Fall of Angels (The Saga of Recluce #6)(163)

"Nylan?"

He looked down in the direction of the drying racks.

Ayrlyn stood at the base of the rocks. "Would you mind if I climbed up to talk to you? You look like you need someone to talk to. I do."

Nylan waved her up and waited until she settled on a boulder beside him. Unlike Nylan, who sat in the dark in a shirt, the healer wore shirt, tunic, and a light ship jacket.

"Neither you and Ryba talk much anymore."

"What is there to talk about? The situation seems impossible, that's all. I feel so awkward. Weryl's my son, and Kyalynn's my daughter, and I've never touched Istril or Siret." He laughed, a soft harsh sound. "Except with a wand in sparring. Yet I feel that Ryba wants me to ignore them. Even though it wasn't my idea, they are my children."

"You try so hard. Siret and Istril know that."

"Does trying count? Or is Ryba right, that, in the end, only survival and results count?" He cleared his throat. "Oh, there are all the religions and philosophies about life being worth nothing if it isn't lived well-but all that's written for people who have the time and the resources to read, not for a bunch of high-tech refugees trying to scrape together a future on a cold mountaintop."

"Go on," said Ayrlyn.

"All I do is cobble together infrastructures that most places have years, if not decades, to build-and figure out better low-tech weapons for Ryba to train people to use. Every time someone dies, it hurts."

Ayrlyn nodded.

"But I'm supposed to ignore that, too." He paused. "I'm feeling too sorry for myself. The deaths hurt you, too."

"Death's everywhere, Nylan. We could have died on the Winterlance. Maybe we did. Maybe this is all an elaborate illusion."

"It's no illusion." He glanced up at the cold stars. "There, I didn't feel each death personally."

"This might be better," reflected Ayrlyn. "Death was a sanitary and distant occurrence there. It just happened- light-minutes away at the end of a de-energizer. No more demons. Or no more angels. And we could ignore it. Here we can't."

"Most people can-here or there. We just can't."

Ayrlyn's hand touched his forearm.

"Your fingers are cold." He took her hand in his, then looked up again. The stars above were bright. Bright and unfamiliar. Bright and cold. He squeezed her fingers, gently.





CII



SILLEK TOSSES THE scroll, wrinkled and smudged, with fragments of wax still clinging to one edge, on the sitting room table. Then he bends over Zeldyan and scoops Nesslek out of his consort's arms.

"You're the best thing I've seen today, except for your mother."

"I'm a thing now?" Zeldyan's voice carries but a faint edge.

"Of course not. That wasn't what I meant." He looks down at his son in his arms and puts his forehead gently against the boy's. "Was it? We didn't mean any insults to your mother." . "Oooooo ..." offers Nesslek.

"That's what he thinks," responds Zeldyan, "for all your fancy words." She smiles fondly at her consort.

"Would you read that abomination I dropped on the table and tell me what you think?"

"A lordly matter? Your mother would not approve, my lord." Zeldyan smiles again, more ironically, as she lifts the scroll. "Why do you want me to read it?"

"You know why," Sillek counters with a laugh, "but I'll tell you anyway. Because you're your father's daughter, and you can think. He's stuck in Rulyarth trying to rebuild that mess the traders left, and I need someone with brains that I can also trust."

"Your mother would definitely not approve of that."

"Of course not. You have brains, and you love me. She didn't approve of our joining after she found out I'd fallen in love with you. 'Love is dangerous for rulers, Sillek.' It gets in the way of honor and patrimony." He walks to the window and stands there, still carrying Nesslek, 'waiting as Zeldyan reads through the scroll.

After a time, he finally asks, "Have you got it?"

"It's a letter from Ildyrom, renouncing all interest in the grasslands. There are many flowery phrases, but that's what it says ... I think."

"Exactly." Sillek bites off the word. "Exactly. It came with a small chest of golds."

"That seems odd," muses Zeldyan. "Last year he built that fort to try to take them from you. I wouldn't trust him."

"I don't, but I think the gesture is real, and it's a danger."

"Not having to fight over the grasslands is a danger?"

"All my holders will know that Ildyrom has sued for peace. Your father holds Rulyarth, and the locals there seem to be pleased with his efforts. We offered a percentage of our trade revenues from Rulyarth to the Suthyan trade council-"

"You did?"

"It was your father's idea-much cheaper for both of us. They couldn't really maintain three ports anyway."

"And we can even if the traders couldn't?"

"If we expand trade, we can. They just wanted quick golds." Sillek shrugs and lifts Nesslek to his shoulder. The infant burps-loudly. "The bay is much better than Armat..."