“I’m not like Gerlich.”
“No. But we need children if Westwind is to survive. And if Westwind doesn’t survive, most women on this planet won’t have a life worth living.”
“You need a purpose, don’t you?” asked Nylan. “You have to have something that makes it all worthwhile.”
“It took you this long to figure that out?” Ryba gave a harsh bark, not quite a laugh, and Dyliess murmured and turned on the coarse sheet. The marshal bent down and rocked the cradle. “I’m not satisfied with mere survival, and you aren’t either, Nylan. You just won’t admit it. You’ll nearly kill yourself to build a tower that will last for centuries, but you won’t admit it. You’ll risk ridicule for being obsessed with building, but you won’t admit you need a larger purpose, too.” The marshal paused, then added, “You still didn’t answer my question. You asked me to do something, and I said I would-if you’d give me an alternative.”
“I don’t know.” Nylan looked down at Dyliess.
“I always thought men liked the idea of harems.” Ryba shrugged. “Or we can keep on the way we are. It’s a little messy, but …”
“I’m not Gerlich, and I need to think about it.” With a last look at Dyliess, Nylan turned and walked down the steps-out through the big south door and out into the shadows that were falling from the cold north across the Roof of the World. His feet carried him to the smithy site, and the rocks and the mortar. At least what he built was solid. At least he could see what happened with mortar and stone and timber.
He needed to talk with Ayrlyn. He needed that, but not yet. Not yet.
LXXX
“THAT’S IT.” NYLAN tapped the last wedge into place, ensuring that the fourth fir trunk would remain in place over the stone culvert. Ryba had declared that food and planting came first. So he’d done the bridge and culvert backward, putting the heavy rock riprap in place on both uphill and downhill sides of the culvert first, doing everything he could do alone until Saryn and the others could fell and bring him the trunks he needed.
“Last year, this was just bushes and grass,” said Huldran, setting down a heavy stone just beyond the footings that held the bridge timbers. She looked down at the stone-lined channel. “Do you think we need this big a bridge?”
“I hope it’s big enough,” the engineer answered. He gestured toward the tower and the bathhouse behind it. “We’re changing the land, and the guard will keep expanding-according to the marshal. The more hard roads and buildings, the more runoff. This is to keep it channeled from the fields.”
“What if there’s no rain?” grunted Cessya, mixing water into the dry ingredients of the mortar.
“That’s next year’s project,” laughed Nylan, slightly nervously. “See that swale down there? If we dam it at the north end, then we can put a spillway, a little one, in the middle, and run a ditch from the south end down to the fields.”
“The Rats’d have your head, Engineer, for all this landchanging,” Huldran commented.
“They’d do the same if they were trying to survive here.”
“They like hotter places.”
“They can have’em,” snapped Cessya. “Mortar’s ready.”
The three lugged the battered and leaking mortar tub up to the flat spot beyond the end of the timbers. Huldran andNylan began to fill the spaces between the heavy rocks, the wedges, and the timbers.
Once the mortar dried and held the trunks, then Nylan could complete the bridge’s roadbed, not so wide as he would have liked, but wide enough for a good-sized wagon and a wall on each side.
As he paused before taking another trowel of mortar, he took in the short stretch of paving stones that extended from the west end of the unfinished structure toward the causeway before the tower. Westwind was looking more and more permanent.
Nylan eased the mortar into place, while Huldran took the cart back up beyond the tower and to the base of the rocky hills to bring back more stones for both the bridge roadbed and for fill.
In the low-walled flat beyond the causeway, blade practice had begun again. Ryba had handed the carry-pack with Dyliess in it to Selitra. Facing her was Blynnal, and the local woman cowered once she held the wooden wand.
Saryn stood beside Blynnal, correcting her.
Behind Saryn, Hryessa and Murkassa practiced, already, from what Nylan could tell, making good progress toward achieving Ryba’s standards for all the guards, whether originally angel marines or local refugees.
The engineer pursed his lips as he bent for more mortar. Results-Ryba got them. He just wasn’t fond of the tactics.
“Working hard again, I see.”
Nylan glanced up to see Ayrlyn standing there. “What else do obsessed engineers do?”
“I’m leaving tomorrow morning …” The redhead let her words trail off.
“All right.” This time, Nylan understood. “Can I finish up this batch of mortar?”
She nodded.
The engineer turned to Cessya. “I’ll finish here. Would you go find Huldran and tell her just to unload the stones and then take the cart back. I need to talk to Ayrlyn about what we need from her next trading trip.”
“Yes, ser.” Cessya grinned. “Walking’s easier than moving stones.”
“We’ll make up for it after the noon meal,” Nylan promised, returning her grin, then looking back down at the stone in front of him.
“I’m still looking for an anvil?” Ayrlyn asked as Cessya started uphill, toward the tower and the rock-strewn canyon beyond the stable canyon.
“We need spikes, and nails, almost any kind of hardware. A set of hammers, I’d guess, big ones for the forge.” Nylan troweled the mortar smooth in the joints between two stones. “And some circular saw blades for the sawmill.”
“We don’t have one,” the redhead pointed out with a smile. “We don’t have a forge, either.”
“We’ll have both, before the end of the year.” The smith extended the trowel for more mortar.
“Nylan … why do you drive yourself so hard?”
“Because … what else can I do? Ryba wants to change this world to one where women rule, and she’ll leave the ground soaked with blood, including mine, if I try to stop her. Besides, she’s right about the way women are treated, and you can’t change that without even greater force.” He paused and wiped his forehead with the back of his forearm.
“Building things won’t change that,” Ayrlyn reflected. “You’re just allowing her to do more.”
“What am I supposed to do? I’ve got three children, and I only knew about one of them until they were born. Am I just going to condemn them to a short and nasty life? If they have strong walls and warmth and clean water, that leaves them less at the mercy of this friggin’ world. I don’t like it, but Ryba’s the only ship in port.”
“What do you want?”
The smith finished the joint, and extended the trowel to the battered tub for more mortar. “I don’t know. I know what I don’t want. I don’t want killing after killing. I don’t want to be cold and dirty and hungry. I don’t want that for Dyliess or Weryl or Kyalynn.” He shrugged, then applied the trowel again.
“You want to be appreciated, but you don’t want to force people to appreciate you. You want to be loved, but not used.”
“You might say that,” he admitted. “But that’s true of most people. Don’t you feel that way?”
“Yes”-Ayrlyn smiled warmly-“but I thought we were talking about you. You feel responsible for all your children, and yet you feel used. And you won’t say anything about it. You don’t like to talk about your feelings, not directly, and you try to avoid it. Was it that way growing up?”
“My mother always said there was no use in complaining. No one cared, and we might as well save our breath. So Karista and I didn’t. The older I got, the truer it seemed.” He set down the trowel as he finished the last of the mixed mortar. “What about you?”
“There you go again. Two sentences about you, and switch the subject to me.” Ayrlyn laughed. “My father was the warm one, and he joked a lot. He was quiet about it, but he also made it known, like your mother, that outside the family, no matter what people said, most didn’t care.”