Читать книгу The Windsingers Series: The Complete 4-Book Collection - Megan Lindholm - Страница 13

Vandien had already kindled a small fire between the wagon and the bare cliff face. It winked at Ki in the gathering darkness. Vandien moved among Ki’s things with sureness now, knowing where to seek for the kettle, the brewing herbs, the mugs. She started to go to the cuddy to gather the makings of the stew, then saw that he already had it beginning to bubble on the fire. She was torn between displeasure at his free ways with her possessions and relief that it would be ready to eat soon. Impulsively, she changed her pace, came up behind him silently over the snow. He poured tea steaming into a mug and turned to present it to her. ‘You’ve keen ears,’ she said. He shrugged and poured a mug of tea for himself. She watched him over the rim of her mug as she sipped. Who the hell was he? What fate had slipped him into her life, sandwiched between a late cargo and a Harpy bent on revenge? It did not seem at all fair that she must be burdened with him when there was already so much hanging over her. She watched him narrowly, seeing for the first time the precise way his hands moved as he did things, the smallness of his hands and feet that moved so economically to every task. Even in his unkempt state, there was an inborn tidiness about him that refused to be quenched.

He took the kettle of stew from the fire. Ki followed him as he carried it to the wagon seat, and then into the cuddy. Two bowls were set out on the small table.

‘I saw no sense to eating in the wind,’ he explained as he poured two equal portions that left the kettle empty.

Ki took out hard traveler’s bread from a cupboard to add to the stew in their bowls. They ate silently. Ki tried not to watch him. When the meal was finished, she pushed her bowl aside. Their body heat and the single candle had warmed the cuddy slightly. Vandien had pushed his hood back.

As they sat silent at the small table he seemed to become more and more uncomfortably aware of Ki’s gaze. Before it, he seemed to withdraw deeper into himself, as if he could vanish by being still and silent. Ki tried to put her eyes elsewhere – on the toy horse on its shelf, on the handle of Sven’s cupboard – only to find her eyes fleeing from her past to rest on the dark little man.

Vandien fidgeted. Reaching into his tunic pocket, under Sven’s cloak, he drew out a fine, thin piece of cord. It was creamy white and silkily smooth as he drew it over his hands. He tied the ends of it together with a small, peculiar knot and then began to loop it in an intricate pattern over his fingers. Ki found her eyes drawn away from his face and to the moving string. She watched as his fingers looped the string about themselves, built patterns that faded and melted into other patterns. He glanced across at her from under thick eyelashes. She became aware of a small smile that hovered at the corners of his mouth.

‘It’s a story string,’ he said in reply to her unasked question. ‘Haven’t you ever seen one before?’

Ki shook her head, watching his fingers deftly loop and throw the string about in melting shapes. He transferred a loop from the thumb to the finger of the other hand, made a pattern of diamonds, and now a shape of rectangles. With a sudden snap of his narrow hands it was a loop of soft string again. He untied his knot and passed it to Ki for her inspection.

‘It seems like any other string,’ Ki observed, as she let it trail across her hands. She tugged it gently, feeling its limber strength. Vandien reached to snag it back from her loose fingers.

‘Where I come from … on the other side of these mountains, and then a ways north … they are taught to all the children. From this string I have learned the history of my people, the genealogy of my family and of other families that touch mine, to say nothing of the doings of many heroes.’

‘From a string?’ Ki asked, half in wonder, half scoffing.

‘Here’s a tree,’ Vandien said, and with a flick of his fingers he held before her a tall triangle of string stretched on the fingers of both hands while four fingers of one hand held the rectangle that was its trunk. Another flash of his fingers, and the tree disappeared. ‘A star!’ This took a moment of loopings before he held up a five-pointed star on the fingers of one hand. ‘The Hawk!’ An abstract, graceful figure that suggested open wings. ‘My name!’ This seemed to be two separate abstract figures, one on each hand, held up side by side for Ki’s inspection.

‘Do the shapes form a sound, like the characters linked on paper?’

Vandien shook his head. ‘We have that type of writing also for things that must be recorded, sales of land, the pedigree of a bull, public announcements – but these are older by far than those symbols. No, this is Van,’ he nodded to his left hand, ‘and this is Dien,’ with a nod to his right. ‘Vandien. Myself.’

‘What does your name mean?’ she asked him.

He shrugged at her question, his dark brows drawing a little closer together in puzzlement. ‘It’s a name, like any other, given by my parents. No meaning.’

‘My father named me as the Romni do, making the name a reason to remember the time of birth. “Ki, Ki,” a bird called to him on the morning I was born. And so I was Ki.’

Vandien looked scandalized. ‘Among my people, that is how we might name a horse or a dog. Not a Human. Your name should bespeak who your parents were and the order of your birth. I sang – croaked might be a better word – to you of Sidris today. Her father was Risri, her mother Sidlin. She was their first-born daughter, hence she was Sidris. You see?’

Ki shook her head. ‘I do not follow it.’

‘It is simple. If she had been the first-born son, she, uh, he would have been Riscid. Their secondborn daughter was Linri, their second son is Rilin, and so on.’

‘And if they have more than two daughters?’ Ki asked. ‘What do they do when they’ve run out of names to share?’

‘A Human’s name does not run out, unless there is a time when he had no forebears. For convenience, we use but the first two parts of our names. I know my own to thirty-six forebears. There is more to it than that, of course, but the rest is for the keepers of the genealogies. A girl adds to her own name the entire name of her mother. A boy takes his father’s.’

‘Who could ever keep it all straight? And, more to the point, who would want to?’ Ki’s tone was lightly mocking, but Vandien’s face went dark at her words.

‘There are some to whom such things matter. They used to matter to me, once, but no more. It is, as you say, a silliness.’ He snapped the string free of his fingers and pocketed it. He rose to take the stacked dishes and clamber out of the cuddy with them. Ki wondered what had offended him. Her pleasant mood evaporated, leaving darkness inside her heart. She wondered at her own foolishness, to sit and talk on trivialities while death stalked her from the skies. She sat still, harking to the wind. Blow long and hard, she urged it.

Through the wind she could hear Vandien outside the cuddy, heard him speak to the team, felt the slight movement of the wagon as he put the dishes into their chest. Idly she wished she were alone tonight, to sort out her memories, to handle the good ones and set aside the bad ones. To look back on her days. Instead, she must deal with this peculiar dark-haired man, so foreign to her experience. He made Ki aware of him and drove Sven back into the shadows. She did not like the way he stung her out of her solitude, didn’t like the way he made her ask questions and wonder. She didn’t want to consider the way his body moved or guess the lively thoughts behind the movements of his features. She liked her silences. She missed her solitary routines.

