He felt his eyebrows climbing. “So if I stay on the far side of the room and leave it alone, it won’t do anything but stare?”
“Basically. Unless its master tells it to, which he won’t.”
Havec was less certain of that but finished tying his boots without a word. Done, he stood. “Why doesn’t everyone have one, if they’re so great?”
“They’re really powerful, but they’re also a liability. Shyins are intelligent, but reckless and impatient. They don’t do much of anything without being told, but, um,” she fell silent for a moment, looking for words. “They’ll do absolutely anything you tell them to, if you get what I mean. Arandgwail wouldn’t pause to question the order the way a human would if he told it to drown a baby or set an occupied building on fire.”
“So you better have self-control and judgment.”
She nodded seriously. “I remember one account I came across at university, the line always stuck in my mind, the writer described it as ‘having a small child made of fire.’”
“Huh. So not really worth it.”
“Worth it provided you’re willing to put in the work,” she corrected.
“But no one is anymore? You said they went out of style.”
Qanath reached for the door but paused with her hand on the handle, giving him a very direct look. “They can do things human sorcery can’t, so when people really unleash them, it stands out. The accepted way of dealing with a conjured creature of any kind is to kill its maker.”
“And now that little bundle of joy is yours?”
She twisted the handle and opened the door, saying forcefully, “Absolutely not.”
Havec grinned as he followed her into the hall, but as they made for the stairs, he considered that he understood the girl better than she thought. It wasn’t something he related to, certainly, but he could grasp the appeal. Making the familiar had been a bold move, daring, contrary to fashion, difficult to pull off. Probably Smooth Guy had done it as much as a gesture as in hopes it would accomplish anything. He wanted things and had the talent to get them, and no mere social norms or long odds would scare him off.
Not so different from a frail young sorceress getting herself apprenticed to an Avatethura Master at the unheard-of age of eighteen. So far as he could tell, that was where the similarities ended, as the girl was earnest and decent, while Smooth Guy was a smarmy dick. If he was what she wanted, though, he was what she would get.
Their new friends were waiting for them in the common room. They seated themselves at the table where only last night they had had a fight, before two extra mugs of tea breathing steam. Breakfast arrived not long after they did, and while they ate, the girl and her putative swain fell to talking. Speaking cautiously of sorcery, a wary sharing of ideas. Although he understood very little, Havec would have been enthralled, but it was hard to concentrate on anything with Hair-On-End raptly watching him. He could agree with the girl that it was cute, but it was too small and feminine for his taste. Also too super-fucking-creepy and too constantly-staring-into-his-face.
As soon as he had finished with his breakfast, Havec stood and gave the girl’s shoulder a pat, telling her to let him know if she needed anything. Then he left the room with alacrity, going in search of a bath. The way The Thing kept giving him smoldering looks and pursing its lips was giving him ideas. His heart thundered hard enough it hurt, and he placed a hand over it. He stopped in the hallway, leaning up against a wall so they could talk.
I won’t, don’t be crazy, he said to the creature that shared his mind. I get why that thing bothers you, and I would never mess with you like that. I never said I wanted The Thing, he added. Just that all those smoky looks are making me want.
Kebbal didn’t respond with words, but his heart began to calm. He was incredibly glad Qanath had finally explained to him that Kebbal was alive. Knowing it was a person with opinions helped.
Shaking his head, he set off again down the hallway. It was painful to contemplate how much agony Xar must have been in during the last years of his life; knowing Kebbal as he did now, Havec could imagine how it raged over their bargain, hurting him in order to express its own pain. Involuntary servitude wasn’t an arrangement it would approve of in the first place, and as the years wore on, it would have been increasingly clear to Kebbal, if not to Havec, that Xar would never make good. It must have been torture for Kebbal to be party to it. They had never agreed to an endpoint for their bargain, but the principles of contract law weren’t going to be persuasive to a spirit of justice older than the gods.
He patted his belly, thinking, I may not be Tabbi, but I will take care of you. I will be happy, and I will let you love me, and I will never leave a debt unpaid.
A Completely Different Game
Havec crossed the square to the barracks in order to begin with the daunting task of becoming a citizen. It turned out not to be as bad as he had feared, though, not on his end. There was a great stack of forms to fill out, filled with questions he mostly couldn’t answer: he had no residence, no references, and there wasn’t a piece of paper attesting to his existence anywhere in the country, let alone in his possession. He was an Avatethura Master, so the man who was helping him filled the forms out for him, drawing lines through every blank he couldn’t fill, which was most of them, and telling him not to worry about it.
It still took more than an hour and he was still glad when it was done. He received a piece of paper at the end, less official-looking than the ones he had seen on Smooth Guy and Qanath but signed by the lieutenant and stamped with the Imperial Seal. Since he had no home to send the next round of paperwork to, they told him he would have to present himself in one of the regional capitals sometime in the next three months to finalize his naturalization and get a real passport. Telling himself that he had always wanted to travel anyway, and that nice people would surely go on helping him navigate this bureaucratic maze, he thanked the clerk and wandered away.
Lost in contemplation of the future, he took a wrong turn on exiting the building. He found himself walking along a hallway he didn’t recognize, which dead-ended after only about ten feet, depositing him in a tiny octagonal room. He moved a few steps into the room and turned slowly in place. A small fountain trickled water into a bowl like a flower centrally beneath a vaulted ceiling that mirrored its petals’ shape. The walls were painted in an intricate mesh of yellow and bronze that made the room seem larger than it was. It was lit by the flickering light of a hundred candles set on shelves along the walls, every one of which looked to have been kindled at a slightly different time.
After a minute’s inspection, he decided he must be in a shrine. He had never seen one before and bit his lower lip as he peered about. He turned in another circle, wondering why there were no paintings or statuary. It was a pretty space but curiously sterile; in light of what little he knew about these people, he had imagined their religion to be flamboyant, full of colorful violence and sex.
He heard boot heels approaching a moment before someone entered the room at his back. His companion was a man a few years his senior with a strong jaw and aquiline nose, hair shaved along the sides of his head. He wore the low-slung beige trousers, thick-soled boots, and blue-and-red shirt that were the everyday uniform of the soldiery, although he wasn’t armed.
The building was wall-to-wall with people wearing the same thing, and it took him a moment to think why this fellow looked familiar. Then he smiled and Havec knew: this was the guy he’d met on the day they got here. A priest, although he didn’t look like it today. Out of the shapeless cassock, he had the physique of a wrestler and moved with the confidence of one supremely at ease in his skin.
“Can I help you?”
“I got lost,” he admitted.
The fellow huffed an understated laugh and came to join him in the middle of the room. “The building is a labyrinth.”
“You’re not going to claim the gods led me here?”
“I don’t think even you have gods following you around every moment of the day.”
Taken aback, he couldn’t think what to say.
The soldier-priest smiled again. “I doubt your friend would approve. Even the gods wouldn’t wish to offend. It is, after all, considerably older than them.”
“Oh,” he said cleverly.
The man looked into his face, thoughtful and serene. He blinked, then blinked again, and for the space of a second his eyes became an uncanny, brilliant green. That quickly, they were brown again, but Havec was sure of what he’d seen.
He couldn’t decide whether he found this more unnerving or thrilling. “What god do you…?”
“Serve? Goddess. Mahudar.” Perceiving his interest, he added, “She is the patron of the mentally ill.”
“You’re joking.” Only after he had said it did he realize he could have found a better way to express his surprise. “I mean…”
“Someone has to care about the miserable. There are gods of lepers and paupers, shall no one serve those who are most truly alone?”
