Thy will be done.
When done they rolled the rugs up. Malik looked at Kai, trapped by his own madness. He took his nephew's shoulders and kissed his forehead.
"Good-bye," he said.
They buckled their sword belts around their waists, drew their swords, and faced each other, the breadth of an imaginary square between them.
Kai's insides had turned to water, but were now frozen. The fear had swollen to such a size that it was no longer a fire burning in his body. He now lived within the fear, was smaller than the thing that had eaten him. But in one sense that total envelopment helped. It was no longer a thing to be fought. It could not be fought.
He felt as if he were sitting cross-legged on the bottom of a lake, and the lake's surface burned with fire. Breathe. Focus. Stay at the bottom. To drift back into the real world meant floating back toward the surface. Meant rising into the flames.
Breathe.
Dimly he saw Aidan and Sophia at the corner of his vision. She had lifted him up, pulled her husband to the side, and held him tightly, his head in her lap, arms wrapped tight around his shoulders.
Malik fixed his baleful glare upon them. "Comfort your man well," he said. "After my nephew is dead, the kufurin will die a death few have known.".
"Luck, Kai," Aidan managed to say.
There is no luck here. No victory. No hope.
Only honor, and dishonor.
Kai never took his eyes from Malik. "Allah preserve us both," he said.
Then he walked the circle, sword held perfectly at the center line of his body, pointing precisely at his uncle's center line. Malik walked in absolute syncopation, maintaining his fencing measure and position effortlessly.
Slowly, the circle evolved to a converging spiral. One digit at a time the distance between them closed as Kai brought himself into proper distance. Then, for the first time, Kai lunged. Malik parried with a barest flick of his wrist.
One final lesson.
Kai's opening gambit was purely exploratory. Weeks back, Malik had said that old war wounds were plaguing him. Kai now reckoned that it was emotional, not physical, ills that had prevented his uncle from accompanying them, but he needed to be certain. At Kai's level of skill, imperfections in balance could be detected in the smallest hesitations. Balance was never static. It was the product of a thousand tiny shifts, invisible to the untrained eye, looming large as the moon to an expert.
Malik's body still responded as sound and echo, light and shadow, in perfect proportion to stimulus. He was not aggressive—yet. Kai knew that Malik must be as reticent as he to commit, to make a move that would lead to a fatal wound for either of them. He knew his uncle. Despite his obsession, there was no question in Kai's mind that Malik hoped that this thing could be ended short of death.
Then in the next instant Malik had changed not lines but levels, dropped low as Kai corkscrewed his blade around, seeking reengagement. Kai dropped his stance and Malik disengaged with blinding speed and fluidity, changed levels again and cut Kai's forearm, returning to guard before Kai had time to feel the pain.
He cursed to himself, shifted his balance back, and in the instant that his weight was balanced equally between his feet Malik lunged. In the blink that it took Kai to shift his balance Malik's blade had touched his right shoulder, and then his lower pectoral. Pain flared as each cut ripped skin but spared muscle.
Kai whirled away, turned—and found Malik's sword at his throat.
"Submit, Nephew. I would not kill you."
Kai was terrified, the nearness of death wrenching him from his desperately woven cocoon of concentration. Without turning his head he could see the petrified Sophia and Aidan. He spun and parried and then exploded forward with every bit of speed he could muster. Malik chose to deflect rather than retreat, and the two men found themselves face-to-face, blades locked. Malik smashed Kai across the cheekbone with his sword's guard.
Firebursts blinded Kai as he reeled back, losing his grip on his weapon. Malik took a step back rather than pursuing. His eyes were narrowed and calculating, almost as if he were merely giving a lesson.
Kai scrabbled for his sword and then stood unsteadily, vision wavering. This wasn't working. What had he hoped for? That he could force his uncle to relent, to change his mind? To do that he had to gain his respect, to gain sufficient stature in Malik's eye that he would listen to his nephew. If not that, then to . . .
To . . .
Kai's mind refused to look further than that. There was no alternative, except death. But how to gain Malik's respect? Mere courage? Malik would expect no less. No, it was skill that might force Malik to see him differently. But Malik knew every move he could make, every tactic he might devise . . .