Her fingers moved idly to her hair. Out of long habit, she let it down and combed her fingers through the brown strands until they lay flat and smooth down her back. Then, with the swiftness born of habit, she put it up again into her knots and weavings. She removed her outer cloak and spread it over the bedding. She was kicking off her boots when Vandien returned. She slammed the sliding door shut against the rising wind that tried to follow him. Without a word, he shook out his cloak and spread it over the bed. He began to remove his boots.

Ki sat staring. Cloakless and bent over, the arch of Vandien’s neck was curved. A marking was on it, small, almost hidden under the hair that straggled there: Outstretched blue wings.

Ki’s heart went cold. She met his gaze with stony eyes as he straightened. He looked at her, perplexed. Then his dark eyes fell, and he shifted his feet in embarrassment.

‘When I am weary,’ he said softly, ‘there are subjects that come to my mind. Things that pain me. And when those subjects are touched upon, I become abrupt and rude, taking offense where none is meant and forgetting where courtesy is owed for hospitality shown.’

He stood before her, seeming to wait. Words struggled in Ki. Should she demand to know the meaning of the mark on his neck? The candle flickered in the cuddy, the lighting was uncertain. Was Vandien to be accused and suspected because he had a peculiarly shaped birthmark? Her logic fought with her wariness. Courtesy intervened when she realized that Vandien was still standing before her, waiting.

‘We are both tired,’ Ki said. The words were enough. He sighed as she blew out the candle. There was less awkwardness as they crawled under the covers, but more watchfulness on Ki’s part. He did not seem to notice. He stretched his body out beside hers, full-length, yet he was careful not to let any touch occur. He was still and silent except for one spell of coughing. Yet Ki could not lose her awareness of him. Anger rose in her. She was sick to death of her fears. Enough that she must watch the skies all day for death. Now must she fear that the man stretched beside her was a servant of the Harpies, an instrument of their revenge? She cautioned herself that she must wait and see. She would not let her hastiness hurt an innocent man. She would never be guilty of that again. And yet she chafed to know, to have her final encounter with the Harpy above, to know what this man beside her was. But she must wait. And waiting was the thing she was worst at. Her last few days at Harper’s Ford seemed to have been years in her life, to have aged her as years on the road with Sven had not.

Her short knife chewed slowly through the tough stem. Already it needed sharpening again. A poorly forged tool even for this job. Ki squatted, seized the large orange fruit, and lifted it. Moving carefully to avoid the plants that still bore ripening fruit, she lugged the punker over to where the beaten cart track wound through the field. She stacked it with the others. She stopped beside the pile, arching her back to stretch her aching muscles in a new direction. About her the hills were beginning to turn from greens to yellows. Leaves of birch were yellow-veined. Alder would be scarlet soon. The summer was dying. The Harp trees played a sadder song. Or was it the humming of her ears?

Ki returned to the row, stooped to saw free another large punker. So this was the life of the landed, she reflected bitterly. Now she knew what it was to belong to the dirt under her feet. With a twinge of despair, she thought of her wagon gathering dust in the barn. Her heart yearned for the road. Soon, soon, she promised herself, wondering if she lied again. Soon.

She lugged the punker to join the others in the pile. She worked alone. Time had not brought her acceptance. There were still those in the family who would not concede that ignorance had brought about that disastrous rite. There were some who would never forgive her for shattering their ideals, even though Cora often told Ki that all was not as bad as they made it out. Ki still did not know what to make of Cora.

Why did she wish to keep Ki here, and go to such lengths to try to make her happy? Ki herself was willing to admit she was a good worker. She had nearly finished harvesting the field of punkers by herself. Rufus had wanted to put three workers on the field; Ki had done it alone in a single day. There was a simpler answer: Cora loved her as she said, and wished her to stay for that reason only. Ki grunted as she lifted a large punker. She hoped that was not the reason. For, then Cora might never be willing to let her go. And she hungered for the road. Here in the fields, she could not dream of Sven and her children, she could not pretend them here beside her. They had belonged on her wagon, by her fire at the close of the evening. Ki grieved because she could not grieve for them. Cora knew it. She would come upon Ki, silent at some task, and give her a nudge or a shake as she passed.

‘Let them go,’ she would plead, a sorrowful look in her eyes. ‘We do not speak of our dead here, lest we draw them back to us from a better place. And what you are doing is worse than speaking. You clutch them to yourself. The Rite did not loose them from you, Ki. Now you must loose them on your own. Let them go, child. Begin to live your life again.’

Then Cora would leave, hurrying to some task of her own. Ki envied her that bustle of life. She looked so purposeful, so certain of the importance of what she did. And lately she looked at Ki with more speculation in her eyes than before. Ki dreaded the moment when its purpose would be revealed. She did not wish to have anyone thinking of her, making decisions that included her. She only wanted to be on her road.

Ki watched her hands sawing at the stem. They were thinner now than they had ever been, but just as strong. The calluses were in new places now. Ki felt as if she were drying up all over, hardening in spots where once she had been soft. She did not mind. She just wished the process would hurry up. Maybe when she was completely dried and hard she would accept this new life. She might stop wondering hopelessly why she lacked the force of will to leave.

A shadow fell across her hands. Lars bent and took the punker from her.

‘Must you always work so diligently?’ he asked, laughing weakly. ‘You leave me no excuse to idle!’

Ki made a smile for him as she rose. ‘I didn’t even hear the wagon come. We may have to make two trips with this field. It bore more heavily than the other.’

‘I didn’t come on the wagon,’ Lars said. For the first time Ki took note of his appearance. His blond hair was still damp and curling at the ends. His yellow shirt was of a finer weave than usual, and it bloused over clean trousers. He wore his good boots, not his rough field clogs. Ki smiled in spite of herself. He smelled like Cora’s herb water.

‘What occasion makes such demands on you, Lars?’ she asked teasingly. ‘You’d put to shame a Romni bridegroom. Will you ask Katya to bind back your hair this night?’

He gave her a long-suffering look and shook his head. ‘We’ve a guest, to arrive late this night. I don’t know how you missed hearing of it. Cora sent me to fetch you. The punkers will keep. A night or two in the fields will not harm them. She knew you would want to be cleaned and freshened for the gathering.’

Ki followed Lars as he lugged the punker over and deposited it on the top of her pile. Then she fell in beside him as they followed the cart path across the fields and back to the house. His hands swung as they strode along, once lightly brushing against Ki’s.

