In the same moment, across a low stone wall, he’d seen the ones he was after. Carlo and Randy were working at the forge, Randy with his hand on the bellows lever and Carlo with a set of tongs in his gloved hand—which, if Carlo’s fingers felt like his, Carlo wouldn’t find comfortable.
“Looking for the Goss boys,” he said. “Hello,” he said cheerfully, walking past the surly, close-clipped kid, him with his hair growing long and a knife in his boot. “How’s it going, guys?”
The burly kid said, from behind him, “You the new rider, huh?”
He stopped so as to include the guy in his field of view—not inclined to ignore a provocation behind him, not in Shamesey alleys and not here. “Yeah,” he said. The guy was big, but there was soft fat over the memory of muscle. The gut argued for more acquaintance with the bar than the bellows. “Wintering over, at least.” He didn’t like the tone. At all. And Carlo hadn’t answered his hail—Carlo hadn’t given him a clue what the situation was except to say something low and fast to Randy. But he was getting bored with the threat, and walked on.
“So what do you want?” the big kid asked, not satisfied with one look back.
“Friendly call,” he said, just about hoping the guy would pick up one of those iron bars and come at him. He’d not been a thoroughly good kid back in Shamesey streets. He’d been very good since. He’d learned to be smart. But God should give him some satisfaction for his reformation.
Carlo came to meet him, and Randy stayed. Quiet, real quiet, for Randy.
“How’s it going for you?” Carlo took his gloves off and offered a handshake.
“Fine. Want to talk to you. Private. Got a minute?”
“Sure.”
“Place to talk?”
“I’ll get my coat. —Randy, you just keep the heat on. Be back in a minute.”
“Wait a minute!” Randy began.
“Back in a minute, hear me?” Carlo tossed the gloves at him and Randy caught them, still not happy.
“You better get your ass back here,” the other kid said. “Pretty quick. You don’t get paid for talking.”
“Yeah,” Carlo said. “—Come on.” He nodded toward the door and shot a look at Randy before he picked up his coat off a peg near the door, grabbed his hat, and the two of them went out into the milky white of a snowy morning, near the big evergreen. Carlo led the way over beside it and stopped.
“Just a real pleasant fellow in there,” Danny said. “Is that the owner’s kid?”
“Yeah,” Carlo said. “Son of a bitch.” And more cheerfully: “How are you doing?”
“Oh, I’m doing fine. Nice family folk I’m with. Nice kid. Pleasant place. —Is that guy somebody who stays around? You have any trouble with him?”
There was a small silence. Carlo ducked his head, arms tucked, then looked up with his jaw tight. “I tell you I’m getting out of here come spring. Me and Randy, we want to go with you when you leave downland, upland, I don’t care. Anywhere we can get work. I’ll have a little by then to pay you with—or owe you. Whatever it takes. I never hired a rider. I don’t know—”
“Save it. I won’t take your money, long as you don’t want to go off the road I’d take—which is down by east or down by west. Anything else, you’d fell off the mountain.”
“I swear—” Carlo began.
“No big favor. I’m going anyway. Might as well have good company-”
Carlo let go a huge breath. “This guy,” Carlo said. “It’s not just me, understand. I’ve tried.”
“This Mackey guy—the senior—I don’t gather he’s got a good reputation in town, clear out to the rider camp. Ridley sure doesn’t think much of him.”
“I tell you,” Carlo said, thin-lipped, “I’d like to pound his head in. But he’ll take it out on Randy. So will the old man. We wouldn’t have a roof over our heads. And I could end up in jail.”
“I think people in the village know—”
“I’m the stranger here. This guy has property. Listen—I want to ask you. If it ever got real bad—I mean real bad—or if something happens to me, could Randy come over to the camp? And you take care of him?”
“If it gets bad—both of you come over. There’ll be breaks in the weather. I can get you on to Mornay or somewhere no matter the weather. Winter’s bad. But it doesn’t mean a horse can’t move.”
Carlo drew several slow breaths. “That’s real generous.”
“I’d take you this week if the weather clears. But—” He suddenly remembered the whole reason he’d come—and it dawned on him the import of what he knew and the village’s ambitions, and maybe that it wasn’t a real safe thing for Carlo and Randy to try to leave the village with their news. Respectable people could do some damn dirty things—for less money than was involved—and while there might be some who’d take a chance to see there weren’t any heirs to Tarmin property but themselves—there might also be those who’d kill to be sure no other village heard about it.
Carlo could be living with one of the chief suspects in either eventuality, to judge by Mackey’s blowhard son and the fact Carlo was talking about refuge.
But the plain fact was, riders weren’t in great abundance up here. All of Evergreen had better reckon they couldn’t get ten meters through the Wild without a rider to guide them, and that came down to him, and Ridley and Callie—with an eight-year-old they didn’t want in rough circumstances. Things came crystal clear to him of a sudden, just being over here in this environment, that if he made it real clear to the village at large that he and Carlo were close friends, it might be the best protection for Carlo and Randy he could arrange. Nobody had better piss off the only rider-for-hire there was up here.
“Has the marshal talked with you yet?” he asked Carlo in his new sense of immunity. “About your rights to property?”
Carlo squinted at him through the blowing snow and went very, very sober. “No.”
“There’s lawyers involved,” Danny said. “There’s lawyers talking about how you’ve got inheritance rights down in Tarmin. That you own the smith’s shop and the house and all. And there’s a lot of people talking about going down there, families here just sort of homesteading all those vacant buildings.”
“You’re serious. They’re going to do it.”
“No joke.” He felt keenly the lack of the ambient that would have made him aware what Carlo was thinking. “And it might work out all right. There’d be plenty of neighbors. Plenty of work fixing up. If you could stand to go back and live there—you’d own your papa’s forge, the shop and the house and maybe more than that. Anything you’d legitimately inherit. Anything your papa’s or your mama’s relatives had. You could be the richest guy in Tarmin.”
Carlo looked disturbed. He raked a hand through his hair, which had been damp with sweat and which was developing ice crystals in the snowy cold. “Mama’s property. And the forge. And the house.”
“You could be real comfortable—if you can be comfortable down there. This village has to have Tarmin operating. Only place they can really warehouse goods. You know that better than I do. And until they can get oxen, or trucks and fuel to haul whatever they normally get from Tarmin, they’re probably going to have to port supplies up the Climb on hand-carts. That means it’s going to be a real lean spring up here. Prices are going to go sky-high. Just immediately as soon as the snow melts this village or somebody on the High Loop has got to get somebody down to Shamesey and buy oxen, hire drivers and get some truckloads of hay up here to the top of the treeline, or the Anveney truckers are going to gouge them for everything they’ve got. Not saying what Shamesey will charge—if they get wind of it before they’ve made a deal. They’re not going to wait around. These people have to move fast before word gets out.”