“Doing damn all right, woman. You’re alive.” He was <glad> of her calm. He was glad of her lifeafter the thing he’d just felt. He felt the shakiness still in her, knew there wasn’t a way in hell to reach into a woman’s private thoughts and patch anything, no matter if he wanted to, no matter how good his intentions—couldn’t prevent her doing what she’d do, wasn’t right to want to. If he’d learned one thing from Aby, that was true.
He’d not held on to her. He’d not tried to change her.
And she’d died.
She reached out and laid her hand on his knee, shook at him to get his attention, her face glistening with tears, <throat tight> as his was. “Name’s Tara,” she said, pointed reminder.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Aby?”
You couldn’t hear words in the ambient. He didn’t know how she came up with the name. But <Aby> was in her imaging, too. <Aby in the high country. Aby and somebody like Westman and herself riding together, in the winter snow.>
“You knewher,” he said.
“A lot of years. Last winter. When she stayed over. You’re thatStuart. HerStuart.”
He nodded. Wanted more of that image. Desperately wanted the missing pieces of Aby’s life. The questions he couldn’t answer.
“She’s dead?” She hadn’t known. “What in hell happened?”
He threw it into the ambient. It was easier than talking about what words didn’t say anyway. <Rogue-feeling. Truck going off. Aby—>
“I saw the wreck.” <Truck on the rocks. Tilted. Dead.> “I’d no idea—God.”
“So I’m going after that thing. Get it stopped.”
“By yourself?” Then <rogue-image.> “Like hell you are.”
“I’d rather,” he began on <you going to village.>
She shook her head, <seeing him,> now, <Guil in firelight.> “Two of us. That much more chance.”
He wasn’t happy about it. He wanted her safe. Didn’t want any more dying.
“I need a gun,” she said. “You can’t use two at once.”
“Woman, —”
“Name’s Tara.”
“Guil,” he said. “ Myguns.” That was damn selfish. He was being a jerk. But he wasn’t getting killed, either. “I’ll hand you one for backup. When it matters.” He’d admitted she was going with him. He didn’t see anything else to do but give her a gun and send her off alone. Which meant she’d still hunt it.
“All right,” she agreed after a moment. “All right.” She wasn’t mad. She didn’t blame him. Damn brave woman, he thought, going out there not knowing if she’d have a gun if he was incompetent.
She didn’t feel like somebody who’d panic. She’d known Aby. That was something.
“We’ll get it,” he said. He didn’t know, after that. Didn’t have any plans, after that.
Except Cassivey’s orders. Except next spring.
She sat there staring at the fire. He wrapped the blankets around his shoulders and looked at it too.
The horses wandered back to their courtship. She sat there remembering her village and her partners and trying for quiet.
Finally she lay down on her side and pulled the blanket up to her ears. He did the same, listening to the horses—<tired horses, both,> Burn having settled to better manners. The mare was still scatter-witted, concerned for her rider, a cold-water bath for Burn’s attentions.
He wasn’t sorry. He really, really wanted rest from emotional images and emotional situations. She didn’t think about him. It was all, all <faces, moments, laughter around a rider quarters, man in bed, men on horses, women riding with her, sometimes Aby among them> as she sat there, still as the frozen dead.
Clenched fist. Steady stare. For a long, long time no thought but the patterns in the fire. She’d reached the angry stage.
Best help he could be, he decided, was do the same, image nothing but <fire patterns.>
She let go a sigh and lay down. Her concentration wobbled. He kept seeing <patterns in the coals,> and the horses settled, <tired horses, quiet horses, warm horses, side by side.>
One wasn’t tempted to linger in the necessaries in the morning: the small add-on joined by a too-efficient door to the main cabin had no heat but the natural insulation, one suspected, of snow piled up over the roof—and one was very glad to be back inside and back in front of the fire.
Tara Chang took her turn while he put tea on and toasted biscuits over a renewed fire. Horses were hungry—horses had to be let out for their own necessities, and let back in out of the howling gale.
It was still whiteout outside. If Jonas had gotten back to shelter in Tarmin, depend on it that Jonas was going to stay put, postponing all questions until the storm had stopped, and hell if he wanted to see Jonas right now—he’d enough on his mind without dealing with Hawley.
“Autumn’s definitely over,” Tara said, shivering her way inside, and shutting the door fast.
“Looks like.” He was uneasy. He wanted to keep the light mood she attempted, but he’d thought of Hawley and Jonas and his mind wanted to go ranging after questions he didn’t want to ask himself. He was cooking a taste of bacon for the horses, to go with <grain> and he’d make hot mash, but <Guil and the woman eating biscuits.> He was being very firm about that. He had water heating for the mash. Which Burn liked adequately well. He wasn’t in the least remorseful about the biscuits.
Tara made the mash, perfectly nice mash, mixed grains. A little bacon to flavor it.
Riders sat and toasted biscuits, and ate slowly, because it was certain they weren’t going anywhere while the wind was howling like that.
He thought about Shamesey, in a long silence marked by horses bashing buckets against the baseboards. He thought about winter drifts, and evergreen, and high villages.
“Verden,” she said. And he guessed it was Verden he was thinking about.
Where Aby’d spent no few days.
“Guys I’ve worked with, Aby’s crew, they’re back at Tarmin holed up. Guy who drew that thing—” He indicated the picture overhead. “You could go back there, if anything happened to me. They’re all right, I mean, I think you’d be all right with them. They’re probably after the thing too, but if something did happen—”
“I don’t miss.”
“I’ve been known to,” he said. He hated infallibility. Considered it lethal. “I’ve decided you’re right. One human hasn’t a chance. So if anything happens, you go back, get Westman. Tell him—” He decided against what he’d like to say, which was Go to hell.
“I’m not going to tell him a damn thing. I know who you mean. I don’t like those guys.”
Didn’t exactly surprise him. He didn’t exactly like them, himself, but he couldn’t find a cause against them.
It occurred to him that why was a reasonable question.
“What’s the matter with them?”
“Just—stand-offish. Just not damn friendly.”
“That’s Jonas. And his horse.”
She flung some small dark bit into the fire. Bark chip, maybe. There was a lot of it on the stones. She didn’t talk for a moment. She wasn’t happy with things. “Aby said—”
She couldn’t leave that hanging.
“What?”
“Said she was worried. I don’t know what about. I don’t know what had happened. The last time, this last trip, before she went with them up to Verden with the trucks, she rode over to us, said—God, she said she wasn’t staying around them longer than she had to, they were into her business… that was what she said.”
He bit his lip. Found his pulse racing. <Wanted> to know. “Did she say what that business was?”
“I don’t know. Only—you know, they don’t run the Tarmin shipment uphill and then down again, they just set a date and our trucks meet them and join up at the downhill. So she gave us the date. And two of our guys, Barry and Llew, they took the trucks out with one of our road repair crews. And you know, usually when the convoys join the convoy boss sorts out who’s going where in the line—”