3: Black Blades

by Ginn Hale

Kahlil arched an eyebrow. “You said you were going to kill me the next time you saw me.”

  “I never could have...” Jath’ibaye’s smile faded and his eyes sank to the floor. “The first time I saw you, you were in Fikiri’s territory, and then you came to me with that letter and the poison from Ourath. I thought it had to be some trick of Fikiri’s. I didn’t know how else you could have come back.”

  Kahlil himself hadn’t been sure how he’d come back from Nayeshi; he’d needed to and he’d been willing to die trying. He supposed that had been enough.

  Kahlil pulled himself up a little in the bed. The profusion of pillows on either side of him made the motion awkward. He expected to feel a sharp complaint from the wound in his abdomen, but there was nothing.

  “I came back on my own power, but I didn’t do a good job of it. I was a mess for a while and the only work I could find was for the Bousim family.” It felt strange and relieving to be able to say this, to tell someone and know that he would understand. “They wanted to avoid the conflict that an attack against you would cause, so they sent me to take a job as a Lisam runner to try and stop your assassination.” Kahlil stared at Jath’ibaye, then scowled. “Did you just tell me that you knew Ourath sent you poison and you still accepted his invitation to the Bell Dance?”

  Strangely, Jath’ibaye smiled at this. He nodded without looking up from the floor.

  “Did you want to be killed?” Kahlil demanded. He suddenly had an insight into how Fensal must have felt about him eating the goatweed.

  “I have, from time to time, but no.” Jath’ibaye stole a brief glance up at him. “Not now. I was just tired and it would have offered me an excuse to make a clean break from Ourath. It wasn’t as if he could have killed me.”

  “You let him poison you because you thought it would be easier than breaking up with him? Do you have any idea how stupid that sounds?” Kahlil spoke before he could consider either the intimate nature of the subject or the presumption of his words. Jath’ibaye didn’t appear to take any offense at either.

  “Saying it out loud just now, I did notice that,” Jath’ibaye admitted.

  “Maybe you should talk things out a little more often.” Kahlil felt oddly at ease with Jath’ibaye at this moment, almost as comfortable as he had felt when they’d shared a house. He could remember that now—their time together in Nayeshi.

  He’d been so happy then. He remembered the strong smell of coffee and the absurd simplicity of their domestic troubles—a leaky faucet, no toilet paper, the odd smell the oven gave off when it was preheating. Kahlil recalled the sweet tang of an apple and sitting together in the dark, waiting for the electricity to come back on.

  John, or Jath’ibaye as he now called himself now, hardly seemed to have changed at all. And yet, Kahlil knew that decades had passed since the Fai’daum leader he was looking at and the graduate student he remembered had been the same person.

  “Do you remember our phone number?” Kahlil asked. “It started out 647…didn’t it? I can’t remember.”

  “Phone?” Jath’ibaye finally met Kahlil’s eyes. “We never had a phone...”

  “Sure we did. In Nayeshi we had a landline because you didn’t like cell phones.” Kahlil scanned Jath’ibaye’s face for a sign of recollection.

  He didn’t know why he had expected Jath’ibaye to remember everything from those days. His own memory was hazy—to say the least—and it had only been two years for him. Jath’ibaye had fought wars and destroyed an entire kingdom since then. The seven arbitrary digits of a phone number probably had no meaning at all to him now.

  He felt stupid for even bringing it up. There were so many other more important matters that they should have been discussing: the holy key, the yasi’halaun. But Kahlil had just woken up and he wanted to ponder something unimportant, something small and amusing, as was his habit.

  Jath’ibaye’s expression was a study in blankness, as if he were holding himself back from any reaction at all.

  “You followed me from Nayeshi,” Jath’ibaye said slowly.

  Kahlil couldn’t understand why the thought should have such a strong effect upon Jath’ibaye. Maybe it was just the distant memory of Nayeshi. How long had it been since anyone or anything had reminded Jath’ibaye of the life—the whole world he had lost?

  “It was hard, but I managed it. Forget about the phone number. It’s not important,” Kahlil said. Then he didn’t know what else to say.

