Luck Of The Wheels

SIX

'Goat, why don't you get down and walk for a while? Stretch your legs,' Vandien suggested pleasantly.

Goat gave him a yellow smile. 'Why don't you?'

Ki closed her eyes for one long moment, then opened them again and fixed them on the road ahead. All morning the two had been exchanging small barbs, but Goat was getting a little too brave now. Vandien smiled at him in silence. Ki could feel his muscles gathering. 'Ki,' Vandien said in a very soft voice. 'Pull the horses up.'

'Vandien.' She said no more than that, putting all her meaning into the name. Not a cautioning, but a plea. Vandien sighed audibly and leaned back. The clopping of the team's hooves filled the silence. The long straight road stretched flat before them. It seemed to Ki that the sandy soil they passed today was yellower. And that was the only difference from yesterday. Algona. She mouthed the word silently to herself. First leg of the journey, a measuring point, a way of saying, well, that much is done. There was a dark smudge on the far horizon. It might be Algona, or it might be stunted foothills. Either would be welcome, the hills for the change in terrain, the town for the marking point in their journey.

Vandien closed his throat. 'Willow told me a lot of things last night.'

Goat snickered nastily. 'I'll bet she did.' 'I'm talking to Ki,' Vandien said icily. 'Be quiet, or I'll make you quiet.' Goat's eyes grew larger and his lips tightened. 'I couldn't sleep much, for the pain. And she said she preferred to sleep during the day while we traveled anyway. So we talked. Or she did, and I listened. Mostly about her lover, but later she got into other things. The politics of Loveran are fascinating; we've wandered into a hornet's nest, just waiting to be stirred.'

'This Duke of theirs seems to keep things tightly controlled.' Worry tinged Ki's words.

'Perhaps. But remember what Trelira said, about the Duke's Brurjan patrols keeping the roads free of robbers and rebels? Willow says the emphasis is more on rebels than robbers. And who the rebels are, the Brurjans determine.'

Ki hissed speculatively. 'Tamshin, for instance?'

'Or Romni. Or anyone else with too fat a caravan, or too high-stepping a horse. The merchants are getting tired of it.'

'Turning into real rebels, perhaps?' Ki surmised.

Vandien nodded at her past Goat's bowed head. The boy was dozing in the sun, eyes closed, mouth slightly ajar. 'From what I heard in Keddi, they've found a focus. The Duchess. The Duke's mother. She held all the power until he came of age and packed her off to a new life with a contemplative order. I understand she finally escaped her meditations and bonds, and would like to have her duchy back. If what Willow tells me is true, it wouldn't be a bad thing. This grass desert used to be grazing lands and farms, before the Duke came to power and started quarreling with the Windsingers. You know how they are; no percentage for the Windsingers, no decent weather. No rain at planting time, no cooling breezes for seedlings, no ...'

'Um. Yes. I know how they are. So?'

He knew what the 'so' meant: How does all this relate to us? Politics to Ki were a nebulous thing, consisting of petty officials to be outwitted and trade laws to be circumvented.

'So that's what all these travel permits are about. The Duke reasons that if he can keep all his subjects where they belong, except for those with a good economic reason for moving around, he can prevent the massing of supporters for the Duchess, and cut down the flow of information among the rebels. He controls the Brurjan guard. He disbanded the Duchess's troops, so there's no other standing force of any kind. By keeping everyone busy accounting for where they are, the Duke prevents the gathering of any force loyal to her.'

'Willow has no travel permit.' Ki was slowly grasping it. 'Therefore, if we are stopped by the Brurjans, and she can show no papers, we are automatically rebels.'

'Right. And in her sympathies at least, they'd be right about Willow being a rebel. Or, at least Kellich sympathizes with their cause. When Willow talks, it's Kellich says this, and Kellich says that. I don't think she's given much thought to it on her own.' Between them, Goat nodded with the gentle jolting of the wagon, his lips vaguely smiling at some childish dream. Vandien glanced over at Ki. Her green eyes were fixed on the distance, her dusty lashes unblinking. Impassive, he thought, to the news that she could be beaten and robbed, raped and killed, in fine legality. She looked ahead, believing that somehow she could cope, she would survive, and that tomorrow would find her in a better place than this. The Romnidream. And was it so different from his own attitude?

