Luck Of The Wheels

NINE

The day's travel had been long, and neither the cheeriness of the sun flooding the damp landscape with light and warmth nor Vandien's tales had been able to make it shorter. Ki had found a good campsite, with deep grass and a grove of trees. Goat and Willow had kept the peace, by exchanging no words at all. But Ki felt strung as tightly as a harp string. Prickly with tension, she waited for some new outburst.

Vandien felt it, too. She had sensed it in the way he told his tales today, choosing the most innocuous ones, tales more fit for lap-size children than two who bordered on adulthood. He had told them well, but with none of his usual embroidery. Now he was grooming Sigurd with a maddening thoroughness that had the beast stomping with impatience. He and Vandien regarded each other with affectionate malice in the best of times; the last thing she needed was to have them get into a spat tonight.

She dashed the dregs of her tea into the sputtering fire and crossed the camp. She took the currycomb firmly from Vandien's grip and gave Sigurd a nudge that told him he was free to go. The great beast stepped out sedately for two paces, and then suddenly gave a wild curvet that brought him down just short of Vandien's toes. Even as Vandien roared, Sigurd leaped away, dancing out of reach. 'Let him go,' Ki counseled him, touching his wrist lightly. Sigurd, for his part, dropped ponderously to the earth and rolled, destroying Vandien's grooming efforts.

'That damn horse,' Vandien snorted, torn between anger and laughter.

The easing of the tension was so marked that Ki hated to bring it back. But she had to. 'What did Willow tell you, earlier?' she asked him.

'When we were walking?'

Ki nodded.

He shook his head. 'Nothing, really. Mostly how much she hated Goat, and it was all our fault she was ruined and no one would ever trust her again.'

'But she didn't say what Goat had done?'

'No. Well, she said something I don't understand. He had spoiled her memories. Something like that.'

Ki stood still, thinking it through. Finally, she sighed. 'I think I understand what she meant. I had a strange dream, shortly after we took Goat on.' She paused, and found herself unwilling to tell Vandien exactly what the dream had been. 'It was like someone was sifting through all my memories,' she said reluctantly. 'And looking in on the most personal ones.'

Vandien winced, and looked away from her. 'I thought I was getting somewhere with that boy,' he muttered, and then burst out, 'Why didn't you say something to me?'

'What could you do about it? Besides, I thought it was only a dream. Now that I know what it was ... I don't know what I'm feeling. Anger. And violation.' She glared over at Goat, recalling what she haddreamed. The blush that reddened her face was not shame, but fury. Fury that was suddenly engulfed by puzzlement. 'I'd like to kill him, Van. But that doesn't help me understand what's happening now.'

'Vandien,' he corrected her automatically. Then, 'What do you mean?'

Ki jerked her head, and Vandien glanced past her. Willow finished refilling Goat's cup with spiced tea. Goat was grinning delightedly as Willow waited on him, but it was the look on Willow's face that was unsettling. She was not smiling, nor glaring. Her face was carefully bland, almost blank.

'She looks like a very polite guest who smells something terrible in the soup, but is so well mannered she will eat it anyway,' Vandien observed.

'She wants something,' Ki said, suddenly sure of it.

'But what?'

'Revenge,' Ki guessed. 'Vandien, I'd like to kill him. But I know I won't. If a grown person had spied on me that way, I'd have to kill. But I look at him, and I see a wayward, very spoiled child.'

'To me, that makes his dream-stealing more offensive, not less,' Vandien observed. 'I'll kill him for you.'

She looked at the set cold anger in his dark eyes. 'Would you?' she queried softly. 'How? Beat him to death while he cried and screamed for mercy? Run him through with your rapier, after you had chased him down? Strangle him in his sleep?'

A shudder ran over Vandien, and she felt the sudden tension run out of his body. 'No.' His voice sounded old. 'No. You're right. I couldn't.'

She touched his hand. 'I know. If you could, I couldn't feel about you as I do.'

Amusement flickered across his face. 'Why don't you ever admit you love me?'

For an instant their eyes locked. Ki squirmed in discomfort. 'Good friends are too hard to come by,' she said at last, and he laughed.

'That they are,' he agreed, and squeezed her hand. 'So. To get back to the subject. What do we do about Goat and Willow?'

'I don't know,' Ki admitted. She watched Willow get up to put some wood on the fire. When she sat down again, she was closer to Goat. Not sitting beside him, but closer.