‘Who is this guest, so important that we must be scrubbed for him?’

‘Cora has not told you?’ Lars asked her with a sideways glance. ‘I am surprised. One that will lighten your heart a bit, I think. And, as I was the one to scold you so for your errors, I will take the happy chance of being the first to tell you good news. You took it sore-to-heart, Ki, when I told you what your Harpy emotions had taken from us. Afterwards I was disgusted with myself. What good had it served to tell you such things? And when my mother knew what I had said! She made my remorse the thicker with a number of names she had not called me since I was a thick-headed child of nine. To lay such a burden on your shoulders was not to my credit. But now we shall both be freed of guilt.’

‘What are you saying?’ Ki demanded. ‘Come to the point, Lars!’ She found her heart beating strangely faster. It had rested heavily on her that she had denied the family the comforts they took from their religion. Disgusting and morbid as she might find their Rites, she had no reason to snatch them away. When Ki had felt the most oppressed by the passing of Harpy shadows overhead, when she had longed most for her wagon and the freedom of the road, she had reminded herself of what she had stolen from these people. She felt she owed them. Was Lars hinting that the debt was nearly paid?

‘The Rite Master has come,’ he told her. ‘He has traveled far out of his road to come to us at this time of year. He makes ready the Rite of Cleansing. We shall renew our bonds with the Harpies! Do not stare at me so! I have not held back news from you. It was only a short time ago that my mother told me of his coming. No doubt you would have known also if you spoke to people instead of moping about the fields. For three days we will meditate and repent. On the fourth day he will work the Rite for us, to lift from our minds the poisons that separate us from the Harpies and to visit again their … their dead.’ Lars faltered at the last words, as if he touched too close to a wound. Ki’s face did not change.

They walked on in silence. Lars’s hard-soled boots thudded on the packed earth of the cart track. Ki’s own softly shod feet made no sound. With the sweat of her earlier work drying on her back and neck, Ki began to feel the chill of the fall day. The light wind that blew had an edge to it. The autumn restlessness she knew of old settled on her. It stirred her like it stirred the water birds, the migrating herd animals. She had an urge to be moving, to be leaving behind the too-familiar fields here, to be leaving the Harpy-studded sky. She was thirsty for a cool newness. Soon she would return to her roads, to her old routes, go through towns where the stable folk remembered her team and called her by name. But just as her heart lifted, a darkness seemed to brush across her eyes. A Harpy had flown across the sun. A deadening doubt fell on her. She tried to shake it off. Indecision.

She felt the sweat-caked dirt about her ankles. Her feet inside her shoes would be filthy. Dirt was under her nails, ground into her skin. The land had seized her, left its mark upon her. It would never let her go. She could not tell them no.

Lars slipped a hand lightly under her elbow. ‘Must you look so glad at my news?’ He gave her arm a shake. ‘Look out of your eyes, Ki! For too long you have worked alone. Your eyes look only inside you.’

Ki lifted herself away from his touch, gentling her action with a smile. ‘When this old man and his rite are through, you will all be healed of the harm I have done you. My own healing must come from another source, I fear.’

‘Perhaps we must find another man and another rite to heal you,’ Lars countered.

Ki smiled, but did not understand his jest. Lars seemed to search her face and eyes for an answer to some question. They walked on, but Lars went more slowly, and finally stopped altogether. When Ki turned to face him to ask what was wrong, the strange look on his face stopped her. His eyes told her that he was going to ask something of her, something very difficult. Ki steeled herself.

‘Will not you make the Rite with us, Ki? No one excludes you from us but yourself. The way you spoke just now, it is plain you have no thought for joining us in purification and atonement. Yet, all would welcome you.’

Ki shook her head slowly. Her eyes were hard. ‘I have done nothing to be purified of; I have sinned no sin to atone for.’

‘No, of course you haven’t. Don’t take my words to mean that. But, for you to go through it might make you feel more at ease here. Every day you go off to a task and work at it alone. It isn’t right.’

‘It’s what I’m used to,’ Ki broke in. She didn’t want Lars to speak any further. The truth rose up in her, burst from her lips with a strength she thought lost to her. ‘I don’t want to join you. Please, don’t look hurt. I would not hurt you any more than I have already. I have stayed on at Cora’s request, bound by my own word foolishly given. I have lived your ways and tried to make them my own. But they are not. I have pulled weeds and gathered crystals, salted fish, and tanned hides. I’ve put my team to pulling a cart of manure across a field and used them to drag logs for Haftor to make into lumber. I’ve done all you asked me to. But there is no joy in it for me. Every day my life meshes more closely with those of a dozen others about me. I must do one task, or another task cannot be started. I must haul the logs, or the lumber cannot be sawed to build the new grain shed. I do not like it, Lars. With my wagon, it rests on me. I can fail no one but myself.’

‘What about Sven?’ Lars asked bravely, bluntly. ‘You bound your life to Sven’s, and then to the children as they came. They depended on you.’

‘And they lie together in a common grave because that dependency was misplaced!’ Ki hissed fiercely. ‘Shall I let you lean on me, to fail you also?’

Lars faced her squarely. ‘No one asks you to let us lean on you. I invite you to enter our Rite, and to lean on me.’

Ki put her hands to her face, to push back from her eyes the loose hair that had pulled from her widow’s knots. Her hands smelled of dirt and punkers. Grit clung to her wet face when she wiped her hair back. Her words came cold and hard. ‘I can lean on no one. I cannot join your rite. I will not consort with Harpies, asking them to show me the faces of the ones they snatched bloodily away from me. Lars, you cannot ask that of me.’

She watched his face. His blue eyes were softer than the skies above him. A pulse beat warmly at the base of his throat. Ki watched it jumping. ‘I cannot ask it of you, Ki. You are right. But I would rather ask that of you than what Cora will ask. I am sickened with anger at what you may meet tonight. I am shamed by necessity. I fear I know what you will choose. I have not the heart to ask it of you. Let Cora do this to you. I have no heart for it. In truth, I am too fond.’

Lars walked away. Ki stared after him. When she followed, she took care not to catch up. Her heart was cold with trepidation. She was too heavy with her own pain to ask what pain she might have given him.

He was out of sight when she entered the common room. The room stirred painful memories for Ki. Here again was the long table pushed to the middle of the room, the empty benches waiting. A proud bowl of beaten silver cradled the year’s last water lilies in a shining pool. Ki smelled savory odors of meat cooling and heard the noisy bustle in the kitchen. There would be many at this table tonight. Ki passed hastily through the room, down the hall to her own room.