'Vandien.' Ki's voice made him realize he was staring at her. 'It doesn't change much. Rousters have always been able to do whatever they wished to Romni. It's nothing new.'

'I suppose it isn't. To you. But I thought you'd want to know about it.'

'Yes. It's better to know, I suppose.' Ki waved at a fat blue fly that had found her. 'And it's obvious that these rebels have already gained your sympathies. But you and I, we can't afford to be pulled into a thing like this. Look what happened to us the last time we got involved with Windsinger politics. We lost. Remember? That's why we're here.' She paused, thinking, while Vandien frowned down the road. 'I wonder. Is Willow ...'

'TWISTED BEAST!' The scream of anger and outrage came from within the wagon, in a voice Vandien would never have recognized as Willow's. Between them on the seat, Goat jolted to wakefulness. He sat up very straight, staring.

'Nightmare,' Ki said mildly. 'She's having a nightmare. Wake her and ...'

But before she could complete the sentence, they heard the wild scrabbling of nails against the cuddy door. As it scraped open on its tracks, Vandien asked, 'Willow?'

She came through the door like an infuriated cat, all claws and wide red mouth and tangled hair. One hand gripped Goat's hair on the back of his skull, while the other raked down his face. She was shrieking wordlessly, -and Goat added his cries of pain. The pair thrashed wildly on the seat as Goat grabbed at her wrist while she dragged his head back and down by her grip on his hair while pushing her knee into the small of his back. The struggle jostled Ki, who was trying to keep control of the spooked team, while Vandien made vague and cautious efforts to intervene with one hand while shielding his damaged ribs with the other.

The chaos lasted but a moment before Ki had hauled in the team and kicked on the brake. Her eyes lit with sudden green fury. Vandien's eyes widened at the set of her face, and he was already moving before she bellowed, 'Get clear!' Still Vandien barely clambered out of the way before she stood, gripped the doorframe for purchase, and, setting her boot to the struggling adolescents, gave a firm push that tumbled them both from the high seat to the dusty earth.

Willow gave a muffled shriek as she fell atop Goat, and the breath rushed out of the boy with an audible gasp. For an instant they both were stunned, and then Willow took advantage of her perch, setting one knee down hard on Goat's shoulder, and raining blows on his face and chest. Vandien, clinging to the side of the wagon, watched in horror as the boy turned his head, dragged up one arm to shield himself, and then sank his teeth into Willow's lower thigh.

'Sit down,' Ki warned Vandien, and before he could, she shook the reins. He half-fell onto the seat, gripping the edge as Ki stirred the team into a ragged trot. The sounds of the combat fell away behind them, to be replaced by more distant cries of 'Come back!' and 'You can't leave us here!' and 'My father paid good money ...'

Then even those sounds faded as Ki shook the reins, urging the horses to more speed. Vandien glanced back, to see both Willow and Goat pelting after the wagon. Willow was holding her torn blouse closed as she ran. Blood streamed from Goat's nose. 'Don't even look at them!' Ki hissed, and he jerked himself around. The cold set of her lips as she stared down the road startled him. Her eyes were hard as jade when she glanced at him. For a long moment he said nothing. Then he began to laugh, softly at first, then trying in vain to shield his ribs from the paroxysms of his belly muscles. Ki glared at him, looking so like an outraged Puhkin idol that he roared with helpless laughter, and then gasped at the pain it cost him.

'Ki,' he wheezed when he could. 'We've come a good ways. You can't really intend to leave them.'

'Can't I?' she snarled. 'Can't I? Watch this!' Leaning forward, she rattled the whip in its socket, and the team lurched into a sudden gallop. But the day was hot, and Ki's swift anger was already being replaced by shame. Vandien saw the reins slip through her fingers, watching the greys toss tentative questions back down the lines to her, and, reading her disinterest, begin to slow to their preferred leisurely pace. A cautious peek back revealed Goat trotting doggedly after them, while farther back Willow plodded along disconsolately. She was weeping and Goat cursing. He leaned back on the seat. Ki was sitting very still, her gaze focused far down the road. He slid the cuddy door shut and moved over to sit beside her on the seat.

