“If your hair had become gray, that had to be a long time from now.” He stood and stretched.
“Nylan … I wasn’t finished, and it hurt that I didn’t finish.”
“Ryba,” Nylan offered gently, “no one who really cares about anything is ever finished with life. And you care a lot.” He forced a smile, then began to dress himself.
Ryba finished with the bone buttons of the trousers and then buttoned the shirt. “You’re probably right, but it was real
.. too real.”
“Another one of your senses of what will happen?”
She nodded. “They come at odd times, but some have already happened.”
“Oh?” He hadn’t heard that part.
“Little things, or not so little. I saw your tower almost from the beginning-and I know what the bathhouse will look like.” She sat back on the joined lander couches that served as their bed and pulled on her boots.
“Who is Dyliess?”
“Our daughter. I’m pregnant, and she’ll be born in the spring, just before the passes melt.”
Nylan’s mouth dropped open. “You … never …”
“She’ll be a good daughter, and don’t you forget that, Engineer.” Ryba smiled. “I wanted the timing right. You can’tdo that much in the winter here, and next summer … we’ll have a lot of problems when people realize we’re here to stay. They think the winter will finish us, but it won’t.”
“Promise?” he asked.
“I can promise that, at least so long as you keep building.” She stood in the open doorway at the top of the steps. “I want things to be right for Dyliess, and they will be.”
“A daughter … you’re sure?”
“You wanted a son?”
“I never thought-one way or another.” He shook his head, still at a loss, still amazed.
“You’ll have a son. I’ll promise that, too.” Her voice turned soft, almost sad.
“You don’t …”
“I know what to promise, Nylan. I do.” Her eyes met his, and they were deep and chill, filled with pain. “There’s no time to be melancholy, Engineer.”
The forced cheer in her voice contradicted her calm and pale face. As they looked at each other, Nylan could hear the hum of voices from below, and the smell of something cooking, although he wasn’t sure he was in any hurry to find out what Kyseen had improvised for breakfast.
“We do our best, Nylan, in spite of what may be.”
“May be or will be? Can these visions of yours be changed?” Nylan sat down on the couch-bed and reached for his shipboots, his eyes still on her.
Ryba shrugged. “Maybe I only see what can’t be changed. Maybe it can be. I don’t know, because this is something new.”
“All of this is something new.” Nylan pulled on his shipboots, getting so worn that he could feel stones through them.
“You need new boots. You ought to check the spares. We’ve only got about twenty pair left over.”
“I suppose you’re right.” Nylan stood.
“I have to be. I’m the marshal. You have to, also. You’re the mage. Now that we’ve settled that, let’s see if breakfast is remotely palatable.” She started down the steps, the hardheels of her boots echoing off the harder stone, and Nylan followed, trying not to shake his head. A daughter, for darkness’ sake, and Ryba had named her, and seen her in a vision of her own death. At that, he did shake his head. The Roof of the World was strange, and getting stranger even as he learned more.
They walked toward the pair of tables stretched out from the hearth. In a room that could have handled a dozen or more tables that size with space to spare, the two almost looked lost. The benches had finally been finished, and for the moment everyone could sit at the same time.
Ryba marched toward the head of the table, but Nylan lagged, still looking around the great room, amazed that they had completed so much in barely a half year. Of course, the tower was really not much more than a shell, but still … He smiled for a moment.
Breakfast in the great hall had gotten regularized-a warm drink, usually a bitter grass and root tea; cold fried bread; some small slices of cheese; any meat left over from supper-if there had been meat served-and something hot, although it could be as odd as batter-dipped and fried greens or kisbah, a wild root that Narliat had insisted was edible. Edible kisbah might be, reflected Nylan, but something that tasted like onions dipped in hydraulic oil had little more to recommend it than basic nutrients. It made the heavy fried bread seem like the best of pastries by comparison. So far the few eggs dropped by the scrawny chickens had gone into the bread or something else fixed by Kyseen.
“Good morning, Nylan,” said Ayrlyn.
“How did you sleep last night?” the engineer asked the redhead, who huddled inside a sweater and a thermal jacket and sat on the sunny south casement ledge that overlooked the meadow and fields.
“Not well. It’s getting cold. When will the furnace be finished?”
“Not until after the shutters,” he answered.
“The shutters won’t help that much.”
“Unless we cut a lot more wood and finish the shutters,the furnace won’t be much use,” Nylan pointed out.
“Don’t we have any armaglass at all?” Ayrlyn shivered inside the jacket.
“There’s enough for six windows.” He put his lips together and thought. “Maybe eight. Most of them ought to go in here. These are south windows.”
“That’s why I’m sitting here trying to warm up. I’m not a Sybran nomad,” Ayrlyn pointed out, turning slightly on the stone so that the sun hit her back full on. “Saryn and I could make simple frames that would go on pivots if you could mortar the pivot bolts or whatever in place. Can you cut the armaglass?”
“If the laser lasts.” Nylan laughed, then frowned as his stomach growled.
“You need to eat.”
“I can hardly wait.” The engineer glanced toward the table where Ryba was serving herself.
“It’s not bad this morning-some fried meat that has some taste, but not too much, if you know what I mean, and there’s a decent hot brew. Narliat showed Selitra a bush that actually makes something close to tea. Bitter, but it does wake you up.”
“All right. Bring me a window design, and we’ll see what we can do.” He started toward the table.
“We need salt, demon-damn!” Gerlich’s voice rose from the end of the table nearest the completed but empty hearth. “Without salt, drying meat’s a tricky thing, and I don’t want to smoke everything.”
“I’ll have Ayrlyn put it high on the trading list.” Ryba’s voice, quieter than Gerlich’s, still carried the length of the room.
Gerlich strode by, wearing worn and tattered brown leathers rudely altered to fit his large frame and carrying a bow and quiver. “Good day, Nylan.”
“Good day. How’s the bow going?”
Gerlich stopped and shrugged. “It doesn’t shoot far enough, or with enough power, but it’s good for some of the smaller animals-the furry rodents.” He grinned. “I’m tanningthose pelts-Narliat told me some of the roots and an acorn they use-and by winter I might have enough for a warm coat.” The grin faded. “There’s not much meat on the fattest ones, and I don’t know how good the hunting will be when the snow gets deep.”
“I don’t, either.” Nylan paused. “Let me think about it.”
“Do that, Engineer.” Gerlich raised the bow, almost in a mocking salute, and began to walk toward the main door. “I’m going to try my luck at fashioning a larger bow.”
“Good luck, Great Hunter.” Nylan made his way to the table and sat down across from Ryba.
“It’s not bad,” she said. “The meat, I mean.”
“What is it?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“One of those rodents, baked and then fried,” said Kyseen, replacing the battered wooden platter with another half-filled with strips of fried meat. “The stove makes all the difference, and the bread even tastes like bread now. The eggs help, but those chickens don’t lay them fast, and I’m letting ‘em hatch a few,’cause we’ll need another cock, a rooster”-the cook flushed-“before long.”