Читать книгу Harpy’s Flight - Megan Lindholm - Страница 7

The Inn of the Sisters was on a small plateau at a place where the foothills began to seriously consider becoming mountains. Trees grew about it, but they had the stunted, wind-twisted look of trees that have survived constant hardships. The inn itself, a gray weathered wood, also gave the impression of tenacious survival. All its windows were tightly shuttered. Long and low, the building crouched beneath the lash of the ever shifting wind. The faded inn sign leaned as the wind pushed it on its chains. It was a picture of two Human women locked in a fierce embrace. Ki eyed it critically. The artist had demonstrated his lack of knowledge of Human body structure. Ki wondered what race owned the inn. The yard was no clue. Two open wagons and three riding beasts were pulled up to hitching rails. Ki glimpsed what might be a stable to the rear of the inn.

Ki let the grays come to a stop. The team was grateful. Since they began this morning, the wagon trail had become a combination of hard-packed earth and mountain gravel. The climb was not a steep one to this point, but the uphill grade was constant. Ki wrapped the reins loosely about the brake handle and hopped down from the wagon. She had heard nothing of this inn, either good or bad. She had spent her coppers already. Would she be wise to show a minted silver in such a place as this? As she considered, she ran her hands gently under the horses’ collars and harness, lifting and resettling the leather. Sigmund rubbed his massive head against her. The wind tugged at her hood.

Ki turned to the creak and slam of the wooden door. The innmaster. He leaned toward Ki, seeming to take in her slender figure, booted and clad in brown leather shirt and leggings. She stared back at him, widening her green eyes. He quailed before her look, as Ki had expected him to. Few could abide the stare of shiny, wet Human eyes.

The Dene slid slowly down the porch ramp and across the inn yard to Ki’s side.

‘One Human alone?’ he asked her, slurring his Common.

Ki nodded gravely, then remembered the gesture had no meaning for the Dene. ‘One alone, and a team of two horses.’ It was worth a try.

‘We’ve quarters for Humans,’ acknowledge the Dene. ‘Provided they adhere to our customs and can pay the rates before they enter. Half-copper for the night for a Human. That includes a meal. One copper per night per horse as large as that.’

The Dene had moved in close, as if admiring Sigmund. Ki’s hopes fell. Its grayish top swayed as it tried to inspect the team without being rudely obvious. Its plump, limbless body pulsed. Ki knew the bare smooth hide was impervious to cold or heat. The eternal cool wind off the mountains would never trouble this innmaster. Knowing what would come next, Ki silently climbed back onto her wagon box.

‘Your team is gelded!’ the Dene announced. Despite the slurred Common, its tone of dismay and outrage was clear. A rippling pink flush, mark of deep emotion for a Dene, spread over its body.

‘Gelding a team is the custom of my people,’ Ki replied. She gathered up the reins hastily.

‘You will find no shelter here with us!’ the Dene thundered at her self-righteously. ‘Denes do not associate with sentient beings that mutilate other beings for convenience!’

Ki nodded wearily, then translated the motion for the Dene. ‘I know. I know. You Denes might be a little more understanding if someone stabled a team of stallions with you for the winter. No, don’t raise a fuss. I’m on my way already.’

Ki shook the reins, and the team reluctantly leaned into the harness. The tall yellow wheels began to turn.

‘The Pass of the Sisters is closed!’ the Dene shouted triumphantly behind them. ‘You will have to go back down the hills. If you wish to cross the range this time of year you must go south, to Carrier’s Pass.’

‘I’ve heard I can cross here if I am determined.’

‘If you are a fool! It has snowed much already. You must go back! You cannot go on. You will only have to come back this way, and we will not give you shelter!’

‘I won’t be back!’ Ki promised over her shoulder. The creaking of the tall wheels over the rutted roadway drowned out whatever other warnings the Dene shouted after her. Ki drove on, trying to put the inn from her mind. At the sight of it she had felt a surge of hunger for a meal of fresh red meat. She had imagined a soft feather bed in a well-lit, warm, dry room. Well, she had heard of Dene inns, she comforted herself sourly, and of what they considered fit lodgings for Humans. Denes preferred a damp environment. Ki would have found no meat, no feather bed, no animal product there, but a damp bed of musty straw and a bowl of warm porridge. Such was the hospitality that a Dene provided for Humans.

Just as well, just as well. Nonetheless, the wind seemed more chill on her face and hands than it had before she had sighted the inn. Without checking the grays, she slid open the cuddy door and leaned back into the wagon. She snagged a small skin of sour wine off its hook. She wet her mouth with it and drank a mouthful. Habit made her sparing of all her stores when she had an unfamiliar trail before her. She had replenished her food in Vermintown before she left, but her caution was the habit of a lifetime.

The wagon seat rocked gently beneath her to the music of the eight steady hooves. She smiled down on the wide gray backs and sent a little shiver of encouragement down the traces. Sigmund tossed his head in acknowledgement and skeptical Sigurd snorted. They would carry her through. They had been through much together and had never failed one another.

It was late autumn in the country they now passed. The grasses were dry on the sides of the trail, and the spruce trees darkest green in preparation for winter. By the time she camped tonight she would be in a country that faced early winter. Sometimes, through gaps in the trees when the trail twisted, she could see the road further along where it snaked across the face of the mountain. The sun there shone on whites and grays and palest blues. Ki frowned at the unlikely circuit the trail followed. It was as if the makers of it had sought the longest path between the inn and the pass itself. The trail dipped into every shallow dale, went around every small rise of land between it and the pass.

She had driven away from the inn at midmorning. At noon she chewed dried strips of meat but did not stop for a meal. Time enough for that when it became too dark for travel. A light breeze was blowing the chill of the mountain down to her. She shivered in anticipation of the deep cold to come.

