Luck of the Wheels

by Megan Lindholm

  ‘Willow, I’m really tired, and my ribs hurt. I don’t want to stay awake and talk. Now be a good girl and let me go to sleep.’ His avuncular tone was deliberate.

  ‘But …’ She was flustered. Evidently, this wasn’t going as intended. What had she intended, he suddenly wondered. He heard the rustle of the straw mattress, opened his eyes again. She had edged farther onto the bed. ‘You don’t understand about Goat. At all. Or you wouldn’t be going to sleep, either.’

  ‘Oh? Well, why don’t you sit on the floor, then, and keep yourself awake by telling me about him?’

  ‘All right,’ she agreed quickly, and clambered up to sit on the bed beside him. He opened his eyes again. In the dimness of the cuddy, she looked very young. Very, very young. ‘Goat has Jore blood,’ she began. ‘Do you know what that means?’

  ‘I suppose it means one of his ancestors wasn’t Human. His father mentioned it to us; I didn’t think it was especially important.’

  ‘It isn’t … usually. There’s a lot of mixed blood in this part of Loveran. You see a lot of half-Brurjan, especially in their garrison towns. And … other crosses. But not many Jore crosses, and hardly ever one with Human body and Jore eyes.’

  ‘So?’

  She edged closer to him. ‘So, it means he can see … everything.’ She lifted her hand in an encompassing gesture, let it fall so it brushed his thigh. ‘Everything anyone dreams, he can spy on.’

  Vandien shifted in the darkness, hitching himself away from her accidental touch. By the Moon, his ribs ached. But he was intrigued now, whether he wanted to admit it or not. ‘So Goat can tell what you dream. Why should that worry you?’

  He could feel her eyes on him in the darkness. ‘Because he uses what he learns from dreams to hurt people. To make fun of their secret longings, or expose their mistakes, and take advantage of their fears. Once he’s been inside your dreams, he can change how you feel about them.’ Overcome by the enormity of the thought, Willow melted beside him. She lay on her side, facing him, her jaw propped on her hand.

  ‘He can change how you feel about your dreams.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And why is that so important?’

  ‘Don’t you see? He can take your secrets and use them against you. He can make your dreams go where he will. Nothing you have ever thought is safe from his spying. And everything he learns spills out of his mouth. He has no honor.’ She spoke bitterly, as one betrayed. Vandien sensed himself very close to the heart of the puzzle, and held his tongue.

  The silence lengthened. Willow wiggled closer to him. She wore a scent, like ginger and oranges. He could hear her breathing, but he waited her out.

  ‘Once,’ she breathed, ‘I trusted him.’

  He didn’t let himself smile. ‘Oh?’

  ‘And he betrayed not only me, but my friends.’

  ‘By telling what he knew you had dreamed?’

  Willow shook her head impatiently, and he felt the brush of her hair. ‘I asked him to … find out a thing for me. A thing that would be useful for me to know. And he did. But instead of telling only me, he told it all about, bragging of what he knew. So it wasn’t any use at all to me and my friends.’

  The rebels. Ah. ‘I imagine you were very angry with him.’ Vandien wondered if she were so naive she thought she was being clever, or if her childish intrigue was a mask. He could feel the warmth of her young body crossing the distance between them. But he could also sense the calculation as she contrived to let her leg brush his. The uneasiness that stirred in him now was not what she was seeking to arouse.

  ‘Of course I was angry! We were all angry, he put us all in danger. And Kellich had to …’

  ‘Leave,’ Vandien filled in for her.

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice was very low. ‘It was all Goat’s fault, because he couldn’t keep his stupid mouth shut. Kellich says there is no strength in a man who cannot keep a secret, nor honor in one who breaks faith with others for personal gain or glory.’

  ‘Mmm.’ He had dozens of questions, but he knew that not talking much was the best way to encourage confidences. When she leaned over and put her hand lightly on his upper arm, he didn’t move away from it. Her fingers moved, probing the muscles there.

  ‘You’re strong,’ she whispered. ‘Stronger than you look. And brave. What you did today, to buy Ki time – that took courage. And quick wit to think of it.’ She shifted her body closer on the bed. ‘Strong men, with the courage and the wits to put their strength to use, are rare. And we need them so desperately.’

