Fall of Angels

LXVI

AS HE HEADED back up to the tower’s top level, Nylan paused on the steps, looking into the tower’s third level with eyes and senses. There, in the darkness, a silver-haired guard held a silver-haired infant daughter to her breast and gently rocked back and forth on the rocking chair that all the guards, and even Nylan, had helped to make.

“Hush, little Kyalynn, hush little angel …” Siret’s voice was low, but sweet, and apparently disturbed none of the guards sleeping on the couches in the alcoves spaced along the tower walls and separated by the dividers many had not only crafted, but personally decorated and carved.

Some remained awake.

Nylan could see where one of the other silver-haired marines-Istril-now heavy in her midsection-stared through the darkness in his direction.

Did she have the night vision? Had it been conferred by that underjump on all who had gotten the silver hair? How many of the former marines had strange talents, like his or Ryba’s, talents they had never mentioned?

That Nylan did not know, for he had never mentioned that ability, though Ryba had guessed-or learned through her strange fragmentary visions. His eyes slipped back to Siret, his ears picking up the gentle words.

“Hush, little angel and don’t you sigh / Mother’s going to stay here by and by …”

Nylan swallowed. He’d always heard the lullaby with “father” in the words, but he had the feeling that fathers weren’tplaying that big a part in Ryba’s concept of what Westwind should be.

How long he listened he wasn’t certain, only that little Kyalynn was asleep, as was Dephnay, and so were their mothers. His feet were cold by the time he slipped into the joined couches up on the sixth level.

“Where were you?” whispered Ryba.

“I went down to the jakes.”

“That long?”

“I … went … to the bathhouse … it’s more … private.” He felt embarrassed, but the heavy mutton of the night before clearly hadn’t agreed with his system. “The mutton …”

“I see … I think.”

“Then I stopped to listen to Siret singing to her daughter for a moment. You don’t-I didn’t-really think of her as a mother. You see them with those blades, so effective, so …” Nylan paused, searching for the words.

“So good at killing?”

“No. I don’t know. It just touched me, that’s all. I don’t even know why. It’s not as though I really even know her. I just helped a little.”

A shudder passed through Ryba.

“Are you cold?” He reached out to hold her, but found her shoulders, her body warm, despite the chill in the tower. The rounding that was Dyliess made it difficult for him to comfort her, or to stop her silent shaking.

In the end she turned away, without speaking. Even later, after they had fallen asleep, his arm upon her shoulder, Ryba had said nothing, though her silent shakes-had they been silent sobs? — had subsided.