The Luck Of The Wheels

by Megan Lindholm

  Dellin clambered slowly down from the wagon and came to stand over them. He did not stoop to touch the body, but Ki could almost feel the soft brush of his mind as he probed.

  'Ki,' he said at last, and there was infinite pity in his tone. She felt his touch on her thoughts, felt his attempt to soften the impact as he said softly, 'It's only his body. He's not ... in there.'

  'No!' Goat's voice was shrill in her ears, but more, it screamed within her as he pushed aside his uncle's comforting touch. She felt scraped raw as his mind-touch ripped away her half-formed acceptance of Vandien's death. 'Don't let go!' he told her fiercely. 'Hold on to his life for him!' His clutch at her feelings was as rough as his uncle's was skilled. It was like the embrace of a stranger, and she would have struggled against it if she had known how.

  Her hearing had gone woolly. Someone whispered, 'Stop. You'll only die with him, he's gone out of reach,' but it was no one she knew and his words didn't matter. What mattered, she found, was sitting down in the dust and dragging Vandien's body half into her lap, cradling him against her as she put her cheek on his forehead. Holding onto him. Refusing to let him be dead. She brushed her lips against his hair. She held him closer, but despite her grip she sensed him slipping away.

  'Too late,' someone warned. 'He's let go, no one can reach him now. Let him go.'

  'Which do you fear more?' Goat demanded of her. The boy's voice was strangled in her ears, but it rang out in her heart. 'Decide. To love him. Or let him go.'

  She couldn't hold him and let him go. His body was warm against her; the rising scents of his hair and skin were sweet in her nostrils. She couldn't let him go. But she couldn't love him, not the way Goat made the word feel inside her, not without restraints and cautions. She loved the man, yes, she wanted him close to her, she'd die for him if she had to. But that was not what Goat was asking of her. She could let her love flow endlessly into Vandien without regret. But there was another aspect. There was accepting wholeheartedly Vandien's love, and depending on his love to be there. It was not just admitting she loved him, but admitting he loved her, and accepting what he offered. It was too dangerous to be that vulnerable, it would hurt too much if ... She felt him slip another notch. Something inside her broke jaggedly. She gasped, but the pain wasn't physical. She threw away her caution, let the walls come down and her love go howling after him. There was relief in releasing what she had withheld from him and from herself. Needing him. Not just wanting him. Depending on him in the same way he depended on her. 'Please,' she begged of someone, not knowing who she asked, nor what she asked for.

  'You've reached him.' There was amazement in Dellin's voice. She suddenly felt his guidance enter the web of their feelings. Deftly she felt him extracting Goat, and just for a bare moment, as he left, she felt as a Jore would the network she and Vandien had made and shared, felt it stretched tight and hummingly alive between them.

  Then there was only the man in her arms, his weight and his warmth against her. She knew then only what she felt toward him; what he felt toward her she would have to take on trust, believing blindly that his feelings corresponded to her own. It was suddenly a lonely and dangerous position to hold. Caution bade her be wary, warned her not to care too much that he cared for her.

  'Don't let go now,' Dellin warned her. He dragged Goat to his feet, stumbled him toward the wagon. 'Neither Goat nor I could hold him for you now. Love him, or let him go.'

  She sat in the dust of the road, holding him. She lifted his arms carefully onto his chest, clasped both his hands in one of hers. The fingers of his sword arm were puffy and chill against hers. The wound he had taken from Kellich? She pushed his sleeve back. As her eyes traced the angry brand down his tanned forearm, she winced. 'What did they do to you?' she asked him.

  'Probably more than he'll ever be able to tell you about, even if he can remember it all himself,' Dellin replied for him. The Jore healer crouched beside them. 'It might be wiser not even to ask.' He rocked on his heels beside them.

  'Is Gotheris going to be all right?' Ki remembered to ask.

  Dellin nodded in his slow way. 'He's tired. But he did well, for his first attempt. I see that my major task will be to teach the boy restraint and caution. He left himself no line of life to depend on. If Vandien had not come back, neither would Gotheris.'

  'But Vandien is back, and he's going to recover?'

  Dellin looked at her pityingly. 'You know he is, so why do you ask? Trust what you feel sometimes.' After a long pause, he added, 'You may find him somewhat changed.'

  Ki lifted a questioning gaze, but Dellin dropped his eyes to one side to keep her from reading them. 'I could mute it for him,' Dellin offered softly. 'Hide the worst from him.'