  Her breath was against his cheek. ‘Did you make the same speech to Goat when you asked a favor of him?’ Vandien asked innocently.

  She jerked back as if he had slapped her. ‘And does Kellich know how you recruit for your cause?’ he continued. ‘Or did he teach you, perhaps, how to win a man to do your work for you?’ Her silence was an audible tension. ‘And what would you have done if I had tried to accept the bribe first, and then do whatever it is that you’ve been building up to ask for?’

  ‘I’d have put a knee in your sore ribs, you …’ she sputtered, at a loss for a name bad enough to call him. She moved then, suddenly, and he blocked it, covering his injured ribs, but it was not an attack. She sat up suddenly, her face in her hands. He heard her draw in a shuddering breath, but he cooled his quick sympathy. Tears might simply be the ploy one used when seduction failed.

  ‘You don’t know what it’s like,’ she said thickly.

  ‘I might, if someone explained it instead of …’

  ‘It’s horrible!’ she burst out. ‘This Duke and his Brurjan guards and his travel passes and his endless quarrels with everyone. Loveran has not a single border-neighbor that trusts us. He has cheated the Windsingers until they no longer hear the pleas of the farmers. Look around you as we travel – do you think it was always grass desert here? When the Duchess was in power, these were the grain fields of Loveran, the pastures thick with fat cattle and white sheep. Now our whole land is dying. Dying! And Kellich says unless we bring back …’

  ‘The Duchess. And throw down the Duke. I heard the talk in Keddi. I can sympathize, if what you say is true. But to send you out to bring back men for his cause …’

  ‘Kellich hates it as much as I do. But he says it’s like a test. You were staying loyal to Ki – I could feel it. And that’s a thing to watch for, for Kellich says that a man true to his own cause can be true to a greater cause. And he says that if I pick the men carefully that I approach, that the … offer will never have to be paid. For once they’ve been with us, they see the right of it, and don’t ask for anything more than to do what is right …’

  ‘Oh, shit,’ Vandien breathed softly, but she heard him.

  ‘It’s not how you think it is at all!’ she said angrily. ‘No man but Kellich has ever touched me. Nor ever will. It is only a thing one does because one has to … like the smuggling. Because one has to do it to keep the cause alive, to survive.’

  ‘Sort of like sacrificing those Tamshin today?’

  Willow swallowed. ‘Goat did that, not I,’ she muttered after a moment. ‘But, yes, if it were for the cause. Even the Tamshin, such as they are, aid us. They’ve been willing to die for us. I’m not saying I like what Goat did. And don’t you think he did it to save me or anything foolish like that. He did it for the reason he does anything. To show off what he knows. But, yes, we expect that kind of sacrifice. That our friends will die for our cause.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure that little boy had strong political convictions,’ Vandien said sourly. ‘Must have been really sustaining for him when the horses trampled him.’

  ‘We can’t think in terms of one person, even if the person is a child,’ Willow whispered fiercely. ‘Kellich says the cause must be our family, the child or mate or parent that we could die for. For the land is our begetter, and if we suffer the land to fail and die under the tyranny of the Duke, then we have betrayed ourselves and our children to the end of all generations.’

  �
��For the life that is the land,’ Vandien muttered to himself, recalling a boy, an oath, and a sacrifice made long ago. He was tired of hearing Willow repeat what ‘Kellich said,’ and he doubted she understood half of what she mouthed. But he did, much better than her youthfulness could encompass, and her words stirred a pain he thought had scarred over long ago.

  Ki dreamed. The dreams engulfed her as water engulfs a diver; they pulled her down and under. She flickered through images bright with color and soft with shadows. Landscapes, horses, Romni wagons, laughing children. Ki stood back from her dreams in a dark place, regarding their passing with equanimity. There were folk she knew, Big Oscar and Rifa, not as they were now, but young as they had been when she was a child, and there was Aethan’s wagon, and the first team of horses she remembered, Boris and Nag. A glimpse of each and then on, shuffling memories that filled her eyes but didn’t touch her. Here was Aethan, older, starting to stoop, and there was Sven, her first glimpse of him, so boyish that she could scarcely reconcile the image with her memory of him as a man. The flicker of memories slowed suddenly, let her regard him as she once had, running her eyes over his blue eyes and fair skin, over his wide shoulders and silky blond hair that flowed down his back. The unbound hair of an unclaimed male of his people.

