All of them were staring at him save Arandgwail, who had turned into a kitten in order to pounce on the tassels of the rug. “That… seems like a risky move,” Amril said finally, and she was surprised by his carefully inflectionless tone. She would have expected him to say it with scorn.
“She left my uncle in charge in Callon, the largest settlement, and it’s less than twenty miles from the border, in a straight line up the coast. It’s the first place your armies will go when they come raging across the border to retaliate. She’s spent all the time since I disappeared stirring up patriotic anger in my people, who responded by making themselves enough of a nuisance your people were aware of it. Even if I hadn’t been here to explain, someone would have guessed who was to blame.”
“You think she’s luring them into a trap,” Qanath breathed.
The priest laid a hand on his arm, and Havec didn’t jerk the limb away. “You think she intends to lose.”
Havec twisted in his seat to face the man. “I’m certain of it: she’s halfway across the kingdom in the middle of nowhere in the most isolated house we have with a handful of picked men and her heir.”
“To what end?” Amril asked doubtfully.
Her friend shook his head even as he thrust himself to his feet. “I don’t know, but I’m not letting it go on. Your country is a thousand times better than mine, but we still have a right to be.”
He made for the door, and the rest of them rose with varying degrees of uncertainty. Qanath knew him best and she was the one who said, “What exactly do you propose?”
“I let it go when she threw me away,” he told them as they chased in a pack at his heels down the hall. “But she just destroyed a town to instigate a war. I’m going to tie her up and throw her over the back of a horse and carry her back to someone who can make her account for her crimes.”
At the foot of the stair, he began to climb, but the soldier-priest stopped. “I’m going to inform them of this,” he called, raising his voice a little. “They will insist on sending a guard to protect you on foreign soil.”
Havec paused, turning to look at him while he thought it over. “Two. No more.”
“Counting me or not?”
Some color finally returned to his cheeks. “I was including you in my party.” He turned his eyes away hastily as the man made for the door, as if he didn’t wish to be caught watching him. “And you?”
The sorcerer was a few steps down from him on the stairs, Arandgwail in human form on his heels. As he pushed past, he said wryly, “Unless you mean to leave Siva Qanath behind, I feel as though I’ve already made my priorities clear.”
When the two of them had moved on, she joined Havec on the stair, and they made their way up to their room. While he went to the stand by the mirror to pick up his toothbrush and razor, he said, “I’ve been telling you to go away from the first, however insincerely, and you’ve been ignoring me for just as long. So I just assumed you’d want to come. You don’t have to, though, it’s not your fight.”
“I feel like I ought to see this through.”
While Qanath gathered her scattered clothing off the furniture and floor, she said, “I talked to your mother, you know. After you left.”
“Oh?”
“She went on about how hard life is in your country and how a ruler has to make the difficult choices for her people. If you’re right about this…”
“She’s even more of a monster than we thought?”
“Yeah.”
He straightened suddenly and turned to her. “On an unrelated note, I suppose you were waiting for the right time to tell your own problematic mother about your plan to train with Xar?”
“I sent her a letter right before we left. So backing down or failing were things I couldn’t do.”
He looked at her, eyes troubled, and she thought he meant to speak. Then he shook his head and crouched again over his pack. It was another minute before they had all their things assembled and were making their way downstairs. They descended into a world where panicked whispers had been replaced by quiet industry; one step out the door, they found horses already waiting, the staff from the inn burdening them with food and supplies. The soldier-priest hadn’t spoken idly.
He was out there already, dressed for winter travel, marshaling the servants and soldiers making ready. Qanath paused on the stoop to watch him, wondering how much she liked the man. He had attached himself to their party without ever being issued an invitation so far as she had noticed, and now he seemed to think he was in charge. She glanced at Havec, but he was already moving forward toward the horse awaiting him, the animal he stole from the mountain house. He didn’t appear to be equally annoyed, and with Havec, it was easy to tell when he was mad, because someone would have a bloody nose.
Amril emerged from the inn, almost bumping into her where she lingered on the stoop. Someone had found him a coat in the intervening minutes, a huge padded affair with fur around the hood. His familiar followed him as usual, still in human form, looking more overtly supernatural than he usually did because he wasn’t bundled up against the cold. Muttering a hasty apology, Qanath cleared the way.
