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

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