Each word dropped from Ki’s mouth like an ice-covered stone. ‘I cannot go yet.’
‘Then, you will never go.’ Haftor’s voice fell. ‘I waste my words, and the courage to tell you to go has been used up. If I left Harper’s Ford, I would have to be responsible for my own life. I could not blame my decisions on my father’s ghost. I would have to answer for all I did, and for all I did not do. So Ki will stay. I cannot say it makes me sorry. I should miss you sorely and grieve at your leaving, even as I shouted to hurry your team into the dark.’
He rubbed his face with both hands as if he were awakening from a long sleep. He stretched wide, and then made a grab at his belt pouch.
‘I had forgotten. Marna is too shy, so she sends me back to you.’ His fingers fumbled clumsily at his pouch in the dark. There was a glint of moonlight in them.
‘A silver comb to hold back your hair. And a wrist piece.’
Ki took the exquisitely worked silver from his hands. It was warm with his body heat. The comb had been worked into a symmetrical, branching vine. Ki held it to the light that escaped around the door, shifting it to watch the silver shine in her hands. The wrist piece was more massive, like a forked bolt of lightning twisted into a curve. Ki hefted them both in her hands.
‘I’ve an expert touch at judging weights, Haftor. The full weight of my silver cup is still in these two pieces. Marna has taken nothing for herself.’
‘She would not. She took all her pleasure in the making, indulging her fancy for design as usually she cannot.’
‘Yet one of the joys of creating is in seeing the thing you have made enjoyed, every day.’ Ki bobbed her head to kiss the silver wrist piece. Then she caught Haftor’s thick wrist and deftly imprisoned it in the silver’s curve. He shook his head and tried to draw it from his arm, but Ki held it there firmly.
‘It’s an old Romni trick. A good one. If you give me back this gift, you are returning my love to me as something also you will not take.’
‘That was the kiss?’
Ki nodded. It felt good to smile, good to give freely again. She wondered that she had not done it in so long.
‘Then you have trapped me into accepting it,’ Haftor conceded.
‘As I intended. And I hope it will remind you and Marna of me after I am gone. For, go I shall, Haftor. You will see.’
A rectangle of light opened in the night. Edward came pattering out onto the porch.
‘Ki!’ he called imperatively. ‘Nils bids you to come that he may wish you good evening.’
‘I come,’ Ki replied. Edward remained standing on the porch, staring at her. Ki shook her head resignedly at Haftor and followed the child back into the house. She heard Haftor’s boots come behind her.
The room was dazzling after the night, the mumble of voices an assault after the quiet of the porch. The eternal humming in Ki’s ears rose suddenly to match it. Edward threaded his way between knots of talking people to where Nils still sat alone at the head of the table. Nils dismissed the child and nodded Ki to a seat beside him. Ki seated herself, pushing aside used plates and utensils to make a place to rest her elbows.
‘Well, old man?’ she addressed him directly.
Nils chuckled. ‘You did very well. No, do not smile at me. Keep your eyes down on the table as if taking an instruction. I congratulate you on your will. Cora thought that surely your pride would send you from that seat. And you left with that young man at a perfect moment. You are a woman among them again, one who can be wrong, one who can be gossiped about and courted by men, and even one who can indiscreetly leave a dinner gathering to be alone with a man.’
Ki hissed at the insulting import of his words, but Nils’s laughter covered the sound. ‘You did not plan it so, then? No matter. It still set the table to buzzing and speeded up my work immeasurably. And that pretty comb in your hand will set tongues to wagging all the more merrily.’ He laughed again at her discomfort.
Ki raised her lowered eyes to pierce the old man with coldness and contempt. Nils snorted at her and shook his head, letting his own contempt show. ‘Go to bed, Ki. You are of the ones that cannot be saved. You will ever prize the freedom and honor of one over the good of all. You will never learn by experience. Why Cora seeks to keep you here, I do not know. You will spoil them all with your poison, like a piece of rotting meat thrown into a clean spring.’ His old hand angrily waved her away with the gesture one would use to flick away an annoying insect. But even as Ki scraped her chair back, the old hand seized her wrist in a grip of iron.
‘What will you do now, Ki? Will you work to undo what we have wrought at this dinner tonight?’
A quick twist of Ki’s wrist freed it from his grip. ‘You have said it yourself, old man. I value my honor as one over what may be the good of all. My word was given. I will not go back on it. I will let you make this rite. But I do not think it will be as effective as you hope it will be.’
Ki stormed away to the privacy of her own room. All marked her passage, none thought to impede it. But Rufus’s quick eyes flicked to her as she passed. He swayed forward from where he leaned beside the hearth. He gave Lars a rough shove with his elbow. Lars glared at him, annoyed at having his morose thoughts so disturbed. Ki could not catch the words, but she saw Lars scowl and redden. She hastened to her room.
Ki frowned into the darkness. Sent to bed like a naughty child after being humiliated. Defiance and anger blazed up in her, hotter than any she had felt on that night long ago. A sudden hatred for Nils and all he stood for ripped through her. She should have fought him then, should have ripped to shreds the fabric he sought to weave. Slowly, she sat up in the darkness of the cuddy. She paid no heed to the cold that stroked her as the covers slid away from her body.
She settled on an elbow and stared down at Vandien. His face was a mask. Hollows full of shadows marked his eyes. His body was a mound under the covers. Those many years ago, Ki had been paralyzed by indecision, had been made a game piece in ruthless hands. But no longer was that so. She would be the one now to take the actions, shape the circumstances. If Vandien was in league with the Harpies … She growled soundlessly in the darkness. She could kill him now, put that suspicion to rest. It would be an easy task to cut his throat now as he slept, to drag the body from the cuddy and leave it beside the frozen trail. If he were the vagabond he claimed to be, no one would miss him. And if he were the Harpy’s servant, she would have struck first to even the odds.
His chest rose and fell hypnotically under the shagdeer cover. She did not reach for her knife in the darkness. Instead, she sank slowly down beside him once more, entering again the warmth their bodies created under the coverings. There was a hoarseness to his breathing; he coughed lightly in his sleep. Ki closed her eyes tightly against the sudden sting of tears. The vulnerable eggs of the Harpies came to her mind. It was the same. No matter what future evil the man might hold for her, she could not strike in this manner. She would be wary, but not rash. She would remember.
She tried to be coldly logical. She listed her doubts. What chance had sent him to attack her that night by her fire? What were the odds of meeting a man in such a desolate place, a man marked with a sign of spread wings? He had precious little to recommend him. And yet …
Ki eased deeper into the bedding. She let her eyes trace the lines of his nose and mouth. She could see those bearded lips smiling, tossing quick mocking words at her. She liked his hands holding a mug or weaving stories on his ridiculous string. There was the way his stride matched hers as they tromped before the horses, the easy way he had fit himself to her life. An old feeling stirred in Ki, one so long unused that for a moment she did not identify it. And when she did she felt only disgust for her own fickleness. She doused her thoughts, flopping over to put her back to Vandien. She closed her eyes and did not stir again.
Vandien lay silent, staring at the ceiling of the cuddy. He wondered.