middle of the hut. “Whoever used this last left in a hurry,” he said as he pulled charred ends of sticks and thicker branches toward him. “But they did leave behind some firewood.” He pointed with the branch to one side, where wood had been stacked. His eyes never left Colin.
“That should make Petraen’s job easier.” Colin scanned the rest of the hut. The roof was steep, to keep the snow from piling up too heavily. Smoke would be funneled from the fire pit up to a hole shielded against the weather at the top. The rest of the rounded interior was mostly bare, a few stone benches that could be used as sleeping pallets against the walls. There were no windows, only the main entrance and a covered hole in the floor against the back wall for the disposal of garbage and waste. The stale smell of smoke and musty dampness cloaked the small room.
“It’s not much of a wayside,” Vaeren said.
Colin caught and held his gaze. The undertone in the caitan’s voice suggested that they could find better accommodations in the village. “It will suffice for tonight,” he said. Then he knelt down and began dragging the black, sooty remains of the previous fire from the pit.
After a moment, Vaeren helped him.
They worked in utter silence, Vaeren studiously ignoring him as they scraped the last of the dead coals from the hollow that reminded Colin of the rounded depressions in the middle of the dwarren keevas, where they held their most serious consultations. The silence became strained, itching at Colin’s back, until he finally sighed and asked, “What House are you from?”
Without looking up, Vaeren said, “I am a member of the Order of the Flame. I am associated with no House except the Order.”
The caitan said it as if by rote, and Colin grimaced. He knew that acolytes of the Order renounced their ties to their previous Houses. Their allegiance was given to Aielan and the Order, their previous House abandoned, although erasing those ties completely was impossible.
“I meant, what House were you originally from?”
Vaeren glanced up at that, his brow creased, as if he were trying to determine why Colin would ask, what his ulterior motive might be. But finally he answered, “Uslaen.”
“Lord Saetor’s House, Khalaek’s caitan before Khalaek was banished and his own House declared fallen.”
“Yes,” Vaeren said shortly. His shoulders stiffened, his soot-greased hands clenched hard on the branch he now held defensively before him. “What of it?”
Colin sat back, surprised by his reaction, by the sudden tension in the room. “Nothing. A simple question, nothing more.”
Vaeren watched him intently, then visibly forced himself to relax, letting his held breath out in a long sigh. “I… apologize,” he said, his voice rough. “I should not have reacted so… forcefully.”
Colin brushed the apology aside with one hand. “No offense was taken. But I’m surprised. Khalaek and his House were destroyed over a hundred years ago. I thought the ascension of the new House had gone smoothly, that the emotions of that time would have been laid to rest by now.”
Vaeren sneered, the expression twisting his face for a moment, then gone, replaced by a troubled brow. He busied himself with the fire pit, drawing the last of the coals close enough to be retrieved.
“Alvritshai have long memories,” he said finally. “I was part of Khalaek’s House before his betrayal, proud to be Duvoraen. I wore the black and gold of the Phalanx on the battlefield at the Escarpment, fought for Khalaek there and before.”
Colin silently adjusted his estimate of Vaeren’s age. “You must have been newly risen into the Phalanx to have been at the Escarpment.”
“Yes. I was only thirty-three, had been part of the Duvoraen Phalanx for barely a year. When the Evant announced Khalaek’s betrayal, when they declared him khai and banished him.…” Vaeren paused to stare off into the distance, his face open and easy to read. Colin could see the young Alvritshai soldier he had been, could see an echo of the shock and disbelief that young warrior had felt.
Then Vaeren’s face hardened with pain and the anger of the betrayal, and Colin again saw the warrior of the Flame he had first seen in the Sanctuary.
He turned to face Colin. “It felt as if Khalaek had betrayed me personally. I was young; I was newly risen to the Phalanx. It crushed me. And I was not the only one that felt lost and adrift after that.”
“But the Evant declared the rising of House Uslaen almost immediately, appointed Saetor as the new lord and gave all of Duvoraen’s lands and people over to him.”