Ki’s wagon passed into the shelter of a rise of land, and the wind eased. The swaying of the wagon, the creaks like small creatures talking to one another, began to lull Ki’s senses. On a familiar road she would have yielded to the temptation to drowse as her team picked its slow way over the trail. But she straightened her spine and pushed her hood back so that the cool air could touch her cheeks. A mountain trail like this could at any time turn into a runnel of washed-away gravel or a slush of standing water and mud. Then was no time to be awakened from a nap, as your wheels stuck with a jerk or your axle smacked against a standing rock.

And, she admitted to herself as she ran a hand across the back of her neck, the value of her cargo weighed on her mind. It was not the first time she had hauled such a shipment. The hidden cupboard had held jewels before, papers that recognized a bastard daughter as heir, and once a forbidden book sealed shut against curious eyes with green wax imprinted with a wizard’s ring. Valuable cargo was nothing new. But the very elaborateness of Rhesus’s precautions disturbed her. Suppose Rhesus was not the paranoid little man Ki had always supposed him to be? Suppose someone was watching him? Would not they have noticed the number of couriers that he sent out, and wondered? And there was the man’s pompous ego to consider, and his fondness for brandy. It would be a great temptation to a man like Rhesus to boast of his own cleverness. Even if he resisted that temptation for days after Ki had left, what was the speed of a loaded wagon compared to a rider on a swift horse? Ki teased her wits with such questions as the day wore on. The very generosity of Rhesus’s payment made her mission all the more suspect.

Night had not yet fallen when the grays waded across a shallow river that had spread across the road. It was not a bad crossing, for it was small, sound gravel under the wheels. But it offered Ki fresh water, the shelter of some small trees, and a level place for the wagon to rest. On the other side of the water, she had the grays pull the wagon off onto level ground beside a stand of spruce.

She cared for her team first, wiping their coats down and covering them with matching blankets. The blankets were a bit worn; she had received them at the same time she had been given Sigmund and Sigurd. For a moment she saw once more Sven’s blue eyes dancing with joy at her surprise, felt the brushing touch of his wide, callused hands as he put into her fingers the stiff new leads that held the wide-eyed three-year-olds. She blocked the image from her mind. The blankets had been too big for them then. Now they were almost worn. She would replace them soon, she promised herself, knowing that she lied.

Ki shifted the leaky bag of salt at the back of the wagon. She lifted the bag below it, opened it, and shook from it a generous measure of grain. The team came to it eagerly, whiffling and snorting as they lipped it from the dry grass. Ki replaced the bogus salt sack, covering it again with the leaky one. That was one concession Rhesus had made to her: if she must haul a load of mock merchandise, at least let it be one that was useful to her. The team would not suffer in this crossing.

The horses moved off, cropping the dry grasses that sprouted sparse on the gentle slope. Ki settled into the rhythm of her solitary evenings, kindling a small fire in the wind-shelter of her wagon, putting on her blackened kettle to boil, parceling out food from her supplies. She brewed her tea, letting it steam itself to blackness before she drank. It coursed scalding down her throat until she could almost feel it splashing into the deep pit of her empty stomach. It made her conscious of the hollow hunger inside her. She set down the earthen mug, reached to stir the stewing soup with the meat knife.

Sigmund stamped and shied. Sigurd snorted and struck out with his front hooves. Ki leaped up as the horses jigged nervously away from the wagon. Her tea overturned as she spun about. She went down swiftly as the shadow from the dark struck her full-force.

The back of her head bounced off the hard earth, scattering sparks of light before her eyes. She fought back blindly, wildly, against the shape of a man she could hardly see. She kicked up from her position, keeping him from pinning her against the earth. She rolled up onto her knees, but even as she rose a rough shove on her shoulder flung her to the ground again. She tucked her shoulder as she hit, rolled nearly into her fire, and came up staggering on her feet. The man rushed at her. At the last possible moment Ki sidestepped the shape that hurtled down on her, flinging out a clenched fist and stiff arm at throat level. He gave a surprised croak of pain. His own momentum betrayed him when Ki’s flying body struck him from behind. He rebounded from the tail of her wagon, sending them both sprawling into the dirt. Ki rolled free of his clutching hands. Heedless of burns, she seized her steaming kettle from the fire and swung it in a splashing arc. The scalding liquid fell on his chest, and the kettle itself connected with his jaw with a satisfying smack. The man went down, hissing in pain. Ki dropped the kettle to snatch up the meat knife. One of her knees hit the center of his chest as she leapt to straddle him, placing the bare blade against the soft base of his throat. He gave one jerk, then lay back quietly when the keen edge sliced shallowly into his skin. He let his arms drop back to the dirt, hands open.

There was a moment when they held their positions, both gasping in raw, cold air. The horses had halted their flight. The light of the fire made shadows and planes of the unkempt face of the man Ki held. With her boots on, they had been of a height, but if the man had been fleshed out he would have had a full stone’s weight over her. He was not. He was thin as an orphaned calf. He had eyes dark as a beast’s and dark, curling hair in which leaves and bits of moss were tangled. It gave him a wild and predatory look. His open mouth, gasping for air, revealed even white teeth. He stared up at Ki, and his eyes were those of a trapped animal, pools of anger and fear. For a moment, as Ki straddled him, she almost wished he had been able to overcome her – a quick and simple way to end it. The stray thought shocked and disquieted her. She made more sure her hold upon him, settling her weight heavily on his chest. Her free hand patted about his waist. He flinched at the touch, then went limp and still under her again. If he carried a knife it was not there. He lay quietly beneath her weight, his eyes alert but his body suddenly docile. His hands splayed upward on the ground, in token of surrender. She stared down at him fiercely, green eyes narrow. He returned her searching look. His bearded lips parted suddenly in a grin. He laughed up at her.

‘Well?’ she demanded of him angrily.

‘Well, yourself.’ He grinned feebly and visibly relaxed. ‘You have yourself in a fine fix. If you were going to kill me you would have done it by now. And if you aren’t going to kill me, just what are you going to do?’ He chuckled, but it changed abruptly into a racking cough. Ki felt a twinge of pity for him, but she did not let it show.

