Читать книгу The Windsingers Series: The Complete 4-Book Collection - Megan Lindholm - Страница 12

Cold nibbled at her spine, crept up around her to touch her, no matter how she shifted and burrowed deeper into the mattress. She opened her eyes grudgingly. Vandien was standing at the edge of the platform, rubbing his scruffy beard.

‘Daylight’s here,’ he said softly when she stirred. ‘We have to be on our way.’

Ki stretched stiffly and moved gingerly from the shelter of the shagdeer cover. Even from within the cuddy she could tell that the cold had deepened. The freezing air pressed in on the wagon like a clenching fist. She struggled hastily into her cloak. Vandien moved past her to take his from the bed and don it again.

With the cold had come a wind that whooshed past the entrance to the canyon. Their tracks from the night before were almost completely erased. The grays were huddled together between the wagon and the cliff wall. Their heads were down and their cropped tails lifted slightly in the breeze. Vandien pulled the protection of the hood further past his face.

‘Damn the luck!’ he spat. ‘A wind like this is all we need to make things worse.’

Ki looked at the sky with an expert eye. ‘The wind may be exactly what we do need to take the wagon through.’ She smiled a dry, cryptic smile at Vandien and jumped lightly from the wagon.

Sigurd whinnied shrilly at the sight of her. They were not pleased to be unblanketed. Ki gave them a small feed of grain to cheer them while she helped Vandien load the remaining firewood. It was not a large load. Vandien spent a single log to rejuvenate last night’s fire and heat a kettle. The Humans broke their fast only with hot tea, sipping it from steaming mugs that cooled too swiftly. Camp was soon broken, Vandien gathering the equipment and Ki stowing it. The harness leather was stiff and hard to thread through buckles thickened with frost. Sigurd tossed his great head about when Ki approached him with the cold bit, then sulked when she finally succeeded in getting it between his jaws.

‘We’re off,’ Ki announced through lips already chilled and dried by the cold. With a creaking and snapping of wheels pulled free of ice, it was true.

Snow was shallow within the sheltering arms of the canyon. But when they emerged from the mouth it became deeper. As they turned out of the canyon, the horses’ heads were pointed into the wind, and they pulled the wagon into a deepening drift of snow. The snow itself was a fine crystalline dust that swirled and lifted on the wind. The horses lowered their heads before it. It stung Ki’s face with icy kisses. Vandien pulled his hood full forward and turned his head aside. Ki could permit herself no such luxury. Someone must use her eyes to guide the struggling team. Her face stiffened in the icy press of the wind. It blew up her sleeves, and inside her hood it circled to slide down the back of her neck. The reins grew stiff in her hands.

The grays plowed through the snow gamely. The tall wheels of the wagon sometimes stuck and slid without turning. Ki strained her eyes ahead, trying to pick out the trail in the swirling snow. All the mountainside looked amazingly alike. She nudged Vandien and shouted over the wind.

‘Do you know this pass well enough to guide us through it in a storm like this?’

The hood nodded. He lifted a bundled arm to gesture that she should turn the team more to the right. Ki made the correction. The previous day they had traveled up winding canyons and between foothills, moving ever so gradually toward the Sisters where they overlooked the narrow trail. Now Ki found her path moving ever closer to the upthrusting of a mountain. As she followed Vandien’s pointed directions, the team headed less and less into the wind.

The trail began to ascend again, at a steeper grade than before. It seemed to Ki that no sooner were they freed of fighting the wind than they were forced to battle an uphill grade. The wind itself did not cease, but battered the wagon broadside now. At least it was sweeping the snow across their rocky path in shallower drifts, rather than piling it up before them.

The mountain became larger, barer, and steeper on the right side of the trail, while on the left the ground began to drop away. From a gradual slope in the morning, it became by noon a gentle hillside that rolled away from them. On the right side of the wagon the mountain began to rear up in sheer walls of bare stone that climbed vertically before they became the rugged sides of the mountain above them. The grays’ feathered hooves met bare, stony ground beneath the snow now. The wagon wheels no longer wallowed but rolled and crunched along. No sooner did the wind sweep a shallow drift of snow across their path than it eddied and swept it away again. Ki found she could follow the trail now without Vandien’s help as it was first covered, then revealed by the shifting winds.

They traveled through a country of absolutes. If it was not snow or ice they saw, then it was rock. If it was not white or gray in color, then it was black. The wagon, obscenely gay in such a setting, creaked through a country in which nothing else moved except the wind-blown snow. The mountain moved closer to the trail’s edge, until Ki knew that if she met another wagon or traveler coming from the other direction neither would have room to give way to the other. It was a possibility that she did not much fear.

It was hard to imagine spring in such a place, or anything other than snow. But here and there a patch of scabrous blue ice clung to the steep mountainside that reared above them, to show that thaws and running water were not unknown in the pass. The blue ice shimmered more brightly in the snow-paled sunlight than it should have. At last, they passed a chunk that was low enough for Ki to see plainly. The ice did not grow paler as they approached it, but bluer. Working within its depths she saw tiny, wriggling blue creatures.

‘Ice maggots!’ Vandien shouted over the wind as they passed narrowly under the shadow of the clinging ice. He shrugged casually as they passed, but to Ki they were new beings that both fascinated and repelled her. She did not realize the danger they presented until a great chunk of blue ice slid down the side of the mountain immediately behind them. It crashed on the path, sending rattling shards of ice bouncing off the back of the wagon. It obscured the way they had come with shattered chunks of blue ice. It would have smashed the wagon or killed the team, had they been in its path.

