“What about her?” Before he could answer, the man added, “What a woman, eh?” He let go a gusting breath of appreciation.

“Um…”

“Hell’s wrong with you, boy, you got some problem with the homegrown thing?” He cast a hostile look at Qanath.

Havec had already had as much to drink with this meal as Xar had ever let him consume in a night, and it took him a moment to find a response. His head was swimming, and the heat just went on climbing. “The woman is old enough to be my mother.”

“Yeah, well,” Erl muttered, unappeased.

He couldn’t find a way to ask whether she was well without revealing more than he cared to about the depth of his ignorance. “You’ve seen her, then?”

“Oh, aye.” This cheered him up a little and he smiled into his beard. “She passed through Daunsbrac,” he nodded over one shoulder toward the northern wall, “not three days ago. Whole town turned out to watch and toss dried flowers in the Dowager’s path.”

“Making for the house on the coast?”

Erl didn’t immediately answer, eyes grown sharp on his face. It was a moment before he said, “Nah, west. Had the heir with her, along with a whole bunch of sworn men, well-mounted and carrying swords.”

He was too intrigued by this wealth of new information to care that their host was flirting with the notion he was an assassin come to murder the tragically isolated Dowager Queen. “Heir?”

“Funny thing, you not knowing that.”

“No, it really isn’t. Who is the heir?”

“Why d’you want to know?”

Suddenly, he’d had enough pretending. He was too hot and too close to answers and just couldn’t be bothered with dancing this cautious dance anymore. “Because I want to know who stole my life.”

Erl shoved his chair back. “I don’t have to sit at my own table and listen to this.”

“Fine, piss off.”

“You expect me to believe—”

“Most anything you’re told, honestly, after listening to you talk,” he interrupted. “Did you never see King Ammon? People always said I bore a striking resemblance to my father.”

Erl squinted at him, but he was giving nothing away. It wasn’t apparent whether he suspected Havec was telling the truth or just wanted to hear what he had to say. “Where you been all these years, if not dead in the ground?”

“I was kidnapped. I escaped.”

“Well, if you’ll just be taking your southern witch with you, you can be on your way.”

Havec rose from his seat so he could face the man more fully, although he only stood as tall as his nose. “I don’t think we will. It’s cold out and you have this nice warm house.”

“You’ll not be staying here.”

“Only another of the many ways in which you’re wrong.”

He saw the man’s eyes dart onto the girl, still sitting at the table observing this confrontation with wide, fearful eyes.

“Funny how you keep calling her a witch,” Havec pointed out, “because she is.”

Erl decided to call his bluff and made a grab for Qanath. Havec had to step up onto his chair and put a knee in the middle of the table to get close enough that he could lean forward and plant a fist in his face. It hadn’t been a great punch, not with the table between them, and it only staggered Erl for an instant, but it was long enough to make him let go of the girl. She wrenched her arm free and scooted around the near corner of the table, putting herself at Havec’s side.

“You want to know where I’ve been?” he snarled, facing the man down still with a knee in the middle of the supper table. “I crawled my way out of hell to come back here and have my revenge. Before I start killing people, I want to speak to my mother. For the last six years, I was never even sure she was alive. I’d like to see her, and while we’re on the subject, why the fuck do you think it makes me uncomfortable you think my mother is hot?”

He was too angry, and too giddy from the cider sizzling through his veins, to care that this was stupid in the extreme. He could beat the hell out of Erl himself, but if Erl roused his neighbors to help him chase them out of town, there was nothing either of them could do. And he really did not want to be outside tonight: in the frosty darkness beyond the windows, it had begun to snow.

The tableau stretched on long enough that he began to realize just how foolish this had been. It was Erl who finally broke the tension, letting loose a sour grunt. “Yeah, alright, boy, have it your way. You go on and commit suicide if you want. But tonight, you better get the fuck off my table.”

As Havec retreated gratefully to his chair, their host reached for his own seat, adding, “And pour me another fucking drink.”

***

They passed an uneasy night in the headman’s spare room, and neither of them got much sleep. The bed was so narrow Qanath wouldn’t have wanted to share it with someone she was actually sleeping with, and having room to stretch out was the least of her concerns. Havec sat down on the floor with his back against the door as they got settled, as if he expected an invasion; while she struggled out of her pants beneath the covers, he related his conversation with the headman. He hadn’t been kidding about Xar anKebbal not letting him drink, because he was still fiery over the fight, righteous about revealing himself. His eyes were glassy, cheeks flushed, words slightly slurred. He must weigh at least half again as much as her, and Qanath was only mildly buzzed.

About the time he finished talking, he passed out sitting up against the door, leaving her to toss and turn and ruminate uneasily. Havec was still convinced the plot to remove him from the picture before he could take the throne originated in his homeland; he had been scornful of the idea, both that anyone in Tabbaqera would give a toss about a barbarian king, and that anyone in Tabbaqera would think giving him to a bonding-broker would actually work. Qanath was inclined to agree with him, but she was worried about the fact that his people thought it was her people’s fault.

Havec had told her that, so far as he remembered, his people took as little interest in the Empire as the Empire took in them. Tabbaqera was too big and too foreign to be either a rival or an ally, and Moritians had ignored it accordingly. Their host, though, had been openly hostile toward her.

Maybe his uncle had told their people that their prince’s disappearance was the result of Tabbaqeran politics as a means of covering his own involvement. Maybe that was the source of their newfound animus. If that was true, it wasn’t comforting. She knew Havec wouldn’t want to let anyone hurt her, but there were limits to what he could do.

People had been warning them all the way north that there were troubles on the border, and now she found herself wondering if they had just walked into a nascent war. If Havec’s countrymen let their anger drive them across the border to raid farms or attack a merchant’s caravan, well. Her people hadn’t built this empire or held onto it by letting provocations like that pass. And here she and Havec were on the wrong side of the border, if her people chose to send those troops they’d been massing over that border to retaliate.

She dozed off but woke with a start when the wind shook the house violently. When she glanced at Havec, she saw the faint, vitreous shimmer of light glinting off his eyes. He seemed to have woken from his brief, drunken stupor. He must be freezing. “You might as well come over here. I don’t think you can make me more uncomfortable than I already am.”

He rose and crossed the room. Qanath rolled onto her side to make space for him, although the bed was too small for that to really work. When he climbed in, his weight depressed the mattress, trying to tip her into him.

“It’s funny how safe you make me feel,” she pointed out. “Considering.”

He was silent for a minute. “Is this some Tabbi thing? I don’t get it…”

“Well, you have a spirit of primal vengeance inside you!”

Havec grunted. “It’s been so long since your people locked them away, I think you forgot why you did it.”

She twisted her neck to glance at him, although he was nothing more than shadows in the dark. “Oh?”

“Did you notice how fast my blisters healed? That sunburn was gone in two days, that is not how sunburns work.”

“You’re young and healthy.”

“I have nightmares. Had nightmares. For years. It doesn’t make sense it was that last night at the academy that made them go away.”

Qaanth frowned as she considered. “You think Kebbal is taking care of you.”

“It has to be.”

“Why lock them away, if they’re benevolent?”