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

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