'The worst thing about children,' Ki observed, speaking in a very small voice, 'is that they require one to act like an adult while provoking one to act like a spoiled brat.'

'I was just about to say that I couldn't have handled it better myself,' Vandien mused. He looked at her carefully. She didn't meet his glance. 'Ki, the walk will do them good. And the message that you have had enough of their squabbling was long overdue. Besides, I wanted to talk to you alone.'

Ki lifted an inquiring eyebrow.

'You might have noticed that I was trying to get Goat to walk and let me speak with you alone. I think I can explain what just happened.'

'Besides two spoiled brats getting into a scuffle?'

'Well, there's a little more to it than that.' Vandien smiled briefly. 'Or there is, to Willow's mind. Have you ever heard of a jutan?'

Ki shrugged. 'Some kind of a demon, isn't it?'

'Not quite. As I understood it, it was a stealer of dreams. A jutan has the power to steal your dreams.'

'So you sleep without dreams? Doesn't sound all that bad.'

'No. But it's similar to what Willow was telling me about Goat last night. Only she was attributing it to his Jore blood and strange eyes. According to her, there's a lot of folks in Loveran that aren't as Human as they look. Jore blood doesn't always show, there's Brurjan crosses, and others she was more vague about. But anyway, Goat has Jore blood and odd eyes, so he can dream-steal. Willow says Goat can listen in on your dreams. He can send nightmares or visions of paradise. Also, he can use what he steals from your dreams, to trick you or shame you.'

'I don't get it.'

'Like a married man dreaming of a secret lover, or a servant dreaming of stealing from his master. Goat might threaten to tell your dreams. A person with Jore eyes can make your dreams go where he chooses,so he can discover any secrets you have.'

'Sounds like a bogey tale,' Ki complained.

'Only if you don't believe it. To Willow, it's a very scary idea. Especially since she seduced Goat into finding something out for her rebels. Only when the time came for him to collect his reward, she refused. So he made the information public knowledge instead. She feels he betrayed her.'

'Oh. And he feels she used him. That's what this is all about?'

Vandien nodded. 'She's been sleeping in the wagon by day because she's afraid to go to sleep while Goat's sleeping. She was full of tales of things Goat is supposed to have done. She says it started when he was small; he'd tattle about the things he had seen in people's dreams. The things didn't have to be real; just that someone had dreamed of her sister's husband in her own bed, or that some skinny little wretch had dreamed of being a bold warrior that every maiden swooned over. Things to make folk laugh. It wasn't so bad, before he found out that people would give him things if he promised not to say what he had seen in their dreams.'

'Do you believe any of this?' Ki demanded. She glanced around the corner of the wagon. Goat was about three wagon lengths behind them, plodding along at a speed that just kept pace with the greys. His chest was heaving, and she guessed he was too winded to catch up. Willow trailed him by another wagon length, her face set in icy anger.

'Willow believes it. And so did a lot of folk in Keddi, if what she says is true. Keddi is a stronghold for the rebels. When word was put out that Goat had betrayed the cause, well, I think that's why his father is apprenticing the boy. Maybe to keep him alive. The feeling was strong enough that none of the merchant caravans wanted to take Goat to Villena. Which is why we've got him.'

'And why the tavernkeeper was willing to pay extra for us to take him. Wonder what she thought he had seen in her dreams?'

'Who knows?' Vandien shrugged.

'And who cares? It sounds to me like a trick ... something that would work very well against someone with a guilty conscience. It's like telling someone's fortune. All you have to do is hold the hand firmly and keep track of the pulse and sweat to know if you're saying what he wants to hear.'

'No!' Vandien feigned astonishment. 'Would the Romni, holders of mystical powers for generations, practice such a deceit?'

'Practice? Hell, who needs practice? We're already perfect at it.'

She glanced briefly away from her driving, grinning at him with a feeling close to their usual easy companionship.

'Stop ... please.' Willow panted the words, stumbling alongside the wagon.

Ki sighed silently, and pulled the team in. The girl gripped the seat with one hand, the other holding closed her torn blouse. She was panting and disheveled, clothes and skin dusty save for where tears had smeared across her face. Looking down at her, Ki was suddenly ashamed of herself. 'Willow,' she began gently. 'Bitch!' Willow hissed, and Ki's shame evaporated. 'You left me back there with him.' Willow choked on an angry sob. 'Alone with him, not caring how he attacked me!'

