Vandien clucked his tongue. ‘Are you still thinking of me in that capacity? Don’t give it another thought, Ki. If I had the ability to do that to any woman, I would not be roaming the roads now. I would have inherited my parents’ lands, instead of them going to my cousin. And if I chose to roam, when I returned I would not be an embarrassment to my uncle.’
Ki shrank from the edged affability of his tone. She slowed Sigurd until his pace matched Sigmund’s and the two were abreast. She tried to meet Vandien’s eyes, but he kept them away from her face. The slender story string came out of his pocket as if by magic.
‘And now,’ he orated minstrel-style, ‘I shall tell to thee the tale of the son of the Vandet and Dienli.’
The string leaped and settled on his fingers, and he held it up for her, a sign on each of his hands. ‘Thus was he named, for Van the first son, and Dien also.’ Ki’s unwilling eyes were drawn to the string, captured in its mesh.
‘They were proud at the birth of their son,’ Vandien went on, holding up the complicated star that, for his people, signified birth. ‘He was marked with the sign of the Hawk from his birth, and they judged it a sign of good fortune.’ The string flipped and settled. But for his graven face and stony eyes, Ki could have believed that he was telling her stories with the string, showing her the remembrance keys as he went along, as he had now for days. ‘Vandet and Dienli celebrated their adulthood, their joining, and his birth for many days. But Dienli was to die when the child was too young to even remember the color of her eyes. (But they tell me, Ki, they were as dark as my own.) And Vandet was to fall from his horse in a hunt before the boy was tall enough to pull back the string of a bow. The care of the boy passed to his uncle until the boy was old enough to prove himself a man.
‘Now I digress to tell you the customs of my wondrous people: A boy becomes a man when he sires a child. A girl is a woman when she bears. And until a child is produced, the act of mating is the healthy play of normal children. No binding may occur until a child acknowledged by both is born. No child may inherit until he has supplied the next heir for the property. Now, as the lands to be inherited were large and the boy was the sole inheritor, there was much anxiety that the boy’s hands should be on the reins as soon as possible. An easy matter, to make a baby grow in a woman’s womb. But the boy’s uncle would take no chances. He would permit no young girls who might be too young to bear, or woman who had not proven her ability to reproduce. He selected instead for the boy suitable women, older women, widows whose men had died, women who had proved themselves fertile, some with children nearly as old as the boy. And he was put to them like an unproven bull put to a series of cows. At first it was done with dignity. The boy would first meet the woman, speak to her, know her a few days before it was demanded of him. He found it an awkward thing, to be bedded with women that reminded him of a mother he had never known and to know that the first to conceive by him would become his life’s partner. It made the boy’s task … difficult. As months passed, and women passed, the pace became more frantic, the uncle constantly reminding the boy of the shame he risked if his failures became known. The boy had a long string of names to pass on – it was a matter of honoring his forebears. The boy became unsure. The women the uncle could find became less tolerant, and more mocking. Until at last a woman went to the uncle and told him that she would waste no more time waiting to be studded by a young gelding.’
‘Enough,’ said Ki quietly. Vandien turned a cool, empty eye on her above his smiling mouth.
‘Do not interrupt the story, Ki. Did you like the last sign I showed you? It means gelding. Like the horse you bestride. Now, attend while I finish.
‘Word spread, of course. To keep as much of the name intact as possible it was necessary that the boy’s cousin inherit. He had produced a fine, fat baby a year before by a sweet and wild little girl in a nearby village. (It seemed to give neither of them any problem.) The inconvenient boy left quietly, and when he infrequently returns, he is given enough money to let him disappear again. One does not encourage family disgraces to hang about the doorstep. And so the story has a happy ending.’
Vandien snapped the string flat between his hands. It snaked back into this pocket.
‘Vandien, I am sorry …’
‘That I am a gelding? But I am not, of course. It was only a surfeit of overripe sweets. I tell you the story just to show you that I would not ask of you anything you would not give willingly. I would not ask such an act of anyone.’
‘Enough, man!’ Ki snapped. Then she went on more gently. ‘To say I am sorry is not enough. It is the greatest cruelty I have ever heard done to a child. But my pity …’
‘Keep your pity. That isn’t what I asked for.’
‘I will not take anyone into my life. I have no room for it. I will not offer that which I cannot deliver. The tasks I have before me are for me alone. I have no life to share.’
‘Choose life, Ki. Choose it one more time.’
The inn yard came into view. A light snow lay on the frozen ground. Wheel tracks and hoofmarks scarred the open yard, and a very young stable boy swung on a gate. It was a battered, homey place, more welcoming than the Dene inn had been. The stable boy stared at them as they pulled in their huge mounts. Ki slid down Sigurd’s shoulder. Vandien attempted a dignified dismount, only to have to drop the last part of it.
‘Shall we go in?’
‘No. I have unfinished business to attend to.’ She stepped forward, embracing Vandien quickly, awkwardly. She stepped back to Sigurd quickly. ‘You will be able to reach your home?’ Her words seemed to care more than her voice.
Vandien stared at her. He did not offer her a leg up, but forced her to clutch Sigurd’s mane and scramble up him in a most undignified manner.
‘Of course,’ Vandien dropped his words softly in the snow. ‘There are folk enough hereabouts that know my name, if not my face anymore. I shall be fine.’
‘I am glad of that. Fare well.’ She did not look back. Vandien stood in the frozen inn yard, watching after her. Sigmund trailed obediently behind Sigurd without need of a lead rope. A small smile came to Vandien’s lips. He knew Ki better than she knew herself. Any moment now, she would rein the horses in, would pause, and then would turn back for him. He would be waiting. A knowing smile flickered over his face. He hastily wiped it away. The grays were growing smaller in the distance. Ki’s words had had a fine ring to them, but he knew what was in her heart. Ki sat straight and ridiculously small on the immense beast. The stubby tails of the grays, docked for their pulling, switched as they walked.
Vandien watched the empty trail, waiting for them to come back from around the bend. The cold began to nibble at him. He pulled his hood up tighter, thrust his hands deep into the cloak pockets. He drew one hand out slowly in disbelief. He looked at the three silver minteds on his palm and remembered the awkwardness of Ki’s hug. He turned eyes of pain and anger to the empty road. He raised his hand high to dash the coins into the snow. But instead, his fist sank slowly in defeat. He tossed the coins instead to the amazed stable boy. His shoulders slumped as he wandered to the door of the inn. Unfinished business, indeed.
Rhesus’s man stared at the unkempt woman on the door’s threshold. Two gaunt, gray horses wandered free in the street before the door. The woman’s cloak was rent as badly as any street beggar’s. Her long brown hair was a tangled mass that straggled out on both sides of her neck beneath her hood. Her face was pinched and drawn. Her green eyes burned.
‘He did not bid me to watch for anyone coming to deliver merchandise,’ the man told her suspiciously. Slowly the tall wooden door began to swing on its greased hinges. ‘Wait here. Let me ask him if he expects you.’
‘Exactly what I wish to ask him myself,’ Ki objected. The man recoiled from contact with her dusty clothes as she squirmed past him under his arm. She prowled up the tiled hall like a hunting cat, peering in first one narrow doorway and then another. She gave the waiting man a glare. She had no patience left for civilized behavior. She had not paused since she left the inn, but had forced the grays on, making them subsist