  Ki felt something in her quicken at the thought, and the airs of her dream seemed suddenly charged. She sensed a passing of time that followed Sven through her memories. Here he was on a spring day when the caravan of Romni had passed through Harper’s Ford; there he was, his cheeks ruddy with the kiss of winter wind, when she and Aethan had returned that way later in the year. The dreams skipped forward frantically, searching, searching, pausing whenever Sven had come into her life, and then hastening on again. And here Sven was older, and his shirt hung open and his fair, wide chest was slick with sweat. And here – ah, yes. The dreams stopped. It had arrived.

  The wooden planks of wagon floor were pale new wood, and sticky yet with sap. She lifted her eyes to where Sven stood before her, shirtless, his back to the new bed with the new blankets on it. Ki couldn’t breathe. She was shaking. Sven’s face was very solemn. He was waiting. Waiting for her. She took a step closer to him. She smelled the smell of his sweat, male and young, and the smell of her own nervousness. He put out a hand and his fingers brushed her jaw. She felt the tremble in them. He was no more experienced than she, and but a year or two older. And yet they had made their promises to one another, and now they were free, to touch and be together. If they could find their courage. She looked at his hair, bound back in a long tail now. A taken man, a man claimed by a woman. Claimed by Ki. His hand fell to her shoulder, and before he could draw her near, she stepped closer to him. The instant of hesitation melted, and her skin was suddenly alive, aware of every brush of skin or cloth against it, and the smell and taste of his skin filled her mouth and nose. He was so strong, so wise in his maleness, so sure.

  Clothing fell, and the wooden edge of the bed bruised the back of her thighs as she tumbled across it. She pulled her eyes up and looked only at his face. His eyes closed to slits as he positioned himself. He was gentle, slow, careful, and yet his mere touch was a jolt against inexperienced flesh. Ki cried aloud. Sven’s mouth closed over hers, swallowing her cries, and his body descended upon hers …

  Somewhere an older Ki watched their uncertain finish, witnessed the sudden awkwardness of their first parting, and then the confidence with which they came together a second time. She saw much she had not remembered until now; how he had bruised his head against the wall, the circle of red dents her teeth left in his shoulder, his hair unbound and lying across her eyes and mouth. Somewhere an older Ki smiled sadly in the darkness, shared the hunger of their young passion but not its fulfillment. She could only witness and remember. Remember so clearly that she almost felt Sven’s hands upon her …

  Ki jerked her head up, found a tangling darkness like wet nets, floundered and struggled and suddenly opened her eyes. She was breathing as hard as if she had run a footrace; her tunic clung damply to her back. Slowly the darkness parted, shadows re-formed as recognizable shapes.

  The fire was a shamble of coals with the ends of sticks littering its edges. The wagon wheel was solid behind her, digging into her back through the cushion. That huddle to the left of the fire was Goat, sleeping in a tangle of blankets. He lay very still, his face turned away from her. His shoulders looked tight and hunched, as if expecting a blow. He had taken his anger to bed with him, Ki decided. She drew a deeper breath and came to herself. A nightmare. Well, like a nightmare in its intensity. She plucked her clothing free of her sweaty skin.

  Sven. The love of her childhood, her husband, the father of her children. Dead. She wished suddenly that Vandien were beside her, that she could turn and touch him and console herself with the goodness of her present life instead of regretting the sweetness she had lost. But he wasn’t, and it would be days and miles before she was alone with him again. Once more she let her head settle to her knees.

  Why, after all these years, dream of Sven? And why of that particular time? Was she remembering when she was as young and callow as Willow? She shook her head against her knees. Young, callow, and ignorant, yes. But not as nasty, never as sly. At least she didn’t remember herself that way. She wondered how others had seen her.

