Once Kebbal was settled in the wagon’s bed with his back against the seat, it said to Farait, “You will sit here with him and prevent the body from being jostled.”
The man climbed into the bed, but said, “I’m not sure he’ll be pleased when he hears.”
Havec’s head rotated awkwardly on his neck in order to gaze at the man standing over him. “He is here right now. We have traded places. This is all.”
Farait settled onto the wooden planks beside him, wrapping his arms tentatively around Havec’s cocooned form. “If you’re so uncertain of the body, why did Havec give control of it to you? If I may ask.”
“I have senses he does not. An awareness of many things he cannot know, which allowed me to formulate a plan where he had only determination and a sense of hope.”
“You couldn’t just tell him your ideas? I’m sorry, I don’t mean to question you, but…”
“You are concerned about him. I understand.”
“He’s told me you tamper with his emotions…”
Kebbal turned his head to look more directly at the person at his side. Havec was enjoying this; now Kebbal was doing the talking, he was free to admire the man and need not agonize over every choice of word. “I think you must not understand how complex your thinking organ is. Emotions are nothing more than chemicals in the blood, and even so, I sometimes get it wrong. Only just the other day, I tried to calm him down after you made a sexual advance that frightened him, and instead I made him to vomit. To attempt to force a thought into his mind? He might not survive and he would never be the same.”
“Oh.”
“Are you worried that I will not give the body back? Every second of this experience is freighted by dread, I cannot wait for it to end.”
“Well… thank you for helping us, it’s very generous of you.”
“It is generous of him,” Kebbal corrected. “He thinks of me as kind and good because I take care of him, but this is ultimately selfish. It has been a long time since someone asked me to do something for the benefit of someone else.”
Farait didn’t seem to know how to respond to that and silence fell. The soldiers riding on either side of their wagon weren’t prepared to interrogate the supernatural being that was wearing him. With a few last shouted orders, the cart started north up the road with a jolt.
It would otherwise have been pleasant to sit nestled in Hot Priest’s arms, snug in his nest of blankets; it had even crossed his mind to wonder whether Kebbal genuinely believed this was accomplishing anything or had done it out of mischief, because it knew how much Havec would enjoy the experience. Kebbal’s fear had infected him, though, and each lurch of the wagon corresponded to a lurch of misgiving about the state his body would be in by the time he got it back. Kebbal coiled within him so tensely, his muscles were already forming into knots. He might have liked to soothe it in the way it often soothed him but had no idea how.
Suddenly Kebbal shrugged his shoulders, twisting his head side to side. “He worries that I am too tense. He thinks my fear is making his muscles cramp.”
“You can hear him?” Farait sounded shocked.
“The body is still his. I am still no more than a passenger. The heart pumps his blood, electrical currents in the brain think his thoughts. He lives: I watch.”
“Is it true that, if you weren’t tethered to a host, you could be in multiple people at once?”
“Yes.”
“Would that not be confusing?”
“No.” At first, this seemed to be all Kebbal meant to say, but then it drew a slightly deeper breath and let out what was unmistakably a sigh. “He is right to suspect that I prefer it like this. I was not made with a capacity to draw boundaries around my sense of obligation the way that humans do, and I do not have these limited ‘senses’ that shut information out. The world when I was born was a simpler place, perhaps it was not necessary.
“I am fond of humans, I think of you as a realized dream. But you were an agony to me all the same. You are too complicated, too difficult to please. Even when I could manage to give you what you wanted, you would turn around one day later and realize it was never what you wanted after all. When humans locked me inside a single body so that I could not answer others’ prayers, I spent three lifetimes weeping in gratitude.”
This spawned a breathless silence. Everyone close enough to hear was gaping. Ancient though the Empire was, it might be the first time anyone had had the opportunity to talk to one of these creatures. Listen to it speak about itself. Farait was the first to find his voice: “I can see why you would be concerned about hurting him. It’s noble of you to help us anyway.”
