"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."