  Murmuring voices from the wagon behind her. Willow’s low voice, intense, unmistakable. A savage curiosity beset Ki, but she held herself still. What were they talking about, those two? And had she dreamed of the man she’d lost because she feared she’d lose this one, too? Foolish. She knew him too well. Whatever else he might be or might have been, he had honor. Polished, she thought, to a brighter sheen than her own. She need fear no betrayal from Vandien. ‘My love,’ she breathed softly, speaking the word he seldom heard from her. Then, ‘My friend,’ she added, taking strength from the thought. The voices went on a long time. But Ki slept long before they were silent.

  SIX

  ‘Goat, why don’t you get down and walk for a while? Stretch your legs,’ Vandien suggested pleasantly.

  Goat gave him a yellow smile. ‘Why don’t you?’

  Ki closed her eyes for one long moment, then opened them again and fixed them on the road ahead. All morning the two had been exchanging small barbs, but Goat was getting a little too brave now. Vandien smiled at him in silence. Ki could feel his muscles gathering. ‘Ki,’ Vandien said in a very soft voice. ‘Pull the horses up.’

  ‘Vandien.’ She said no more than that, putting all her meaning into the name. Not a cautioning, but a plea. Vandien sighed audibly and leaned back. The clopping of the team’s hooves filled the silence. The long straight road stretched flat before them. It seemed to Ki that the sandy soil they passed today was yellower. And that was the only difference from yesterday. Algona. She mouthed the word silently to herself. First leg of the journey, a measuring point, a way of saying, well, that much is done. There was a dark smudge on the far horizon. It might be Algona, or it might be stunted foothills. Either would be welcome, the hills for the change in terrain, the town for the marking point in their journey.

  Vandien closed his throat. ‘Willow told me a lot of things last night.’

  Goat snickered nastily. ‘I’ll bet she did.’

  ‘I’m talking to Ki,’ Vandien said icily. ‘Be quiet, or I’ll make you quiet.’ Goat’s eyes grew larger and his lips tightened. ‘I couldn’t sleep much, for the pain. And she said she preferred to sleep during the day while we traveled anyway. So we talked. Or she did, and I listened. Mostly about her lover, but later she got into other things. The politics of Loveran are fascinating; we’ve wandered into a hornet’s nest, just waiting to be stirred.’

  ‘This Duke of theirs seems to keep things tightly controlled.’ Worry tinged Ki’s words.

  ‘Perhaps. But remember what Trelira said, about the Duke’s Brurjan patrols keeping the roads free of robbers and rebels? Willow says the emphasis is more on rebels than robbers. And who the rebels are, th
e Brurjans determine.’

  Ki hissed speculatively. ‘Tamshin, for instance?’

  ‘Or Romni. Or anyone else with too fat a caravan, or too high-stepping a horse. The merchants are getting tired of it.’

  ‘Turning into real rebels, perhaps?’ Ki surmised.

  Vandien nodded at her past Goat’s bowed head. The boy was dozing in the sun, eyes closed, mouth slightly ajar. ‘From what I heard in Keddi, they’ve found a focus. The Duchess. The Duke’s mother. She held all the power until he came of age and packed her off to a new life with a “contemplative order.” I understand she finally escaped her meditations and bonds, and would like to have her duchy back. If what Willow tells me is true, it wouldn’t be a bad thing. This grass desert used to be grazing lands and farms, before the Duke came to power and started quarreling with the Windsingers. You know how they are; no percentage for the Windsingers, no decent weather. No rain at planting time, no cooling breezes for seedlings, no …’

  ‘Um. Yes. I know how they are. So?’

  He knew what the ‘so’ meant: How does all this relate to us? Politics to Ki were a nebulous thing, consisting of petty officials to be outwitted and trade laws to be circumvented.

  ‘So that’s what all these travel permits are about. The Duke reasons that if he can keep all his subjects where they belong, except for those with a good economic reason for moving around, he can prevent the massing of supporters for the Duchess, and cut down the flow of information among the rebels. He controls the Brurjan guard. He disbanded the Duchess’s troops, so there’s no other standing force of any kind. By keeping everyone busy accounting for where they are, the Duke prevents the gathering of any force loyal to her.’