Red Quarter Dune Watergatherer and further south Ravard was busy most of the afternoon and night, supervizing preparations for the journey. About three sandglass runs before dawn, he entered her room. He was carrying an oil lamp and placed it on the box. Then he sat down on the lid beside it.
She made no pretense of being asleep. "There was no need to hit me," she said, her contempt undisguised. "No man of stature ever does such a thing." She rolled over and sat up to stare up at him. "You go to kill or capture your brother. He spoke of you with nothing but affection. He worried endlessly you might have died. What kind of man are you?"
He refused to meet her gaze. Then, after a long silence, he said, "I'll speak to Sandmaster Davim 'bout this. We'll bring Shale back with us, to the dunes. He'll become one of us-a Reduner Kher. He'll be our stormlord, if indeed that's what he is. We can still have our random rain and yet know we need never thirst if things go wrong."
At least he was openly believing her now.
"Have a care, Mica. Davim has his own plans and if he thinks you will thwart them, he will have you killed." And you know nothing of your own brother if you think he would join you in such a plan.
In an unwitting echo of her thoughts, he said, "You know nothing of our ways. Nothing!"
"Your ways?"
"Yes. Mine. I lived in hell once, son of a sot and a whore, starved and thirsty-and did any Scarpen lord care then? Did any stormlord send us more water? I hated that life. We were worse than slaves. Here on the dunes, when I was a slave, I had food in my belly, water in my skin, and a chance t'better myself. A chance t'become a man, a warrior, not some waterless scum living on the fringe of a settle begging for drink. Davim gave us a new life."
"No, he didn't. Whatever he gave you was for himself, not you. But Chert he killed and he made you do it for him. That is not the work of a man who cared for either of you."
"You know nothing! And how d'you know so much about Shale anyway?"
She stayed close to the truth. "I'm a teacher. When he came to Breccia, he needed schooling. I was one of his teachers."
He came and knelt beside her. "Garnet, Mica is dead. He died right here on the dune."
"No, he didn't. He's you. He's still there inside you."
"What d'you know about it? Mica died of ill-use as a slave. He was whipped and kicked and humiliated." He took hold of her face in both hands and held it steady, a hand-span from his own. "You know what that's like? A lad of fifteen, passed around like a skin of amber, for everyone to do what they liked with."
She tried to look away, but he gripped her tighter, his thumbs digging into her cheeks. "A slave, used up the backside till there was nothing more left of him. Oh, nothing special. In Davim's tribe the warriors do it with everyone when they are new-men, women, children. And then they stop. And you're grateful 'cause they stop."
Words jerked out of her in revulsion. "Oh, waterless soul."
"I don't need your pity. 'Cause that's when Davim came and took what was left, and made me. Ravard. Warrior. Kher. He taught me t'be a Reduner; t'have pride in who I am. If Shale comes looking for Mica, he won't find him. And I reckon if I go looking for Shale, I won't find him in this Stormlord Jasper, neither. Reckon once you start sleeping in a bed under a roof and eating all that fancy fodder, you become one of them. Scarpen folk, water-soft flesh and flint-hard hearts."
She raised a hand to cup his cheek, as gentle as he was not. "And yet in your tribe you do not have slaves."
He shrugged. "If folk don't want t'join us, I don't want them. Other tribes can have them if they like, but not here. That's not weakness; that's strength.
"I don't want any more conversation from you t'night. Nor do I ever want t'hear the name Mica again, on your lips or anyone's. I am Ravard." He bent to kiss her and she acquiesced, drawing him down on top of her.
No more than what thousands of women have done through the ages, she thought. Selling our bodies in exchange for safety. Or to avoid something more unpleasant.
It could have been far, far worse.
But still: Jasper's brother?
In her heart she couldn't bring herself to hate him, or even to hate what he did to her. He was a tormented man, and she thought in the end perhaps she suffered less than he did. Later, in the bustle of the impending predawn departure, Ryka took advantage of the lack of guards around the camp to dig up her stash of food and take it down to where the young pedes were corralled near the waterhole. The transport water jars for the war party had already been filled, and the camp guards had long since been called in to help, so there was no one to question her about where she was going or what she was doing.
She had to make several trips carrying the things she would need: panniers, water jars, bridle and saddle, blankets. She used her senses and avoided people as much as she could, but no one cared what she was doing anyway. The women were both busy and silently grieving with the knowledge their menfolk were riding to war. The men thought it beneath them to concern themselves with the affairs of women.
The war party left before it was light.
