He shot her a startled look. “Hell no, fuck this place.”
“Does that mean you’re coming home?”
He led them north and east to the big windowless building, where he slid open one door. The interior was dark, but it smelled of large animals and stale poop. “Light,” Havec whispered, shoving closed the door.
She fumbled through her coat pockets, hoping against hope all her crystals weren’t still in her bag. She breathed a sigh of gratitude when her hand closed around a cold hard shape. Rows of sleepy horses were revealed by its light. As she lifted it to cast a wider beam, Havec already had a saddle in both hands and was moving along the outer wall, sizing up his options.
“Can you not just light a lamp?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Can’t you?”
He cast her a look before stopping before a gray horse with a black mane. He rested the saddle over the door of the stall to free his hands while he swung it open. He led the animal out into the central area and began with the labor of saddling it while Qanath danced anxiously. Shouts arose beyond the walls of the building, the sounds of hunters already hunting out of doors.
Havec only had the one horse saddled but made next for the door. Qanath could hear it too, the thudding footfalls of someone approaching at a run. A moment later, the door slid open again and a lone man entered. He was on the small side, maybe a decade older than her, and his hair was tied in a simple club at his neck.
He saw her standing there and parted his lips to shout, but by then Havec had him from behind and slapped a hand over his mouth. Sliding the door closed with the heel of one boot, he said in a hushed but cheerful voice, “Hey there, Timeth. Long time, no see.”
The man’s eyes went wider, swiveling in their sockets. He had been grappling over his shoulders, trying to lay a hand on the man behind him, but went still. Havec said something to him in his own language, voice warm, but at the last moment, the other man’s brows went up and he let out a muffled shout.
By then Havec’s fist had collided with the base of his skull, making his eyelids flutter and knocking him to his knees. He wasn’t unconscious, but was clearly dazed, as Havec dragged him away from the doors and swiftly trussed his hands and feet. Qanath had assumed he was a soldier, seeing him with her fear more than her eyes, but now she realized he wore humble woolen garments with no outerwear to shield him from the elements.
As soon as he had finished, Havec set about saddling a second horse, moving now at a sprint. If they had sent a servant to prepare mounts for a search party, the search party would be on his heels. It was done in the matter of a minute, then he was beckoning.
When Qanath stopped at his side, he didn’t give her time to try to mount, grabbing her around the waist and hefting. She was way too conscious of the danger to be offended and threw herself over the saddle gratefully. “Are you aware,” she asked as she scrambled to get herself turned the right way around and sitting astride, “that your name is almost chaos?”
Havec had gone for the doors but paused with his hands on one leaf, head cocked. He let out a shout of laughter. “I’d never thought about that.”
He slid the door open, trotting back to the dark brown animal he’d chosen for himself. It was much taller than the one he’d picked for her, and she was glad she didn’t have to perch on its lofty back. The second he was mounted, he took her reins from her and moved out of the building, towing Qanath.
Most of the activity seemed to be centered in the main house, light blazing from every window to light up the young night. Qanath stared at the many windows without blinking as Havec swung them around the back. She had thought he chose the route to get them swiftly under the trees until he stopped, dismounting in order to retrieve their abandoned packs. She was so frightened and wrong-footed, she wasn’t thinking straight and had forgotten they would want their money and food. Havec, on the other hand, was more calmly purposeful than he had been since the night he led her out of Xar anKebbal’s blood-drenched house.
Once they had their supplies in hand, they were free to go, but it wasn’t going to be that easy: as they passed behind the third building, they were seen. A group of half a dozen men stood out back conversing urgently. These were definitely soldiers, big men wearing shirts of stiffened leather and carrying swords. There was a moment of frozen surprise as they caught sight of the two of them some forty feet away. Then most of the men ran at them halfheartedly, shouting. Probably telling them to stop.
