Ki lowered her eyes. Unbidden, there floated to her mind a brief vision of the slain hatchlings, the crumpled mother. The humming in Ki’s ears rose, until she felt it drowned the sight from her eyes. She willed the ugly image away. Was that the secret Cora had shared? Did she guess more than she was saying?
‘These feelings you have found in me, Cora – I have tried to keep them private, to lessen the impact on you all. But it is not a thing I can let go of simply by saying I shall. Time, and the open road, would be my best cure. So, you see, to do your will, I must do mine.’
There. Ki felt she had sidestepped the noose neatly. She waited for Cora’s next move. Old, Cora might be, but Ki doubted that her wits were slipping. Her hands and mind guided the family as surely as Ki’s guided her team. She had been loath at first to release Sven to Ki. Ki had been a small thorn in her flesh, the one who came and went, free of Cora’s control. Ki was the one who could not be predicted or maneuvered. Ki wanted their parting to go well. She did not desire this last battle of wills, with no Sven to buffer the tension.
‘But why must you hasten away from us so soon? Did you not see the truth in Rufus’s words? He is a bully, I know, but he did make his point. For you to leave now would be the final insult to a hurt and angry people. Why cannot you stay until we can honorably pay for the land Sven passed to you? Surely you can stay, at least until the Rite Master can come to us and help us make our peace with the Harpies. It would mean so much to me if you could stay that long. Rufus sees it as a matter of honor. Could you not stay?’
‘Perhaps,’ Ki replied guardedly. Cora’s words wove subtle webs around Ki of logic and guilt and dependence: We need you. You hurt us. How can you leave us? Cora had implied she did not approve of Rufus’s heavy-handed ways. Was she going to show him how it might be done more subtly? Ki raised her green eyes to Cora’s dark ones, trying to reach what might be behind them. Only two bright bird eyes in an old face that smiled at Ki, almost pleadingly. Ki looked down, confused.
‘Why do you want me to stay?’ she asked bluntly.
Cora sighed, shifted on her bed. ‘Must it all be spoken, perhaps too soon? I am old, Ki. You are strong but cushioned with wit and gentleness. Rufus is a bully, Lars a tenderheart. They need a wise hand on the reins. I dreamed that someday you and Sven would tire of the road, would come back to us. Now Sven is gone, forever. So I will ask of you what Rufus would have demanded. Ki, will you stay? You’ve a strong spirit. We have need of such strength, especially after such a trial as last night’s.’
Ki imagined she felt a two-edged blade. The invitation was made with flattery and a reminder of the harm she had done. A small bubble of anger perked up in her. Was she a child to be manipulated this way? She tried to formulate polite words, courteous words of farewell. Her mind struggled, suddenly began to flounder. Her head began to throb. She was being ungrateful to Cora. Had she not taken Cora’s son away from her already? Her ears hummed until she could not hear anything else. Her vision seemed to darken in the sound.
Suddenly, to struggle through it seemed too great an effort. Ki had nowhere to go and nothing to do when she got there. She felt curiously empty as she said the words, the words she could barely hear through the humming in her ears.
‘I will stay, Cora. I will stay until you have made your peace with the Harpies.’
The snow whirled and swirled on the trail. Vandien had subsided to a heap of garments on the seat beside her, miserable with cold. The team plodded on stoically. Ki watched the snow whirl, baring and obscuring the trail, a shifting, never-repeating, white-on-white stirring. Eternally different, and ever the same. Like her days at Harper’s Ford had been.
It was the rhythm of the days that had absorbed her, sapping her will away. She tried to look back, to pick out clear memories. There were few. For a moment her mind caught an image of herself kneeling on a floating dock on the mineral marshes at the far end of the family’s holdings …
The marsh smelled evil on hot summer days. The vapors stung Ki’s eyes, made her nose run and her eyes water. It was one of the few places where her constant headache seemed to worsen. The buzzing of bright insects camouflaged the buzzing of her own ears. It was dismal, a smelly place, even on a bright summer day. No one chose to work here – no one except Ki. The others avoided the tasks of the marsh, but Ki went to them willingly. For here she could work alone.
She moved her heavy wooden bucket down the dock to the next wooden pin that jutted out over the water. She picked loose the knot in the thin cord tied around the pin and drew the cord up carefully. There was a beauty to the orange crystal that clung to the line. Ki let it dangle for a moment, watching the sunlight strike its facets. Then she deposited it gently into the bucket beside the others. Great care had to be taken with the fragile crystals. The Tcheria would not pay as dearly for broken ones. Ki took a fresh length of clean line from the pouch that hung from her shoulder. She lowered one end into the soupy water, then tied the other to the wooden pin that projected from the dock.
‘She does not even dress as we do!’
Ki’s eyes snapped to the unfamiliar voice. Katya stood over Lars where he knelt on a separate dock, retying a line on a pin. No doubt she thought herself a safe distance from Ki to speak about her, but voices carried strangely in the marsh. Ki kept her eyes averted, carried on with her work. Dead trees reared up from the marsh, their branches festooned with a slimy, pinkish moss. It partially hid the couple from Ki’s eyes. But Ki saw the look of annoyance on Lars’s face as he pushed back his long hair and squinted up at Katya.
‘I didn’t hear you come up,’ he greeted her.
‘You don’t seem to notice anything about me anymore, Lars. Look at her. Cannot she at least wear a smock and trousers like the rest of us?’
Lars looked as he was bidden. He saw Ki carefully pulling up a fresh crystal, eyes intent upon her work. A jerkin of brown leather trimmed her upper body above her coarse brown trousers. Lars and Katya were attired in the loose white farmer’s smocks and trousers of the valley. Lars frowned.
‘I doubt that she has even given thought to what she wears,’ he replied. He deftly changed the subject with a courtesy. ‘You have not visited us for some days, Katya.’
‘At first I thought to give you time to recover from that hideous Rite,’ Katya explained. ‘But now, of late, when I stop by, you are always out working somewhere with Ki. You must know the story of the Rite has spread far and wide. Some say your own foolishness brought it upon you, but I do not see it so. I have only sympathy for your plight, Lars. I cannot imagine how it must be, outcast from the winged ones’ society.’ Katya put a hand on his shoulder to make him pause so that she could admire the crystal he had just drawn from the water. He lowered it gently into his bucket and rose to move to the next pin. Katya stood squarely in front of him. Ki watched from the corner of her eye. Katya’s thick, honey hair was braided up into a crown on her head. Folded arms framed her soft breasts. Lars rolled his eyes at the look of tenderness she gave him and edged around her.
She followed to kneel beside him at the next pin. ‘You look so worn, Lars. No one in the valley understands why you do not send Ki packing and get a little peace back into your lives. I think you should all try to forget what happened so that you may heal. You can scarcely forget, with her a constant reminder. I know it wears on your mother. Cora hasn’t sent for me once since it happened. Does she believe I will think the less of her for her misfortune?’
Lars slowly drew a crystal from the water. ‘She has much to do of late, Katya. Things she must see to alone. She has sent word to the Rite Master that we are in need of a special rite. And she spends much time with Ki. I am sure that she misses your company. But she feels an obligation to Ki, to help her. Katya, if you had been present at the Loosening and had felt the tempest of emotion that Ki encloses, you would understand why my mother feels as she does. Ki must let go of those emotions or burst