"No, but I needed to hear you admit it, Nealrith. And I need to hear what you intend to do about it."
Nealrith ignored his words and waved a hand at the tunnel entrance. "Take a sample here."
Kaneth fumbled in his tunic pocket for one of the onyx vials he carried for the purpose. "Can you sense anything wrong?"
"I would say the water is just about as pure as when it came from the skies. Its essence is not wrong, just the amount." Nealrith thrust his hand under the water where it splashed through the grille. He kept it there for a moment before he added, "About half the flow of this time last year. And every star cycle before that. The city's mother cistern is not filling to capacity. Ryka said it is eight handspans too low. They had to adjust the siphon."
"How long before that translates into shortages on the streets?"
Nealrith shrugged. "Depends on when we start rationing."
"We can't wait until these cisterns are empty and the decrease becomes noticeable in the level-supply cisterns down in the city. We have to start rationing now."
"That's… drastic."
"Then what about deepening the mother well shafts?"
"It's not a solution, Kaneth. I've spoken to the engineers. The groundwater level needs to be maintained. And the only way to do that is to have sufficient rain."
"The engineers are fossilised old sand-grubbers, you know that." Kaneth turned back to the intake flow and caught some of it in the vial, which he then stoppered. "The city engineer wouldn't replace a single brick of the tunnel if it was left up to him, the sun-dried old fool. Rith, we can't just go jogging along pretending nothing is wrong! Deepen the shafts. Build more shafts. Tap into the groundwater elsewhere and bring water through a new tunnel. Be stricter about the enforcement of birth control-there are still rich folk who have more than two children because they can afford to buy their dayjars. Anything is better than sitting back and waiting for people to die of thirst. Better still-" He paused.
"Better still what?" Nealrith was willing to listen to anything, for how could you ration something that was already apportioned at its acceptable limit? There was no wastage of water in Breccia. Each man, woman and child received exactly what he or she needed for life. Every fruit tree, every palm grove, every jute and flax plant, every vegetable patch received exactly enough for growth and harvest. Ration water and food production would drop. Eventually people would die. They'd starve, if they hadn't already died of thirst.
But Kaneth backtracked. "Are you saying that the Cloudmaster cannot make good the lack?"
"You don't need me to tell you it is unlikely. You've seen him. My father is old beyond his years, and ill. I am going to the Sun Temple after this, to ask Lord Gold to make a heavier sacrifice to the Sunlord. Perhaps that will help."
Kaneth snorted. "Withering waste of water."
They looked at each other, two men who had been friends since the day they had first met as children, almost thirty years earlier. Nealrith's heart lurched. They were like sand grains at the top of a slope too steep for stability, waiting for the landslip, the irrevocable damage, the words that couldn't be taken back. He smothered a desire to change the subject rather than hear something he knew instinctively he would not be able to countenance.
"Spit it out, Kaneth," he said finally. "What is your solution? None of what you have suggested so far is practical. You can't tap into water that simply isn't there. More wells somewhere else would be accessing the same underground water as the present ones do; you know that. And I am assuming that you are not going to recommend wholesale slaughter of a number of our citizens so that the rest of us have enough to drink."
"As much as it might sometimes be tempting," Kaneth said with a flippancy that grated on Nealrith, "one has to draw the line somewhere."
"So?"
"We must let the other three quarters fend for themselves. Your father has more than enough strength to supply us here in the Scarpen Quarter; let the other three find their own water."
Nealrith drew in a sharp breath. "Sunlord help me-you are advocating wholesale slaughter! You can't be serious."
"I am perfectly serious." And indeed for once he appeared to be. The cynical half-smile, the insouciance, were gone. He was utterly sober. "Save ourselves. It's all we can do."
"It is unthinkable."
"Oh no, it's not, for I am thinking it. And I am not the only rainlord to do so."
"Taquar Sardonyx of Scarcleft, too, I suppose," Nealrith said bitterly. "But the idea is ridiculous. Quite apart from the sheer inhumanity, we would have the Reduners battering at our walls with an army of zealot tribesmen mounted on pedes and tapping out ziggers. Have you thought of that? A war on our hands at this time? You should, because you may be one of those who fall with a zigger burrowing up your nose. Although I suppose a war would indeed reduce the number of our citizens in need of water."
Kaneth shrugged dismissively. "All right, keep the Reduners supplied with water, although I suspect they may actually care the least. Many of them think they should return to a time of random rain anyway. But we should stop sending rain to the White's 'Basters and the Gibber grubbers. After all, what have they ever done for us? We don't need them, Rith. They are weeds, sucking up water and producing nothing we cannot do without in the short term."
He caught hold of Nealrith's sleeve. "Think of it. Your father need only supply half the amount of rain. He can do that much. It will buy us time to find other stormlords to help him, to find another to replace him as Cloudmaster when the time comes. He will live longer if he has fewer stresses on him."
"He wouldn't be able to live with himself if he had to do that! The shame and the guilt would kill him. What of those who would die in the White and Gibber quarters? You are advocating the brutal eradication of two peoples, as if they were rats in the waterhall!"
He had raised his voice and the echoes faded out around them: "waterhall… hall… all." The reeve looked up from his work, curious. Nealrith lowered his voice to a furious whisper and shook off his friend's hand. "Kaneth, I didn't think even you would be so utterly without conscience."
"Even I?" Kaneth stood looking at Nealrith with a sharply raised eyebrow. "Well, even I don't want to see my fellow Scarpermen die of thirst. It is you-and your father-who would see us all die a lingering death as our gardens and groves wither and the cisterns empty. Tell me, Nealrith, Highlord of Breccia City, which is a better ending: to have all four quarters die slowly, or have two of them prosper and only two succumb to a waterless death? Yes, I'll admit it, I think of myself. Is there shame in that? I want to live! I am looking to settle down at last-to marry into the Feldspar family, actually. But that's neither here nor there. Rith, I want you to propose this solution to Granthon. He will listen to you."
"Never!"
"Then I will. Someone has to have a practical solution for a very real problem, and the Cloudmaster has got to listen. You're a dreamer, Rith, and your scruples will suffocate us all in sand." When Nealrith did not reply, he added, "I warn you, there will be those who will fight for this to the bitter end, and you may not like our methods. We will salvage something from this mess, with you-or in spite of you."
"You can't force my father to do something that goes against all he has ever worked for: the unity of the four quarters and the prosperity of their peoples."
"That's just words, Rith. There has never been unity. Or prosperity, either, if you were to ask a Gibberman. It may have been Granthon's dream in his younger days, but he never achieved anything like it. And now we have a problem. And even you have to admit that there are only two possible solutions, at least in the long term. We either find several more stormlords-and we've had a singular lack of success there, you must admit-or we reduce the number of water drinkers. It is as simple as that."