6: Broken Fortress (2 page)

He stole a quick glance to Jath’ibaye. He seemed so human. And yet the rushing water beneath them and the jutting mountains ahead of them were all testaments to his divine nature.
 

“You can’t have been in Basawar that long. I would have known…” Jath’ibaye’s expression remained firm, almost stern, but there was something like concern in his tone.

“What?” Kahlil asked. Then he remembered his own mention of the two decades that had passed. “No, just two years. When I followed you from Nayeshi, I skipped years ahead. I couldn’t control the Great Gate so I just had to focus on the bond I have to you. It pulled me through to Nurjima two years ago.”

“I wonder why there and not Vundomu?” Jath’ibaye asked.

“You must have been in Nurjima when I came through,” Kahlil said. “It would have been close to the time for the Gaunsho’im Council’s opening sessions. If you’d been upset or angry, I probably would have been drawn to the strong emotion.”

Jath’ibaye nodded. Kahlil didn’t know if the gesture meant that he had, indeed, been upset then or if Jath’ibaye was simply acknowledging that his physical location had been accurate.
 

“Then you’ve only been home a little while.” Jath’ibaye didn’t look at Kahlil. Instead his blue eyes were narrowed, watching the waters below them. “A great deal must have changed since you left.”

“More than I can know, most likely,” Kahlil replied, but he wasn’t about to let Jath’ibaye pull him into a reverie of days gone by. The world of his past was long dead. “What about you? How long have you lived here now?”

“Longer,” Jath’ibaye answered, as if that was all there could be to say on the subject.

“Much longer? Three weeks? Or more like a hundred years?” Kahlil raised his brows and for just a moment he caught the hint of a teasing smile on Jath’ibaye’s lips.

“Somewhere between the two.”
 

“You must have been here for at least twenty-seven years now,” Kahlil informed him. “But I think longer than that, because you were already established in the Fai’daum by then.”

Jath’ibaye gave a nod, though the playfulness had fled his expression.

“Thirty-one years,” Jath’ibaye said. His tone did not imply that they had been kind years.
 

“That’s more time than I’ve spent in Basawar in all my life,” Kahlil commented. “I think you must be more of a native now than I am.”
 

Kahlil wanted to ask Jath’ibaye about his arrival here and the destruction of Rathal’pesha. But he felt afraid of what Jath’ibaye might tell him. There was no way that it could be a pleasant reminiscence. He knew what it took to awaken a Rifter. Jath’ibaye had to have endured terrible pain.
 

“You still haven’t answered my question about whether the peace treaty with the gaunsho’im is broken.” Kahlil decided that the future was probably a better subject than the past.

“No, I haven’t,” Jath’ibaye replied.
 

Kahlil waited, but Jath’ibaye said nothing more. Wringing conversations out of him had never been easy, even on Nayeshi. Life in Basawar seemed to have made Jath’ibaye into an unassailable fortress of noncommittal silence. Kahlil frowned at him and Jath’ibaye gave a slight laugh.

“What?” Kahlil demanded.

“You just look so obviously annoyed.” Again, his playful smile faded. “You reminded me of someone else, that’s all.”

“Oh.”
 

“I can’t answer your question because I don’t know yet if our truce is broken or still salvageable. The gaun’im will have to decide that.”

Kahlil leaned against the side of the ship. The sky above them was a washed-out blue. Faint, streaky clouds rolled slowly past.
 

“I’m not good at this,” Kahlil said at last. He glanced back to Jath’ibaye. His eyes seemed a brilliant blue, so much brighter than the sky. “I’m no good at standing around doing nothing.”

“If you’d rather be alone…” Jath’ibaye began to move away, but Kahlil caught him by the arm. Jath’ibaye’s muscles were as tense as iron cords. Kahlil released him immediately, wondering what reflex could have inspired such a presumptuous action. Even in Nayeshi, he’d never been physically free with John. He had never dared to allow himself that. The only time they’d ever touched was to shake hands once upon meeting.
 

“I didn’t mean you should go,” Kahlil said. “I’m thinking more generally of my life. I need some purpose to serve.”
 

“Such as?”

Kahlil straightened. “I was hoping you would tell me.”

“Me?” Jath’ibaye gazed at Kahlil.

“Why not? I have skills. I’m well trained. You have enemies. If there’s going to be a war, you could use a man like me.”

“If there is going to be a war, then yes, you would make an invaluable weapon,” Jath’ibaye said. “But are you sure that you want to be a weapon?”
 

“What else would I do? I am your Kahlil and so long as I am bound to you, you might as well use me.”

“You have other options,” Jath’ibaye replied. “The Payshmura can no longer force you to live that way.”

“What options?” Kahlil asked.

“Anything you like.”
 

Kahlil rolled his eyes. “It’s not as though I have the skills to take up farm life, do I?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps you do,” Jath’ibaye replied. But Kahlil could see that even Jath’ibaye didn’t put much faith in the idea of Kahlil scratching out his living in the dirt. For a panicked moment, Kahlil thought Jath’ibaye meant to brush him off, give him a train ticket and send him on his way as Alidas had done.

“Don’t you want me? I am well trained and no one could be more loyal to you in a fight.” Kahlil’s tone grew emphatic.