‘Little squirmers chewed it loose,’ Vandien observed without rancor. ‘This pass would be a safer one to travel were it not for the maggots and the rotten ice they make. Keep the team moving. There’s no sense in pausing, or even in looking up. If we saw a chunk coming down, there’s no place to get away from it.’

The wind was an ever-present shushing, a nosy cold creature that nudged its way into every opening garments might provide. Sometimes it shifted about to meet the wagon with a shout and smack of head wind. Vandien looked like a huddled pile of garments on the seat. ‘You could ride within the cuddy, you know!’ Ki called to him. ‘There’s no reason we both have to endure this. I don’t need you to pick out the trail anymore.’

Vandien shook his head, making no words. Ki was secretly glad of his company in the icy wind, but wondered why he chose to remain there. When the sun was overhead, the winds seemed to decrease in volume. The snow still swirled about the horses’ hooves, but not as strongly. The trail, too, leveled out for a space and traveled horizontally across the mountain’s face, as if taking pity on the weary team. Ki halted the wagon to let them breathe. She blanketed them as they stood in their traces. The trail was wide enough for her to walk past the team, to stroke the frost from their muzzles and share an apple between them. They managed it awkwardly around their bits, jangling as they chewed. The wind buffeted her as she climbed back onto the wagon and to its shushing sound added a whistle. Ki wondered if it were building up again. She wanted to rest the team for a while, but feared to let them stand long if the icy wind was chilling them. She entered the cuddy, closing the door behind her.

Vandien had thrown his hood back from his face in the still cold inside the cuddy. His dark hair was tousled about his face, and the wind had burned his cheeks red above his beard. The contrast made his dark eyes seem brighter, almost shiny black. They sparked at her, and Ki returned his smile as she pushed her own hood back. There was a certain triumph to having come so far in such bitter weather. It was a heady feeling, having prevailed against the winds of the world.

Ki hooked down a dangling sausage, used her belt knife to cut chunks of it against the small wall table. It was so cold, the meat made her teeth ache. They ate together, feeling the wind rock the wagon gently on its axles, hearing the faint whistle it made as it swept past the cuddy.

Vandien rose abruptly, opened the cuddy door to the wind and then pointed to a speck in the sky. ‘I thought that was too pure a note to be wind song. There he is again! Hardly ever see a Harpy aloft in this kind of weather, but then, that’s a strange one. An outcast, did I tell you? Looks like he’s caught in the wind.’

Stomach quivering, Ki looked. He was so far away, she could not tell his colors; perhaps he was a brown, she told herself, or a deep purple. Or the ghost of a blue, whispered some sneering creature from a dark corner of her mind. The Harpy hovered, not overhead, but up the trail, and very high. His wings would dip, and he would circle high on the vicious winds to come again into position. His clear whistle cut the wind.

‘Look how he fights that wind, Ki! Like he wants to stay over the trail. You’d think he’d realize that the wind against those cliffs is what’s throwing him around.’

Ki did not reply. She was listening to another voice in her head, to Haftor, standing dark and menacing in starlight, holding tight to her wrist: Cora will not be able to contain such a secret. You killed those Harpies. That’s a debt paid only with blood. Neither time nor distance will heal it. Harpies don’t give up on blood debts. Neither do the men who serve them.

Vandien glanced curiously over at Ki, wondering that she did not share his curiosity about the creature. Ki was crouched like a cat, looking out the door under Vandien’s arm. Her eyes were glued to the speck that circled and whistled.

‘Ki!’ She jumped at her name. ‘We had best be on our way again. There is only one shelter spot between here and the bare faces of the Sisters. If we make it tonight, we may pass the Sisters tomorrow. Two days past that and we should be coming down out of the pass. Wagon and all, just as you said.’

Ki turned haunted eyes on him. He would never know what courage it took for her to emerge from the cuddy, to bare herself to the sky and the death that hung there. She almost hoped the Harpy would try to dive on her, to be smashed by the winds against the cliff face. But he did not. He was too wise for that. He hung, rocking in the sky. His whistles grew louder and longer in the thin air. He cried his triumph to Ki.

Team unblanketed, Ki clambered woodenly back onto her wagon. She started her wagon rolling again. The grade was easier now; the snow and wind no longer had to be fought. The wind had suddenly switched to come from behind them. The team pulled with a will, undisturbed by the creature that whistled and cried over their heads. Had they not been foaled and grown to size in Harper’s Ford, where the shadows of Harpies swept over the pastures? Ki wished the snow would mantle her from those eyes, the wind rise and dash it from the sky. But the sky only cleared and the wind became a shushing constant. The creak of the wagon could not mask the whistling that was not wind.

She hunched her shoulders, pulled her hood higher about her face. For one terrible instant she felt her face pucker and redden, and a part of her wondered if she would bawl in loud cries for the way destiny had caught up with her. She sobbed in a breath of the frigid air, and it braced her. Beside her, Vandien said loudly, inanely, ‘Have you ever heard the lay of the hunter Sidris, and how she went to slay the black stag with scarlet antlers?’

Even as Ki turned bewildered eyes upon him, he opened his throat and began to sing. He had a mellow voice that wandered willfully beside the familiar tune. He sang loudly, if not well, and she did not mind his missed notes, nor the places where he hummed to cover the words he had forgotten. He drowned the Harpy’s whistle.

