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nodded at the sloped tubs lining the temple roof. “Make sure you do not miss.”
    Each of the rectangular-mouthed bins led down to one of the four cisterns carved in the bedrock beneath the village. There were drains in the roof which also led to the cistern caves, but those would pick up whatever dust had been tracked across the roof, forcing them to purify the murky turbidity such contamination would cause. These tiled collectors were carefully patched and grouted every summer to get them ready for the rains. There were other collectors somewhat like these ones out in the fields, tall inverted cones that funneled rainwater into storage caverns for later irrigation needs. Those collectors weren’t kept as immaculately clean, but then the ones here in the village were for the villagers themselves.
    “Chanson, you will monitor how much water falls on the fields and how much is being collected. You will siphon off whatever excess the dyarina cannot yet handle.”
    “Yes, reverend,” Chanson said.
    “Now, why do we only call half of the clouds?” Kedle prompted their young apprentice. “And why do we only wring out of them what they are willing to give?”
    “Because the rains belong to everybody, including the other villages that would have been in their path farther along,” he replied promptly.
    “Good lad. I will summon the rains, now,” Kedle warned them. Lifting her arms, draped in their dark blue thawa sleeves, she started humming to herself and began making beckoning, almost clawing gestures with her hands. The clouds started to roil.
    Mindful of her duties, Chanson reached out with her own powers, extending her mind to the north. The churning of the clouds being divided were causing the droplets inside of them to grow larger and fall faster, heavier. She quickly caught the excess, cupping her hands and turning on her heel.
    Like most of the younger women of the village, she was clad in a blouse and gathered skirts instead of the one-piece thawa . Her hem floated outward as she began her spin-trance, echoing in sky blue the way the silvery curtains of falling rain now twisted and spun. On the top of the temple and far out to the north, the two of them danced, her in her skirts and the rain in its veil. Diverting the excess into the nearest field collectors, Chanson slowed and tapered off her efforts as the clouds finished parting.
    Now the rain that fell wasn’t excessive, though it was enough to darken the ground visibly even at this distance. She judged it enough to water the fields and orchards without threatening anything; it was time to let nature and the careful pulling of the reverend dyara handle the matter. Waiting for the clouds to reach the village gave her enough time to slip between two collector bins and peer over the edge of the temple wall. From up here, she could see into Falkon’s courtyard, and could tell that the chickens had been fed and the filly groomed.
    The young girl now swept the courtyard stones, while the boy ... well, Chanson couldn’t see where he was, but she knew the foreigner had bartered with their mother for chores out of them in exchange for teaching them to read and write once the busy planting season was over and the more leisurely weeding season began. All of the mothers and fathers had agreed to the bargain, after the reverend dyara Kedle had examined his writing skills in Sundaran and pronounced them more than adequate for the task.
    The elderly woman had declared her fingers too gnarled and stiff with dyara ’s disease to teach the children, while Chanson would be busy teaching their dyarina how to walk through the fields and gauge the water needs of all the various plants and animals this season. Someone needed to teach the villagers the basics, and the foreigner needed to build up a source of wealth for himself, not just tend Falkon’s farm in the would-be warrior’s absence.
    Despite the way the clouds darkened the late afternoon light, Eduor himself was