He wasn’t sure what would happen if she was spotted; as a child, he had been curious about the Empire, but he had been drawn to tales of sorcery, not practical matters of tariffs or trade. Tabbaqera was massive and immediately adjacent but had little relevance to daily life. It was no rival of Moritia; that would be like a lion taking interest in the yapping of a small dog. They sold it pearls and timber, and so far as he remembered, that was that. In Moritia, they listened to what news traveled north of Senators making speeches on the Senate floor, new plays performed, troubles along other borders with other ‘barbarians,’ as if these events were taking place on the dark side of the moon.
By the time they smelled the smoke of another settlement, the sun had vanished behind the mountains to the west. He didn’t want to deal with bringing a Tabbi among his people and accommodating to however they might react, but they couldn’t remain outdoors in this cold overnight. When he caught the first whiff of a hearth fire, he made for it immediately, not bothering to scout out an approach where he could study the community before they came into sight. They would be staying here whether that was a good idea or not.
It turned out to be a decent-sized town, which beat the woodsman’s hut he’d been envisioning. It was considerably shabbier than the town they skirted earlier on the other side of the border, but everything was going to be here. What money his people had came from the Empire in the first place.
When he led them through the last row of trees into a field full of sheep, the girl said uneasily, “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“No,” he replied. “The odds we’ll find a better place to sleep before it goes completely dark are worse.” Raising his voice, he called to the tow-headed boy half-hidden amongst the sheep, “Is there an inn?”
For a minute, the kid just stared at him, and Havec wondered if, in the intervening years, he had forgotten his own native tongue. He seemed to have forgotten everything else. Then the boy stood up off the rocky outcrop where he had been lounging and pointed vaguely into town. “You want to talk to the headman.”
Havec thanked him and led the way down the slope. They had to fight free of the milling mass of animals, which the boy elected to drive in on their heels. He ran a hand along a few of their fluffy backs, not yet sheared for the warmer seasons to come.
A low ceiling of cloud moved in as the day drew to a close, and the wind was picking up. The town seemed a comfortable place; nothing special, of course, but the one- or two-story homes looked to be sound. Each house was surrounded by a patch of garden, the earth freshly turned, but it was too early in the season for anything to be growing this far north. Many of the houses had a stripe of blue paint down the center of the front door, and he wondered what it meant: it wasn’t a custom familiar to him.
They had to ask directions once they got into town; the boy’s pointing hadn’t been much to go on. There weren’t many people around, but a man stood by the open gate to a sheepfold, waiting for the boy and his flock. He directed them toward a house on the far side of the settlement that had a wolf for a weathervane, which they apparently couldn’t miss. Havec felt the man’s eyes lingering on them as they walked away and couldn’t decide if it was a good thing or a bad thing that he hadn’t asked questions.
The headman’s house did turn out to be easily distinguished from its neighbors, as it was the only one with a weathervane at all. Havec knocked at the door as if he felt confident, then waited on the stoop, refusing to fidget. It was a minute before they heard footsteps approach, and they knew they would be looking at a big man before he opened the door by the way the entire structure groaned.
The man who appeared in the doorway wasn’t quite as tall as Xar but every inch as wide and eclipsed most of the light. He looked particularly bear-like with his great bush of a beard and rough leather clothes. The humorous thought had no sooner crossed Havec’s mind than he thought to wonder just how outlandish the two of them looked to him.
“Yeah?” Unlike Xar, his voice didn’t match his form, a nondescript tenor that might have been pleasant in song.
“I understand you have accommodation where travelers might stay for a night?”
The headman’s grey eyes had come to rest on Qanath, unfriendly, and he made no bones about why: “Don’t know as I have space to put up one o’ them Imperial witches.”
Havec stepped in front of her, seizing on the obvious and easiest lie. “Keep your eyes off my wife.”
“Not afraid of an adder in your bed, pretty thing like you? Or is that it: the she-devil’s in charge?”
The man lifted a hand, one thick finger extended to poke him in the chest. Thoughtlessly, he twisted his forearm around the appendage, moving it away from him, and struck the headman in the chest. The heel of his hand hit the man’s breastbone. Massive though he was, he hadn’t expected the attack and let it drive him back a step.