The song was a ballad, evidently of his own people, put to a Common tune. He began it with a long introduction of meaningless syllables, repeated at intervals through the song. The song was long and wrenchingly romantic as it told of the hunter who followed the mystic stag and died nobly in the slaying of it. Another time Ki would have mocked the sentimental words about the two futile deaths. Now she was caught up in them. When finally the song died away and Vandien subsided into a somewhat embarrassed silence (truly, he did not have a voice for singing), Ki was surprised to find that the whistling of the Harpy had stopped.

She turned her eyes up to the sky. He was gone. But she knew that he could find her again whenever he wished. There would be no turnoffs from this trail, no friendly forest to hide in. For a moment she considered warning Vandien. Might not he share the fate ordained for her? And then it seemed to her that the Harpy was like the blue ice that twitched with maggots and sometimes overhung the wagon on the narrow trail. No use to look up and worry. If it was going to fall on you, it would. It would find you. As Rufus had found Ki that day.

He had come to the apple tree in the afternoon, to find Ki still sitting there, considering the things she had done …

‘Cora would see you,’ he said stiffly. His eyes were deeply shadowed. Ki guessed that he had slept little. She rose with reluctance to follow him. This summoning boded no good for her. She trailed after him dispiritedly, ignoring the speculative looks she received from Lydia and Holland as she entered the common room. They passed down the narrow hallway.

Cora’s eyes were closed. There was more gray in her hair than Ki remembered. Last night had been no time for noticing such things. Now Ki found herself remembering that when she and Sven were joined she had thought Cora sturdy as a tree. Her old cheeks still held a pitiful trace of that bloom, but they were no longer high and firm but wrinkled like apples stored away all winter. The single small window in the room let in little of the afternoon sunlight, and less air. Ki felt stifled. In the closeness her head throbbed and the buzz in her ears seemed louder.

Lydia, who had followed them into the room, plumped and smoothed the feather-stuffed coverlet that lay over the old woman. She sent Rufus and Ki a warning look. Rufus shooed Ki from the room and shut the door gently behind them.

‘She cried out for you, but that was a while ago. She seemed awake. But she drifts in and out. Her body already fails under the burden you put upon her last night. Inadvertently,’ he added grudgingly as Ki knit her brows.

He beckoned again, and she followed him down the hall to another door. There were no windows in Rufus’s room. His bed was narrow, pushed into a corner of the room and covered with a single brown woven blanket. Ki glanced about the room in vain for any sign of Holland’s presence. There was no token of her, no garments of hers on the pegs, no weavings from her hands. So they couched separately.

Rufus went directly to a cluttered table in one corner. He drew up a small stool to it and sat, leaving Ki looking about the room, standing. For a moment his fingers played over some bits of paper and tally bars on the table. Then he turned his stool to face Ki again.

‘I shall speak Cora’s mind for her. I know what she would say. You are thinking of leaving,’ he accused her gravely. ‘Do not deny it. But I forbid you to do it, as head of the household you have sworn yourself to. Ki, I will not pretend to understand what went on last night. Lars has accepted the blame for it, and I am prepared to listen to one of his lengthy testimonials later. But it is you I must speak to about leaving. Enough shame hovers over us now. Will you make the disgrace complete? Yes, there were words, hard words, spoken against you last night. Lars seems to feel you are in danger. He does not seem to remember that the people here last night are your kinspeople. They may speak as they will to us, for they are family. Families make wild words within themselves. They mean nothing. But if Ki were to leave? Consider it. Consider it from their pain. You came and you hurt them and you left, with no indication of remorse. A harsh blow. And there are things left unsettled by Sven’s passing, things that your leaving would put in jeopardy. There is the land that was Sven’s, that would have been your children’s. You have a duty to it now.’

‘My duty is to my wagon and my road and my freight,’ Ki said quietly. ‘I acknowledge no other.’

Rufus sighed. He licked his lips and seemed to consider. When he spoke, it was as if he felt the words were too basic to need to be uttered. ‘My mother wanders in her mind, Ki. To be fair, I will tell you that it began months ago, long before your news or your singular performance last night. But this may have been the final unhinging. The family knew that last night. So, I take up the reins, as you might say. You speak of duties, Ki. Of all that sat at that table last night, there is not one whose well-being does not rest upon me. My brother Sven was happy to wed you and to rattle off down the road with you, to make his living as a common teamster. To let the lands committed to his trust lie fallow, when they should have been producing. Then I was the one who had to think of duty. I kept the sheep and the kine, I tilled and planted his fields for him, giving to each what they needed, asking of each what he could give. Farming the land and feeding the family – this is not a thing like the turning of a wagon wheel upon the road. Rather, it is like the juggling at fair time, when one man keeps the plates spinning on the table and the balls flying in the air at the same time. It is a constant watching, a touch here, a flip there, and never, never an unwary resting. Someone must treat with the Windsingers for fair weather, must make the trades with the Dene and Teheria for that which we cannot produce ourselves. Fields must be tilled and planted, buildings repaired, cattle bred and slaughtered. That is what Sven left to Lars and me. Lars was too young to be more than a puppy at my heels. It has worn my mother out to carry it on, past the years when she should have been sitting before a tapestry, or rocking her youngest grandchild to sleep. It has driven Holland from my bed (yes, I saw your look) and made my sons but my apprentices. It has been heavy on me. I have not minded. But the time for it is past. You are a capable woman. Sven is gone, but Lars is here. This is an unseemly time to say this. But time is no longer waiting on my convenience. Heal the rift, Ki. Be one of us.’ Rufus paused, watching Ki gravely.

