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, all the sugar tumbled from its top. “It’s all ruined now!” he cried, and dashed the little cake into the dirt to be trampled by the crowd.’
‘A man and two children!’ Ki’s voice trembled in outrage. ‘Not sugar on a damned sweetcake, Vandien!’
‘So, by all means, dash the rest of your life into the dirt!’ His anger matched her own.
‘And what do you suggest?’
Ki had the last word. Vandien had no answer. They settled deeper into the coverings, huddling closer to one another. The wind did not scatter snow over them tonight. It seemed to have changed direction. There was only the cold night full of icy stars that pressed down on them, keeping their bodies curled for warmth. Ki closed her eyes.
‘I could make you an offer,’ Vandien ventured cautiously, almost as if he did not wish Ki to hear him. The night held its breath, listening. ‘I could offer to never give you anything that I didn’t give freely, with no thought of repayment, without even a thought of the giving.’
Ki was silent, sleeping perhaps. Or she had not heard him. Or she did not care to answer. Or she would not.
‘And what would you ask in return, Vandien, you scrawny bit of road baggage?’ he asked himself in a strained falsetto.
‘Why,
