Cloud's Rider

by C. J. Cherryh

  Dreadful nickname.

  “All right,” she said. Her hand rested listlessly in her brother’s as he squeezed it.

  “You slept all the way up,” the younger brother said, and squatted down by the older. The girl lay on her prop of pillows and gazed into their faces.

  “I don’t remember.” Her hand moved on the lace and yellow ribbons of the coverlet. “Isn’t it a pretty room?”

  “It’s real pretty,” the older boy said and squeezed her hand again. “—Listen, Brinny-boo, we’re down by the gate. Got a job in the smith’s setup here. We live there. We’re fine. Randy and I are fine. You need anything?”

  “Where’s mama?”

  “Mama and papa are gone, Brinny. So’s aunt Libby. They’re all dead. Nothing left of Tarmin but us.”

  The blue eyes clouded. She turned her face into the pillow and tore her hand from her brother’s fingers.

  “Brinny?”

  “I want mama.”

  “Yeah. I know, I know.” Carlo patted her shoulder as he got up from his knees and looked at Darcy. “I don’t know what I can pay you right now, ma’am, but I will, as soon as I come by any money. As could happen.”

  “I’d like her to stay here. No charge. I have the room. I don’t mind her using it.”

  “That’s awfully kind of you.”

  “I’d be glad to take care of her.” She became desperate, fearing she’d led herself into a dangerous dead end of reason, and having lost all her sense of what anyone truly wanted, she had nothing left to throw to the hunters but a tidbit of her privacy, to make them think they were friends and to make logical to them her position. “I had a girl about her age. She died. The house has been real empty. The girl needs someone all the time—a stable environment. She can’t be moved to still one more strange place.”

  “If Brionne could live here, if you were willing to do that for her, we’d be grateful. We might be able to help out, do some fixing up and all. Next spring—next spring it looks like we’ll be able to give you some kind of payment.”

  That didn’t matter to her. Money didn’t matter. Their separation from Brionne was the currency she wanted. It was wonderful news.

  “I’m well set,” she said, and walked out to the head of the stairs, luring them to follow as she kept talking. “I can take care of her. Of course you’ll come and see her.” By spring—by spring if they changed their minds and wanted their sister back, she’d argue the child was too delicate to travel with them and live in a ravaged village. It was a stupid idea for them to go back there, and by what she’d heard of Tarmin, though the buildings might be intact and all, they’d still have to get supplies there. By the time the boys were in any fashion set to want her back she’d have Brionne attached to her, that was what she’d do. So they’d never get her back. By that time Brionne wouldn’t even think of going—to brothers she hadn’t been tearfully glad to see.

  “We’d really be grateful,” Carlo Goss said; and the younger brother said, as they followed her down the stairs:

  “Carlo and me get along all right. But it’s pretty rough down at the forge.”

  “I’m sure you’re right.” She knew the smith, his surly brat. And his wife, as vicious and self-seeking a woman as ever she’d met— only woman in town who could have made Van Mackey worse than he was. “Your sister owes her life to you. It was a miracle you got up the Climb at all.” She reached the front door and, since they had never taken their coats off and seemed in a hurry, gave them no grace at all of invitations to stay and talk. “You come back whenever you want. You’ll know she’s just down the street.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” the older boy said. “I’m grateful. We are. Really.”

  “Any time.” She opened the door, waited just long enough to see the boys leave down the snowy steps.

  Then she shut the door and latched it against the kind of drunken fools that sometimes mistook the private door for the office, and calmed herself enough for a sigh of relief.

  The girl was hers. They hadn’t, after all, come to make any other arrangements. They were no more than kids themselves, the younger boy young enough to need someone’s care—but not hers. It didn’t need to be her business. Nothing about them needed to be her business.

  But in one thing she was puzzled—the impression she’d gotten that, after all they’d done to save her, they’d not been shattered by her condition—or cheered by her improvement. They’d just offered money—and left with nothing in evidence but relief.

  Odd, she thought. That certainly wasn’t the behavior of loving brothers. It just wasn’t. And Brionne had shed no tears, none at all.