  Ki heard what he was offering. It frightened her. What had they done to him, that Dellin would make such an offer? She pushed the idea away, and knew he felt her doing so. 'I want him the way he is,' she said firmly. Saying the words aloud helped her know they were true, 'I don't always have to understand him. Sometimes we'll just have to trust each other.'

  Vandien took a slightly deeper breath. His mouth twitched. She held him closer. His eyes slowly opened. 'I thought ...' His voice was rusty. 'I thought I was home.'

  'You are,' Ki told him.

  TWENTY

  'Loveran is no longer a Human province. Does it feel strange, knowing you're responsible for a thing like that?'

  A few heartbeats passed before Vandien answered. 'No. Because I won't accept that as true. All of this would have happened without us, you know. Kellich would have killed the Duke, if we had never happened along.'

  'But we did.' Ki watched the Brurjans trotting toward them, then glanced over at Vandien once more. Bad enough that he looked so damn good in the Duke's armor, on the Duke's horse. Did he also have to be aware of it? As the Brurjans closed with them, he lifted his hand in casual greeting. Both his sleeves were rolled back, but they scarcely glanced at the knife's scar. 'Keklokito,' one growled companionably in passing, and Vandien nodded. His white horse cut through their ranks, and the opening widened to allow Ki, riding Sigmund and leading Sigurd, to follow. She'd sold the wagon in Villena, as much out of disgust with it as for the coin. Sigurd's leg needed the rest from pulling anyway.

  She waited until the sound of the Brurjan troops had faded behind her before she asked, 'How's it feel to be a Brurjan legend?'

  He made a noncommittal sound.

  'What's it mean, anyway?'

  'Lordly one,' he said, quite seriously.

  'I'll bet. How much farther to the border, do you suppose?'

  'Doesn't matter, remember? No freight, no customers, no deadlines.'

  'No money,' she pointed out.

  'Has it been a problem so far?' he asked chidingly.

  'No. But after we cross the border, Keklokito isn't going to have his Brurjan friends to depend on. Thank the Moon.'

  'They aren't that bad,' he insisted again, and Ki snorted, but let it drop.

  'I miss him,' Vandien said suddenly into the silence.

  Ki didn't need to ask who. 'Dellin said there was something between you. A teacher bond. It's what made him keep looking for you after I'd given you up for dead. And he'll always be aware of you, through that bond ...'

  'As close as I'll ever come to a son. And I'll never see him again.'

  'We don't have to go back north,' Ki suggested.

  'Yes we do.' He cleared his throat. 'I had to leave the boy. Dellin explained it to me that last night. As long as I was close by, Goat would never form a "primary" bond with him. And he needed that bond to teach Goat, not just healing, but how to shield and protect himself.'

  'So, for his own good, you leave him.'

  'He understood.'

  'Is that what all those long talks were about in the back of the wagon while your body was shaking off the poison?'

  'Dellin said it was more the effects of the Brurjan cure than the poison from Kellich's blade. She must have given me the full Brurjan dose.'
r />   'Could Keklokito have merited less?' Ki asked gravely.

  He shot her a glance, but didn't smile. It was something she'd missed lately; it was harder to make him smile, and he seemed always to be thinking of something else. Was this the change Dellin had warned her about?

  'Know what Goat said to me, the night before we left Villena?'

  'What?' Ki asked tolerantly. Since they had left Villena, Vandien hadn't stopped talking about the boy, and repeating precocious things Croat had said. Oddly, she found she didn't mind hearing them. She'd even added a few of her own.

  'He said, "Your honor, Vandien, is what makes it possible for you to live with yourself.'"

  'And can you live with yourself, now?'

  'A little better than it was right afterwards. Goat assured me that my motives were always honorable, even when the results were appalling.' Vandien paused, gave a small laugh. 'It's strange. The words of a child, and I take them so seriously.'

  'He knows you very well.' Ki couldn't keep a twinge of jealousy out of her voice.

  'Well enough to know there's only one woman I'd burn a town down for.' Vandien grinned suddenly. 'I think Goat would have helped me do it, too, if he'd had the chance.'

  Old habit made Ki refuse to look at him. Then she caught herself and brought her eyes up to face him. 'Did you think I'd threatened Willow with less than that for your life?'

  They rode side by side, as close as White could be persuaded to come to Sigmund. Something hummed between them, like a secret they both knew and neither wanted to speak. It was good.