Editing Rivers Between Us (section)

== A Clockwork Prodigy ==

My wife died there.  [[Red Flanks]] was her captain, but I bear him no ill will, for he too was felled by the side of his mate, the fair haired Selenn.  My only shame is that I was in the forge when they made their last charge, for I have never been a warrior.

In a single day in the battle of Mishaka thousands were felled at a time, so my sorrow is not a lonely one.  It is still mine.  Wife, sister-in-law, and brother are all seeding the earth, slain not by the honorable edge of a sword, but by the pitiless ravages of sorcery.  I wept for them for a day, but then I took our children, my own [[Chester]] and their three young ones, and I went home.

Nathan was their eldest, and he was only four.  The others were too young to feel the loss as more than a nameless ache, but he knew their absence as a real thing.  Perhaps that is what bound us.  Every day he followed me where I went, will I or nil I.  So he followed me to the forge.  It was  a dangerous place, and I knew this.  My own son I would not allow within (and he had not the patience for the craft; he rides, and that is enough for both of us), but if I had barred the child then he would have died of his misery, sickly as he was.  Thus at six he knew all of my tools, how to make a horseshoe, plowshare, or sword.  In another two years he had the strength to attempt such things, if he deigned to.

His was a mind of gears and metal.

I knew when he rebuilt my bellows that I was not ready for him.  He redesigned the forge so that the heat of the fire fueled a device that pumped the bellows automatically, with three speed settings as necessary.  He constructed a system of waterways that traveled above the ground to provide irrigation to distant fields in our village, and when he fancied making a pair of lizard skin boots he designed a set of traps that would not harm the skin of its prey.  All this he did to impress me, I knew, for he wanted me to be his father, which I am not.  Even so, I tried to act the part.  I knew that this adopted son had learned all he could from me, so I arranged for him to be taught in Lookshy by his ninth birthday.

I was proud of Nathan.  I still wonder if I killed him.

-''[[Gallian]], Rivers' Uncle''