Vandien's voice was bland and helpful. 'Actually, Willow, we left Goat alone back there with you, not caring how you attacked him.'

Ki glared at him, then back to the girl, who was glowering at them. 'Actually,' Ki added coldly, 'my personal feeling was that I didn't much care how either of you attacked the other, as long as you didn't do it on my wagon. A sentiment I still feel. Do you understand me?'

'But... but he came into my dreams. I felt him. And then - look, he bit me! Here, look!' She tugged up her draggled skirts to show a neat circle of red dents in her lower thigh. 'He bit me!' she repeated, disgust evident in her voice.

'It might have been more difficult for him if you hadn't been sitting on his chest,' Ki observed. 'I've never understood the logic of one person attacking another, and then being offended when the other person fights back.'

'But...' Willow stammered in her outrage. 'But he's a boy, and I'm a woman. He should have more respect!'

'Yes,' Ki agreed smoothly. 'As should you. More respect for yourself than to get into a squabble in the first place.'

'Yes!' Goat's voice sounded in vehement agreement. He had come up on the opposite side of the wagon and was clambering up onto the seat. 'We should leave you right here, you simpering sow! Let you walk to Tekum and your precious Kellich!' He moaned the name abandonedly. 'Leave you for the Brurjans to find. I wonder how Kellich would like you after a herd of Brurjans had been through you ... or how well you'd like him? Maybe you'd like their hairiness even more than his!'

Vandien stood slowly. He placed his boot carefully in the center of Goat's chest and pushed. The boy flew backward, landing on his rump in the road with a thud that made the dust billow. He was too astonished to make a sound.

'Works well,' Vandien observed to Ki. 'I see why you used it before. Perhaps they need another little trot before they're going to give us any peace.'

'No!' Willow clutched desperately at the wagon. 'Please!' she added in a different tone as she looked up at Ki's set face. 'I... I won't fight with him anymore ... if he doesn't start it first!'

Ki swung her gaze to Goat. He was still sitting in the road. Slowly he got to his feet, rubbing his buttocks. 'I'll leave her alone,' he grudgingly promised. Willow was already clambering in the side door of the wagon. As Goat climbed up on the seat, he muttered, 'Not that I ever did anything in the first place. I was just sitting here when she jumped me

'Liar!' Willow hissed from within the cuddy. 'You came nosing into my dreams ...'

'Shut up!' Vandien bellowed, in a voice so unlike his normal tones that Sigurd jerked sideways in the harness while Ki recoiled from the blast by her ear. She stared at him in amazement. 'Now,' he went on hoarsely, 'I don't want either of you to say a word to each other for the rest of the day. Or about eachother,' he added as Goat's mouth opened to speak.

Goat closed his mouth. An instant later he opened it to complain, 'But that will be boring!'

Ki started the team and Goat settled with a lurch into his seat. 'Peaceful is the word you're looking for,' she informed him. 'Boring is walking behind the wagon in the horses' dust.'

He fell silent, but his yellow eyes brimmed with reproachful tears. The wagon trundled on, the silence it bore getting thicker and stiffer with every step the horses took. Ki was aware of Willow's muffled sobs within the cuddy, could picture her leaned up against the plank walls listening to be sure no ill was spoken of her. Ki stole a glance at Vandien, saw his dark eyes mirror her own discomfort. Puppies, she thought. One going to be married, one going to be apprenticed, but no more than puppies after all. She couldn't stand it.

'Vandien,' she ventured into the choking silence. 'How did that story end?'

'What?' he asked in confusion.

' The Pot of Jam and The Bird of Life. You started telling it to me at the inn that night, and never finished it.'

A slight smile touched his lips as he recalled what had interrupted the telling. 'I don't remember where I left off

'Nor do I.' Ki wouldn't look at him. 'Just begin again at the beginning.'

'Very well.' Vandien nodded, suddenly seeing her intent. Reaching to his throat, he lifted a loop of worn green string from around his neck. He settled it onto his fingers, preparing to weave the story-symbols of his people as he spoke. 'It's almost worn out,' he said softly.

