They waited no more than two minutes before a new party came tumbling down a flight of stairs at the back. The lieutenant hadn’t come alone: a young man trailed in his wake, garbed in a formless brown robe. Bereft of any trappings, Qanath couldn’t guess what god he served, but he was definitely a priest: it was there in his serenity. He features were hewn with the precision and symmetry of sculpture, and the calmness of his expression contributed to his resemblance to a timeless, perfect piece of lifeless stone.
The other soldiers fell away from them eagerly the moment their leader appeared, a balding man with a lantern jaw. He put himself foursquare in front of Havec, planting his fists on his hips. “You’re the Avatethura Master anKebbal?” he demanded, and the way he barked the question made it hard to judge whether he was dubious or impressed.
“I am,” Havec said simply.
“You’ll let my associate confirm that?” He gestured at the priest standing placidly at his shoulder.
“Depends on how unpleasant that will be.”
“Not unpleasant at all,” the priest said, stepping forward. He smiled benignantly. “But if you might warn your companion and assure it that I mean no disrespect?”
Havec’s brows shot up before he could control his expression, and she could guess why; it was something she hadn’t considered, either, that he might speak directly to the creature that lived in him. His face smoothed out again and he spread his hands. Without further conversation, the young priest blinked his eyes. They had been brown, but suddenly they were green, the vibrant hue of emeralds. Infinitely older, although she couldn’t say how she knew. It was as if his god or goddess was looking out of his face, and she shivered, glad all over again she had opted for the Collure.
It lasted all of a second, then the priest drew in a sharp breath, flinging a hand up between them. His palm was outward, fingers splayed, and one might mistake it for a gesture of repudiation but for the respectful way he averted his eyes. “Sinudan, valore vast avatethura,” he murmured, in what sounded like one of the southern tongues, Hasuul or Tre. He blinked again, eyes returned to their ordinary brown, then bent in a bow. “Avat, you honor us with your presence.”
The confirmation sent a stir through the soldiers. Troubles along the border notwithstanding, this was the most exciting thing to happen here in years. They fell to whispering urgently with one another as their lieutenant stepped forward again. “Heard what happened to your predecessor,” he began gruffly. “You follow his murderers north?”
Most everyone in the room gasped in shock, as if word of Xar anKebbal’s death was being kept secret. News of an Avatethura Master’s murder was the sort of thing that might cause a panic, but it looked as though people of a certain rank had been made aware of it. Havec shot her one swift look, and it amazed her when he decided to take her advice. “No.” For a moment, he left it at that. Then he took another deep breath and admitted, “I came here for reasons of my own. You may have noticed I’m not Tabbi…”
More than a few of the soldiers chuckled.
“I was… kidnapped in my youth. Carried across the border locked in a trunk and handed over to a bonding-broker who sold me for his profit against my will.”
The mood in the room shifted, everyone briefly appalled. As quickly as the shock had appeared, it was replaced by smoldering anger. It didn’t surprise her that no one questioned his word, not now they knew what he was. “Our people came across the border?” the lieutenant asked ominously. His eyes went to several of the soldiers, who hastened from the room.
“No, the kidnappers were my own.” A fleeting hesitation, then Havec admitted, “I was the only child of the previous king, who had just died. Someone else wanted the throne.”
“And you came home to have your revenge,” the lieutenant finished for him, as if this were only natural, which for a person styled ‘anKebbal,’ it was. “Do you remember any other details? The names of any Tabbaqerans who were involved, places they may have taken you…?”
“I remember the broker’s name,” Havec replied, speaking slowly. “But I’m reluctant to share it with you. I mean to cut his heart out myself.”
Taken aback, the soldier took a step to the rear. Then he bent in the deepest bow yet. “Of course, Avat, I did not mean to offend. But, ah…”
“Your grudge against the broker is understandable,” Qanath interjected, “but killing him doesn’t change anything. Someone else will take his place. It’s in the interest of the Empire to shut down the trade.”
Havec was silent, studying her, and she wasn’t sure how he would respond. At last, he said, “I’ll see what I can remember. You have your work cut out for you, I can tell you that. He auctioned me off to a crowd, and where there’s that kind of demand, there’s always going to be someone happy to supply.”
There was an awkward silence thrumming with all the questions no one dared to ask, then he said grudgingly, “I have no idea who any of them were. Still, he would know. When I find him, I guess I could hold off on killing him long enough to let you talk to him.”
Qanath breathed a sigh of relief. It had never been certain Havec would cooperate with an inquest, and because he was an Avatethura Master, they weren’t going to threaten to throw him in jail for obstructing their investigation. Had he been Pemets like her, she would have known how to appeal to him, tempting him with the prospect of humbling a bunch of rich assholes so bored by their own fortune they had turned to depravity and thought they were above the law. Havec, though, was rich and above the law: these weren’t going to look like flaws to him.
