“I said let’s not talk about it.”
“Well, the kid could actually have gotten a wild horse,” Luisa said. “I mean, there’s always the chance. There’s been a herd at the water meadow…”
“The kid’s a damned fool!” Tara snapped. “The kid’s something’s supper, if she’s wildly lucky, which I think she wasn’t; and the boys are riding around out in the dark risking their necks for a spoiled brat who’s already met what she bargained for! It’s not damn worth it! The kid batted her eyes at Vadim, the kid sneaked out of here when she damned well knew better, and they’re off being damned stupid men!”
She didn’t need to have said that. She immediately wished she could call it back. The chill in the air after that was immune to a fever-heat fire.
So the night wore on in interminable minutes and eternal hours, while two grown men who’d gone out to play hero because they couldn’t say no to a kid who simpered at them… were out there in mortal danger.
The kid could hear the horses—hell, any villager could hear the horses if they stood next the wall—hear and be heard, at close enough range: that was why there were walls, for God’s sake, that was why townsmen didn’t go walking out in the woods without a rider—because they heard too damned well.
But Brionne was so self-sure that what she heard was ever so much more than a horse’s own rider did, some flaming miracle of special sensitivity and understanding of the horses—
God, the kid had probably been listening out into the dark for years for what she wanted to hear… and she probably hadn’t realized the defense Flicker had been sending out into the storm was even going on, because <white-white-white> was the snow, was the storm. The blacksmiths’ house was far enough away from the camp that the kid might not even have heard Flicker at all or been within Flicker’s defense. She might have heard something beyond the other village wall.
And then because stupid damn little girls who thought they heard the horses and didn’t even sense when one was backing up and about to trample them didn’t the hell comprehend that what precious oh-so-talented Brionne wanted didn’t damn matter to the laws of nature and the inclinations of a crazed killer—precious Brionne took a walk.
“You know,” Mina said, “they could have gone on to the road crews and tried to find out about them.”
“Will you the hell let it alone?” Tara said, and hadn’t meant to say that to Mina, either. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry, Mina.”
Mina shrugged, looked elsewhere, hurt—not at her, just hurting, without an ambient to carry it, that was why the rider quarters sat the measured distance it did from the horses, but, God, she could see it. Luisa and Mina were partners. They were best friends, together and with the men.
And because she was the know-it-all newcomer, it didn’t call on her to curse at Mina—she hadn’t access to the ambient to say <I love you> or <I’m scared, too,> and she couldn’t say what she thought aloud—words sounded stupid and lame when the ambient wasn’t behind them.
But she was their senior in years, with Vadim out of the camp. She was supposed to lay down the laws, she was supposed to keep them from driving each other off the edge. She was supposed to keep the camp in order and the village safe—but that hadn’t meant yelling at Mina.
“Mina,” she said, feeling the shakes nudging at her arms—“My fault. Sorry.”
“I don’t like this,” Luisa muttered. “I don’t feel good. Nothing feels good.”
“None of us feel good!” Mina snapped. “None of us feel good. Can we just not go for each others’ throats?”
Tara was seeing <white> again. She was back in the forest.
Then an ember snapped, wood they’d carried in out of the snow-covered woodpile: it spat sparks and snapped and spat while it dried. But her nerves were raw-ended. She jumped and twitched, and couldn’t for a moment get her breath in the sickly closeness of the air.
The main room was log-walled, chinked with mortar. The corners were refuges for shadows, places the light didn’t reach, and they’d not lit the lamps. The firelight cast their three shadows large on the walls, on the rafters, and the interlocked shadows jumped with the gusts that bested the chimney’s updraft.
Another snap, not as loud as the first. But the nerves still jumped. She’d put off her jacket, but she was all but inclined to put it on again and go out into the yard and touch ambient one more time tonight.
They ought to go the hell to bed. Luisa was right: the boys were surely holed up somewhere and weren’t going to stir out again until the sun came up and they could face the unpleasant job of reporting back a grisly find which had to be the story out there.
If she hadn’t snapped at the kid when the kid had come into the den—
Probably with wonderful, special news to tell them. And they hadn’t fallen down admiring her. If there was a bad horse out there, it was enough trouble. If a bad horse had a rider when it went, the after-midnight lore held that the rider who didn’t shoot it fast went with it, and whoever was his good friend had better shoot him equally fast.
If the rogue snared that kid, then it could get from her what horses got from human minds—an outright addiction to the complexity of human images and an ability to remember and stick to a task until it was finished.
Until it was finished.
And Brionne, precious Brionne, didn’t think what anybody else wanted. When Brionne got an idea—nobody counted but what Brionne wanted. Did they?
She had gooseflesh on her arms. She didn’t need to turn over that mental rock and examine the underside.
She found herself on her feet and pacing again. Mina was standing, arms folded, staring at the shuttered window. Luisa was whittling something. Luisa was always making wooden animals—she had a collection of them on the mantelpiece, real ones and fanciful ones. Tara couldn’t see what Luisa was carving. Didn’t want to guess. She ought to set an example and go to bed, but the thought of going off to a separate room and lying in bed alone with her thoughts was not at all attractive.
And maybe it was after all a good idea to check outside again before she tried to rest.
It was something to do, at least. If she just found silence out there, it was some reassurance; and she felt steady enough to look in on Flicker. So far the ill effects added up to a little swelling and soreness in the legs, nothing rest wouldn’t cure. Flicker could lie down and get up at will now, no worry about her going down and her lungs filling; but Flicker’s rider wanted to be sure of that from hour to hour, especially when she was staying a little outside Flicker’s range.
Surely the boys were all right. God, they weren’t a pair of juniors. They could take care of themselves. Fears spread, was all.
Hell, she said to herself then, and got up and went for her coat.
“Where are you going?” Mina asked.
“Just to take another listen,” she said. “Be right back.”
Mina looked worried. “You don’t go out anywhere,” Luisa said. “You want me to come with you?”
“Better just one of us. We’re too noisy tonight. I’ll check on the horses. Get a grip on my temper while I’m at it.” She shrugged into the jacket under two worried looks. She slung on her scarf and went out, not dressed for a long stay in the winter night, not even putting her gloves on.
The first breath of cold night air was a relief. She went down the wooden steps, crunched her way across a new film of ice on the tracked and hole-riddled yard, and trekked out toward the den under a starry, cloudless sky.