Jonet cried out hoarsely and went to one knee, but the rest of the people with Qanath seemed inclined to be appalled. Gripping Amril’s hands tight in her own, she turned them both so she could find out what everyone was staring at. Her friend wasn’t by himself, and it wasn’t just Hot Priest or the Tabbaqeran soldiers.
He had a horde of milky ghouls in their hundreds.
The things were everywhere, crammed together shoulder-to-shoulder in every open space between the buildings she could see now the snow had dwindled. Mostly naked, they wore the rudiments of clothes and even jewelry. She had never seen a living thing more obviously dead; they looked like mummified remains. None of them carried anything resembling a weapon, and it was hard to put her finger on why she was so certain they were angry.
“Grandfather. I warned you not to interfere.”
“He warned you not to provoke me. It appears neither of us pay much mind to threats.” Havec took a single, menacing step forward, then seemed to wobble as if the stable ground were gyrating. “I do not act on my own behalf, but it happens that I found a cause to champion that also gives me what I want: your death.”
In spooky unison, the thousand silent little people raised their hands, palms out. Qanath had no idea what this meant, but Lofflied bellowed. “You think to turn my own servants against me?”
Havec opened his mouth, then checked. “I would debate this with you, but the moment is not rightly mine. All he wants for me to say is: go to hell.”
Qanath gasped as understanding swept through her, shaking her worse than the wind and fatigue. She would have run to him had not Amril’s hands tightened on hers, gripping painfully. “You can’t. Qanath. We have to see this through.”
He had spoken quietly, but her friend’s eyes were on her face now and the next words he spoke were to her: “Go ahead with your plan, sorceress. He is fine. He wants me to tell you: you were late your first day, it is time to make up for it.”
She swallowed hard and forced herself to nod, hoping it was the right decision. Hoping she wasn’t complicit all over again in letting someone hurt him. The instant she acquiesced, the storm returned, but this was no mere storm; it felt like the end of the world. The wind was so fierce it knocked them immediately from their feet, and they clung to each other fearfully. Ara was in human form, down on his knees with an arm around each of them.
A large shape charged past them, bellowing. The god fell, not on her friend or her countrymen, but the pallid mummies defying him. They stood still before his onslaught, hands upraised, untouched by the cold or the wind that looked as if it had killed them eons earlier. Qanath panted through her mouth, the cold of the air cutting at her throat, lips so chill and dry they’d cracked and bled and froze, as the god struck them down one by one. Only slowly, as she maintained the violently-gyrating channel straining at the seams, did she understand that the little people were responsible. The god had given them the power to seed his storms and spread his ice, and they were dumping it out with the same fatal gush as a severed artery.
The snow rose to their shoulders where they sat amidst the drifts, and Ara dug it off of them. She had no idea what had become of Jonet or the shamans. She couldn’t see her friend, the army, the town surrounding them. She couldn’t see Amril because she couldn’t open her eyes anymore, couldn’t spare the iota of concentration it would take. She was hanging onto their construct with nothing more than determination, energy spent, muscles quivering, mind afire with fatigue. It felt as if she had been awake and battling continuously for a week. She could hear the god screaming even above the shrieking wind.
Then everything went still.
The bridge of geometric buttresses dissolved, and Qanath couldn’t say whether she had done this deliberately because the work was at an end or lost the capacity to hold it together at the precise instant it became acceptable to fail. She opened her eyes onto a world of white, a few fat flakes drifting placidly down atop the drifts that blanketed them. There was no sign of Lofflied, and the little people were all dead, leaving behind drifts of ancient bones and bleached-white hair atop the snow. Perhaps some of those bones were bigger than the others, and she shuddered as she wondered if the Moritians would try to pick Havec’s father from amongst the ghouls’ remains. From the clouds, a lance of sunlight broke free.
Her gaze sought her friend, and she found him standing undaunted right where he had been. “And with that,” the thing wearing him said, gazing around it in a satisfied way, “I believe that my work here is complete.”
A New Adventure Begins
Havec just had time to think: Not again. It startled him when he said it out loud; it had been hours since last he had control of his mouth. By that point, he was already sitting down. It didn’t hurt as much as it could have, because he’d fallen into snow that reached to his hips, but it was embarrassing.
He was feeling contrite by the time Farait took his hands and pulled him to his feet, contrition that wasn’t rightly his. He couldn’t recall that he had used to feel what Kebbal felt and wondered if it simply felt more license to be candid with him after everything, or whether doing what they’d done had altered their bond. That’s alright, I know you wanted to give up control of the body the second you could. He added, Thanks for helping us.
The major was alive and well and issuing commands, so Havec made for his friend. Picking his way through snow deeper than his legs was no party anyway and climbing through the remains of the droghos was a grisly business. He was just as stiff and miserable as he had feared he would be, and it had been a long time since he slept. By the time he reached them, Qanath was on her feet, her grumpy gallant at her side, both of them looking dead on their feet. He had no words and hugged her.
When he released her, he was presented immediately with Hair-On-End, keen to remind him of the promises they made yesterday. He prepared himself to be grabbed, hopefully by the arm, but when Arandgwail reached out to him, its hand stopped several inches proud of his chest. It left it there for a moment, shivering in terrified pleasure, before withdrawing the hand again with a nervous laugh. Leaving it to discuss the experience with its maker in a breathless tone, he moved past them to the man only now climbing to his feet in the middle of what looked to be a circle of unconscious shamans.
