The Windsingers Series: The Complete 4-Book Collection. Megan Lindholm

      Ki had once seen a Romni wagon that had slid and rolled off a mountain path made treacherous by spring runoff. She had marveled at the clean snapping of the heavy wood, great horses thrown about like puppies, at the litter of small debris strewn down the side of the cliff like bits of bright paper. But never had she seen wood crushed, the fibers compressed together so tightly that they crumbled away from one another afterwards. Her wagon had been crushed and smeared across the stone like a bright insect smashed on a window pane.

      Here and there her eyes picked out the details her mind did not want to know: the woeful head of a wooden horse, intact, but its body crumbled away; a rag of bright curtain; flat, crumpled copper that had been a kettle; straw crumbled to chaff; a single bright flower painted on a board that had survived.

      She did not scream; she did not speak. Vandien’s boots scuffed on the rock as he strode up to her. He took her upper arm to lead her away, but she shrugged him off. Only her eyes were alive as they flickered and danced over the wreckage. She began to tremble. It started as a shivering and increased in tempo until Vandien wondered if she would convulse in a fit. She prowled shaking among the wreckage of her life.

      Vandien observed her. She moved slowly, stooping to pick up a treasured fragment. She cradled it against her body for a few steps, then dropped it to pick up some other remnant. She seemed to choose them at random: a scrap of leather, the handle of a mug, a rag of bright fabric. She clutched and discarded each in turn. She moved aimlessly through the rubble, keeping nothing of what she gathered, impervious to the cold that made her hands white and red. Finally, she let a little fur boot tumble from her hand. She watched it fall. Her trembling passed.

      ‘It will be night soon. We have no more time to waste here.’ Her tone almost implied that Vandien had kept her standing about. With a purposeful stride, she crossed the rocky trail to climb up the packed snow and ice. ‘It will be dark soon,’ she called back to Vandien. Her trembling had ceased. She made a grab for Sigurd’s head, and he swung it willfully away from her. She slapped him sharply on the shoulder and made a second, more successful grab. She was looking up the hill of his rolling, dappled shoulder when Vandien came up behind her.

      ‘Boost?’

      ‘Then, how will you get up on Sigmund? You look like you feel worse than I do.’

      ‘I wouldn’t claim that distinction. Ki, I am sorry for the things that have come to pass.’

      ‘Are you? I wish I could be. I wish I could feel anything about them.’

      He caught her leg, threw her up on Sigurd’s back. She rode over to Sigmund, snagged him, and led the more docile animal back to stand on the snow beside the ice ridge. Vandien launched himself at the broad back, nearly overshot onto his face, then scrambled into position. They headed the horses around the curve of the mountain and back down the trail. The wind blew stinging ice crystals into their faces. Ki rode with her hands tucked under her thighs for warmth, letting Sigurd follow his nose.

      They would have passed their supplies in the darkness but for the body of the Harpy. It stuck up, too large and angular a shape to be completely covered by the blowing snow. Ki reined in beside it, looking down without pity on the scarred features, the ruined body. For the first time, she realized how much damage the fire had done to him. Thick scar tissue stretched on his chest, and she saw that the fingers of his small forearms were curled permanently into fists.

      ‘What kept him going?’ she wondered to herself.

      ‘Hate.’ Vandien spoke from the darkness beside her. ‘What will keep you going now that he’s dead?’

      Ki was silent for long moments. She listened to the silence of a night broken only by stirring wind, a shifting horse, Vandien’s breathing. What was left to her? She had no man or children to cherish; she had no Harpy to fear and hate; no wagon to shelter and preserve her grief in; no friends to return to. She felt peculiarly emptied. The debris of her life once more sifted through her hands. She raised her hand to a bulge that still nestled inside her shirt.

      ‘I have my freight to deliver.’

      Vandien laughed low and unpleasantly. ‘I wondered when it would dawn on you. It will be a surprised client that receives it! Need I recommend to you that you go armed?’

      Ki gave him a peculiar look. ‘Armed?’

      Vandien shook his head at her. ‘Still she trusts. Do you believe that it was fate that decided to give that Harpy another chance at you? Was it fate that sent you through this particular remote pass on a fool’s errand, with a handful of trinket gems as cargo?’

      Ki’s eyes caught what little light there was. Vandien recoiled from that look. ‘Be careful how you speak of Rhesus!’ she warned. ‘I have dealt with him for many years. I know him.’

      ‘Perhaps. But I know gems,’ Vandien returned coldly. ‘I have handled some in my time, enough to know fine from poor. And what you have in that pouch would do more credit to a tinker’s tray than to a lady’s wrist. Two are flawed, one is badly cut, and the other two of little value – not enough to be worth sending someone through this pass in a wagon.’

      ‘He gave me a good advance against their delivery,’ Ki replied stoutly.

      ‘No doubt he could afford it if someone else was footing the bill. And would the advance seem so large if he never expected to have to pay the rest of it?’

      A small doubt uncurled inside Ki. Swiftly she catalogued her dealings with Rhesus, finding a resentment here, a bitterness there. To her, their dealings had always seemed fair, the agreed-upon price had always been paid. Now she saw that, to Rhesus, that would mean that he had never made a shrewd bargain such as he liked to strike, that he had never been able to force from Ki more than he had paid for. Such a thought might rankle with a man like that. Ki’s shoulders slumped another notch. Was there any direction that treachery could not come from?

      They ate salt meat in darkness, then huddled close and impersonal on the shagdeer cover, the cloaks thrown over them. Ki closed her eyes, feigning sleep. Vandien was not deceived.

      ‘There is a fine wainwright in Firbanks.’

      ‘I don’t go that way. I have freight to deliver in Diblun.’

      Vandien sighed. ‘I feared you would insist. Ki, will you take the chance for that petty vengeance, and make it a framework for your life? And then what? After the merchant, will you find who bribed him and take another revenge? Take my advice. Don’t go to Diblun at all. Let it go, and be free of it. You owe him nothing, and the right person could sell those gems for you and get you something out of this mess.’

      ‘I promised to deliver them. Regardless of how he has broken faith with me, I shall not break mine. And I do have questions for him. I doubt it was a Harpy, burnt and blue, that came to him and asked him to arrange my little journey. Harpies are lacking in such subtlety. To me, it smells like a Human.’

      ‘To track down and be avenged on.’ Ki did not reply. ‘And when that quest is settled?’ Vandien left her no time to reply. ‘Ki, have you never considered living?’

      She was quiet beside him. He knew she did not sleep. He gave it up. ‘My face throbs like this – beat … beat … beat … beat … beat …’ Vandien counted out his pain. He began to reach a hand to his bandaged face, then stopped himself. ‘We have no more clean bandage material, do we?’

      ‘I’ll see what I can find in the morning. Vandien, I have never chosen death.’

      ‘Then you run remarkably close company with it, for entertainment, I suppose. Falling Harpies and bogged-down wagons put a certain edge on life. I have not been bored riding with you. But what of yourself? Shall you never take joy in anything again?’

      ‘I don’t know.’ They listened to the ponderous sounds of Sigmund folding his body down to the ground for the night. ‘Maybe. I don’t think I really want to. How could I?’

      ‘I saw a child at a fair once who bought a little cake at one of the stalls. In the jostle of the crowd,