Vandien reached back and slammed the door. His hands clenched the edge of the seat. Ki glanced at his white knuckles, then fixed her gaze on the road. The tree-lined street was quiet, most trade closed down for the heat of early afternoon.
'I don't know if I can stand it,' Vandien said in a strangled voice. 'Having that thing in there.' Ki nodded. Suddenly Goat did seem more of a thing than a person. 'What do you suggest?' she asked softly.
Vandien shook his head wearily. 'We can't just leave him here.'
'He'd only find his way back to Willow.' Ki paused, then observed, 'Like rotten meat. You hate to carry it with you, because of the stench, but you fear to throw it aside lest you poison some poor beast.'
'His uncle in Villena.' Vandien's voice was unenthusiastic. 'I hope that poor bastard knows how to deal with him. I don't.'
'I wish we didn't have to stop here at all. But we're low on salt and tea, and I want to ask the smithy if he has anything for ticks and fleas. This damn warm weather ...'
Ki let the sentence dangle, and she could feel Vandien make the journey north with her, back to the cool lands. What was a snow-blocked pass or ice on the harness buckles compared to endless heat and bugs and guards and papers?
They were almost outside the town before she spotted an inn that suited her. It was set back from the road and there were few animals in the yard, and none of them looked capable of bearing a Brurjan's weight. From somewhere close by she heard the clang of hammer against anvil. Sigurd and Sigmund drew the wagon obediently into the yard. They stopped and stood, waiting for water.
The hostler who came from the stables frowned briefly at the garish wagon, but seemed to know his business as he moved surely around the horses.
'Water, and grain for them. Take their bits out, but don't unharness them; we won't be staying that long,' Ki told him.
He nodded to her words, then gave a puzzled frown. 'Aren't you come for the festival? Not far off, now. Folks already getting ready for it.'
She shook her head, then transferred her attention to Vandien. 'I'll buy you a beer,' she offered.
He astonished her by shaking his head. 'No. Let's just get our errands done and be moving on. I've no urge to explore this town or spend any time here.'
The cuddy door slid open. 'But I do!' Goat protested. 'I want to look around before we move on. I want ...'
'No.' Vandien's voice was flat. Goat glared at him for a moment, then turned to Ki.
'I can at least walk around with you while you do your errands. We need more honey, and I want ...'
'I'll be walking around with Ki while she does her errands. You'll be staying here and watching the wagon. I don't want you to leave it, and I don't want you talking to anyone. Some inngirls have fathers, Goat, or brothers, or sweethearts. Try your tricks here, and you'll be lucky if it's only my fist you feel. Do we understand one another?'
Goat glared at him in outrage, and then slammed the door. Ki had remained silent throughout their exchange. Now she asked Vandien worriedly, 'Do you think it's safe to leave him alone?' 'He'll be a lot safer alone than if I have to stay here with him,' Vandien promised her blackly. He grinned at her then, suddenly and disarmingly, but there was an edge to his smile that she had never seen before, and it did nothing to disarm his threat about Goat. She took his arm and walked him away from the wagon, feeling the tension that was thrumming through him. Ki sighed, and wished she could lose the image of the distraught Willow glaring after the wagon.
They bought the tea first, and a small earthenware pot of honey sealed with yellow wax. Ki tried to get him interested in the leather goods in a small open-fronted shop, but the usually gregarious Vandien was withdrawn. He was as charming as ever, and the leatherworker eager to show him her wares, but there was something missing from his manner. Warmth, Ki thought, and caring. Usually he could make every person he talked with feel as if he were the most fascinating character Vandien had ever met. Today he was distracted, as if he were listening to something else. 'No, no, I'm content with what I have,' he explained, running his hand down the worn sheath of his rapier. 'It's old, but she draws easily from this, and it keeps her safe. Anything fancier would only attract attention.' He looked up at the leatherworker as if seeing her for the first time. 'Work as fine as yours for a simple traveller like myself? Would only make the Brurjan guards think there was more about me than there really is. But I thank you for showing us your goods.'
