Sunlight sliding between the slats on the shutters woke Rhavas. By where the beams struck the floor, the prelate had slept soundly—more soundly, perhaps, than he'd intended. Rhavas started to sketch the sun-circle over his heart, as he had on waking every morning for as long as he could remember. But wasn't that one more habit to throw on the rubbish heap? So it seemed to him, and so he checked his hand's all but automatic motion.
Yawning, he got up and used the pot again. Then he opened the shutters. "Coming out!" he called, and chucked what was in the pot into the street. Anyone down below had to watch out for himself. No angry shouts rose, so Rhavas didn't suppose he'd given some luckless passerby a rude surprise.
He went down to breakfast. The barmaid on duty wasn't the one with whom he'd lain the night before. Koubatzes was already spooning up porridge, and talking with a man whose back was to Rhavas. After a bit, the mage's companion turned his head. Rhavas had thought he looked familiar: he was one of the men with whom the prelate and Ingegerd had traveled south from Tzamandos. For the moment, seeing him just made Rhavas glad that some of the party had managed to get away from the Khamorth in the stand of pines.
Rhavas called for a bowl of porridge and a cup of wine to wash it down. The barmaid brought him what he ordered. The bowl, chipped along the edge, was of the same cheap earthenware as the cup. The spoon was of horn. As for the porridge . . . It was hot, and it would fill him up. Having said that, he exhausted its virtues.
Nothing was wrong with the wine, though. He drained it and waved for a refill.
The barmaid had just brought him the fresh cup when Koubatzes came over to his table. "May I join you, very holy sir?" the mage inquired.
"Why not?" Rhavas said, a trifle grandly.
Koubatzes settled himself on a stool. It creaked under his weight. He drummed his fingers on the stained, battered pine of the tabletop. "I was talking with Arsenios there for a while," he said.
"Yes, I saw you. What about it?" Rhavas inquired.
"Well, I don't quite know," Koubatzes said. "He tells me he was traveling with you. As a matter of fact, he tells me he was traveling with you and the Haloga woman up until a couple of days ago."
"Oh." Rhavas sent Arsenios a look that should have melted most of the snow in Kybistra. The merchant, oblivious, stayed on his stool. He seemed to be chewing his cud like a cow. Rhavas thought hard about cursing him—he was angry enough—but reluctantly held back. If Arsenios fell over dead, Koubatzes would wonder why, and the wizard was wondering about too many things already. Rhavas just looked at him. "What about it?"
"You said she was dead, very holy sir," Koubatzes reminded him.
"She is." Rhavas knew perfectly well that was true. He knew the details, too, and no one else ever would.
But Koubatzes knew too much already, and knew it straight from Rhavas' own lips. "You led me to believe she died in Skopentzana, when the barbarians sacked the city. How could she have traveled with you if that happened?"
"Simple." The word came out of Rhavas' mouth before he had the least idea of what would follow it. Whatever it was, it would have to be a lie. He did his best to make it a good one: "You must have heard me wrong. I said she died after Skopentzana, not in it. In fact, a Khamorth arrow hit her in the back as we were riding out of the woods after the plainsmen attacked us there."
Koubatzes frowned fearsomely. "By the lord with the great and good mind, that isn't what you told me before."
"By the lord with the great and good mind, sorcerous sir, it is." Rhavas swore the false oath without hesitation. It was all of a piece with everything else that had happened since Videssos' troubles started. So he told himself, anyhow.
The mage's frown only got deeper. "That is not what I remember you saying." But he sounded more puzzled than outraged or suspicious. Rhavas' rank and his manifest holiness argued powerfully that he should be believed. Koubatzes doubted himself at least as much as he doubted the prelate.
Rhavas tried to make his smile seem sympathetic. In fact, it was mocking. He sipped from his cup of wine, laughing, as it were, behind his hand. He said, "We were both very tired last night, and we'd both drunk wine. Who knows what you thought you heard?" He did not mention what he'd said then, but left the impression he was very sure of that.
That impression of certainty struck home, too. "Maybe." Koubatzes sounded doubtful, but of himself rather than Rhavas. "I would have taken oath—I did take oath, to Arsenios—you told me something different, though."
"You know how these things are. You've dealt with people," Rhavas said easily. "Let five men watch an accident in the square. Ask them what happened an hour later and you'll hear six different stories."
"Maybe." Now Koubatzes might have been arguing with himself. Part of him wanted to believe Rhavas: that was plain. Part of him still knew something was wrong, but didn't quite believe what it knew. He slowly got to his feet. "All right, very holy sir. I won't trouble you anymore."
"No trouble at all," Rhavas said to the sorcerer's retreating back. When he was trapped in the worship of Phos, he would have had trouble sounding so genial; most people would have called him stern and harsh. He thought he still might be stern, but in the service of a new master.
Koubatzes sat down with Arsenios once more. The merchant said something. Rhavas couldn't make out what it was, because the man's back was to him. Koubatzes came back sharply, so sharply that Arsenios flinched. Koubatzes got up again and stalked out of the taproom.
He still wonders, Rhavas thought. Well, let him. What can he do about it? Not a thing, and he has to know it.
Even if Rhavas came right out and told the wizard what he'd done with and to Ingegerd, what could Koubatzes do about it? Not much, not now. Before the Khamorth invaded, before Videssian administration here in the north—and through how much of the rest of the Empire?—fell apart, Koubatzes could have had him arrested and interrogated. These days? Each town remaining in Videssian hands might as well have been a separate tiny kingdom. Leave the walls behind and you left its jurisdiction behind as well.
Rhavas went out to the stables. The little horse he'd ridden and the other he'd led as a pack animal had been brushed and seemed happy enough. The stable boy expectantly looked his way. He gave the youth a couple of coppers.
"Phos' blessings upon you, holy sir," the stable boy said.
"And on you," Rhavas replied, trying not to notice his own hypocrisy. The stable boy seemed to have trouble deciding whether to feel pleased at getting a priest's blessing or disappointed at not getting another copper. Rhavas shrugged. That was the boy's worry, not his. He put the steppe pony's trappings on it, clambered up into the saddle, and rode away from Kybistra.
It was still cold. The snow would stay on the ground a while longer. But the sun rose earlier than it had in deepest winter, and set later. It climbed higher into the sky at noon and shone brighter day by day. Not spring yet—oh, no. But a place from which, if you looked ahead, you could see spring.
When Rhavas looked ahead, he saw the usual white-swathed landscape. No plainsmen roamed across the snow-covered fields. He would not have worried even if they did. He had their measure—he could point a finger and fell them well before their arrows could reach him.
Not wanting any nasty surprises, he also looked back over his shoulder. No nomads behind him, either. No nomads, no, but someone riding out from Kybistra along the same track. Whoever the horseman was, he was pushing his mount hard, gaining on Rhavas with every stride it took.
The man waved. "Very holy sir!" he called, his voice thin in the distance. Rhavas watched the smoke of his breath stream out around his head. "Wait, very holy sir!"