The leatherworker warmed toward him. 'The Duke's Brurjans seem to think that of anyone they meet, these days,' she confided to them. 'Such a sifting of travellers as they have done of late. There are rumors of a rebel spy travelling to the Duchess. It is said that he has knowledge of the Duke's troops, and the strength and fortifications of Masterhold itself. The Brurjan that lays claws on him first is to be richly rewarded, with seven black mares and a white stallion from the Duke's own stables.'
'All the more reason for us to remain unobtrusive,' Ki filled in. Vandien had wandered back to the street and was watching the traffic. A haunted look was on his face. He was right, Ki decided. Finish the errands quickly and leave.
She thanked the girl, and they made their way to the smithy and found he had herbs which, rubbed against the horses' sweaty hides, would stave off the worst of the fleas and ticks. He also had a paste for worming, one he assured Ki was necessary in this part of the world as a monthly tonic. Vandien stood bored as she listened to the smithy, and did not even join in on bargaining him down to a price she thought fair. Her arms were full as they left the smithy's barn, and Vandien carried the tea and honey, so she could not take his arm as she longed to.
'Sure you don't want just one quick beer?' she offered again as they approached the wagon.
'Well ... no. No, let's get on our way to Villena. Goat! Open the cuddy door, my hands are full. Goat!'
No answer. No creak of motion from the wagon. The horses shifted in their harness as Vandien waited. Then he turned, stacked his goods into Ki's arms, and jerked the door opened himself. 'Goat!' he roared, as the door came open.
There was no reply, and the look he turned on Ki was unreadable. 'He's gone,' he told her, and jumped down from the wagon step. She struggled laden up the step to dump their purchases on the bed. She came out of the wagon to see Vandien coming out of the inn.
'Not there,' he said tersely. They looked at each other in silence.
'Want me to check the other shops around here?' Ki offered, but Vandien shook his head, hisexpression suddenly savage.
'You know where he's gone as well as I do. Damn Goat, can't leave anything alone. It was bad enough as it was, and now to go back into it, to have to see her face again.'
He moved as he ranted, placing the bits in the horses' mouths, setting aside the water buckets the hostler had left for them. 'Let me just pay the innkeeper, then,' Ki suggested.
He was holding the reins when she came out, and for once she said nothing about his driving. The team felt his tension down the reins, for they stepped out smartly and Sigurd, for once, tried no tricks with him. Back they went, the shade of the great trees flickering across the greys' backs and changing them to silvers and whites and almost blacks as the light changed.
He turned the wagon into the dusty yard of the Two Ducks Inn, and pulling up the team, set the brake and jumped down from the seat. Ki followed him, hoping they would find Goat, hoping that they wouldn't find him with Willow, hoping desperately that nothing was going to happen, but feeling, just as instinctively as Vandien had all day, that something had already happened, that all that was left was to make a salvage attempt.
The quiet of the innyard had been deceptive. Ki and Vandien stepped into a dream standing motionless, like a play waiting for an audience. Guests of the inn stood in a white-faced circle about a grouping of three. Willow, sitting at a stained wooden table, her face cradled in her arms, her glossy hair a spreading copper against the table's dull surface, while Goat, his face a frozen mask of fear, plucked desperately at her sleeve, begging, 'Willow, make him stop! Tell him you wanted to!' The man with the drawn blade had to be Kellich. Ki would have known him anywhere. This was who Willow loved, and rightly so. This man in the loose shirt of scarlet silk and black trousers tucked neatly into shining black boots. This man, slender as his blade and as flexible, with a graven face an idol might have envied as the setting for eyes that were darker azure than an August sky. But Willow could not have loved the pain and anger in those eyes, the humiliation that whitened his tanned skin to sallowness.
'Come to your death, whelp!' Kellich invited Goat.
'No!' Goat wailed, and stepped once again into the shelter of Willow's body as Kellich moved around the table. 'Willow! Make him stop it! You wanted to be with me, you know you did! I felt it, you wanted me. Tell him! Tell him to let us go!'
Willow lifted her head suddenly. Nothing of youth was left in her face. Hopelessness and hatred had blended to leave her green and blue eyes scarcely human. She turned a killing look on Goat. 'I wanted what you stole from me!' Her voice was low, gravelly, but carried well. 'So I put in my mind what you wanted to see. Did you think I wouldn't know how to do that, you, who know so much about me? When you stole all my life from me, made my memories a mockery, didn't you stop to think that I might hate you for it, but know how to hide that hate?'
Goat's eyes bugged out, yellower with terror and outrage than Ki had ever seen them. 'Bitch!' His shriek broke on the word. 'Bitch, copper-haired bitch! You made me think you liked me, you made me think you cared for me!'
Willow shook her head slowly, her red mane sweeping her shoulders. Her face was harder and colder than ice. 'I hated you. Your touch on me was like rats scampering over my body. I loathed it. I loathed it!' Willow screamed the last words, and Goat cowered. She looked desperately into Kellich's face then, but his eyes did not change. He was not a man with deep wells of forgiveness within him. Her first errorwas to be her last.
Willow saw it as surely as Ki did. She rose with a ponderous heaviness, slapped away Goat's clutching hands. She moved away from him, into the circled watchers. 'Kill him,' she said to Kellich in passing. 'It will not save anything for us, but it may save the next person he meets. Have no pity for him.'
'I'll have no blood on my floor!' the innkeeper interjected suddenly. His ruddy face was already dripping sweat. 'I'll call the guard, I will! Duelling's forbidden, and I'll not have the Duke's guards saying I sanctioned it here! I'm warning you, Kellich! Much as I like you, I'll call the guards.'
Kellich's eyes had never left Goat. 'Call away,' he told the man. 'It won't be a duel here, Geoff. It's an execution; no, an extermination. Not for myself, not for my own pride or honor, though.' He turned suddenly on Goat. 'Give it back to her,' he said softly. 'And I might let you live.'
For a long instant Goat stared at him. Then his face crumpled, and tears brimmed his Jore eyes. 'No. I can feel the lie! You're going to kill me, no matter what I do.' His lower lip suddenly jutted, trembled. 'None of you ... ever ... liked me at all!' The last was the wail of a betrayed child. Then he threw his head up, suddenly defiant. 'When the guards get here, I'm telling. I'm telling them everything, Kellich. Your head will be carried on a pole at the front of the Duke's procession, this festival.'
The boy had judged wrong. His threat did not cow Kellich, nor the crowd. Ki felt the whole room grow colder, felt all the people at the inn suddenly accept the necessity of Kellich's killing Goat. No mercy for him. And if Kellich did not kill him, the mob would. Goat had touched a nerve.
'Oh, damn!' Vandien breathed beside Ki. 'Damn, damn, damn, why can't I just let it happen!' Then, before she could react to his words, he was stepping forward, his hand light on the hilt of his rapier, calling out, 'Hold, Kellich! Hold!'
Ki stood transfixed as the man swung his attention to Vandien. 'You're free with my name, for a stranger,' he observed. His blue eyes darted to Vandien's hand on the rapier hilt, swiftly measured the man against himself.
'I feel I know you, from all that Willow has said about you,' Vandien began, but Kellich interrupted with a strained laugh.