“And what steams me most is, they think we got to sit here and take it!” the headman added, voice rising. “What won’t they do to keep us small, eh?”
“Kill our prince?” Havec suggested, hoping for more details.
“Eh?” Erl agreed angrily, leaning forward to slosh an extra tot of cider in both their cups. “I mean, you heard rumors about him…”
“Rumors?”
Erl waved that away and his visible face had gone red. “Forget I said anything. Just forget I did. Carrying tales like a Tweelan fishmonger, next I’ll be asking you to braid my hair. Point is, he was smart, everyone said so, always with his nose in a book. Guess that looked like a problem to them devils down south, because next you know… Poof!”
He mimed something exploding and Havec heard the dry roar of fire. He would have liked to translate the conversation for Qanath, to hear her thoughts, but he didn’t want to draw attention to her. Erl had mostly seemed to forget she was there as the meal went on, and given the topic under discussion, Havec thought it best it stay that way.
He wasn’t sure what to make of the revelation that his disappearance had been interpreted in his homeland as a Tabbaqeran plot. He was pretty sure that wasn’t true. If anyone in the Empire had ever considered Prince Havec a threat, which he had trouble swallowing, they damned sure would have paid closer attention to his fate.
The girl had been deeply distressed when she learned the truth about Xar, barely able to believe such a thing could occur. It said a lot about the probable perspective of the average Tabbi on the street. It suggested disappearing him by turning him into an unwilling bonded had always been untenable. Any master who might have bought him would have faced the challenge, not only of keeping him contained, but keeping him secret from everyone who would have helped him escape.
A Tabbaqeran would have known the odds were good he would eventually get away. Even if they were willing to take that gamble, they would have stipulated conditions about where he went. Somewhere way out in the country doing manual labor, not studying at the knee of one of the Embodiments of War. It made so much more sense that it be his uncle, who didn’t know enough to grasp that Xar had made him a thousand times more dangerous than he had been six years ago.
“And the Queen?” he asked distantly.
“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.”
