Fall of Angels (The Saga of Recluce #6)(85)

"I'm sorry."

"Do you know what it's like to see pieces of the future? Not to know, for certain, if they're what will be or what might be? Or whether you'll bring them into being by reacting against them?"

Nylan cleared his throat. "I said I was sorry. I hadn't thought about things quite that way."

Ryba looked at the stones of the wall beside Nylan. "You deal with stone and brick and metal-the certain things. I'm wrestling with what will sustain life here for generations to come. What do I do about men who are killers? Or those who will leave? Or may leave?"

"I don't like the implication that I'll leave." Nylan sat down beside the dark-haired woman and touched her shoulder. "I don't have any pat answers. I do what I can, everything that I can think Of, as well as I can."

"I know, Nylan. You work like two people. You've done things I don't think are possible, and Westwind wouldn't be without you. But a place isn't a community without traditions, values, that sort of thing, holding it together. That's why we need your tower, Ayrlyn's songs-"

"And your ability to teach and create military strength?"

Ryba nodded. "It's going to be tough."

"It's already hard."

"It's going to get harder," she predicted, looking out at the cold shape of Freyja. "A lot harder."

In the end, they lay skin to skin, and, after a time, Ryba was passionate, demanding, and warm. Predictably, before they had even relaxed, she had to get up.

"You just went," he protested sleepily.

"There are some things, especially now, where I don't control the timing." She pulled her gown down and padded down the stone steps.

Fighting exhaustion and sleep, Nylan tried to analyze the subtle wrongness behind her words . . . but nothing made sense.

Before either solutions or sleep reached him, Ryba padded back up the steps and slipped into the couch. Her cool hand stroked his forehead for a moment. "You're a good man, Nylan. No matter what happens, remember that." She squeezed his shoulder.

He squeezed her hand in return and murmured, "Know you try your best, for everyone."

She shuddered, and let him hold her, but she would not turn to him as she sobbed silently.





XLIII



IN THE NORTH yard outside the bathhouse, Nylan picked up the hammer and chisel. Behind him, on the roof, Denalle and Huldran spiked roof tiles onto the cross-stringers mortised into the main timbers to provide a flat surface.

Overhead, the clouds were white and puffy, like summer clouds, but the chill in the late autumn wind belied that. To the west, the clouds seemed evenly spaced, and Nylan hoped that they would stay that way. His eyes dropped to the pair on the roof-Cessya had ridden off with Ayrlyn.

". . . damned gourds, whatever they were, never ripened .. . bitter in the stew, worse than that rancid bear meat. . ."

"Just keep complaining, Denalle, and I'll spike your hand right under the next tile," snapped Huldran.

"Potatoes are good ... hope they last..."

"More spikes, Denalle."

Nylan let his eyes drop from the unfinished roof to the dark stone before him that would be a water-conduit section.

"And you cannot make a few channels in stone?" Narliat had asked, at Gerlich's prompting. And Ryba had just left Nylan hanging.

His choices were simple. Abandon the idea of showers. Finish the trough pipes in wood, which would need continuous maintenance, or try low-tech stone-cutting methods. In a low-tech culture, cleanliness was important for health and survival, and if he didn't make it easy or halfway convenient, cleanliness would go the way of the Winterlance. Besides, abandoning anything would cause problems with Gerlich. He was coming to like the big man less and less. Was that because he was coming to trust his feelings more? And Ryba-how much was she deceiving him, just to ensure that Westwind would survive?

He moistened his lips. In some ways, it didn't matter. He was stuck finishing the bathhouse the hard way. He took a deep breath and studied the chunk of dark stone, letting his senses drop into the heavy mass, following the lines of stress and fault. If he nudged that line... and boosted that... then, just maybe, the stone would break ...

He brought the hammer down on the chisel. Clung! The impact shivered up his left arm. There was a technique to chiseling stone, and he had no idea of what it was. He raised the hammer again.

Clung! A flake of stone the size of his thumb flew from the chisel, but the reverberation still numbed his arm. A dozen strokes later, he had learned a better angle and not to grip the chisel so tightly. He also had only chipped out a narrow groove in the stone.

The clouds had almost disappeared, leaving the sky a bright green-blue, but the wind seemed stronger, and colder.

Even before he heard the hooves, Nylan could sense the approaching horses, knowing that they were marines-and Ayrlyn. There was no sense of the white disorderliness that seemed to accompany the arrival of locals.

The five horses, and the cart acquired from Skiodra and since rebuilt, headed over the ridge and down the track to the tower. The clay remained damp enough from the previous rain that there was no dust. Riding pillion behind Istril was a woman in tattered leathers, with long brown hair. Another refugee? wondered the engineer. And Istril? She wasn't riding any differently. Was that another of Ryba's foresights? Something that might be?