town. Or so the wainwright assured her; she hoped he was right. It wasn't unusual for folk to know little of the roads that led away from the towns they had been born and raised in.
The horses snorted occasionally, complaining of the dark road and the annoying ruts that crumbled under their heavy hooves, but Ki kept them to their pace. The town fell away behind them, and then the cultivated fields. They finally entered the endless swell of the prairie. Vandien still hadn't spoken. She slid closer to him on the seat. Hooking one arm around his waist, she pulled him tight against her. He sighed suddenly, and put his arm across her shoulders. She didn't mind the weight. Turning her head, she brushed a kiss across his stubbled cheek. She waited.
'Ki,' he said, and stopped. For a long time, he said nothing. She moved her hand up his back, rubbed the tight muscles in the back of his neck. He didn't relax.
'He was one of the best swordsmen I've ever faced.' She nodded into the dark.
'I think we could have been friends.'
She nodded again.
'Oh, gods!' he cried suddenly. 'I killed that boy!'
'You didn't mean to,' she whispered. She let go of the reins to hold him, and the team, free to do its own will, immediately halted. Around them was only the empty night, the chirring of insects and the smell of the earth as the dew settled. Ki held him, wishing he would cry or curse, anything but hunch and hold his pain inside him. She ran her hands up and down his back, then hugged him suddenly, kissing the side of his face fiercely, trying to make him feel less alone.
He moved then, capturing her wrists and gently setting her away from him. 'The horses need to be unharnessed.'
'Yes. And I'll make a fire. You'll feel better when you've had a cup of tea and something to eat.' Her own words sounded inane, but it was all she could manage. She let him unharness the team while she found straw and twigs and bits of scrubby brush to build a fire. The small light in the darkness was cheering; she took courage from it. She filled the kettle from the cask and set it over the flames, then climbed the wagon step to get the new bag of tea.
It was dark within the wagon, and she groped over the bed where she had earlier tossed the sack of tea. Something warm stirred under her hands.
'Ki? Have we stopped finally?'
She stumbled backward down the steps, fleeing as if confronted by a nightmare. Goat followed her out, rubbing his eyes and blinking after his long sleep. She couldn't make a sound, could only stare at him. She didn't remember thinking of him since they left Tekum, but now she knew a part of her had deliberately decided to leave the boy behind. That same part was both horrified and enraged to see him emerge from the wagon. He walked toward the fire, holding his hands out toward it.
'DAMN YOU!'
It was the pain in Vandien's voice more than the anger that froze her for the instant that it took him to get to the boy. Goat went down under him, and Vandien's hands tightened on his throat before she could reach them. Stupid details imprinted themselves on her mind as she flung herself into the struggle: that the cut on Vandien's forearm had opened and was leaking darkly in the firelight; that Goat had not changed his shirt and there were great rings of sweat under his arms; that the boy looked like a dying rodent as his drawn-back lips bared his long yellow teeth. Then she was in the middle of it, wedging her shoulder against Vandien's chest and up, kneeling on Goat's chest as she levered the man off him, and then springing up to fling her arms around Vandien as Goat raced, howling, for the shelter of the wagon. Vandien flung her off with a curse and sprang after the boy, but he already had the door shut. She heard a thud and then the clatter of overturned pans as he piled things against it. Vandien turned to the other door, but she got to the seat before he did. She sat, her back to the other cuddy door, and looked down on him.
'Don't!' she warned him as he started up. 'Get out of my way.' He spoke as if she were a stranger, one he would not mind bloodying. It shocked her.
'Listen to me.' Her voice was shaking. 'Wait a minute.' He didn't. He was coming up onto the seat. She planted her hands on his shoulders, held him back. She wondered if he would throw her aside, knew that his anger made him far stronger than she, wondered what she would do if he did. He didn't, but all of her weight was insufficient to keep him on the ground. He was on the wagon seat. She plastered herself against the door.
'Vandien. Listen. If you touch him right now, you'll kill him. It won't stop at a beating. You'll kill him!'
'That's right.' His voice indicated he would enjoy it.
'I can't let you.' Her voice was even shakier, but truth rang in her words. Vandien pulled his eyes up to meet hers. She was drawing a line. No compromise. He'd have to hurt her to get her away from that door. She watched him think about it, and it hurt that he had to think about it, but she knew him well enough to understand it. 'Please,' she said, and she knew she was begging him, and that was another thing that had never been between them. It got through his anger.
For a long time, all was still. When he finally spoke, his voice was thick with heavy emotions. 'Get rid of him.'
The evenness of her tone surprised her. 'I will. In Villena.'
'Now. I can't be around him, Ki. I can't tolerate him anywhere near me. Get rid of him now, or I'll kill him.'
'I can't.'
He stared at her, and she sensed how hard it was for him to hold back. She forced her words out quickly, trying to make him see.
'If I toss him out here, there's only one place for him to go. Tekum. And he's hurt Willow enough already. I feel responsible for part of that hurt. I won't be responsible for letting him back into her life.'
She saw those words penetrating his anger, saw the barest hint of a nod, a concession. 'I have to take him to Villena,' she said quickly, and saw Vandien's anger begin to rise again. 'Because,' she pushed on, 'he's not the sort of thing you leave running about on its own. Someone has to take charge of him. His uncle's expecting him. So that's where he goes. I can't turn him loose on unsuspecting people in Rivercross, or just throw him out on the road to attach himself to travellers. You can see that, can't you? Vandien?'
He pulled back from her. He stood clear of the wagon, and in the gleam of the tiny fire his face held only a few planes of light. He seemed far away, and when he spoke, his voice was even more distant. 'Keep him away from me.' A pause. 'I don't want to see him, I don't want to hear him. I don't want to smell him. Or I'll kill him, Ki. I'll kill him.'
'It wasn't my fault!' came Goat's wild caterwauling from within the wagon. Ki saw Vandien's eyes widen, and she pounded a fist angrily against the cuddy door.
'Shut up!' she commanded him. The boy was silent again. 'I'll keep him away from you, Vandien. But Ihave to take him to Villena and turn him over to his uncle. You understand that, don't you?'
'All I understand is that he made me kill a man worth ten of him. A hundred of him. Made me kill him unfairly, made his death too quick ...' He turned aside abruptly, shaking his head fiercely. He walked away quickly, almost running, and she lost his silhouette in the blackness.
She hugged herself, held in her trembling. A wave of dizziness swept over her, and she suddenly felt how hard her heart was beating. But it was over, she told herself. For now. She took a great breath. 'Open the door, Goat,' she heard herself say. 'He's gone. Open the door, and listen to what I tell you, if you want to get to Villena alive.'
He walked into the darkness, feeling the wagon dwindle behind him, losing the small light of the tiny fire. On across the dark prairie, feeling the sparse dry grasses whisper against his boots, like the whisper of drawn steel ...
'If I hadn't been showing off,' he said to the empty night. 'If I hadn't been pressing the boy, showing him how good I was. If I hadn't been making death thrusts, and trusting his skill to parry them ...' His voice faded. But so had the boy been pressing him; had he dropped his own guard for even an instant, it would have been Kellich's steel in his chest, in his eye, laying open his flesh. He tried the justification on. It didn't fit. Instead he found himself thinking of how preferable that would have been. A quick death in a fair fight - yes, but what if, like Kellich, he had been pushed from behind? It would change everything; it had changed everything, he had seen it change everything in that fraction of a second before Kellich fell. Kellich had believed that he was in league with Goat.
