While she dug out the last of their food, Havec got the horses ready. In the length of twenty minutes, they were mounted again and heading south. He tried to steer them in an easterly direction, hoping to find that town they bypassed at the border. If Qanath thought her people would protect them, it was worth a try. And there was nothing but wilderness south and west; that was the route his mother’s agents took when they carried him out of the country, in order to avoid human eyes.
Once he finished eating the meager handful of crackers that was the last of their food, he asked, “What do Avatethura Masters do? Do I have to go around righting wrongs on Kebbal’s behalf?”
The girl shot him a surprised look. “I don’t think so. I think you just mostly have to be.”
“How can I be something I don’t even understand?” he demanded, torn between frustration and a swelling hope that everything she said was true. “If this is such a big deal, shouldn’t I have training or something?”
“What do you think you were doing the last six years?”
“Learning how to throw a punch?”
“Along with discipline, patience, fortitude, and probably a hundred other noble things. There’s a reason my people decided the Avatethura Masters ought to be warriors, not scholars or priests.”
They were silent for the length of several minutes while the day that had dawned brightly sunny began to grow overcast. Havec squinted up into the clouds massing overheard, noting their heaviness, a warning that they carried more snow. He had been unsure when first they started up into the mountains, but the longer this went on, the more certain he was that this weather was unusual at this time of year. As he thought it, a lone flake of snow drifted down and landed on his nose.
The girl had been thinking about something less troubling. “At some point, people will expect you to open a school. Even if you don’t want to go back to his house, the property is yours.”
“Of course I don’t want to go back!”
“Well, people are going to start sending you their children. You’ll want somewhere to put them, I would think.”
“People will send me their children?” he repeated incredulously.
“The prestige of being taught by you will mean a lot. It will help your students get ahead. People will compete for the privilege to learn at your feet.”
Havec stared into the pine forest, amazed. He had been aware that Xar’s big empty house had once been a school and had tried on many occasions to imagine the place fully populated. He had been picturing himself as one of the students, though, one face among many, fantasizing that he wasn’t so alone. That he hadn’t been singled out and had companions his own age. He had never once considered what it would be like to be the person who was master of what would be a bustling, chaotic household full of energetic young people. He was only just old enough to have graduated and couldn’t decide whether to be intrigued or alarmed.
“People will trust their children to me? Even though I can’t prove I didn’t murder my predecessor?”
“If you tell the authorities the truth, they will want to believe you.”
“And when they ask what we’re doing out here?”
“Havec.” He could tell she was scraping together her last reserves of patience. “Let me set this up for you. You, Havec anKebbal, contain within you, tethered to your flesh and bounded by your will, a being of primal power older than mortal life. You can only care for your supernatural tenant if you channel its desires along the best possible paths and treat it with respect. There will be times when pacifying the appalling force of nature you carry inside you means letting it have its way. It’s a price my people are happy to pay.”
“Huh.”
He could feel Qanath’s sidelong gaze on his face, wondering if he finally understood. Apparently she decided that he didn’t, because she added, “We shouldn’t have run after the attack, and no one’s going to care that you thought we might be blamed. But you had to come back here and learn the truth. No one’s going to question that.”
“I have to tell them my story.” He felt a sinking sensation in his gut.
“You don’t have to tell anyone you spent six years in an older man’s bed with your hair in curls,” she said bluntly. Havec turned to stare at her; she had never alluded to that so directly, not since they became friends. She caught the look but didn’t retreat. “What? You can tell people as much or as little as you want, but they’re going to be extremely curious how a foreigner became an Avatethura Master. People are going to ask how he found you. They’re going to assume the relationship was straightforward and amicable unless you choose to share. No one but me will ever know the truth if you want to keep it to yourself.”
“You said there would be an investigation. You said they would go through the house.”
She heaved a sigh. “I don’t know, Havec, maybe the politzqa who got called in found the jewelry and sexy clothes and guessed he had a lover. Maybe, when they hear about you, they’ll put two and two together. Anyone who gossips about you will do so quietly behind closed doors. Badmouthing an Avatethura Master makes you look like trash.”
They didn’t speak again as the morning wore on and the heavens drew closer, the snow coming heavier than ever and piling deep around their horses’ legs. Havec had only just caught a promising whiff of wood smoke when they got caught. The smell was there and gone again, and he drew rein, casting his eyes about fruitlessly. It was in that still moment when he heard the shouts.
He could just make out the forms of as many as a dozen mounted men on the slope of the valley they were climbing down into from the northwest. The men were coming in from a different angle, due north. He stared at them, struggling to make it make sense, baffled that his mother would send her entire search party out en masse instead of putting out hunters in pairs to look for their trail.
