‘No one “conquers” the Sisters,’ he said quietly. ‘We may elude them, or make ourselves unobtrusive. But we shall not “conquer” them. There are tales of the Sisters. Beauty is not always kind.’ He spoke calmly, but there was a hard control in his voice. ‘But tales are best saved to be told about a fire, with hot food before one.’
‘And blankets to hide our heads under when the scary parts come,’ Ki scoffed shortly. His tone irritated her. Its mystery reminded her of a local guide who had taken her, for one minted coin, through the high temples in Kratan. He had told her horrendous tales of priestesses that mated with snakes, and the scaliness of their offspring. Afterwards, he had tried to sell her the mummified scaly finger of such an infant. Ki had been disgusted, as she was now. What did this Vandien take her for, a fool? Small wonder. What would Ki call a teamster who found herself in an unknown pass in winter snow without a supply of firewood?
They slogged on through the snow. It packed and caked on Ki’s leggings and melted on her thighs. Once a trickle of melted snow found its way down inside her boot, sliding like a finger of ice down her leg. As she walked she flexed and unflexed her toes. They would slip to numbness, and then return to stinging pain as she moved them. But as long as they hurt, they were still hers. She breathed through a fold of her hood, trying not to pull the icy air directly into her lungs. A little frosty patch built up before her lips from the moisture of her breath: It was another irritation for her. As the last light fled, the cold seeped in deeper and deeper about them. It was a palpable thing, fingering their garments and slipping in wherever it found an opening. At the wrist, at the back of the neck, at the small of the back – it was like icy forefingers prodding nerves.
Vandien veered sharply left. Ki flanked him. Then she realized that for some time she had been simply following his lead, not even trying to make out the trail before them. It humiliated her; but she swallowed it, knowing there was no way she could make that out to be his fault. He did know this pass; that much he had proved. And if he found them shelter for the night from this beastly cold, then he would have earned any help she could give him to get across the pass.
It was full dark now. Sigurd was letting his displeasure be known with noisy snorts. It was time to stop for the night. No one could know where they were going in this blackness. But Vandien moved on steadily, and Ki matched him. Her weary eyes, the lashes rimed with frost, could make out little of her surroundings. Gradually the walls of a little arroyo were closing in around them. The snow became shallower, as if they were wading out of a lake. It was only about their ankles when Vandien abruptly stopped.
‘This is the place. Circle the wagon about so that it cuts off the wind from the mouth.’
Ki nodded dumbly and obeyed. Weariness flowed through her more sluggishly than her own chilled blood. In darkness she halted the team. She had to bare her hands to the cold to unharness the drooping horses. The buckles clung to her bare fingers. Vandien had disappeared. Ki could spare no thought for him. She had her team to care for. In spite of cold and weariness, she meticulously rubbed down the horses, drying away sweat and damp from their hides. She blanketed them with their own blankets. A trip to her cuddy, and she reinforced their blankets with her two worn ones. It posed a problem for her, but they had earned the extra warmth.
She heard the mutter of Vandien’s voice and the sounds of frozen wood-chunks hitting against one another. Sparks blossomed in the darkness in a shower. Ki’s sandy eyes sought out that area as she shook out a generous measure of grain for the team. She heard a muffled curse from the spark place, and finally a tiny, ruddy glow lit the silhouette of a man’s sheltering hands. Ki returned the sack of grain to the back of her wagon.
The flames of the fire were leaping now. Its spreading light marked out the new boundaries of the world; the edge of the wagon and the curving wall of stone and ice that closed it in. The team shed its natural fear of the fire to draw closer to its tiny warmth. Ki drew near herself, staring into its flickering depths. Vandien put on another ice-rimed log. It sizzled and smoked, and then caught. Resin began to pop and crackle. The sudden warmth made the chill mask of skin on Ki’s face ache. She held out her hands, warming them without removing her gloves. The warmth did not penetrate to her feet. They remained remote parts of her body, her toes small chunks of ice in the ends of her boots.
‘We cannot rest yet. If we stop moving now, we will freeze before we start again.’ It was Vandien’s voice, unutterably weary and miserable. Ki shook her aching head. He was right.
‘I know. There’s no need to remind me. I’ve been this cold and tired before, and I’ll likely be this cold and tired again,’ she informed him. She knew she was being unfair. There was a reason for it, but she was too tired to search her mind for what it was. At least her irritability warmed her a little. Vandien seemed to understand her frame of mind, for he ignored her words. Without replying, he began to open the dish chest, taking out the kettle and packing it with snow. He handled it with the palms of his hands, awkwardly, as if he were fingerless. The skin of his face was stretched yellow over his cheekbones and forehead. Frost spiked his beard.
A window seemed to open in Ki’s mind. Her heart smote her for her thoughtlessness, for putting the privacy of her grief before a man’s life. She moved swiftly, allowing herself no time for memories or regrets. She climbed stiffly up the wheel. The cuddy door moved stiffly in its tracks. She sought in the darkness. There was his smell again, and the familiar feel of garments washed and mended by her hands a thousand times. She turned off her memories, ignored the voice that whispered betrayal.
Vandien was tamping down snow into the kettle, taking no more care with his fingers than if they had been lifeless sticks. His hands were white in the firelight. The veins showed blue, sinew and bones outlined.
‘Stand up,’ Ki ordered him gruffly.
He rocked slowly to his feet with motions that could have bespoken mere stiffness and fatigue, or been pure insolence. Perhaps both, Ki thought. She shook the folds of the heavy cloak out, pushed the shawl from his shoulders and settled the cloak around him. Hastily she bared her own fingers to lace and tighten the leather ties that his own stiff fingers could never manage. The cloak was hopelessly too big. When she jerked the hood up about his face, it fell far over his eyes. She bunched it about his face as best she could. Vandien stood strangely docile under her ministrations. She could feel his violent shivering, hear the chatter of his teeth. The heavy mittens were of wolf hide, lined with sheepskin. She pulled them up over his lifeless hands. They went nearly to his elbows.
‘Somewhere in the wagon there would be his sheepskin leggings,’ Ki remembered aloud as she looked down at Vandien’s thin leather ones.
‘I walked frozen all day, while you had these in the wagon?’ Vandien’s voice was indignant and bewildered.
Ki nodded slowly and raised her eyes to his. The mittens, the heavy cloak, the pale face of a stranger within them. Dark eyes looked out of Sven’s hood, flecks of anger glowing in them. The shock of the wrongness seized her, and she turned away from it. She tried to remember how Sven had looked in them. Larger, yes, but what else? The image wavered in her mind, would not come.
She spun away from Vandien to face the dark and cold. But Sven was not there either. She crouched, hunkering her body down, making herself small and separate from all things. She huddled, searching her mind for a clear image. But they all seemed blurred by time. She rummaged for emotions, for love and grief. She found only anger. Sven would have remembered the firewood. Sven would have asked ahead about safe stopping places. He should be here to do those things. But he wasn’t, and she couldn’t even see his face. She hunched forward, shivering with a cold not of snow. A heavy fur mitten was resting on her shoulder.
‘Come, get up. You’ll freeze there, and it won’t change a thing. The water for tea will be hot soon … Ki.’
He did not ask for explanations. He did not try to help her rise or comfort her. She heard the squeak of his boots against the dry snow as he returned to the fire. Ki rose slowly, feeling as if her guts were dropping back into place inside her. Her mouth was full of bitterness. She went to the cuddy, lit the small candle briefly to take out the dried meat and withered roots for stew, to search