The Towers of the Sunset - L. E. Modesitt [123]
“Why do you drive yourself so hard?” he asks.
She looks up slowly. “Am I that different from you? How many people insist on running up desert hills in boots to cut stone? How many people work at everything from developing water systems to gardening from dawn until after dusk?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Do I?”
He looks away from the piercing green eyes, away from the reddened but still creamy and freckled skin, and his fingers tighten around the wedge he holds before he sets it next to the mallet. His eyes drift back to her. A stray breeze caresses her forehead.
“Stop that . . . please,” she says.
“That wasn’t me.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have blamed you.” Her tone is soft.
“Sometimes it is me. But not now.”
“Why do you like me?” Her eyes look out on the dull dark green of the sea below the cliffs.
“If I have to explain . . .” He sighs, knowing that she will persist. “You’re honest, and you hate scheming. When you weren’t so tormented, you could laugh at the absurdity of things. I know you still could, if it weren’t for me.”
“It’s not you. It’s being tied to you.” She shifts her weight, but her green eyes remain fixed on the stillness of the sea.
“If you weren’t tied—”
“Creslin, somewhere inside that driven killer is a sweet man, but you know there’s too much blood and tears tying us. Even the greatest order-master born couldn’t break the tie. Only my death will do that, and I’m too young to consider it.”
In time he sighs and picks up the mallet. She stretches, rises, and heads back for another stone.
LXXX
CRESLIN SHAKES HIS head, realizing from the light that it is well past dawn, well past the time he should have risen.
Thrap!
Megaera? Where is she?
He sits upright, looking from the low pallet on the stone floor toward the closed door between their unfinished rooms. Only the two bedrooms at the seaward end of the holding are done, and the partial roof would let in rain, should it ever fall on the northern end of the desolate island. Through the unglassed and unshuttered window, he can see the high, hazy gray clouds that promise yet another hot and rainless day.
“Put on your leathers, Creslin.” Klerris’s voice penetrates the closed door to the hallway.
The silver-haired man stretches and stumbles to the door, opening it. “Where’s Megaera?”
“Outside in the washroom.” As usual, the Black Wizard’s faded robes are dustless and clean.
“Why are you here so early?” Creslin wears only ragged undershorts. He looks back at the pegs in the stone alcove that will be a closet someday.
“To tell you that your ship’s coming in.”
“I don’t have a ship.” The co-regent of Recluce struggles toward the outside washroom. A shave will make him presentable, and the cold shower might restore some of his energy.
“It’s a Suthyan coaster flying the banner of Westwind. She’ll make Land’s End by mid-morning.” Klerris looks happier and more alive than Creslin can recall; the Black Wizard matches the younger man’s steps.
“All right. Just let me gather myself together.”
“Not that much to gather together . . .”
He ignored Megaera’s whispered mumblings from behind the shower screen and begins to shave. Before he has finished, the redhead, her hair wet and plastered away from her face, has retreated, wrapped in a damp robe that barely conceals her shapely thighs.
“I’d appreciate it if you’d stop that, too . . .”
The shower is stone-cold—the sun-warmed water has already been used by Megaera—and Creslin shivers through it, too tired to feel virtuous.
“You’re pushing yourself too hard.” Klerris turns and studies the sky to the east, above the sea.
“Why not? At least I can collapse and not dream. At least I can point to another field, another orchard, another line of dressed and mortared stone. Even to another tiny bit of understanding the great and massive forces of order.”
“You need to talk to Lydya.”
“All right, I