Qanath looked at the shyin, peering eagerly into every corner as if Havec might be hiding. “He’s sleeping.”

“I could watch him sleep,” Arandgwail offered, with an intonation that suggested this would be of help to everyone.

She hesitated, wondering just how dangerous it was to cross this creature. His master came to her rescue, heaving a weary sigh. “No, Ara, that wouldn’t be wise. I think it may be time we look for our own bed.” As he stood, he muttered, “And I thought the month when he went through puberty was bad.”

Qanath stared after them as they mounted the stairs, contemplating the wrenching sensation in her chest.

***

When Havec woke the next morning, he found Qanath already awake, sitting by the unshuttered window with her legs curled under her. He had no idea whether she had simply risen early or whether she’d been up all night. She didn’t look tired; her eyes, fixed on the distance, were tight around the edges, and in their depths, a fire burned.

Chafing both hands across the top of his head, he sat up in bed. “So?”

“It isn’t anything I ever thought I wanted.”

“You’re rethinking.”

“I wanted to prove myself to my mother…”

“But maybe now you’re realizing you’re ambitious in your own right? You don’t have to justify yourself to me.”

She didn’t answer; she had yet to turn her gaze from the window.

He found this silence slightly worrying, and as he tossed back the covers, he attempted a joke. “My mother threw me away because I’m so lacking in the necessary quality, I must be the last to judge.”

She grunted.

Rising from the bed, he made for the vanity on the far side of the room. As he passed behind Qanath, he glanced over her shoulder, and when he did, he stopped. He had assumed she was staring at nothing, preoccupied with her thoughts, but now he saw she had been looking at something all along: Smooth Guy was sitting in a chair outside that restaurant across the square in spite of the snow, drinking a cup of tea with a book open on his knee. Havec’s eyes darted, and at first, he could find no evidence of Hair-On-End. Smooth Guy’s far shoulder was in shadow, though, and it looked deformed, probably by the mass of a small vile animal.

“The Future Mister Girl,” he said dryly.

The shadow detached itself from Smooth Guy’s shoulder, resolving into a mink that flowed down his chest and across his lap before disappearing beneath his chair. Almost as if it had sensed Havec’s scrutiny, and maybe it could. He saw it slinking rapidly around the nearest corner and a minute later Hair-On-End appeared from the same direction it had gone. Tossing himself onto the seat across from his master, he stole the man’s tea and took a drink. Then he flopped back in his seat restlessly, giving the impression that he was bored.

“What about you?” she asked, and her voice was strained. “Arandgwail seems to like you a lot. With anyone else in the world, I would say getting in bed with a shyin was just a more exciting means of committing suicide, but I bet you could hold your own.”

“No thanks,” he said simply.

“Really? As a human, I think he’s kind of cute.”

“Qanath. No.”

“You have to brave the waters sometime. Or do you mean to spend the rest of your life alone?”

Grasping the arm of her chair, he turned it about so she had no choice but to face him. Then he sat down on the foot of the bed. “Right now, I’m still enjoying the hell out of not having to take my clothes off every time another person decides I should. I guess at some point that will lose its luster, and then,” he gestured expansively, “I’ll go on a spree!”

That made her smile a little.

Sitting forward, he pointed a finger at her. “My life is not the one that’s currently interesting. I don’t get why we’re playing this game. Do you think I’m so vain I won’t notice you keep putting me off, given an opportunity to talk about myself?”

That wiped the smile off her face, and she turned her face aside, looking ill. “Havec…”

“What? It’s a straightforward question: do you want to go ahead with your mother’s plan, and will you ever be willing to marry that smarmy ass? Okay,” he conceded, “two straightforward questions.”

It was a minute before she whispered, “Will you think less of me if I say yes?”

He frowned. “Why would I? Last I checked, it’s your life.”

Her hands knotted anxiously in her lap. “I don’t discount what you’ve been through, but you were born to importance. You’re beautiful and talented and the son of a king. People like me, people on the outside, there’s this hunger you wouldn’t understand.”

“But you think Smooth Guy does.”

“Please don’t call him that.”

He sighed heavily to make sure she knew she was being silly, but went ahead and corrected himself: “You think Amril does?”

“I do,” she said softly, and still she wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“Fine, he gets you and I don’t. I don’t understand why you’re being weird about it.”

“Because I know you don’t approve,” she said softly.

“Don’t approve?” he repeated. “That isn’t fair. I just think Smooth—Amril is a little…”

“‘Smarmy’ was the word you used. You’ve also called him a stuck-up dick, a snake in the grass, a worm, and a greasy prick. Leaving aside all the questionable phallic imagery, it seems safe to surmise you don’t like him. And if I see myself in him, what does that make me?”

Sighing again, he stood and moved past her to the window. Then he braced a hand on either side of the frame and stood that way, waiting for the pair below to notice him. He had been right to suspect that Hair-On-End was already aware of him; The Thing held out for all of five seconds before it turned about to stare. It said something that made its master look up for the first time. His eyes found Havec quickly, and his expression was blank. Havec stayed where he was, letting the man take his time appreciating that he was in his underwear in the girl’s bedroom and had spent the last six years working out instead of hunched over a book.

“Now you’re trying to pick a fight?” the girl demanded behind him.

Over his shoulder, he replied, “I think it will do him no harm at all to be reminded that this is the first thing you look at when you wake up.” Point made, he left the window, going to the washbasin as he’d originally intended in order to brush his teeth. Around his toothbrush, he said, “He still doesn’t seem to have figured out that you’re the crux of his ambition and he needs to impress you to move ahead.”

Face shuttered, she asked, “Oh?”

“If you like the guy, I guess the next order of business is to make sure he’s your snake in the grass. Then when the day comes, he can help you spit your mother on her plans.”

He turned away to spit, but then the mirror caught his attention. After washing his face, he reapplied his eyeliner, making the lines nice and thick. His hair was getting kind of long, long enough to grow down over his ears, and he fingered it as he wondered where he might get it cut. It was the striking silence from the other side of the room that finally turned him around.

It had been several minutes since he’d spoken, and still Qanath was staring at him, expression arrested. “What?”

“You just…”

“Just what?”

“I had only kind of started to think…”

Shaking his head, he moved past her again in search of a shirt. “Am I, or am I not, the Embodiment of Vengeance? You think I can’t spot a good scenario for revenge? She bought that guy with your womb, it’s only right you go ahead and make the deal yourself.”

“You really don’t think less of me.”