“I did not lay aside my rights so that you could execute the idiot regardless,” Karn bellowed. “He should be flogged for what happened, not hanged!”
Whatever Komo said in reply was inaudible to Teer, but it calmed the Spehari enough that Teer couldn’t hear the next exchange.
Was the Spehari trying to save Teer’s life? Why? Teer had no illusions about what he’d done. He’d pulled a gun on a man who had committed no crime except being a member of his species. While the nation created by that species had betrayed Teer’s father, this Lord Karn certainly hadn’t!
Teer’s current state certainly wasn’t making him any happier with the Spehari or the Unity, but he had to admit that none of this was Karn’s fault.
So, why was the Spehari trying to spare him?
“I will speak to the boy,” Karn’s voice echoed down the corridor again. He’d clearly at least opened the door from Komo’s office.
“I’m not sure that’s wise,” the Wardkeeper told him. “He did try to shoot you.”
“The only weapons in that cell will be the ones I bring with me,” the Spehari replied. “Unless you are utterly incompetent at your job, Wardkeeper Komo?”
“He is not armed. Not even a spoon,” Komo admitted.
“I have no fear that a boy of nineteen turnings will disarm me and turn my weapons against me before I disable him with magic,” Karn stated. “I will speak to him.”
Teer laid A History aside on the bed as he straightened to look at the door. That wasn’t what he’d been expecting. He had no idea what was going on now or how to handle it.
Teer had to agree with Komo, in principle at least, but the door swung open and the Spehari strode in regardless.
He was no shorter or darker-skinned now that Teer was sober, though the strange fuzziness that had hung around him in the bar was gone now. He looked down at where Teer sat on the bed and scoffed.
“Are you going to try to kill me again, boy?” he asked. “With your bare hands, perhaps?”
“I wouldn’t know where to begin,” Teer admitted.
“See?” Karn turned back to Komo. “Leave us, Wardkeeper.”
“The laws say—”
“I am Spehari,” Karn ground out. “Leave us.”
“I will lock the door,” Komo said. “Call when you need us.”
The Wardkeeper bowed his way out of the cell, closing the door behind Karn and locking it. The Spehari continued to look down at Teer silently, then turned to look at the door. Orange light flickered around his hands for a moment, then flitted across the room to coat the door in a thin sheen.
“We cannot be heard now,” he told Teer. “It will not last, but it will buy us some much-needed privacy.”
Teer could see the spell. He didn’t know much about Spehari or magic, but he was pretty sure that was strange.
“What do you want?” Teer asked bluntly.
“My name is Karn of House Morias,” the Spehari told him. “I am the man you tried to kill. More successfully than most, which is fascinating to me. Older and far superior fighters than you have tried, and few have managed as much as you did.”
“I am sorry,” Teer half-whispered, looking at the floor. “I was a drunken fool.”
“Yes. Not generally considered an excuse, though usually a mitigating factor,” Karn agreed.
Teer…mostly followed what the Spehari was saying. He thought.
“Why are you even here?” he asked.
“Two reasons,” Karn told him, holding up a pair of fingers on his right hand. Now that they were this close, Teer saw that those hands were far from the delicate and clean hands he would have expected from a Spehari. Karn’s hands were worn and callused, with multiple small burn scars along his fingers.
“Firstly, I do not believe your death is necessary,” the Spehari said bluntly. “You seem discouraged enough that I would not expect you to go hunting the Spehari in the streets, and I doubt there are enough other Spehari-haters out here for your death to be a useful example.”
He folded a finger down and grinned, the expression carving turnings off his face.
“There are other ironies inherent to the situation that you are not aware of.”
Teer stared at the other man blankly. He’d only understood about half of that last sentence. Karn realized that and chuckled.
“You and I have more in common than you think, but I can’t explain that here,” he told Teer. “My second reason for wanting to know more about you is that you intrigue me, boy. You saw me. Everyone else in that bar saw a Merik bounty hunter. Even another Spehari wouldn’t have seen through that illusion or even realized it was there. But you…you saw me.”
That made no sense to Teer, but it triggered a thought.
“Like I can see the magic you did on the door?” he asked.
Karn looked at him like he’d grown a second head and glanced behind him. The door continued to gleam a faint orange color to Teer but the Spehari studied it like it was entirely new to him.
“Most Spehari can’t see other people’s magic,” he said slowly. “You are more intriguing by the moment, boy, and I hesitate to condemn you without knowing more. So.”
“So what?” Teer demanded. “I’m a curiosity? What does it matter?”
“It matters for a lot of reasons,” Karn replied. “Why did you try to kill me?”
“Because I was drunk and angry and you were Spehari,” the youth admitted. “Did you miss that?”
Karn chuckled again, still looking down at Teer on the bed.
“I got all that, yeah,” he agreed, his tone slipping into a very different register for a moment. “But that doesn’t actually tell me anything,” he continued. “Most people don’t hate the Spehari that much. We’re more of an unpleasant distant problem than something that immediate.”
“What, you want to know why people hate your species?” Teer gestured to the book on the bed. “Try reading that. The author likes the Unity and she can’t brush over the horrors your people inflicted on mine when