He had no idea what to say. Sorry for killing your son? Sorry for blaming you for my parents’ crimes? Sorry for believing you were a bad man just because you didn’t get along with your brother, who was an ass?
Jonet didn’t give him the chance, dragging him into an embrace that lasted long enough for him to realize his uncle had been wounded by his death. By the time the man finally released him, he felt as though he no longer needed to explain himself. “Uncle,” he began, but if he didn’t need to apologize, what was there to say? Farait was hovering nearby, and he gestured to the man for lack of another topic of conversation. “This is Farait Tamur. He’s, um, an army priest.”
“I’m Havec’s boyfriend,” Hot Priest said boldly, stepping forward and extending a hand.
His uncle was discomfited but didn’t hesitate to shake, saying, “Your sorcerers didn’t want to tell me what became of my nephew in your empire. ‘Something special’ was all they said. It’s your job to explain?”
“Oh, I’m just in love with him.” Havec couldn’t understand how something phrased as a demurral could so clearly be a boast. “I think he understands what he is better than any of the rest of us.”
His uncle’s eyes had gone back to him, curious, and he drew a slightly deeper breath. Then what he said was, “I look forward to hearing it, but this probably isn’t the time.”
The process of cleaning up had been complicated by the fact that Havec brought a division of the Tabbaqeran army with him. He hadn’t meant to invade his own homeland, but that was essentially what he’d done. Moritia had courted war and now the enemy was on their soil, in their largest settlement. Moritia’s leaders walked undefended in their ranks. He had the impression Uncle Jonet feared that if he stopped being polite and attempted to complain, the Tabbaqerans were going to clap him in chains. He chose to ask that the army help dig out the town, make sure no one was trapped by the snow, because what choice did he have?
It was a busy, chaotic day, and as the only person who had a foot in both worlds, Havec was constantly called upon to help his two peoples communicate. The sorcerers had vanished the instant the storm blew off, and he envied them. He wasn’t able to escape until the sun touched the peaks to the west, and he still hadn’t had a chance to have that conversation with his uncle. He had no recollection of eating dinner, just a blank period of happiness followed by discovering himself full. He staggered up the stairs afterward, body weighing twice as much as usual, and barely remembered to tug his boots off before falling face-forward onto a bed.
He woke to the sound of pounding on a brightly sunny morning, still lying on the covers fully dressed. The bedroom had once been his, but all of his personal effects had been removed in the intervening years. Farait was with him, also lying atop the covers with his clothes still on, fast asleep with one possessive hand up Havec’s shirt. He might rather have woken slowly to this pleasant experience, but someone was still thumping on the door.
He uttered a groan, and the door was flung open. Lieutenant Pannus stuck his head inside, not wasting time on hellos. “Avat. There’s a situation I’m hoping you can help us understand.”
Havec’s mother, he was to learn, had been murdered in the night. It was the first he realized they had brought her along, unwilling to let the woman out of their sight until she could be interrogated. Too late for that now.
They had installed her in the castle’s cells with Uncle Jonet’s knowledge, but not his participation: they stationed their own soldiers at the door. Four Tabbaqerans had passed the night in the room leading to the locked doorway that led to her locked cell. It had no window: the cells were underground. When they shut her in that evening, she was fine; when they went to give her breakfast, she was dead with a knife in her chest.
They assembled in the basement, Major Cimmuman, his officers, Havec, even his uncle, everyone looking furious and/or disturbed. Farait was called upon to interrogate the guards, but Mahudar’s province was pain, not lies; the most he could tell them was that the four people in question weren’t plagued by guilt such as might come from committing treason.
The mood darkened as the day wore on, but it took Havec a while to figure out why the Tabbaqerans were so upset: the entire army and half the population of the town was eventually questioned, and no one had seen anything. As if the woman had been killed by a ghost. There were any number of cults of assassins who could pull something like this off. The real problem was that they were all homegrown. They had heard Havec’s story, and although he himself was no longer certain his mother had colluded with anyone on the opposite side of the border, the Tabbis were convinced. It was the obvious explanation for how she died, not to mention why: someone must have wanted to silence her before she could name names.
By the time evening rolled around, it had become clear that his work was done. It wasn’t his job to prosecute an inquest, and he had answered all their questions to the best of his ability. He stepped from the room where the major had established his headquarters in the castle and shut the door, thinking to go in search of supper. Probably the time had come to have that talk with Uncle Jonet.
Around the first corner, he almost ran into Hot Priest. He froze, stomach seizing. “I’ve been told I’ll be expected to open a school and raise other people’s kids. What license I have to get to know my new homeland and actually be young, I suspect there’s a clock and it’s started to run.”
He couldn’t bring himself to voice the question that was stuck in his throat. Farait met his gaze fearlessly. “I spoke to Lieutenant Pannus earlier. Resigned my commission. If you’ve changed your mind, now’s the time to tell me.”
Havec let go a sigh, feeling terribly hopeful as they fell in side by side.
***
Qanath went to bed and stayed there for a solid day. When she reemerged, it was onto a different world. A tense, confused world in which they had conquered a neighboring kingdom accidentally. Fear abounded, and soldiers clogged the streets of the modest town she could finally see now the clouds had blown away to usher in spring. Contrary to expectation, they were mostly quite genteel toward the people of Moritia, whom they seemed to regard as fellow victims in this diabolical scheme.
