“They arrived two days ago?”
“Yes, ser.”
“You didn’t want to take them up to her?” Saryn smiled wryly.
“No, ser. I know better when those two arrive. I knew you would be back before long.”
Knowing the chill that Ryba could project-and her anger-Saryn could understand the guard captain’s reluctance either to deliver the missives or merely to leave them for Ryba. “Wait here for me.”
With the three heavy sealed missives in her hand, Saryn walked up the stone steps past the now-empty spaces on the upper levels and the area that had once been an arms practice area during the winter until too many bodies had filled the tower. As she neared the top level, she called, “Marshal…I have some missives for you.”
“The door is open.” Ryba’s words were cool.
Saryn climbed the last three steps, aware that she was breathing a little heavily. She wasn’t in the condition she should have been, or would be later in the spring. Then she stepped through the open doorway and set all three sealed missives on the table, directly before Ryba, who sat with her back to the window.
“These didn’t come today.”
“They came while I was gone. They were waiting for me to give to you.”
“They all fear to hand me anything from him.”
“Do you blame them?”
“No.” Ryba’s green eyes fixed on Saryn. “If you would wait below until I read these.”
“Yes, ser.”
“While you’re waiting, I’d also like you to consider another problem. Too much of the guards’ business is being handled in the local tongue. We need to keep Temple the language of the guards. I’ve asked Istril to think on this as well. The young ones must speak Temple first.” Ryba held up a hand. “Don’t say a word. You’ve insisted that the guard captains give commands in Temple, and the guards all know those. That’s not enough. We need to work in schooling for the children and the new guards. Schooling in Temple.”
Saryn inclined her head, turned, and made her way out back down to the main level.
“That was quick,” said Hryessa.
Her words were in the degraded form of Old Rationalist that the locals used, Saryn noted. “She asked me to wait until she read the messages.”
“So fortunate you should be.”
“She also wants us to use Temple for everything and teach it to the young ones.”
Hryessa frowned. “Only you angels know it well.”
“You speak it, and it might give us an advantage in battle and in trading, especially in years to come when all the young ones know it.”
The guard captain shrugged. “As the Marshal wills.”
Always as Ryba wills. Nylan understood that early. Yet what could those like Llyselle, Istril, and Siret do? They were full-blooded Sybrans, and trying to live in the hot lowlands would have been a slow death sentence. And the women who had fled to Westwind would suffer the same fate as those slaughtered by the false brigands. Even as a half-Sybran, Saryn had found the lowlands oppressive the few times she’d visited Lornth.
After a moment, Saryn smiled at Hryessa. “You might as well get on with your duties.”
“Yes, ser.” Hryessa offered a smile that contained both understanding and sympathy.
“Commander!” Ryba’s voice carried down the five levels of the stone stairs with ease.
Saryn retraced her steps back up the tower. No sooner had she stepped into the small study than Ryba gestured for her to take the seat across the circular table from her. Saryn did, but did not speak, waiting to hear what Ryba had to say.
“You know that Nylan has sent Dyliess a letter every year on her birthday?” Ryba’s words were not quite a question.
“I had wondered when the first messages always came in the spring, and there was always one from the west, sometimes through Lornth, for you.”
“They have to come from there. Nylan and Ayrlyn are living like hermits in some forest to the southwest, but there’s always a letter for Dyliess…and another one for me. One with information he thinks I’ll find useful.”
Saryn did not comment.
“It usually is,” Ryba continued. “The engineer has always known what is useful.”
“Has Dyliess read the letters?” Saryn asked.
“Yes. I’ve read them to her since before she could read. I make copies for her now. I’ve kept the originals in a book for her.” Ryba frowned. “The engineer is generally kind and thoughtful in his writing. He also is careful not to write anything he thinks will offend me.”
“Dyliess doesn’t speak of him.”
“I’ve told her not to, except to me, or to you, if she chooses. It’s better if everyone thinks of him as both mighty and departed for good, and not as a father who is human enough to write letters.” Ryba laughed, softly and bitterly. “If only once a year, long as those missives may be.”
“She must know that he hasn’t forgotten her.”
“That’s true.” Ryba glanced over her shoulder toward the window, still closed, but with the gray hangings pulled back to allow the morning sunlight to pour into the small chamber, illuminating the dust motes that hung in the air.
“Is there anything I should know, then?” asked Saryn. Ryba would not have mentioned the letters without a reason.
“He wrote that our troubles to the west are not over, and that, without aid, Lady Zeldyan may have difficulty holding Lornth.”
“She does provide a buffer,” Saryn temporized. “Do her difficulties lie with Lord Ildyrom’s son? The Jeranyi have always been a problem.”
“That’s but one aspect of it. The Suthyans have reclaimed Rulyarth as well, and have imposed close-to-punitive tariffs on goods bound to Lornth.”
“She’s being squeezed on both sides then. Do we have to do anything?”
“Both young Deryll and the Suthyans would be far less to our liking as neighbors than is Lady Zeldyan. Still…we will have to see, after we deal with Arthanos and the Gallosians.”
Saryn had the chilling sense that Ryba had already seen. “The Gallosians…and not the Suthyans?”
“The Suthyans fight with golds…or use them, or the promise of golds, to get others to fight. We will have to face the Gallosians first. After we deal with Arthanos, you’ll be the one who goes to Lornth,” Ryba went on. “What ever happens, I won’t send you to your death. That much, I do know.”
Ryba was quite capable of lying-except that Saryn would have detected it, and Ryba knew that. Still, from what Saryn had seen in the under-space battles with the demon towers, what she’d felt on the neuronet, and what she’d experienced and observed in the ten years since the angels had come to the Roof of the World, some forms of living might well be worse than death, not that she wished to experience either. But why would she mention that she would not send me to my death?
“Would you like to question the Gallosian now?” Saryn asked quietly.
“I’ll do it this afternoon in the common room before the evening meal, with at least a squad of guards present…and you, of course, and either Istril or Siret, whoever happens to be more available.”
“Yes, ser.”
“That will be all.”
Saryn nodded, then turned and made her way back down the cold stone steps of Tower Black, wondering, as always, just what Ryba had foreseen and exactly why she intended to send Saryn to Lornth.
XIV
Just past mid afternoon, Saryn sat at the end of the trestle table nearest the hearth in the main-floor great room. To her right was Llyselle, and to her left sat Murkassa.
“…the scouts reported that half the Suthyan party took the road to Lornth and that the trader was with that group,” Llyselle said. “The others took the northern road, the one to Middlevale, which avoids most of the Lornian lands on the way to Rulyarth and Armat.”
“The trader is traveling through Lornth…or part of it. Have you told the Marshal?”