He was a servant of Mahudar, she had heard since they arrived, and Mahudar made her skin crawl. The goddess’s disciples liked to say it was a blessing not to be alone with one’s pain, and maybe that was even true; Qanath couldn’t speak for those who felt the need. But what Mahudar did had always sounded more like a violation to her, peering into people’s minds and sharing what she found with her priests. Havec needed to know the man was walking his memories, watching his experiences through his eyes and feeling what he’d felt. If anyone had ever done as much to her without permission, especially a man contemplating asking her out on a date, she would have skinned him alive with a butter knife. Then sent him packing, obviously.
It certainly looked as though the priest was as good as his word, because she saw the moment when Havec understood. His head snapped around to face the man fully and his skin had gone translucent. She didn’t think she had ever seen him look more vulnerable, not even on the night when Xar anKebbal died. The scene held only for a moment, then his cheeks turned pink, and he ducked his head. Qanath was incensed: she had been hoping and expecting he would punch the jerk like he deserved. The other man glanced at her over his shoulder, and if he was satisfied by his victory, he didn’t let it show.
She caught Amril watching her and raised her brows angrily, daring him to comment. He chose to say nothing, turning away. Arandgwail had shifted back into an animal an hour earlier and moved over to his master’s horse. He wasn’t readily visible, but unless Amril had suddenly developed a massive tumor on the back of his neck, the shyin would be responsible for the bulge at the base of his hood.
Annoyed with all the men – the soldier-priest for overstepping, Havec for not standing up to him, Amril for failing to have her back when she tried, and Ara for being asleep – Qanath fell back and rode alone for the rest of the day. Only the boy, whose name was Hib, was behind her. His was the task of ensuring that no one was following their tracks.
As the light waned, a new dusting of snow began to fall. Havec wanted to push on to their destination, but Moida talked him into pitching camp at dusk. It would be some hours after midnight before they finally reached the isolated chalet, she promised, and that was assuming none of their horses broke a leg floundering in the snow in the dark.
The old woman found them a place to stop where a precipitous rock-face would cut the wind. The way they made camp, you would have thought the seven of them had been traveling together for years. She and Amril convened in the center to begin spelling stones for heat; she hadn’t been able to do this properly when it was just her and Havec because you needed two sorcerers working in concert to create a heat-source or heat-sink that would keep working for more than a few hours. Dumping extra energy into an item or drawing it out could only last so long before nature reasserted itself. It needed two sorcerers working on two separate items, one hot, one cold; then they could lock the heat-source and heat-sink against one another like opposite poles. Done properly, both halves of the transaction would remain in that state indefinitely, unless one broke.
While Ara kicked the snow away for them and fetched them rocks to spell, they knelt and joined hands. Havec and the soldier-priest saw to the horses; they passed the party’s baggage over to Moida and Hib, who began preparing food. In a shockingly brief timespan, they gathered in a circle around a pile of bright crystals, each of them sitting on a hot rock or clutching it to their chest, with a warm cup of reconstituted pottage in one hand and a handful of jerky and dried fruit in the other. The silence lingered, both thoughtful and tense.
It was Amril who finally broke it, halfway through the meal. Out of nowhere, as if it had not been six hours since they spoke of this, he said, “Isn’t it obvious?”
Everyone stared at him.
“You said this woman is inviting invasion,” he pointed out, addressing the words to Havec. “You seem to think your people have no delusions about holding out for long. If she already understands she’ll lose, is that not necessarily the point?”
“To what end?”
“If this country falls into our hands, it will lose its independence, but gain many things in exchange. Infrastructure, improved trade, access for its young people to the Empire’s schools.”
Havec considered it, frowning unhappily. “I can accept,” he said at last, “that the woman would like to see the country grow richer. But at the cost of her own power?”
“You said she removed herself from center stage and left your uncle in the path of the coming retribution. Like he was meant to take the fall.”
“In hopes that she would end up governor of the new region once the dust cleared? That’s quite a gamble.”
“Not if she has friends across the border who already promised her a reward if she could hand over a chunk of territory neatly giftwrapped, complete with an excuse. No one’s going to listen to the Pacifi’s protests, not with Petron in their minds.”
That woke them all up, to be sure; everyone sat up straighter, turning to stare at him. What he was suggesting was horrible: that parties unknown in their own country had been willing to sacrifice an entire town to generate casus belli to claim a meager slip of foreign land. Qanath drew in a deep breath and let it out in a sigh, acknowledging miserably that history could bear witness to the fact that her people weren’t above it. There was a faction in the Illiumate that argued for a gentler Empire, the scaling-back of the Scolate, even reparations paid to their neighbors over border-disputes, and they opposed expansion of any sort. How inclined anyone was to listen to them, though, that varied. Having been attacked, very few people were going to agree that they shouldn’t respond. Tabbi blood had been spilled.
Havec remained unconvinced. “My country is poor.”
It was the soldier-priest who responded. “There’s a bigger picture, Avat, it isn’t just about tax revenue. There will always be factions in the Empire that believe expansion is the only way. And there are already coalitions out there fighting to revitalize the north.”
He shook his head.
“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.”