Kebbal had been living in human bodies long enough to learn how to sigh, but apparently the concept of privacy remained a mystery; plenty loud enough for everyone nearby to hear, it replied, “From the moment his mother bargained with the bonding-broker, I knew of him. I told you it is a relief that I can no longer answer humans’ needs, but I am aware. And I wanted him. A host who might understand me, who would need things I was able to assist him with. It was only after I began to see how my own feelings fed the worst urges of my host that I realized I had made myself into one of the people he should revenge himself against. I am quite certain he has figured that out by now, yet he has chosen not to hold me accountable for reasons I do not understand. I want to be worthy of it.”
“I think all of us can relate. Tabbaqera has done very little to earn his admiration, it isn’t clear why he has forgiven us.”
“You were not to blame: I was.”
“We did our part.”
“It was the sorceress. She did something to him. I hid within him, shrunk down to the smallest mote, afraid to draw his attention because I did not know how he would react when he truly understood that I was there. While I hid, waiting fearfully for him to realize he was carrying the guiltiest party around with him, everything changed. He was very angry, then he was not anymore.” Kebbal fell silent, then added, “He says that she reminded him cynicism is just a way to lie about why we refuse to take risks.”
“And you’re… okay with being forgiven? That isn’t… anathema to you?”
“I am desperately grateful he has chosen to love me in spite of what I did. Because I feel as if I have to prove myself to him, I cannot now refuse to do this unprecedented thing he asks of me. To risk the host I worked so hard to acquire in order to free a race of slaves. Do you not see the symmetry? Does punishment only count when it is motivated by a desire to hurt? It is precisely what I deserve. I acquiesce because I need to know his forgiveness has not just been given but earned. It is rare that I find a host who understands me so well.”
Kebbal fell silent again, and although Havec didn’t feel as if he was forming thoughts with the usual coherence in his detached state, his supernatural friend could hear him loud and clear. “He is trying to claim I have read too much into a whim. I do not believe this is the case. He has been dwelling on the little frozen people since we encountered the first one on the road, and now I know why. In freeing them, I will free myself from my crime.”
***
They spent the night in the castle because it was already getting late and no one thought it was a good idea to undertake a battle against a god of cold without the assistance of the sun. Qanath tossed and turned for hours. When she wasn’t worrying that her mother had been involved in all of this, she was worrying the plan would fail.
She did manage to drift off but awoke with a start to the sound of the wind battering the shutters some hours before dawn. The layers of heavy quilts made a cozy nest, but the air beyond her blankets was icy in spite of the fire still burning in the grate. She closed her eyes, but they sprung open again.
Heaving a sigh, she tossed the covers back, then wished she hadn’t. It had been far too long since last she’d had a bath but she didn’t even consider looking into it. She struggled into her trousers so fast she staggered and almost fell, slipped her bra on under the shirt she had worn to bed, then pulled another layer atop the soiled shirt. Once she had her shoes on, she left the room.
She had thought she would wander, but the castle was so still and quiet that it turned out to be very easy to home in on the one source of light and noise. She stopped in the doorway to what turned out to be the kitchen, gazing upon the unwelcome sight of Amril and the Moritian shaman seated on either side of a simple, gouged-top table, heads bent together conspiratorially. Between them was a tiny black kitten. She felt her skin flash hot then icy cold as she thought to wonder if he used the shyin to strike up conversations with every woman he met.
By this point, they had noticed her. With a suddenness that made them both jerk back, the kitten erupted into a young man right on the tabletop. Hopping onto the flagstone floor, he hurried forward, seizing Qanath around the middle and hoisting her. When he set her down an instant later, it was to complain, “I wanted to hug you hours ago, but he told me no.”
“People need to sleep, Ara,” his master said patiently.
“I could have put her back to sleep after I woke her up,” the shyin reminded him. He shrank back into a kitten, which mewled and pawed at the cuffs of her trousers until she picked it up.
