Fall of Angels

LXXXIV

“I’LL TAKE HER.” In the darkness, Nylan slipped out of his side of the bed, his former lander couch, and picked up Dyliess. “She can’t be hungry. You just fed the little pig.”

He checked her makeshift diaper-too much remained makeshift within Tower Btack-but she was dry. Nylan eased into the rocking chair. “Now … now … little one …”

Despite his gentle singing, Dyliess’s moans changed into a full-fledged crying.

Ryba sat up. “I’m tired, but not enough to sleep through that.”

The engineer kept rocking, kept singing. Ryba flopped back on one side and rubbed her forehead. Outside the tower, the night wind whispered, its gentle hissing lost behind the cries and songs in the tower.

Dyliess continued to cry for a time. Then her cries dropped off to moans, and the moans to sniffles. Finally, she gave a last snuffle. Nylan continued to rock, and the wind whispered through the cracks in the shutters.

“I can’t sleep, now,” said Ryba, just above a whisper. “And I have a headache.”

Nylan refrained from saying that he had several, and instead patted Dyliess on the back and stood, walking back and forth between the partly open armaglass window and the cradle. Finally sensing she was asleep, he eased Dyliess into the cradle, then immediately knelt and patted her back with one hand while rocking the cradle with the other.

Dyliess took three noisy breaths and settled back to sleep, but Nylan eased off the rocking slowly. After a time, he stopped and returned to his side of the bed, where he sat on the edge, eyes closed, and rubbed his temples with the fingers of his right hand.

“We haven’t talked about children,” Ryba said quietly into the darkness.

“What about them?”

“You never answered my question. You’re being difficult.”

“Probably.”

“Do you want everything we represent lost?”

Nylan took a deep breath. “I don’t know. It seems as though, so long as I build towers, and bridges, and bathhouses, and smithies, everything is fine, but when I say …oh … never mind … I can’t explain how I feel.”

“You haven’t tried,” said Ryba in a reasonable tone.

“You have everything figured out. If we don’t kill these two men, dozens will arrive, and we’ll have to kill them, too, or be killed. If we don’t use the two men as studs, we might have our gene pool contaminated too soon …”

“Aren’t you being harsh?”

“You’ve said or done all those.” Nylan’s shoulders slumped in the darkness, and his eyes dropped to the cradle. Would Dyliess be as coldly reasonable as her mother?

“We landed with twenty-seven women. No sooner had we landed than a local lord showed up wanting to turn us all into serfs or concubines, or worse, and probably to slaughter all three of you men. Since then, we have made not one aggressive gesture toward the locals. We have not raided; we have not stolen. All we have done is build a place to live where they can’t and try to survive. The locals are still trying to kill us or cheat us … or both. The local women, some of them at least, are risking death to find refuge here. Maybe all this local male behavior is mere lousy socialization. Maybe it’s not. Do you want me to gamble after everything that’s happened? Do you really want Gerlich’s genes to dominate Westwind?”

Nylan rubbed his temples again. Finally, he said, “The killing hurts. Even when I don’t do it, it hurts.”

“You think I like it?”

“I know you don’t,” Nylan said. “I’m telling you something different. It’s part of this net, or whatever it is, but when someone’s killed, a wave of whiteness, like mental acid or something, washes through me.”

“Ayrlyn told me the same thing happens to her.” Ryba paused. “You both have that ability to help healing. They’re probably tied together.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“We still haven’t dealt with the children problem. Do you want me to risk-”

Nylan raised a hand to wave off the question, but realized that Ryba couldn’t see the gesture. “You’ve been right aboutmost things, but … and this sounds like a woman … I still feel violated.”

“I’ve noticed that. You stay on your side of the couches. Are you … do you need time?”

Nylan took a slow deep breath, wondering if time would ever heal anything. “I don’t know that time would heal things.” He paused. “Do you want me to move my stuff elsewhere?”

“No.” Ryba’s voice was cool.

“What do you want?”

“I want you to think about things. We can move the couches apart, if that will help.”

Nylan puzzled at Ryba’s tone, wondering about the wrongness again. “More visions?”

“You could say that.”

Nylan could sense the sadness and reserve in the tired voice, and the anger. “I’m sorry.”

“So am I, but being sorry doesn’t solve things.”

He eased his body next to hers, putting his arms around her shoulders.

She pushed him away. “I don’t need your comfort.”

“Ryba …” He put his arms back around her. Who else could hold her, and who else besides Ryba was strong enough to bring them through? His eyes burned, even as his own anger seethed, but he whispered, “Even marshals need to be held.”

“I don’t need you … I don’t need anyone.”

In the end, he looked into the darkness, while Ryba, the marshal, the farsighted, sobbed silently, again, with her face away from him.

Dyliess slept, and the wind hissed through the window.