Fall of Angels (The Saga of Recluce #6)(26)

"Next," said a voice.

He looked up to see Ayrlyn standing there. "Sorry." He stood and moved away from the stream.

She smiled. "You don't have to be."

"You're doing well with Narliat."

"He figures he'd better do well. He doesn't have anywhere else to go. Besides, he likes the ratio of men to women."

"Has anyone .. . ?"

"Right now, Ryba would have their heads, but that won't last. She probably knows that, too. She thinks of everything." Ayrlyn paused. "Just be careful, Nylan. She uses everyone."

He nodded, hoping the darkness would cover his lack of enthusiasm.

Ayrlyn bent to rinse her platter, and Nylan walked to the lander, passing a pair of marines on the way. One was Huldran, the stocky blond who helped with stone-cutting; the other a solid brunette whose name he had not learned.

"Evening, ser."

"Good evening, Huldran. Are you on sentry duty?"

"Not tonight. Not tonight."

Once in the forward area of the lander, Nylan pulled off his boots. Then he sat in the darkness for a time barefooted, before he pulled off the shipsuit that, despite careful washing, was getting both frayed and stained.

When Ryba still did not appear, he finally stretched out, folding the cover back to just above his waist. His shoulders and his forearms ached, and his feet hurt. He also worried about Ryba-their relationship. A lot of the time she was distant, commanding, just like he imagined an antique nomad-liege of Sybra. Of course, that was her heritage, and Candar seemed to reinforce those traits.

In the distance, he could hear laughter, but could not recognize the voices.

As his eyes began to close, he heard footsteps on the hard floor of the lander, and he propped himself up on his elbow. "I told you I wouldn't be long." Slowly, Ryba slipped out of her boots, and then out of the shipsuit, and eased under the thin cover. Her lips were cool, but found his, and her skin was like satin against him.

Later-much, much later-they eased apart, although Ryba's hand held his for a moment.

"Don't go away." Ryba rolled away from Nylan. "I'll be back in a moment."

"Where would I go?"

She ruffled his hair slightly and pulled on her shipsuit over her naked body, thrusting her bare feet into her shipboots- boots that were beginning to wear, as were everyone's.

Nylan wondered absently if traders had boots, or if footwear would become yet another problem. He leaned back on the couch, letting the cool air from the door waft over him. Sometimes ... on the one hand, Ryba was a good leader, captain, whatever, and she was receptive, sometimes aggressive in sex ... and yet... he sometimes felt more like an object than a person.

His eyes closed. It had been a long day, as were they all, and he.was barely aware when Ryba returned, slipping off her suit and lying beside him under the thin blanket that was almost too hot.





XVI



THE SUN HAD barely cleared the trees on the eastern side of the sheer drop-off at the base of the meadow when Nylan laid the endurasteel brace and the crowbarlike local blade beside one of Ryba's Sybran blades. Beneath the blades was a crude quench trough, half-filled with water and the hydraulic oil for which there was really no other use-not for centuries, probably.

Then the engineer walked around the working space outside the base of the unfinished tower construction. Should he consider a dry moat as well? He shook his head. Half the year or more a moat would be a bug-filled mess, and the other half the high snows would render it useless.

"Stop spacing out. Get on with it," he muttered, turning to the firm cells. The power bank was down to twenty percent, and the system wouldn't work at levels below twelve. His eyes went to the windmill, which turned in the lighter morning breeze. The cell being charged was over eighty percent. Another day might find it at ninety percent if the wind picked up, if...

Nylan laughed ruefully. Far less than a day of continuous heavy laser usage would discharge one bank of cells, and it would take nearly half a local season to recharge the individual cells in just one of the four banks they had brought down from the Winterlance. The more he tightened the beam and the shorter the energy pulse, though, the less the effective power drain, and that meant some things were less power-intensive. Darkness knew he'd better find less power-intensive ways to use the laser.

With a little more than half the stone for the tower cut, he'd exhausted two banks and most of the third. The emergency charger had recharged three cells, but each bank held ten. Still ... he had gotten more proficient with managing the laser's power flows, and each row of stones took a shade less power. Also, the cut edges and leftover chunks could be used, perhaps for the less exposed inside walls.

Terwhit... terwhit. The call of one of the birds-a green and brown scavenger-drifted across the high meadow from beyond the field, along with the smoke from the small cook fire.

The engineer studied the curves of the Sybran blade again, with his eyes, senses, and fingers, frowning as his senses touched a slight imperfection in the hilt. Then he grinned. Who was he deceiving? He was no bladesmith, just a dumb engineer trying to figure out how to counterfeit a workable sword while no one was around to second-guess him if his idea didn't work-using questionable techniques in an even more questionable environment.

Terwhit. With a rustle of feathers, the small greenish-brown bird flitted from a twisted pine in the higher rocks behind the partly built tower toward the firs in the lower southwest corner of the high meadow.