She leaned her face a littler closer to his. ‘I would not be so sure, were I in your position, that it was too late for me to kill you. The knife and the throat are still convenient to one another.’

He was silent beneath her again, striving to get his breath. When finally his lungs had stopped heaving he spoke calmly.

‘I only wanted one of your horses. I meant no harm to your person. When you set your cup down I knew that you had seen me and that I would not get one without a fight. So I attacked, knowing that my chance lay in a quick victory over you. But things did not go as I planned.’

He coughed again, and Ki became aware of the painful thinness of the man and the fever-brightness that lit the dark eyes. But she hardened herself, saying, ‘To take one horse from me in this place is to take my life. It’s like saying you intended to cut off only one of my legs. What great need can you have that forces you to thievery?’

He seemed to consider his reply. ‘A man on foot cannot get through the pass. It is too far to walk in the wind and snow; I have not the proper gear. I have tried it three times, and failed. But on horse, I could get through.’

‘So your first thought, naturally, was to steal a horse,’ Ki coldly concluded. ‘Sometimes one in need asks first, instead of taking action. If you had come peacefully into the circle of my fire and asked me for help in getting over the pass, do you think I would have refused you?’

‘Twice I have tried that way. And twice folk with wagons have given me aid to the foot of the deep snows, only to turn back their wagons and return to the Inn of the Sisters. A wagon cannot get through. I have begged, each time, for the use of a horse, but it was always refused me. Theft is all that is left to me.’

‘You could return to the Inn, wait out the winter. Or go farther south to Carrier’s Pass and cross there.’ Ki did not like the tone of this conversation. She felt ridiculous talking to someone while she perched on his chest. And his strange attitude was contagious. Ki, too, had begun to regard his attack as impersonal, a thing to be excused, like a stranger’s jostle in a crowd.

‘The Denes do not welcome me. They say I paid them in bad coin. How was I to know? Think you that if I had any money left, good or bad, I would be living off small rabbits and wild greens? You must know how Denes are. Their love of dumb beasts is great; their tolerance for sentient creatures who do not conform to their way is small. My life would pay for my small debts. I cannot go back.’

‘You still have not said why you must cross,’ Ki persisted stubbornly.

A shadow passed over his face. The trapped beast peered from his eyes. He glared as if her question were of the greatest impertinence. Ki stared back at him. She did, after all, have the upper hand. She wished to know all the facts before she decided what to do with him. His scowl deepened with her continued silence. Then slowly it faded from his face. He made a gesture that might have been a shrug. ‘What does it matter who knows, then? I need money. My family lives over the mountains. I have relatives that have helped me in these small matters before. And so, I go to them again.’

Ki scowled. It seemed an implausible tale to her. To take such a risk just to … then the man beneath her coughed again, and she found that she had involuntarily moved the blade to keep from cutting him. She tightened her lips, frowning in disgust at herself. Slowly she rose. Even more slowly, she made a show of sheathing her knife. He watched her closely. He made no move to rise but remained as still as if her weight still pinned him.

Ki deliberately turned her back to him but kept her ears tuned to any sudden movement. She picked up the spilled kettle, frowned at the food that remained in it, and set it back on the fire. He still did not move as she drew water from her cask and added it to the kettle. She glanced over at him in annoyance. His ridiculous posture, flat on his back, hands spread upwards on the ground, disarmed her completely. She wanted nothing to do with this man. She would banish him from her campfire, eliminate him from her worries. She watched the slow rise and fall of the ragged tunic over his bony chest.

‘You will ride with me,’ she instructed him at last. ‘Like yourself, I must get over the pass. As we both must cross, we may as well do so together. Now, get up and take some food. You are no more than a bundle of sticks.’

‘And broken sticks at that,’ he readily agreed. With a grunt and a sigh, he drew his body together and rose to his feet. He ran his hands over his ribs. ‘Or at least cracked sticks. Your weight is no joke to a man who has been fasting as I have.’ He grinned at her and scratched his scraggly locks. He shook his head, then combed his fingers through his dark hair, removing the leaves and scraps of moss it had gathered during their struggle.

Ki frowned at him. She could not comprehend the jesting tone he took. It had been long since anyone had dared to joke with her. She could not be comfortable with his good humor. She had just thwarted his thieving attempts, beaten him down, and held a knife to his throat. And now he smiled at her, a crooked smile. What did she expect him to do? Anything but that.

She took more food from her supplies, never quite taking her eyes off him. She recreated the stew in the kettle. He watched her. She looked at him, and his grin grew wider.

‘You have no intentions of trying to bind me? Have you no fear that I will somehow overpower you and make off with one of your horses?’

Ki shrugged, shaking a scanty measure of tea into the pot and returning it to the hot stones by the fire’s edge. ‘The horses are already quite spooked tonight. As you see, I do not picket them. Should you wish to steal one, you must first catch him. Overpower me, kill me – that task is still before you. With my blood-smell on your hands it would be nigh to impossible to catch one of them. No, you have no interest in stealing now. Your only hope of getting over the pass lies in your doing as I say.’

Ki glanced down at her mug of hot tea. She had just poured it. Regretfully, she handed it to him across the fire and rummaged in the dish chest for a second mug. He was silent as she filled it, silent as she sipped. He held his mug in both palms, letting the hot tea within it warm his thin hands. Ki sipped, watching the stranger over the rim of her mug. She smiled behind her tea. So, now she put him at a loss, feeling as if he did not know how to behave. Childish! She sneered at herself as a bubble of triumph rose in her.

The stew came to a bubble, and Ki filled two bowls with it. She passed him a bowl, letting him juggle the hot tea and hot stew as he tried to find a place to settle himself. She seated herself back against a wheel and began to eat. For a time he remained standing, holding mug and bowl as if they were strange artifacts of an unknown use. His eyes on her, he sank finally to the ground. When she looked up, he was setting down his mug and taking up his spoon. He ate with an attitude of great thoroughness, as if he wished to be sure of every morsel. When he had finished, he set the plate aside. He moved to her fire, picked up the teapot slowly, looking at Ki uncertainly. She pretended not to notice his stare. He refilled his mug.

