'All right. You're worried about Vandien, right?'
'Right.' Close enough to the truth, anyway.
'They'll keep him alive, if they can.' Goat's voice was cautiously reassuring. 'They'll take decent care of him. They need him.'
So did she. But she didn't have him any more than they did. No one had him. Her soul fell into a black gulf.
'He's good with a sword. That's important to them.' Goat's voice was hesitant, wary. Asking to be asked. She complied.
'Why?'
Goat clambered back onto the scat. She couldn't really see his face in the dark, but he still stared off intothe night. 'What I took from Willow,' he said softly. 'What she wanted back so badly that she was... kind to me ... was a part of a plan. I don't know everything - no one rebel ever knows everything about a plan, except the Duchess. I didn't understand it all, because Willow didn't. But Willow was to be the one to make the contact with the Brurjan that could be bribed not to look for poison on Kellich's blade.' Goat's voice fell away. 'Only I took the name of the Brurjan out of her dream.'
'Moon's light,' breathed Ki. She stared at Goat, disbelief warring with enlightenment. 'You can do things like that.' When she said the words, they came out as a statement.
'With some people,' Goat conceded slowly. 'Willow has Jore blood, too, though it doesn't show in the same way as mine. Nor would she admit it. But I know it. It makes the link easier for me. But she can't ... reach into someone like I can. She is just ... very persuasive. Her talent doesn't have the strength of mine. It's part of why she hates me, I think.'
'I see,' Ki said slowly. How much jealousy had Willow felt, knowing this boy could offer the rebellion so much more than she could? Had she deliberately alienated him from her friends, to eliminate him as competition? Competition for what? For respect and honor? For Kellich's attention? Would Kellich not have needed her if Goat had been recruited?
Reality broke over Ki like a cold wave. And she had been taking the boy back into the middle of that quarrel? Insanity. Vandien was gone; nothing could be served by following the tracks of the rebels. Senseless. Better to get the boy out of here, to deliver him to Villena as she had promised. Then would be the time to take revenge for Vandien's death. Perhaps by then she would know who to blame for it.
'Don't move. We don't want to hurt anyone. Unless we have to.'
One moment the night had been a quiet and empty place around them. Now hooded figures ghosted up from the grass, flowed into the road. Sigurd whinnied in sudden alarm and threw his head back. Reflex made Ki pull them in even as someone gripped the edge of her wagon, swung easily up onto the box beside her. A knife touched her throat. Her eyes flickered over the highwaymen. Seven, eight of them. Humans. But those were only the ones she could see. Were there others behind the wagon, more still lying flat in the grass? Goat was twisting his shirt front in his hands. She put out a hand to his shoulder, gripped the boy to steady him. He quivered under her touch.
'What do you want from us?' Ki asked quietly.
No one answered her. They were already moving around the wagon. She heard the side door open, felt the weight of an intruder rock the wagon. 'Just follow the plan,' one of them reminded the others. 'Everyone knows his own part.'
'Rebels!' Goat breathed.
'Quiet!' the leader barked again. At least Ki assumed he was the leader. He was the only one who had spoken, and he held the knife at her throat. In their flowing brown robes and hoods, they all looked remarkably alike. His shapeless hood had a slash for his eyes. She saw their glitter, but could not tell what color they were, nor anything else about the man. 'Climb down,' he ordered gruffly. And put your hands in front of you.'
'Take whatever you wish and leave us in peace,' Ki suggested. 'We won't report this to anyone. We were just leaving this area anyway. There will be no trouble from us. We have business that takes us far from here.' 'Your business has become our business,' the man said sternly. The knife pressed more firmly, and she became aware of the figure holding a blade to Goat's throat. She rose carefully, clambered down in the shadow of the knife-wielder. They walked Goat over to stand beside her. 'Clasp your hands together, palm to palm,' the leader directed.
Ki glanced at Goat. The boy's trembling hands were clutched before him. His face was drawn. She copied him, joining her hands together and holding them in front of her. The hooded man bound her wrists with a strange, flat rope that only tightened when she flexed her muscles against it. Goat was already bound. Behind her someone mounted the box of her wagon, took up the reins. Then a bag came down over her head.
The sack smelled of grain, and she nearly choked on loose chaff that shook free from its rough weave. The hands that seized her elbows were not rough, but neither were they gentle. She was hurried forward, sent stumbling through the dry grass and rocks for a good distance. She heard Goat cry out, the sound cut off short. 'Goat?' she called out, and a hand slapped hard against her belly, making her lose her breath. She was pushed up against a large, warm animal.
'Mount it,' an unfamiliar voice ordered, and as she struggled to do so, someone large caught her around the waist and heaved her up on the animal. The only harness she could find was a rough blanket strapped over the horse's back. She gripped the edge of it, wrapped her legs around its barrel body. It started forward without any warning and she lurched backward, nearly losing her seat. 'Hold on,' a gruff voice warned her, and then the beast was jerked into a jolting canter, and her ears were filled with the sound of moving horses around her. If she slipped down, she'd be trampled.
Blind and powerless to control her fate, she was carried forward in a nightmare journey. She gripped the edge of the horse's blanket tightly, using every bit of strength in her legs to keep a firm seat. She drew a deep breath, imposed an artificial order on her mind. One thing at a time, she decided. These horses couldn't keep up this pace for long. They were farm plugs, not warriors' horses. So they couldn't be going far. Once they arrived, she might have an opportunity to free Goat and herself. It was the best plan she could think of now. She gripped the thought and hung onto it, pushing all else out of her mind.
'What is this place?' Goat's voice was eerie in the darkness.
'I don't know. Some kind of a root cellar, maybe?' Ki put her hand on the boy's shoulder and patted it. She could feel him vibrating with nervousness.
She wondered what time of day it was. She had no idea of how long they had ridden, blinded and bound, nor how long it had taken her to work free of her bonds and get the bag off her head. It hadn't helped much. It was as dark without the sack as it had been with it.
The smell of earth was all around them. She had already discovered that the ceiling of rough slab wood was but a handspan over her head, and that to touch it brought down a shower of soil. The chamber itself was small, no longer than a tall man lying down, and about half again as wide. Her jaws ached from chewing the rope from her wrists, and her wrists were chafed raw where the bonds had worked against them.
'I'm thirsty,' Goat said suddenly.
'Not much we can do about it,' Ki observed quietly. She was groping her way along the wall. There had to be a door, but if there was, she kept missing it. All her hands found were earth and occasional tanglesof roots. Once she stepped in something that might have been vegetables gone bad. She certainly hoped that's what it was. And around the fourth corner and down that wall again. And here it was at last. The door. She had missed it before because she hadn't remembered how her head had been forced down before she'd been pushed in. It was a very short door, no more than waist high. She groped for a handle, found none, pushed on it. It didn't yield at all. Probably barred from the outside. She sat down slowly, put her back against it.