  Jath’ibaye pulled himself to his feet. His skin still looked unnaturally pale. Dark bruises ringed his throat and Kahlil could see the uneven, bulky mass of bandages beneath his clothes.

  “So, you’re still calling yourself Kyle?” Jath’ibaye asked, though he said the name strangely, as if the Nayeshi pronunciation caught in his throat.

  “It’s easy to remember.” Kahlil shrugged, an awkward movement, as his recently-healed muscles were still slow to respond.

  Jath’ibaye gazed at him so intently that Kahlil felt an embarrassing flush begin to rise across his cheeks. Then Jath’ibaye looked away to the view out the tiny portal. Outside, dark blue-green waters swirled and twisted past.

  Kahlil took it all in with a kind of stunned wonder. Even a day ago, he would never have imagined that he could have ended up here. Or with John, again.

  “I should go above deck and tell Ji that you’re awake,” Jath’ibaye said suddenly. “She wasn’t sure if you would pull through.” He started for the door, but then turned back to Kahlil. “Do you think you can eat anything yet?”

  “I can try.”

  “I’ll find something easy to start with.”

  “Thank you,” Kahlil responded automatically, but as he studied Jath’ibaye’s stark figure and pale face, he did feel genuine gratitude and wonder.

  He had come back to Basawar to kill the Rifter and instead the Rifter had saved him. Now the idea of killing John seemed laughably pointless.

  He had never wanted to do it in the first place. He had liked John—more than liked him, if he was truly honest. He thought that he might even like Jath’ibaye if he got to know the man.

  “Wait,” Kahlil called just before Jath’ibaye stepped out the door.

  “Yes?” Jath’ibaye asked.

  “Thank you for saving my life.” The words couldn’t convey all of his relief or gratitude, but they were all he could offer at the moment.

  “I wish I had.” Jath’ibaye gave him another smile. He looked so exhausted and worn that the expression almost seemed sad. “You should thank Ji. She’s the one who did the work.”

  “Oh, I certainly will.” He wanted to say something else, something that would make up for reminding Jath’ibaye of the life he had lost. No comforting words came to him, so he settled for a question instead. He said, “Where are we going now?”

  “Home.”

  “Home?” Kahlil echoed the word as though he had just learned it. He had no idea where home was anymore.

  “Vundomu,” Jath’ibaye clarified. He lingered, halfway out the door.

  “I see.” Kahlil knew he could have asked another question and kept Jath’ibaye with him, but there was no point in it. It wouldn’t accomplish anything. If Jath’ibaye was pained by the memories that Kahlil brought back, then he would want to be alone. He had always guarded his privacy that way.

  Kahlil let him go.

  Arc Four: Amidst the Holy and Profane

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  John pushed the hair back from his face and drew in a slow, deep breath.

  After two years in Basawar, he had grown used to the thin air and the hungry quality of the soil and stones. It felt comfortable to him. The wet earth moved beneath him, curling around his heels and squeezing between his toes. Pools of yesterday’s rain had turned the sparring ground into a wallow. As he moved, the mud slithered and squelched beneath him, but he didn’t feel as if he was slipping. Instead, it seemed that the soil accommodated him, shifting and folding to support him.

  The priest opposite him
charged. John swung to the side. Mud squelched beneath both their feet. John caught the other man’s arm in a loose grip, and with the slightest nudge, threw him off balance. The priest flailed out, attempting to catch John and pull him down with him. John stepped back and the priest tumbled down into the mud.

  From the sidelines, John heard Samsango’s laugh. The old priest sat with several other ancient priests, watching the battle practice and quietly making wagers. Their faded gray robes seemed to melt into the pale stone steps that surrounded the arena. The thin morning sunlight gleamed across his bald head. John guessed, from the collection of polished stones in Samsango’s lap, that he had won a fair number of wagers.

  John gave him a jaunty wave before turning back to offer his opponent a hand up.