Or did he?
Kai quieted the ugly voices in his mind. He concentrated on Malik, who stood on the other side of the square, sword balanced lightly in his hand, its tip pointing down.
Calm. Waiting. Darkly amused.
Kai couldn't hold his gaze, and his face dropped to the square. His vision clouded again, and to his surprise he saw Babatunde's Naqsh Kabir superimposed over the square, its lines intersecting the square at oblique angles.
The Naqsh Kabir. Yes.
He attacked, lunging beautifully along a line of the square, then changed line to one of the Sign of the Presence of God's lesser angles. His leverage seemed stronger, and for the first time Malik exerted himself in the deflection, moving back and to the side, and the tip of Kai's sword came within a half-digit of Malik's chest.
Malik's eyes narrowed again, and he nodded, the barest hint of a smile creasing his lips. Malik lunged in again, and this time—Kai was certain— using his maximum practice intensity. There was a phrase of motion so fast and dangerous that Kai's conscious mind ceased functioning, and he was lost in a world of reflex, Malik's virtuosity forcing him to respond in similar pattern, until he was unable to remember his chosen tactic.
He felt himself leaving the bottom of the lake, drifting up where the water boiled, his survival instinct flaring and flashing and burning away his forced calmness, panic hammering at the doors of his resolve.
Kai jerked back as Malik slit his cheek, then fell as a deliberately broad stroke swept with decapitating speed toward his neck. He sat on the ground panting, looking up at the dark, massive figure looming over him, the sword in its hand already freshened with his blood.
If he had not yielded ground, had not in fact fallen before his uncle, that last stroke would have slain him. Malik's eyes were dark, huge. Cold. He knew his uncle's physical endurance, knew that he could not have tested it to any degree, and yet Malik's breaths were sharp and deep. He was sweating, and the iron bands of his chest rose and fell like the gears of some massive machine.
"Your last chance, Kai," Malik panted. "The fever is almost upon me. The men of our family burn with it. Your father knew its heat, and it has been my curse. Turn back now, before it is too late."
As Kai stood again the world was wavering, concussed. He charged, came straight at his uncle, then stopped, veered, engaged swords with delicacy then slid to the side and, before Malik could adjust lines, charged again. The change of lines, tempos, intensities and tactics, all in the blink of an eye, confused the sword master just enough to get Kai close before Malik could disengage blades and skewer him.
For an instant Kai was at close range, and before his uncle slid away he slammed a knee toward Malik's groin, a blow Malik twisted to avoid. In that instant Kai dropped his sword and gripped Malik's right wrist with both of his hands, wrenching and torquing desperately, disarming his uncle with a move that left him open for a countering elbow.
But Kai knew that response, had seen it and felt it a dozen times, and was already moving away from it as it arced in over his shoulder and splintered his jaw. Agony exploded, but instead of moving away Kai came in, head-butting, hammering with fists and knees in a blind whirl, until a short blow to the pit of his stomach dropped him. Kai hit the ground, rolled out, and cam
e up—between Malik and the swords.
The side of his face ached and he spit what felt like a splinter of cracked tooth. Kai blinked blood out of his eyes and managed to focus.
His uncle's nose bled, and there was a gash in his scalp across his left eye. He stood in a crouch now, all trace of avuncularity vanished. In his right hand he held his jambaya, fourteen digits of gleaming death.
Kai drew Nasab Asad. Again, after a moment of clarity, he had descended into dream. He held his father's blade. His brother's. And faced the deadliest warrior in New Djibouti.
His uncle.
The two men circled, each slashing at the other's exposed limbs. Kai let Malik rip the back of his left arm to get a nick in on his uncle's right wrist.
It was a beautiful move. A warrior's move. The two men fell into a rhythm of steel, a dance so deadly that few men could even follow the pace, let alone survive or triumph.
