He wanted to remain aloof, but that spun him around, and she couldn’t read the raw look in his eyes. When he turned away again, he muttered, “Have you ever wondered if your mother thinks you have no future in politics because you’re too naïve?”
Qanath stared at him for a long time afterward, while he fussed about with the backpacks and pretended not to feel her gaze. She wanted to scoff. She wanted to tell him this was all a bunch of bullshit and she wasn’t buying a turd. Xar anKebbal had been a great man, he can’t have known. He would never have been party to so monstrous a scenario. And she had seen this man strolling about his house as though he owned the place. He’d been healthy, pampered, dressed in jewels, not locked in the basement in a cage.
She had witnessed their final moment, though, and she had thought at the time, even through the shock, that something was going on. Something more convoluted than goodbye. She hadn’t been close enough to eavesdrop on their murmured conversation, but she had heard Xar anKebbal speak one intriguing word, which was ‘bargain.’ She’d watched him give the barbarian that farewell kiss, she’d noticed Havec trying to resist, she’d seen his master use his strength to force it on him.
She had sensed that something more tangible than emotional nuance passed between them when he did.
She drew a breath as she remembered the scene, that heartbeat when their lips met and everything went dark. It had passed faster than an eye-blink, and she had convinced herself it was nothing. A delusion, a symptom of her fear. But there had been an instant where blackness descended, darkness so dense it was as if light had ceased to exist, and in the void left behind, something watched. She sucked in another breath and let it out in a sigh, settling back to the earth.
“That was Kebbal? He gave it to you?”
“He thought it would be well-suited to me,” he replied indifferently.
Another memory struck her, of his sudden appearance in that room as she was about to die, the way he leapt from the stairs with the deadly confidence of a raptor stooping. She had watched him fight but failed to understand. “He didn’t just give you the Legacy, he’d been training you for years.”
“Since I was fifteen.”
“You were his pupil. His heir. Not his servant.”
Havec went still. Quietly, he said, “Oh my god.” Without ever glancing at her, he went back to work.
“What? You had the run of the place, you were his protégé. He must have thought of you more as a, a lover…”
Now he did twist around to look at her. She couldn’t tell if he was searching for words or struggling to take hold of his temper, but it was several uncomfortable minutes before he said, “Xar wasn’t a fool, so I don’t imagine he ever let wishes blind him to the truth. He knew when he bought me I would always consider him an enemy. He proposed a deal the moment we got home, before he took the fetters off.”
“Fetters? You were a criminal? The bonded don’t—”
“Typically wear restraints,” he interrupted, “because they aren’t typically captives hell-bent on escape. And before you ask the next stupid fucking question I know you’re going to ask: no, no one noticed and thought it was odd and informed the authorities because angry wide-eyed children trussed up like convicts are the norm when you’re buying flesh under the table from the specialty dealers.”
Qanath looked at him and wondered what to say. “This deal?”
“If I was a good boy and didn’t fight him every step along the way, he would teach me how to get my revenge on the people who handed me over to the bonding-broker in the first place.” He thrust a thumb over his shoulder. “So if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to do that now.”
He stood, slung his pack over one shoulder, and walked away. Qanath stared after him until he vanished around a curve in the trail, too astonished to react. Then, cursing under her breath, she grabbed her own things and took off after him.
When she caught him up, she demanded, “You’re the, the embodiment of vengeance and you’re not even going to try to get revenge for the man who made you what you are?”
“He wasn’t the person you thought he was, do you still not get it? Doesn’t the Empire have laws about when children become grownups and are allowed to do grownup things? Things like, for example, have sex with scary old men?”
“Are you asking about our age of consent? Seventeen.”
“So, he was officially a child-molester. Cheers.” He stretched his legs, less an attempt to run away from her than make it uncomfortable to keep up.
“But he must have been like a father to you.”
“If that were true, I would hate him even more.”
“You don’t even want to know why?”
“Maybe it was the Cilian League,” he said lightly. “Aren’t they the ones pushing for a return to the good old values of the Empire of yore?”
“That isn’t funny!”
Havec made a rueful face, as close to a smile as she’d ever seen him get. “It kind of was.”
Qanath hissed in anger, searching for further arguments.
“Why do you want me around so badly, anyway? You like me even less than I like you.”
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.
