“Newly-conquered, hostile territory is going to create a huge influx of manpower. The number of troops billeted here permanently will multiply fivefold, and those soldiers will need to be transported from afar, many of them bringing families. Trained bureaucrats will need to be imported, along with masons and carpenters to build structures to house the apparatus of government. Laborers rushing in from other areas seeking employment quarrying rock for new roads. Engineers to plan their construction. I could go on for hours.”

Havec’s black-rimmed eyes were wide as he tried to imagine what his country would look like after all those changes.

“Think of the impact just on Nizerh,” the soldier-priest continued. “Think how the harbor-master would feel about all those ships bearing people and resources swamping his piers, employing his people. Think how the shipping companies carrying those goods would prosper, and how the influence of the government officials who represent Nizerh’s interests in the capital would swell.”

Qanath’s heart stopped, and her eyes went to Amril across the fire. He saw her looking and met her eyes, but would only give her a tiny dubious frown, a miniscule shake of the head. Unwilling to blurt out her fears, she watched the others in silence for the rest of the meal. She felt as though just suspecting what she suspected had implicated her.

No one noticed she was withdrawn, because Havec was the only one who paid that much attention to her and now he had been roused from his thoughts, he turned to the man at his side. Not a figure of speech: he shifted himself by forty-five degrees. She watched the way her friend leaned forward, peppering the fellow with questions, visibly searching after new topics every time his monologues petered off, and couldn’t decide whether to be more charmed or concerned. It was incredibly sweet to her that, beneath the veneer of cynicism, he still had an innocent, unguarded heart. But she entertained reservations about the man he was attempting to hand it to.

She had pressing worries of her own, though, and the instant someone suggested they turn in, she took her bedding in search of the sorcerer. Tossing her blanket down on the ground beside his, she laid down. As soon as she had kicked her shoes off, she pulled her hood up and closed her eyes. She wasn’t resting but waiting. The soldier-priest had been assigned the first watch and was walking a circuit, but after twenty minutes or so, the others went still.

Casting one last glance at the man standing by their horses staring into the night, she rolled onto her side. “Well?”

Amril had known she meant to confront him and been waiting for it. “We only had a matter of weeks to grow acquainted as we negotiated with one another, and she never took me into her confidence,” he said as quietly. “But I don’t think it likely. You said yourself the Hakam is rarely impressed by political victories, I can’t see them judging the revitalization of the Old Country sufficient achievement. Especially not if they ever thought to wonder how it happened. She wouldn’t be able to claim credit for much beyond bureaucratic competence without admitting to her culpability.”

“She doesn’t have to admit to anything,” she reminded him. “She isn’t aiming at the title herself, she’s trying to use me. And here I am,” she added bitterly, “innocent of wrongdoing, right in the thick of things.”

He didn’t respond, mulling it over. Ara had been somewhere on the other side of him, and suddenly he blossomed upward into the shape of a man. As he made to step around them, Amril’s hand shot out over his head, fingertips brushing the shyin’s knee.

“Where are you off to?”

The shyin crouched over him, saying conspiratorially, “The man with white hair is over there.”

“I think we should leave him alone for the night, Ara. Come lie here with us and take a nap.”

Arandgwail didn’t argue against the command; in the darkness, it was harder to follow his shape-shifts and it was as if he had disappeared. Then the kitten was wading forward amidst the drifts of woolen blanket to curl up between their heads. After a second, it uncurled and stretched out, laying one tiny paw on Qanath’s cheek. She could just hear the bumblebee thrumming of its purrs.

“I was thinking of it like having a child,” she said quietly, “but that isn’t precisely true, is it? After all: he obeys.”

“For entire hours on end,” Amril agreed. “With luck, I’ll only have to get up once over the course of the night to chase him back to his place.”

It made her smile, and she freed a hand from the blanket in order to scratch the shyin’s furry head.

His master rolled onto one side so he could face her, and she could feel the sharpness of his eyes. “You like him, don’t you?” His intonation made it clear he was surprised.

The kitten’s paw was still on her cheek, tiny claws flexing and retracting with the rhythm of its grumbling breaths. “I think he’s sweet.”

“Most people find him off-putting.”

“I suppose I can see why they would feel that way,” she answered, “if they’re too obtuse to understand that he isn’t human and isn’t going to act like it.”

Amril never responded, but for a long time afterward, Qanath could feel his scrutiny. She ignored him, stroking the kitten until its purrs died off and it fell asleep. They hadn’t addressed any of the meaningful matters that still lay between them, but the situation was clearer to her now. She hadn’t been able to make her mind up about him and now she had an inkling that this was because he hadn’t made his mind up about her. His loyalty might be as steadfast as she had barely allowed herself to hope, but she was going to have to win it first.

***

Havec’s eyes opened onto a frigid dawn, gaze straying idly across his companions as his mind got up to pace. No one else was stirring save the boy Hib, who looked to be mixing up a fresh batch of potage. He gave Havec one awkward bob of the head, eyes flinching away from his.

Havec hadn’t been so different, once upon a time, soft-spoken and fearful of putting himself forward. It was Xar who changed him, as much as growing up, because he had been the center of the man’s universe. That entire household revolved around him. After a while he just leaned into it, but it wasn’t how he was made.

He had the suspicion, based on comments she had made, that the girl believed consequence and self-confidence were two faces of the same coin. In his experience, it wasn’t true. It was only after he lost his freedom that Havec found his voice.

When he sat up, he made a startling discovery: Hot Priest was lying beside him, only a foot away. The sight of his handsome face relaxed in sleep was thrilling but alarming, and Havec rose hastily, beating a retreat. It was a funny reaction in light of the thoughts it interrupted, and as he ducked behind a tree, he called himself a coward.