Blend. Break. Evaluation. Blend. Malik's blade, lightning quick, scarred Kai's face just above the eye, but Kai kicked Malik's knee. Malik smashed Kai's foot, but then his uncle hobbled back. Kai was half blind now. Malik tested his knee, and found it good. He circled Kai to his blind side, and Kai turned to face him.
He knew what would happen now, now that he had, through terrible and near total exertions, damaged Malik. Now his uncle would kill him. Now would come an ending.
But if that was his fate, he would face it as a man. And if necessary, perhaps the very nature and manner of his death would awaken that compassion that his words and efforts had not.
Insh'Aallah.
Malik's face, crimsoned and cold, flickered for a moment, and Kai was not certain if that was merely his vision, or whether something had, for a moment, broken through the wall around Malik's heart. Like a fish in a frozen pond, something had come near the surface for just a moment, and then vanished.
Then Malik began the ending, creeping closer, his blade held low and extended in his right hand, the left back a length, his entire body a weapon.
Kai abandoned his life, and joined the dance.
What Kai had seen within Malik's eyes was indeed a phantom: the phantom of his own image, lost in the mist of years.
Never had Malik intended to kill or even to cripple his nephew. A swift disarm followed by a beating that would warn him from future misadventure, then to reckoning with the rebellious slave and the woman Sophia.
But nothing was working right, not since the night his brother died. No, that was wrong. Not since the night of Fatima's death, when he had taken the witch Sophia in her room, and in some way she had taken him in return. Abu Ali's death had widened the wound, so that it seemed he could not heal, could not mend, could only stanch the dark outflow of his life force with Sophia's body. Malik hated himself for his weakness. And that very hatred increased the flow.
When he sat alone in his study, he could hear the voices of the men he had slain. If he closed his eyes he could see their faces, and their cold, bloody fingers seemed to grip at him from the pit of hell. He had been at the edge of death, had peered into the depths. Had seen no light. Felt no sheltering touch of a loving God.
The faith that sustained Abu Ali was not his. Malik had knelt in prayer fifty thousand times, and never felt Allah's grace. Not for a moment. He had felt the fire of hell, and knew that it burned for him. There was no God, no force of light in the universe. There were only men and their endless struggles to make meaning.
And there was Satan, who had taken his wife, had taken his brother and his nephew, had brought the witch into his heart so deeply that he had come to this.
Only her flesh held back the dead. Only her lips offered salvation. Only in her arms could he find dreamless sleep.
So he would humble this boy, and then kill the slave. And Malik would continue down the road to hell, taking nightly solace in unwilling arms.
He had made his devil's pact, but then . . .
In his vision, for a disturbing instant, he faced not a man of twenty, but a boy of eleven, with the full promise of life before him. Such a clever boy was Kai! So quick to learn, so nimble-minded. A lover of books, but deep within those mischievous brown eyes burned the same fire that had raged in his father, before Abu Ali turned so fully toward Allah. The same fire that had consumed Malik's soul when Allah had denied him His light.
All creatures seek the light, and if denied the glory of heaven, they will warm themselves at the fires of hell.
It was not a boy he faced, but a man! A man who had defied him, whose men had drawn arms in his house. A man who had wounded Malik in the presence of his retainers, and had to be punished, severely.
But. . .
He saw that boy, and in that vision time seemed to yield. No longer were they in a courtyard, fighting for life and honor. They were in his exercise chamber, practicing. Malik's beautiful wife Fatima watched them, beaming.
See how young Kai holds his sword! A small sword, a child's sword, smaller and lighter than a man would carry, but still a thing of good steel and sharp edge. And Kai used it so earnestly, thrusting and blocking and dancing through his paces at Malik's command.
How exciting to be so young, just taking the first halting steps along the road of life. As the younger brother, Kai shared a bond with Malik that most could not understand. And there was within him a spark of genius, a spark that Malik would nurture into a full flame. Ali would become Wakil, but it was Kai, studious Kai, who would carry on the true family tradition, winning honor and glory, expanding the ancestral lands with grants from Alexandria. And when the moment came to strike for independence, General Kai would join voices with Wakil Ali, and lead their country into the future.
And how proud Malik would be. Abu Ali had provided the fleshly spark, but he, Malik, had actually fathered the boy.