The lieutenant bowed yet again, expressing his gratitude. The soldiers who had been sent away began returning over the course of the conversation, leading other people who hung back but listened with great interest. Most of them were unarmed and wore no uniforms aside from the imperial kite embroidered on a few of their shirts. Qanath would have bet anything they were politzqa, attorneys and detectives come to learn what they knew. Sure enough, they moved forward into this lull in the conversation.
There seemed to be a consensus that the time had come to move on to the subject of Xar anKebbal’s death; they had asked him enough personal questions and ought to leave behind the matter of his captivity before he grew annoyed. They had received a concession toward cooperation at some undetermined future date and that was all they had the right to hope for. Qanath was very conscious of how differently this might have gone, had she been the only one by to interrogate, but the nice thing about having Havec around was that all these authority figures had forgotten she existed and were leaving her alone.
For a span of weeks, Havec’s face had been the last thing she looked at when she went to sleep and the first thing she saw the next day. As so often happened with things that grew familiar, she had ceased to pay attention to it. But now she looked at him, really looked at him, not assuming she knew what was there. Not viewing him through the lens of friendship that saw what he meant to her, and not the lens of memory, which saw the sullen bed-bonded stalking about his master’s house in demeaning undress, lashing out at her because he couldn’t raise a hand to the person he was actually angry at.
This time, she looked at him through the eyes of the awed men and women who were seeing him for the first time, and she was astonished by how much he’d changed. The bush-whacked hair, the thick black circles around his frigid eyes, the tattered clothing, the last softness of boyhood melted from his face. He had a way of standing with his shoulders back and his hips forward, head jutting at an awkward angle, that gave him an uncanny resemblance to a wild dog contemplating biting you. He looked, she realized, like exactly what he was.
It was a fascinating revelation, and she let the excited mob jostle her to its margins while she watched her friend. On the day she met Xar anKebbal, she had felt his presence before he entered the room, a weight of menace that stole the breath. She had thought it was Kebbal she sensed, but now she had an inkling that this was only partly true: that was what Kebbal was in that individual. Havec had a force of presence too, one she hadn’t noticed because he took it on after they met. In him, it became something different. Subtler, less threatening, but also more difficult to predict.
She wasn’t the only one who noticed it; she was the last to have seen. No one had their back to him, even people on the other side of the room having conversations of their own. Their heads told them to be respectful, but their hearts were just a little bit afraid.
Eventually it did occur to someone that there was another witness in the room, and then Qanath was dragged back to center to answer the same questions. They were nice about it, though, and treated her like a victim rather than a suspect. She told them everything she could remember, knowing it wasn’t much. It must be maddening to find witnesses to this terrible crime, only to run headlong into a new brick wall.
It ended after maybe an hour, then they were free to go. They were warned very politely that these people weren’t actually heading up that investigation and the people who were would want to talk to them themselves. There were no threats about leaving, though, no menacing looks, just a reminder to Havec to return the next day so they could expedite the process of his naturalization. Get him a set of temporary papers while that took place. Qanath had been certain they would accept him once they realized what he was, but even she was surprised by how easy it had been.
Then it was over and the priest was leading them across the square at the town’s center to a homey-looking red-roofed inn. He was a member of the army himself, he confessed. When they needed someone to lead a few prayers or speak the right words over a deathbed, he took his uniform off and slipped into the robe. His head was shaved along the sides, leaving a close-cropped crest across the top of his skull, but it was the only thing about him that spoke more to the soldier. Qanath couldn’t imagine him carrying a weapon.
He left them in the care of the innkeeper with another benevolent smile. Havec ordered them a single room again, and this time she was sure of it: he wasn’t being frugal, he wanted her by. He would never in a million years admit he was intimidated, but there it was.
She still had no opinion one way or another and said nothing of it as they followed the innkeeper up the stairs. Once they were alone in their room, a decent space with a nice broad bed and a cozy armchair by the potbellied stove, she said, “It’s incredible to me how perfect you are at this.”
Havec grunted a question, rooting through his pack on the bed.
“You might have been made to be an Avatethura Master. That makes it funny to me that you are. You’re not even from our country but still you ended up in Kebbal’s reach at the right time to inherit it. Like it sought you out.”
“If Xar was letting Kebbal drag him around, he was shit at his job.”
Surprised, she told him, “There has to be give and take, you know.”
“Are you still,” he demanded, hurling the bag across the room where it collided with the wall with a crash, “making excuses for him?”
This alarmed her, the accusation more than the violent outburst. “No! That wasn’t what I meant. It’s your life, I wasn’t there.”
He squinted at her suspiciously.
“I’m not saying it was fate. He was responsible for his choices. It’s just…” She sighed. “I don’t even know if I have a theory. But it’s so weird to me, I look at you and think, ‘That is exactly what a man named anKebbal ought to look like,’ and think of the chance that brought you here. How can it be a coincidence?”
