G’zon’s gray eyes glistened in the light of the dimmed glows, his heavy brows curling over them like stormclouds. “I thought…”
<<I don’t pry,>> the brown rumbled. <<Your mind is your own. Tell me.>>
The homely man frowned, and sat up straight, inclining his head toward Nowyrth. “When I was young, I lived at Big Bay Hold. My parents’ names were Garvaiden and Lyzera; they were from Nabol. I had an elder sister who was born at Nabol: Eris.”
<<Eris is the mother of Liosliath’s rider. You are her uncle?>>
“Don’t tell them that. Don’t tell anyone that. Eris,” and the brownrider scowled, “Eris doesn’t like it to be known.”
<<Tell me more about your mother and father, then.>>
“Mother,” G’zon said, reflectively. “My mother Lyzera was a beauty in her youth, very slender, with big gray eyes and dark hair that shone against her pale skin. I’ve seen a sketch of her, and she was lovely. I remember her best as a graying, bitter woman who no more loved my father than she loved the sea. Mother always hated the sea. It made her sick, and she was always saying that it sucked the spirit out of the seaholders. Mother wanted a place where big things were happening, and Big Bay wasn’t it.”
The stocky man paused for a moment, then continued. “The man I called Father was not related to me by blood. Mother was in love with an ugly fellow, Morild, and I closely resemble him. Eris, with her brown hair and blue eyes, looks like Father.
“Father was handsome, and a sweet-talker, but he loved to drink. He ran a scam that earned him a lot of money, but it all went to drink. It was lucky that Eris’d already run off by the time I was born, because what was left barely bought Mother and I food.
“I worked, when I was old enough. Most of the jobs I got were sea-jobs, mending nets, gutting fish, shucking oysters. I’ve still got the old scars from those sharp shells. My friendships were very short-lived, because I still had a devil of a temper. I wasn’t the taller, or perhaps not even the strongest, but I got the maddest. The only person who liked me was Eris, when she came home.
Eris made Father /mad/. She had a son a little younger than I was: Gwyr. The first time I can remember meeting her, she had a second child, Killaria. That was a messed-up family too, but Kila seems to have come out all right. I don’t know about Gwyr. He couldn’t play rough, and he didn’t like me. After a while, he stopped coming with them. I don’t even know if he’s still alive.
“Anyway, Nowyrth, when I was twenty, Eris’ daughter was given command of one of the freighter-ships, and Eris offered me hire aboard it. I could only be second mate, since Canharian was already in the slot that appealed to me most, but it was a job, and I took it. I’ve told you the rest, right?”
<<You have. I…it is strange that such an apt rider would come from such a background, but it made you /you/, so it is all right. Go to sleep, G’zon, we’ve drills to do in the morning,>> Nowyrth said in his thunderous whisper, and the brown shifted a little closer to his rider.