How proud.
Then his vision wavered, and he saw the adult Kai again. The precise same expression: fear, determination, the fierce pride that marked the men of his family.
The boy was wounded, had fought bravely, but had slowed down now. That was inevitable, although he had displayed sheer genius in the middle game. The way he had changed lines of engagement! And that disarm, sacrificing the jaw that now swelled like a melon, on the off chance that fortune would favor him better with knife than sword!
Kai's life fluid puddled on the tile beneath his feet. His legs trembled, and he raised a hand to wipe blood from his brow.
He is almost finished, Malik thought. To test his theory Malik probed the outer edge of Kai's circle. Kai attempted a clumsy riposte and evaded.
No, no, young Kai. When a man attacks, he leaves an opening. Find it!
Kai seemed to be swaying. From exhaustion, or . . . ? Almost as if he could hear music, notes dancing magically on the wind. He moved almost like a belly dancer. A trap? Intrigued, Malik slashed, and Kai evaded with a bit more grace, actually invited Malik to overextend, and then swept his foot from under him.
Malik rolled away and Kai lunged after him, slashing and stabbing. An exquisite, hopeless move. Malik spun, nearly sweeping Kai's legs from beneath him as his nephew scrambled back. Malik rose. His courageous, doomed, beloved Kai had spent himself, could barely hold the three debens of steel aloft.
A single tear rolled down Malik's cheek. "Yield," he whispered.
Kai lunged at him. Behind them, the witch Sophia screamed. It was Kai who lost his concentration for a moment, and Malik cut his wrist, disarming him.
This was the moment. He could close, could cripple the boy without killing him . . .
He closed for the death stroke, but was suddenly overwhelmed by the image of young Kai again, looking up at him, face smeared with blood. Then young Kai's face was clean, and beautiful, staring up with respect and adoration at a younger, better man, the man that Malik once had been.
"Kai," Malik whispered.
Malik hesitated on the death stroke. Kai's head crashed forward, a final, desperate move, striking Malik on his already broken nose. Malik stumbled back, dazed, p
ulling Kai with him. As Kai went down he scooped up the fallen knife, and they collapsed together. There was a single sharp, despairing cry.
And then silence.
Sophia and Aidan were shocked and motionless, his fingers locked with and nearly crushing hers. His blood mingled with her tears. He had barely breathed since Kai had stepped in to take his place, had never dared hope that any such miracle might delay his death. Certainly he did not believe in salvation. Not at this late date.
To lose his woman, his life, and his best friend on the same day . . . that was an unholy joke, that was the cruelest twist since that cold morning, half an eternity before, when dragons had glided out of the mist and destroyed his world.
He felt Sophia's breath, hot against his cheek, her fingers clutching his hard enough to crack a nut.
Kai and Malik lay tangled on the ground, limbs splayed like the dead. Neither moved. Then Kai pushed himself up, rose tottering on unsteady legs, his shirt covered with blood. He took a single step, then staggered and fell. Malik rolled him away.
The sword master stood, gazing down at his nephew, eyes filled with grief. "Look—" he said, then blood gushed from his open mouth, and he collapsed to his knees, and then fell onto his side, Kai's knife in his back.
Kai rolled over onto his side and looked at his uncle. Gingerly, as if each was afraid of breaking the other, the two men held each other. Malik's face held no more anger, no more pain. It was soft, and proud. He reached out with a single bloody finger and traced a crimson line along Kai's swollen jaw. "Care for Azinza. Present her to the Empress."
Kai swallowed, and it felt like shards of broken glass scraping down his throat. As the adrenaline of combat began to retreat, pain rumbled through his body like an avalanche. "As if she were my own."
"I remember your first step," Malik said. "How proud . . . how proud your father . . ." His face softened as the muscles went slack. Suddenly, strangely, Malik's head felt. . . lighter.
There was silence in the courtyard as Kai laid his uncle's head gently on the tile. Very slowly, he tugged at Nasab Asad's handle until the blade slid free of Malik's body. Fighting for every digit of motion, Kai stood.
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