Ki fluttered her hands before her, indignation drowned in confusion and disbelief. She walked slowly to Rufus’s narrow bed, seated herself upon it. ‘You ask the impossible of me, Rufus. I don’t see what my staying here will solve. I cannot. I will not. I will not be hasty, or rude. I cannot even find anger at your assumption of authority. In truth, my temper has been drowned in grief. I am past anger such as that. I am tired of my own emotions. Since Sven passed I have been strung like the strings of a harp tree, and every breeze has played upon me. I have nothing left in me, of anger, or pride, or gladness. So, I will simply tell you I cannot. I cannot drop my life strings and take up others, to weave a pattern not of my own choosing. Least of all will I live among people who despise me. Three days I will stay, for I do not wish to leave so sour. But that is all I give.’ Ki rose and walked to the door.

‘And what of the lands?’ Rufus demanded. Ki turned at the panic in his voice. ‘A full sixth of the lands rests in your hands. Many are watching how they will fall. I do not have the money,’ Rufus gestured at his tally sticks, ‘to buy Sven’s land from you. For, if I give you the money the family has, what will we use to buy good winds and fair weather from the Windsingers? What is the sense of land with harsh winds blowing across it, drying it out, and whirling the top soil away? And what is the sense of fair weather if the land that basks in it is no longer ours to plow? You must see the dilemma!’

‘I am no farmer. I make no claim to your lands. I have no use for more ground than will fit under my wagon.’

Rufus shook his head stubbornly. ‘It cannot be done that way. You cannot walk away from it. The land must be paid for. Such is our custom.’

‘Damn your customs!’ Ki cried wildly. ‘Look what they have done to me! Look what they have done to us all!’

‘Without customs, we are nothing. Not a people.’ Rufus and Ki both turned incredulous eyes to the door. Cora’s eyes were weary but alert. She leaned on the doorframe, catching her breath. Her pale lips smiled at Rufus’s look.

‘I asked you to bring Ki to me. Not take her off and badger her until she gave way to your will.’ Slowly Cora shuffled across the flagged floor to seat herself heavily on the foot of Rufus’s bed. Her breath came in harsh pants. No one spoke. Ki agonized over the effort she put into each inhalation.

‘Boys never change, even when they are grown to be men.’ Cora managed a brief smile. ‘I remember a time when I gave each of my sons a switch and sent them out to bring the chickens in. Sven rattled his along the ground, spooking the birds along. Lars waved his in the air, forgetting his task entirely. But Rufus used his to knock the tail feathers off two of my best cockerels.’ She smiled again. ‘He bullies still.’

Rufus opened his mouth angrily. Cora fluttered a hand at him. ‘Hush! I am too weary to be arguing with you. I sent for Ki. She shall help me back to my room. This rock you call a bed offers me small comfort here.’

Abashed by her unexpected rescuer, Ki rose. Cora’s hand on her shoulder was the weight of a bird. Slowly Ki guided her down the hall, back to her bedroom. An imperious wave of Cora’s hand sent Holland scuttling from the room. Sighing heavily, the old woman seated herself upon the bed, then leaned back into her pillows.

The ensuing silence was difficult for Ki. Cora was occupied with breathing. Ki looked about the room at the heavy drapes and tapestries, at the bulky carved wooden furniture, and back at the heavy coverings Cora drew across her legs.

‘You would be better outside, resting on a blanket over fresh hay, in a shady spot. The clean air would renew your strength.’

Cora smiled mirthlessly. ‘The scandal of such a sight would renew the tongues wagging. Then they would all be even more convinced that my mind had begun to wander. You needn’t look embarrassed, Ki. I know Rufus believes it is so. I spend too much time sitting silently, smiling to myself. And I take too much from the flocks and herds, so that I may visit the Harpies and pretend that I am not a sagging old woman. At least the inroads I make on the animals will cease for a time. He will be happy of that small good from the ill winds that swept us last night.’ Cora paused, and subtly changed the subject. ‘Last night revealed one thing to me, Ki. You’re a strong woman. Stronger than even I suspected. And I know how you sheltered Sven and the children. We have need of such strength here.’

Ki bowed her head to the compliment even as she squirmed uneasily at what was coming. ‘My “strength” did much harm last night, Cora. I would like you to know …’

Another wave of the hand. Veins and tendons stood out on the gaunt fingers. Age was nibbling the flesh from Cora. ‘I sensed your confusion and struggle last night. Two joined as we were in leading the Rite have few secrets from one another. I felt your fierce love for my son and your children. It is a great comfort to me to know he was so well loved. But I sensed much more than that. It was not your fault they died, Ki. Even if you had hurried your wagon up that hill, it would have changed nothing. Let go of your shame and frustration. And realize that nothing you can do now can change what happened then. Let go of your anger and hatred. I think that if you do so I can believe that the three have been loosed and moved on to a better life. It would be a great comfort to me.’

Ki lowered her eyes. Unbidden, there floated to her mind a brief vision of the slain hatchlings, the crumpled mother. The humming in Ki’s ears rose, until she felt it drowned the sight from her eyes. She willed the ugly image away. Was that the secret Cora had shared? Did she guess more than she was saying?