The gray horse with black hair waited amongst the others, and she made for it, hoping it was the right thing to do. Havec caught sight of her and seemed to read her unease, because he stopped what he was doing and came over. She tensed in anticipation, but this time he didn’t pick her up and throw her at the horse: he took it by the bridle and explained how she could get up there herself. She did as instructed, although it took her several tries to make it onto its back. The gray was small in comparison to the others, but the animal was still massive.
The soldiers who would be accompanying them showed up at this point, and Qanath had to fight to hide her dismay; she had been counting on the skill and savvy of experienced warriors to help them see this through. What was left of the garrison, though, wasn’t much. The two companions Havec had stipulated were a woman so old she ought to be in retirement and a boy so young he must have needed his parents’ permission to enlist. The one had dentures; the others’ face was covered in spots. She sighed inside, wondering just how much of a hindrance their ‘assistance’ was going to be.
All was in readiness and there was no more sense in worrying: it was time to leave. Quite a lot of the town had spilled back into the square for the second time that day in order to see them off. The mood was decidedly subdued among the people who had turned out to wish them luck, and Qanath had the suspicion they would have forbidden them to leave if they believed it was their place. If his own mother was responsible for this barbarous act of war, it was easy to see why Havec would feel implicated, but hunting her down and bringing her to justice was a task that frankly anyone could do.
Havec would do what he would do, though. As usual, the choices were to help him or get out of his way. The murmuring crowd that had turned out to bid him god speed didn’t cheer as he kicked his mount into motion, but didn’t attempt to call him back. A number of people tossed bushels of dried flowers or herbs in their path to be crushed beneath their horses’ hooves. Mostly in silence, the seven of them passed out through the gates.
They rode without speaking along the last mile of Imperial soil and began to climb. As they approached the ridgeline, Havec said suddenly, “Now, I’m assuming there won’t be an attack here based on this diabolical scheme I dreamed up. If I get shot full of arrows before we reach the shelter of the trees, you’ll know I was wrong.”
It was a joke, but the rest of them were too tense to laugh. Qanath had entirely forgotten there could very well be a barbarian war band lurking just out of sight amongst the trees and watched them draw close with her heart in her throat. In spite of her fears, they crossed the border without event, moving forward over the crest of the hill into a silent world. If you knew to look for it, you could still make out, beneath the freshly-fallen snow, the channel she and Havec plowed on their hectic dash to safety.
The rest of the day passed in uneasy quiet, the members of their party occupied with their thoughts and with watching the woods fearfully. It turned out that their escort hadn’t been chosen because there were no better options: the old woman was the best tracker within fifty miles, the boy an apprentice she had been training since he was old enough to walk. On two separate occasions, Moida made them swing wide around a settlement before they had perceived that it was there. It quickly became apparent they were acquainted with the terrain on the wrong side of the border, as if they crossed into foreign territory frequently to scout or poach. The soldier-priest caught Qanath and Amril exchanging looks over that but made no attempt to justify it. If the Scolate’s leaders along this stretch of border had entertained concerns about their northern neighbors, they had just been vindicated.
Havec paid the rest of them little attention, following their guides obediently with his eyes fixed inward. At one point, Qanath found herself riding alongside the soldier-priest, who looked weirdly martial to her eyes, actually wearing his armor and carrying sword, spear, and bow. She had assumed he was primarily a man of faith, his membership in the army’s ranks honorary, but the way he handled his weapons made her rethink. She had left her slender wooden pole behind in their room, since the only person she was likely to injure with it was herself.
She watched him for a while, and he never felt her gaze. His eyes were fixed unswervingly on Havec, and they were green. After as much as an hour of this, she said softly, careful her voice didn’t carry, “Does he know what you’re doing?”
The man turned to her, startled to be addressed, and when he blinked at her, his eyes returned to their natural brown. “I’m sorry?”
“When you look at him with your goddess’s eyes, does he know what you’re doing? He’s spent years in our country, but he has huge,” she gestured in frustration, “swaths of ignorance, you can’t just assume he knows what’s going on.”
He only looked at her, head cocked, as if he didn’t understand why she’d brought this up.
“You need to explain it to him. If you don’t, I will.”
The soldier-priest frowned at her, then said simply, “As you will.” With a click of his tongue, he moved away from her, pushing forward to fall in at Havec’s side. He began to speak to her friend immediately, canted toward him in the saddle, voice pitched low so that no one else could hear. Qanath watched them, hoping that he was confessing.