Everyone was up by the time he returned to camp, squinting in the brilliant sunlight and sluggishly repacking. Hot Priest handed him breakfast, another cup of warm potage, but Havec couldn’t meet his eyes. He gulped his breakfast down before passing the cup to the first person who held out a hand. They were back in the saddle and pushing westward in considerably less than an hour.

Over the course of the morning, he knew they were getting close. It came as a total surprise, though, to crest another of the endless rises in the road they followed to find the narrow valley they sought opening beneath them. Havec drew rein, holding his breath as he took in the scene. There was no smoke emerging from any of the chimneys, and they were already well into day. Aside from the occasional moaning of the wind amidst the trees, all was quiet.

It wasn’t clear whether the others understood, but Moida said almost at once, “Looks like she moved on.”

“If she went back to that town by the coast to join your uncle,” Qanath said tentatively, “doesn’t that mean it’s a coincidence?”

Havec couldn’t tear his eyes off the buildings below. “Five people live in this place year-round.”

A deeper silence settled across his companions as they began to understand. As much as he did, which was that something wasn’t right. He kicked his mount forward, keeping to the road rather than attempting to come in obliquely under cover as he had last time. He had the terrible suspicion no one was left alive to notice.

He made for the stable, since it was the logical place to shelter their horses while they looked about. At the double doors, he hopped down and grabbed one leaf. The instant he slid it open, his nostrils filled with the coppery tang of frozen blood. Just inside the door lay a body slumped on one side, limbs bound by rope. Havec rolled him onto his back and gazed upon the bloodless face of the hostler he himself tied up, throat cut.

Rage flooded him, anger so intense he worried that the thundering of his heart might shatter his ribs, and he couldn’t tell whether the fury was Kebbal’s or his. It didn’t matter: they were united in their desire to make someone pay. Abandoning the stable, he made for the central house, already certain what he would find. He quickly discovered old Tresle the cook dead in the kitchen of a sword thrust through the heart. Based on the warlike way she clutched a butchering knife, her murderers had gone first for the young pot boy slumped by the sinks across the room. She had seen her death coming and tried to fight.

He had seen enough already but made himself go on to the third house where the servants had lived. It was his fault they were dead, he owed it to them to look at their bodies and acknowledge their deaths with his pain. He found two other people in the last building, Tresle’s husband Grof, the gamekeeper, and a young woman who, like the pot boy, hadn’t been in service long enough to meet him back when this was his favorite place in the world. As he knelt to close Grof’s eyes, he thought inevitably of doing the same for Yob and wondered why it was always the servants who died.

Qanath had chosen to make the rounds with him, although she cried a little and mostly kept her face hidden in his arm. It was a gesture of solidarity he would never forget. He hadn’t said so, but she had grasped that this place was important to him. That this incident resonated unhappily with the fate of the lake house he had also loved.

Once they had made this tribute, he went outside in search of Moida, who had been walking cautious circles around each house. “Can’t say as I know where the killers came from,” she declared, straightening from her inspection of the ground as he approached. “One pair of tracks, older, comes in from the west afoot, pair of hooves come out later the same way. Zaresh Farait,” she nodded at the man standing at her shoulder, “says that’d be you. Big party leaves just before the last snow we had, mounted, going east at speed. Yesterday midmorning, another group leaves, going northwest. Four people, all mounted, moving slow. Never saw anyone else come in.”

She didn’t meet his eye, by which he gathered she had already guessed the answer to this riddle. “My mother killed these people or had them killed. I spoke to the man in the stable briefly, I’m the one who tied him up. She must have feared all of them knew I was here. The rightful heir to the throne, whom she’d told everyone was dead.”

Feeling sick, he made for his horse. He found himself wondering what he could have done differently that would have seen these people still alive. Not gone to the stables, maybe, but he had needed to get them out of here swiftly in the middle of a snowstorm. Maybe he shouldn’t have come here in the first place. Maybe his mother was right that he should long since have questioned her role in the carefully-planned tragedy that changed his life.

Maybe his real failure had been to leave her alive.

“You cannot hold yourself accountable for this. You can’t foresee all the world’s ills.”

He turned to look at the man who had pushed ahead of the others to ride beside him. Then he put his eyes back on their trail. “I assume you know. If you’ve watched all my most painful memories, you must have seen what my mother did.”

Hot Priest made no attempt to cavil. “Yes.”

“From the very first, from the moment I realized it wasn’t chance, I was telling myself the first order of business was to find her and make sure she was safe. Before I met Xar and thought about revenge, that was my goal. I guess somewhere over the years, as Xar got to be the only real thing and my memories faded…”

He trailed off, and it was a few minutes before he continued, but Farait didn’t interrupt. “I guess I just forgot. That the reason I was so fixated on my mother was because I hoped I might prove myself to her. Not because we were ever actually close.”

“Sometimes it feels like distinguishing friends from enemies is a harder challenge than any of the battles we fight,” Hot Priest said, and they didn’t speak again.

They found the grave no more than a quarter-hour later.

It was Arandgwail who first perceived it, asking all of them in turn if they smelled that funny smell. When his master gave him permission to investigate, he turned into a raven and swiftly vanished from sight to the west. It was the first time Havec had ever seen him leave the man’s side, but they came over the crest of the hill they were climbing seconds later to find him right there, waiting beside their path. The raven was hopping about like a robin on a mound of packed snow that definitely wasn’t natural, his movements saying without need for words: ‘Look at me! Look what I found!’

Havec dismounted next to the man-length hump lying alongside the trail, thinking he could already guess what it was. He scraped handfuls of snow away from one of the short ends until he uncovered a boot. Before he could move around to the far end, Farait began digging at the sepulcher’s head.