The room she slept in now was a smaller, simpler one. Cora had moved her into it, hoping to put Ki more at ease in the house. Ki had tried to arrange it to her own tastes. She was not satisfied with the results. Her few garments hung on pegs on the wall. The single small window was left open and bare of draperies to let in what light and air it could. A shagdeer rug on the floor, Ki’s own bedding on the narrow bedstead echoed the cuddy waiting in the shed to Cora. Ki did not see it so. She knew of no other way to arrange a room. A bare wooden stand beneath the window held a simple jug and bowl of blue earthenware. Lydia was pouring warm, scented water into the jug as Ki entered.

Ki started to scowl, then wiped it from her face. She would never become accustomed to it, never. To Lydia and Kurt fell the simple household tasks. They filled everyone’s water jugs, shook and aired all the family bedding, shared the washing of all garments. Ki reminded herself that her privacy had not been violated. Lydia was but doing her task, as Ki had done hers in the punker field.

‘Thank you. That smells lovely.’

‘I’ll leave the extra pitcher of water,’ Lydia replied, setting it down gently on the stand. ‘Cora said you might want extra water tonight, in honor of our guest. Oh, when I washed your brown shift, there was a seam coming undone. I mended it with black – the closest match I have for it right now. Will that be all right?’

‘Of course. Thank you. You needn’t have done it, Lydia. I don’t mind doing my own mending.’

‘I know. And I don’t mind harvesting my own punkers. But it all goes better if we do our own tasks. Be easy with it, Ki. A person would think she had shamed you by doing any small task for you.’ With a smile and shake of her head, Lydia hurried from the room. She would be busy tonight, preparing the house for a large group of people. Ki did not envy her.

When the door shut behind Lydia, Ki stripped off her garments, kicking free of her soft, low boots. She poured water into the basin, dipped a soft cloth in it. She began with her sweaty, dusty face and worked down her body past small, firm breasts that no longer served any useful function, over a flat, muscled belly that bore the rippling scars of two children’s passage. She had to change the water in the basin twice as it became brown with suspended dust. The grime on her feet had been worked into her skin by the pressure of her boots. Ki scrubbed them, soaked them a bit, and scrubbed them again before her feet emerged small and pink as a child’s.

The cool wind from the window had dried her body as she worked. Now she seated herself on the bed to unbind the complicated knots and weavings of her hair. Loosed, her brown mane fell nearly to the small of her back. She curried it thoroughly, listening to the soft ripping sound the brush made as it smoothed her hair and took the dust from it. When her hair finally swung smooth and shining, she bound it up swiftly again into widow’s knots.

When her hair was a woven net that bounced against the back of her neck, Ki moved to the pegs where her clothing hung. The choice was not large. The simple brown shift was presentable. Lydia’s skillful mending scarcely showed. Next to the shift was a pair of loose blue pantaloons and a gaily embroidered vest. This was acceptable wear by the mountains and on the other side of the range, but slightly scandalous in Harper’s Ford. Beside it was the green shift with yellow flowers that Ki had worn the night of the Rite of Loosening. She had not touched it since. Now she let the fine weave of it slide over her fingers softly. She had refrained from wearing it lest it remind the others. She lifted it from the hook. They would be thinking of it tonight no matter what she wore. It might as well be the green gown. She slid it coolly over her head. It was still too long for her, even with the heavy sandals she strapped on her feet.

People had begun to gather in the common room. Most of them greeted Ki with a modicum of kindness. Some still nursed the psychic bruising she had given them. Holland was speaking quickly and softly to a woman who stood beside her nursing a child. Ki guessed what they spoke of. She deliberately walked over to them and touched one of the baby’s rosy bare feet.

‘Healthy as a little pig, isn’t she?’ Ki smiled hard at them both. The woman nodded hastily and turned to admire a nearby wall. Holland did not attempt to disguise her glare.

‘For shame!’ muttered a low voice beside her. Ki turned quickly to find Haftor grinning behind his hand at her. He shook his head. ‘Shame on you for waiting so long, that is. You should have begun to bait them a long time ago.’

‘To what end?’ Ki asked curiously. Haftor’s good humor gleamed through his homely face. Lamplight outlined the high cheekbones, glanced from his gleaming black hair. His dark blue eyes were full of merriment.

‘To force them to deal with you. While they can gossip about you in corners, and you stroll by us unperturbed as a hunting cat, they have no reason to respect you. Or to change their minds about you. Give them a taste of your wit now and then. They’ll either come to fear you and leave you alone, or recognize your worth and let you become one of the family.’

Ki smiled in spite of herself. ‘You and Lars have had your heads together?’

Haftor knit his dark brows. ‘Lars? He doesn’t indulge in long conversations with me. Saves them all up for you, I suppose.’

‘Meaning?’ Ki asked bluntly.

‘Meaning … nothing. Except that Lars seems to find himself more in your company than any of the rest of us do.’

‘That’s Rufus’s doing, I guess.’ Ki wondered where this strange turn of the conversation was taking them. ‘He told Lars to show me how to make myself useful. Lars has done so, giving me the same tasks he does himself. There’s nothing strange about that.’

‘Nothing at all, Ki. As anyone with half an eye would see. Rufus would be a fool not to arrange it so.’

Even as Ki tried to make sense of his remark, she felt a light touch on her sleeve. Lars smiled at them both.

‘Speaking of Lars, here he is, to snatch you away for some doubtless important reason.’

‘Extremely important,’ Lars agreed blandly, ignoring the acid edge to Haftor’s voice. Ki wondered what fey spirit had taken them both tonight. ‘My mother, Cora, requests that Ki come to her to meet our guest. You will agree to the importance of that, Haftor, will you not?’

‘Certainly, Lars. In fact, I find it so urgent I shall escort Ki to your mother myself.’

Ki moved lithely away just as Haftor would have possessed her arm. ‘I shall escort myself there, thank you. Whatever tussle you puppies have going, you had best leave me out of it.’ Ki moved swiftly away, leaving the two eyeing one another.

Cora was seated in a throne-like wooden chair to one side of the fireplace. On the opposite side of the hearth was a matching chair, empty. Ki moved to Cora’s side with a smile.