‘These feelings you have found in me, Cora – I have tried to keep them private, to lessen the impact on you all. But it is not a thing I can let go of simply by saying I shall. Time, and the open road, would be my best cure. So, you see, to do your will, I must do mine.’

There. Ki felt she had sidestepped the noose neatly. She waited for Cora’s next move. Old, Cora might be, but Ki doubted that her wits were slipping. Her hands and mind guided the family as surely as Ki’s guided her team. She had been loath at first to release Sven to Ki. Ki had been a small thorn in her flesh, the one who came and went, free of Cora’s control. Ki was the one who could not be predicted or maneuvered. Ki wanted their parting to go well. She did not desire this last battle of wills, with no Sven to buffer the tension.

‘But why must you hasten away from us so soon? Did you not see the truth in Rufus’s words? He is a bully, I know, but he did make his point. For you to leave now would be the final insult to a hurt and angry people. Why cannot you stay until we can honorably pay for the land Sven passed to you? Surely you can stay, at least until the Rite Master can come to us and help us make our peace with the Harpies. It would mean so much to me if you could stay that long. Rufus sees it as a matter of honor. Could you not stay?’

‘Perhaps,’ Ki replied guardedly. Cora’s words wove subtle webs around Ki of logic and guilt and dependence: We need you. You hurt us. How can you leave us? Cora had implied she did not approve of Rufus’s heavy-handed ways. Was she going to show him how it might be done more subtly? Ki raised her green eyes to Cora’s dark ones, trying to reach what might be behind them. Only two bright bird eyes in an old face that smiled at Ki, almost pleadingly. Ki looked down, confused.

‘Why do you want me to stay?’ she asked bluntly.

Cora sighed, shifted on her bed. ‘Must it all be spoken, perhaps too soon? I am old, Ki. You are strong but cushioned with wit and gentleness. Rufus is a bully, Lars a tenderheart. They need a wise hand on the reins. I dreamed that someday you and Sven would tire of the road, would come back to us. Now Sven is gone, forever. So I will ask of you what Rufus would have demanded. Ki, will you stay? You’ve a strong spirit. We have need of such strength, especially after such a trial as last night’s.’

Ki imagined she felt a two-edged blade. The invitation was made with flattery and a reminder of the harm she had done. A small bubble of anger perked up in her. Was she a child to be manipulated this way? She tried to formulate polite words, courteous words of farewell. Her mind struggled, suddenly began to flounder. Her head began to throb. She was being ungrateful to Cora. Had she not taken Cora’s son away from her already? Her ears hummed until she could not hear anything else. Her vision seemed to darken in the sound.

Suddenly, to struggle through it seemed too great an effort. Ki had nowhere to go and nothing to do when she got there. She felt curiously empty as she said the words, the words she could barely hear through the humming in her ears.

‘I will stay, Cora. I will stay until you have made your peace with the Harpies.’

The snow whirled and swirled on the trail. Vandien had subsided to a heap of garments on the seat beside her, miserable with cold. The team plodded on stoically. Ki watched the snow whirl, baring and obscuring the trail, a shifting, never-repeating, white-on-white stirring. Eternally different, and ever the same. Like her days at Harper’s Ford had been.

It was the rhythm of the days that had absorbed her, sapping her will away. She tried to look back, to pick out clear memories. There were few. For a moment her mind caught an image of herself kneeling on a floating dock on the mineral marshes at the far end of the family’s holdings …

The marsh smelled evil on hot summer days. The vapors stung Ki’s eyes, made her nose run and her eyes water. It was one of the few places where her constant headache seemed to worsen. The buzzing of bright insects camouflaged the buzzing of her own ears. It was dismal, a smelly place, even on a bright summer day. No one chose to work here – no one except Ki. The others avoided the tasks of the marsh, but Ki went to them willingly. For here she could work alone.

She moved her heavy wooden bucket down the dock to the next wooden pin that jutted out over the water. She picked loose the knot in the thin cord tied around the pin and drew the cord up carefully. There was a beauty to the orange crystal that clung to the line. Ki let it dangle for a moment, watching the sunlight strike its facets. Then she deposited it gently into the bucket beside the others. Great care had to be taken with the fragile crystals. The Tcheria would not pay as dearly for broken ones. Ki took a fresh length of clean line from the pouch that hung from her shoulder. She lowered one end into the soupy water, then tied the other to the wooden pin that projected from the dock.

‘She does not even dress as we do!’

Ki’s eyes snapped to the unfamiliar voice. Katya stood over Lars where he knelt on a separate dock, retying a line on a pin. No doubt she thought herself a safe distance from Ki to speak about her, but voices carried strangely in the marsh. Ki kept her eyes averted, carried on with her work. Dead trees reared up from the marsh, their branches festooned with a slimy, pinkish moss. It partially hid the couple from Ki’s eyes. But Ki saw the look of annoyance on Lars’s face as he pushed back his long hair and squinted up at Katya.

‘I didn’t hear you come up,’ he greeted her.

‘You don’t seem to notice anything about me anymore, Lars. Look at her. Cannot she at least wear a smock and trousers like the rest of us?’

Lars looked as he was bidden. He saw Ki carefully pulling up a fresh crystal, eyes intent upon her work. A jerkin of brown leather trimmed her upper body above her coarse brown trousers. Lars and Katya were attired in the loose white farmer’s smocks and trousers of the valley. Lars frowned.

