The Chaos Balance

XVI

In the deep twilight after the evening meal, Nylan sat in the chair by the north window in his room, rocking Dyliess, singing softly.

“…hush little girl, and don’t you sigh,

Daddy’s forging toys by and by,

and if those toys should fail to please,

Daddy’s going to sing and put you at ease…”

“Toys?” asked Ryba from the door to his quarters. “You have time to forge toys?”

“Not at the moment, but I can sing about them.” He shifted Dyliess on his shoulder and kept rocking, patting her back. She lifted her head, seeking her mother.

As Dyliess looked at her mother, Ryba’s voice softened, and she smiled. “Hello, there, silvertop.” After a moment, she added, “She is beautiful.”

“She is,” Nylan admitted.

“I came to get her for bed, but I wanted to talk to you for a moment. It’s been half a year, and you really never did deal with the questions I had.”

“That’s possible,” the smith said. “I try to avoid those kinds of questions.” He kept rocking slowly, and Dyliess put her head down on his shoulder again.

“We’ve only got four children, a couple on the way, and we don’t know how our genes mix with the locals-or if they will.”

“They will,” the smith affirmed. “I can feel how things mesh. This world is H-norm, or planoformed thoroughly to be that way. Things will work out.”

“We don’t have time just to let them work out.”

“Oh…what did you have in mind?” Nylan wanted to take back the words even as they slipped out.

“Ydrall likes you,” Ryba said. “And we do need to find out how the genes mix. Feeling it isn’t enough.”

“I’m not interested.”

“You were interested enough in Istril that night an eight-day or so ago.”

Nylan contained a wince. “That was a moment of weakness. I’m not the Gerlich type.”

“When it comes to women who take their fancy, all men are Gerlich types. There just aren’t as many who appeal to you. I thought Ydrall might be your type.” Ryba shrugged. “Find someone else, but find them.”

“What do I tell Ayrlyn?” Nylan asked. Why was she so diffident, so uncaring? Had she always been that way, or was it another push? Another shove to tell him to leave?

“Whatever you want. You’re good with words when you choose to be. I really don’t care. You’re the only stud around here, except for Daryn, and that’s a match between locals.”

“You could certainly entice him.” Nylan wanted to wince as the words burst out. She’s trying to provoke you. Don’t drop to her level.

“Be serious. Only Nylan the mighty smith can stand up to the Angel of Westwind.” Ryba laughed harshly.

“That wasn’t fair,” he admitted. Dyliess shivered, and Nylan patted her back again. Then she hiccupped and raised her head again.

“You actually considered whether it was fair. I’m amazed.”

Dyliess hiccupped again.

“Take it easy.” Nylan slipped to his feet and began to walk around the room, patting his daughter’s back and humming. “I try,” he answered Ryba.

“Sometimes.” The Marshal’s eyes turned to her daughter. “Is she hungry?”

“I don’t think so,” Nylan answered softly. “Just sleepy, and a little gassy.” He kept walking, for a time, then slipped past Ryba and across to her quarters, where he slipped Dyliess into her small bed in the inside corner away from the drafts.

Ryba waited until he returned, then said, “We need more children-or we will.”

“That takes men-or technology-or both, and I don’t see much of either around here. You didn’t have to chase Relyn off, you know?” Nylan walked toward the window, but stopped by the former lander couch that was his bed.

“I didn’t. You warned him off, and he was local anyway.”

The smith took a long, slow breath. He didn’t want to get into a discussion of Relyn. It wouldn’t do any good, not when Ryba would start pointing out that Relyn’s religious view of the world’s order fields would eventually hurt Westwind. What did she mean by eventually, anyway? Five hundred years later?

“What do you want?” he finally asked.

“I told you. Find a local to bed. Or another guard.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Don’t think too long,” Ryba said. “I’ve given you the chance to think all winter.”

“I won’t take that long,” he promised.

With a curt nod, Ryba turned toward the door, then stopped. “Will you be here?”

“I have some notes to do-on the mill.”

“Will you listen for Dyliess, then, until I get back?”

“Of course.”

Another nod, and the Marshal was gone.

Nylan walked to the window and looked out, up toward the ridge and the watchtower. He couldn’t see the ice-needle Freyja from his single window.

After he studied the mountains for a time, and his muscles began to relax, he went back to the work table, where he used the striker to light the single candle. Although his night vision was nearly as good as his day vision for most matters, the candle did help in writing and reading. As the flame lengthened, and cast light from the polished bronze reflector onto the table, he sat down on the stool and looked at the papers weighted down under the ornate hilt of a blade that had broken at the tang. He had found it in the plunder from the great battle, long since separated from the actual blade. The hilt was heavy, overdone, and had doubtless added a poor balance that had contributed to the blade’s breaking, along with a tang that had been too narrow, but the hilt itself made a decorative paperweight.

In the dim candlelight, Nylan squinted at the crude paper on the table, then dipped the quill into the ink and began to draw-slowly and carefully. Each section of the mill had to be laid out so that there would be no mistakes. The purple outside the open window turned velvet black, and the chirp and whistle of unnamed insects rose and fell.

At the tap on the door, he looked up. Ayrlyn’s face peered in.

He motioned, and the healer entered, easing the door shut behind her.

“Ryba and Saryn are still down in the great room, talking over something obscure, like whether caltrops are really that effective except in defending fixed emplacements and whether two-handed blades are useful in mounted attacks. Saryn was advocating lances and beefed-up stirrups…”

Nylan smiled wryly.

The healer shook her head and pointed at the stack of papers before Nylan. “What are you working on there?”

“The plans for the sawmill.”

“You didn’t do that for the tower, or the bathhouse, or the smithy,” she pointed out, then leaned over him and kissed the back of his neck.

“I didn’t have to. I was here.”

“You are serious, aren’t you?”

“Ryba practically ordered me to bed Ydrall. She wants to see the gene mix with locals.”

“I take it you were reluctant.”

“That wasn’t the real point. She was giving me another shove. I told her I’d think about it. I have no intention of thinking about it.” He rubbed his forehead.

“You got ink on your forehead,” Ayrlyn said.

He tried to blot it away with the back of his hand. “Then, when I said I wasn’t the Gerlich type, she said I was, except that fewer women appealed to me, and if Ydrall didn’t appeal to find a local who did so that she could confirm that the genes mixed.”

“Did she put it that way?”

“Pretty much.”

Ayrlyn pursed her lips. “That makes you angry.”

“That, and basically being told my prime value is as a stud.”

“She’s angry at you for choosing me.”

“I’m glad I did,” Nylan said. “I wish I’d seen who you were earlier.”

“I wasn’t who I am now back then, if that makes sense. I was a mousy comm officer.”

“Neither was I. I was a withdrawn engineer. I still am.”

Ayrlyn’s eyes dropped to the papers. “Are you going to tell Ryba about all these plans?”

“Not until we’re on our way out of here.”

“She may not let us have mounts.”

“That’s why we need to make it quick,” Nylan said. “Right now, there’s sympathy for me, for you. If we let her drag it out, it will get so unpleasant that people will just want us gone. She’s proved she’s good at that.”

“For someone who wasn’t sure about leaving, you’ve reached a big decision quickly.”

The engineer-smith-healer shook his head. “To see something I should have seen two years ago? Hardly. Hardly.” He took a deep breath.

Ayrlyn bent over and blew out the candle, then kissed the back of his neck again. “You were almost finished for tonight, weren’t you?”

“If you say so…” Nylan eased out of the chair.