‘You sent for me?’ Ki’s eyes touched Cora’s hair, glinting silvery from the fire’s light, then fell on the worn hands folded idly in her lap. How strange to see Cora’s hands still! Ki’s heart went out to her, resting for a moment in Cora’s quiet strength. If Ki had ever had a mother, she would have wanted her to be a woman like this, full of quietness inside however she might chatter on the surface, loaning her strength to any that might need it. Cora had constrained Ki to stay here; Ki disliked that act. Yet, she could not dislike the woman who had done it. In Cora’s presence she felt that, for the moment, she could relax her grip on the reins, knowing that a woman fully as capable as herself was in charge. Ki could feel safe with Cora, for as long as their interests ran in the same direction.

Cora smiled up at her, reached to pat lightly at Ki’s hand. ‘I wanted you to meet our guest. He’s had to go to the backhouse again. He’s an old man, troubled by his stomach. Nils is his name. He has come from far to help us. Lars has told you this?’

Ki nodded and gathered her courage up. ‘Did Lars tell you that I would not enter into this rite? For, I am sure that idea came from you, not Lars.’

‘He told me,’ Cora admitted serenely. ‘And I told him that he had not asked you sweetly enough. He can have a charming tongue when he wills it, that boy of mine, but he will not always use it when I request him to. So, I suppose I must ask you myself. Ki, why will you not make this Rite with us? It would show the others that you have determined to make your home with us, to share our ways and enter our family fully.’

‘Then I would be lying to them,’ Ki said firmly in a quiet voice. She and Cora both looked about the room, smiling at any who might mark their conversation. Lydia held up a wine glass to her, and Cora smiled and nodded. She came promptly to serve them red wine in ancient glasses. Cora complimented Lydia on the table flowers. Ki smiled and nodded her thanks to Lydia as she received her glass of wine. She held it, untasted, as Lydia moved away.

Cora sipped at hers and fixed bright dark eyes on Ki. ‘You do not wish to be one of us, do you?’

‘I do not,’ Ki answered. ‘Though I thank you for the offer. Cora, I have stayed as you asked me. I have tried the life you offered me. I cannot make it mine.’

‘The time of healing is not finished,’ Cora reminded her.

‘I shall stay it out,’ conceded Ki. ‘But then I must be on my way, with no hard thoughts between us, I pray. You will let me go then, Cora.’

It was Cora’s turn to bow her head to Ki’s will. She did so with a slight slumping of her usually squared shoulders. Ki’s heart smote her. ‘I will let you go,’ Cora said. ‘If by then you have found nothing here to hold you, I will let you go. There will be no hard thoughts between us, but on my part there will be regret. When I was a girl, Ki, I found a wounded hawk, little more than a fledgling. I nursed it and coddled it back to health. It rode about on my wrist and fetched birds from the sky at my command. But I knew its heart was not in it. So, to my father’s disgust, I one day set it free. I know how to let things go, Ki. Do you?’

Ki looked at her hard, uncertain of the question. Before she could speak, Cora was nodding a greeting to an old man who was settling himself in the chair opposite.

Ki marveled at him. His smooth white hair was knotted at the base of his neck in the old way. His eyes were winter-blue under finely drawn white brows. The rest of his features were equally precise – the straight nose, the small mouth. He looked like a carefully preserved statue of an earlier type of Human, a man whose muscles were not nearly so important as his mind. He was slight of build, coming little higher than Ki’s shoulders. Age had stooped him, making his narrow shoulders curl toward his chest. And yet, despite his small build, he had a carriage of power. Ki dipped her head to him instinctively.

‘Nils, I present to you Ki, my daughter chosen by Sven.’

The old man sat calmly, nodding at Ki. ‘I’ve come to undo your mischief, Ki. What do you think of that?’

Nils spoke as if she were ten seasons old. Ki refused to take offense. ‘I welcome you here as no other could. I see you as the key to my freedom, old man.’

Cora frowned at Ki’s rough form of address, but the old man put his head back and laughed. He had small, even teeth and a laugh that seemed bottomless. The room about them quieted as attention fixed on Ki and Nils. Ki’s ears burned.

‘I feared an adversary here,’ Nils said loudly to Cora. ‘You warned me of a spirit that had wrested control from you during a Rite. I thought to find bitterness, anger, and a sly mind. Instead, I have this puppy telling me to do my best to put things to rights; she will be grateful. Ki, you make an old man young again.’

The room had begun to buzz about them. Ki wondered at Nils’s motives. His little blue eyes gleamed bright as a ferret’s. They seized Ki in their gaze, and he gave a barely perceptible nod.

‘I claim your daughter’s arm to help me to the table, Cora,’ Nils announced. Ki stepped to his side uneasily. Never had she seen an old man in less need of physical assistance. Yet he gripped her arm hard above the elbow, and put enough weight on it that her body was forced to sway close, her head above his. He took small, slow steps, as if he found walking a labor.

‘You’re a bright one,’ he whispered as Ki helped him to the table. ‘Hiding from you would do my purpose more harm than good. Cora is right. I must tell you. You’ll be in for a rough time of it tonight. You’ve scared these people half to death. To rejoin them to their Harpies, I must unscare them. I must make you appear less formidable, more of an incompetent child and less of a strong counter-spirit. You could resist me in this. You could stand firm and young and strong, making a mockery of their beliefs, forcing us to see the uglier side of that race that has befriended us. Or you can let me make a mockery of you, belittle you, turn you from the specter in the corner to the shadow under the bed. Which will you?’

Ki thought rapidly as she drew out the old man’s chair for him. ‘And if I choose to withdraw completely? I have already told Cora that I will not join you in this rite. What if I should seek the privacy of my room?’

‘The fears these people have built up will stay with them, daunting them until the end of their days. My rite will be powerless against it. No one will again see their dead. There will be no more Rites of Loosening. One more rhythm will pass out of their lives, and they will be the poorer.’

Ki gently pushed the chair toward the table. She curbed the pride that rose in her. She had said she wished to make amends. So this is what it would take. ‘Do your worst, old man,’ she replied. Nils chuckled and sent her a bright glance.

‘Remember your resolve, girl. You’ll need it.’

Ki stepped back from the table, uncertain of where to place herself. She looked to Cora. The glance Cora shot her pleaded. For what? Then, as Lars moved to silently escort Ki to a seat far down the table, away from the adults and people of import, Ki understood. Nils had primed Cora to what must be done. Cora, ruthless as a wolf when her family was threatened, had taken the necessary action.