Then he took in the way the trees fell away from the men where they had begun to gallop down the rise, the narrow stripe of bald snow cutting across the valley’s center. The scene rearranged itself, transmuting from wilderness to countryside: those men were on a road he hadn’t realized was there. A broad, straight road that must lead from somewhere to somewhere. They had come this way because his mother had guessed where he was going and was trying to cut him off.
Shouting to Qanath, he surged forward, making for the road he couldn’t see but now knew was there. The girl balked, leaning back in the saddle in fear, but her horse had already figured out Havec was the one to follow and threw itself courageously into the snow. They fought forward, snow flying from their legs like sea spray. As the men off to their left hit the level valley floor and sped up, the two of them reached the hard surface of the road.
Turning their heads south, Havec leaned low on his horse’s neck and shouted encouragements in its ear. He was icily aware that the road beneath the snow was no Tabbaqeran highway, designed by the finest engineers in the world and regularly maintained: there would be ruts and potholes aplenty.
They were forced to slow as they climbed the hill at the southern face, their mounts thrusting themselves into deepening drifts. He could hear the shouts of the men behind them growing triumphant as the distance closed. His shoulders twitched as he recalled those Tabbi soldiers with their bows, and he couldn’t remember whether his people trained to shoot from horseback. He could practically feel the spear driving into his back and forced his horse to draw up slightly, putting the girl in the fore.
Their pursuers hadn’t overtaken them by the time they came to the crest of the hill, though, and as they summited, the welcoming smell of wood smoke he’d caught a hint of before hit him full in the face. There it was below them: the border, safe haven, that town they’d seen two days earlier. He leaned low, shouting at their horses, urging them on for the final stretch. When he looked upon the place from the other side, he had thought it wasn’t fortified, but he saw now there was a wall, stretching around perhaps a third of the town on the north. Less an actual fortification than a message that his people weren’t welcome to wander in. There was a gate where this road entered, standing open now, several Tabbis in armor standing nearby. As they pelted closer, more soldiers came running from within the town.
It was unwise to run a horse at this speed down a steep hill covered in slick wet snow well above the fetlocks. It was a miracle every step they took and didn’t fall. He wanted to look over his shoulder at their pursuers but felt as if it would break the spell. As they drew closer, the girl shouted, “Help! Help!” Whether it was the sound of their native tongue or the sight of her Tabbi face when she took the goofy hat off and waved it over her head, the soldiers parted abruptly from the gates and allowed them to thunder in.
They closed ranks behind them, ten people all armored and with their swords drawn. He ignored them as he drew his valiant horse to a halt, looking over their heads. The Moritian warriors had been no more than fifty yards behind by the end. They’d drawn up too, horses dancing in agitated circles as they argued with one another about what to do. He already knew they wouldn’t be charging the gates, however hostile his people may have grown.
Shaking his head, Havec put them from his mind: Moritia was behind him now and it was time to confront his new life. Slinging a leg over the saddle, he hopped down into the paved square beyond the gates, freshly swept of snow, and turned to face the Tabbaqerans all gaping at him. “I’m Havec anKebbal,” he told them, shooting the girl a fleeting look. “Please let me back into my homeland.”
***
His declaration was received in stunned silence by their audience. One of them appeared to think it was a hoax and said, “Now see here—” before the fellow at his shoulder hushed him hastily. There was a pause quivering with confusion and crisscrossed by sideways looks, then one of the women at the back excused herself to go fetch the person in charge. Then the two of them were being ushered with stilted civility into the largest building fronting the square by a group of soldiers who couldn’t seem to decide whether they were protecting them or arresting them.
Immediately within the building lay a large space that was obviously a waiting room, lined along the inner wall by desks with placards on them meant to direct visitors to the proper place. This was the headquarters of the local Scolate, where people could apply for permits and report crimes. Based on the number of men and women she saw wearing the everyday uniform of the soldiery – close-fitting cottons of tan and Imperial blue-and-red – it was also the home of the local garrison. Sitting on the border as this town did, the army would have a permanent presence.
They waited for the lieutenant to arrive to begin the questioning, and all of them had put up their swords. Qanath had been sure this would work eventually, but she had expected a few more protests up front. What if Havec had been right all along? What if word of the Avatethura Master’s death had proceeded them and the Scolate was already hard at work looking for the people responsible? They could hardly have done something more suspicious than to walk up to these guards and confess that they were acquainted with the fact that the man was dead.
She reminded herself this was silly. These fears were Havec’s, because he didn’t know any better, because Xar anKebbal had fed him lies that made him feel hunted and alone. The man had wanted him to believe his master was the only person in the country who had any sympathy for him as a means of isolating him, and it was the opposite of true.
She realized Havec was looking at her, face carefully blank, and gave him a nod that hopefully expressed her confidence. She had heard him quote her, and with anyone else, she would have assumed he was using her words because he wasn’t sure how to find his own. She was pretty sure Havec meant it as a joke, though. Making a point, so that when they got busted, as he still suspected they would, he could throw it in her face.