Ki glanced away from the road to look at the fine string. 'Guess you'll have to make another trip home for a new one,' she suggested cautiously. On his infrequent trips to visit his family, he always returned with a new story-string. Yet of all the stories he told Ki, very few were about his people or what he did on his visits home.

Vandien was silent, settling the fine twine around his fingers. His hands moved, tossing and looping the thread into the familiar symbols for his name. He looked at the twin webs he had made, one on each hand, joined between. He sighed suddenly. 'No,' he decided abruptly. 'I think I'd better just find something else to use. It's hard to find the right kind of string, though. It has to be tough, but flexible, and a little bit stretchy. It can't be too thick ...'

'What about the jam pot and the bird of life?' Goat interrupted suddenly.

Vandien freed a hand from the string, smoothed his moustache over his smile. Ki knew the boy's attention pleased him. 'Better than coins, almost,' Vandien had once told her, 'is when you're telling the story, and no one even sneezes.'

' The Pot of Jam and The Bird of Life. ' Vandien announced the story formally. The string lifted, looped, and fell over his fingers into an elaborate star, the beginning of a story. 'Once there was a rich farmer, with many acres of fine crops growing in black soil by a brown river. While he was alive and healthy, all his family lived very richly, but one day the farmer sensed that his time was coming for dying. So he calledbefore him all his sons and daughters, and they were as many as there are purple-and-white turnips in a good garden, for this farmer had plowed and sown energetically for all his years.'

Behind them, the cuddy door slid open a crack. Willow, very pink about her mismatched eyes, peered out.

'I wanted to see the pictures,' she excused herself hoarsely.

'Of course.' Vandien slid the door open further, turned sideways and wedged his back against the jamb so that his hands were visible to Willow as well as Goat. 'Well, as each son or daughter came before the old man, he gave generously to each one, according to the child's interest. To one son who had tended the pigs in rain and cold, he gave a herd of fat swine. To a daughter who had pruned and tied the grapes even in the heat of the sun, he gave a hillside vineyard. To the daughter who cooked fat fish for his table, he gave the fish-trap in the river. And on and on, until all was given away, and the old farmer thought he could die in peace. But just as he lay down on his fat feather-bed and prepared to let out his last breath, his youngest daughter came to him. He had forgotten all about her, for all day she had been where she always spent her days out in the forest, harvesting what she had not sown, reaping what she had not planted. A basket of wild berries was on her arm, and her lips were red with the juice of those she had eaten. The old farmer looked at her. He did not love her as well as he loved his other children, for he could not understand one who did not plant the seed and tend it. But he could see that she was still his true daughter, and because of that he owed her some pittance to keep her alive. Her eyes, green as moss under old oaks, were reddened where she had been weeping, and her hair, smooth and brown as autumn acorns, was wild on her shoulders where she had clawed it in her grief at his dying. Daughter, he said, little have I left to give you.

' Father, she said, little that matters to me, and I will tell you that I would gladly give up whatever you gift me with, if it would buy you but one more day of life. '

'Then her father felt shamed, for in truth all he had for the girl was a little pot of jam. And that was of no use to anyone, for the jam was sour and full of pits, while the pot had such a long and narrow neck that no spoon would fit down it, even if the jam had been fit to eat. This, you see, was why he still had it to give, for no one else had ever wanted it.'

Ki stole a glance at the group. Goat had curled forward, his elbows on his knees, and for once his face was empty of any slyness or malice. He was a boy listening to a story, and Willow might have been his sister. Her red hair was loose upon her shoulders, and she twined it soothingly around one index finger as she listened, her odd eyes watching the play of the string on Vandien's fingers. A smile even touched her lips as Vandien drew the loop of string out in a long, long neck to show how foolishly the little pot had been turned.

Ki let the reins go slack in her fingers, trusting the greys to follow their noses down the monotonous road. As Vandien spoke, she watched, not his fingers, but his face, the dark of his eyes that sparked with his enjoyment of the tale, his features that mirrored each character in turn. She wondered, again, what had brought him into her life, and what made him stay.

Then her interest was caught in the story, and she forgot to wonder as the horses drew them, step by steady step, closer to Algona.