Others were moving into their places about the table. Kurt, Rufus’s eldest son, took a seat beside Ki. He glanced at her, abashed to find her seated so closely, and then looked away. Edward took the chair on the other side of her, and other children filed from across the room to fill in the empty places. Ki sat gravely, her dark head raised above theirs, looking up the table to where Haftor, Lars, Lydia, and the others were being seated. Haftor stared down the table to where Ki sat. The muscles of his jaw clenched, and he spoke some short, angry words to his sister seated beside him. Embarrassed, Marna hushed him. Haftor’s dark blue eyes met Ki’s in a pledge of loyalty. Ever so slightly, Ki shook her head. She hoped he understood the message. Lars, Rufus, and Cora did not even look her way. Their attention was fastened on Nils, as was everyone’s. The little girl across the table from Ki giggled nervously. Her seating was so inappropriate that even the youngest child was aware of it. Ki took a slow, deep breath and turned her eyes to Nils.

Nils did not need to make any gesture to gain the full attention of the table. He simply began to speak.

‘I have come to you here, at Cora’s request, to repair a rift between you and the Harpies of Harper’s Ford. We shall not speak tonight of ignorance or pettiness.’ Ki’s face reddened. Haftor’s knuckles showed white on the edge of the table. ‘I am not here to instruct you in what you already know. You have been raised to certain ideals. You have enjoyed the companionship of beings better than ourselves, creatures closer to the Ultimate. But your regard for them has been soiled, your image of them spattered with the mud-throwing of a hurt and angry mind. You were wise. You did not go to the Harpies and defile their gifts to you by exposing them to these unfitting sentiments pressed upon your unwilling minds. You have chosen to wait, for atonement and reconciliation. You will return to the Harpies as unsoiled as when, in childhood, you made your first encounters. Tonight we begin.’

Nils paused. It seemed to Ki that he paused so that every person at the table could shoot her at least one look. She read every conceivable emotion in them. From Cora, a plea for understanding. Rufus was cold, Nils knowing. From Holland came enmity and a thirst for revenge. Marna’s was wonder, Haftor’s a grim sympathy and an unreadable promise. Lars’s eyes were hooded, careful blanks. But his mouth was small as a stricken child’s.

‘Tonight we eat together,’ Nils reclaimed their attention. ‘We talk, we drink, we speak no words of sadness or misfortune. By each plate Cora has placed a bit of dried kisha fruit wrapped in toi leaves. Take it with you tonight. Chew it slowly before you sleep, and think as you chew it of pleasant memories of happy intercourse with the Harpies. It will help you to recall those meetings in detail, and the feelings of peace and wholeness they gave you. Now, let us eat and speak to one another as if this misfortune had never befallen you.’

Nils fell silent. Basins and platters began to be passed at the higher part of the table, and the murmur of polite voices rose. Around Ki the children were silent, waiting anxiously for the dishes to work down the table to them. Ki ate, as the children did, whatever the adults had left to be passed. The children, warned, no doubt, to be on their best manners, spoke little. Ki was at a loss. She could not pretend to be interested in their short comments on the food, and she would not supervise their feeding. Young Edward dropped a piece of meat, retrieved it calmly from the floor, and ate it. Ki pursed her mouth and glanced up-table. Hastily she returned her eyes to her plate.

Nils had effectively drawn out her claws. For the first time since the Rite of Loosening, people were looking at her openly. Nils, by placing her far down the table, had made her an appropriate topic for conversation. He had told them all not to dwell on that mangled Rite of Loosening. Ki guessed that they had found other topics. She ate slowly, in small bites, keeping her head bowed and her eyes on her food. She tried not to care that it made her look like a guilty child to sit so while her ‘elders’ discussed her. She marked the absence of Haftor’s deep voice in the conversation. She could hear other voices, but not enough of the softly spoken words to make sense. Only enough to sting. ‘Romni’ she picked out several times, and the phrase ‘Sven too young’ once.

Ki’s mind cast about, traveled back through the years. Rufus knelt in the yard, blood streaming from his nose, with Sven towering above him, outraged and weeping in frustration. Lars was a white-faced little boy peering from the door. Ki had been sixteen then, and Aethan a year dead. She had wanted to flee back to the shelter of her wagon, to whip up the tired old team and disappear from Harper’s Ford forever. But Cora had been standing in the bright sunlight, wiping earth from her hands, demanding to know what went on. And Sven, a fool in his righteousness, told her.

‘I said to him that Ki may stay her wagon in our fields, in the fields that will come to me when I am a full man. I say she may, for I am decided that we will be joined together. He says I let her stay because she pays me in the coin that Romni girls love best to give away. So I struck him. I will strike him again if he tries to rise before he apologizes to her.’

Cora had not only made Rufus apologize, but she had forced Ki to eat inside, at the table beside them. Ki had hated her for it at that moment, not understanding why she did it, and not wanting to. This meal was like to that one, with emotions simmering but not voiced to Ki. But here was no Sven to press her hand under the table, to put the choicest bits before her. Seven months later Sven had attained his manhood, claimed his lands, and taken Ki to his bed. He had been young for it, and Ki scandalously so. All talked of the outlandish joining-gifts he gave her. Sigurd and Sigmund were then gray three-year-olds, scarcely broken to pull, nervously prancing at the ends of the new lead ropes that Sven proudly placed in Ki’s hands. And their bed had been in the front of a new wagon, built by Sven’s hands with the best materials he could muster. He had painted it blue, with apple blossoms about the windows and cuddy door.

Cora had tried to dissuade Sven from making the joining formal, Rufus had mocked him, and Lars had been fascinated by his older brother’s daring in bringing this wild road woman to their home. But when Cora had seen that Sven was not to be budged, that he would leave with Ki forever, she had yielded graciously, recognized their agreement formally, and made her tribute to the Harpies in their honor.

So, let them discuss it yet one more time, Ki whispered to herself as she ate. Let them rake and sort the facts, commiserate with Cora over this outsider forced into her home, over the waste of a fine son who could have joined farm lands or timbered country. Ki felt only tired. But then a sudden wail of loneliness snaked up in her, so strong that Ki wondered if she had cried out loud. Sven, Sven, gentle of hand, always giving her too much, giving to her before she thought to ask, always thinking of her, making her way smooth before her. Sven, his wide hands bloody as he received his son from her body; Sven, sunlight on his face, making him squint as he rode beside the wagon; Sven, firelight on his shoulders and back as they made love beside the fire while the children slept safely within the wagon.

In the wake of her silent agony came rage. Sven would never have permitted this to be done to her. Why did she sit here humbly through this insane meal? Why sympathize with their ridiculous need to cozen themselves with images of their dead renewed by Harpy magic? A surge of angry strength went through Ki. She wanted to rise suddenly, to send her chair flying, to sweep from the table before her the dishes and food. Her darting angry eyes crashed into Cora’s agonized look. Cora knew of her internal tempest. Knew it and feared it. Ki felt the power surge within her. She held it all in her hands.

