betrayed. Worse, she felt foolish. Because she had known all along, not just for a day, but for years, that it would come to this. That she would someday reach for him, in need, and he would not be there. Anger shook her like the storm that had battered her wagon days ago, and self-disgust filled her at the way she had let herself be beguiled into depending on him. She turned her back on them and covered her eyes, trying to find a way to be alone. Dellin had spoiled her numbness.
'I can't help you without letting you hurt the boy.' Dellin's voice came dimly to her. 'I'm sorry. You'll have to face this on your own.'
On my own, thought Ki, and the words echoed stupidly through her mind, repeated endlessly. On my own. She felt herself reach out, and suddenly knew the truth of Dellin's words. There had been a bond, but now she reached and felt only a wall. No one reached back. He'd let go of her. Sometime yesterday, he'd chosen to follow the rebellion. And died for it. Her loneliness stretched endlessly and achingly into a void that held no answers, no return of warmth. It was a bleeding that could not be staunched. On her own. 'I cannot allow it, not so close to Gotheris!'
The halting of the wagon jarred her. She had not realized that Dellin had been driving the team. She opened her eyes but could see nothing at first. Then nothing turned into the fingers of her hands. She lifted her face slowly, uncoiled. Dellin had risen on the seat. 'Stop that!' he cried commandingly. 'Let her go!' Ki turned her head.
From one of the remaining trees, a noose dangled. A young boy had hold of it, holding it open. Perhaps fifteen or twenty people, more than Ki had yet seen today, clustered in the streets. They muttered angrily, like stirred bees, and their faces were avaricious with hate. Three young men were dragging a woman toward the tree. 'She's one of those damned rebels,' someone shouted to Dellin. 'One of those what killed the Duke and turned the Brurjans loose on us all. Friends with the very one that done it!' Others in the crowd muttered an angry assent.
'Let her go!' Dellin roared. The men halted, looked up at him. Their eyes flamed with hate. The woman bucked against their grip, threw her whole body backward trying to break free of their relentless hold. Her hood flew back.
Willow had aged in the night. Her spikily shorn head made her look like the victim of some devastating illness. Her skin was grey, and black soot smudged the side of her nose. With her mismatched eyes wide and rolling, she looked like a battered doll, victim of some wicked child.
'Let them kill her,' Ki said quietly.
Dellin looked down at her. 'I thought I should stop them, for Gotheris's sake. Now I know I must stop them. For yours.'
In the brief interval of his speaking, the crowd had lost interest in him. One of the men gripped Willow's short hair, lifted her nearly clear of the ground as they pushed and dragged her forward. The boy, his mouth ajar, held the noose open and waiting for her.
Dellin's eyes wandered gravely over the crowd. But if he had hoped to see any sign of them relenting, he was disappointed. 'Stop.' Dellin said the word this time, and a plea was in his voice. He did not speak loudly, nor did his voice carry. It was almost as if he mouthed it under his breath. It did no good. The men who gripped Willow were strong in their purpose. Ki could find no pity in her heart for the girl. She had cursed Ki too well and too truly. A few folk at the edge of the crowd, suddenly sickened by what was to come, turned and hastened away. She saw a woman put a pleading hand on her husband's arm, lean close to speak earnestly to him. Reluctantly he accompanied her as she turned away. No one paid any attention to their leaving.
'Don't do it!' Dellin breathed again. The boy holding the noose jerked as if stuck with a pin. His eyes focused suddenly on the struggling girl, on the savage faces of the men forcing her near. His eyes widened as if he had just glimpsed demons walking by daylight. He yelped like a kicked pup, and fled.
'Damn!' One of the men cursed, and had to take one hand from Willow to snatch after the swinging rope. She took full advantage of his distraction, ripping a hand free to batter frantically at the man who gripped her hair. Ki sat quietly, watching her. Behind her she heard a muffled whimper, turned to see Goat framed in the cuddy door. He clutched the seat as if he were drowning and it was the only bit of driftwood in the sea. On his face was the panicky look of a child who cannot breathe. In his eyes was horror such as Ki had never seen. 'It's wrong,' sighed Dellin.
