"True, your dancing is good. You have been well taught, for a snuggery girl. But you must realise that Scarcleft doesn't support too many full-time dancers. Most dancers earn the bulk of their income some other way; usually through a snuggery or a personal financial arrangement with a protector. As whores, if you like. It is as good a word as any. To earn enough as a dancer to support yourself independently, you would have to be more than just good. You would have to be special. You are not special."
The words battered her hope. You are not special. Good wasn't good enough. And there was that word again: whore.
"I'm only thirteen," she said, and knew immediately that it was the wrong thing to say. She may have been a child in years, but being childish was a luxury she could not afford.
Amethyst shrugged. "You will be better when you are older, of course. But you will never have the-the shining edge that makes a solo dancer. That indefinable something. It has nothing to do with looks, nothing to do with training. It is more than that. It is something you are either born with, or not. You were not."
Terelle wanted to cry. She wanted to protest. She wanted to beg.
She did none of those things. Instead she pulled her tunic down and retied her sash. "I'm sorry to have wasted your time, Arta."
"Oh, but you did not waste my time, child. Not at all. Wait, I want to show you something. Meriam, play the same tune again."
The flautist looked surprised but lifted her instrument to her lips. To Terelle's amazement, Amethyst started to dance, the same dance she had just been shown. She had remembered every step in its correct sequence, every nuance. Terelle watched spellbound. Every move was exactly how Terelle had envisioned it should be done. "Oh," she said when the dance was finished, "that was… beautiful. I could never have danced it like that."
"No. But you wrote it that way." Amethyst came across the floor and took her by the shoulders. "You have been looking in the wrong direction, child, chasing water when you can make the vessel."
"I-I don't understand."
"You are not a performer of dance; you are a creator. That is where your skill lies."
Terelle considered that. She had always thought that a performer was a creator, but she was not going to argue the point with Amethyst. "I'm not sure how that can help," she said finally.
"Neither am I, exactly. The problem is that there is not much call for new dances. I will buy one piece from you every quarter, though. A dance of about the same length for five tokens."
Terelle drew in a sharp breath. Enough water for five days just for a short dance! "That's… wonderful," she said at last.
"But it won't solve your problem, will it? You need more than that to separate yourself from the snuggery. For that, I can only offer advice. Look to making things, Terelle. That's where your destiny lies."
"What-what sort of things?"
"How should I know? Songs? Tunes? Pottery? Jewellery? Patterns for weavers or lace makers? Go and find out!" She sounded snappish but her next action belied her tone. She put an arm around Terelle as they went to the door, saying with a quiet passion, "Don't become a whore. It might make you a better artist in the end, but you will lose part of your soul."
Jomat the steward was hovering outside the door, and the smirk he gave her made Terelle want to slap him. She was sure he had overheard.
"Jomat," Amethyst said, "pay her five tokens and show her out. She will return in a quarter year; please admit her again then."
At the front door Jomat disappeared into a side room for a moment and returned with the tokens, which he ostentatiously counted into Terelle's hand. "I'm sure you dance very prettily, my dear," he said. "You mustn't let these little setbacks get you down."
He sounded sincere enough, and she tried not to step backwards as he patted her on the arm with a sweaty hand. She said, "The arta is a wonderful dancer, and she was very kind."
"Oh yes, she's the best there ever was. A perfectionist, of course, and perfectionists are difficult to live with, aren't they? Not, of course, that we would ever have her any other way."
He opened the door and Terelle slipped out, wondering if the way his arm brushed her chest as she went past was accidental or not.
Her feelings in a turmoil, she started back to the thirty-second. Elation warred with despair. She had sold a dance to the famous Amethyst-there were five shiny tokens in her purse to prove it-but she herself would never make a dancer. So, she did have a talent for creation, but how was she going to put that to good use? She had just seen the country's most famous dancer perform something of hers, and do it beautifully, but it was something she herself would never do so well.
And she came away convinced of two things about Amethyst that she had not known before. The dancer had been born waterless, and at one time in her life she had sold her body for water.
Terelle knew the signs.
CHAPTER TEN
Scarpen Quarter Breccia City Breccia Hall, Level 2, and outside the city walls "But I want to go!"
Rainlord Senya, granddaughter of the Quartern Cloudmaster and eleven years old, came close to stamping her foot. She was stopped only by the memory of her grandmother telling her that when she behaved in such a manner she resembled a myriapede in heat. The comparison was unpleasant, so she tried not to stamp and not to grit her teeth, either. Her restraint, however, made no difference to her mood.
"I am sick of being cooped up in the palace. It's been almost a year since Mama and Papa left, and in all that time you haven't allowed me to go anywhere. Papa would let me go if he was here."
"I doubt it," her grandmother said evenly as she looked up from the gemstone she was carving. "Your father gave precise orders before he left for the Gibber. He said you weren't to be allowed out of Breccia Hall except under rainlord escort. None can be spared to take you to the Gratitudes festivities until we all go this evening. That will have to suffice."
"But it's much more fun in the afternoon. They have a fair, and games. Tonight is just all the religious stuff." In parody, she mimicked the high-pitched wail of Lord Gold, the Quartern Sunpriest: " 'Praise be to the Watergiver for our water! Praise him, praise her, praise the whole darn parcel of sun-dried water prophets!' "
Ethelva's face tightened, but she said nothing.
"Why can't someone go with me this afternoon? Rainlord Merqual would take me."
"Your grandfather has sent Lord Merqual to investigate a water theft from the tunnel that supplies the dye-makers' street on the twenty-eighth level. It is a very serious matter."
Senya flounced into the chair next to Ethelva and glared at her. "Why do I have to be bothered with guards anyway? I can go with a servant. I am quite safe in Breccia, surely."
"We do not know that." With a sigh Ethelva laid her carving aside and took her granddaughter's hands in hers. "Senya, my dear, it is time you started to think a little more deeply about things."
"What do you mean?"
"Think: twenty or so years ago there were six other young rainlords or potential stormlords around your father's age, besides Taquar and Kaneth. None of them made it to twenty-two. Not one. I don't mean to scare you-no, I take that back. I do mean to scare you. I want to scare you silly because you don't seem to have the sense to know when you are threatened."
"By who? No one has ever tried to hurt me! None of those people were murdered. They just had stupid accidents and things. Falling down stairs. Getting lost in the desert. Getting sick."
"Let's just say that we don't want any of those things to happen to you."
Senya pouted. "I am so bored! There is nothing to do here. I should have gone with Papa and Mama-"
"That's a change," Ethelva remarked, releasing her hands. "Before your parents left, you said you wouldn't want to set foot on the Gibber Plains for all the water in a mother well."
"I don't want to exactly, but anything would be better than sitting around doing nothing."