“Clever, how you just up and guessed the right Archetype of War off the top of your head,” the detective commented.
He shot her a look. “I’m clever, my guesses tend to be as well. I was sent to find this young woman at Xar anKebbal’s school, it seemed logical his was the Avatethura in question. What happened to him?”
No one answered, but after a moment Qanath drew in a deep breath. “I can shed some light on this situation. The Senator is my mother. Why she has someone following me…”
The woman behind the desk snorted and her face thawed somewhat. “Once you have kids of your own, that’ll get easier to explain.”
Her eyes went back to the man. “Is that true? My mother hired you to look over my shoulder?”
“To make sure you were safe,” he replied calmly, “and provide you with any help you might need.”
“Help? With what?”
He spread his hands. Qanath had the strong suspicion there was more to this than he wanted to admit, but she couldn’t tell if that was rational or a symptom of her troubled relationship with the woman who hired him. Her mother had never seemed to care about her before, but maybe she did. Maybe she had taken this unprecedented step because Qanath had taken an unprecedented step first.
“I can keep them overnight if you want me to,” the detective told her, drawing her mind back to the matter at hand, “but being weird isn’t a crime. It seems to me you might have more use for him than I do.”
She glanced at Havec; he made a meaningful face, raising his brows. “Yes, I think I’d like to ask him a few questions.”
The detective nodded. “It’ll take a couple of minutes to process the paperwork, if you don’t mind waiting.”
“Not at all, if we have a decent place to wait,” Havec answered, speaking up for the first time. He had been convinced they would arrest him on sight an hour earlier, but he seemed to have adjusted already to being a figure of universal respect. Qanath looked at him and wondered if she could ever manage the self-assurance that came with consequence. It was one of the things that drove her mad about him, the way he knew instinctively that he stood out in any crowd, but also one of the things she loved.
He nodded at the open doorway, adding, “We’re going to go take a seat in the common room and have a drink, if you want to send them over when you’re done?”
She bowed her head. “Of course, Avat. It would be my pleasure.”
They made their way back outside into a dying day, a few scattered snowflakes drifting down from the lowering sky. It had slowed for the time being, but those clouds showed no sign of blowing off. While they passed the still-packed café, her companion asked, “Did you believe a word of that?”
She sighed. “I don’t know what to think.” She wanted to express her convoluted feelings about her mother’s shocking intervention but couldn’t find words. Maybe she didn’t need to.
“If he’s supposed to be helping you, why did he make contact but then ride by?”
“That’s a good question,” she said slowly.
“You think the bit about your mother is real?”
She put her hands to her mouth, huffing hot air onto her chilly fingers. “Why would it not be? The only important thing about me is her. I don’t think anyone would think to get at her through me, fishing after information or something. Not after the way she’s acted all these years.” She knew none of the woman’s secrets and had hold over very little of her heart. This ought to be obvious to anyone who cared enough about her mother to pay attention to her private life, be they enemy or hanger-on.
They let themselves into the common room, wonderfully warm and rich with the welcoming scents of tea and dinner in the works. They took a seat at a rectangular table in the far corner by the stairs, an out-of-the-way space where they could talk undisturbed. Feeling reckless, Qanath ordered them one of the nicer bottles of wine. It was presented and poured out, and after the maid left again, they stared into their drinks.
She noticed Havec was as worried as she’d ever seen him. “You don’t trust him.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who was more obviously a snake in the grass,” he replied. “But why he’s slithering around you? Your guess is as good as mine.”
***
Their new friends arrived not long after their wine, and Havec elected to move around the table so he was sitting at the girl’s side. He found this situation unsettling, although he had yet to come up with a theory. He didn’t like the idea of sitting beside one of them, which would leave one or the other at all times unobserved.
Smooth Guy pulled out a seat, but before he sat, he passed that folded-up square of paper over. While they settled themselves, Qanath unfolded it, holding it so that he might read:
The bearer of this letter, Hotu Amril Arp, acts in my service and the service of the Empire. I have commanded him to remain at all times within the bounds of the law.
Senator Nembe Ameel
Terse and to the point, about what he had expected of Qanath’s mother, who didn’t seem to have much room in her heart for anything but her job. He loved that she had qualified her support for the man, that was a nice touch. Laying the groundwork for distancing herself from her accomplice if she later found the need to cut him loose. Did that mean she, too, had reservations about Smooth Guy’s trustworthiness? Or was she just a jerk?
Qanath passed the letter back. “Suddenly my mother cares terribly for my wellbeing?”
“Maybe she was concerned about the company you keep.”
Smooth Guy’s eyes had drifted onto him, and as they met one another’s gaze, Havec discovered he wasn’t the only one who was certain the two of them would never become friends. “Her mother doesn’t know I exist. Until this girl showed up at our door, no one but Xar and his servants did.”
Even as he said it, he realized it wasn’t true. Talak knew about him, and so did Qanath’s father. Talak wasn’t likely to confess what he had done, though, especially not to someone in the government. If he was acquainted with Qanath’s mother and their relationship was such that he had been frank with her about kidnapping foreign minors and selling them into the sex trade, Smooth Guy was the least of their problems.
As for her father, he might very well share the story of his visit to an Avatethura Academy with the mother of his children, but the timing was wrong. Three days the girl had been in the house before those assassins arrived; the man would still have been on the road, walking back to Nizerh. Even if he’d headed south to Saintianos, the closest town, and bought the services of a courier, he couldn’t have gotten a letter to the capital in time to have Smooth Guy waiting for them.
“Anyway,” he added, “‘maybe’ is a weasel-word used by worms to distract people from their lies.”
“Weasels and worms,” Smooth Guy exclaimed, voice as sharp as Havec’s swords. “I’m overwhelmed by this conversational menagerie.”
“You’ll be pretty overwhelmed if I punch you in the face. Which would you prefer?”
“Havec,” Qanath said warningly.
“Girl,” he said right back, matching her serious tone and raising her a firm look. He gestured at the man across the table from them. “This greasy prick is up to something, something more complicated and unfriendly than watching your back. You can tell because every time we ask a question, he tries to pick a fight. Knowing what I am, he would rather get his ass kicked than give you a straight answer.”
“I’m not the one threatening to punch people,” the guy retorted coolly.