The crowd was thinning. The man trying to bring the noose and Willow's neck closer together looked abruptly and distinctly uncomfortable. It seemed to Ki he suddenly found his central role in the drama distasteful. 'You'll be punished,' Dellin warned ominously.
'Get the damn noose on her!' one of the men holding Willow ordered him. But the one gripping the noose was instantly angered.
'You want it done, do it yourself!' he snarled, and flung the dangling rope at his companion. He missed gripping it, and the noose swung past him, and then pendulumed past him again. Those standing in the streets now seemed suddenly more witnesses than accomplices. The hate-energy had bled out of the lynching.
But the one who gripped Willow's hair was immune to the change in atmosphere. Even as the other two 'loosened their grips on her, he drove his fist into her belly, doubling her over and briefly stilling her struggles. He kept his grip on her scalplocks as he reached wildly for the passing noose and snagged it. The rough rope was in his fingers, and he was pushing it down over Willow's head when Goat growled.
'Feel it yourself!'
And he did. The man fell, gasping, to his knees, his nails clawing wildly at his throat as he mewled out the terror that had muted Willow. She fell bonelessly, her chin slipping free of the noose. She sprawled in the street, her legs and arms too long and angular in conjunction with her cropped head. The other two executioners boggled at their leader clutching at his throat. Long strings of spittle were falling from his open mouth, dangling and then darkening his shirt front. They backed in disgust, then spun and walked off in different directions, shoulders hunched, the one with his arms folded tightly around his body. Of the lynch mob there was only the victim lying in the street, and the executioner strangling in a nonexistent noose.
'Stop that!' Dellin barked, and his long fingers cracked like a whip as they struck Goat's fixed stare from his face. Red and white streaks remained in their wake, and an astonished look in Goat's eyes. 'No!' Dellin told him firmly, as if he were a child reaching for a pot of boiling water. 'No! Let go!'
Ki saw him release the man. She saw it in Goat's face, in the sudden slumping of his narrow shoulders. She didn't have to turn to see the lynchman tumbled flat in the road like a puppet with cut strings. But she did turn to watch Dellin as he climbed down the box and slowly crossed to where Willow lay.
He lifted the girl with an ease not entirely Human. He spoke something over the limp form in his arms, and when she began to stir, he set her carefully on her feet again. Neither one of them paid attention to the man who lay in the street, weeping silently. Dellin spoke softly to Willow as he took her hand and led her toward the wagon. He brought her alongside it, gestured her up toward the box. She lifted her face and for a long moment her eyes locked with Goat's.
'No!' she cried out, in a voice low and harsh as a cat's growl. Her eyes fixed on Ki and went wider. 'I won't go with you! I won't ride with traitors and freaks! I won't become one such as he! I won't! I'd rather die!' She broke free of Dellin's light touch, spun and was gone in a staggering run.
'She speaks the truth,' Dellin said, and with a start Ki knew his words were meant for Goat. The boy watched Willow run away with heartbreak in his eyes. 'She'd rather die,' Dellin went on mercilessly. 'Andshe 'probably will, if she keeps radiating it to the Humans around her. Thick as their mindskins are, still a few will hear her, and enough will feel her death-hunger to find a way to satisfy it. This,' and his sweeping hand included not just the fleeing girl, but the smouldering city as well, 'is what comes of Jore blood misused, to a Human's end. This is what comes of Jore and Human mingled without wisdom or conscience.' His grave accusation brooked no denial.
'You can't say all this is his fault!' Ki objected, and was surprised at the depth of her feelings.
But Goat, his pale eyes wide, nodded with equally grave acceptance. 'Yes, Ki, it was.'
'You are strong, and your Jore talent is great in you,' Dellin observed.
Goat nodded again. With a strange humility, he added, 'Stronger than you, Uncle. And more talented.'
Dellin stared at the boy, re-evaluating him. When he spoke, there was acceptance in his voice. 'It is good for both of us to recognize that before we begin. So, Gotheris. Now is a deciding time. Will you go on with me, and learn? Or will you flee, as that girl does, frightened by the wideness of the plain she glimpses?'
