Thank you for being so understanding.'
Carnelian controlled his anger. Nothing would be gained at that moment from violence. He would bide his time.
The next day Carnelian began work on the cisterns. He had explained to Sil that the Bluedancing were going to stay in the Koppie during the withering. Once she had overcome her disbelief, then horror, she helped him find women to act as overseers.
By the end of the second day, the first cistern had been cut: a rectangular hole in the ground the bottom of which was bedrock. He had sent the men Osidian had given him to the lagoon and, when they returned, their drag-cradles were sagging under the weight of the clay they had gouged from its banks. This was tipped into the hole, where the Bluedancing used it to plaster the walls and floor. When it had dried, waterskins were carefully emptied into the cistern. All that day, drag-cradles arrived laden with more. Slowly the level of the pool rose brown and murky up the clay sides of the pit. When it had nearly reached the top, Carnelian laid over it covers of woven fernfrond strengthened with scouring-rush poles. The structure sagged a little but held. Days later, as the Bluedancing and the others were digging the next cistern, Carnelian had the covers lifted off the first. A sigh of relieved delight rose from his Ochre helpers as they saw the clay had settled, leaving the water clear.
When the mother trees announced the Withering with their cones, Poppy came to Carnelian eager to plant her seed. Though Akaisha had promised to ask permission from the other Elders, Carnelian was reluctant to ask her if she ever had. Besides, he suspected it was no longer their decision to make. He became anxious about what might happen to Poppy's precious seed once it germinated. In the end, he persuaded her it would be best to wait. A year was not, after all, such a long time in the life of a mother tree. Tearfully, she agreed.
Torrid days blazed in indistinguishable continuity. Each morning the men set off to fetch water to fill the cisterns. Each time they had to ride further as the lagoon shrank away.
'Most of its bed is cracked like old skin,' one of them coughed, resting his hand on the pole of a drag-cradle, trying to keep in his aquar's shadow. Their mouths and their eyes opened in faces caked with dust.
Carnelian reassured them they had enough water stored. He had himself surveyed the nearly forty cisterns that morning. The wall of one had crumbled. The levels in each had fallen, no doubt through seepage as well as evaporation. Still, after consulting Whin, he gauged that they had enough for those who were to remain behind, at least until the Rains came.
A morning after a full moon, the air began to haze with spores. Soon they so choked the day even the sun could not peep through. At night, hiding with Poppy beneath blankets, they could not sleep for the hissing. Seven days the storm lasted and on the eighth the whole world seemed to have rusted.
The weddings held during the next moon were not the joyous events they had once been. People were uncertain whether the old should preside over them as they had always done. Besides, the ceremonies were tainted by mourning.
When the Master came, he always brought dead with him. Never very many, he was a skilled commander, but enough to haunt the Grove with wailing. Ravan would talk to them of victories and show them the salt tribute they had forced their victims to pay. He and the Master would spend the night on the summit of the Crag and did not seem to mind sharing it with the corpses nor with the ravens that came to feed upon them. Carnelian shunned the Master, as did the rest of the Tribe, who had grown to dread his returns.
Even in the shade, each breath was toasting Carnelian's throat dry. He looked out past the Newditch to where the curve of Osidian's ditch was already cutting into the burning plain. He imagined the Bluedancing suffering there with only improvised hats to keep off the sun; ubas over nose and mouth to filter the air their digging kept always clouded with dust. They already knew their fate. They were to labour all through the Withering on the new ditch. Worse, Carnelian imagined, was the news that it was nearly time to fire the ferngardens. The Tribe would then leave for the mountains. The Bluedancing knew this was when their tithe-marked children were to be sent to the Standing Dead in place of the Ochre's own.
Carnelian wondered how the Wise would react once they discovered that the Bluedancing had not come to Osrakum to pay their tithe. Would this alert them to Osidian's presence? Perhaps the crime would be lost for a while in the ocean of their bureaucracy. This seemed a bleak hope. What was certain was that if Osidian continued to disrupt the Earthsky, one day there would be retribution. On that day, Osidian would have the war he craved.
In the cool of the night, the Grove was sometimes disturbed by the cry of some woman calling for her husband. In the day it was hard to believe any of their men would return from the torrid, shadeless plain. The heavener djada was packed onto the drag-cradles ready for the migration. The Tribe sipped water drawn from the cisterns. Even the men who had come to tell them the lagoons were dried up were long gone. So it was that when the messenger came to declare that all their men would be returning the next day, he was disbelieved. No one dared to challenge the Gods by feeling hope. The next day many dared the summit of the Crag, but nothing solidified from the wavering air. Despair saturated the shade beneath the mother trees.
Shouting raised Carnelian from fevered drowsiness. The greatest heat of the day had passed. When word reached them riders were approaching the Koppie, Carnelian joined the rest of his hearth running out along the Lagooning across the black deserts of the ferngarden to welcome them.
That Fern was there alive would have been cause of joy enough for Carnelian and the hearth, but that there were no dead at all stunned people to silence. Riding at the Master's side, Ravan announced that the Ochre were everywhere victorious. The Tribe burst into song, ecstatic that what they had dreaded had not come to pass.
The tension between Fern and Ravan had subdued the carnival atmosphere of the hearth. That and the demand the returning men had made that the Elders should give up their salt regalia so that the warriors could protect it along with the rest of the Tribe's wealth. Whin's and Akaisha's hair looked lank without beads. Even Sil's joy at the return of her husband could not withstand his moroseness. Carnelian was desperate to talk to him but he felt it was Osidian watching them through Ravan's eyes.
Something woke Carnelian. Taking care not to disturb Poppy, Carnelian sat up. Someone was moving towards the rootstair. Instinct made Carnelian rise and follow. The cold night air made him glad he had thought to bring a blanket. The figure was climbing to the Crag, its footfalls lost in the sighing of the mother trees. Carnelian went as fast as he could, but when he reached the path that hugged the Crag, he found he had lost the figure. He hurried on, guessing that whoever it was, was going down the Westing to the latrines. Suddenly, a shape appeared before him.
'Why are you following me?' it whispered.
Carnelian realized with relief it was Fern. He had hoped it would be him.
'It's me.'
'Carnie? High father, you frightened me. Why are you stalking me?'
T need to talk to you.'
Cursing softly, Fern pulled Carnelian after him. They said nothing as they descended the Westing. When they reached the Homing, they turned right and walked along it until they reached two cedars from between which a piece of rock extended out over the ditch. This was one of the men's latrines.
Fern turned to him. 'What do you want?'
Carnelian could not make out his face. He tried to find a question. 'Something needs to be done.'
'Why should I trust you?'
Carnelian grimaced. As well as he could, he explained what had happened on the summit the day he had intended to kill Osidian.
'Do you still love him?'
Carnelian bit back the easy denial he was about to make. 'A part of him, but the rest, I despise.'
Silence fell between them. The cedars on either side of the ditch creaked. Beyond, the burned ferngarden was a paler darkness.
'Don't worry. I'll do it.'
Carnelian was shocked by his friend's cold determination. 'You can't.'
Carnelian could feel Fern growing angry. 'Even now you try to protect him. Will you also betray me?'
Carnelian became angry too. 'If I'd wanted to do that don't you think I've had plenty of opportunities?'
He hesitated, then reached out and gripped Fern's hand, holding on to it when Fern made to pull away. 'He controls me by threatening you.'
The hand relaxed in Carnelian's grip. 'You must see we need him now. Who else will stand between us and
