreed to move into Carnelian House, as long as all the bedrooms were totally refurbished and rearranged. She would not, she had informed him, sleep where he had once bedded his succession of hussies. Rather to her surprise, he’d swallowed the humiliation of that with good grace, even though the new furniture had taken fifty days to be made and he’d been compelled to beg the Cloudmaster for an extension of the deadline for their marriage.
“I swear,” he said. “In fact, this used to be my sitting room.”
“And no hussies in the house in the future. You want to be unfaithful, you do it somewhere else. And now, let’s get this over and done with. I am going to need you to unlace this stupid dress for me, unless you’d prefer me to ring for a maid.”
“Oh, I think I have plenty of experience in undressing women,” he said dryly, “as you so frequently remind me.” He hesitated, then continued, “Ryka, I don’t like this. It’s not something that should be got ‘over and done with’ like taking a dose of kalo oil for indigestion. I’ve never taken a woman against her will, and I sure as the sands are hot don’t want to start now. Especially not with you. I value your friendship too much, for a start, but even without that—” He shook his head unhappily. “It’s distasteful, and I object to the position you have been placed in.”
“There’s someone waiting outside the door, isn’t there? Granthon’s man? A water sensitive waiting to see if we mingle our water today?”
He nodded apologetically. “I’m sorry. Um, we could fake it.”
He sounded doubtful, though, and she shook her head. Blighted eyes, the idea that he could die, thrown out into the desert, because of her foolish scruples gave her the shivers. “No,” she said, more forcefully than she intended. Modulating her tone, she added more quietly, “We are not going to take such stupid risks.”
“You don’t deserve to have your first experience forced on you like this. We could probably fool the fellow—”
She blinked at him in startled surprise. “You’re scoffing me!”
He stared back. “We could try—”
“Not that! No, I mean—you can’t possibly think this is my first experience, surely!”
“Why, y—” He stopped and reddened in embarrassment as the silence lengthened; her eyebrows were raised so high they disappeared under her fringe. “Er—I guess not.”
“I’ll be damned. You did. Kaneth, I’m
twenty-nine years
old!”
He was silent.
“You arrogant, condescending, ridiculous
male
! You can bed women from one end of the land to the other, but I am expected to forgo all such pleasures simply because I am a woman?”
“Well, you made such a fuss about
my
pleasures—”
“Not the fact that they occurred but that they were so promiscuous, so blatant and—and—so
commercial
!”
“I grant you that no one can say you were blatant. I have no idea who you favoured. Can I ask why you didn’t marry him?”
“Who?” she asked, puzzled, and then started to laugh when she realised what he was thinking, but there was a bitter edginess to her mirth. “You really are impossible! Whatever makes you think there could only ever have been
one
? You have insulted me in just about every possible way in the past few moments. Am I so unattractive that you can’t imagine anyone wanting to bed me? Should we wait until it’s dark, perhaps, so that you find all this more… palatable because you can’t see the body in your bed?”
“Oh,
shit
!” He turned away from her, throwing his hands up in the air, then spun to face her again, anguished. “Blighted eyes, Ry, why is it I have a genius for spewing forth turds instead of sense when you are around? You are the
last
person I want to hurt and yet I have an aptitude for doing just that. Forgive me, please. What I said was thoughtless and insulting, you’re right. And I am a fool.”
She took a deep breath, torn between loathing and loving him. “It’s just as well I have a sense of the ridiculous, isn’t it?” she asked at last. “Or that water sensitive outside the door would be running back to the Cloudmaster with a tale to tell. Even now, he’s probably wondering just why we are standing on opposite sides of the room.”
“We can rectify that,” he said diffidently and rounded the bed to stand in front of her. “I have a mind to rid you of that cumbersome garment, for a start. Ry, we may not be lovers, but I would very much like to bed a friend. To build something worth keeping, especially if we have children. I can’t think of anyone I would prefer to bear a child of mine than you, you know.”
“I can live with that, I suppose.” The words were ungracious, sharpened by her need to have him look at her as a lover, not as a necessary wife or prospective mother. She tried to soften them with a smile, but it came a shade too late to be convincing.
He held out a hand to her and struggled on. “I don’t really want to wait for dark,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to see your legs without the benefit of clothing. I don’t think there’s another woman in the Quartern who can match them.”