Luck Of The Wheels

The wagon started with a lurch. Goat bumped his head on the side of the door. 'Close the door, Goat,' Vandien suggested. Goat looked from Willow's stiff spine to Vandien's cold eyes.

'I didn't do anything to her,' Goat said suddenly. 'But you'll never believe that, will you? No matter what she says, you always believe her, and you always think I'm lying. I didn't do a single thing to her ...'

'Did so!' Willow hissed angrily. She whirled suddenly to confront him. 'Lying won't change it, Goat. I know what you are, they know what you are, everyone knows what you are! You think you can run away from it, but you can't. When we get to Tekum, Kellich will know. Kellich and the whole i

'Oh?' Goat's voice was suddenly cold. 'And you're going to tell Kellich all about it, aren't you, Willow? In every little detail? Well, then, let's share what I know. Your pretty little Willow, Vandien, with the mismatched eyes? You think her so sweet and naive, ru

Willow had gone white except for two red spots on the points of her cheeks. She stared at Goat, and then swayed as if she would fall from the wagon. 'Keshna!' she invoked wildly. Vandien put out a hand to steady her, but as he touched her she stiffened. Drawing herself up straight, she took a deep breath. The wagon jolted on. Ki's grim face stared out over the ears of her team. Goat sat quite still, smiling at Willow's back. The sound of her ragged breathing was louder than the creak of the wagon. Twice she drew breath for speech, and Vandien kept his hand on her shoulder, braced for whatever she might say.

She took a sudden deep breath. She turned to him. Tears had tracked down her face and shone still in the brightness of the sun after the storm. But she no longer wept. Her eyes were open, but shallow; her soul was walled up behind them. He sensed that a decision had been made, and wondered what it was. But when she spoke, her calm words took him by surprise.

'Won't you tell us another story, Vandien, to pass the time?'

NINE

The day's travel had been long, and neither the cheeriness of the sun flooding the damp landscape with light and warmth nor Vandien's tales had been able to make it shorter. Ki had found a good campsite, with deep grass and a grove of trees. Goat and Willow had kept the peace, by exchanging no words at all. But Ki felt strung as tightly as a harp string. Prickly with tension, she waited for some new outburst.

Vandien felt it, too. She had sensed it in the way he told his tales today, choosing the most i

She dashed the dregs of her tea into the sputtering fire and crossed the camp. She took the currycomb firmly from Vandien's grip and gave Sigurd a nudge that told him he was free to go. The great beast stepped out sedately for two paces, and then suddenly gave a wild curvet that brought him down just short of Vandien's toes. Even as Vandien roared, Sigurd leaped away, dancing out of reach. 'Let him go,' Ki counseled him, touching his wrist lightly. Sigurd, for his part, dropped ponderously to the earth and rolled, destroying Vandien's grooming efforts.

'That damn horse,' Vandien snorted, torn between anger and laughter.

The easing of the tension was so marked that Ki hated to bring it back. But she had to. 'What did Willow tell you, earlier?' she asked him.

'When we were walking?'

Ki nodded.

He shook his head. 'Nothing, really. Mostly how much she hated Goat, and it was all our fault she was ruined and no one would ever trust her again.'

'But she didn't say what Goat had done?'

'No. Well, she said something I don't understand. He had spoiled her memories. Something like that.'

Ki stood still, thinking it through. Finally, she sighed. 'I think I understand what she meant. I had a strange dream, shortly after we took Goat on.' She paused, and found herself unwilling to tell Vandien exactly what the dream had been. 'It was like someone was sifting through all my memories,' she said reluctantly. 'And looking in on the most personal ones.'

Vandien winced, and looked away from her. 'I thought I was getting somewhere with that boy,' he muttered, and then burst out, 'Why didn't you say something to me?'

'What could you do about it? Besides, I thought it was only a dream. Now that I know what it was ... I don't know what I'm feeling. Anger. And violation.' She glared over at Goat, recalling what she haddreamed. The blush that reddened her face was not shame, but fury. Fury that was suddenly engulfed by puzzlement. 'I'd like to kill him, Van. But that doesn't help me understand what's happening now.'

'Vandien,' he corrected her automatically. Then, 'What do you mean?'

Ki jerked her head, and Vandien glanced past her. Willow finished refilling Goat's cup with spiced tea. Goat was gri

'She looks like a very polite guest who smells something terrible in the soup, but is so well ma

'She wants something,' Ki said, suddenly sure of it.

'But what?'

'Revenge,' Ki guessed. 'Vandien, I'd like to kill him. But I know I won't. If a grown person had spied on me that way, I'd have to kill. But I look at him, and I see a wayward, very spoiled child.'

'To me, that makes his dream-stealing more offensive, not less,' Vandien observed. 'I'll kill him for you.'

She looked at the set cold anger in his dark eyes. 'Would you?' she queried softly. 'How? Beat him to death while he cried and screamed for mercy? Run him through with your rapier, after you had chased him down? Strangle him in his sleep?'

A shudder ran over Vandien, and she felt the sudden tension run out of his body. 'No.' His voice sounded old. 'No. You're right. I couldn't.'

She touched his hand. 'I know. If you could, I couldn't feel about you as I do.'

Amusement flickered across his face. 'Why don't you ever admit you love me?'

For an instant their eyes locked. Ki squirmed in discomfort. 'Good friends are too hard to come by,' she said at last, and he laughed.

'That they are,' he agreed, and squeezed her hand. 'So. To get back to the subject. What do we do about Goat and Willow?'

'I don't know,' Ki admitted. She watched Willow get up to put some wood on the fire. When she sat down again, she was closer to Goat. Not sitting beside him, but closer.

'She's stalking him,' Vandien said. 'But perhaps we should do nothing ... unless we have to. We'll be in Tekum by tomorrow afternoon. We leave Willow there, and that's an end to it. Then on to Villena, to get rid of Goat. Then ...' He let the sentence dangle, looking quizzically at Ki.