The outside gate, Tara thought with a chill. The spook in the woods. The kid’s hanging about the horses… “Crack of dawn.” It was approaching twilight. “You’ve searched the village? You’ve searched all the village?”
“Everywhere.”
“Rider gate,” Tara said, and ran the steps, struck out past Goss and his sons, down across the snowy yard and toward the den, Vadim hurrying to catch up, the blacksmith and his boys close behind.
The snow between the village wall and the exposed side of the nighthorse den hadn’t melted that much during the day. They didn’t go to that side of the den unless they were going to the outside gate and nobody’d been out, none of the horses had been stirring out—truth to tell, they and the horses had slept the whole afternoon.
But somebody in small-sized boots had gone past the corner of the den and along the wall, and not come back. The pointed-toed footprints led up to the camp’s outside gate, and the gate had been dragged open and shut again—enough, one was sure, for the owner of those boots.
“Those your daughter’s tracks?” Tara asked, indicating the prints, but the horses were near enough she was already feeling the father’s rising panic.
The father didn’t know the half of it.
“Chad and I had better go look,” Vadim said.
“The hell,” she said, imaged <Tara and Vadim riding out,> imaged <guns.> And <long shadows on the snow,> which was the reality out there. It was close to evening.
“You’re not up to it,” Vadim said. “Flicker damn sure isn’t. We’ll look as far as we can follow those tracks.”
She didn’t want to stay and wait. She knew the search wasn’t going to turn up a live and happy girl, and that conviction in her mind might have been what agitated the blacksmith: they were next the den wall.
“What in hell’d she do it for?” the man asked as Vadim went off quickly around the corner, <getting Chad,> and the ambient flared with her distress, her resentment of villager stupidity, villager demands. The blacksmith caught her arm, hard. “I’m talking to you, damn it, Tara Chang! Why in hell didn’t one of you put her back out the proper gate? What in bloody hell was she doing here in the first place?”
“It was a dare,” one of the boys muttered, and an image flashed into Tara’s mind: <Brionne slipping through the village side gate.> “They dared her do it.”
“Who dared her?”
<Kids watching, from the village side.> “The kids. But she was always coming here. She said she could hear the horses.” <Brionne in a village house. Brionne at a fireside… >
But it wasn’t anywhere Tara had ever seen. And dammit, Brionne didn’t hear the horses. <Snatching the young fool out of harm’s way,> she remembered, precisely because the girl didn’t hear—or hearing, refused to believe that any horse refused her insistent attentions.
But she was seeing <Brionne in the village, Brionne next the forge, her face glowing> and it wasn’t her doing it, it was the blacksmith and his sons too near the horses.
“My girl’s been coming here?” the blacksmith cried, as if it were her fault. “She’s been in and out of here and you didn’t report it? Damn you!”
They were townsmen unused to the images that came thick and fast next the den—< Brionne with biscuits, Brionne running out the door of the den>—and Tara felt panic rising in the ambient. “She came here. I told her go home. We all told her go home. It didn’t take. She—”
She couldn’t focus on it. She was seeing <Vadim and Chad getting supplies. Restless horses, waiting.>
<Mina and Luisa wanting to go.> The argument had broken out on that score before Vadim had exchanged words with Chad inside the den. Hell, Tara thought in the eyeblink give and take of the ambient, and caught a breath on: <Chad angry. Long shadows. Clouds. Twilight behind the peak.>
<Vadim wanting Mina and Luisa with Tara. Flicker upset.>
—and glared in startlement as the blacksmith for a second time caught her sleeve. < Scared. Wanting daughter.> Then images from some other near source boiled up: <Hating Brionne. Brionne in house. Rage.>
<Goblin cat crouching, ears flat, over bloody rags, red coat—satisfaction, pain, wanting this with a fevered, angry ache—the man at the forge, hammering glowing iron—wanting him, wanting him to look at him—>
God, <the kid, the boys—> She couldn’t get a breath past the hate in the spiraling ascension of tempers, and the blacksmith rounded on the kid with <beating boy,> his fist cocked. The boys were on the retreat along the wall, the shorter dragging the taller, whose fists were also clenched. Hate flooded the ambient. Anger. Pain.
<Village. Gate.> Tara couldn’t find her faculty of speech. She threw force into the image, shoved at the blacksmith, wanting <Goss leaving, boys leaving. Camp gate shut.>
“Don’t you push me!” the blacksmith yelled.
Flicker’s temper hit the ambient. Flicker was on her way outside.
“Get out of here!” She found the words, scarcely the breath, and hit the man with her fist. “You’re upsetting my horse! We’ll find your daughter, man, just <get out of here, dammit! Now!”>
She shoved him as Flicker came around the corner of the den, a shape of anger and night. It was a cul-de-sac between the den, the palisade wall and the camp’s outside gate, with a mad horse occupying the only way out, sending <anger, danger, kill, flashes of light > as Tara ran and physically pushed at Flicker’s chest to restrain her from a charge.
“Get past!” she shouted over her shoulder, leaning all her weight and will against Flicker, making her <back up,> wanting her to calm down. “Get past, dammit!”
It was an eternity measured in breaths. Goss and his sons eased past them. Her arm shook against Flicker’s strength, Flicker’s anger—but then Goss and his sons, Goss shouting recriminations at the boys, headed back along the wall. Goss opened the Little Gate and went back to the village side of the palisade, mad, scared, with something maybe broken forever between him and his sons.
The Goss boys had let loose more truth at their father than they’d ever intended. The boys hated Brionne: the father was overwhelmed with panic and the boys with hatred of their sister. The images as they faded in distance from the wall were of rage and outrage, and a rider couldn’t judge what the right of it was, or who was justified.
Brionne was the youngest, Brionne was a pampered, headstrong brat. Given, she didn’t like the kid, but she’d never in her life shared a moment of such hatred among strangers—sendings going wild, sendings of a frankness that villagers weren’t used to, minds cycling wildly over thoughts, darting after known soft spots and old faults as unerringly as willy-wisps to ripe carrion, horse and human tempers flaring completely out of bounds.
Shaking, she leaned on Flicker’s shoulder and tried to calm Flicker down, telling herself she didn’t remotely know why Brionne had gone out this morning, or what Brionne thought she was doing—but if she had to lay a bet on it, the young fool had thought she’d heard a horse.
She didn’t like that thought. God, she didn’t like it. And she hadn’t handled Brionne’s father well. She was painfully aware she’d set up the encounter, not remotely suspecting more than concern on their side until they got near the horses.
She stood, still shuddery, with her hands on Flicker, whose mind she did understand, and kept imaging <quiet, quiet water> and <still trees and sunshine,> patting Flicker’s neck to quiet the violence she still felt in the ambient.