Vandien had already kindled a small fire between the wagon and the bare cliff face. It winked at Ki in the gathering darkness. Vandien moved among Ki’s things with sureness now, knowing where to seek for the kettle, the brewing herbs, the mugs. She started to go to the cuddy to gather the makings of the stew, then saw that he already had it beginning to bubble on the fire. She was torn between displeasure at his free ways with her possessions and relief that it would be ready to eat soon. Impulsively, she changed her pace, came up behind him silently over the snow. He poured tea steaming into a mug and turned to present it to her. ‘You’ve keen ears,’ she said. He shrugged and poured a mug of tea for himself. She watched him over the rim of her mug as she sipped. Who the hell was he? What fate had slipped him into her life, sandwiched between a late cargo and a Harpy bent on revenge? It did not seem at all fair that she must be burdened with him when there was already so much hanging over her. She watched him narrowly, seeing for the first time the precise way his hands moved as he did things, the smallness of his hands and feet that moved so economically to every task. Even in his unkempt state, there was an inborn tidiness about him that refused to be quenched.
He took the kettle of stew from the fire. Ki followed him as he carried it to the wagon seat, and then into the cuddy. Two bowls were set out on the small table.
‘I saw no sense to eating in the wind,’ he explained as he poured two equal portions that left the kettle empty.
Ki took out hard traveler’s bread from a cupboard to add to the stew in their bowls. They ate silently. Ki tried not to watch him. When the meal was finished, she pushed her bowl aside. Their body heat and the single candle had warmed the cuddy slightly. Vandien had pushed his hood back.
As they sat silent at the small table he seemed to become more and more uncomfortably aware of Ki’s gaze. Before it, he seemed to withdraw deeper into himself, as if he could vanish by being still and silent. Ki tried to put her eyes elsewhere – on the toy horse on its shelf, on the handle of Sven’s cupboard – only to find her eyes fleeing from her past to rest on the dark little man.
Vandien fidgeted. Reaching into his tunic pocket, under Sven’s cloak, he drew out a fine, thin piece of cord. It was creamy white and silkily smooth as he drew it over his hands. He tied the ends of it together with a small, peculiar knot and then began to loop it in an intricate pattern over his fingers. Ki found her eyes drawn away from his face and to the moving string. She watched as his fingers looped the string about themselves, built patterns that faded and melted into other patterns. He glanced across at her from under thick eyelashes. She became aware of a small smile that hovered at the corners of his mouth.
‘It’s a story string,’ he said in reply to her unasked question. ‘Haven’t you ever seen one before?’
Ki shook her head, watching his fingers deftly loop and throw the string about in melting shapes. He transferred a loop from the thumb to the finger of the other hand, made a pattern of diamonds, and now a shape of rectangles. With a sudden snap of his narrow hands it was a loop of soft string again. He untied his knot and passed it to Ki for her inspection.
‘It seems like any other string,’ Ki observed, as she let it trail across her hands. She tugged it gently, feeling its limber strength. Vandien reached to snag it back from her loose fingers.
‘Where I come from … on the other side of these mountains, and then a ways north … they are taught to all the children. From this string I have learned the history of my people, the genealogy of my family and of other families that touch mine, to say nothing of the doings of many heroes.’
‘From a string?’ Ki asked, half in wonder, half scoffing.
‘Here’s a tree,’ Vandien said, and with a flick of his fingers he held before her a tall triangle of string stretched on the fingers of both hands while four fingers of one hand held the rectangle that was its trunk. Another flash of his fingers, and the tree disappeared. ‘A star!’ This took a moment of loopings before he held up a five-pointed star on the fingers of one hand. ‘The Hawk!’ An abstract, graceful figure that suggested open wings. ‘My name!’ This seemed to be two separate abstract figures, one on each hand, held up side by side for Ki’s inspection.
‘Do the shapes form a sound, like the characters linked on paper?’
Vandien shook his head. ‘We have that type of writing also for things that must be recorded, sales of land, the pedigree of a bull, public announcements – but these are older by far than those symbols. No, this is Van,’ he nodded to his left hand, ‘and this is Dien,’ with a nod to his right. ‘Vandien. Myself.’
‘What does your name mean?’ she asked him.
He shrugged at her question, his dark brows drawing a little closer together in puzzlement. ‘It’s a name, like any other, given by my parents. No meaning.’
‘My father named me as the Romni do, making the name a reason to remember the time of birth. “Ki, Ki,” a bird called to him on the morning I was born. And so I was Ki.’
Vandien looked scandalized. ‘Among my people, that is how we might name a horse or a dog. Not a Human. Your name should bespeak who your parents were and the order of your birth. I sang – croaked might be a better word – to you of Sidris today. Her father was Risri, her mother Sidlin. She was their first-born daughter, hence she was Sidris. You see?’
Ki shook her head. ‘I do not follow it.’
‘It is simple. If she had been the first-born son, she, uh, he would have been Riscid. Their secondborn daughter was Linri, their second son is Rilin, and so on.’
‘And if they have more than two daughters?’ Ki asked. ‘What do they do when they’ve run out of names to share?’
‘A Human’s name does not run out, unless there is a time when he had no forebears. For convenience, we use but the first two parts of our names. I know my own to thirty-six forebears. There is more to it than that, of course, but the rest is for the keepers of the genealogies. A girl adds to her own name the entire name of her mother. A boy takes his father’s.’
‘Who could ever keep it all straight? And, more to the point, who would want to?’ Ki’s tone was lightly mocking, but Vandien’s face went dark at her words.
‘There are some to whom such things matter. They used to matter to me, once, but no more. It is, as you say, a silliness.’ He snapped the string free of his fingers and pocketed it. He rose to take the stacked dishes and clamber out of the cuddy with them. Ki wondered what had offended him. Her pleasant mood evaporated, leaving darkness inside her heart. She wondered at her own foolishness, to sit and talk on trivialities while death stalked her from the skies. She sat still, harking to the wind. Blow long and hard, she urged it.
Through the wind she could hear Vandien outside the cuddy, heard him speak to the team, felt the slight movement of the wagon as he put the dishes into their chest. Idly she wished she were alone tonight, to sort out her memories, to handle the good ones and set aside the bad ones. To look back on her days. Instead, she must deal with this peculiar dark-haired man, so foreign to her experience. He made Ki aware of him and drove Sven back into the shadows. She did not like the way he stung her out of her solitude, didn’t like the way he made her ask questions and wonder. She didn’t want to consider the way his body moved or guess the lively thoughts behind the movements of his features. She liked her silences. She missed her solitary routines.
Her fingers moved idly to her hair. Out of long habit, she let it down and combed her fingers through the brown strands until they lay flat and smooth down her back. Then, with the swiftness born of habit, she put it up again into her knots and weavings. She removed her outer cloak and spread it over the bedding. She was kicking off her boots when Vandien returned. She slammed the sliding door shut against the rising wind that tried to follow him. Without a word, he shook out his cloak and spread it over the bed. He began to remove his boots.
Ki sat staring. Cloakless and bent over, the arch of Vandien’s neck was curved. A marking was on it, small, almost hidden under the hair that straggled there: Outstretched blue