The leatherworker warmed toward him. 'The Duke's Brurjans seem to think that of anyone they meet, these days,' she confided to them. 'Such a sifting of travellers as they have done of late. There are rumors of a rebel spy travelling to the Duchess. It is said that he has knowledge of the Duke's troops, and the strength and fortifications of Masterhold itself. The Brurjan that lays claws on him first is to be richly rewarded, with seven black mares and a white stallion from the Duke's own stables.'
'All the more reason for us to remain unobtrusive,' Ki filled in. Vandien had wandered back to the street and was watching the traffic. A haunted look was on his face. He was right, Ki decided. Finish the errands quickly and leave.
She thanked the girl, and they made their way to the smithy and found he had herbs which, rubbed against the horses' sweaty hides, would stave off the worst of the fleas and ticks. He also had a paste for worming, one he assured Ki was necessary in this part of the world as a monthly tonic. Vandien stood bored as she listened to the smithy, and did not even join in on bargaining him down to a price she thought fair. Her arms were full as they left the smithy's barn, and Vandien carried the tea and honey, so she could not take his arm as she longed to.
'Sure you don't want just one quick beer?' she offered again as they approached the wagon.
'Well ... no. No, let's get on our way to Villena. Goat! Open the cuddy door, my hands are full. Goat!'
No answer. No creak of motion from the wagon. The horses shifted in their harness as Vandien waited. Then he turned, stacked his goods into Ki's arms, and jerked the door opened himself. 'Goat!' he roared, as the door came open.
There was no reply, and the look he turned on Ki was unreadable. 'He's gone,' he told her, and jumped down from the wagon step. She struggled laden up the step to dump their purchases on the bed. She came out of the wagon to see Vandien coming out of the inn.
'Not there,' he said tersely. They looked at each other in silence.
'Want me to check the other shops around here?' Ki offered, but Vandien shook his head, hisexpression suddenly savage.
'You know where he's gone as well as I do. Damn Goat, can't leave anything alone. It was bad enough as it was, and now to go back into it, to have to see her face again.'
He moved as he ranted, placing the bits in the horses' mouths, setting aside the water buckets the hostler had left for them. 'Let me just pay the innkeeper, then,' Ki suggested.
He was holding the reins when she came out, and for once she said nothing about his driving. The team felt his tension down the reins, for they stepped out smartly and Sigurd, for once, tried no tricks with him. Back they went, the shade of the great trees flickering across the greys' backs and changing them to silvers and whites and almost blacks as the light changed.
He turned the wagon into the dusty yard of the Two Ducks Inn, and pulling up the team, set the brake and jumped down from the seat. Ki followed him, hoping they would find Goat, hoping that they wouldn't find him with Willow, hoping desperately that nothing was going to happen, but feeling, just as instinctively as Vandien had all day, that something had already happened, that all that was left was to make a salvage attempt.
The quiet of the innyard had been deceptive. Ki and Vandien stepped into a dream standing motionless, like a play waiting for an audience. Guests of the inn stood in a white-faced circle about a grouping of three. Willow, sitting at a stained wooden table, her face cradled in her arms, her glossy hair a spreading copper against the table's dull surface, while Goat, his face a frozen mask of fear, plucked desperately at her sleeve, begging, 'Willow, make him stop! Tell him you wanted to!' The man with the drawn blade had to be Kellich. Ki would have known him anywhere. This was who Willow loved, and rightly so. This man in the loose shirt of scarlet silk and black trousers tucked neatly into shining black boots. This man, slender as his blade and as flexible, with a graven face an idol might have envied as the setting for eyes that were darker azure than an August sky. But Willow could not have loved the pain and anger in those eyes, the humiliation that whitened his tanned skin to sallowness.
'Come to your death, whelp!' Kellich invited Goat.
