He bared his teeth at her again. “I dressed like that to remind him I wasn’t his lover, I was his property. If you had ever experienced a moment of actual unpleasantness in your life, you would understand.”

“If you care about injustice, why won’t you help me fight my battle?”

“Who says I do? Your problems mean nothing to me.”

“Well maybe I don’t care that you don’t care! You can barely walk, I don’t think you’re going to be outrunning me.”

“You told me yourself I’ll break the boots in in a matter of days.”

“Here’s the thing, though,” she told him, and he didn’t like the satisfied note in her voice. “I get the sense you don’t know anything about my country.”

Havec stopped himself from swallowing but couldn’t think of a good retort.

The girl’s eyes were sharp on his face. “You’ve spent years in Tabbaqera now, but all that time you were thinking about where you wanted to be, not where you were. You don’t know what you can and can’t do. I’m betting you took money from your master’s house, but you don’t know what it is. What the coins are called or how much they’re worth. You don’t know how to get where you’re going or how to get across the border once you’re there.”

She said nothing further, and they walked for a long time in silence, long enough that both of them began to hobble again. Havec watched her all the while, and although she must feel his eyes, she kept her own gaze on the road. He didn’t ask her about the bargain she seemed to be proposing because there would be no bargain. Having just slipped the bonds of a jailor masquerading as an ally happy to help, he wasn’t cutting any deals like that again. He was curious, though, just how tight these fetters were that she was contemplating.

“What do you think would happen to me? If I got caught.”

She considered it longer than he expected, eyes on the horizon. “I don’t really know. I suppose it would depend on how busy and bad-tempered the magistrate was who ended up hearing your case. No one can confirm your story at this point, not this many years down the line, and with Xar anKebbal dead—” She paused here, eyes wide. “We’re the only ones who know what really happened and we ran.”

“It wouldn’t be wise to tell anyone.”

She shook her head sharply. “Anyway, it probably depends. Unless they had a list of unsolved crimes committed by young men with white hair, I think they would sooner toss you back over the border than put you in jail.”

He was astonished she had been so honest with him but made himself say coldly, “Seems to argue against your case.”

“Does it?” she asked indifferently. “That answer was based on the premise that the foreigner without a passport had not flipped out the instant the politzqa tried to arrest him and killed like five of them. Which, let’s be honest, is what you would do if someone came at you with chains.”

He couldn’t admit that this was funny and had to settle for a grunt.

“My point was, I would think you would be grateful—”

He spun around and slapped her across the face. “Nothing you ever do can force me to love you. Don’t try.”

This time she tried to hit him back, but he just leaned back and let the blow whistle past. “What is your problem? I’m offering to help.”

“I don’t want your help!”

“That doesn’t mean you don’t need it.”

“I can make my own way.”

“I don’t think you can.”

“Watch me,” he said between his teeth.

Some of the anger left her, and she said dubiously, “There’s nothing wrong with needing other people.”

Havec had run out of words and hissed at her. Then he turned on his heel and set off walking north. He had only gone three strides before he heard her footsteps following. Grinding his teeth, he wondered just how many times he would need to slap her before she got the hint and went away.

Then he wondered uneasily just how fucked he would be if she did.

M.C. Burnell

Across the Old Heartland

Before Qanath had come fully awake, she was rolling over, eyes searching. When her gaze lit on a lump of shadow nearby, she released her pent breath in a sigh. She had expected her companion to take off the moment she fell asleep. Settling back into the grass that was her bed, she studied the lines of his visage, only partly softened by sleep. It came as a shock that he was still here; she’d been certain he would take the first opportunity to abandon her.

Shaking her head, she sat up. She wasn’t ever going to get inside the head of someone who slapped people when they offered to help him. Why try? All it was going to earn her was a headache, and she already had one.

She stifled a groan as she rose, making for the stream beside which they’d slept. They were out of sight of the road here beneath a stand of fine old cottonwoods. Their leaves were newly budded and there had been no elements to shelter from, but both of them had wanted to sleep beneath that limited protection for the night.

At the stream’s verge, she knelt and dunked her canteen, watching it glug bubbles as it refilled and wishing Havec had one too. Between the purse he had yet to admit he had and all the jewelry she’d taken, they probably had quite a lot of money on them. They didn’t have much in the way of supplies, though. That town had been there right where the strangers told her it would be, but Havec had wanted to swing wide for the obvious reason and Qanath had been certain that, if she went in without him to ask after news and buy them food, she would never see him again.

