‘So your first thought, naturally, was to steal a horse,’ Ki coldly concluded. ‘Sometimes one in need asks first, instead of taking action. If you had come peacefully into the circle of my fire and asked me for help in getting over the pass, do you think I would have refused you?’
‘Twice I have tried that way. And twice folk with wagons have given me aid to the foot of the deep snows, only to turn back their wagons and return to the Inn of the Sisters. A wagon cannot get through. I have begged, each time, for the use of a horse, but it was always refused me. Theft is all that is left to me.’
‘You could return to the Inn, wait out the winter. Or go farther south to Carrier’s Pass and cross there.’ Ki did not like the tone of this conversation. She felt ridiculous talking to someone while she perched on his chest. And his strange attitude was contagious. Ki, too, had begun to regard his attack as impersonal, a thing to be excused, like a stranger’s jostle in a crowd.
‘The Denes do not welcome me. They say I paid them in bad coin. How was I to know? Think you that if I had any money left, good or bad, I would be living off small rabbits and wild greens? You must know how Denes are. Their love of dumb beasts is great; their tolerance for sentient creatures who do not conform to their way is small. My life would pay for my small debts. I cannot go back.’
‘You still have not said why you must cross,’ Ki persisted stubbornly.
A shadow passed over his face. The trapped beast peered from his eyes. He glared as if her question were of the greatest impertinence. Ki stared back at him. She did, after all, have the upper hand. She wished to know all the facts before she decided what to do with him. His scowl deepened with her continued silence. Then slowly it faded from his face. He made a gesture that might have been a shrug. ‘What does it matter who knows, then? I need money. My family lives over the mountains. I have relatives that have helped me in these small matters before. And so, I go to them again.’
Ki scowled. It seemed an implausible tale to her. To take such a risk just to … then the man beneath her coughed again, and she found that she had involuntarily moved the blade to keep from cutting him. She tightened her lips, frowning in disgust at herself. Slowly she rose. Even more slowly, she made a show of sheathing her knife. He watched her closely. He made no move to rise but remained as still as if her weight still pinned him.
Ki deliberately turned her back to him but kept her ears tuned to any sudden movement. She picked up the spilled kettle, frowned at the food that remained in it, and set it back on the fire. He still did not move as she drew water from her cask and added it to the kettle. She glanced over at him in annoyance. His ridiculous posture, flat on his back, hands spread upwards on the ground, disarmed her completely. She wanted nothing to do with this man. She would banish him from her campfire, eliminate him from her worries. She watched the slow rise and fall of the ragged tunic over his bony chest.
‘You will ride with me,’ she instructed him at last. ‘Like yourself, I must get over the pass. As we both must cross, we may as well do so together. Now, get up and take some food. You are no more than a bundle of sticks.’
‘And broken sticks at that,’ he readily agreed. With a grunt and a sigh, he drew his body together and rose to his feet. He ran his hands over his ribs. ‘Or at least cracked sticks. Your weight is no joke to a man who has been fasting as I have.’ He grinned at her and scratched his scraggly locks. He shook his head, then combed his fingers through his dark hair, removing the leaves and scraps of moss it had gathered during their struggle.
Ki frowned at him. She could not comprehend the jesting tone he took. It had been long since anyone had dared to joke with her. She could not be comfortable with his good humor. She had just thwarted his thieving attempts, beaten him down, and held a knife to his throat. And now he smiled at her, a crooked smile. What did she expect him to do? Anything but that.
She took more food from her supplies, never quite taking her eyes off him. She recreated the stew in the kettle. He watched her. She looked at him, and his grin grew wider.
‘You have no intentions of trying to bind me? Have you no fear that I will somehow overpower you and make off with one of your horses?’
Ki shrugged, shaking a scanty measure of tea into the pot and returning it to the hot stones by the fire’s edge. ‘The horses are already quite spooked tonight. As you see, I do not picket them. Should you wish to steal one, you must first catch him. Overpower me, kill me – that task is still before you. With my blood-smell on your hands it would be nigh to impossible to catch one of them. No, you have no interest in stealing now. Your only hope of getting over the pass lies in your doing as I say.’
Ki glanced down at her mug of hot tea. She had just poured it. Regretfully, she handed it to him across the fire and rummaged in the dish chest for a second mug. He was silent as she filled it, silent as she sipped. He held his mug in both palms, letting the hot tea within it warm his thin hands. Ki sipped, watching the stranger over the rim of her mug. She smiled behind her tea. So, now she put him at a loss, feeling as if he did not know how to behave. Childish! She sneered at herself as a bubble of triumph rose in her.
The stew came to a bubble, and Ki filled two bowls with it. She passed him a bowl, letting him juggle the hot tea and hot stew as he tried to find a place to settle himself. She seated herself back against a wheel and began to eat. For a time he remained standing, holding mug and bowl as if they were strange artifacts of an unknown use. His eyes on her, he sank finally to the ground. When she looked up, he was setting down his mug and taking up his spoon. He ate with an attitude of great thoroughness, as if he wished to be sure of every morsel. When he had finished, he set the plate aside. He moved to her fire, picked up the teapot slowly, looking at Ki uncertainly. She pretended not to notice his stare. He refilled his mug.
They sipped tea, eyeing one another, not speaking. There was nothing to say. But there was everything to say, Ki reflected, uneasy and tinged with anger within. Exasperation crept over her. Damn him, this was her fire and her wagon. How could he make her feel uneasy at it, as if she had no right here, not even the right to question the ridiculous and offensive way he had intruded himself into her life?
‘I’m Ki.’ It came out almost as an accusation.
‘I’m Vandien,’ he rejoined. He smiled and sipped his tea. The shadows of the fire on his face showed Ki how he might have looked were he washed and fed and dressed decently. It was not a bad way for a man to look. Muscle clung compactly to bone on his body. He was scarcely taller than Ki and only a bit wider through the shoulders. A much-worn leather tunic covered the chest and torso that narrowed down to his hips. His leggings were leather also, worn thin and patched.
He had a straight nose that seemed to begin right between his dark, well-formed eyebrows. His mouth looked small beneath the uneven growth of beard and moustache. No doubt he usually shaved his face. His hands were neat and well-formed around his mug. They were small and callused, as if they had grown used to hard work only in adulthood. He smiled as her eyes rose again to his, as if he could read her thoughts.
‘What takes you over the mountains, Ki? You have the advantage of me. I told you a bit more under the courtesy of the knife than most strangers divulge to one another.’
He drank tea, watching her coolly over the rim. Ki shrugged casually.
‘My business. I’ve a load of salt to deliver, promised some time ago and soon to be late. And I’ve thought lately of shifting my trails. I know this side of the mountains too well. I’ve heard there’s better work for a teamster on the other side.’
‘Not much different from this side. You must be a most dedicated trader of salt, to be so determined to cross this pass in winter.’ He was not calling her a liar. Not quite.
‘So I must be,’ she conceded drily. ‘At least it keeps me from turning to thievery.’
‘Ah!’ he cried and mockingly seized at his heart as if he had been pierced by a rapier. ‘I am rebuked!’ He let his hands fall and laughed aloud. Ki