Recluce 07 - Chaos Balance by L.E Modesitt Page B

squad guide her roan up past the smithy and into the canyon that held the stable.
       Ayrlyn rode beside Nylan, a pensive look on her face.
       After unsaddling and grooming their mounts, they walked back down toward the tower, alone on the stones of the road, since Nylan was among the slowest in grooming and handling mounts.
       “What do you think?” Nylan asked.
       “What do you think?” the healer replied. “Trust your own feelings. If I disagree, I'll tell you, but don't look to me to interpret what you feel.”
       Nylan flushed slightly, then coughed. “All right. When I'm uncertain, I try to feel out others before saying anything.”
       “I know. What do you feel?”
       “Ryba's angry. She's looking for things to get angry at me for. We've always had to haggle with Skiodra. Didn't you have to haggle on all those trading runs you made last year?”
       “Everyone in Candar likes to haggle, I think.”
       “She didn't even want me to come, and then she said something about remembering my blades-as if I hadn't dealt with Skiodra before or that ambush they set up with the herder. She's suddenly treating me like a child.”
       The healer nodded, hunched into her jacket against the late afternoon wind.
       “I don't like it. It's like the way she treated Gerlich, except she hasn't drawn steel against me.”
       “She can't do that. You may be a pain in her Marshal's ass, dear, but all her guards love you, and they'd like to do it from closer than they do.” Ayrlyn paused. “Don't let them.”
       “I've gotten that word.” He grinned, but only momentarily. “That's going to be more of a problem.”
       “I know. What do you think you should do?”
       The smith shook his head. “I don't like it. I've darkness near killed myself making a safe haven here, and it's not going to be pleasant any longer. It may not even be safe for me much longer. I'm not a Gerlich, and trying a coup would only destroy Westwind, even if I could do it. And that would only make things worse for the children ... for everyone but us, probably.”
       “You're right there.” Ayrlyn paused by the practice yard, well up the road from the end of the causeway. Her eyes drifted toward a last drooping snow lily that arched out of one of the few remaining patches of snow on the north side of the loose-stacked stones of the practice yard wall. “Can't you just avoid Ryba?”
       “How? Westwind isn't that big. If I do what she says, she'll push for me to do more and more-or make me less and less useful-like with this smith training bit. She's good at maneuvering, and pretty soon I'll look either as obstinate as Gerlich or as useless as Nerliat was. At least, I think so. What do you think?”
       “It doesn't matter what I think. I can just be a meek healer and stay in the background. You've got a lot of support from Siret, Istril, even Huldran and Llyselle, though,” mused Ayrlyn.
       “Right,” Nylan snorted. “Saryn sides with Ryba, and she trains most of the new guards-or Ryba does. Maybe . . . what? Seven of forty guards think I'm good for something. Most of the new guards dislike or distrust men, and they accept me because I'm not like the men they knew-but I'm a man. Just how long will it be before there are a hundred guards, and half don't even know me?”
       “That would take a while.”
       “Like being buried in a slow avalanche or being tied down and consumed by ants over the years.” Nylan winced at his own image.
       “You don't sound happy. What do you want to do?”
       “It's not a question of wanting. It's a question of seeing the storm on the horizon and finding cover.” He laughed, once, harshly. “Why is it so hard? I could see the need for a tower before anyone else, and I built it. I can see the need to leave, and I avoid facing it. What's the difference?”
       “Three children?”
       “That... and, I told you before, deep inside ...” He