She opened her mouth, then couldn’t decide what to say. Not so much for lack of answers as lack of trust. She meant to cling to him because her entire future, so carefully planned, had just been thrown into disarray. Because she had pledged herself to Kebbal and he was its heir. Because horror had invaded her home last night and he made her feel safe.

She didn’t feel like justifying herself to Havec, though. Maybe he was a person of more substance than she initially gave him credit for, but he was still a grumpy jerk. Lifting her chin, she told him, “Because.”

***

The road they followed was only wide enough for a single cart, but it was no overgrown dirt track; it was raised slightly proud of the surrounding countryside, its gravel surface free of potholes and ruts. Ruler-straight where it need not bend around the curves of hills, it cut through a landscape Havec had been staring at through a window for years, but never actually visited. Mostly flat, the region was a study in the color brown. Brown rocks, brown grasses, brown dirt. The effect was austere and made the scarlet and purple wildflowers all the more shocking.

He had meant to keep walking briskly toward the northern horizon until the girl gave up and went away, cast from his shoulders like broken old feathers falling from the wings of a bird. It infuriated him to discover, after no more than a few hours, that he was the one who needed to stop. His hips grated with each step as if the sockets were filled with sand, and his lower legs ached like he’d borrowed them from an eighty-year-old man. His feet were swollen and raw with blisters from the high-quality boots he had never actually worn.

The girl was still following him, and she made no comment at the early halt. She was barely breathing heavily, although at least there were unattractive stains of perspiration spotting her shirt. She walked past him off the verge, toward the narrow stream gurgling between overhung banks. Once she found a spot where she could get close to the water, she took her shoes and socks off and stuck her feet in. After a minute, very carefully not directing the words at him, she said, “That feels good. Should help take the swelling down.”

He glared at her back, but eventually discomfort won. Hurling his pack into the bushes, he peered around in search of a seat of his own. It didn’t improve his mood to discover that the only level patch where he could get close to the water was the one the girl had already claimed. He was tempted to go grab his bag again and walk away. Then he let out an angry breath and took a seat beside her.

He tugged at the laces with such impatience that one of them snapped. He wrenched the boots off and tossed them over his back, the socks following. His feet were red and smelly and blistered, like they’d contracted a pox. He stuck them in the water with a scowl.

The girl’s eyes were on his feet, and he waited for her to say something while he wondered if he would end up throwing her in the stream. It was a minute before she said casually, “Ouch. New shoes?”

The reality was that he hadn’t worn shoes in years, minus the time it took to get fitted every few years for a new pair of boots he would never use. “Yes,” he said between his teeth.

“It’s going to take a couple of days to break them in, I’m afraid. My fa’s a cobbler,” she added.

Havec grunted. If she knew a lot about shoes, she probably knew as much about feet. She could probably tell just by looking that he’d spent years deluding himself he was preparing to go home while his master smiled and made promises and crippled him before his oblivious eyes. He couldn’t walk more than five miles on end. He had no idea where home was, other than north. He was vaguely cognizant that the Empire had laws restricting the presence of foreigners and movement back and forth across its borders but didn’t know nearly enough to keep himself safe.

His master had admitted as he died that he never meant to make good on their bargain. Havec acknowledged it with a sense of betrayal that was as nothing beside the revelation that he hadn’t seen it for himself. Xar had been a man with an addiction, and the only thing you could trust about addicts was that, when push came to shove, you couldn’t trust them. Had he really thought the man who had been holding him hostage by means of a childhood tragedy for a span of years would one day help him win free?

Or had he been just as glad for an excuse to maintain the comfortable status quo?

This thought was so deeply unpleasant that he felt a flash of gratitude when a spec of darkness in the distance resolved into riders on the road. Bracing his hands on the streambank, he slid forward and stepped down into the mud. It felt surprisingly good, oozing up between his toes, cool from contact with the water. Crouching, he peered out between the tufts of yellow grass.

“What are you doing?”

“Riders. Approaching. Two of them, it looks like.”

“Why are you in the river?”

“I’m a foreigner, it’s—” A thought struck him. He half-straightened, turning to her. “There are laws about foreigners, right?” If that had been a lie, if he could have walked out the door six years ago…

The girl was nodding uncertainly, though. “I think so, but I don’t really know the specifics.”

“Well, let’s not get arrested, what do you say?”

She glanced over her shoulder anxiously, hissing, “But they look like men! And I look like I’m alone!”

Disgusted, he demanded, “You think if they decide to come over here and rape you, I’m going to hide in the grass and watch?”

“No, but…!”

“Look,” he said impatiently, “those may or may not be bad men, we come in both varieties. There is no such thing as a human being who isn’t curious. If they get a look at me, they’ll tell everyone they know.”

They waited in mutual tension for the riders to draw near. The girl had her face fixed forward, staring at the road from the edges of wide eyes. Havec continued to squat in the hollowed-out shelter of the undercut bank, using the thick grasses to hide his face. If this went sour, he needed to know as it happened. Until he could be shut of this girl, he wasn’t about to let someone slit her throat.