They sipped tea, eyeing one another, not speaking. There was nothing to say. But there was everything to say, Ki reflected, uneasy and tinged with anger within. Exasperation crept over her. Damn him, this was her fire and her wagon. How could he make her feel uneasy at it, as if she had no right here, not even the right to question the ridiculous and offensive way he had intruded himself into her life?

‘I’m Ki.’ It came out almost as an accusation.

‘I’m Vandien,’ he rejoined. He smiled and sipped his tea. The shadows of the fire on his face showed Ki how he might have looked were he washed and fed and dressed decently. It was not a bad way for a man to look. Muscle clung compactly to bone on his body. He was scarcely taller than Ki and only a bit wider through the shoulders. A much-worn leather tunic covered the chest and torso that narrowed down to his hips. His leggings were leather also, worn thin and patched.

He had a straight nose that seemed to begin right between his dark, well-formed eyebrows. His mouth looked small beneath the uneven growth of beard and moustache. No doubt he usually shaved his face. His hands were neat and well-formed around his mug. They were small and callused, as if they had grown used to hard work only in adulthood. He smiled as her eyes rose again to his, as if he could read her thoughts.

‘What takes you over the mountains, Ki? You have the advantage of me. I told you a bit more under the courtesy of the knife than most strangers divulge to one another.’

He drank tea, watching her coolly over the rim. Ki shrugged casually.

‘My business. I’ve a load of salt to deliver, promised some time ago and soon to be late. And I’ve thought lately of shifting my trails. I know this side of the mountains too well. I’ve heard there’s better work for a teamster on the other side.’

‘Not much different from this side. You must be a most dedicated trader of salt, to be so determined to cross this pass in winter.’ He was not calling her a liar. Not quite.

‘So I must be,’ she conceded drily. ‘At least it keeps me from turning to thievery.’

‘Ah!’ he cried and mockingly seized at his heart as if he had been pierced by a rapier. ‘I am rebuked!’ He let his hands fall and laughed aloud. Ki unwillingly smiled in return. The man was insane. She sipped tea.

‘Tomorrow we shall be in snow. The day demands an early start.’

Vandien raised his mug in a strangely formal gesture. ‘Drink with me to an early start,’ he intoned in a mystic voice. Then he downed the cooling tea that remained in the mug.

Ki did not drink with him. She remained frozen, mug in hand. She felt as if he had moved a rock in her mind and the toad beneath it had winked one yellow eye. The warmth in her body drained down into the cold pit of her stomach. She watched him narrowly.

But when Vandien lowered his mug he did not stare at her knowingly as she had feared. Instead, he gathered a handful of dry grasses, polished clean his bowl, and shook the last few drops of tea from the mug. He held up the cleansed items for Ki to note, then set them again by the fire. He stretched. Then he dropped to all fours and crawled under the wagon.

Ki watched him, mystified. He curled up like a dog and closed his eyes.

Ki cleaned her own bowl and mug slowly and rose stiffly to put them away. She banked up the fire and moved about her wagon, putting it to rights for the night. The horses had drawn close again. She went to them, reassuring them with small tongue-clicks and gentle scratchings on their throats. Then she sought out her cuddy.

She did not kindle a light tonight. Enough starshine and firelight came through the small window. She hopped down into the cuddy and stepped to her bed. It was no more than a flat wooden platform elevated off the floor for the sake of storage beneath it. It was large enough to hold two bodies close and comfortable. It was not a sumptuous place to sleep. There was a mattress-bag stuffed full of clean straw to soften the boards beneath. For coverings, Ki had two worn woven blankets, one a dusky blue, the other a brown-gold. In a moment of abandon in Vermintown, she had spent part of Rhesus’s advance on a bed covering of shagdeer hides stitched together. The shagdeer hides were an unwarranted luxury, lush and new in their softness. Ki could strip naked and slip beneath the old woven blankets, pull the shagdeer hide over them, and be as warm as if she slept by a fire on a summer night. After the continual chill of the day, it was a tempting prospect.

But beneath the wagon was a man in a tunic gone thread-bare, who huddled and shivered like a beast. Ki sat slowly on the bed. The shagdeer hide was rich and warm. The worn blankets had little to recommend them. Their colors had faded, their nap grown worn and thin since the day she had first seen them spread smooth on a mattress of fresh hay inside a new wagon that smelled still of tree sap. When she and Sven had slept beneath these blankets, there had never been a need for a shagdeer covering. The soft touch of them as she raised them to her face was like the gentle movement of a large hand against her cheek.

Ki roughly folded the shagdeer hides. Then she crawled out of the cuddy onto the seat. She leaned over the edge of the seat and threw the bundled hides at Vandien’s shivering form. She did not wait to see his startled look or hear any words of thanks. She went back to her cuddy, sliding the small door to and fastening its seldom-used hook.

She did not shed her dusty clothing, but crawled up on the platform and spread the worn blankets over her lap. Her hands rose in the darkness to loosen for the night her widow’s knots. The touch of them on her fingers brought to mind the echo of Vandien’s strange words. She sat still in the darkness, her hair loose upon her shoulders, remembering …

Ki had been long on her road to Harper’s Ford. She had sent word ahead of her coming and of the sad tidings she must bring them. She would be expected. Yet, as she caught her first glimpse of the long meadows and apple trees that fronted the familiar road, her heart quailed within her. Could she not go on past quietly, her team clopping softly in the night, raising small puffs of dust with every step of their feathered hooves? She had sent them word of their loss. There was really nothing further she could offer them. How could she comfort them, who could not comfort herself? She was tired of her own emotions. Since Sven had passed she had been strung like the strings of a Harp tree, and every breeze had seemed to play upon her. There was nothing left in her of anger or pride or gladness. Her quick laugh and sudden tongue had been stilled. Her wits had grown dull with no Sven to whet them. Every emotion in her was stilled, forgotten, like a city when the sea takes it back.

