Smooth Guy clamped its beak delicately between forefinger and thumb. “Forgive me. Arandgwail has dreadful manners and an attention span that would put a toddler to shame. In the best of circumstances, shyins are prone to mischief. I should have known he couldn’t sit still so long without causing trouble.”

Qanath had gone still, reassessing furiously now the rules had changed. Releasing a tired breath, she settled back in her chair, making it clear she was unimpressed. “I thought familiars went out of style five centuries ago. Relying on the service of a shyin even at one remove hardly seems worth the risk.”

Smooth Guy let go the bird’s beak, running the tip of his finger along it soothingly. The demon bird fluffed its feathers angrily but finally retracted its wings. It shifted its feet a few times on his shoulder in order to present its profile to Havec as if it was now ignoring him, but no one was fooled.

“Your mother is less concerned with her reputation than your welfare.”

“That is a lie,” Qanath replied. “There’s no such thing as a politician who doesn’t care about their reputation. Come on,” she added, collecting Havec with her eyes as she pushed back her chair. He was already on his feet and more than ready to leave.

“Please.” Smooth Guy leaned forward, laying a hand on the tabletop beside her drink. “Hear me out.”

“I have been,” she reminded him. “Lies are all I’m hearing.”

“Fine, I’ll tell you the truth.”

“That easy?”

“You mother would rather I tell you things she wasn’t ready for you to know than let you walk away.”

After a tense pause, she sat back at the table and folded her hands. Smooth Guy looked next to him. “Please, Avat. Sit. I apologize again for Ara, he’s young. I ought to have warned you, I see that now.”

Havec was clear on the fact that Smooth Guy hadn’t stumbled accidentally onto rudeness: he had made a choice. Knowing full well that what he was doing might upset them, he had done it anyway on the off chance they would be too intimidated, or just too curious, to hold him accountable. If his initial assessment of Hair-On-End had clearly shot wide, he had been spot-on when it came to Smooth Guy. This prick was exactly what Havec thought from the moment they met: far too smooth for anyone’s good.

He hesitated, but Qanath was looking at him now, a plea in her eyes. She didn’t like her mother but she had been waiting all her life for the woman to acknowledge her. She wasn’t ready to walk away.

She’d had the grace to step back and let him decide how to handle his affairs, it was only right that he return the favor. He made no effort to hide his scowl but did return to his seat. As he pulled up to the table, the raven turned into a kitten with lustrous black fur, small enough it could have fit in one hand. He tensed when it hopped onto the table, but it was after different prey and pounced on the cork from their wine bottle, batting it about.

Once they were both settled, Smooth Guy topped up their glasses. “It’s true that open reliance on sorcery is only slightly less frowned-upon in the Illiumate than open ties to the faith.” He’d had his eyes on his hands but looked up, meeting Qanath’s gaze directly. “The same is not true of the Hakam.”

Havec saw some revelation hit her like a physical force. “You cannot be serious.”

“But I am.”

He opened his mouth, then wondered if revealing his confusion would make things harder for her. Qanath had already grasped, though, that he didn’t understand. Keeping her eyes fixed on the man across the table, she said, “Mother isn’t satisfied with her station and wants to climb.”

“I thought she already was your highest class.”

“Not quite. That title belongs to the twenty-three bloodlines that possess a hereditary seat on the Hakam.”

“Oh.”

No longer speaking to him, she said pointedly, “There hasn’t been a Mhurange raised from the Illiumate in a thousand years, it’s only ever happened twice.”

“It is true that politics is not the favored path,” Smooth Guy agreed with the caution of a man placing a tile in birit. “Historically the Hakam is more likely to elevate a candidate out of complete obscurity who has distinguished herself despite the disadvantage obscurity creates.”

Qanath gasped so hard she choked on her own wind and spent the next minute hacking and coughing, trying unsuccessfully to take a drink. The upside of this was that, by the time she got her breath back, Havec had gotten up to speed. It sounded like her mother had done the precise opposite of his, fucking with her life without her permission in order to help her acquire power instead of take it. He couldn’t see how that made it better; he suspected that Qanath agreed.

The moment she could speak again, she rasped, “You cannot mean to tell me she kept me at the bottom my entire life to teach me how to jump.”

“Something like that.”

“Where do you come into this?”

“I sold myself into the Scolate at the age of twelve and went off to the Collure.”

