And faithful to his promise, with <Burn bringing wood,> Guil hauled out <pan> and <bacon,> and put it on to cook. He needed more wood. Burn wanted more than one bit of bacon. It seemed a workable bargain.

A second supper—was baked potatoes and sausage, which took no thought, no effort, and nobody in Tarmin camp was much interested in food. Tara ate. She didn’t taste it. A quiet, worried day, it had been. She supposed that she ought to report to the village that Chad and Vadim were still out, but the village was wrapped up in its own grim business over the blacksmith’s murder, and there was still the chance—still the chance—that the boys would turn up before she had to explain to the marshal.

She took potato and grain mash with sausage bits out to the horses and listened into the gathering dark, standing between Flicker and Luisa’s horse, patting Mina’s Skip on an insistent nose as she set down the pan.

Then she did something she’d never willfully done, and drew Flicker’s attention first—that was effortless. But she wanted to hear <outside,> and asked for it.

Flicker heard the usual little spooks around the edges. Tara kept listening, putting her attention out to the ambient, and nudged into Green; and still it was spooks, a lorry-lie, maybe.

Skip’s attention came in without much noise at all, and of a sudden they were reaching far, far out, listening for <Quickfoot and Jumper, Vadim and Chad.>

What came instead was a disturbance of other minds, and she tried to shut it out, but it was noisy, much too noisy: <Boy with gun. Crowd in the village.>

She didn’t know what that was. She didn’t like it. She didn’t want panic in the village, some villager picking up on her query outside the walls.

She drew away from the horses, wished <silence, still branches, > and walked completely out and away from the den.

Not a ripple in the ambient from Vadim and Chad. But, she said to herself, the likelihood was that the boys would come riding back with some gruesome story they truly didn’t want to take to the grieving family. That in itself could keep the boys out a little longer—if they found something they couldn’t get quiet in their own minds: a rider didn’t put as first priority the friends waiting and worrying about him. A rider had loyalty to his horse first; his actual working partner second; his partner’s horse third; his responsibilities to his hire somewhere after that; and his lovers wherever they crossed the ranks of partners or friends—

Which meant neither Vadim nor Chad would desert the other out there, where two horses might stand off what one horse couldn’t, and where two minds might find a calm one mind couldn’t recover.

But it damned sure left three women in Tarmin camp pacing the floor and sweating out the hours, while reasons for them to hold back bad news at least from the Goss family had evaporated on a gunshot: the Goss family was shattered. Chad and Vadim couldn’t know that unless they heard her sending. And there was no sign they had.

The sky was headed for its second full dark, and cloud was moving in, girding Rogers Peak now with a gray, impenetrable ceiling—heralding earlier dark, the chance of snow, and a chance of storm, if that cloud just kept coming, as well it could—this eastern face of the mountain had better weather, but it gave you surprises you didn’t take lightly.

The shadows had already gone blue and vague. Tara took the by now well-worn trail toward the porch, not quickly. But the feeling of harm was in the air.

She walked as far as the wooden steps, had her foot on the first when the summons bell rang a gentle request for attention on the village side, and the rider gate opened.

Townsmen came in, the mayor and the marshal.

Mina and Luisa had heard the bell. They came out onto the porch, hugging sweatered arms against the cold as the delegation trudged closer across the cracking, potholed ice.

“Need to talk to Vadim,” the marshal said.

Tara took a deep breath. “Not here.”

“Where is he?”

“Out looking for the Goss kid.”

“He didn’t say—”

“There wasn’t a need to say.”

“Not a need!”

“He’s doing his job, that’s all. He and Chad. They’re looking around out there. What can I do for you?”

“Talk,” the mayor said. “Inside.”

Light was fading fast. A wind was getting up. Tara nodded, uncertain in her capacity as senior rider—it was unprecedented that village authorities should ever have the urge to cross through that gate unless it was something involving the whole village-rider agreement, but she nodded, and Luisa and Mina went inside as she preceded the mayor and the marshal up the steps and into the lamplight.

“Tea?” Mina asked.

“We’ll make this brief,” the mayor said. Bay was his name, and by his manner he didn’t intend to sit, take off his coat, or ask any hospitality. “We’ve got a meeting going on right now. Judicial meeting. Andy Goss’ son shot him. The older boy. Carlo. He doesn’t deny it.”

“There were circumstances,” Tara began, but the mayor cut her off.

“The whole village knows the circumstances. The boy hated his father.”

“Loved his father,” Tara said, though she wasn’t quite sure she understood love as villagers had it. It feltthe same. “It was his sister he hated.”

The mayor and the marshal didn’t look impressed, just nervous.

“This is a bad time to be down to three riders,” the mayor said. “This is a real bad time.”

“You can’t find anything out sitting inside the walls.” She found herself unwillingly defending Vadim’s decision, and had a sudden dark thought: Damn. Damn! They’re hunting it. That’swhat they’re doing.

“No word of the road crew either?”

“No word,” Tara said, “no word from Vadim and Chad, either. I’ve listened.”

The mayor looked as if he’d swallowed something unpalatable. The village couldn’ttell the riders how to run their affairs. They weren’t obliged to like it. Or to accept howriders knew things.

“Is there a possibility,” the marshal, Delaterre, asked, “that the girl was murdered? That the boy had something to do with that?”

“Absolutely not.” Tara was appalled. “The boy’s not a killer. I can swear to that. Brionne, on the other hand—”

“Possible that the boy enticed her outside, knowing the danger out there right now, in the hope she wouldn’t—”

“Marshal, the girl’s a spoiled brat—she sneaked out the gates. Sheknew the danger out there same as anybody over five. The boy and Goss himself were in our camp looking for her.”

“Goss hit the boys,” Mina said. “Goss beat them.”

She was twice shocked. Mina neverspoke her mind in front of villagers.

“There’s no evidence,” the marshal said. “The wife is testifying against the boy—”

“The wife helped,” Mina said shortly. “They beat hellout of the boys. Brionne could do no wrong.”

The horses weren’t anywhere near. The ambient through the camp was all but dead still, quiet, hushed. Even villagers might feel it.

“Will you give a deposition to that effect?” the mayor asked.

“I swear.” Mina held her hand up. “I swear right here. You’re witnesses. You can swear for me in court. A rider doesn’t need to go there.”

There was silence in the room, just the crackle of the fire. The rattle of a shutter in a rising wind.

“They’d no business,” the mayor said, “the senior riders going off the way they did. The village is their first job.”

Tara frowned and plunged ahead. “I’ll tell you something, mayor Bay. There’s something out there scared hell out of my horse. But the Goss girl went out on her own, looking for a horse sheheard. That’s what happened.”

“We’re not sure,” the marshal said. “You said it. The boys hated the sister.”

They were wanting to think ill of the boys. They had their case made. She didn’t need the ambient to see that. And it turned a corner she hadn’t expected. She stuck her hands in her pockets and waited for clarification.