Chetwin's Backroom Grace Chetwin

Annhilde flees the Fend to save her newborn grandchild from ritual snapping of the neck. Pursued by vengeful Fendmen, she accepts the help of an innocent stranger and in so doing risks not only the child's life but his. Quote from the chapter:

… Thanks to Brocan—tahin Brocan, she’d crossed the Rim, and was … under his protection. … His was a generous offer, but made in ignorance of the enormous stakes. Could she in all conscience, even for the child’s sake, accept it?. . . She tightened her arm about the anuk. Despicable, to deceive him, but did not the child’s need warrant such an act?

Above her head, the siffra wafted in the currents, like clouds. Heavenly veils. When she was small, she believed that if she stared long and hard enough, she would pierce those clouds and see the truth of all things. Sighing, she turned onto her side, her arm over the anuk now. “Laksra,” she murmured, and slept.

“Not far now,” the handler said, in evident relief. “A score of forhar hides says we’re almost on her.” A score of forhar hides? Anka remounted grimly. In that moment he’d have given half his season’s cull to prove the little handler wrong.

They moved off slowly at first, to get her used to the thar’s gait. She shut her eyes and clenched her jaw. How to endure this? And yet it was better than freezing to death back in that icy bolthole. And the farther they got from the Fend, the safer her grandchild would be.

“But if she has crossed the Rim?” Fahn persisted. “Then we follow.” Stugar swung into the saddle. “Follow!” Pahar looked horrified. Stugar laughed shortly. “You swore the oath.” Shrewd and promising to be as wise as Lahr, he also had a small, malicious wit. “We can’t go home without Annhilde and the child.” He spat out his wad and took up his reins. “So let’s catch her fast, before we find ourselves in Kond!”

She slid into her bolthole, had it almost shut—and cried out. In the center of her narrowing line of vision, directly across the pool from where she was, a man stood stock-still under the flying snow, and he was staring straight at her.