“I can’t do that!” he exclaimed.
“Why?”
“Because I’m a foreigner, no one would believe me!”
“Not instantly and without question, but they would definitely look into the claim. They wouldn’t let your people drag you off while they did.”
“At which point they would discover Xar was murdered in his home…”
He had been telling her, from the moment the man died, that they would take the blame for that. Another assertion she had taken as truth because he said it with such certainty. “At which point you would show them Kebbal.”
He frowned at her dubiously.
“I saw it when he passed it to you. For a second. It was like the entire world went dark, and I could feel something looking at me.”
Havec’s eyebrows were climbing for his hairline. “You saw that? It felt…”
“Ominous and full of hate,” she suggested.
“Not hatred, but anger and regret. It was parting ways with its last host after years of bitter discord, can you imagine how painful that must have been?” Qanath had never once contemplated sympathizing with the plight of an Archetype of War, but she wasn’t the one whose life’s work was to be its friend. “You think I should pass it over to some border guard?”
“No!” It was an alarming prospect, one of the Archetypes of War dumped offhandedly into an unsuspecting vessel of unknown worth. Maybe Xar anKebbal hadn’t warned Havec what he meant to do, but he must have prepared his heir for his Legacy very carefully. “I’m pretty sure a priest would be able to spot it swimming around inside you or whatever.”
“Ew.”
She held up her hands. “I’m not the one who put it there.”
He snatched a cracker out of her upheld hand as if she had been offering it to him and ate it whole. Out of the corner of his mouth, he said, “No, but everything in the Empire is a freak-show, you people can’t even have normal hang-out-in-the-clouds-uselessly gods served by the usual jaded, scheming priests.” He paused momentarily, then said in an uncharacteristically pensive vein, “It’s funny it took me so long to realize it’s where I belong. The hints were there.”
It had been a horribly negative thing to say about her homeland, but she thought he had meant it as a compliment and allowed herself to smile.
“That still leaves me the chief suspect in an unsolved murder.”
“Huh? Oh.” Qanath rolled her eyes. “Havec. It’s long past time for you to figure this out: you are important. To our people. In your own right.”
He frowned at her, confused.
“You’re an Avatethura Master, as I’ve been trying to tell you since day one. You command respect by virtue of existing. If you tell the truth about what happened that night, they’ll be inclined to take you at your word.”
He made a face, as if he could barely interpret the words emerging from her mouth. “Why?”
“Because you’re Avat Havec anKebbal. Being the living housing for that thing is considered a noble calling. You’re the last, secret disciple of a man loved far and wide, whatever he may have been in the privacy of his home.” A thought struck her, and she said more to herself, “It would have caused a panic when they found him dead. No one outside that house knew he had an heir for his Legacy, it had been years since there was a student in his school. I wonder…” She stuffed a last handful of dried cranberries into her mouth and chewed them thoughtfully.
“What?”
“Oh, if they haven’t already realized you must exist. The moment they discovered him dead, the Beztliathe would have been scrying frantically, trying to figure out where Kebbal went. Trying to find some way to contain it again before it put the entire Empire at war. When they couldn’t locate it, they would have to have realized that either he had a candidate for his Legacy and just never told anyone—”
“Or a troupe of assassins invaded his home and killed him in order to steal it, knowing he was alone,” Havec interrupted, eyes narrowed in thought. It was a moment before his gaze refocused on her. “There’s some reason I’m not still the prime suspect?”
Qanath shrugged, feeling helpless in the face of his cynicism. “Because? Because he actually trained you and you can prove it? All the academies have different styles of fighting, people who know about that kind of thing would be able to confirm that you were Kebbal-trained. Anyway, I don’t pretend our society doesn’t have flaws, but secrets haven’t done you any favors, Havec. Isn’t it time to come out of the shadows and take a stand?”
He had nothing to say to that, and they didn’t speak again. They huddled together beneath their blanket, each of them curled around a hot rock. Qanath glanced at her companion only once before the exhaustion finally took her. It was hard to be certain in the spooky blue light of moon-on-snow, but she almost thought he was smiling as he drifted off.
A Perfect Bullseye
Havec woke at dawn with a neck so stiff he couldn’t straighten his head. The rock clutched to his belly still had some residual heat and he savored that for a minute while he twisted his head cautiously, trying to get blood back into his neck. Once he had it moving again, he set his rock aside regretfully.
Qanath had fallen into him while she slept, and he took her by the shoulders carefully in order to move her away. As he positioned her on the ground of their tiny dirt-floored hollow, he noticed the sharpness of her cheekbones beneath her skin. They hadn’t been nearly so pronounced when he met her. So that was great: she was losing weight. With Qanath, any weight lost was more than she could spare.
As he stepped into the snow, he recalled with a pang that he had told her Xar’s assessment of her looks. Qanath had loved him in spite of himself long before he understood how badly he needed a friend, and he had repaid her with pointless cruelty. What end did beauty serve? It was Qanath’s hard-won knowledge that had kept them alive through the night, not his pretty face.
Not that he was about to apologize for having a pretty face, not after yesterday. The memory of washing his makeup off just because some shepherd made fun of him returned to him, warming his chilly cheeks. It had been wrong to let these people’s judgments affect his actions or make him doubt himself. His father had thought he was good enough to follow in his footsteps, but if the rest of them didn’t, so be it. Qanath seemed convinced Tabbis who had never laid eyes on him would be inclined to assume the best. Hard to credit, but trusting Qanath had yet to lead him astray.
He hadn’t realized she was up, but heard her raised voice from somewhere off to his right: “I never envied men before.”
“Oh?” he called.
“Then I had to pee in the snow.”
This made him laugh. “Maybe this is why my people are so judging. Maybe it’s all down to climate.”
They reconvened at the boulder, where the girl gave him a puzzled frown.
“Oh, you know. Since I’m not man enough to be king…”
Her baffled gaze drifted onto his groin before she realized she was doing it and jerked her eyes away. She didn’t seem to understand what he meant, and after half a second’s cogitation, he realized he didn’t want her to. Hastily, he pointed out, “It doesn’t matter what these people think. We’re leaving, right?”
“Please,” she said fervently.
