The world snapped back into focus, leaving him crouched on the floor of the common room of an inn, holding the collar of what looked to be an ordinary man. Havec had the sense that he had only just avoided something unspeakably weird that he would never, ever have been able to forget and was desperately glad he couldn’t imagine it.

Standing, he let Hair-On-End go so he fell back onto his master’s lap. “Sorry, sweetie. I might have given you a go, but you aren’t Kebbal’s type.” That said, he made for the stairs at the rear of the room.

Qanath lingered long enough to suggest that they talk tomorrow, after tempers cooled. Then she was following on his heels. When she caught him up at the top of the stairs where he had stopped to wait for her, he said at once, “If you have any idea what that thing was about to do to me, please don’t share.”

Two Straightforward Questions

Qanath lay staring at the ceiling, lit by a single stripe of lamplight slipping between the shutters from the town square. Havec slept peacefully beside her, still save his deep, even breathing, the hard cynicism he wore in the daytime smoothed away. The room was quiet save for the soothing rustling of the fire in their little potbellied stove, the world beyond shrouded in the eerie silence that seemed to come with snow. It must be bitterly cold. Inside, however, it was pleasant, and beneath the thick quilt, she nestled in a cozy cocoon. The air smelled of wood smoke and wood soap, just a touch of Havec’s sweat; comforting, familiar scents that spoke to repose. In the midst of all this restfulness, she remained stubbornly awake.

She turned her eyes onto the ceiling again as she recalled that Amril had assumed they were together before he even knew they shared a room. A woefully misguided misread of both of them, but Qanath was flattered by it too. Leaving aside his sexuality, she had always felt like Havec was out of her league, and it made her belly flutter to think Amril might not agree.

It was hard to know what to make of him, and it was hard to know what to make of how little he wanted them to know. ‘Smooth guy,’ Havec called him, and the nickname said it all. He gave titles like that to everyone; so far as she was aware, she and Xar anKebbal were the only people in his life who had ever merited a name. Still, the epithet was a pointed judgment, that was plain.

And her mother? What was one to make of that? Was she truly to believe that, after eighteen years of concerted indifference, the woman had elected to care? To carve out an integral place for her daughter, if not in her heart, at least in her plans? It was exactly what she had always wanted and that was why she was so afraid to believe in it.

She rolled over and closed her eyes, but they opened again immediately. When she rolled back onto her back a second later, Havec stirred, muttering. She had spent enough nights beside him by now to know he would remain motionless from the moment he closed his eyes ‘til dawn; if he was restless, it was her fault. Heaving a sigh, she sat up.

She climbed from the bed and slipped back into her trousers, tucking in her rumpled shirt. She slipped her shoes on and went straight for the hallway, trying not to make noise. The corridor and stairwell remained lit, but only dimly by a few scattered lamps. Qanath found the darkness welcome and made for the stairs, thinking to sit before the hearth fire until the dancing flames lulled her tumultuous thoughts. Halfway down the stairs against the back wall she could see into the room beyond, but it was only when she reached their foot and made for the fire that she realized she wasn’t alone: her mother’s stalking horse sat in an armchair, staring into the flames as she had meant to do. Arandgwail wasn’t immediately visible, but the patch of deeper shadows on his lap might actually be a small dark shape.

She had gone still halfway to the hearth, uncertain whether to go forward or retreat. When he turned to look at her, she felt compelled to move. Coming toward him, she took another chair before the fire, pulling her shoes off with her toes and sitting on her feet. She could think of nothing to say to him and nodded.

He returned the greeting, and they sat that way for a span of minutes before he commented, “Out and about by yourself so late, what would your chaperone say?”

Her eyes narrowed. He had said it lightly, as if it were a jest, but they didn’t know one another nearly well enough to make jokes that barbed. “I think he has a point,” she responded, selecting her words with care. “When you go out of your way to play up the tension between you, it does kind of look like you’re doing it to distract me.”

“I can’t just dislike him because he threatened to attack me the moment we met?”

“He’s really nice,” she argued.

“He’s nice to you. It’s not the same thing.”

“He is nice to me,” she allowed, adding, “because I met him halfway, which is how trust works.”

He huffed angrily. “Are you sure you didn’t go further?”

She sat back slightly. “Excuse me?”

“It’s hard not to notice, in the midst of all this, just how much he’s gained.”

It took a moment for his meaning to sink in, it was so absurd. When it did, she couldn’t help herself and laughed. If it was derisive, well, such was life. If you went around saying things that ridiculous, you were going to have to accept that people might judge you. “You think Havec orchestrated the attack on the school?”

“Kebbal fell into his hands because of it, along with the limitless license the Avatethura carry with them.”

“You don’t know the man at all,” she told him wryly.

“You’re so certain of him? You’re sure it never crossed his mind that the previous master’s death would uplift him?”

She had the suspicion that Havec had contemplated Xar anKebbal’s death on a daily basis for a span of years, but that was beside the point. He didn’t have any drive: it was how this started. For better or for worse, he had been made without ambition, and into that vacuum, other people stepped. That was how he really ended up an Avatethura Master: because a series of people made important choices on his behalf.

These insights were far too personal to share with a stranger, though. Drawing in a sharp breath, she let it out in a slow sigh. “First of all, Xar anKebbal always meant to give him the Legacy. That’s why he was the only student at the school for more than five years. Second, I know him and you don’t. He’s only intermittently moral but he’s a man who keeps his word. If he feels a sense of obligation to someone, he will kill himself trying to make good, even if he would rather slit their throat.”