  The kids hadn’t come back down from the midway shelter when the weather cleared—which meant the two of them had a choice of going up what Tara called a hellish road, or going up a straight-up-the-mountain route that Tara swore she could make, and that Guil maintained, against her protestations, that he could make.

  There were, Tara said, logging shelters and miners’ cabins, and she knew with a local rider’s knowledge where they were.

  There was supposedly such a shelter ahead of them on their ascent, not of the road, but of the broad mountain face. It was a shelter, as Tara had imaged it,

  But thus far Guil saw it only through the inner eye, in Tara’s memory of a summer approach to the place, , and not the sort she’d care to overnight among. The image was

  The reality was and it was a good thing, Guil thought, that they had two experienced high-country horses feeling their way through the snow, knowing by the way trees grew and brush situated itself that there might be a ledge, knowing the soft, attractive snow was not at all reliable. It wasn’t a rapid progress and, hazy as the snow-sifting branches had become to Guil’s perception, he walked, or staggered, used Burn’s tail to help him up the generally steep slopes.

  It wasn’t Burn’s favorite way to make a climb, with a human pulling on a fairly important part of Burn’s dignity, but Burn tolerated it, as Burn tolerated the baggage knocking about his ribs, , because otherwise his rider wasn’t going to be able to follow Tara and Flicker up this damn slope—and that would have meant Burn, torn between and , faced an unthinkably inconvenient choice.

  Which would of course be , but damnably dreadful to make.

  <“Burn ” waiting.> Guil didn’t talk out loud much at all—or hadn’t, until the last few days. He didn’t know when he’d last had someone to talk to—last time he’d ridden with Aby, he guessed; but it surprised him, now, the unaccustomed word coming out of his mouth, the way it surprised him that the snow was so gray and the world that was going around in such an unaccustomed way.

  It was a very inconvenient place to fall. He had empty air at his back, rock under his feet, and feeling himself overbalanced, he grabbed a sapling evergreen, which bent, but which kept him on his feet and on the small ledge somewhere on a fairly steep slope. Even when the whole world went and an attempt to find footing failed; he only swung around with the tree in his embrace—facing he wasn’t quite sure what direction, but it felt like sideways on the mountain.

  “Guil? Guil, hang on!”

  “Oh, I will,” he said, and kept his arms full of tree, hoping that his sight would come back—he had Burn’s view of and , but he didn’t think that was directly in front of him. It seemed rather, like the rest of the mountain, somewhat to the side and behind him.

  That persuaded him, along with the general inclination of the very flexible, smelly and prickly sapling, which stabbed right through his gloves and through a gap that had developed between his glove and his jacket cuff, that if he let go he’d fall—which would hurt his side and his headache far worse than hanging on was hurting him. So he clung.

  Eventually he heard, through the gray that beset his vision, the scrabble of human feet and felt much closer to him.

  “Here.” A hand closed on his arm. “I’ll steady you.”

  “I’m not seeing.”

  “You can’t see?”

  “It’s not bad. It’ll come back.”

  “The hell it’ll come back!”

  “A little knock on the skull. A while back. I’m just dizzy.”r />
  “But you can’t see.”

  “It’ll go away.”

  “You’re a damn fool, Guil!”

  “Just wait here a minute.”

  “You should have told me you were having blackouts!”

  “Just gray. It’s fine.” He blinked several times. He could see quite plainly, looking down on the scene and slightly overlapped—his brain having temporarily lost the knack for sifting skewed images into one image. It made him dizzier, and for a moment he thought he was going to lose his breakfast into the bargain, which might make him let go of the tree.

  Not a good idea.

  And he supposed if it were just him and Burn, Burn would get back down here and give him something besides a tree to hold to; Burn had four feet, and he’d feel a lot better about that, than about Tara’s trying to pry him loose.

  “You can’t hold me,” he said.

  “I want you to put your arm around my shoulder and I want you to put your right foot in the direction I go. All right?”

  “You can’t hold me.”

  “Shut up and let go! We’re not that far from the shelter. Trust me, hear?”