  More than a hundred low-ranking ushvun, like John himself, were gathered on the steps of the arena. Normally, only the thirty men who shared the same dormitory practiced on the training grounds at the same time. Today, men from all of the dormitories encircled John in a sea of gray robes and black hair.

  A year ago he would have found it intimidating, but now he knew all of them by sight, if not personally. And he knew that most of them cared little about the outcome of these individual tests. They had each had their share of defeats and conquests. In their dormitory groups they practiced fighting together every day. They were more interested in the opportunity the gathering offered to chat and gamble.

  Their subdued conversations produced a low soft hum. It was a rare, comfortable sound, like distant radio music or birdsong. It offered John the sense of being at once surrounded by life and, at the same time, not having to be drawn into it.

  Some of the priests had stripped down to just the thin pants they wore beneath their robes. Others were still dressed in their robes and coats, keeping warm while they waited in the shadows of the armory building. A few, like John and his opponent, were spattered and streaked with mud.

  John steadied his opponent and watched him slog back to the steps. The other priest simply stripped all his clothes off and tossed them onto a step.

  John scraped a dried spatter of mud off his shoulder and waited for the prior to decide who he would fight next.

  Normally, with the grounds in such poor condition, the tests would have been called off. But today was special.

  Today, they were being watched.

  The highest-ranking priests in Rathal’pesha—the ushman’im and ushiri’im—were gathered on the walkways overhead to observe the tests. John easily picked out Ushman Nuritam; his long white braids were swept up in the wind and writhed like ribbons. Beside him stood Ushman Dayyid.

  Dayyid’s black coat formed a dark column behind Nuritam’s frail figure. His thick black braids cascaded down his broad shoulders, too heavy for the breezes to lift. The natural northern softness of his features was undermined by his sharp nose and arched lips.

  During the first weeks after John arrived in Rathal’pesha, Dayyid had gone out of his way to come down to the training ground and demonstrate the battle forms, using John as his practice opponent. John hadn’t known anything about the handholds or stances, and Dayyid hadn’t tried to explain them to him, either. Time and time again Dayyid had hurled him to the ground, twisted his arms back, kicked him in the ribs, and held him down with one foot placed over his throat.

  And John knew that Dayyid had done it simply to show John and the other priests that he could.

  After a week, John’s mouth had been split and too swollen for him to eat without tasting his own blood. Samsango had given him a balm to deaden the pain of his beaten ribs and bruised back. When John asked what he had done to offend Dayyid, Samsango had told John not to take the thrashings personally. Ushman Dayyid always beat new priests as a forewarning against insolence. He’d assured John that if he didn’t fight, Dayyid would eventually grow bored.

  Samsango had been right. After two days of meeting limp resistance, Dayyid hadn’t returned to the ushvun training grounds to abuse him further.

  He saw remarkably little of any of the ushman’im or the ushiri’im. They kept to the upper floors of Rathal’pesha, practicing their divine rituals and using the Gray Space to speak to Usho in the Black Tower and the Issusha’im Oracles in Umbra’ibaye thousands of miles away.

  Beneath them, the common ushvun’im saw to the day-to-day upkeep of the monastery. As an ushvun, John cleaned goat sheds, tended weasel coops, scrubbed statues, scrubbed floors, scrubbed walls, hauled urns of lamp oil, carried bags of raw taye, prayed until he could barely speak, and stood through icy nights of guard duty. He had worked in the kitchens, the gardens, the laundry, and the bell towers.

  At first, the constant labor had left him too tired to think. He had staggered through his first month in an exhausted daze. Once, Samsango had found him passed out with his face nestled into a fetid weasel nest.

  He had lapsed into strange fantasies of floor buffers and dishwashers. Memories of spray-on oven cleaner and laundromats had flooded him with deep homesickness.

  Steadily, he had adjusted. He had grown used to handling the animals and learned shortcuts through the twisting, maze-like halls of the monastery. He had developed the ability to know which duties were important and which had been assigned to him simply because he was standing there. Most importantly, he had mastered the critical skill of appearing occupied with a duty when the prior was nearby.

