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.>
Hell, Guil thought, seeing desertion and conspiracy. He wasn’t feeling at all sociable this afternoon, if it was afternoon. He was stuck inside, under roofs, with the hearing company of a woman he liked, to whom he was bound to be polite, while irreconcilable facts were churning around in his head and he was wanting to shoot Jonas Westman for suspicions he couldn’t fix in any world of fact.
So he skulked off with his surliness and his suspicions to clean his guns, which could take a considerable time if it needed to; and he took all the time and care he could justify at it.
But a man could only spend so long oiling guns and doing mending and washing dishes, while two fool horses were at a whole damned afternoon and evening of foreplay. It was going to be a lot worse come nightfall—he only hoped to God the storm kept going long enough to let two lovelorn horses get it worked out and at least quieter. He didn’t want to imagine the rogue coming calling when the ambient was as erotically charged as it was—particularly since Tara was sure, at least in the ambient she’d relayed, that the rogue was female.
A scary situation if you were the one on the damn lunatic autumn-hazed male. He couldn’t hold Burn. No way in hell he could hold Burn from going right off a cliff, the same way Aby couldn’t have held Moon, on that road, with an edge too close.
A tightness hit his chest. He was a lot better. He really was. Temper wasn’t helping it. Suspicion that Aby’s death didn’t need to have happened if people had been sane—wasn’t helping it.
Aby’d been carrying secrets all right, secrets that the villagers had guessed and a horse would pick up on. Aby’d been carrying just too damn much without her partner. She’d picked up something from Jonas she didn’t like. She could have thought it related to the gold. She was trying to protect Cassivey’s contract—and if the word got gossiped about, Cassivey wouldn’t be happy.
Jonas might not be after the gold as money. But the deal Aby had with Cassivey—Jonas could want that real bad. Aby and her regular partner hadn’t been together much in the last two years. Maybe Jonas had just gotten ideas and that was why Jonas wouldn’t face him at Shamesey. Aby’s good living off Cassivey sure as hell explained Jonas coming back up here. She was making money. She was making a lot of money; by what Cassivey was paying him, she was stuffing it in that bank account hand over fist, —and for what? What did a rider need, beyond her supplies and her guns and her winter-over?