  He let go. He didn’t grab her, fearful of dragging her off if he slipped, trusting if they slid, her instinct would save her; and he’d try for the tree. He could see a bit—at least a blur of white and gray that was snow and rock. He could see through Tara’s eyes, clearer than that, once the human brain decided which view of things was compatible with where two human bodies were standing. Once he had that, he could climb, using her balance and her sight, up that slope to where two horses waited anxiously.

  “Sit down?” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said, and found a rock and rested there until the blood got back to his brain or away from it or whatever unnatural condition was causing the gray-out.

  Then he saw a log cabin in front of him.

  “We’re here,” he said.

  “Yeah,” she said. “We’re here. Mining camp. Halfway to the upper road.”

  He said, on a copper-tasting breath and with a pounding headache: “Told you I could do it.”

  Preacher John Quarles came to call at the clinic in the morning. John’s mother had sent over a cake, which came welcome.

  “Is it true?” John asked. “Has the little girl waked?”

  “Yes,” she said. She didn’t want John to go and pray over her, but she didn’t see any way out. She brought him upstairs, where the sunlight through white curtains, on white lace and yellow walls, made the girl so beautiful she liked just to look at her at this hour.

  Brionne had actually been reading—one of Faye’s books, that lay beside a white hand on the lace and satin coverlet. Brionne had nodded off, as she would almost every page.

  “She’s very weak yet,” Darcy said in a hushed voice. “She asked for books. But she tires very quickly.”

  “An angel,” John said, and launched into a quiet little prayer for “the Lord’s own little miracle.”

  Brionne never stirred.

  Darcy led her visitor downstairs again and, in the obligation to social courtesy, found herself comfortable with the visit—actually found herself in a buoyant mood as John sat and shared tea and cookies.

  “Truthfully,” John said, “it wasn’t just the cake that brought me. I wanted to be sure you were aware—” John cleared his throat. “I trust there’ve been no visits from Simms.”

  “For what?” She reacted to every breath of wind that threatened the girl staying here. She’d come to hope—so much. And they couldn’t change the arrangement. She didn’t want to deal with lawyers.

  God, did he suspect? Did he know it mattered that much?

  “Knowing that child’s welfare is precious to you,” John said, “I think you should petition the court for guardianship—and have her rights protected.”

  “Against what?” Her nerves wouldn’t take shocks. Not anymore. “Why?”

  “This child has rights,” John said, “to a lot of property. There was a village meeting about it. The Goss children are the heirs to the smith down in Tarmin. And a house. At least one house. Maybe two. It’s been the talk in the village—”

  “I don’t get around the village much,” Darcy said. “Socially. As you know.”

  “Well, in the Lord’s wisdom, the boys and this dear child are the only living heirs—some say of the whole village, but the judge I think will rule that the village is salvage, except that the Goss family holds the blacksmith shop and the family house and maybe one or two other houses in the village.”

  “The boys came here talking about maybe coming into some money. That was what they meant.”

  “Seems they do stand to inherit quite an establishment. Now, the oldest boy seems quite a nice young man—but I just would be careful, Darcy. I think you should seek legal guardianship. In this child’s interests. There are just too many who might seek it. If you understand.”

  Hell, she thought. That was why the elder boy had been so forward with his offers of money. She said with never a ruffle: “There’s no way this poor girl can go down there. God knows the conditions down there. I hope you’ll back me in that with the judge.”

  “I have no difficulty with that,” John said. “The boys are good boys. But they have their interests in actually working the forge, in which I just do not imagine this fragile child has any skill. I do think they’ll stand by her financially as the Lord blesses them—they seem good churchgoing boys, and they do seem right in their intentions, but the older boy in particular is at that age when some girl will take his fancy, and he’ll start thinking of his own house. The brothers seem very close, and I think there’s no worry for the younger boy, who I’m sure will apprentice to his brother, but I think to assure equity for this child there should be some provision for her, specifically, with some caring person, independent of means, to look out for her interests.”