Or so she thought as she raised her eyes for one look at the twisted apple tree that had been a trysting place for them. Her eyes froze. A young man stood there, his hair pale in the evening light. A farmer’s smock hung nearly to his knees. His light hair hung long and loose to his shoulders, as befitted a man unspoken for. Ki’s tongue clove to the roof of her mouth as he lifted one arm in greeting. In a dream, she stopped the horses. Sven came across the meadow to her, silently, moving through the tall grasses in the graceful stride she knew so well. She dared not speak, lest she break the spell. She did not care how this could be. Just let him keep coming closer. As he drew near, the trueness of his features did not alter. He did not fade nor float as a ghost should; she heard the brush of the grasses against his striding legs.

‘Ki!’

Her heart fell. That tenor voice was not Sven’s but that of Lars. Lars, the youngest brother, as like to Sven as ever.

She sagged back against the cuddy door. Her shaking heart fell to her stomach. Neither spoke as Lars mounted the wheel and seated himself on the seat beside her.

‘Shall I drive?’ he offered softly.

Ki shook her head. She stirred the reins, and the team pulled. She could think of no words to say to him. Once more a desert possessed her heart. The pain would be new to Lars. Yet the months of bearing the pain alone had taught Ki no ways to quell it.

‘Poor sister Ki. I had cold words ready for you for not letting us know sooner. I forget them now. If a time of healing has still left you looking thus …’ Lars let the thought trail off. The wagon creaked beneath them. The horses’ hooves went on clopping in the dust. Lars leaned back heavily against the cuddy door. Ki felt his body sway with the wagon. Irritably, he hunched forward to gather and lift his long hair from the back of his neck. He wiped the sweat away with his sleeve. Ki smiled at the gesture. He was the image of Sven before he was a man.

‘I remember how he hated having his hair down on his neck. He used to tease and say that was the only reason he had come to an agreement with me: so that I would bind his hair back with a thong as befitted a taken man.’

Lars nodded sourly. ‘It’s a foolish custom, but one mother will not hear of parting with. I almost wish I were a boy again, with my hair cropped short. It’s to my shoulders already, and keeps on growing.’

‘It will soon stop, by itself,’ Ki said comfortingly. ‘But if it is such an irritation to you, you could always find a woman to take you and bind it back.’

Lars’s shoulders thumped against the cuddy door as he threw himself back in disgust. ‘You, too eh? I feel like a yearling at a stock fair. Rufus reminds me of my “duty.” Mother must have Katya over to help wind the wool, to put shingles on the barn, to aid with the spring calving. Strange. Up to last year, I was help enough for her when such things needed doing. Now she must have the two of us – and no more, mind you.’

Ki chuckled. She knew they were both keeping their minds from a darker subject. She knew it, and worked at it.

‘So your mother plots against you, with the aid of your older brother. What of this Katya? Can she be so distasteful that you must resist?’

‘Katya.’ Lars rolled his eyes up. ‘Katya is plump and pretty, and as exciting as corn bread. Already she has the look of a farming woman. Hips that could birth a nation, shoulders that could take an ox’s yoke, hands to steer a plow, breasts to nurse a brood.’

‘Sounds daunting,’ Ki murmured.

‘Daunting. That’s the word for her. We grew up as friends, you know, liking one another well enough. She has grown to be a solid, pleasant woman – a woman to go fishing with, or hoe with in the fields. But not a woman I would choose as a mate and partner. I have never desired her that way.’

‘Then keep your hair loose upon your shoulders, Lars. It becomes you so. Soon enough a woman will find you and come to bind it back for you.’

‘I hope she begins looking soon,’ Lars grumbled softly.

Evening was cooling the world. Night scents were beginning to rise. Through the trees on either side of the road Ki could make out the dim lights of small houses. Those were the homes of Sven’s kinspeople, those related by blood or tied by their oaths to the family. These were the people who would demand of Ki their Rite of Loosening. Landholders all, they would come with their farmers’ eyes and earth-worker hands to ask of Ki what had become of their Sven. A cold feeling twisted inside her. She did not want to lie.

Ki turned tired eyes to the night sky. She tortured herself. If she narrowed her eyes and did not look at Lars too directly, she could pretend. Many evenings Sven would tie his horse to the tail of the wagon, to trail along. He would clamber up on the box beside her. The children would be drowsing in the cuddy as they talked in low voices and watched for a good stopping place. Some evenings they didn’t speak at all. The sound of slow hooves and the wagon’s creaking was all the conversation they required. Those were long, companionable evenings, with Sven’s shoulder gently bumping against Ki’s as she drove.

‘How did it happen?’ Again, Lars broke Ki’s spell.

She hesitated. She tried to find words for it. It must be a tale he would believe. It must be a tale they would all accept. A thousand times Ki had imagined herself at this moment, when one of Sven’s people would ask that question. She did not want to lie. She did not think she could.

The words came to her brokenly, sounding strangely distant to her own ears. She might have been speaking of a famine in a far-off country, or blighted fields on the other side of the mountains. ‘They … Sven took the children. Young Lars was big enough to sit behind him and cling to his shirt. His little legs stuck out. He couldn’t wrap them around that big horse. Little Rissa he put before him. She thought it great fun to be up so high on that big black horse. You never saw that beast of Sven’s, Lars. A full stallion, and given to sudden, unpredictable tempers. I had advised him against such a horse, but you know how he was. He loved its spirit and the chance to measure his will and spirit against that of the horse. Usually it was not a fight between them; it was a trying, a challenge between two high-spirited animals. But sometimes … stubborn, stubborn man.’

True, every word of it. As far as she had taken the tale. Ki let the silence lengthen. She had pointed Lars onto a false trail. She hoped his mind would take it up. Silently she begged Sven to forgive her for laying their deaths on his judgement in horses. When Lars did not speak, Ki knew he was trying to spare her. He thought he knew the way of it. Good. She broke the silence for him.

