“Could I ask why?” The marshal’s voice was calm, soft. “Is it just me? You go off and talk to Ayrlyn.”
“I worry, and I worry about things that seem set in stone. I feel like, when I talk to you, we talk in circles.” When Ryba did not answer, he continued, his eyes still on Dyliess. “We go back and forth saying the same things. If you try to avoid using force, people die. If I don’t build towers and weapons and what amounts to a low-tech military infrastructure, people will die. If you don’t play tyrant and I won’t play stud,our children won’t have any future.” His voice dropped into silence.
Again, Ryba was silent, and he continued to rock the cradle and to watch the sleeping Dyliess. In time, he spoke. “Even as each killing hurts more, I become better at making weapons and using them. I can’t walk away from you, or Istril, or Siret, or little Dephnay who won’t know her mother or her father-not now-but I keep asking myself how long I can continue doing this.” He gave a rueful grin he doubted Ryba could see through the darkness. “How long before I’m so blind in a battle that I get spitted? And if I don’t kill my allotted one or two, who else will get killed?”
“You think I like it?” asked Ryba, her voice still calm. “I can’t ask anything without the threat of some sort of force. I can’t get anyone to see what I see. If I try to use reason, even you fight me. If I use coercion and trickery, then what does that make me? But I have to, if I want a daughter, and if I want her to have a future. There aren’t any choices for me, Nylan. And there aren’t many for you.”
Nylan looked back at Dyliess’s peaceful and innocent face, asking himself, Were we like that once? Does life force us into the use of force and violence, just to survive?
“You have visions of what must be, and when you don’t follow those, people suffer and die,” Nylan finally said. “You’ve told me that, and I see that. I see it, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
“All I want is for us to be free, for the guards, me, Dyliess, not to be trapped in a culture in which some horses are treated better than women. That’s not asking a lot.”
“It doesn’t seem so,” agreed Nylan. “But for us to be free seems to require more recruits and more and more weapons. More recruits makes the locals madder, and that means we have to defend ourselves, which leads to more deaths, and more plunder. That allows us to get stronger, but only if we keep our deaths few, which means better training and more weapons. Better training means less food-growing and hunting, and that means a military culture, probably eventually hiring out to the powers that be.” Nylan cleared his throat.“Is that what you see? Is that what you want?”
“I wish I could see a more peaceful way, but I don’t. Westwind will have to hire out some guards, but from what little I do see, we will be able to prosper by building better trade roads, by levying tariffs on them, and by protecting them.” Ryba paused. “I don’t see this as the clear and unified picture you paint, either. I catch an image here, or there, and I have to try to visualize how it fits. I always worry that I won’t put the pieces of this puzzle together right, and that I’ll fail and someone else will die who shouldn’t.”
Nylan slowly eased the cradle to a stop. Dyliess gave the smallest of snores, then sighed. He slipped under the light and thin blanket that was all he needed in the summer evening.
“Would you hold me?” asked Ryba. “I know you’ve been forced, tricked, and coerced, and I’m not proud of it. But it’s lonely. I’m not asking for love. Just hold me.”
In the darkness Nylan slipped from his couch to hers, where, uncertain as he was, Nylan put his arms around her, his eyes open to the rough planking overhead, wondering how long he could hold her, yet knowing she had no one else.
CIV
“HISSL HAS REQUESTED relief from his post in Clynya for three eight-days,” Sillek says, looking up from the table and stifling a yawn. His breath causes the candles in the nearer candelabra to flicker.
“He’s been there for a while, hasn’t he?” asks Zeldyan, gently bouncing Nesslek on one knee, while occasionally picking up a morsel from the small sitting room table and eating it.
“Yes.”
“Why does it bother you?”
“Terek says he’s up to something, something not exactly wizardly. Strange people have been visiting him-armsmen no one recognizes. He’s been laying up enough provisions for a small army. Koric told me that. He laughed. Said that Hissl has no idea how to do something secretly.”
“He’s not … surely he wouldn’t try to … he’s not stupid enough for treason.”
“No. And he’s not subtle enough to try it that way. If he were out to overthrow me, his best chance would have been to murder Koric and open the grasslands to Ildyrom in return for support from Jerans. He is smart enough to consider that. Since he didn’t, it’s something else.” Sillek yawns and looks at his son. “When will he go to sleep?”
“Soon,” says Zeldyan with a laugh. “Keep talking. Your voice soothes him. So what is Hissl doing?”
“I’m just guessing, but I’d say he’s going to mount his own expedition to the Roof of the World.”
“Why? He wouldn’t know a sword from a dagger.”
“He is a wizard, and he told Terek last year that he thought the thunder-throwers of those angel women would not last a year.”
Zeldyan frowns. “Why would he risk such a thing?”
“He dislikes being second to Terek. He would like lands in his own right and a title. I could not back down on my promise on that, especially if Hissl defeats them, and he knows that. My word would be forfeit to every holder and every wizard in Candar.” Sillek frowns, then stifles another yawn.
“You’re more tired than your son. Perhaps you should be the one going to sleep.”
“I’m not that tired.”
Zeldyan laughs and cradles Nesslek in her arms. “His eyes are drooping, and I’ll be able to put him in the cradle soon. Your mother thinks ill of my closeness with him.”
“I know. She says nothing, though.”
“You don’t mind, do you? He’ll grow so fast. I saw that happen with Fornal and Relyn.”
“Have you heard anything about Relyn?”
Zeldyan shakes her head. “Why are you worried if Hissl is going to attack the Roof of the World? If he wins, you don’t have to go. If he loses, he still may weaken them.”
“I’m no longer sure about that. I wonder if I see Ildyrom’s fine hand behind all this.”
“Keep talking,” says Zeldyan as she slips to her feet and steps toward the cradle.
“Terek says that every time that someone has attacked those devil women, the women have gotten a lot of plunder. They’re selling a lot of plate armor and blades to traveling traders for supplies. They’ve got mounts and some livestock, and a tower and they’re building more buildings …”
Zeldyan nods to Sillek to keep speaking as she eases Nesslek into the cradle and starts to rock it gently.
“ … now Ildyrom is as devious as a giant water lizard and about twice as dangerous. What if he’s backing Hissl, not directly, but through some adventurers? Ildyrom can’t lose. If Hissl wins, I lose the wizard that’s kept him at bay. I also lose face, and that’s a problem with the holders that will tie me up. If Hissl loses, that’s worse. Those angels will have enough plunder that it will take all the free armsmen in Candar to pry them out. And even more women will start fleeing unhappy situations here and in Gallos, and whatever it is, those people on the Roof of the World know how to fight and to teach other to fight. So all my holders will be up in arms if I don’t act. So will Karthanos. And Ildyrom, with his pledge not to take the grasslands, loses nothing, only a small chest of coins. Even if I win, it will be a bloody mess, and it will be years before we could consider more than holding on to what we already have.”
“That’s more than enough now,” Zeldyan points out.
“I know that. But from Ildyrom’s position, a few coins behind Hissl is a cheap way to weaken Lornth no matter what happens. And I can’t afford to stop Hissl, either. That’s what’s so demonish about it.”