Ryka watched them go, then sought Khedrim and told him in execrable Reduner she would look after the young pedes that day. Better, she told him, that he help around the encampment because all but the very young and the very old men would be gone. He nodded, yawning, and went back to his pallet.
She slipped away in the dark to the pede yard, where she finalized the packing. Once everything was done, she rode Blackwing down to the waterhole. Keeping an anxious watch behind her, she used her power to fill the water jars, then headed south, her shadow springing into existence as the first ray of the sun tipped over the horizon onto the plain.
Blackwing flicked his antennae this way and that, sometimes reaching back to touch her in protest. It was the first time he'd been ridden any distance, the first time he'd carried a load, the first time he'd been separated from his litter mates.
"Ah, Blackwing," she murmured, "I'm not sure you are really big enough for what I am asking of you, you poor little thing."
The animal stopped then, and turned a questioning head, as if to say, "Do I have to go on still further?" Ryka gave a rueful laugh. She jabbed him with her prod, aware they mustn't drop too far behind because she had to bypass the Reduner forces while they were in Qanatend. If she was too slow, they would reach the pass through the Warthago first.
The journey was not going to be a dew-coated stroll, not on a young pede with no idea of what it was supposed to do, and with a baby who could decide to be born any time at all. She was probably being foolish. She told herself she was taking the risk because Jasper needed to be warned an army was on its way. Just in case he hadn't been responsible for the messages. But in the end, she couldn't fool herself.
Be honest, Ryka. This journey of yours has nothing to do with warning the Scarpen and everything to do with wanting to see Kaneth. You want him to be there when his baby is born. You don't care if he is Uthardim still, you don't care if he left you behind, you want him there.
Mid-afternoon on that first day she felt a body of moving water behind her. Painfully aware of her inadequacies as a rainlord, she'd made a deliberate effort to be alert to her surroundings. Usually her concentration ended up telling her useless things like the presence of an eagle in the sky above. This time, though, it wasn't a bird. She'd just passed over the first dune south of the Watergatherer and the next was no more than a red line crimping the skyline ahead. She stopped Blackwing and turned to look back, but could see nothing. Her short-sightedness annoyingly blurred the line of the last dune into an amorphous mass of shades of red.
About the length of a sandglass run later, Blackwing became restless, slowing down and balking if she prodded him. When he battered at her with his antennae, expressing his annoyance, she was forced to stop. He turned his head behind, his feelers swirling in the air. She guessed he scented another pede, and was rebelling at any notion she had of keeping ahead of whoever was following.
Looking back herself, she could now see a puff of dust rising up into the air. She was being followed. Her water-sense told her it was a single pede, but she had no idea how many people were on it.
She gave Blackwing a piece of dried bab fruit, hoping to put him into a good mood so he would move on, but he was stubborn. Spitless damn, she thought, you idiot lump of chitin! I might end up having to kill someone because of you. She dismounted and tried leading him, but he just dug his legs into the red soil and clicked his mouthparts at her in annoyance. Worried he might take it into his head to pull the reins out of her hands and flee, she clambered up again, cursing the sheer bulk of her pregnancy. He still wouldn't move.
He was willing enough to wait, so they sat there in the sun and gradually the puff of dust grew larger and changed into a single figure on pedeback. Her eyesight was such that the rider was almost on top of her before she recognized him or his mount: Khedrim on Redwing. Sunblast the boy.
He drew up alongside and stared at her.
With a sinking feeling in her stomach she saw he was clutching a zigger cage full of the murderous beetles keening their hunger. Her heart flipped over.
"Khedrim, what do you think you're doing?" she asked.
"You're escaping," he accused, apparently not noticing her Reduner had suddenly improved to almost faultless diction. "And you stole a pede. I went to help you and you weren't there."
"So? Just go home, lad."
"Grandfather told me to come after you. He's in charge now the tribemaster and the others have gone. Redwing showed me the way-she wanted to follow Blackwing. It was easy."
"And they sent a single boy after me? Do they expect me to calmly return with you?"
"What can you do?" he asked scornfully. "You're just a woman, and a slave. And you're having a baby. There's nothing you can do. Besides, I have ziggers." He waved the cage at her. The beetles screamed in anger. "And a scimitar."
"Your grandfather told you to kill me?"
"No. That's just to threaten you with."
"And if I still say no?"
An astonished look spread over his face. "But you wouldn't want to die!"
"No, I wouldn't. However, I am refusing to go back with you. The question remains, then, are you willing to kill by releasing a zigger? Or several ziggers?"
