“Yeah.” That was normal.
“Some bosses, after they sort the trucks out, camp there that night. Aby did, usually. But they didn’t ever stop. My partners were behind our trucks, and they just started rolling, and our guys, they stayed with the repair crew, ready to move them up when the trucks had cleared the road. But the whole convoy was just on down the mountain. Never did even seethe riders. —It’s not that unusual if there’s weather threatening. There’s a truck pullout a couple of hours on down. And some bosses just had rather make the time. Aby’d said she didn’t want to spend time with them. I guess we all assumed she was anxious to get down—down the mountain. But she wasn’t with them, was she?”
“No. She wasn’t.” He was very careful with his edges. <Still water.> “They were spooked. That’s theirstory. The rogue showed up and spooked the convoy, sent Aby and Moon right off the mountain.”
“I took supplies and more crew up to the road repair just a few days ago. They’d found the wreck <way down the mountain.> Our guys thought it could be a month old. They had no idea.”
He was getting madder, and madder. Burn was disturbed. He tried to calm himself.
“Jonas knew,” he said. And then broke a promise Aby’d died keeping: “There was gold on that truck. Whole year’s shipment.”
She wasn’t knocked-down surprised. Mildly, maybe. “They said it went with the convoy before.”
“They.”
“Rumors. There are always rumors. But—”
She was confused. Thinking about <rogue.>
“Jonas imaged me about a rogue spooking the trucks,” he said. “A rogue killing Aby. —Hell of a coincidence, isn’t it? A rogue— and that one truck—the one with the gold?”
“The rogue’s real,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said, and sat staring into the fire until he’d calmed himself from the attempt to add that up.
Sometimes things just happened. Sometimes the luck was just against you. But beton it that Jonas Westman knew what was in that truck. Lead truck, it had been: he resurrected that from the image he’d gotten. Aby’d gone over the edge. It had.
<Wrecked truck. Logs scattered like straws down the rocks.> That was Tara Chang’s memory. The way it had been when she’d visited the site. No bones. Nothing. What died in the Wild vanished before morning.
A lot of riders went that way. Just disappeared. Just gone.
The storm was still piling up snow in Tarmin streets—drifts were halfway up the windows, and they opened the door to shovel their way out—Danny worked up a sweat, and the village kids, shoveling with less fury but longer duration, made it to the porch.
Not senior riders. It was juniors’ work. Senior riders sat warming their feet inside.
Juniors carried the wood. Filled the water barrel with clean snow that floated white in black water. Seniors complained about the length of time the door was opened, and burned more wood.
Something had turned last night. Danny tried not to think about it, but there was something unpleasant in the ambient, and Cloud was surly and snappish enough to match Shadow’s disposition.
“What are they mad about?” Randy asked when they were out on the steps.
“Missing Stuart, probably.” It wasn’t the truth. He wasn’t sure what was the truth; but something had gone skewed from the moment Jonas lectured them last night on false hopes, and that image had come to him which he didn’t want to think about.
So he went back in. They had the storm shutters set back for the daylight hours, barred them only at night—and he’d found books, ten of them, the whole that the store offered for sale. He sat down by the window in the white light reflected from the snow, and read about <old kings and battles with swords.>
He found a strange lot of attention on him then. The boys were staring. Jonas and Luke and Hawley were. And the horses.
It was funny, he’d never read around the horses before. He’d just gotten into the habit of picturing things in his head since long, long ago, when mama would read to him and Sam and papa.
Sam never got good at it. Sam wanted to be down in the shop. Sam didn’t want to study. Sam wanted to marry somebody who read.
Mama had read aloud.
“You can go on,” Luke said, meaning he wanted more, but Luke wasn’t going to admit it out loud. So he read to them.
It was an easy place to dive into, full of images. The horses were confused, but they liked some of it, he guessed—Cloud kept trying to fix the images so they looked more like Cloud understood, which wasn’t a real help; and sometimes his audience did the same, until the images were something they more agreed on. Jonas cut in, on the king’s side. You could guess. The boss-man couldn’t be a fool. The story had to bend until the boss-man found some vindication.
He read until his eyes were tired, and until he was at a place and a turn of the story that he could shut the book and think about it and nothing else—like wanting the storm to end, so they could go out and go find Stuart before Harper did. And stopping the rogue so they could find someplace safe, and quiet, and he and the boys wouldn’t have to take orders.
He sat by the fire and had himself a snack—he never in his life thought he could get tired of ham.
“Could go on another day,” Carlo said. “Never knew it longer. But it could, I guess.” Carlo ducked his head, <wanting to say something.>
“Quiet,” Danny said, feeling the disturbance. “Calm down. Say words. Don’t picture things.”
“When they go out of here, after him, I mean, are you going with them?”
He’d shifted thinking about that. He’d begun thinking differently since last night. And he was scared.
“I don’t know.” He tried to think about the stove, whether it needed cleaning out: they’d been <burning a lot of wood.> About the story. <Kings and swords.> “I really don’t know.” He owed Stuart. He didn’t trust what was going on. <Going with Jonas> put the boys in danger; going put the boys out there where their <sister> was.
“She’s our sister,” Carlo said urgently. “She might listen to us.”
“She might not. You want your brother to be there?”
Carlo was scared, too. Cloud moved up and nosed in between them, jealous of anything that wasn’t him. Danny shoved him with a hand on his chest, not even thinking about it. Carlo put his hand on Cloud from the other side. Cloud didn’t offer to bite.
“I want her alive,” Carlo said, and it was the truth. “I don’t like her. But I want her out of this.”
“What about Randy?”
“Is here safe?” Carlo asked. “Even if you stayed, is here really safe?”
It wasn’t. Not with Harper loose. Not with a lot else that was going on. But he couldn’t avoid Jonas.
There was leisure for shaving, for washing clothes to dry in front of the fire—not damn much else to do. They washed up the pans they’d used and then, with the wind still howling over the roof, Tara spent a long, long time working over Flicker’s mane and tail.
That made Burn jealous. <Mare’s rider combing mare’s mane. Guil sleeping. Burn with twigs and leaves. Burn covered in mud.>
Mud, hardly. But he owed Burn on this trip. He got up and combed until Burn’s tail and mane were drifting silk. Brushed a perfectly good nighthorse hide until Burn was starting to complain of pain.
“Pretty fellow,” Tara said, and stroked <pretty nighthorse neck.> Burn did have male muscle and a healthy sheen that made ripples when he flexed it. As he did. Of course.
With Tara <scratching Burn under chin.>