He must want more than anything to ask about his nephew, to learn why she kept alluding to someone he had believed to be dead for years. Possibly someone he had mourned. What he said, though, was, “What crimes has she committed against you, save to complain? Is Tabb the Ancient grown so fragile in its dotage it cannot bear to be disparaged?”
“You’re familiar with a town called Petron? Directly across the border?” Amril asked.
The Moritian bowed his head as if to say: how not?
“Several days ago, it was destroyed by a pair of giants, lured down from the mountains by Moritian sorcerers.”
All color fled the man’s face.
“It was your nephew’s theory that your sister-in-law was to blame, not least because she was in hiding in the mountains surrounded by a picked guard while you were here just miles up the coast, ready and waiting to take the fall for it.”
The façade broke, and he set his tea down, covering his face with one shaking hand. “Is he truly alive?”
It was Qanath who answered: “Yes.”
“There wasn’t a body,” he whispered. “But thanks to the fire, I never knew whether that had significance. Maybe it had simply been destroyed. I was afraid to hold out hope.”
She decided on the spot that he didn’t need to know his nephew had blamed him for it. “The fire was a front to hide what really happened. His mother sold him to a bonding-broker, he’d been in bondage ever since. When his master died, I explained to him it wasn’t actually legal to own him against his will, and here we are.”
“Has he come back to take the throne?” No hint in his voice or expression how he felt.
“No,” she said as firmly as she dared. “His thought was it should go to you.”
“And then? I heard you mention that my son is dead.” He didn’t seem to be particularly troubled by it. Neither of them commented, but he seemed to read something in their faces. “Ammon loved the boy, I never saw him give much thought to it. But Gheara and I both knew the gods had played an evil joke on us. She got my son and I got hers. I never wished an early end on my own seed, but Hemell was theirs from the moment he emerged from the womb, arrogant and heedless, disdainful of any virtue save strength.
“We were never easy in one another’s company from the time when he was very small, and the instant his cousin died, the queen took him from me anyway. She had a duty to train him as her heir, she told me, a duty I could never hope to fulfill.” He fell silent, then murmured, “If all she ever wanted was to trade, she could have just given the boy to me. I would have taken him.”
Arandgwail sat up, resting his chin on the low table between them. “Are you talking about the man with white hair?”
He had addressed this question to their host, but it was Amril who answered. “Yes, Ara, he is.”
“Isn’t he interesting? There’s another person inside him.”
His uncle didn’t seem to know what to make of that. Qanath drew a deep breath and forced herself to say, “While he was away, he became something important to my people. If he leaves our borders, my people are going to follow him. In numbers. I don’t know how you can expect him to rule your country with a hundred reverent Tabbaqerans surrounding him.”
“I don’t see what right you have to decide on his behalf. Or is he still your slave?”
That made her want to shout, but she wrestled the anger into check. “That wasn’t what I meant. He told me himself he has no desire to stay. Probably because we treat him with respect!” That came out hotter than she meant it to, but she hadn’t appreciated the implication that she was partly to blame for what happened to him simply because of her nationality. It wouldn’t have stung if the thought hadn’t crossed her mind on previous occasions.
“He finally came into his own,” his uncle mused. “I often suspected all he needed was a chance to learn himself outside the crushing confines of his parents’ expectations. Ammon wanted so badly for the boy to be a miniature Ammon, gods! it was obscene how much he loved that his son looked just like him. As for Gheara, it was clear from a young age that my nephew—” He stopped.
“He’s told me he was bookish and retiring,” Qanath suggested.
He looked at her strangely, she wasn’t sure why.
“Your brother is back from the dead.”
The expression Jonet turned on Amril was totally blank. “I saw his body. I sat with it overnight before the funeral, after it had been prepared for burial.”
Rubbing at her burning eyes with her fingertips, Qanath responded, “Nevertheless. We met him in a cave up in the mountains. Havec said the place is a gateway to the underworld.”
“Your brother’s soul was back in its body, cognizant but unable to move,” Amril took up for her. “Your nephew told us they were going to use your son’s body so he could come fully back to life, but we foiled that plan and left him in the cave with all his hedge-witch servants slain. Not twelve hours later…”
“The god of winter passed us in the woods of the material world, wearing your brother’s flesh,” Qanath finished. “We don’t know what exactly they had planned, but we’re pretty sure it wasn’t this.”
“Ammon, you fool,” his brother whispered, “what has become of you?”
“We assume their goals were worldly and political, but we have it from a priest that the god will want nothing but to spread the clouds of winter across the world,” Amril added.
The Moritian was silent, studying them while he contemplated how honest he wished to be. “For several years now, the queen has been making decisions that seemed inexplicable to me. Calculated to make us weak. Imposing prohibitive tariffs on Tabbi trade, driving away commerce we desperately need. Rabblerousing against the Empire and stirring up antagonism against a neighbor whose goodwill we can’t afford to lose.”
“There was a theory that she was courting invasion,” the sorcerer noted in a careful voice, not glancing at Qanath. “Maybe she had a buyer lined up, ready to give her the governorship if she could hand your territory to them.”
Havec’s uncle was shaking his head. “See, I thought that too at first. The two of us have never gotten on, but Gheara is no fool. She had to know what she was doing was dangerous. She’s been adding to the armory, though, putting swords in hands, encouraging those noxious hedge-witches. Why make the conflict bloodier and more protracted if she knew she was going to lose? If Ammon was alive all along, it makes more sense. He’s exactly the sort of person who doesn’t know the limits of his strength.”
“The sort of man who would invite a god as mighty as this one to take up residence in his body, thinking he could hold his own?” Amril suggested quietly.
“That sort, yes.”
Qanath heaved a sigh and rubbed at her eyes. “It doesn’t matter what they hoped to accomplish, not anymore. That thing, the Wight of Winter, Havec called it? It’s loose now in the material world and it doesn’t care about borders. It’s going to hurt everyone.”
Unlikely Allies Abound
They pushed on along the coastal road as the hidden sun stretched toward the mountains. The land rose here, what few trees there had been between them and the rugged shoreline falling back, giving them a fine view down upon iron-colored water dashing itself angrily against jagged rocks. The blizzard was strange to experience: you could tell how late it was in the year, in how leisurely the sun was about setting and how long the light hung around even after it was gone. It was spring, even if the weather wasn’t behaving like it.
Havec remained in control of his body even after they left the droghos behind. He was guessing that, so long as he kept on south, Kebbal would trust him to keep to the promise it had made on his behalf. At one point, he thought to worry that it had tired itself unduly in doing what it did, maybe even hurt itself, and he asked, Kebbal? Could you give me some sign you’re okay? His right eye snapped closed, then opened again, but it took him a second to grasp he had just winked at himself. He snickered, slapping a guilty hand across his mouth when he saw the startled way the others peered at him. “Sorry, it’s… It’s nothing.”
This stage of the journey was mostly uneventful. Hib saw one other droghos, or thought he did, but it was gone by the time the rest of them looked. The poor boy couldn’t sit still for seconds on end, such was his fear that something was following them.