An echo of the sneer returned. “You can’t declare a new lord and House and expect the people to follow so easily. I’d been part of Duvoraen for decades, had been raised to serve Lord Khalaek, been trained to protect him, to revere the black-and-gold uniform, to live under the Eagle’s Talon.” Vaeren stood abruptly, brandishing the branch, the fire pit between them. “I couldn’t do it,” he muttered, the sneer seeping into his voice. “I couldn’t shrug the Duvoraen House mantle aside so easily. I couldn’t simply vow to serve Uslaen after all that I’d done, after spilling my blood for Duvoraen on the battlefield. The Lords of the Evant should not have expected that of us.”
“Even though Khalaek had betrayed you, betrayed all of the Alvritshai?”
“That was only what the Lords of the Evant claimed,” he said sharply, but his conviction faltered even as he said it, the branch he wielded lowering. “I didn’t know what to believe. Neither did anyone else within the Phalanx. None of us understood, but we all know of the games the Lords of the Evant play.”
Colin held Vaeren’s gaze. “They needed stability. For the treaty with the humans and the dwarren.”
Vaeren’s glare hardened. “And I needed time to adjust, to come to terms with Khalaek’s betrayal.”
Colin shifted where he sat. “But you said you were part of House Uslaen when I asked.”
Vaeren snorted with derision. “I was. Duvoraen had fallen; Uslaen had risen in its stead. The Evant declared me Uslaen. No one can claim to be of House Duvoraen anymore without the risk of becoming khai themselves, of being shunned by everyone, being cursed or spat upon. Duvoraen is dead. But I couldn’t stay with Uslaen, couldn’t pretend to a vow to Saetor that I’d never made, not in my heart.”
“So you joined the Order.”
“Yes. I joined the Flame. What better way to deal with the betrayal of Khalaek and the Evant than to remove myself from them altogether? Nearly a hundred of the Duvoraen Phalanx fled to the Order after the Escarpment. Hundreds of others abandoned Uslaen completely.”
Colin frowned. “They shifted to another House?”
Vaeren shook his head with a grim smile. “They left. They vanished, departing in the night, abandoning their watches, their posts. They became khai-roen, a self-imposed exile. They could not serve under Saetor, could not serve under any lord at all.”
Colin felt a shudder pass through him. The fact that hundreds of Alvritshai had simply left their House and lands behind, had vanished, disturbed him deeply. He understood being disillusioned, understood feeling betrayed by your own people-the refugee families who’d fled Andover nearly two hundred years ago before the onset of the Feud, families like his own, had been betrayed by the Proprietors in New Andover. That betrayal had driven Colin and his family onto the plains, had ultimately killed them all.
All except for Colin and Walter, and neither of them were exactly human anymore.
He reached across with his right hand and massaged his left arm, where beneath the sleeve of his shirt his skin was mottled black with the poison of the Wells and their Lifeblood. It was an old habit, one that he’d thought he’d broken. With a disgusted wince, he snatched his hand away, glanced up to find Vaeren watching him intently.
“Where did they go?” he asked, his voice harsher than he’d intended. “Where are the Alvritshai who abandoned Uslaen now?”
Vaeren shrugged. “No one knows.”
The unease Colin felt sank deeper into his chest. He held Vaeren’s gaze a moment longer, then motioned with his soot-stained hands toward the fire pit and the wood. “We should get the fire started.”
Ten minutes later, he stepped from the hut as a thin, white smoke began to drift from beneath the small aperture in the roof. Aeren, Eraeth, and Siobhaen were still grooming the horses, Aeren talking quietly with Siobhaen, although it didn’t appear Siobhaen was participating much. Eraeth shot Colin an irritated look and shook his head slightly. At the same time, a burst of laughter echoed from the woods south of the road. Petraen and two members of Aeren’s Phalanx approached, ducking under the low-hanging branches of the trees, arms laden with