Havec went still, regretting too late that he had let a petty challenge escalate. He could defeat every single person in this town one-on-one, but if these people decided they needed to be dealt with violently, that wouldn’t be how the confrontation played out. He didn’t fancy spending the last hours of his life fleeing through the woods of his homeland like a stag while people shot arrows at him.
The headman, however, seemed pleased by the interaction and let out one short laugh. Stepping back from the door, he said, “Better you than me.”
They moved into the house gratefully, taking their packs off and leaning them up against the wall beside the door. The ground floor of the home was a single large room, a fire roaring in the fireplace against the far wall. The floor was carpeted by hides, and the chinks in the log walls had been filled with what looked like mud, making it snug and warm.
Their host had already returned to the area off to the left where a long table and stone basin formed a kitchen. Seating himself with a grunt, he picked up a small knife in one hand, a potato in the other. “Your woman cook?”
He conveyed the question to Qanath, who bit her lip. “Not really. I can help prep.”
“She would be happy to help,” he said. “Is there anything I can do?”
“There’s always wood to be chopped.”
He didn’t like being separated in this uncertain environment and pulled the girl aside before he went out the door. Putting a hand in the hollow of her lower back, he stepped much closer to her than he ordinarily would, speaking in her ear, “I told him we’re married, so if he hits on you, freak out.”
“Oh thank god.” She closed her eyes briefly. They opened again, swinging onto his face. “Trust me, I would’ve done that with your permission or not.”
He was too nervous to laugh and gave her a nod. Outside, it was growing dark, the town gone still save for the forlorn whistling of the wind. Around a corner of the house, he found the spot the headman had directed him toward, lit by the nearby windows, the shutters not yet closed. He had never chopped firewood before, but after only a moment’s examination of the two piles of wood beneath the eaves, he could see what needed to be done. Grabbing an unsplit log from the pile with his left hand, he twisted the ax free from the splitting stump with his right.
After only a couple of minutes, he took the coat off, folding it on the ground at his feet. The town was still but filled with the sounds of people retired to their homes for the night. He could hear babies crying, children laughing, the somber murmur of adults conversing over their evening meal. He quickly lost himself in the rhythm of the labor, and it came as a shock to realize it had gone completely dark and they were calling him in.
His host had come out to fetch him, and the man examined the layer of split logs he had added to the pile while Havec retrieved his coat. He seemed pleased by what he saw and gave Havec a clap on the back. “Pretty thing like you, I didn’t think you had it in you, but you put me ahead a couple days!”
Havec glanced at the man sidelong as they made their way around the house, wondering why he kept saying that. He didn’t think it was a come-on, or for that matter, a compliment. It was only back inside in the now-stifling heat that he caught a glimpse of his own face reflected in the thick, bubble-ridden glass of a window and realized he still had his makeup on. Combined with his clean-shaven face, he must look almost as foreign as Qanath. Last time he was home, he had barely begun sprouting whiskers; it hadn’t occurred to him that the custom was Tabbi, that it would look strange to people back home.
Dinner was simple, a hearty stew of potatoes, peas, and some meat he chose to think of as hare, chased down by sips of cider that was deliciously tart. For a few minutes, all three of them were fully occupied with eating and no one spoke. After he had blunted the edge of his hunger, though, the headman said, “Name’s Erl, by the way. Didn’t think to ask after yours.”
“Havec,” he said thoughtlessly, realizing as the word left his lips that he might not be ready to face the ramifications of being himself. Qanath caught her breath, wide eyes rising from her dinner in search of his face. She couldn’t understand anything else they were saying, but she knew his name and was sharp enough to grasp more quickly than he had that speaking it here might cause trouble.
Their host, however, had bowed his shaggy head and missed the byplay. “Named after our prince, was you?”
“Um…”
“But as I think on it,” the man answered himself, voice pensive, “you’re too old, ain’t you? You would’ve been half a man already when he died.”
It wasn’t every day someone told you you were dead, and he cleared his throat.
“Named for his grandpappy, then, eh? Good man.”
Here was a question he knew how to answer, and he said cautiously, “Yes, I am named for King Ammon’s father.”
“Who never got to sit the throne himself, murdered as he was barely a man with his babes just born by those southern devils, and all for a couple of sheep,” the headman said as if finishing his thought. “Good to see your family’s got their values in the right place. I wasn’t sure.” His eyes flicked onto Qanath.
“Yes,” Havec said weakly, hoping Erl would go on obligingly filling in the blanks.