Havec did something that set his horse flying along the valley’s basin, Qanath dragged behind. The incredible speed of their movement would have been exhilarating had she not been so terribly afraid. It was the first time she had ever sat on a horse in her life, and she was certain that, at any moment, she would fly loose.
At the southern end of the valley, where the land began to rise, the trees closed in and they were forced to slow. “How did we get away?” she asked breathlessly.
“I imagine they got a pretty garbled account of what they were supposed to be hunting for. She couldn’t exactly tell them her dead son had come home to take his revenge.”
“I thought you said there aren’t rules she has to obey.”
“There aren’t laws,” he corrected himself. “This place has belonged to my family since my ancestor led our people over the mountains from the west and took it by force from the Tweelans. How pleased do you think they would be if she told them she stole it from my father’s son? You saw Erl, ready to spit in the Empire’s eye because he thought you were to blame.”
This made sense of a sort, but not the sort she liked. “Well?”
He didn’t ask what she meant. “Depends.”
“On?”
“Are you going to say ‘I told you so’?”
“I never did,” she protested.
“No, but you’ve been thinking it. Loud enough I can hear you.”
There was no denying the charge, so she ignored it. “I just want you to come home where you belong. You’re one of us now, you have been for years.”
He shot her a strange look over his shoulder, and she had no idea what he was thinking. She rarely did. As he turned back, he said matter-of-factly, “Let’s see about surviving long enough to get there, what do you say? One hurdle at a time.”
Qanath looked at his back as he led them between the trees and resigned herself to let it go for now. They were leaving very visible tracks behind them in the ever-deepening snow, a signpost pointing the direction of their flight, but they quickly drew ahead of the sounds of disturbance into a silent night. It couldn’t possibly be over that easily – these people weren’t just going to let them go after he casually executed their future king – but it seemed as though the confusion had bought them a few minutes in which to get a head start.
They traveled for an hour through a bitter, alien landscape lit only by the mysterious internal glow of the fallen snow before he finally called a halt. Their shelter was a waist-high rock outcrop, its cap of snow rising almost to the height of his head. While Havec attended to the horses, Qanath kicked through the snow in search of rocks she might spell.
Once she had a hot rock for each of them, she kicked the snow back more industriously, clearing a spot where they could crouch for the night. She took their bags when her companion handed them over and sat with them on her patch of soil. While she rummaged after food, she watched him work.
Although she could justify the decision to follow Havec on his quest, she hadn’t ever really made a choice. She could see that from the vantage of hindsight. She’d walked out the door into the wide world on that fateful night when her carefully-tailored plans for the future fell apart because he had. She didn’t want to be left alone, not when she could cling to someone decisive who had a sword. He was a force of nature and she’d been swept helplessly into his wake, a twist of chance she would never regret. She didn’t repent the journey to Moritia, either, even if it hadn’t turned out as he wished; he had deserved to know the truth and she was glad she’d been here when he learned. She could see now, though, that she should have done things differently.
She had been letting him make all the decisions, and that did not make sense. Havec was a foreigner and he’d spent his formative years locked at the top of a tower with an ogre guarding the door. Although this wasn’t his fault, the bottom line was that he didn’t always know what he was talking about. There was a very great deal about the world he didn’t understand; she had the suspicion Xar anKebbal had taken pains to keep him ignorant because it made him easier to control. She couldn’t allow his fears and misconceptions to cloud her judgment or both of them would live to regret it. Or they could die, of course.
“I have a new plan,” she told him when he was finished and came to join her by the rock.
Havec looked at her questioningly as he took his supper from her hands.
“Instead of crossing over in more of this awful snow out in the middle of nowhere, let’s look for a town.”
He ate a bite of cheese; chewed it; swallowed. “And?”
“That’s about the whole of it.” She took a sip of water before adding, “Aside from the part where we approach the first Tabbi we can find wearing a uniform and you go, ‘I’m the Avatethura Master Havec anKebbal, please let me back into my homeland.’”