Strong hands pressed down on her shoulders.

‘I’ve finished all I can eat of this meal. And I’ve not seen you touch a bite for some minutes. Won’t you take a piece of fruit to finish on and walk outside into the cool with me?’

Ki had never heard Haftor’s voice more tender. She looked up into eyes that seemed to suffer her humiliation as keenly as she did. She began to rise, then checked herself. She looked to Nils.

It irritated Ki that others might interpret her glance as requesting permission. Cora also looked to Nils, who muttered something to her, and Cora sent Ki the barest of nods. Ki rose, wondering at the wounded look that Lars sent her. Haftor leaned past her to select two perfruits from a bowl on the table. He presented her with one, and then followed her as she moved to the door.

Outside she found a smoky autumn night. The smells in the air told Ki that the leaves were loosening their holds on the trees. Soon they would carpet the ground of this river valley with yellow birch and cottonwood leaves, with here and there a sprinkling of red alder. The ground would grow hard with frost, and the wagon roads would be very good to ride on early in the morning, before thaws could soften them to muck. Ki wondered how soon she would be on those roads. Cora had promised to release her as soon as the healing was done. Ki would have to speak to her privately. Would she be able to leave in three days when this Rite of Atonement was over? Or must she wait until they had actually paid their Harpy visits and been satisfied? Ki bit deep into her perfruit.

‘It’s bitter,’ Haftor said in a low voice beside her. She had almost forgotten him. She shook her head in denial.

‘Mine’s sweet,’ she contradicted, holding it out so that he might sample it also.

‘It’s not the fruit I was speaking of. Ki, why did you endure that dinner tonight?’

Ki bit the perfruit again, chewed slowly. She did not know how to answer him. If she confided to Haftor her true reasons, would that negate this rite for him? Would it jeopardize her freedom to leave? ‘It was Cora’s will,’ she ventured.

‘Cora’s will!’ Haftor snorted. He spit the pit of his fruit across the darkened yard. ‘So they will tame you, make you meek for the good of the family? It’s as fitting as putting a deer to the plow.’

‘It … it isn’t what it seems, Haftor.’

‘It never is, Ki. Not what it seems to me, nor what it seems to you. Take to your road tonight, Ki. I’ll help you harness the team and provision your wagon from my own larder. Leave now, while their tongues wag over you. I’ll speak not a word of your road to anyone. And I know a way that none would guess. Go while you can. My father did. Sven did. This is not a good place for you.’

‘What of you?’ Ki asked, puzzled. It was the second time Haftor had voiced these feelings.

Haftor laughed a small, hard laugh. ‘Me? I’m a coward. Sven refused to ever visit the Harpies. Did Cora ever tell you that? I think not. She felt it keenly that he would not go with her to meet the grandparents that died before his birth, that he did not visit his dead father. Sven was willful, even as a boy. I always wished for his courage. A visit to the Harpies cannot be forced, you know. Sven never went. So he was really alive, just as he is really dead now.’

Ki averted her face from the hardness of his words, but Haftor boldly seized her shoulders, turned her back to face him.

‘It’s like a poison, Ki. No, not a poison. It’s … when you have it, you feel you would die without it. Only since your rebellion made me stop going have I seen it. There are others that know it now, too, I’ll wager, though few will speak it to Cora’s face. Do you think many of them will return to the Harpies, Rite or no Rite? They have been coming to life, Ki, these last few weeks, and finding it precious. It’s becoming real for them. For some it is heady. Rufus had found that he runs the holdings well, even when he cannot go to his father for advice on a field or the selection of a bull. Lydia holds her head high at last, finally freed of her mother’s nagging tongue, that had belittled her for seven years beyond her deathbed. And Lars. Poor Lars has discovered that he has a heart that must be joined, as well as a body and lands. You’ve put the bitter edges back on our lives, and now we see the sweet ones. You’ve awakened me from a dream that has lasted sixteen years, since first they brought me here, and Cora, to comfort me in my orphanhood, took me to the Harpies to see my father again. With that visit, I was bound. How could I ever leave the one place in the world where my father was still alive to me? And yet …’ Haftor struggled a moment. ‘She never realized what she did to me. She thinks I have forgotten how it was. I have not. I do not hate her, Ki. But I can never love myself as once I did. The things I did at her bidding, the things I accepted …’ Haftor shook his head as his voice trailed off. He coughed, clearing his throat.

‘Ki, Cora asked you to make this Rite, did she not? She seeks to lure you to the Harpies. Answer me this, Ki. If you could embrace Sven again, could cuddle Rissa’s warm little body against you, tweak young Lars’s nose for his nonsense … would you ever leave Harper’s Ford?’

Haftor’s eyes were dark holes in a white face inches from Ki’s own. The darkness was cold about her. The lonely wail that had sounded inside her echoed again through her. To have them back, to hold and be held, to feel Sven’s warm breath on her face.

‘Bones,’ said Haftor. ‘Bones and meat nibbled by worms. But the Harpies dress it anew, sell it to you for more meat, and direct your life to their best advantage. “Build up your flocks, Rufus.” So your father tells you. Harpies are ever hungry. Open more land to pasture. Bring in more cattle. Why waste your time on sheep? A calf is bigger than a lamb, more satisfying to a Harpy’s hunger.’

Ki’s heart thudded. She wrested herself free of Haftor’s grip, then stepped away from him.

‘Cora would not do this if that were true.’

‘Cora would never do a thing this evil,’ Haftor agreed. ‘If she knew how evil it was. But she is old, and she has never known any other way. Shall she deny it, admit that when she dies a few years hence she will be truly dead?’ It might have been a sob that caught Haftor’s words in this throat. ‘Who among us can resist such pretty lies? I don’t believe in myself. I don’t believe in your will, either, Ki. So I tell you to go. Go now as I would go myself, were I a stronger man.’

‘I gave Cora my word.’ Each word dropped from Ki’s mouth like an ice-covered stone. ‘I cannot go yet.’

‘Then, you will never go.’ Haftor’s voice fell. ‘I waste my words, and the courage to tell you to go has been used up. If I left Harper’s Ford, I would have to be responsible for my own life. I could not blame my decisions on my father’s ghost. I would have to answer for all I did, and for all I did not do. So Ki will stay. I cannot say it makes me sorry. I should miss you sorely and grieve at your leaving, even as I shouted to hurry your team into the dark.’

He rubbed his face with both hands as if he were awakening from a long sleep. He stretched wide, and then made a grab at his belt pouch.

