Niken had stopped shaking by the time the sun cleared the tree line, but Rama had seen the way it started, and the memory of it sat uneasy in his chest through the whole first hour of riding. She had been asleep, wrapped in Ki Branggah's spare cloak near the dying fire, when her small body had gone suddenly rigid. Her teeth chattered hard enough to hear from six feet away, her eyes open and staring at nothing while a low animal sound worked its way out of her throat that had nothing childlike in it at all.
It had lasted perhaps a minute. Ki Branggah held her through it, murmuring steady nonsense the way he must have done for frightened children a hundred times before. When it passed she came back to herself confused and exhausted, with no memory of it at all, only the ache in her jaw from clenched teeth and a fear in her eyes that hadn't been there before.