Astonishment turned to confusion. It had obviously never occurred to him this could be the outcome. "You're scoffing me," he said at last.
"No, I'm not. I'm not going back with you. I am riding on."
His reply was a wail. "You can't! I'd have to let a zigger out!" He looked as if he was about to weep.
"Khedrim," she said as kindly as she could, "I am wearing the correct perfume."
"You're lying. No one gives the perfume to slaves."
"Maybe not, but I stole some of Kher Ravard's. Look, why don't you go home and say you couldn't find me."
"That's not true. Besides, I have to stop you. Otherwise you might warn the Scarpen folk our warriors are coming."
"Ah. Then we are at an…" She tried to think of a Reduner word meaning impasse, couldn't, and changed what she had been going to say. "I don't think we can find a solution then, at least not one that will suit you."
She glanced at the ziggers in the cage and sucked the water out of them, one by one, taking care not to hurt Khedrim in the process. "Sorry about this, but I think it's the best solution."
He didn't understand at first. Then he realized the ziggers were silent and looked down. Water dripped out of the cage. The dried-up husks looked no more harmful than the curl of a dead leaf.
He gaped, his jaw sagging, as he struggled to comprehend what had happened.
She didn't wait for his realization, but jabbed her prod into the gap between Blackwing's head and thorax. Startled, the pede leaped forward.
Unfortunately, Redwing, now she had caught up, wasn't about to let her litter mate disappear again. She sprang after him without waiting for any signal from her driver. Khedrim jerked in shock and the zigger cage went flying out of his hands. He grabbed for the reins.
Ryka cursed. The lad was not trying to rein the animal in; he was urging it on. "Witless boy," she muttered. "Surely he knows now what I am and what I can do to him."
Redwing was the stronger animal and she was soon streaming along level with Blackwing. Khedrim yelled for her to stop. Redwing, apparently convinced this was a fascinating game, paced herself to match Blackwing's speed perfectly. Her nearside feeler entwined with Blackwing's in a playful caress.
"Go home! Go home before I kill you," Ryka roared at Khedrim. "I'm a rainlord, you stupid sand-tick! I can dry you up like those ziggers…" She wondered briefly if she could blind the pede to stop the lad. Oh, blast it, if I disable the beast, how will Khedrim get back to camp? He could die out here…
Khedrim glanced away, bending down, struggling with something strapped to Redwing's other side. Almost too late, Ryka realized what he was doing. The silly boy had brought a chala spear with him. And he intended to use it. On her. Even as she absorbed that, he had leaped to his feet, perfectly balanced on the saddle, feet hooked under the segment handle and his arm drawing back, preparing to throw.
The waterless little shit, she thought, with more exasperation than rancor. So typical of a boy's game, endlessly practiced, now turning deadly with such ease. She dragged back on the reins. Indignant, Blackwing threw up his head, but his feeler was still locked with Redwing's and the two young animals slowed together.
In the split second left to make a decision, Ryka dismissed the idea of throwing herself to the ground as too dangerous, declined to blind the lad as too cruel and rejected the obvious alternative, of drying the flesh on the hand that held the spear, as too crippling. Instead, she drew out the water from one of the bare toes poking out of his sandal.
He screamed in agony, lost his balance and fell from the still moving pede.
The two animals parted. Redwing, freed of the weight of her rider, came slowly to a puzzled halt. Ryka pulled Blackwing around in a wide circle to return to where Khedrim lay, unmoving, on the ground. Quickly, she hobbled Blackwing's feelers together with the reins to prevent the pede from wandering, and slid off to run to the boy.
Even before she reached him, she knew he was dead. His neck was broken, his eyes open, unblinking and lifeless. She fell to her knees, keening.
Khedrim. Oh, Khedrim.
The day before he had been happy and obliging. Today, blood seeped sluggishly from his nose and ear, spreading a dark red stain on bright red soil.
So needlessly dead.
She rocked to and fro beside him, cursing, trying to make it not true. She cursed Davim and Taquar and Ravard and their senseless dreams of vanquishing the rainlords. She cursed their cruel vision of returning to a Time of Random Rain.
And tried, in vain, not to curse herself for making a mistake. A boy dead. Was it worth it, Ry?
Then, because she was Ryka-pragmatic, unromantic Ryka Feldspar the historian-she took Khedrim's water. When she left him, he was no more than a dry husk, bones and teeth wrapped in sinew and parchment skin all draped with red cloth, his skull adorned with red-stained hair and shiny agate beads tumbling around his face.
She rode on, stony faced, with her load evenly spread over two young pedes.