locked with the Brurjan's black ones. 'Gold,' he whispered again, seductively. 'Just take the gold and leave. Tell them you did as you were ordered.' The Brurjan's narrow red tongue spilled out between his teeth, curled to moisten his lips. He swayed slightly, and abruptly his eyes narrowed. He shook his head violently, 'No!' he said, his voice thick. 'I'll take the gold, and burn the wagon! No reason to do just one or the other!'
In two steps he had seized the boy and held him inches from his fangs. 'Where's the gold?' he demanded gutturally.
Goat squirmed frantically in his grip, trying to lean away from the teeth and rank breath that burned his face. 'I don't know!'
The Brurjan flung the boy aside, whipping him past his shoulder as if he were a rag. Goat met the ground hard and sprawled there. Ki watched the Brurjan enter the wagon. A moment later she heard the sounds of breaking crockery and rent wood as he began his search. It wouldn't take him long. The small cupboard set under the mattress was neither that small nor that secret. Objects began to hail out of the wagon around Goat - the floor keg split on the ground, followed by a shower of dried beans as the Brurjan shook out the sack in search of the hidden trove. Goat lifted his head, looked at Ki. 'Tell me what to do,' he begged.
She got her other knee under her, pushed up slowly from the ground. The pain rode her, injecting her with agony and sucking out her strength. She tried to fix her mind elsewhere, to find anger as she listened to her home being ransacked, to find a killing urge toward this Brurjan who had sent Vandien to his death. But all she could fix on was the foolishness of the creature. Vashikii would never have left two enemies alive while he searched for plunder. He would have methodically eliminated all danger before looting the wagon. He would have secured the black war-horse, which danced nervously in the dust as an armload of quilts were thrown out of the wagon. Vashikii had lived long, and his battle fangs had grown thick and yellow because he had not taken chances. Just as Ki promised herself she would live a little longer than this one who had killed her friend. She leaned, panting silently, against the side of the wagon, and waited. Goat had found Vandien's fallen knife. He picked it up, looked at Ki, and stepped around the tail of the wagon.
It didn't take long. She heard his muffled Hmph! of triumph, heard the pale clink of the yellow coins against one another as he hefted the small but heavy sack. The plank floor creaked under his weight. He was heavier than two Humans, and too tall. The wagon had not been built for his kind. He had to duck to exit, and his jaws led the way as he leaned out, his throat stretched long and unprotected as he blinked once in the sunlight.
The same sunlight winked on the brief glint of Ki's blade, and then only the small blackened haft that stuck out from the side of his throat like an arcane handle. A cry bubbled out of him, sprinkling red, and he batted savagely at Ki. The blade had gone into the big artery on the side of a Brurjan's throat, and they both knew he was dead.
His blow took her on the side of the head and she fell, then scrabbled out of his reach. He reached up and pulled Ki's knife from his throat. He came after her. They both knew she would die with him. She lay on her belly in the dust, watching him with green lizard eyes.
Goat leaped from the top of the wagon. His weight staggered the Brurjan, but the creature did not fall. Goat's knife rose and fell, scoring the Brurjan's leather harness and inflicting one slight flesh wound before a hairy arm swept the boy into the dust. But the delay had been enough. He sank beside the boy, fell across him, and the last of his blood pumped out over Goat's chest. The boy shuddered and lay still. Ki let her head fall forward onto her arms. Blood and dust and death. She had killed again, taken the life of another sentient being as she had sworn she would never do again. It distressed her, briefly, that she could find no remorse. Only surprise at how easy it had been. How simple it was to kill, when one was properly motivated. Then the day greyed briefly, and she sank into that soft greyness.
'Vandien,' she said softly into the road, tasting dust with his name. The sound of her own voice roused her. How long had she been lying here, how long had he been gone? She knew that he was already dead; but some part of her demanded that she see the body and touch its final stillness. It was this least logical part of herself that pushed her body up. She staggered upright. This emotional part, grown stronger than she had ever recognized.
'He's dead.' It was Goat's voice, full of awe, coming from beneath the body.
