Lamb took a long breath, looked to the starry sky and breathed out smoke in a grumbling sigh. ‘There’s going to be trouble.’
‘We going back?’ asked Shy.
‘You’re not.’ The shadow of his hat fell across his face as he looked at her so his eyes were just two gleams. ‘I am.’
‘What?’
‘You’re taking the children. I’m going back.’
‘You always were, weren’t you?’
He nodded.
‘Just wanted to get us far away.’
‘I’ve only had a few friends, Shy. I’ve done right by even fewer. Could count ’em on one hand.’ He turned his left hand over and looked at the stump of his missing finger. ‘Even this one. This is how it has to be.’
‘Ain’t nothing has to be. I ain’t letting you go alone.’
‘Yes y’are.’ He eased his horse closer, looking her in the eye. ‘Do you know what I felt, when we came over that hill and saw the farm all burned out? The first thing I felt, before the sorrow and the fear and the anger caught up?’
She swallowed, her mouth all sticky-dry, not wanting to answer, not wanting to know the answer.
‘Joy,’ whispered Lamb. ‘Joy and relief. ’Cause I knew right off what I’d have to do. What I’d have to be. Knew right off I could put an end on ten years of lying. A man’s got to be what he is, Shy.’ He looked back at his hand and made a three-fingered fist of it. ‘I don’t… feel evil. But the things I done. What else can you call ’em?’
‘You ain’t evil,’ she whispered. ‘You’re just…’
‘If it hadn’t been for Savian I’d have killed you in them caves. You and Ro.’
Shy swallowed. She knew it well enough. ‘If it hadn’t been for you, we’d never have got the children back.’
Lamb looked at the pair of ’em, Ro with her arm over Pit. Stubble of hair showing dark now, almost grown over the scratch down her scalp. Both so changed. ‘Did we get ’em back?’ he asked, and his voice was rough. ‘Sometimes I think we just lost us, too.’
‘I’m who I was.’
Lamb nodded, and it seemed he had the glimmer of tears in his eyes. ‘You are, maybe. But I don’t reckon there’s any going back for me.’ He leaned from his saddle then and hugged her tight. ‘I love you. And them. But my love ain’t a weight anyone should have to carry. Best of luck, Shy. The very best.’ And he let her go, and turned his horse, and he rode away, following their tracks back towards the trees, and the hills, and the reckoning beyond.
‘What the hell happened to being realistic?’ she called after him.
He stopped just a moment, a lonely figure in all that moonlit white. ‘Always sounded like a good idea but, being honest? It never worked for me.’
Slow, and numb, Shy turned her back on him. Turned her back and rode on across the plateau, after the wagon and Majud’s hired men, after Sweet and Crying Rock, staring at the white road ahead but seeing nothing, tongue working at the gap between her teeth and the night air cold, cold in her chest with each breath. Cold and empty. Thinking about what Lamb had said to her. What she’d said to Savian. Thinking about all the long miles she’d covered the last few months and the dangers she’d faced to get this far, and not knowing what she could do. This was how it had to be.
Except when folk told Shy how things had to be, she started thinking on how to make ’em otherwise.
The wagon hit a lump and with a clatter Pit got jolted awake. He sat up, and he stared blinking about him, and said, ‘Where’s Lamb?’ And Shy’s hands went slack on the reins, and she let her horse slow, then stop, and she sat there solemn.
Majud looked over his shoulder. ‘Lamb said keep on!’
‘You got to do what he tells you? He ain’t your father, is he?’
‘I suppose not,’ said the merchant, pulling up the horses.
‘He’s mine,’ muttered Shy. And there it was. Maybe he wasn’t the father she’d want. But he was still the only one she’d got. The only one all three of ’em had got. She’d enough regrets to live with.
‘I’ve got to go back,’ she said.
‘Madness!’ snapped Sweet, sitting his horse not far off. ‘Bloody madness!’
‘No doubt. And you’re coming with me.’
A silence. ‘You know there’s more’n a hundred mercenaries up there, don’t you? Killers, every man?’
‘The Dab Sweet I heard stories of wouldn’t take fright at a few mercenaries.’
‘Don’t know if you noticed, but the Dab Sweet you heard stories of ain’t much like the one wearing my coat.’
‘I hear you used to be.’ She rode up to him and reined in close. ‘I hear you used to be quite a man.’
Crying Rock slowly nodded. ‘That is true.’
Sweet frowned at the old Ghost woman, and frowned at Shy, and finally frowned at the ground, scratching at his beard and bit by bit slumping down in his saddle. ‘Used to be. You’re young and got dreams ahead of you still. You don’t know how it is. One day you’re something, so promising and full o’ dares, so big the world’s too small a place to hold you. Then, ’fore you know it, you’re old, and you realise all them things you had in mind you’ll never get to. All them doors you felt too big to fit through have already shut. Only one left open and it leads to nothing but nothing.’ He pulled his hat off and scrubbed at his white hair with his dirty nails. ‘You lose your nerve. And once it’s gone where do you find it? I got scared, Shy South. And once you get scared there ain’t no going back, there just ain’t no—’
Shy caught a fist of his fur coat and dragged him close. ‘I ain’t giving up this way, you hear me? I just ain’t fucking having it! Now I need that bastard who killed a red bear with his hands up at the source of the Sokwaya, whether it bloody well happened or not. You hear me, you old shit?’
He blinked at her for a moment. ‘I hear you.’
‘Well? You want to get even with Cosca or you just want to swear about it?’
Crying Rock had brought her horse close. ‘Maybe do it for Leef,’ she said. ‘And those others buried on the plains.’
Sweet stared at her weather-beaten face for a long moment, for some reason with the strangest, haunted look in his eye. Then his mouth twitched into a smile. ‘How come after all this time you’re still so damn beautiful?’ he asked.
Crying Rock just shrugged, like facts were facts, and stuck her pipe between her teeth.
Sweet reached up and brushed Shy’s hand away. He straightened his fur coat. He leaned from his saddle and spat. He looked with narrowed eyes up towards Beacon and set his jaw. ‘If I get killed I’m going to haunt your skinny arse for life.’
‘If you get killed I doubt my life’ll be too long a stretch.’ Shy slipped down from her saddle and crunched stiff-legged to the wagon, stood looking down at her brother and sister. ‘Got something to take care of,’ she said, putting a gentle hand on each of them. ‘You go on with Majud. He’s a little on the stingy side but he’s one of the good ones.’
‘Where you going?’ asked Pit.
‘Left something behind.’
‘Will you be long?’
She managed to smile. ‘Not long. I’m sorry, Ro. I’m sorry for everything.’
‘So am I,’ said Ro. Maybe that was something. For sure it was all she’d get.
She touched Pit’s cheek. Just a brush with her fingertips. ‘I’ll see you two in Crease. You’ll hardly notice I’m gone.’
Ro sniffed, sleepy and sullen, and wouldn’t meet her eye, and Pit stared at her, face all tracked with tears. She wondered if she really would see them in Crease. Madness, like Sweet said, to come all this way just to let them go. But there was no point to long goodbyes. Sometimes it’s better to do a thing than live with the fear of it. That’s what Lamb used to say.