Qanath was exhausted from stress and lack of sleep, the sorcery on top of it; she had only ever been allowed to conjure spirit light a few times, always in a controlled environment under the eyes of a knowledgeable teacher. And although Havec didn’t understand this, it had been risky to prod at Kebbal. Havec was its helpmate and partner, and it would probably tolerate most anything from him. Qanath was not the Avatethura Master, and it could very easily have taken offense.
It had let her go forward with her plan, though, and it looked like Havec was free from his entourage of ghosts. She did the only thing there was to do at this point: sat down in the dirt with a thump and laughed. After a few seconds, he joined in.
Two Routes Leading North
The day they left Dareh, they traveled slowly, because both of them felt like shit. They were tired anyway, and the fact that they were forced to waste the entire morning walking in a circle didn’t help. Dareh only had the one gate; the others had long since been bricked up. The cemetery lay in the northern half of the city, but they must go all the way south to get out. Then they spent the next several hours treading the path that traced the circumference of the walls in order to get back to the north-bound road, perhaps a quarter-mile away from where they began.
As the day drew to a close, thunder sounded on the southern horizon. The girl stopped walking and cast her eyes at the cloudless heavens, seeking the sound’s source. Havec was forced to grasp her wrist and tow her off the road, where she lay down on her belly reluctantly when he told her to get down.
The land north of the deserted city was a gently-rolling quilt of farmland, pasturage, and scattered patches of trees. None of those trees, fences, or newly-sprouted crops were anywhere near them, though, and they had nothing better to work with than the limited concealment of knee-high scrub. Kneeling beside the girl, he grabbed grasses and brambles by the fistful, tearing them loose and casting them onto her back and head.
When he threw himself onto the ground at her side, the girl hissed, “What is that?”
The rumbling wasn’t thunder but the reverberations of an approaching parade; other than that, he couldn’t say. “I don’t know.”
“Then why are we hiding?”
“Because I want to learn before it sees us.”
‘It’ turned out to be a cavalry unit, a mounted band of what had to be several hundred soldiers riding in ordered ranks. The soldiers mostly had their eyes fixed forward, and the slackness of their expressions suggested they were bored. Unlike the pair they had encountered right before a chegu almost ate them, this was no patrol meant to ensure that the roads remained safe; these weren’t peacekeepers but soldiers on their way to war. They were dozing in their saddles, and he had the sense they had come a long way.
Mostly they weren’t talking, but they made an incredible amount of noise. It wasn’t just the muted thunder of the horses’ hooves on the packed dirt of the road, but the clatter of a hundred suits of armor jouncing as they rode. Their breastplates were sheets of overlapping discs rattling like cymbals, reaching down onto the thighs. He squinted, noticing that all of them carried bows on their backs in addition to the swords. The sunlight glinting off all that bronze dazzled his eyes.
“That is awesome,” he whispered fervently.
Qanath glanced at him sidelong.
“Can you imagine that bearing down on you in the open field?”
“I don’t want to.”
He grunted. “Why do you want me to teach you to fight?”
“Was this what you wanted as a child?”
The question startled him enough that he briefly tore his eyes off the passing troops. “What boy doesn’t dream of becoming chattel to a scary old man possessed by a demon?”
“Kebbal isn’t a demon.” She cast her eyes uneasily side-to-side as if the thing might be eavesdropping on them.
He gave her a withering look. “My point stands.”
“So does my question.”
“I was a kid when I was kidnapped. Before that, my father’s only child. I was never encouraged to dream.”
“You envy me. You think I’m luckier than you.”
The last of the cavalry went past, although not the last of the party: at the tail of the throng came rank upon rank of mule-drawn carts that must be carrying equipment and victuals. There were people riding amidst the sacks and crates on those carts, glazed eyes fixed on the distance. They must be support staff, healers and hostlers and cooks.
Havec stacked his fists one atop the other and rested his chin on them, eyes lingering on the soldiers now dwindling. “I don’t know that ‘envy’ is the word. But I think, in your quest to prove yourself, you shouldn’t lose sight of the many things you have to be grateful for. The closeness you have with the rest of your family, your relationship with your father. You’re a sorceress, you have a degree at the age of eighteen. I suppose there’s no reason anyone has to want a family or care deeply about the family they have, but it makes me think your mother is a person of limited scope. Maybe she’s a decent politician, but it seems to be the only thing she knows. Why let her strip you of your extra dimensions?”
Qanath turned to stare at him, eyes wide. It took her a very long time to respond. “I see what you mean, but it’s hard not to be angry.”
The soldiers and their supplies had vanished over the crest of the closest rise, the overwhelming din of their party dimming. Havec hefted himself to his feet, then turned to the girl and held down his hands. “I bet. But you know, I hated Xar with the passion of a thousand suns. It was only when he died that I realized I spent more time dreaming about being free of him than actually making plans for it. Take it from someone who learned the hard way: shitty people will twist you into something defined by them if you give them half a chance.”
The girl let him pull her to her feet and they set off walking north again through the slowly-settling miasma of dust left by the army. After a few minutes, the sound of hooves and clattering armor and creaking wagon wheels had been replaced by a shushing wind and birds chirping. Seeming to pick her words, his companion said, “I sent her a letter when I graduated.”
“Yeah?”
“She sent me a frame. For my diploma.”
“A token gesture, probably carried out by an aide. You thought she would care.”
She nodded, waiting to find out how he would respond.
Havec snorted. “You thought you knew how much of a bitch she was and still you felt betrayed. Am I right?”
Qanath nodded again but didn’t speak.
He hesitated, wondering whether he wanted to say this. “When Xar died, he told me he never meant to make good on our bargain and let me go. For days afterward, I was like…” He made a face, trying to convey the outrage he had felt, not toward Xar, but toward himself.
“How did I not see that coming?” she suggested.
“Right?” he agreed. Then he grimaced and said more quietly, “At the end of the day, though, don’t we want to be a little more complex and beautiful than the scars they make us?”
“I don’t know. Do I still get to rub her face in the dirt?”
Havec snorted, but he felt his lips curling.