'She's stalking him,' Vandien said. 'But perhaps we should do nothing ... unless we have to. We'll be in Tekum by tomorrow afternoon. We leave Willow there, and that's an end to it. Then on to Villena, to get rid of Goat. Then ...' He let the sentence dangle, looking quizzically at Ki.

'Then we go north, away from this damn Duke and his Brurjans and his papers and checkpoints.' She spoke defiantly, expecting an argument. Instead Vandien nodded.

'I think you're right. I don't like the feel of this land, or its folk. Always watched and watching. But I say we bear north and east, away from both this Duke and the Windsingers.' 'North. We can go east after I've gotten a new wagon.'

'We'll see.' Vandien's capitulation was uttered in so distracted a tone that Ki turned to see what he was watching. A shiver of dread snaked up her spine. Willow had not moved. But Goat had. He sat at her feet beside the stone she perched on. His head was leaned against her knee. As Ki stared, her pale hand lifted, settled on his hair, stroked it. Like a fondled kitten, Goat nestled his head closer against her knee.

Without hesitation, Ki turned and strode back to the fire. She didn't break stride as she gripped Goat by the collar and hauled him to his feet. Willow gasped and Ki saw sparks of anger in those blue and green eyes. Ki's anger met them.

'What was it to be, Willow? A little silver pin driven up behind his ear? Or a quick bit of knife across his throat?'

But the glitter was already erased from Willow's eyes. The face she turned to Ki was passive and empty. 'What do you mean?' she asked slowly.

'I'm talking about Goat's head on your knee, and your hatred of him. They don't go together, Willow, not unless you're getting him in close enough to kill. I won't have that. I've been paid to take him to Villena. And I'll get him there. I don't condone what he did to you.' She glanced at the boy, still half-strangled in her grip. Disgust filled her face, and her sudden push sent him staggering. 'If it's any comfort, you weren't his only victim. But much as I hate what he's done, I won't have bloodshed. You can't undo what's happened, Willow.' Ki was almost whispering now, and the girl's face was still. 'Leave it behind you and go on from here, forget it and take up the rest of your life. Think of Kellich, and take comfort in him.'

At the mention of his name, life passed briefly over Willow's face. And agony. 'I do think of him,' she murmured. 'I do.' With those words, her face closed again, her eyes going as empty. 'I meant no harm to Goat,' she said calmly.

'Let me go, you ass! Mind your own business!' Ki turned from Willow, to find that Vandien had a firm grip on Goat and was easily dealing with the boy's efforts to shake him off.

'Let him go, Vandien.' Willow's request came just as Goat gave a violent lunge away from Vandien. Vandien released him, letting the boy's own momentum carry him away. Goat plunged into the dust at Willow's feet. He scrambled up angrily.

'Leave us alone!' He stared from Ki's face to Vandien's. 'Is it so hard to believe she likes me? Yes, she likes me, and she asked me to sit beside her because she was lonely. You don't believe it, do you? But it's true!'

Vandien opened his mouth to speak, but Willow interrupted. 'It's true,' she said. She reached out a hand to Goat, and he took it as he sat down beside her. He stared up defiantly.

'You see,' he said. 'She likes me.'

'I give up,' Vandien muttered. He snagged Ki's hand and drew her along. Together they walked off into the evening. The night was fragrant and soft around them, and overhead a myriad of stars shone. But Ki could not surrender herself to the peace.

'I don't understand.' There was pain in her voice, for Willow. 'I don't either. Look.' He tugged her up a small rise of earth. He pointed down the long gentle slope before them. The distant lights shone warm and yellow. 'Tekum,' he said softly. He stood behind her, his arms around her, his mouth by her ear. 'Tomorrow it will end. Willow will go her way, and we will take Goat on to Villena. Do you think the team could stand longer days? I'd be willing to drive evenings, to get us there sooner.'

'Maybe.' Ki sighed, and turned in his embrace. She held him close, smelling his smell, a scent like herbs and grasses damp in the morning. She felt the strength in his arms, in the muscles that ran across the flat of his back. Her strong fingers kneaded the flesh of his back and he groaned with pleasure. 'You know,' she said in his ear, 'there are Brurjans and checkpoints and papers and cracked axles and thrown shoes waiting for us down every road. Why do we keep on wandering the way we do?'

He shrugged, and his fingers tracked her aching spine. 'If we stayed in one spot, we'd just have to wait for them to come to us,' he observed. 'But I'll be glad to see the end of this run. Very glad.'

