“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.
Eventually, he found himself looking down on the cold blue face of his cousin Hemell. It hadn’t occurred to him to wonder where the man had gone; he hadn’t taken notice of his absence from the abattoir at the chalet. If he had been carried away in order to give him a more respectful burial than the butchered servants, you would have thought they would put him in a more permanent resting-place. There were plenty of places in the heights where the snow hung around all year, but this tomb was going to melt in weeks, leaving his body exposed to the scavengers. Perhaps the point had been to ensure that no one ever found the corpse.
“Or is she just using the cold to preserve you,” he murmured, not really aware he was speaking aloud, “until she decides on the best lie to tell our people about your death?”
There was a moment of silence, then Amril said, “Ara, you said he smells funny. How is he different from the bodies back in the house?”
The raven threw itself into the air, flying back to its master’s hand. Once it had alit on his fist, he leaned to one side carefully so it could hop off him onto its saddle, where it turned back into Hair-On-End. “I don’t know,” he said at once, “he just smells funny. There’s stuff in him.”
“Stuff?”
The shyin shook its head. It was interesting that it had turned itself into a bird that ate carrion and been put off by the smell. Havec wasn’t sure what to make of that. He could smell nothing: the body was only a few days old and frozen solid.
They continued onward over the course of an uneventful day, following a path that tended increasingly north. Every time they came over a new hill, he held his breath, expecting to see some even more isolated country house. As the daylight leeched from the sky, hope began to fade. He let them stop when Moida began to hint that making camp would be wise, making no attempt tonight to push them on into the beginnings of night.
All of them tossed the warm rocks they had been carrying into the snow to melt a spot; these ones were permanent, apparently, and would go on being hot indefinitely unless they broke. It had been pleasant to carry a bit of mobile heat all day. They made camp efficiently as a team, exchanging few words. Everyone was tired, not just physically exhausted but emotionally spent from a day passed on pins and needles waiting for a confrontation.
At the heap of glowing crystal that stood in place of a fire, he sat down. The girl had spaced their rocks in a circle around the newly-cleared camp as neatly as if setting a table, and Havec picked one up. As he cradled it against his chest, Qanath turned to him. “Do we have any idea what destination she could be making for?”
He heaved a sigh “There’s only one place I can think of at this point.”