‘I had forgotten. Marna is too shy, so she sends me back to you.’ His fingers fumbled clumsily at his pouch in the dark. There was a glint of moonlight in them.

‘A silver comb to hold back your hair. And a wrist piece.’

Ki took the exquisitely worked silver from his hands. It was warm with his body heat. The comb had been worked into a symmetrical, branching vine. Ki held it to the light that escaped around the door, shifting it to watch the silver shine in her hands. The wrist piece was more massive, like a forked bolt of lightning twisted into a curve. Ki hefted them both in her hands.

‘I’ve an expert touch at judging weights, Haftor. The full weight of my silver cup is still in these two pieces. Marna has taken nothing for herself.’

‘She would not. She took all her pleasure in the making, indulging her fancy for design as usually she cannot.’

‘Yet one of the joys of creating is in seeing the thing you have made enjoyed, every day.’ Ki bobbed her head to kiss the silver wrist piece. Then she caught Haftor’s thick wrist and deftly imprisoned it in the silver’s curve. He shook his head and tried to draw it from his arm, but Ki held it there firmly.

‘It’s an old Romni trick. A good one. If you give me back this gift, you are returning my love to me as something also you will not take.’

‘That was the kiss?’

Ki nodded. It felt good to smile, good to give freely again. She wondered that she had not done it in so long.

‘Then you have trapped me into accepting it,’ Haftor conceded.

‘As I intended. And I hope it will remind you and Marna of me after I am gone. For, go I shall, Haftor. You will see.’

A rectangle of light opened in the night. Edward came pattering out onto the porch.

‘Ki!’ he called imperatively. ‘Nils bids you to come that he may wish you good evening.’

‘I come,’ Ki replied. Edward remained standing on the porch, staring at her. Ki shook her head resignedly at Haftor and followed the child back into the house. She heard Haftor’s boots come behind her.

The room was dazzling after the night, the mumble of voices an assault after the quiet of the porch. The eternal humming in Ki’s ears rose suddenly to match it. Edward threaded his way between knots of talking people to where Nils still sat alone at the head of the table. Nils dismissed the child and nodded Ki to a seat beside him. Ki seated herself, pushing aside used plates and utensils to make a place to rest her elbows.

‘Well, old man?’ she addressed him directly.

Nils chuckled. ‘You did very well. No, do not smile at me. Keep your eyes down on the table as if taking an instruction. I congratulate you on your will. Cora thought that surely your pride would send you from that seat. And you left with that young man at a perfect moment. You are a woman among them again, one who can be wrong, one who can be gossiped about and courted by men, and even one who can indiscreetly leave a dinner gathering to be alone with a man.’

Ki hissed at the insulting import of his words, but Nils’s laughter covered the sound. ‘You did not plan it so, then? No matter. It still set the table to buzzing and speeded up my work immeasurably. And that pretty comb in your hand will set tongues to wagging all the more merrily.’ He laughed again at her discomfort.

Ki raised her lowered eyes to pierce the old man with coldness and contempt. Nils snorted at her and shook his head, letting his own contempt show. ‘Go to bed, Ki. You are of the ones that cannot be saved. You will ever prize the freedom and honor of one over the good of all. You will never learn by experience. Why Cora seeks to keep you here, I do not know. You will spoil them all with your poison, like a piece of rotting meat thrown into a clean spring.’ His old hand angrily waved her away with the gesture one would use to flick away an annoying insect. But even as Ki scraped her chair back, the old hand seized her wrist in a grip of iron.

‘What will you do now, Ki? Will you work to undo what we have wrought at this dinner tonight?’

A quick twist of Ki’s wrist freed it from his grip. ‘You have said it yourself, old man. I value my honor as one over what may be the good of all. My word was given. I will not go back on it. I will let you make this rite. But I do not think it will be as effective as you hope it will be.’

Ki stormed away to the privacy of her own room. All marked her passage, none thought to impede it. But Rufus’s quick eyes flicked to her as she passed. He swayed forward from where he leaned beside the hearth. He gave Lars a rough shove with his elbow. Lars glared at him, annoyed at having his morose thoughts so disturbed. Ki could not catch the words, but she saw Lars scowl and redden. She hastened to her room.

Ki frowned into the darkness. Sent to bed like a naughty child after being humiliated. Defiance and anger blazed up in her, hotter than any she had felt on that night long ago. A sudden hatred for Nils and all he stood for ripped through her. She should have fought him then, should have ripped to shreds the fabric he sought to weave. Slowly, she sat up in the darkness of the cuddy. She paid no heed to the cold that stroked her as the covers slid away from her body.

She settled on an elbow and stared down at Vandien. His face was a mask. Hollows full of shadows marked his eyes. His body was a mound under the covers. Those many years ago, Ki had been paralyzed by indecision, had been made a game piece in ruthless hands. But no longer was that so. She would be the one now to take the actions, shape the circumstances. If Vandien was in league with the Harpies … She growled soundlessly in the darkness. She could kill him now, put that suspicion to rest. It would be an easy task to cut his throat now as he slept, to drag the body from the cuddy and leave it beside the frozen trail. If he were the vagabond he claimed to be, no one would miss him. And if he were the Harpy’s servant, she would have struck first to even the odds.

His chest rose and fell hypnotically under the shagdeer cover. She did not reach for her knife in the darkness. Instead, she sank slowly down beside him once more, entering again the warmth their bodies created under the coverings. There was a hoarseness to his breathing; he coughed lightly in his sleep. Ki closed her eyes tightly against the sudden sting of tears. The vulnerable eggs of the Harpies came to her mind. It was the same. No matter what future evil the man might hold for her, she could not strike in this manner. She would be wary, but not rash. She would remember.

She tried to be coldly logical. She listed her doubts. What chance had sent him to attack her that night by her fire? What were the odds of meeting a man in such a desolate place, a man marked with a sign of spread wings? He had precious little to recommend him. And yet …

Ki eased deeper into the bedding. She let her eyes trace the lines of his nose and mouth. She could see those bearded lips smiling, tossing quick mocking words at her. She liked his hands holding a mug or weaving stories on his ridiculous string. There was the way his stride matched hers as they tromped before the horses, the easy way he had fit himself to her life. An old feeling stirred in Ki, one so long unused that for a moment she did not identify it. And when she did she felt only disgust for her own fickleness. She doused her thoughts, flopping over to put her back to Vandien. She closed her eyes and did not stir again.

Vandien lay silent, staring at the ceiling of the cuddy. He wondered.