  “I agree. Guardianship.” Darcy found her hands trembling and tried to disguise the fact. John Quarles was an opinion that counted almost conclusively with the judge. John was also one to couch even his harshest judgments in very soft words, and John seemed to be saying that in his opinion the boys weren’t that acutely concerned for their sister—in which conclusion her own observations thoroughly concurred. “Also,” she said, “I do think—whatever my own reservations—it would be well if the child had exposure to church. You know I sent Faye. As traumatized as this child has been—I am thinking of taking her to services. And that tells you, John, how much I’m willing to commit to for this child.”

  “That in itself is a miracle, Darcy.”

  “Maybe—” She’d sell her soul for possession of the girl upstairs. And prepared to do it. “Maybe after all I’ve been through I’m willing to listen, myself. I at least think it’s important to give this child every stable influence I can lay hands on. And this child needs a guide, John.” She considered half a breath and threw all the chips on the table. “Maybe I need a change of heart, too.”

  That, God help her, led to a spate of praying right there and then, which she found incredibly ridiculous and embarrassing. But she bowed her head and said, feeling she would throw up, “Amen,” when John was finished.

  But it meant John would fight for her rights. John had himself a couple of challenging prospects. They were hard come by, in a village divided between the hard-drinking woods-dwellers and the villager youth who, after their usual pubescent foolishness, realized that their respectability and their standing depended on the church. Village youngsters fell, either as a matter of course or a matter of post-procreative contrition, into John’s kindly hands. Those were no challenge. She was. Her attendance would set the village abuzz—and satisfy no few pious busybodies who’d included her in Sunday prayers for years.

  Her Brionne. Her wayfarer from the storm—might be a wealthy young woman. A respectable, looked-up-to woman, churched, prayed-over, able to dictate her own way in the world and have anything she wanted.

  That was what the boy had been talking about, this Tarmin business, and coming into some money. If he wanted to send money, if he wanted to pay Brionne her inheritance in cash, that wa
s very good. She’d call Simms tomorrow and have a document drawn up, something to protect Brionne and assure her rights to her share.

  She wrote out a prescription to the pharmacist for cough medicine which John and his mother both used.

  “How soon do you think they will resettle Tarmin?” she asked.

  “Oh, up and running by next fall. At least to get a substantial establishment there, and maybe some supplies up here. The marshal’s organizing. The judge is drawing up documents. And the very clever heads are figuring how to deal with the lowland companies without getting into debt. There’s a great deal of greed at work here, Darcy, an uncomfortable amount of worldly greed.”

  That, she believed truly shocked John. So many things did. It didn’t mean John didn’t understand them.

  “I tell you,” she said, “this child’s been through enough. She deserves to stay up here and be very comfortable.”

  “Amen,” John said. “Lord bless, and amen to that.”

  That afternoon, with the sun peeking through gray clouds and the office curtains back, and her porch sign saying Open for the first time in a year, Darcy had her first doors-open customer, when a miner came trailing in with a sliced arm he claimed to have gotten on a nail near the barracks and she knew damned well was a knife cut, likely gotten in the tavern last night, by the color and character of it, the sort of thing knife fighters often got defending themselves, and bad knife fighters at that.

  Even before this last year she’d tended to send this sort of patient to the pharmacist for salve and bandages, since the man hadn’t come in directly after the fight (he’d slept it off, she was sure, oblivious to the pain) and the cut was too old for the stitches it could have used. Probably it had been a clean knife. The likeliest contaminant was The Evergreen’s steak sauce.

  “I do appreciate this,” the man was saying. Earnest was his name. Earnest Riggs. Miner, of the sort constantly trying to get a stake to hire and provision a couple of his fellows for some hole in the rocks out of which they did a little hunting, a little mining, a little of anything to keep going another season, for, of course, the big find, the vein he just knew was there. She didn’t even ask if he was the down-the-mountain sort, or the up-the-mountain sort, which might have said whether he was panning or digging. She personally didn’t care. He did have credit slips with the bank, which she asked for up front. But while she was getting the bandages, he was telling her what an upstanding citizen he was, and how his little company had a find— this was always preface to an appeal for funds, but he hadn’t gotten to it yet.