'Maybe not,' she croaked, but already grief was tightening her throat.
'No.' Goat whispered it. His narrow hands rose slowly, to clutch at his own throat as he stared at the dead Brurjan atop him. His yellow eyes seemed to spin and spark like the eyes of a Harpy. 'I felt him go. It was nothing like an animal... one moment he was there, wishing you dead, and the next he was ... bigger. And getting bigger, and bigger, looming over you, ready to snuff you out like a palm over a candle flame. And then ...' Goat's voice sank even softer. And then he went somewhere else. And I nearly followed him there!' Fear shook the boy, making his teeth chatter. 'I nearly followed him there!'
He scrabbled out from under the Brurjan's body frantically and then crawled to Ki, as if rising were beyond him. He sat at her feet for an instant, staring up at her. Then he suddenly hugged her knees, burying his face against her skirt and shaking her with his trembling. 'Oh, Ki! It's what Vandien felt, when he killed Kellich. It was too big, too real!' He clung to her, weeping as a much younger child might, and she found herself patting his shoulders, telling him that it would be all right, all right, all right.
A long time passed very slowly as she stood there. At last the boy's trembling subsided and he slowly drooped away from her. He looked terrible, as if he had been through some wasting illness. She found herself pushing the hair back from his face. He looked up at her and she stared down into his face. Purified. Sanctified. Something. Like metal passed through the cleansing fire. 'I killed the Tamshin. When I told the Brurjans about them. And I killed Kellich there. But Kellich went hating me, and when he was gone it was like a pain in my mind that stopped. I didn't care. Because I didn't really understand ...' He groped for words, found none. There was a comprehension in his face that was more terrible than any grief, that Ki sensed surpassed her own understanding of what had come to pass.
'Goat. It's going to be all right,' she said, lying, but having to say something to the boy. It wasn't right for a child to be filled with whatever now possessed this boy. But he shook his head at her, refusing false comfort.
'Ki, we have to go after them. After Vandien. And we have to hurry.'
'Yes,' she said softly, and the boy jumped up. He started toward the wagon, then stopped. 'What do we do about them?'
She looked at the crumpled bodies. Flies were gathering. 'Leave them,' she suggested.
And the horse?'
'It will eventually go back to wherever they've been stabled. It wouldn't let us get near it, anyway.' 'Should we try to ... cover them, or something?'
'No. I'm too tired to care. And they're too dead. It doesn't really matter, Goat. No matter what we do to them, they'd still be dead.' She paused, breathing. If she closed her eyes, the pain from her back was red and blotted out all thought. She tried to find some order in her mind. 'Goat. I can't. You'll have to sort things. Anything that's still useful, toss back in the wagon.' She looked again at the crumpled Brurjan. 'Nothing with blood on it,' she added quietly. Goat nodded silently, his eyes still full of pain.
She clambered slowly up onto the seat. She sat down carefully, took up the reins. The pain from her back was a living thing, sucking the strength from her body.
Goat clambered up beside her. He took the reins gently from her hands. 'I think it's finally my turn to drive,' he said.
She nodded, leaned back on the seat and felt the world slide into deep blues and blacks around her. The wagon started with a sickening jolt, and she found it was all she could do to keep a grip on the seat and ride along.
Cooking meat. The smell taunted her. I don't eat meat anymore, Ki reminded herself. I'm too closely linked with all things that move to want to feed on their flesh. But suddenly it seemed a silly resolution, a child's fantasy that by abstaining from meat she could somehow break the cycle of feeding and being fed upon. With or without her it went on. She had killed today, and she did not have to eat of Satativa's flesh to have preyed upon him. She suddenly perceived that eating meat or not eating meat changed nothing. She could not abstain from being Human, nor deny the position Humans held in the slow wheel of life. So she had stopped eating meat. It meant nothing. If she walked about with her eyes closed, would the colors go out of the world?
Her eyes were closed, and had been for a long time. Slowly she opened them. It was evening, the curtains of night fluttering over the world before closing completely. A pall of smoke along the road made the light dimmer