'Me, too.'

They walked slowly back to the camp, savoring the light wind that carried the moisture-laden air through the night. Habit made them both gather a few dry sticks as they walked. In the camp, Ki poked them carefully into the fire, then lifted the kettle. 'Shall I make more tea?'

He didn't reply, and when she looked at him, his face combined disbelief and disgust. Ki stared at him; then her ears, too, picked up the muffled sounds coming from the wagon.

Their eyes met. Vandien stepped toward the wagon, but Ki flowed up from her crouch by the fire, to step in front of him.

'No.' She kept her voice low.

'But ...'

'Leave it. There's nothing you can say or do. She has to make her own mistakes and learn from them.'

'But why? She despises the boy, and what he feels for her is only what a bull feels for a cow in springtime ...'

'I know. I don't understand why, Vandien. But interfering now would not save anyone anything, and would only embarass us all.' She drew him back, beyond the fire and away from the sounds emanating from the wagon. She brought him a mug of tea when it brewed, and found him stretched out on his back, staring up at the stars. Ki sat beside him, crosslegged. She held her own mug and set his within easy reach.

'What are you thinking?' she asked softly.

He took a long time to answer. 'I'm thinking that if I had it all to do over again, it would be different.'

Ki sipped her tea and nodded. 'Yes. We'd have paid more heed to her, and kept them separated. Or never taken on passengers at all. I'd have done better to go vagabonding with you. Or gone back north to Firbanks for a new wagon.' 'Yes. That, too.'

Something in his voice silenced her. He continued looking up at the stars, ignoring his tea. When he spoke, she wasn't sure if it was to her. 'Perspectives change, when you look back on things. I told you once that I ran away from my family, after I couldn't sire an heir for my parents' line. I was their only child; when they died, I was the only one carrying their name. I couldn't inherit until I proved that I could carry on my line. I was young, but my uncle urged me to father a child immediately.'

Ki nodded in the dark. Her fingernails were biting into her palms. He seldom spoke of these things.

'He found women for me. Suitable women, he called them. Older women who had already borne children. Big-breasted, heavy-hipped women who would never miscarry or be taxed by childbirth. Women that filled me with awe.' Vandien swallowed. Ki listened to his long silence. When he went on, there was a falsely light note in his voice that cut her. 'My own mother had died when I was an infant. I didn't remember her at all. I'd been raised by my uncle, and been watched over by Dworkin, his man. I knew nothing of women, save what I'd heard whispered about. But I tried. By the Moon, how I tried. At first I could at least bed them, though I couldn't make one pregnant. But later, as I failed time after time, and the pressure from my uncle grew greater and the disdain of the women more obvious

'Vandien.' Ki couldn't listen to any more.

He stopped. For a long time, all was silent. She reached out to him, but stopped herself before she touched him. He lay so still, staring up at the sky. He took a deep breath. 'Then my cousin got a village girl pregnant. A wild, fey little thing, slim as a willow with big dark eyes. It seemed to take no effort at all for him. I saw then how deeply I had failed. And I did the only logical thing. I left my cousin to inherit, for we shared many ancestral names. And I took the names of my parents, Van and Dien, and ran away. My only regret is that I didn't run away sooner. I think I knew, even before I tried, that I would fail. Weak son of a weak line. My parents had produced only one child. With me, the line failed entirely. I was glad to disappear, and take my shame with me.'

'I'll bet your cousin was glad to inherit.'

Vandien rolled his head toward her. 'Of course he was. Don't think I haven't come to see that. I didn't when I was a boy, but in my years of wandering, my eyes have opened. The sooner I failed, the sooner my cousin could be made heir, to my father's lands as well as his father's and mother's. It turned his comfortable holdings into something just short of magnificent. A prize stroke of fate for him.'

And did you never think that your uncle had a hand in that fate? How old were you, Vandien? Twelve? Thirteen? A young stallion is not the most reliable stud, but that doesn't mean he never will be. A bullock, if too young, will not ...'

'I'm not that young anymore, Ki.' The smile he gave her was pensive, and affectionate. 'If I were able to father a child, I imagine you'd have a few by now.'

'I don't want any.'

'Liar.' Vandien sighed and took her hand. She let him hold it, but could think of no reply. 'It bothers me,' he said suddenly, 'what Goat does. That girl back there in Algona. Willow tonight. He takes something from them, Ki, and they may never even know they have lost it. That girl and Willow ... they will have memories that will intrude at times, spoiling a tender moment, stealing the shine from a precious thing ...' 'Like you have,' Ki said slowly.

