“It was a dare,” one of the boys muttered, and an image flashed into Tara’s mind: <Brionne slipping through the village side gate.> “They dared her do it.”

“Who dared her?”

<Kids watching, from the village side.> “The kids. But she was always coming here. She said she could hear the horses.” <Brionne in a village house. Brionne at a fireside… >

But it wasn’t anywhere Tara had ever seen. And dammit, Brionne didn’thear the horses. <Snatching the young fool out of harm’s way,> she remembered, precisely because the girl didn’t hear—or hearing, refused to believe that any horse refused her insistent attentions.

But she was seeing <Brionne in the village, Brionne next the forge, her face glowing> and it wasn’t her doing it, it was the blacksmith and his sons too near the horses.

“My girl’s been coming here?” the blacksmith cried, as if it were herfault. “She’s been in and out of here and you didn’t report it? Damn you!”

They were townsmen unused to the images that came thick and fast next the den—< Brionne with biscuits, Brionne running out the door of the den>—and Tara felt panic rising in the ambient. “She came here. I told her go home. We all told her go home. It didn’t take. She—”

She couldn’t focus on it. She was seeing <Vadim and Chad getting supplies. Restless horses, waiting.>

<Mina and Luisa wanting to go.> The argument had broken out on that score before Vadim had exchanged words with Chad inside the den. Hell, Tara thought in the eyeblink give and take of the ambient, and caught a breath on: <Chad angry. Long shadows. Clouds. Twilight behind the peak.>

<Vadim wanting Mina and Luisa with Tara. Flicker upset.>

—and glared in startlement as the blacksmith for a second time caught her sleeve. < Scared. Wanting daughter.> Then images from some other near source boiled up: <Hating Brionne. Brionne in house. Rage.>

<Goblin cat crouching, ears flat, over bloody rags, red coat—satisfaction, pain, wantingthis with a fevered, angry ache—the man at the forge, hammering glowing iron—wanting him, wantinghim to look at him—>

God, <the kid, the boys—> She couldn’t get a breath past the hate in the spiraling ascension of tempers, and the blacksmith rounded on the kid with < beatingboy,> his fist cocked. The boys were on the retreat along the wall, the shorter dragging the taller, whose fists were also clenched. Hate flooded the ambient. Anger. Pain.

< Village. Gate.> Tara couldn’t find her faculty of speech. She threw force into the image, shoved at the blacksmith, wanting < Goss leaving, boys leaving. Camp gate shut.>

“Don’t you push me!” the blacksmith yelled.

Flicker’s temper hit the ambient. Flicker was on her way outside.

“Get out of here!” She found the words, scarcely the breath, and hit the man with her fist. “You’re upsetting my horse! We’ll find your daughter, man, just <get out of here, dammit! Now!”>

She shoved him as Flicker came around the corner of the den, a shape of anger and night. It was a cul-de-sac between the den, the palisade wall and the camp’s outside gate, with a mad horse occupying the only way out, sending <anger, danger, kill, flashes of light > as Tara ran and physically pushed at Flicker’s chest to restrain her from a charge.

“Get past!” she shouted over her shoulder, leaning all her weight and will against Flicker, making her <back up,> wanting her to calm down. “Get past, dammit!”

It was an eternity measured in breaths. Goss and his sons eased past them. Her arm shook against Flicker’s strength, Flicker’s anger—but then Goss and his sons, Goss shouting recriminations at the boys, headed back along the wall. Goss opened the Little Gate and went back to the village side of the palisade, mad, scared, with something maybe broken forever between him and his sons.

The Goss boys had let loose more truth at their father than they’d ever intended. The boys hated Brionne: the father was overwhelmed with panic and the boys with hatred of their sister. The images as they faded in distance from the wall were of rage and outrage, and a rider couldn’t judge what the right of it was, or who was justified.

Brionne was the youngest, Brionne was a pampered, headstrong brat. Given, she didn’t like the kid, but she’d never in her life shared a moment of such hatred among strangers—sendings going wild, sendings of a frankness that villagers weren’t used to, minds cycling wildly over thoughts, darting after known soft spots and old faults as unerringly as willy-wisps to ripe carrion, horse and human tempers flaring completely out of bounds.

Shaking, she leaned on Flicker’s shoulder and tried to calm Flicker down, telling herself she didn’t remotely know why Brionne had gone out this morning, or what Brionne thought she was doing—but if she had to lay a bet on it, the young fool had thought she’d heard a horse.

She didn’t like that thought. God, she didn’t like it. And she hadn’t handled Brionne’s father well. She was painfully aware she’d set up the encounter, not remotely suspecting more than concern on their side until they got near the horses.

She stood, still shuddery, with her hands on Flicker, whose mind she did understand, and kept imaging <quiet, quiet water> and <still trees and sunshine,> patting Flicker’s neck to quiet the violence she still felt in the ambient.

She told herself that Flicker was still on edge from a brush with disaster; or Flicker was reacting to villager hysteria—Flicker shivered and snorted and worked her jaws, <wanting bite, wanting blood >—she was still trying to haul Flicker down from her fighting mood when Vadim and Chad came riding around the corner with the kits they always kept ready against a sudden call—outbound.

Bound outside into danger she’d ridden through last night, for a damned spoiled brat who’d killed herself in one willful push of a latch.

<Goblin cat,> she imaged, and felt Flicker jump under her hands. She had a leaden weight of apprehension in her gut. There was no usein what they were doing, this late in the day. Vadim was having a crisis of guilt, Chad was going because Vadim was dead set on it; and she was mad, dammit. They were running a risk and they knew it, but they weren’t listening to her.

Mina and Luisa arrived from around the same corner, their horses trailing behind them—but being nearer the outside wall than they were, Tara found it her job to walk along in the men’s tracks, unlatch the gate for them and fight it wide against the snow piled up inside.

“Back before dark,” Vadim said, from Quickfoot’s back, “unless we do find her trail. We might have to make a camp. I don’t think she got far.”

“She couldn’t,” she said, and clapped a hand to Vadim’s leg, trying to still the ambient. “Don’t be a fool, God, don’t either of you be fools. You know what’s out there, the damn kid’s gone to it—”

“I’ll turn him around before dark,” Chad said, meaning Vadim. “Don’t you open that gate, Tara, don’t open that gate, unless you know it’s us or it’s Barry and Llew.”

“Get back before dark!” Mina said from behind her. Vadim was Mina’s lover and hers, from time to time, as Chad was Luisa’s—or hers, from time to time, but not so often as Vadim. She caught the imaging from Mina and from Luisa, both her own most-times partners—and for a moment it was an intimacy rider with rider and horse with horse that took the breath and scared hell out of her. It was love, it was friendship, <vivid and warm and smelling of straw and sex> and the boys were about to ride out the gate.

“You’re senior,” Vadim said, and Chad’s Jumper passed by her with a whip of a well-groomed tail.

“Latch down tight,” Chad said.