  Now, the mere sound of the prior’s footsteps could wake John from a lazy doze and send him striding down a hall with an intensely focused expression. The prior seemed to judge most of the ushvun by the speed of their movements and the intensity of their expression. An open frown or scowl would result in a reprimand for a surly attitude, while grins, smiles or any wide-eyed expression of wonder were indicators of too much free time.

  John had found that wearing a slight frown, narrowing his eyes, and striding with a fast, deliberate pace down a hall was exactly what the prior liked to see him doing.

  Right now, the prior stood at the edge of the practice grounds, scowling. He was a small, plump man and his three honor braids always gleamed with far too much sweet oil. They seemed to slither down his back and often left a slight stain at the nape of his robes. Two silver flail-shaped pins on the shoulders of his robe indicated both his rank and primary pastime.

  The prior swung his left hand into the air, calling a new opponent down onto the muddy training ground.

  The new priest was a younger man John didn’t know well. He scowled as his feet sank into the cold mud. John, in contrast, slid one leg forward slightly, feeling the soil roll across his ankle. He could already sense where the best footing would be found.

  His opponent flipped his single black braid back from where it had hung over his shoulder. John’s own wild blonde hair was pulled back and tied with a strip of leather. Wisps of hair escaped and fell in his face. He tucked them back behind his ears.

  He wasn’t allowed to wear even a single braid yet. That would come after his initiation this summer. Until then, he was still just an initiate, a man of little importance and the butt of most practical jokes.

  Even old, bald priests like Samsango technically wore honor braids. Samsango’s were woven from goat hair and sewn to the shoulders of his robes. He had two, which placed him just below the prior in honor. But even without any, John’s position was better than that of a priest whose hair had been cut.

  For a year after his braids were shorn, a dishonored priest was treated with animosity and utter contempt. He received the most demeaning and dangerous work, often cleaning the latrines or replacing the cracked tiles of the steepest roofs. He ate the coarsest food, wore the roughest clothes, and slept beneath the thinnest blankets. He could be punished for any misfortune and had no right to speak in his own defense.

  John knew now that when they had first met, Ravishan’s short bristle of black hair had been a symbol of disgrace. Ravishan had been punished for some transgression against the Payshmura creed. John had no idea which one. The us
hvun rarely spoke of the ushman’im or the ushiri’im. When they did, it was with awe and reverence.

  There had only been a few nights, while John had been serving guard duties high on the walls, when Ravishan had managed to visit him. Their time together had been brief and precious. John hadn’t wanted to ruin those pleasant few hours by asking questions that could embarrass Ravishan. Instead, they had talked about Nayeshi and shared gossip about their fellow priests.

  John wondered if Ravishan was watching from one of the raised walkways. He thought he could see other dark forms on the farthest walkways, but he couldn’t make out any faces.

  The prior lifted both his tanned plump arms into the air and John’s attention snapped back to the practice grounds and his opponent. The other priest crouched back into a defensive stance. The prior dropped his arms, and John charged forward.

  John’s opponent shifted to catch John’s shoulder, but he moved too slowly. John spun, mud spattering up under his feet. He swung his leg up and hooked the soft back of his opponent’s knee. The priest buckled back. John slammed his open hand into the man’s chest and his opponent splashed down into the mud.

  Cold spatters smacked across John’s bare stomach and chest. It was fast and simple. John found he liked that about the Payshmura battle forms. The fallen priest swore, but accepted John’s outstretched hand. John helped him back up to his feet. Behind them, John heard another short crow of triumph from Samsango.

  “Good form, Jahn,” Samsango called out. “Keep on your feet.”

  John wondered just what Samsango had bet on him. It couldn’t have been much. None of the ushvun owned anything but their braids, razors, and a few polished prayer stones. Though, they often wagered their duties. It was a sort of gambling where everyone started out laden with obligations and then hoped to come out with none. No one ever struck it rich. Even the greatest winning streak never amounted to more than a day off.

  John strode back to the left side of the practice ground.

  The prior lifted his arms again. This time, it was John’s turn to take the defensive stance.