It was bizarre just how wary he was of being caught. Like he thought they would string him up the moment they realized he existed, for no other reason than that he did. It was true he had no legal right to be here, but it was hardly a capital offense. It wasn’t like they hated barbarians on principal. He had lived in this country for years without learning anything about who her people were or how they thought.

That, or Xar anKebbal had told him repeatedly he would be killed out of hand by the first person who saw him because it was an easy way to keep him in the house. She grimaced, wishing the thought hadn’t occurred to her. She didn’t feel like feeling sorry for him, he seemed to have that well in hand. She didn’t want to believe it, but the instant she entertained the possibility it might be true, it became something she couldn’t ask about.

Once she had drunk her fill, she went in search of privacy, still thinking about her companion. He said he had been with the man since he was fifteen, which would have been about the time the Avatethura Master dismissed the few students he had and stopped taking in more, an event that had mystified everyone who heard about it, which was absolutely everyone. The most common theory was that his school ran out of money, but what if he had a secret to hide?

Keeping a bed-bonded was the kind of thing that would raise eyebrows in certain quarters, but it wasn’t something someone would need to conceal, not unless they were a hypocrite who preached the value of abstinence along Hythnal Way in the City of Signs. She had only known Xar anKebbal for a span of days, but he hadn’t struck her as someone who was bashful about being himself. If the bed-bonded in question was very, very illegal, though, if exposure would mean, not only scandal, but trouble with the law…

It was hard to fathom. Xar anKebbal had been a great man famed across the Empire for his quality. For him to turn around as he approached the twilight years of his life and toss his reputation to the wayside to do something reprehensible for the sake of lust was hard to credit. People probably took mad risks for love, but they were talking about a man taking mad risks to force his attentions on a sullen barbarian who returned his affection with spite.

Once she had wiped herself off as best she could with leaves and grass, she made her way back to the stream to wash her hands. Then she stood over her companion and stared at his face. He’d said something about going home to get revenge, and it crossed her mind to wonder if Kebbal had been drawn to him, the Avetethura Master dragged along by happenstance.

“Two questions: how long are you going to do that, and are you not aware of how creepy it is?”

Qanath took a step back from the man glowering at her from the shadowed circles of his eyes. She snorted when she realized he had probably woken the instant she stirred and been lying there for half an hour with his eyes closed waiting for her to do something he could criticize.

Turning away from him, she sat down and reached for her pack. She pulled it onto her lap and dug after breakfast, saying over one shoulder, “Even if I wasn’t both squeamish and moral, you’ve been trained to fight while I have not. I don’t see myself managing to kill you while you lie there helpless, and I don’t have a penis. What’s left?”

“You were trained at the Collure,” he pointed out.

She whipped around, peering over her shoulder. “You actually feel threatened by me.” That, she hadn’t seen coming. She had suggested he was frightened to provoke him.

“Threatened, not necessarily. Rationally wary?” He sat up, rubbing at his face. He combed one impatient hand through his hair, then reached for his knife. Qanath’s mouth fell open, but he didn’t point the knife at her. Grabbing another fistful of hair, he began sawing it off an inch from the roots. It looked like an uncomfortable procedure, but he kept at it, slicing it away in uneven chunks and scattering the fistfuls that came free into the surrounding shrubs.

“What are you doing? Please don’t say cutting your hair, it’s not as witty as you think.”

One corner of his mouth twitched, but she couldn’t tell if it was an aborted smile or the beginning of a sneer. “The curl isn’t natural, you know, the servants put it in rollers. And he would always,” he shook the fistful of hair he was holding. Qanath had seen his master take him by the hair and didn’t ask him to explain the gesture.

Returning to her search for breakfast, she said neutrally, “You seem to be laboring under a misconception about how sorcery works. I could hurt you, sure, but not before you stuck a sword in me. It takes time to put a spell together, anything complicated enough to be worth doing. That’s why sorcery is never used directly in warfare. It’s too slow to be much of a weapon.”

“You can’t, you know, hex people?”

She very carefully didn’t glance at him. “That kind of hoodoo witchery exists only in tall tales. I could set you on fire, but to make you fall in love or suffer a string of bad luck? No way.”