‘I doubt that she has even given thought to what she wears,’ he replied. He deftly changed the subject with a courtesy. ‘You have not visited us for some days, Katya.’

‘At first I thought to give you time to recover from that hideous Rite,’ Katya explained. ‘But now, of late, when I stop by, you are always out working somewhere with Ki. You must know the story of the Rite has spread far and wide. Some say your own foolishness brought it upon you, but I do not see it so. I have only sympathy for your plight, Lars. I cannot imagine how it must be, outcast from the winged ones’ society.’ Katya put a hand on his shoulder to make him pause so that she could admire the crystal he had just drawn from the water. He lowered it gently into his bucket and rose to move to the next pin. Katya stood squarely in front of him. Ki watched from the corner of her eye. Katya’s thick, honey hair was braided up into a crown on her head. Folded arms framed her soft breasts. Lars rolled his eyes at the look of tenderness she gave him and edged around her.

She followed to kneel beside him at the next pin. ‘You look so worn, Lars. No one in the valley understands why you do not send Ki packing and get a little peace back into your lives. I think you should all try to forget what happened so that you may heal. You can scarcely forget, with her a constant reminder. I know it wears on your mother. Cora hasn’t sent for me once since it happened. Does she believe I will think the less of her for her misfortune?’

Lars slowly drew a crystal from the water. ‘She has much to do of late, Katya. Things she must see to alone. She has sent word to the Rite Master that we are in need of a special rite. And she spends much time with Ki. I am sure that she misses your company. But she feels an obligation to Ki, to help her. Katya, if you had been present at the Loosening and had felt the tempest of emotion that Ki encloses, you would understand why my mother feels as she does. Ki must let go of those emotions or burst apart when they ripen.’

Ki’s ears reddened. Was it thus they saw her? She busied herself with tightening a knot already tied tight. She tried not to hear Katya’s indulgent chuckle.

‘That sounds like Cora. Anything little, anything hurt can find a home with her. She is not one to hold a grudge. Look at how she took in Haftor and Marna. Everyone else said she owed her brother’s children nothing. Didn’t he leave her to manage the family holdings alone?’

‘My mother did not see it that way,’ Lars replied shortly. ‘They are her brother’s children and as entitled to the family lands as her own.’

Lars rose and walked rapidly to the next pin. He did not look to see if Katya followed him. Ki’s head was down, her hands busy when Katya shot a glare in her direction. Katya hastened to where Lars bent over the pin.

‘Sven’s holdings,’ Katya’s voice was abrupt, blunt, ‘will Ki keep them or sell them?’

Ki found her eyes glued to Lars’s red face. Glints of anger showed in his pale eyes.

‘She has never mentioned it to me, so we have never discussed it. There have been too many other painful topics to be considered. Lands and monies have never come up.’

‘It would be a substantial holding, would it not?’ Katya pressed. ‘If half your grandparents’ holdings came to Cora’s children to be divided three ways by her offspring – that’s a full sixth of the family’s holdings that would have been Sven’s, and are now in questionable hands. When Marna comes of age and into her holdings, she and Haftor together will control a full half of the original holding, while you and Rufus will hold two sixths …’

‘It is a family matter, for family to consider. Unlike Rufus, I foresee no problems with it. It would not be the first time the holdings were run by weighted votes.’ Lars’s voice was curt, a polite reminder to her that although he spoke to her he regarded the matter as private. He no longer pretended to work at the crystals.

Ki watched Katya’s chin come up at his tone. She shifted her hands to her hips. She towered over him as he crouched beside the pin and bucket. Her breasts rose as she took a deep breath. ‘A woman would want to know these things before she joined a family, so that she would know how her offspring would fare. She might consider it more advantageous to find a man willing to join with her own family, and she thus would retain her own inheritance rights.’

‘I agree,’ Lars replied evenly. ‘She would be a fool not to consider alternate moves. And alternate mates.’

He rose and shouldered past her to stride to the next pin. She remained standing on the dock, watching him work. Ki glanced swiftly at her face as she moved to her next pin. Katya seemed to be regretting her words.

Slowly Katya drifted after Lars to kneel beside him again. He rose even as she knelt, going quickly to the next pin. Undaunted, Katya followed him. Ki moved on reluctantly to her own next pin. Every pin was bringing them closer to the junction of the floating docks.

‘Did I tell you that I just came from taking a lamb to the Harpy Platform?’ Katya asked in a girlishly contrite voice. Lars moved silently to the next pin. She trailed after him. ‘Father asked after you first, as he always does. He was pleased to hear how well – how well you wear your manhood.’

‘Katya,’ Lars groaned warningly.

‘And he was full of news of his precious Harpies, as always,’ she went on hastily. ‘He hasn’t changed a bit. When he was with us, he always knew all the news: joinings, births, quarrels, deaths. Father was always talking of it, almost before it happened.’

Lars picked up his bucket, moved to the next pin. Ki tarried at her own pin, pretending to be having some difficulty with it. But Katya’s voice carried as clearly as ever.

‘There has been a tragedy!’ She offered it most pleadingly for his attention. Lars gave in, rocking back on his heels and turning martyred eyes up to her.

‘Not in our own aeries, I am relieved to tell you. It was in a lone aerie far to the south of here, a good week’s travel away, though only a few days for a Harpy on the wing. It was a renegade aerie, the Winged Ones there raising a brood alone. Father said they were a loning pair, caring little for keeping peace with other folk. Their attitude in this is not condoned by our own Harpies. Indeed, some of ours are saying they brought it upon themselves. For all that, they still have our sympathy and a promise of aid in their search for vengeance.’