‘I would warn you, Lars. I know nothing of this Rite of yours. I fear I shall bring shame on myself before the family.’

Lars snorted. In happier times it would have been the beginning of his forgiving laugh. ‘You have always worried overmuch about offending us, Ki. We know you are not of us. Cora, my mother, will guide you through. And Rufus, too, will be at your side to help you if needed. Do not be offended. It is not often done this way, but it can be, especially in cases where the sole survivor of a family is a small child. The Rite Master has approved it.’

‘To your Rites I am myself a child. I take no offense.’

‘Did Sven never speak to you of our customs?’ Lars ventured.

‘Sometimes. But we spoke little of death customs. Sven involved himself with life. He did say … Lars, you may think me crude to ask this in such a way, at such a time. Your mother worships Harpies?’

Ki’s words had sounded steady and calm. Only her heart shook in her body. She longed for Lars to deny it, to laugh at her for believing Sven’s tall tales. Then she could relax, could share with them the truth of Sven’s death.

Lars spread his large hands upon his knees. ‘It must sound strange to you. And Sven would make it more so, with his jibes and mocking ways. It is not worship we give them, Ki. We know they are not gods. They are mortal beings like ourselves but, unlike us, they have a closer link to, well, to the Ultimate. Fate works more directly upon them. They hold the keys to the doors between the worlds. They have a knowledge denied to us, and abilities …’

‘… abilities born of those other worlds. I know the phrases, Lars. Sven told me that your mother sacrificed a bullock to the Harpies on the eve of our formal agreement, and a yearling each time I gave birth. You are right – it seems outlandish to me: To me they are carrion-eaters, preying on herds and flocks, taking savagely, mocking, cruel …’

Ki ran out of words and sputtered into silence. Lars shook his head tolerantly. ‘Myths, Ki. The common myths about the Harpies that so many believe. I do not blame you. If I had seen only what the Harpies do and not been educated about their customs, I would believe it also. But a Harpy kills only in need. Only when it must feed. It is not like a Human, who may kill for sport or sheer idleness. Harpies have learned the balancing points between the worlds, between death and life itself. They could show us the paths of peace our own kind have forgotten.’

‘Religious bunk!’ Ki did not realize she had voiced her bitterness aloud until she saw the rebuke in Lars’s eyes.

‘I am sorry,’ she said with true contrition. Lars had just lost his brother. He did not need to have his beliefs mocked. ‘I judge them, as you say, by what I have seen. I come from a different people, Lars, and I have been raised on the old tales around the Romni fire. When I was small, I believed that the moon was the mother of us all. She had birthed every race: Human, Harpies, Dene, Tcheria, Alouea, Windsingers, Calouin, and all the others. To each she gave a different gift, and she placed us all on this world. She gave us a law: live in peace together. And she watches over us eternally from the skies to see how well we will obey. It is a simple tale, Lars, and perhaps I do not believe it now as I once did. But I do not believe that any one of the sentient races is superior to any other. I do not believe that Humans owe an atonement to any people, least of all to the Harpies.’ Ki slapped the reins angrily against the dappled backs before her. She had let her words carry her away. The horses stepped up the pace willingly. They had been this way before and knew this turning led to clean stables, to a feed of grain, and a thorough rubbing and cleaning of their hides. These were the pastures where they had been birthed and where they had galloped as ridiculous colts until the day Sven put their lead ropes into the unbelieving hands of young Ki. Of their own accord the team quickened its pace once again. Sigurd raised his huge head in a whinny of greeting. An answer rose from the stables.

A lantern appeared at the door of the long, low stone building. Ki heard the murmur of voices, saw Rufus direct his sons to open the stable doors and be ready to care for Ki’s team. Lars sighed.

‘They sent me ahead, you know. I was supposed to prepare you for this Rite, and I have not. But I doubt that anyone could. Let it be a healing to you, Ki, a sharing of your sorrow. Let the pain spread out to be carried by all of us, and you will find your own burden less. That is how it is intended. You say Sven spoke to you of some of our customs. Of them all, this is the one I think is the most powerful, in uniting a family and dividing its woes.’

Ki nodded grimly. She dreaded it all. She had no idea what this Rite of Loosening would be. Among strangers, she would have to do her best to fulfill this Rite for them. Her final sacrifice to the memory of Sven. A last debt to pay before she went on her own way. She would think of Sven and do it well.

Rufus was bringing the lantern to the wagon seat. Ki climbed down quickly before he could offer help. Lars leapt down from the other side. Already the boys were loosening the harnesses from the horses to lead them away to cool water and clean straw. Sigurd and Sigmund went wearily.

‘You’ve been a long time making your way to us, Ki,’ Rufus greeted her. Straight lips, cold eyes. He put his hand under her elbow, irritating Ki immensely. Was she blind, that she needed to be guided to the door? Lame, that she could not walk along? Sven, she rebuked herself sternly. She bowed her head.

‘I needed a time alone, Rufus. I fear that you may not understand. But I meant no offense or neglect to you. It was too great a tragedy, too sudden a rip in my life.’

‘Leave the girl alone!’ Cora barked from the doorway. ‘If she wants to explain, she’ll do it once and for all to everyone when we are all gathered. She needn’t undergo a private rebuke from every one in the household. I am sure she had her reasons, and we shall all hear them. But at the proper time, Rufus. Now let her go. Ki, you look like a beaten dog, and that’s the truth. No slight meant to you, as you well know. Hard it is to lose one, let alone three. When Sven’s father took the bloody cough and died … I won’t talk of it now, but I know the pain behind such looks. You know the way, Ki. Same room as always. Lars, fetch her a light down the hall. The beasts have been seen to, have they? Of course they need grain, you young idiot! If I don’t see to it all myself …’

Ki felt swept along by a river into a bright common room of the house, cut free from Rufus’s grip by Cora’s tongue, to be washed down a hallway to a bedroom by Lars. She had not greeted any of the people clustered in the common room to receive her. And Cora was chattering on like a magpie to cover her grief and shock. Speeding up life to get past the bad parts, Sven had called it. Talking to everyone at once, seeing to every tiny detail as if they were all helpless babes. Ki wished that such a defense could work for her.

