Fall of Angels

CIII

“WE DON’T TALK much anymore,” Ryba said quietly. “I miss that.”

“I’m sorry. I guess I don’t much feel like talking a lot of the time,” Nylan said quietly, as he rocked the cradle and watched his daughter’s face through the darkness.

“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.