‘Vengeance?’ Lars asked slowly. His voice was troubled.

The buzzing in Ki’s ears suddenly rose in volume. Premonition leaned cold on her.

‘A nest destroyed within days of hatching! Done by a Human, too, by all the signs. Someone scaled the cliff to torch the nest. The mother was heartlessly slaughtered, her body flung to the base of the cliff. The father was hideously burned in a vain attempt to save the eggs. He may never wing again. He is so scarred he has lost much of the movement necessary for normal flight. But he will live.’

Ki watched the cord slip from her lax fingers to vanish in the murky water. Her head whirled with sudden vertigo. She could not seem to get enough air into her lungs.

‘Of such stuff is nightmare made.’ Lar’s voice was haunted. ‘When did it happen? It must have been some months back, at the end of hatching season. Or was it a late brood and it happened but days ago?’

‘Father did not say.’ Katya seemed pleased at Lars’s response and interest. ‘I understand that the father was not found for some days, for he could not fly for help. He was near death when he was rescued. They say he is partially blinded, too. Our Harpies are sympathetic and have been taking food to him. But he was a militant and a renegade. They will not take up his revenge for him, though they speak of the deed angrily and listen for news of such a Human. One such as that makes me ashamed to be of the Human race.’

‘In that, you would not be alone,’ Lars replied. Katya carried the heavy bucket as they moved to the next pin. Ki, drawn by horror and fascination, picked up her own bucket to move down another pin, where she could pick up their voices.

‘Is it true, Father wished to know, what we are hearing? That Haftor seeks to win favor with Ki?’

Lars stabbed an angry look at Katya. ‘Are you taking up your father’s hobby so soon?’ he asked in a deadly voice.

Katya flushed. ‘It is not for myself I ask, Lars, but for my father. You know how he thirsts for news. He says he has heard it from others on that side. That Haftor will try to win Ki, and with her Sven’s lands. The family holding is large. It is natural that there would be much curiosity, and even alarm, to see the ruling share of the holding fall to new hands.’

A dull, aching anger rose in Ki. She felt herself a tally bar, a reckoning piece in this game of balancings they played. She, Ki, reduced to a measure of land to be controlled. But she did not move or speak. She set an orange crystal gently in her bucket, drew out fresh line for the pin.

‘I fail to see any reason for alarm, Katya. You sound like Rufus when you have so much suspicion in your voice. Haftor is cousin to me. We fear no treachery from him. Given some time, he might well prove a good leader for the holdings. But I doubt that it will come to pass. I am as close to Ki as any, and I can tell you that she has no soft feelings for Haftor, regardless of how he may see himself or what ambitions he may have. Haftor and I have had our differences, but he is a good man. When Haftor makes a joining, it will be to a woman he cares for, regardless of what she may or may not hold. Mark my words, and see if I am not right.’

‘There are even those who say …’ Katya hesitated, but the look in her eyes was more catlike than uncertain. ‘… those who say that Lars would profit more to take Ki to wife than if he took Katya.’

‘Lars!’ Ki called it twice as loudly as she needed to. ‘I’ve a full bucket. I’m going up to the hanging shed.’

She sent Katya a warm smile under cold eyes. Lars did not look at her or reply. Ki rose, heavy bucket dangling, and thumped up the floating dock to climb the steps to the bank above the marsh. She followed the beaten track between the banks of coarse, waving grass. The sun beat on her aching head, and her mind could find no safe place to light. The blue Harpy lived, and lived to seek revenge. Other Harpies would aid him. Tongues wagged about what bull would next be put to Ki the cow. Her pace quickened, her scowl set deeper.

‘Race along like that, and every crystal will be shattered before you get to the shed,’ warned a voice behind her.

She slowed her pace and looked back. Haftor toiled along, a bucket dangling from each hand. He looked out at her from his dark, beetling brows and grinned to soften his words.

‘Do you know how they speak of us?’ Ki found herself asking him angrily. The dammed-up anger burst in her. She let it flood her mind with the more personal affront she felt, letting it wash her thoughts away from circling Harpies and sharp talons.

Haftor shrugged under his burden, allowed himself a small chuckle. ‘Does it bother you, Ki, to have your name linked with mine? You have never spoken of it before. I thought you were unaware of it. A vainer man would believe that you approved the talk. But it is easily resolved. Wait until you’ve an audience, then put your fist in my ugly face. No woman will blame you for it. It will give them something new to talk about.’

Ki looked at him incredulously. ‘Does it not bother you, Haftor, to have every tongue forking over your personal life as if it were their manure pile?’

Haftor stopped, set down his buckets to get a fresh grip, and then moved on. Ki followed him.

‘People have “forked over” my life since the day Marna and I were brought here as children. Most felt that Cora took us on out of the charity of her heart. Only Cora seems never to have seen it so. So, walk with me or poke me in the eye. They will talk about us, either way. Only the tone of the gossip will change. So,’ his tone suddenly became lighter, and he turned to toss Ki a smile, ‘why not give them something to jabber about? When will you come to my sister’s house to visit and admire the work of her hands? From her forge and anvil come the best metal-working the family has ever seen. She has never given them cause to regret taking us in.’