‘I’ll leave the candle here, Ki. Refresh yourself and rest a bit. It will be a long evening, and you have already been through much. Take your time. They have waited this long; it will do them no harm to wait a little more.’ Lars shut the heavy wooden door behind himself with a solid thunk.

Ki sank onto the bed. It was thick with Cora’s best weavings and new sleeping furs. A white bowl rested on a stand by the draped window. Ki knew that the cool water in the graceful ewer beside it would be scented with fresh herbs. This was a room for ceremonious occasions. Cora had insisted that Ki and Sven spend their first night here after they made their agreement formal. They also slept here when they returned twice to present their children to the family. Sven told her that his father’s body had been laid out upon this bed. The room had seemed a colder place to Ki after that. She could take no comfort in the thickly padded bed or scented water or rich shagdeer hide on the floor. So she would take a note from Cora and hurry herself through this bad part.

She washed her hands and face in the cool, scented water. She took down her hair and carefully redid the knots and weavings smoothly. She had no clean clothing to put on. She had left her things in the wagon. It would be too awkward to walk out past all those people to find clean things and return to change again. Ki was paralyzed by indecision. At any other time it would have been a minor dilemma. But now it brought a blackness crashing down on her, a depression no logic could lift. To go before them in this dusty skirt and blouse seemed an insult to their ceremony. To make a stir by going for clean garments seemed a vanity and an insult to Sven’s memory. She sank onto the bed and put her forehead in her hands. It was all too much. They wanted too much of her. She had nothing left to draw out of herself and give to their rite. She was empty, and her being here was an empty act. She could not decide what to do. She was tired of it all. She pressed her hands to her temples. Weariness, hatred, and anger – would she ever feel any other emotions?

A tap at the door, and Cora was entering before Ki had even raised her head.

‘You look a little better, dear. No, I’ve taken liberties, and I hope you won’t mind them. As soon as word came. Well, you know me. I try to think of everything. It helps sometimes to think of everything at once. There’s a robe here in this chest. I wove it for Lydia as a gift, you know, a surprise, but I had not reckoned on what birthing that second huge boy of hers would do to her belly. So, naturally I never gave it to her, nor even showed it to her, for I didn’t want her to think I thought she had let herself go a bit. No one has seen it and I had set it aside for you even before … ah … word came. Weeks ago, in fact. It’s clean and fresh and new. I know you Romni don’t usually wear green but tonight is a night for our own customs, and I didn’t think you would mind. Something new and fresh, sometimes it gives you an extra bit of strength to go on, you understand. So I’ll just lay it out here for you.’

Cora paused expectantly as she smoothed the robe out across the foot of the bed. Their eyes met. Cora’s eyes had always been dark and deeply shining. Ki had once hoped her children would inherit those compelling eyes. But now they were dull, as if her bright spirit had congealed there. Ki saw the mirror of her own anguish and despair. But there was no relief in finding that her suffering was shared. They were two fish, trapped in separate pools in a drying riverbed. Their tragedy separated them, and their courtesy was a sham between strangers.

‘It’s lovely, Cora. I’ve never felt much bound by the Romni traditions about green. Thank you. It is exactly what I needed right now.’ Ki hoped she sounded warm. All she felt was tired, and shamed by her dusty dress.

‘I’ll just go out, then, and let you make yourself ready. Not that you need to hurry. Lars told us all how tired you are. We’ll wait for you.’ Cora hurried out, fleeing from herself.

Ki shut her eyes tightly, sat still for a moment. Then she rose. She stripped off her dusty clothes. She dampened a cloth in the scented water and smoothed it over her body. The robe slipped on coolly. Tiny yellow flowers had been worked at the throat and cuffs. It was a bit long for Ki, but surely no one would notice that tonight. She smoothed it over her hips and forced her spine to straighten.

The common room was a long, narrow room with a low ceiling. It had no windows, but was dominated by a huge fireplace that blazed at one end of the room. The floor was of flat mortared stone, the walls of thick gray river rock and clay. They kept out the heat and cold alike. A long table stretched down the room. Folk crowded benches on both sides of it. The table was laden with platters of meat freshly taken from the huge fireplace, with fruit piled high in bowls, with steaming pots of vegetables, and with pastries stuffed with berries. Conversation was muted among the people gathered there, humming like a hive of bees at nightfall: A gathering of the family.

Ki stood framed in the dark hallway, afraid to enter and afraid not to. How could she cross that open space alone, to where an empty chair at the head of the table awaited her? But Lars had been watching for her. He was suddenly at her side, escorting her across the room without touching her. She made her way up the table, past murmured greetings from relatives she had met only once or twice before. She could not even put names to all of them. Lydia, of course; and Kurt and Edward, sons of Rufus; Haftor; and beside him, looking so like him, must be the sister she had never met. The faces merged as Ki nodded acknowledgement of their greetings. Lars took his place, waving her on to hers. She passed three old women she did not know; Holland, wife to Rufus; an old man; and Rufus himself. At last the empty chair gaped at her. Ki seated herself and looked up. At the far end of the table, incredibly distant, sat Cora. How could Cora guide her from there? Everyone sat expectantly. Ki waited. There was food on the table before them, and drink. Was she supposed to make some signal for them to begin? Was the Rite of Loosening a family meal, a coming together to share food and sorrow? Ki’s eyes sought Lars, but he was too far down the table to help her.

At her right elbow, Rufus suddenly whispered, ‘I bring you sad tidings.’

Ki jerked her head to stare at him. What tidings could he possibly bring her worse than what she had for them? But Rufus was nodding and making small encouraging hand signs. Ki surmised his intent. She cleared her throat.

‘I bring you sad tidings.’ She said it clearly. She paused, wondering how to word her phrases for such a mixed group. From the old man fumbling with his fingers at the edge of the table to the little girl scarcely able to see over the top of it – how make it comprehensible to all? But from Ki’s gulf of silence their response thundered at her.

