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

we call it? Only to see that you took your wagon through a certain pass. No time limit was set upon me, only my word that at some time I would see that you passed that way. And that was all. How was I to know it would be dangerous to you? So, be not angry with me. We may still do business together, you and I.’ He paused to nibble speculatively at his thumb nail. ‘I think, to be just, that my price for the information will be equal to the minteds that I just …’

      Ki did not wait to hear. She felt no anger as she slowly lowered her worn boots from the table. She felt nothing as she swept to the floor the pens, the counters, and a flurry of scrolls. Rhesus screamed high, but Ki’s eyes were cold as she upset the table upon the tiled floor, with a crash that sent splinters of polished wood flying. The carved chair rose lightly in her weathered hands, to arc across the room and cave in the front of the shining cabinet. Rhesus fled from the room, squeaking. Ki followed him with her panther’s stride. He fled without grace or logic, looking back fearfully as he huffed up the hall. Silent and relentless came Ki. She heard a girl’s voice raised in a question as Rhesus darted into the room Ki had first seen him emerge from.

      It was a room of whites and yellows, of creamy floors and soft white rugs, of tapestries of flowered fields. A huge divan dominated the center of it, surrounded by filigreed tables bearing an overwhelming assortment of sweetmeats and fruits. A girl started up from the divan as they entered, Rhesus quivering and staggering as he fled. She gasped at the sight of his pursuer, Ki, ragged, dusty, and wooden-faced.

      Ki halted at the sight of her. It was not her extreme youth that shocked Ki, though the image of that child in Rhesus’s embrace was a blasphemy against beauty. Nor did the girl’s nudity and carefully erotic body paintings surprise Ki – it was the necklace of circling silver Harpies that adorned the slender throat, and the azure and cobalt Harpies that swung from each pink ear. Ki stopped.

      ‘From her forge and anvil come the best metal workings the family has ever seen.’ Haftor had said that. He had been right. Once a person had beheld the work of Marna’s hands, ever she would know it. Ki did not realize that she had advanced on the girl until she felt the cold silver of the necklace in her hands. The girl fled, her bare feet pattering across the cream floor, her white neck marred by the burn of metal rudely jerked from it.

      Ki could not focus her mind on Rhesus’s shrill cries as he frantically jerked on a summoning bell’s rope. She tried to remember Marna’s face. It would not come to her. She could find only Haftor, battling his madness, his eyes intense with a vengeance he would never satisfy. Haftor had learned to hate too well. Would Ki school Marna to it also? Ki flung the Harpy necklace from her violently. It rattled and slid across the floor to wrap around Rhesus’s foot. He ceased his yammering long enough to stoop and seize his treasure.

      ‘Give her this,’ Ki said suddenly into the jolt of silence. ‘Tell her she succeeded. Tell her it came from my body. Tell her to be at peace, for it is all over.’

      Ki groped in her belt pouch, and the silver hair-comb came readily to her hand. She drew her fist back to fling it at him, but found she could not do it. She strode across to where Rhesus cowered to press it into his wet hands. A twinge of regret at parting with it surprised Ki. She froze the emotion. She spun on her heel and strode out the door, to pass between two bewildered serving men as they hastened to answer Rhesus’s summons. She let herself out.

       TEN

      Firbanks was a dusty, cold little town huddled between two forested mountains. It possessed a single inn, run by a Human and a Tcheria in partnership. To Ki’s regret, the Tcheria managed the food area. There were no tables and benches, only squat-legged trays full of sand raked smooth. Tcheria preferred it so. Guests were expected to crouch on straw mats beside the trays while they ate. Ki found the trays too tall if she sat on the floor, and too uncomfortable to hunker beside. She had brought one of her blankets up from the wainwright’s and, in defiance of local custom, folded it for a cushion. A young Tcheria of the third gender had raked her sand table smooth and brought her hot food and a yellow wine. Ki’s nose told her that the bread was freshly baked. She picked more cautiously at the grayish hunks of meat and green sprouts that swam in her bowl of greasy broth. She frowned at the thought of the two copper dru that had paid for it.

      The wainwright had demanded nearly all the money she had as an advance before he would begin work on the wagon. She and her team were making a small wage, pulling logs down from the mountainside. It would be enough to pay for the wagon’s completion. Ki stifled the impatience that rose in her at the thought of the days of work and waiting before her. She had, she reminded herself, no fixed goal. No matter how often the idea came to her, she would not push on to Thesus. Bad enough that she had stopped at the Inn of the Three Pheasants to ask after a man with a bandaged face. Micket, the innkeeper, had been surprised at her queries. She had not enjoyed the speculative look in his eyes. And worse, that she sought out in Firbanks a wainwright that recognized Vandien’s name. To go any further would be to admit to more than concern for his safe journey. She sipped the yellow wine, frowning at its curious flavor.

      Besides, no doubt Vandien was long gone from Thesus by now. And if he wasn’t, he would be before the damn wagon was finished.

      The wagon. She sipped more wine, as if to drown the thought. No matter how many times she explained it all to the sweating wainwright in his shop, no matter how often she measured out the spaces with her hands, it would not be the same wagon. This wainwright of Vandien’s had his own ideas. He wished to set the wheels differently so they could be exchanged for skids in deep snow. He wanted to make the cuddy larger and put a second door that went out the side of the wagon. He insisted that she needed more and larger windows, and a wider bed. Every day Ki told him exactly how the wagon was to be. And every day, when he spoke of how his work went, it had been done as he had suggested. Today Ki had threatened not to pay. He had said, ‘So, build it yourself if you are so particular.’ The man was impossible. She didn’t know why she dealt with him. He was as impossible as Vandien himself.

      She took another sip of the wine. She was becoming accustomed to the flavor. It was all the inn offered.

      A patron nudged her shoulder in passing. Ki turned to glare at the knees behind her. Boots of soft leather were fastened right below them. Ki’s eyes traveled up. She could not speak.

      His eyes she recognized. He had scraped away all his beard except for a moustache above his unsmiling mouth. His hair had been trimmed back off his shoulders. The scar was a pale track across his weathered face. It pulled one eye askew. His face and body had fleshed out, much to his advantage. The soft linen shirt that opened at his throat was clean, the saddle pack slung over his shoulder was supple new leather. He wore a curious vest with a strange blue pattern worked into it. On one hand was a plain ring with a single stone set into it. A slender rapier in a battered sheath dangled at his side. He did not smile as he gazed down on her.

      The saddle pack dropped to the floor on the other side of the sand table. He sat on it, pushing his rapier’s hilt to swing the weapon out of his way. He set an empty glass on the table and put a spherical bottle of the yellow wine beside it. He nested it down into the sand with an expert’s touch. He placed both elbows in the sand and leaned his chin in them.

      ‘All Tcheria utensils have round bottoms. Now you know why they use a tray full of sand. Nothing tips over.’

      ‘Oh.’ His solemnity daunted her.

      ‘You finished up all your business in Diblun?’

      ‘Yes.’ Damn his grim face. ‘I delivered my freight.’

      He nodded sagely as she spoke, pouring wine for himself. He took a long sip of it, waiting. Ki looked down at her bowl, her long hair spilling forward to hide her chastened face. A heaviness of a chance lost grew inside her.

      ‘I saved Sven’s things for you. I knew you would want them.’

      ‘I don’t. Get rid of them, Van.’

      His face went white and taut. He stood up, nearly knocking over the sand table, wine and