He nodded. 'I should have run away sooner. But I didn't. And I can't stop what Goat does. I had started to like him, Ki. To think I could give him something he needed. And then, that girl... Keep him out of my path until we get to Villena. I won't be able to tolerate him after this.'

'I'll keep him out of your way. But I don't feel much differently myself.' Ki eased down beside Vandien. The night was mild and the earth warm. She lay beside him, not quite touching him, and the open night seemed cleaner and more wholesome than the camp beside the creaking wagon. She closed her eyes, thinking of Firbanks and the wainwright there. She slept.

'But you promised!' Willow's wail split the morning. It jerked Ki awake. She sat up with a start, then groaned, feeling she had torn loose every stiff muscle in her body. Dew had settled on her and chilled her. The crushed grasses beside her were the only sign of where Vandien had slept.

She clambered to her feet and stumbled toward the wagon. She splashed water from the cask over her face and hands, and then tried to make sense of the scene that presented itself.

Willow, her hair a tousled gleam in the new sun, was pouting prettily at a rumpled Goat. He was crouched by the fire, putting bits of twigs on the coals. Obviously they hadn't been awake much longer than Ki. 'You promised it to me,' Willow repeated, her voice husky with rebuke, and something warmer. Goat looked up at her and grinned. He spotted Ki and the grin grew wider as he rejoiced in his audience.

'I'll give it back to you,' he said in the sticky sweet voice one might use to a spoiled child. Willow brightened. 'But not just yet,' he teased for Ki's benefit.

'Goat,' Willow cajoled, and moved closer. A sly smile stole over his face as he stared at the fire.

'All right,' he told her. 'Close your eyes, then.'

He stood, dusting off his knees. He leered genially at Ki, but her attention was on Willow's face. Beneath the closed eyes, the mouth was a finely drawn line; above them, the brow was smooth. Like a sculpture, Ki thought, purged of human emotions and thoughts. Like an empty thing of stone.

Then Goat swooped his face in and kissed her. Willow's eyes flew open, and for an instant Ki read her face. Outrage, disgust, and horror. And then nothing. The face smoothed over as a mason wipes a trowel over damp mortar, smooths and seals it. Then, a smile, as empty as a limp wineskin. 'Oh, Goat, stop teasing me! You promised you'd give it back.' There was a purr beneath the whine that made Ki's stomach tighten.

'I will,' Goat promised her indulgently. 'But later, Willow. Later.' He hooked his arm around her and tugged her close. He turned his smile on Ki and she felt sick to be watching them. 'I see you're finally up, Ki. Well, I hope you and Vandien had as good a night as we did. Though I won't say we got a lot of sleep!' He cackled and hugged the girl closer. Willow's body went to his as if it were a sack of old clothing, neither resisting nor aiding the hug. Her face was empty and her eyes were careful.

The silence grew too long. There was nothing Ki could ask or say. Finally, she simply observed, 'We'd better get on the road if we want to be in Tekum today.' A ripple of despair washed over Willow's face and was gone, like a wave spending itself on a sandy beach.

No one seemed hungry, and Ki didn't bother with food that morning. She loaded the wagon, gatheringthe scattered mugs and the kettle, stowing it all neatly as Goat giggled and pawed at the passive Willow. Ki wondered what had become of Vandien, but she did not call. He knew where she was, and that the wagon must leave soon. Let him have this time to himself. He needed it so.

Then, as she brought the big grey horses up to harness, he was suddenly there. His cream shirt was sweated to his body, and his sheathed rapier was in his hand. Fencing with shadows, she guessed, slaying all the dark things that menaced him from his dreams. He moved Sigmund into the traces, pulling straps and fastening buckles. Their eyes met briefly across the wide backs. 'Hello,' he offered apologetically.

'You know we can't go to that festival in Tekum.'

'I know. I'm just keeping the skills sharp. In case.'

'Hmph,' she agreed skeptically. Then she turned at the sound of the wagon door shutting. She heard the ghost of Goat's high giggle, and knew Willow was inside with him.

'Shit,' said Vandien, with great feeling. Then he followed her up onto the high plank seat. She took up the reins as he settled beside her.

'We'll be in Tekum soon,' she promised him.

'Better late than never,' he conceded. Then he leaned back on the wagon and seemed to go to sleep. Ki started the team.