“The Scolate grants scholarships,” Qanath said from the corner of her mouth for Havec’s benefit. “If you pass the tests, they send you off to university. Once you graduate…”

“The loan comes due,” he supplied.

“Anyway,” Smooth Guy continued, and there was a hint of irritation in his voice, as if being forced to talk about himself was rubbing off that slick veneer. “I put in my five years in the Corps of Engineers, and as soon as the term expired, I applied for another, to get my graduate degree. Conjuration, obviously.” He nodded at the tiny black kitten in the center of the table, now lying motionless on its belly with its legs outstretched as if it were a flying squirrel caught mid-leap.

“Which gets you here how?” Qanath pressed.

“Your mother bought my commission.”

“And? If you had a problem serving, you would never have gone back. The Scolate has many means of rising in its ranks, I don’t think there’s a better way to make a name for yourself. What did she offer you that made her way preferable to the scheme you already had?”

With studied calm, he told them, “The last four Mhurange have been male. Word is, the Hakam has no intention of singling out another man until some of the more bellicose goddesses and nonbinary divinities have been appeased.”

Qanath sat back in her seat, letting out an angry breath. “Please. At the end of the day, merit is what matters, whatever barana rakis has to say. You know it as well as me and yet you’re not willing to bet on yourself? Why would someone as ambitious as you are throw your lot in with me?”

The mask was starting to crack in earnest, and his jaw flexed. Through his teeth, he told them, “Not insurmountable odds, but still they’re long. And I don’t have the contacts. In an age without a war to fight, there’s only so far military service gets you. It’s pretty hard to do something so amazing anyone outside the ranks gets to hear of it.”

“I’m to believe you gave up?”

“Changed my wager,” he corrected coldly. “Why waste my life striving after something I may never achieve when I can guarantee it to my children?”

Both of them sat back from the table in unison as if they had choreographed the move.

He added irritably, “A deal I made before anyone knew about this.” A wave of his hand taking in both of them made it obvious what he meant.

Sitting forward again, Havec said bluntly, “I like guys, guy.” He nodded to the girl sitting next to him. “And her, so if you fuck with her, I’m going to kill you. To be clear.”

Smooth Guy made a prim face at him, as if it had been vulgar to say so. Come to think of it, it probably wasn’t Done to threaten people, not in so many words, not in the circles these two hoped to tread. Qanath had hinted on more than one occasion that many rules were bent for Avatethura Masters, though; it would be nothing short of a travesty not to capitalize on it.

“Oh,” he cried facetiously, “was I not supposed to say so? Her mother might have bribed you with her womb, but if she doesn’t want you, there’s not a whole lot you can do. Well, I tell a lie: there are, but all you would really accomplish is to give me an excuse.”

“I’m well aware of the implications,” Smooth Guy said haughtily.

“Are you?” Havec asked doubtfully. “If you were, you would grasp that your entire future hinges on whether she’ll ever consent to have you, and if you understood that, one would think you would be less of a stuck-up dick. Just a thought.”

He never learned what Smooth Guy might have said to this; he had placed one hand flat on the center of the table, and suddenly there was flesh beneath his palm. Hair-On-End had taken the opportunity to turn back into a human, sprawled across the center of their table, and of course his hand was on the thing’s ass. With a curse, he shoved it away from him, hard. It rolled across the tabletop, wine glasses spewing wine everywhere and spraying broken glass across the floor. Then it rolled right off, onto Smooth Guy’s lap. His chair went over backward and the air sizzled as someone let loose raw sorcery instinctively.

Havec didn’t wait to find out what might come of it, bracing his hands on the table and leaping across. One of the legs of the chair had broken, and Smooth Guy was lying amidst the wreckage looking dazed, The Thing still on top of him. It was pushing itself upright as Havec closed on it, and he grabbed its collar at the throat. It bared its teeth at him, teeth far too large and pointed to belong in that human mouth. He hissed back and punched it in the eye.

Its eyes were vast, their pupils yawning pits, and he grew dizzy. He swayed, frightened he might fall in. The air around him was bitterly cold and somehow dead, and he shivered as the thing in his hand opened its mouth again. He stared at it, frozen, losing track of which of them was at the mercy of which.

Then Smooth Guy said sharply, “Dai. Dai, Arandgwail.”