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

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СКАЧАТЬ thought rapidly as she drew out the old man’s chair for him. ‘And if I choose to withdraw completely? I have already told Cora that I will not join you in this rite. What if I should seek the privacy of my room?’

      ‘The fears these people have built up will stay with them, daunting them until the end of their days. My rite will be powerless against it. No one will again see their dead. There will be no more Rites of Loosening. One more rhythm will pass out of their lives, and they will be the poorer.’

      Ki gently pushed the chair toward the table. She curbed the pride that rose in her. She had said she wished to make amends. So this is what it would take. ‘Do your worst, old man,’ she replied. Nils chuckled and sent her a bright glance.

      ‘Remember your resolve, girl. You’ll need it.’

      Ki stepped back from the table, uncertain of where to place herself. She looked to Cora. The glance Cora shot her pleaded. For what? Then, as Lars moved to silently escort Ki to a seat far down the table, away from the adults and people of import, Ki understood. Nils had primed Cora to what must be done. Cora, ruthless as a wolf when her family was threatened, had taken the necessary action.

      Others were moving into their places about the table. Kurt, Rufus’s eldest son, took a seat beside Ki. He glanced at her, abashed to find her seated so closely, and then looked away. Edward took the chair on the other side of her, and other children filed from across the room to fill in the empty places. Ki sat gravely, her dark head raised above theirs, looking up the table to where Haftor, Lars, Lydia, and the others were being seated. Haftor stared down the table to where Ki sat. The muscles of his jaw clenched, and he spoke some short, angry words to his sister seated beside him. Embarrassed, Marna hushed him. Haftor’s dark blue eyes met Ki’s in a pledge of loyalty. Ever so slightly, Ki shook her head. She hoped he understood the message. Lars, Rufus, and Cora did not even look her way. Their attention was fastened on Nils, as was everyone’s. The little girl across the table from Ki giggled nervously. Her seating was so inappropriate that even the youngest child was aware of it. Ki took a slow, deep breath and turned her eyes to Nils.

      Nils did not need to make any gesture to gain the full attention of the table. He simply began to speak.

      ‘I have come to you here, at Cora’s request, to repair a rift between you and the Harpies of Harper’s Ford. We shall not speak tonight of ignorance or pettiness.’ Ki’s face reddened. Haftor’s knuckles showed white on the edge of the table. ‘I am not here to instruct you in what you already know. You have been raised to certain ideals. You have enjoyed the companionship of beings better than ourselves, creatures closer to the Ultimate. But your regard for them has been soiled, your image of them spattered with the mud-throwing of a hurt and angry mind. You were wise. You did not go to the Harpies and defile their gifts to you by exposing them to these unfitting sentiments pressed upon your unwilling minds. You have chosen to wait, for atonement and reconciliation. You will return to the Harpies as unsoiled as when, in childhood, you made your first encounters. Tonight we begin.’

      Nils paused. It seemed to Ki that he paused so that every person at the table could shoot her at least one look. She read every conceivable emotion in them. From Cora, a plea for understanding. Rufus was cold, Nils knowing. From Holland came enmity and a thirst for revenge. Marna’s was wonder, Haftor’s a grim sympathy and an unreadable promise. Lars’s eyes were hooded, careful blanks. But his mouth was small as a stricken child’s.

      ‘Tonight we eat together,’ Nils reclaimed their attention. ‘We talk, we drink, we speak no words of sadness or misfortune. By each plate Cora has placed a bit of dried kisha fruit wrapped in toi leaves. Take it with you tonight. Chew it slowly before you sleep, and think as you chew it of pleasant memories of happy intercourse with the Harpies. It will help you to recall those meetings in detail, and the feelings of peace and wholeness they gave you. Now, let us eat and speak to one another as if this misfortune had never befallen you.’

      Nils fell silent. Basins and platters began to be passed at the higher part of the table, and the murmur of polite voices rose. Around Ki the children were silent, waiting anxiously for the dishes to work down the table to them. Ki ate, as the children did, whatever the adults had left to be passed. The children, warned, no doubt, to be on their best manners, spoke little. Ki was at a loss. She could not pretend to be interested in their short comments on the food, and she would not supervise their feeding. Young Edward dropped a piece of meat, retrieved it calmly from the floor, and ate it. Ki pursed her mouth and glanced up-table. Hastily she returned her eyes to her plate.

      Nils had effectively drawn out her claws. For the first time since the Rite of Loosening, people were looking at her openly. Nils, by placing her far down the table, had made her an appropriate topic for conversation. He had told them all not to dwell on that mangled Rite of Loosening. Ki guessed that they had found other topics. She ate slowly, in small bites, keeping her head bowed and her eyes on her food. She tried not to care that it made her look like a guilty child to sit so while her ‘elders’ discussed her. She marked the absence of Haftor’s deep voice in the conversation. She could hear other voices, but not enough of the softly spoken words to make sense. Only enough to sting. ‘Romni’ she picked out several times, and the phrase ‘Sven too young’ once.

      Ki’s mind cast about, traveled back through the years. Rufus knelt in the yard, blood streaming from his nose, with Sven towering above him, outraged and weeping in frustration. Lars was a white-faced little boy peering from the door. Ki had been sixteen then, and Aethan a year dead. She had wanted to flee back to the shelter of her wagon, to whip up the tired old team and disappear from Harper’s Ford forever. But Cora had been standing in the bright sunlight, wiping earth from her hands, demanding to know what went on. And Sven, a fool in his righteousness, told her.

      ‘I said to him that Ki may stay her wagon in our fields, in the fields that will come to me when I am a full man. I say she may, for I am decided that we will be joined together. He says I let her stay because she pays me in the coin that Romni girls love best to give away. So I struck him. I will strike him again if he tries to rise before he apologizes to her.’

      Cora had not only made Rufus apologize, but she had forced Ki to eat inside, at the table beside them. Ki had hated her for it at that moment, not understanding why she did it, and not wanting to. This meal was like to that one, with emotions simmering but not voiced to Ki. But here was no Sven to press her hand under the table, to put the choicest bits before her. Seven months later Sven had attained his manhood, claimed his lands, and taken Ki to his bed. He had been young for it, and Ki scandalously so. All talked of the outlandish joining-gifts he gave her. Sigurd and Sigmund were then gray three-year-olds, scarcely broken to pull, nervously prancing at the ends of the new lead ropes that Sven proudly placed in Ki’s hands. And their bed had been in the front of a new wagon, built by Sven’s hands with the best materials he could muster. He had painted it blue, with apple blossoms about the windows and cuddy door.

      Cora had tried to dissuade Sven from making the joining formal, Rufus had mocked him, and Lars had been fascinated by his older brother’s daring in bringing this wild road woman to their home. But when Cora had seen that Sven was not to be budged, that he would leave with Ki forever, she had yielded graciously, recognized their agreement formally, and made her tribute to the Harpies in their honor.

      So, let them discuss it yet one more time, Ki whispered to herself as she ate. Let them rake and sort the facts, commiserate with Cora over this outsider forced into her home, over the waste of a fine son who could have joined farm lands or timbered country. Ki felt only tired. But then a sudden wail of loneliness snaked up in her, so strong that Ki wondered if she had cried out loud. Sven, Sven, gentle of hand, always giving her too much, giving to her before she thought to ask, always thinking of her, making her way smooth before her. Sven, his wide hands bloody as he received his son from her body; Sven, sunlight on his face, making him squint as he rode beside the wagon; Sven, firelight on his shoulders and back as they made СКАЧАТЬ