L. Modesitt - The Chaos Balance

“Don’t you understand, Nylan? I won’t beg. I won’t ask.” The flame-haired healer began to walk more briskly out toward the bridge.

Nylan hurried after her, then settled into a quick walk beside her. For a time he walked silently, hoping she would say more. She didn’t.

“Did you ever think that I don’t like begging, either?” he finally asked.

“Begging? When all you have to do is lift a finger, and any guard in the tower would crawl to your couch?” Ayrlyn stopped in the middle of the small bridge and turned eastward, looking out across the slow-melting snow, into the glare of the mid-morning sun off the expanse of white. Beyond the drop-off, in the distance rose the dark spires of the high forest, now that the evergreens had shed their cloak of winter white.

“I didn’t notice you crawling,” he said slowly. “And I haven’t lifted my finger, as you put it, to beckon anyone else.”

“I won’t crawl. For you. For anyone. And you didn’t turn Istril away, not at all.”

Nylan sighed. “It didn’t seem right to have her in my bed, and it didn’t seem right to turn her away. Especially when she said she’d talked to you. She doesn’t lie.”

“That’s a great line. I bedded her because she doesn’t lie.”

Nylan winced, as though a Lornian arrow had slammed through him. “That isn’t what I meant. It wasn’t an easy situation.”

“You think it was easy for me? You ought to know by now how I feel. Yet you stand there and look at me as if I had four heads or spouted chaos and fireballs with every word.”

Nylan looked down at the cold, cold stones of the bridge underfoot. After a moment, he forced his eyes up and to meet Ayrlyn’s. “Would you believe”-he swallowed, trying to force the words out-“that you’re so honest that it scares me worse than facing those wizards did?”

Her eyes did not flicker, just waited.

“I’m not that honest. And I’m not very brave. I never wanted to be captain. You know that. How could a man who deep inside fears everything… how could I ever lead people? How could I ask you…?”

A faint smile crossed her lips, like the glimmer of sunshine after a storm. “The way you just did…by being honest with me…by not trying to be the solid engineer that no one touches. I don’t want a hero image. I don’t want a male version of Ryba. I have fears, Nylan. Everyone does. You do. I can deal with that. I just can’t deal with a man who hides from himself.”

Hides from himself…yes, you do . The engineer licked his lips, ignoring the chill ice that coated them, then sublimated away. “I have a lot…to learn.”

“So do I. Will you learn it with me?”

“If you’re gentle with me…that kind of honesty is hard,” he admitted.

“All honesty is hard. So is love.” Her eyes were brown, soft, and deep, and he felt lost in them, lost in wondering what he had not seen, what must have been so obvious. His hands reached for hers as they stood on the stones of the bridge he had built, in the cold spring of Westwind.

The white-robed wizard stood near the front of the barge, on the raised section of deck right behind the three-cubit-wide bronze cleats, each shaped like a horned ox, around which the two ropes had been wound.

“Gee-ah…” The low sounds of the boat drovers whispered across the canal surface in the gray before dawn as the four oxen pulled the gilded White Lily northward from Fyrad, their hoofs clicking faintly on the worn paving stones originally laid for the ancient steam tugs that long ago pulled the barges from the city of the Winter Palace, propelled by the same chaos engines that the Second Company of White Engineers was laboring to re-create for His Mightiness’s fireship under construction at Cyad.

Themphi frowned. These days, oxen were more dependable, far more dependable. As for building a replica of an ancient fireship…he shook his head. Maintaining the steam device for the palace doors was tiring enough, yet Lephi wanted a fireship, with an ancient fire cannon, regardless of the cost and the impact on that precarious balance between order and chaos.

He glanced back at the low superstructure that held the privileged passengers, and the seven remaining guilty Mirror Lancer officers, then at the canvas awning under which the other passengers slept. One of the officers had attempted to assault the wizard. Themphi had turned the proceeds from the resale of that officer’s household and concubines over to the wronged peasant girl along with a year’s pay from each officer. In that, Lephi had been right. Erratic as the Emperor was, he was more often correct than not. The white wizard shook his head as he glanced westward in the general direction of Cyad.

“A peasant girl…and she will be the richest woman in…what is that wretched place…Nystrad.” Themphi stretched and looked at the deckhouse where young Fissar still slept. The young always slept, unaware of the continual balancing acts required of their elders.

Far behind the deckhouse were the piers of Fyrad where the swift coaster had brought him from Cyad, far more swiftly than taking the North Highway.

Then his eyes dropped back to the glasslike surface of the canal.

Water bugs, almost as large as the wizard’s clenched fist, skimmed across the shimmering surface, darting between the stalks of the reeds trimmed back to less than a cubit above the water, even with the smooth graystone blocks that formed the side of the west towpath of the waterway. The barge glided northward from Fyrad along the Great Canal, past trimmed reeds and ancient stone canal walls.

A kay or so to the east of the canal, the river wound a more sinuous course, and one more dangerous, with its population of stun lizards and sharp-toothed crocodators. The river was used by the peasants who had no coins to pay the tolls of the canal-and those who wished to avoid the keen-eyed Imperial inspectors.

“Gee…ah…”

Themphi fingered his smooth-shaven chin, looking straight down and catching sight of his own angel-shaded reflection in the silver-gray waters.

The white-trimmed blue barge continued to glide through the mirror-smooth waters of the Great Canal, another work that Themphi knew could not be replicated by the Empire he served. North toward the Accursed Forest, that expanse of…who knew what that had been bounded by white stone walls and wards since the founding of Cyador-and perhaps before.

He shivered as he thought of the teetering balance between order and chaos that awaited him.

The mare’s hoofs squushed as she carried Nylan down the muddy road toward the brickworks-and the millpond. Beside him, Ayrlyn rode a chestnut mare. As usual, her jacket was fastened-all but the very top-and Nylan’s was only loosely closed.

Less than a hundred cubits to their right-west-the rock rose in a sheer cliff nearly a kay up to the high meadow plateau that held Westwind. The two had started their ride after breakfast, and it was approaching mid-morning, although they had not pushed their mounts. Riding in the mud took longer, especially crossing the occasional snowdrifts, some of which remained nearly waist high, and the route was anything but direct. The direct route would have been over the cliff. Instead, they had to ride along the road from the tower up the ridge and down the ridge. From the fork below the ridge, they headed south and then west along the circular trail that eventually led downhill through the true upper forests of the Westhorns to border the cliff face. Nylan supposed the road eventually led somewhere in Lornth, but it wasn’t the main road, and neither he nor Ayrlyn had taken it much beyond the brickworks. Neither had had much time for idle travel, and on Ayrlyn’s trading runs the previous year, she’d followed the best roads, which were certainly slow enough.