‘I am sure neither of you has ever done so,’ Ki hastened to reply. It was the first time Haftor had ever spoken openly to her of the matter. Ki had never understood what there was about the subject that made it seem forbidden. But she felt the mention of it drew her onto shaky ground.

The hanging shed loomed up before them. The door was ajar, and Ki could see within to long poles that spanned the interior and supported the glistening crystals on their cords. ‘I will come to see you and Marna when Rufus leaves me time free. Perhaps Marna would work some metal for me? I’ve little to trade, except a share of the metal itself. It’s silver, and fine but I’ve no use for it as a silver mug. It takes the heat of the drink too well and burns my hand.’

‘I’m sure she would be pleased to do it for nothing. She gets little chance to work with fine metal and takes pleasure in good materials. What will you have her make from it?’

They had reached the door of the hanging hut. Ki set down her heavy bucket. She folded her mouth, her face thoughtful. ‘Almost, Haftor, you make me forget who I am, and when. I had the mug for a long time, and often thought of a hair comb for myself and a wrist piece for Sven. Now I’ve no use for either. My hair is bound back in widow’s knots, and I shall not see that metal shine on Sven’s arm. Almost, almost, you make me forget.’

Haftor flushed unexpectedly at her words. A smile gentled his homely face. ‘Fetch the mug anyway, and bring it tonight to my sister’s house. Have your hair comb, and a wrist piece to fit yourself. Surely you shall not wear widow’s knots to the end of your days?’

She looked at him silently. She stooped and took a crystal on its line from her bucket. She reached to an empty spot on the pole and knotted the line about it. ‘I shall ask your sister to make me only the comb, and a wrist piece to fit herself. Or her brother, if she has no vanity for jewelry.’

Haftor looked deep into Ki’s eyes. Gentleness mellowed his face. ‘Ki, will not you tell me what troubles you today? A spattering of gossip, no matter how distasteful to you, could not pale your face this way.’

Ki folded her mouth narrowly. She stooped to her bucket for a fresh crystal, took her time to hang it. Where was her mind today, to let her face so mirror her distress? Damn Harpies and everything to do with them! She tried for a weary smile.

‘I am but tired, Haftor, in a peculiar way. The odors of the marsh make my eyes sting and my nose run. They make my head pound until my ears are filled with the sound of a thousand bees humming. I do not think this life suits my body. I find myself longing for the coming of the Rite Master, so that you all may make your Rite. Then I can go on my way with a good conscience.’

Haftor looked at the empty path behind him. He stepped inside the small hut, close to Ki. His eyes were darker in the dimness of the hut’s interior. His voice was low and urgent.

‘Go now, Ki. Go now!’

She stepped back from him, bewildered and frightened by his sudden intensity. He did not look completely sane, with his mouth set and eyes glowing so. She licked lips gone dry. ‘I cannot go now, Haftor, and keep my honor intact. I have given my word to Cora that I would stay. Would you have me break it?’

‘Yes! I would. But you, I fear, will not.’ He shook his head and cast his eyes down. The fierceness seemed to ebb away. ‘For your sake, I hope the Rite Master hurries. But he is an old man, and he will not hasten his rounds. He travels from town to town in the valley, catechizing the children and presenting them to the Harpies. As he did to me once.’ Haftor’s voice trailed away uncertainly, and he seemed lost for a moment in a memory. ‘Another month will find him with us.’

Ki wondered what he had recalled. Had older memories haunted Haftor as memories of him haunted Ki now?

A jolt to Ki’s ribs recalled her to the present. Vandien had stirred himself in his coverings to nudge her. Ki glanced up at the sky. No Harpy. And the sun was still high enough for them to travel yet a ways.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Tonight’s camp.’ Vandien had settled back against the cuddy door, but he pointed a gloved hand.

Ki looked. She saw no more than a wide place in the trail. True, the rock there overhung the trail a bit and was free of blue ice. But it was bare to the sky, a bad place to have to defend.

‘And if we push on past there – use up what daylight is left to us?’ Ki asked over the wind.

Vandien shook his head slowly, not even bothering to straighten up on the seat.

‘A narrower, more treacherous trail ahead, one best seen in full daylight. And no place to camp for the night, unless you want to light your fire on the trail before or behind us. Here at least you may unharness the team in a level spot and let them take shelter between the wagon and the cliff. Ahead, nothing.’

Regretfully, Ki pulled the wagon up in the wide space. She wanted to flee from the Harpy. Hopeless. It had always been hopeless. Even at a dead run on level ground, the team could not outdistance that winged death. Ki prayed for strong winds as she moved to unharness the team. A bitter smile twisted her lips. Did she think that Keeva would hear one who had forsaken the Romni ways?

The rhythm of camp-making took over her mind. Rub the team, blanket the team, shake them out a double measure of grain. She leaned on Sigurd a moment, feeling and hearing the steady munching as his dull teeth ground the grain. The inevitability of her own death settled over her like a cloak. It seemed to make the wind muffled, to make the nasty fingers of the cold more impartial. It dulled the old fear that nibbled at the edges of her mind. It was coming for her, as she had long known it would. Now it would be soon, and the waiting would be over. Ki would be glad when the waiting was done. She was weaponless on an exposed ledge on a mountain face. Let death be mercifully swift for her. She wondered if she would struggle at all.

A grim humor settled over Ki. It was as Haftor had said: You needed the bitter edges of life to make it real, to let you taste what was still sweet. She hugged Sigurd’s great shoulder impulsively. The beast veered away from her in surprise.