She let him hear and digest these points before continuing, “You should also consider I was there. I was in the room with them, I actually caught a glimpse of Kebbal as it passed between them. Havec was shocked, completely unprepared for it, and he tried to refuse. You want to claim he was after the power that comes with the position, but I’m the one who had to tell him what Kebbal is, what an Avatethura Master does, and how our people feel about the people who do the job.”

“He could be acting.”

Qanath turned in her chair so she could face him more fully, resting an elbow on the arm, then resting her chin on her palm. He wouldn’t meet her gaze, and it was reassuring to watch him fidget. This man had made her feel self-conscious since the moment they met, as if she didn’t fit perfectly into her skin. Knowing he could be totally wrong helped to level the field. “He really couldn’t.”

He changed tacks, saying guardedly, “You saw Kebbal.”

She drew in another sharp breath. “It was like the entire world went dark.” Annoyed by the characterization, she shook her head. “It was like light ceased to exist, like I’d been transported back to a time when there wasn’t anything. In the void, I felt something looking at me. It was…” She hesitated, recalling her own terror and stacking it up against what Havec later said. She had been frightened, but it made sense to her that he understood the creature better than she could. “It was complicated and ancient. Completely alien, but interested in me all the same.”

He turned that over in his mind, eyes distant with thought. “You say you saw it, but what you saw was it watching you.”

The inherent contradiction of this had never struck her before. “Basically, yes.”

“Does that mean it’s essentially a mirror?”

She frowned, waving that away. “Definitely not.” She ended up describing their adventure in the graveyard in Dareh, the ghosts and what she did. The simplistic geometric shadow Kebbal left behind when exposed to the light of barana rakis. Amril was a sorcerer with years of experience on her, and he lapsed into pensive silence when she was done.

The lump of fur on his lap sighed at this point and rolled over. She couldn’t tell what it was; it was sleeping in the hollow where abdomen met leg and she didn’t care to get caught staring at the groin of a man she hardly knew. Whom her mother had promised her to, by the way.

He had perceived her interest, though, and perhaps she wasn’t the only one who would be glad to turn the conversation off this argument; rather than make some awful jest, he scooped the shyin out of his lap. He held it out to her on his cupped hands, leaning forward over the arm of his chair to give her a better look. It was the kitten again, fast asleep after its exciting day. She hesitated for a heartbeat, but quickly lost the will to resist and stroked its tiny head. Its fur was long, soft as thistledown, and what was most incredible to her was how real it felt. There was a sense in which it was actually a kitten, but more than anything, what it was, was an expression of its maker’s will.

“I’ve never seen one before,” she said quietly, so as not to wake him. “My conjuration professor had a phoenix and a mannequin, but…”

“Nothing so impractical.”

Qanath didn’t care that it was impractical: it was wondrous. The idea that cleverness and determination could be combined in order to bring new sapient life into being was the kind of thing that made it worthwhile to get out of bed. What need had Arandgwail to help with the housework? Was the fact of his existence not enough? The fervor of these thoughts was embarrassing to her and she kept them to herself.

“You mentioned earlier that he’s young…”

“I’ve not had him a year.”

His tone was slightly defensive, as if he was wondering where this might lead. Qanath didn’t want to fight with him about Havec’s suspicions or her mother’s plans, though, not when there was something interesting to talk about. “The way you said it, in the context I thought you meant in himself and not just in years. Will he actually grow up?”

Amril sucked in a deep breath, seeming surprised. Then he scooted his seat over a few cautious inches and set the sleeping kitten on the broad armrest of her chair. Eyes on the lump of black fur, he answered, “That depends on him. He’s never out of my sight for longer than it takes to use the privy, the opportunities to learn are there. Whether he’s paying attention at any given moment…” He spread his hands fatalistically. “He is what he is. Still, I do not believe it foolishly optimistic to hope he’ll gather a bit of wisdom of his own over the years.

“If you were asking more about his physical vessel, the animal forms he chooses as the whim takes him, but his human shape is a mirror of mine. He came into being as a baby, and for the first few days, he aged by months with each cycle of the sun. I scarcely slept for a week, and while I sat up with him at night, I almost thought I could watch him growing. It’s been slowing down as his apparent age draws closer to mine. Once he matches me, the shape he puts on will age as I do. When I get my first gray hairs…”

“So will he,” she supplied, adding silently, And the second you expend your last breath, he will cease to exist.

The sorcerer had fallen silent too, but now volunteered, “Roughly eighty-five percent of shyins are the same gender as their maker, and no one has ever discovered why the remainder aren’t. To me, that says something meaningful about how much he’s purely a product of himself. You’ll note that he looks nothing like me. He laughs at all my jokes but falls asleep when I talk. I like Ayan string music and he prefers those insipid Vithral flutes.”

Although she found this fascinating, she would never be able to go through with it. She could spend years at study honing her craft until she finally had the skill and understanding to perform so dizzying a task, but brought to the brink, she knew she would balk. It was too final. Too heavy a burden of responsibility, too permanent a bond. You had to have a license for sorcerous constructs of the second or third degree, and even the paperwork took years.

She stifled a yawn in the back of her hand, and Amril reached for the kitten. It stirred, yellow eyes turning onto Qanath. It peeped at her sleepily, then blinked. In the space of seconds, it had bloomed into a man her age, sitting on one hip on the arm of her chair.

“It’s you,” he said brightly. “Is the man with white hair around?”