More to the point—she was alive after a night with no gun and no supplies in a winter storm—and in her mind was a grief and a certainty that her partners weren’t.
And on the mundanely practical side—without a word of her intentions, or any need to do anything but laze in the blankets until he had the door clear, there being only one shovel in the shelter— he’d found when he’d finished his own job that the woman had their packs put together and a dozen flatcakes cooked, so when they’d set out onto the road, they had decent food in their packs that didn’t use emergency supplies.
She’d also asked for a pocket-full of shells for the pistol—so, she said, if he lent it to her in a hurry she had a reload without needing the belt.
This was no stupid woman. He decided he’d have liked her immensely if they’d met on a trail or a camp commons or, one had to think of it, in Aby’s company: someone Aby had dealt with came with recommendations, so far as he was concerned.
More, the business about the shells had made him ashamed of his reserve of all the weapons, and he hadn’t just given her the shells; he’d given her the pistol outright, belt and all, hers with no debt, in the hope she was going to be at his back—because with her to back him up, with her knowing the territory as she did, he wasn’t obliged to stay and wait for Jonas’ doubtful help.
Possibly his skittishness toward Jonas was autumn-thinking, too. Burn and Shadow were a bad pair. And with <male horse > occupying the ambient, the thought of dealing with Hawley had edges of very bad feeling, very violent feeling, that didn’t make it a good idea for Hawley, for him, or for Jonas right now, to be sorting out what they thought about each other.
He and the woman, on the other hand, could be as noisy as they wanted to be, since they were looking for trouble. They didn’t, either of them, they well agreed, want to spend another night waiting for the rogue on its terms, they were reasonably sure it wasn’t behind them, and they meant to push on up the road, the only sane way up the mountain, until they attracted its attention.
They could agree on that. But it didn’t mean he’d know the rest of her signals: working with a stranger, sensible as she was, meant they couldn’t predict each other’s moves if the ambient went as crazy on them as he was afraid it would.
Another reason she needed one of the guns.
It was likely she had her own doubts about him. She was mostly thinking about her partners, with that skittish, spooky skipping-about of thoughts she had—or Flicker had. Hard to pin down. Hard to understand, sometimes. Skittish as Shadow, and that was going some. But bright, not dark; she blinded you with sunglare when you came too close to her. She whited out your vision.
And he wanted—
Hell, he didn’t know. Flicker’s change-abouts were contagious. Confusing.
Just—Aby was dead. And he wasn’t. He’d discovered that unsettling fact last night, felt guilty, and angry, and distracted, and glad—none of which he could afford right now.
Autumn promises. He neededhis mind on present business. He needed his mind on the ambient, not pouring problems into it.
So he wantedthe rogue to show, dammit—he saw no reason for them to freeze chasing it. He <wanted > it into the ambient, until Burn began to be disturbed with him and laid back his ears and nipped at his leg. Something ghosted at him in that second, drifted through the ambient—and stopped.
“Tell you something,” Tara said to him then, in that moment that the air was still a little spooky and strange. “I was through this stretch of woods a few days ago with the rogue on my tail. I didn’t know what it was at the time—but it’s hard to be back here and not think about it. Sorry if I do it. Just so you know. It’s a memory.”
“Yeah,” he said. He’d just had a momentary sending, just <white-white-white> for a moment as if the blizzard had come back. Scary. Something in the trees.
He’d provoked it, he thought.
Begging trouble. With a shell in the chamber. Driving his partner crazy. Making her doubt what she heard and saw. A help. A real help, he was being.
<Kid on that horse.> That was what scared hell out of him. Tara’s image of that damnfool kid. It wasn’t neat, it wasn’t clean— they had a townbred junior to separate out of the problem.
A kid who, if she hadn’t frozen to death, might not be sane.
Or might not want to be sane, if they did get her back.
“Kid opened a gate,” Tara said sharply. “She went out where she knew she wasn’t supposed to go.”
“Not the only village kid who ever did it,” Guil said. Her anger with the girl bothered him. There wasn’t compassion. Maybe it was because it was a girl, and Tara made demands she’d have made of herself. He didn’t know.
It was her village that was dead. It was her partners that were dead, the way Aby had been his. Her dead—her whole village, old people, kids and all—were because a kid who knew the rules had wanted what she wanted and to hell with the consequences. She was angry. And he couldn’t argue with it.
It would have been a beautiful sight, all that untracked snow, blanketed thick around the trees, the rider shelter snowed-under up to its roof on the side; but the door was all shoveled out, there was no smoke from the chimney; and the single track of a horse went right up to that area, and lost itself in the general churning up of the snow, where at least one horse had broken through the drifts.
It wasn’t what they hoped they’d find: they’d arrived too late to catch Stuart.
“ Thirdset of tracks,” Luke said in apparent surprise. “Somebody was with him.”
Harper, Danny thought, was following. But when he caught the <tracks> Luke was looking down at, he saw the footprints of a third horse overlay twooutbound horses—how old, that second horse-track, or whether the last was Stuart following the other two, wasn’t clear in his inexperience. Cloud was imaging <female> and <Spook-horse.>
Harper was Spook’s rider. But—Quig? he asked himself. Quig’s horse wasn’t a mare.
The rogue was.
“Suppose the first is the rogue?” Hawley asked. “Suppose Stuart went after it this morning? Or it’s after him?”
“Check the board,” Jonas said, basic common sense, and Luke went and pulled the latch-cord, carrying his gun, even though the horses imaged no other presence, and warily checked inside.
Luke shut the door again. “Stuart. And Tara Chang, of all people.”
“ Tara’salive!” Randy said, <delighted.> Carlo was excited, too, all but moved to tears—because, Danny suddenly thought, they weren’t the only survivors any more. There was somebody else they knew in the world. They remembered <Tara in the camp,> remembered <looking for Brionne,> and there wasn’t a doubt in their minds that that was why their rider had come here. <Tara looking for Brionne. With Stuart.> On that, their hopes sprang up to a wild possibility—he felt it, even Jonas felt it, the whole ambient disturbed, but Hawley remarked, sourly,
“That son of a bitch was real comfortable last night, wasn’t he? Didn’t wait till Aby was a month gone.”
That made Carlo <fighting mad.> It took Randy, on the far side and away from Hawley, a moment to catch what Hawley meant, and then Randy was <mad.> But Jonas told everybody to get back on their horses and get the hell back on the road.
Danny swung up, nudged Cloud with knee and heel until he caught up with Shadow, on the edge of the road, urgent with the only answer he saw. “Harper’s out to kill Stuart,” he said to Jonas, fast, because horses were moving. “That’s all he wants. He knows who he’s tracking now—he’ll have seen that board, too. He’s going to break his neck getting caught up and they’re not hurrying— they’re not going to know he’s stalking them.” <Jonas hurrying. Three of them. Up the road. Stuart and the Tarmin rider. Him going slower, with Carlo and Randy.> “Don’t lag back for us. I’ll take care of the boys. Just for God’s sake get Harper before he gets Stuart.”