The riders didn’t appear to notice Qanath until they were abreast of her, but when they did, they pulled off the road. As they approached, they were calling out greetings, and the girl was finally forced to turn around. She had been pretending not to notice them, as if that would make them go away. It was a classic prey-mistake: if you thought something might be a threat to you, you should act as though you were right.

If these fellows were planning something, it wasn’t apparent in their friendly hellos. Both of them were young, and he wondered what they were doing out here. None of their accoutrements were fancy, and their horses weren’t anything special, but the men themselves just weren’t disreputable enough to be highwaymen. Each of them had a pack attached to the saddle, too small to conceal anything but food and a change of clothes. They had no other baggage, no tools of any trade, and their simple clothing was nondescript, well-made, unmarked by insignia.

He frowned at them as he wondered what they were. Tourists would be better dressed. Soldiers would be armed. Merchants would have wares, couriers would wear uniforms, and farm-boys would be at home on their farms doing chores.

They might be pursuing some religious purpose; he had never gotten a handle on the Empire’s perspective on faith. There seemed to be as many gods here as there were people, and those people didn’t always feel compelled to love those gods or treat them with respect. Still, if they were pilgrims, you would expect them to bear trappings. He’d seen a number of pilgrims go past the school in the years he spent there, and they were always crashing cymbals or carrying effigies or casting flower-petals in their wake.

“Are you alone?” one of them exclaimed, a diminutive fellow with a mischievous cast to his features and a shock of ruby curls standing wildly to attention off his skull. A suspect question, but there was nothing predatory about the way he said it. He seemed alarmed.

The girl’s eyes went to Havec, and he looked back, casting his eyes significantly at the men. Clearing her throat, she said, “Y-yes.”

Havec could almost have sworn the other man’s eyes had found one of his discarded boots amidst the grasses, and a shadow of a frown crossed his visage. Then it was as if nothing had happened and he was saying pleasantly, “Where are you headed?”

There was an uncomfortable pause before the girl replied, “I was visiting a relative in Huaron, but now I’m going home. My family’s in Nizerh?” There was another pause, and although Havec didn’t know the geography of the Empire well, he could tell this was a shit story by the looks on both the men’s faces. The girl knew it too and licked her lips. “I think I may have gotten lost?”

The hair-on-end fellow made a face that said, ‘No shit!’ The other guy, the smooth one, twisted in his saddle, pointing north. “Not a mile beyond that hill, you’re going to come to a town, and there’s a road there that will take you back east. I don’t think you can make it to the next town before dark, but you’ll be headed in the right direction.”

“And this road? Does it continue north?”

The men exchanged a glance. Havec winced. Well done, girl, he thought, why not just tell them you’re lying?

“I don’t know,” Hair-On-End replied, “I’ve never been that way.”

“You want to be careful,” Smooth Guy added, and his gaze on the girl was level, all pretense that he had believed a word she said abandoned. “There’s trouble on the northern border, it’s no safe place for someone traveling alone.” His eyes didn’t flick toward the boots lying in the grass, but Havec was certain he had seen them.

“I’ll remember that,” the girl said brightly. “Thanks for your help!”

Havec wanted badly for her to ask these guys who they were and what the devil they were doing out here, but he knew it wasn’t happening: she was too eager to end the conversation. He glanced at her, wondering what her problem was. He hadn’t had the impression that the Empire was so unsafe a chance encounter on a public highway warranted this degree of fear.

While she bid the strange strangers adieu, Havec studied her, thinking that he might have misread her story. He didn’t know nearly as much as he could about Tabbaqera, how its society or government worked. When he heard her father explain their circumstances, he had assumed they were in desperate straits. They were definitely poor, but maybe that meant something different to her than to him. This girl was acting like she’d never been within a mile of actual ugliness and wasn’t clear what she needed to look out for.

He waited in the streambed for another few minutes to make sure those guys were out of sight. Then he hoisted himself back onto the bank. While he washed the mud from between his toes as best he could, the girl gathered up his discarded things. When she handed him his socks, he bared his teeth at her, making sure she knew he wasn’t going to thank her for help he hadn’t asked for.

They were back on the road soon enough, walking north. Havec found that his feet did feel slightly better, although it probably wasn’t going to last. He glanced at the girl beside him, who had to be pretty damn sore too, thanks to her lessons. The backs of her hands were raw from the training bag, the only outward sign of ill-use, but for a few days there Xar had worked her like a real pupil. Too bad she had gone through that for nothing.

“What are the odds,” he asked the world generally, “that you’ll actually take the road east at this village like you’re supposed to?”

“Who are you to tell me what I’m supposed to do?” she retorted.

He threw up his hands. “Assassins spilled out of the night and killed your clever plan. Not an act of god in the traditional sense, but unless you were responsible for that after all…”

The way her narrow jaw jutted forward made it clear she wasn’t backing down. “I wanted to be trained by an Avatethura Master. I don’t see how the situation has changed.”

It took him a moment to realize what she meant. “I am not an Avatethura Master, girl, I’m an Avatethura Master’s bitter ex-hostage, off to retrieve his stolen life.”

“Don’t call me ‘girl.’ My name is Qanath. I’m the same age as you, and I don’t know what high ground you think you’re standing on: only one of us has seen the other’s butt.”