‘What tidings do you bring us, sister?’

Ki took a deep breath. At her elbow, Rufus hissed, ‘There are three ye shall see no more. Drink with me to this sorrow.’

Ki shot Lars a venomous glance. No doubt he was supposed to have versed her in her lines before she arrived here. Lars shook his head apologetically at her. Rufus tapped his fingertips impatiently on the tabletop beside her.

‘There are three ye shall see no more,’ Ki intoned. ‘Drink with me to this sorrow.’

‘There are three we shall see no more. We drink with you,’ came murmured reply.

Rufus’s lips were folded flat and tight when Ki looked to him for instruction. Damn it, he could be as angry as he wanted. She was going through this for their sake, not for any satisfaction of her own. The least he could do was help her to do it as correctly as possible. She caught the tiny movement of his finger. For the first time, she noticed the strangeness of the table setting. Above her plate, in a precise row, stood seven tiny cups. They were handleless, with a shiny gray finish. She raised the first one and brought it to her lips. The entire table followed her motion. Peering over the rim, she saw that each consumed the entire contents of a cup in a quick swallow. Ki copied them. It was not the wine she had expected. The stuff in the cup was warm and viscous, with a faint taste, like the smell of clover. She set the empty cup before her.

‘Sven, Lars, and Rissa: they are gone from us. Drink with me to this sorrow.’ Rufus muttered the words. He seemed resigned now to this role as prompter. So much the better. It would go swifter that way for them all.

‘Sven, Lars and Rissa: they are gone from us. Drink with me to this sorrow.’ Ki spoke the words soberly. She would put on their tragic puppet show for them.

‘Sven, Lars and Rissa: they are gone from us. We drink with you,’ they responded.

Again a cup was raised and emptied. Ki waited for her cue.

‘You’re on your own now,’ mumbled Rufus, staring at the tabletop. ‘Tell us how it happened, in your own way. Follow the pattern we’ve set. Save a cup to end on.’

Ki glared at Lars, and he ducked his head. Could she tell the tale as she had told it to Lars and be convincing? Ki looked at the remaining cups to gauge how best to tell it.

‘They rode together on a great black horse. Drink with me to this sorrow.’ Ki hoped to Keeva she was doing this right. She would have Lars’s head for this later.

‘They rode together on a great black horse. We drink with you,’ repeated the chorus. The gathering at the table seemed satisfied with her beginning. Ki raised the third tiny cup and drained it. Suddenly, the room quavered, became a dream. She sat tall on her wagon seat. A slight wind stirred her hair. A smile was on her face. There was a presence on the seat beside her, warm and encouraging. Ki knew it but, oddly, she paid no mind to it. All was as it should be. ‘Round the wagon galloped Sven and Lars and Rissa. “Snail Woman, Snail Woman!” Sven roared in a mock taunting. Rissa’s tiny voice echoed him, full of laughter. “Sna-o Wo-man, Sna-o Wo-man!” Lars was too convulsed with laughter to speak, too occupied with hanging on to Sven’s shirt tail. Rom’s black coat shone in the sunlight. The light ran along his muscles, clenching and unclenching beneath his satiny coat. Lars’s blue shirt was still too long for him; it flapped behind him, snapping in the wind they created.

‘For a moment, Sven pulled Rom up. “Shall we show her how a horse ought to move?” he asked rhetorically. The children shrieked their encouragement. Rom was off like the wind. The grays snorted in disgust.

‘Their pale hair blew behind them,’ Ki was moved to say. ‘Drink with me to this sorrow.’ Someone mumbled a response to this. In another place, another Ki raised a tiny cup and tossed it off. It tasted like nothing now. She watched them go, Sven and Rissa laughing, Lars bouncing on the shining black haunches of the horse. Rom’s hooves threw bits of road up behind him. The grays plodded on. The wagon swayed and squeaked.

‘Over the hill the three rode,’ sighed Ki. ‘Drink with me to this sorrow.’ A far wind sighed in the trees. A dampness in Ki’s throat. The presence watched with Ki as Rom disappeared over the long rise of hill. The blue sky rested on the hill top, empty. They were gone. ‘I came behind, too slow,’ grieved someone. ‘Drink with me to this sorrow.’ The wind stirred the tall grasses by the road and they rustled dismally. But the day was bright, and Ki on the wagon smiled and swallowed. There was a warm patch of air beside her, warning her that this was enough. Time to come back now. Time to stop. Ki ignored it. There was something she had to do. A task, a chore not to be neglected. Suddenly she was seized by a compulsion to see the other side of the hill. She wanted to whip up the team, shake them into a trot, a ponderous gallop, to crest that rise. But she did not. On they plodded, the wagon creaking cheerfully. Ki could not understand why she smiled, why she did not stand and lash the team into action. Someone was tugging at her, dragging at her arm. There was no one there. The wagon creaked on, inexorably. Hurry, hurry, hurry. Clop, clop, clop, slowly on the rocky road. She crested the rise.

Ki screamed, wordlessly, endlessly. She could not draw a breath for words. The howl of her grief rushed out of her. She heard that howl bounce back to her, an echo careening back from nowhere.

Suddenly another Ki was aware and fighting. This was hers, hers alone to bear. They must not see, she must not see. She must not think of what she saw. Harpies take the softest meat. Cheeks of face and round child bellies, buttocks of man, soft visceral tissue, haunch of horse. Don’t see, don’t hear, she begged. Harpies, two blue-green, flashing. Laughing, screaming, tumbling in the air above Ki. Beauty keen as a knife, cold as a river. Whistling their mockery at her loss. Ki could not comprehend her own pain. Not again, not again, someone screamed. The closer she moved to the bodies, the fiercer came the pain, like a heat radiated by a fire. To scream was not enough. She could not cry. She howled like a beast. She must not let them see the Harpies, see how they circled above her, screaming with laughter as she howled.