“It’s not a matter of what I want,” Jath’ibaye said. “The question is, what do you want? For yourself?”

Frustration flared up in Kahlil at the obtuseness of Jath’ibaye’s thinking. In Nayeshi, men chose their profession. Not here. Could he truly not understand that after all these years?

“I want to be your Kahlil. It’s all I’ve ever wanted and you know that. In Candle Alley, you told me yourself that I couldn’t run away to another life. And you were right. I—” Kahlil stopped as he realized that his memory had to be wrong.

“
I
told you that?” Jath’ibaye’s voice was oddly soft.

“I thought it was you, but it couldn’t have been, could it? You were never in Amura’taye with me. It must have been another ushvun.”

“Who?” Jath’ibaye asked. “Do you remember?”

“I don’t know.” Kahlil tried to call up the memory again, but it eluded him. He had thought it had been John. He had thought that there had been blood on the man’s hands. Kahlil shook his head. “Since I came through the Great Gate my memories have been…”

Jath’ibaye waited, watching him with a strange, intense expression. Kahlil turned away in embarrassment. He felt suddenly like a sideshow oddity.
 

“They’ve been a mess, that’s all. I was injured during the crossing. Badly injured.” To avoid the discomfort of Jath’ibaye’s fierce scrutiny, Kahlil chose to observe the sky. White clouds twisted and turned in the wind and for a moment Kahlil could have imagined that they were circling above him. “I remember things that could never have happened. I’ve forgotten things that I know I had to have done. Even my body isn’t right. There should be Prayerscars on my eyelids and across the backs of my hands. You remember that I had them, don’t you?”
 

Jath’ibaye’s face had gone pale. Perhaps he was not as completely recovered from the poison as Kahlil had first assumed.
 

“It was a long time ago,” Jath’ibaye said slowly. “But yes, I remember. In Nayeshi, you bore the black Prayerscars of the ordained Kahlil.”

“There was something else. Two red scars across my mouth, but now they’re hardly there at all.” Kahlil traced the surface of his cheek where the scars should have been.

“And you don’t know why the scars are missing?” Jath’ibaye asked.

“I have no idea,” Kahlil admitted. He fought to keep his frustration from sounding in his voice. “I don’t understand where they’ve gone, but I know they were there. I remember the afternoon it…” Kahlil couldn’t bring himself to admit how the scars had come about. He glanced to Jath’ibaye.

There was a strange tension to Jath’ibaye’s expression, as if he were suppressing some violent pain. He really wasn’t well yet, Kahlil realized. He should let him go and rest. Kahlil nearly said as much, but Jath’ibaye spoke first.

“Do you have any idea of what affected you?” Jath’ibaye asked the question carefully, but Kahlil just shook his head.
 

“I understand that the world I left behind when I traveled to Nayeshi isn’t the same one I’ve returned to...But I shouldn’t have been changed…I don’t know. Perhaps the issusha’im did something before Umbhra’ibaye was destroyed,” Kahlil offered, though he had no idea what they could have done that would have changed him like this.

“I don’t think so…I don’t know,” Jath’ibaye said quickly, without meeting Kahlil’s gaze. “There’s something Ji asked me to take care of below deck. I’d better deal with it while I’m still thinking of it. Will you excuse me?”

“Sure,” Kahlil said. The announcement came so abruptly that Kahlil doubted its validity.
 

“We’ll talk again later.” Jath’ibaye disappeared below decks.
 

Kahlil wondered which of the things that he had said had disturbed Jath’ibaye so much. Perhaps Jath’ibaye had simply grown tired of the whole rambling discussion. It certainly hadn’t gone the way Kahlil had intended.
 

He looked back down at the two currents slipping past one another. The waters looked rougher than before. Tiny white crests churned and crashed.

Perhaps Jath’ibaye’s sudden departure had nothing to do with him at all. He had looked so unwell. Suddenly Kahlil wondered how difficult it was for Jath’ibaye to restrain his power. Did it hurt him to hold back that immense destructive force in order to turn a single current in the river?

It was more than a little egotistical to assume that Jath’ibaye’s every reaction had to do with him. The man had the entire Gaunsho’im Council to contend with. He had a river to master and enemies like Fikiri to consider. Jath’ibaye’s thoughts had probably been miles away throughout most of their conversation.
 

Kahlil himself worried about the armies currently on the move. He scowled at the jagged mountains looming on the northern horizon. Distantly, he remembered the vast, walled garrison of Vundomu. That would have been decades ago. How well fortified was it now? How well could it withstand the onslaught of the gaunsho’im’s unified forces?
 

He considered moving through the Gray Space and seeing Vundomu for himself. But his sudden appearance would probably cause alarm. It was wiser to wait and arrive with Jath’ibaye, assuming Jath’ibaye still wanted his services.

The idea of Jath’ibaye refusing him felt both absurd and terrifying—and he couldn’t quite understand why except that he had endured so much and come so far to reach this point that he couldn’t bear the prospect of it all having been for nothing. He’d crossed two worlds and nearly died just to find John. And now that they were together, it felt as though he had at last found his place.

And yet when they’d stood speaking there’d been something so uneasy about Jath’ibaye’s manner that it shook Kahlil’s confidence.

He scowled at the dark, disorienting waters swirling in the wake of Jath’ibaye’s ship.
 

Better not to brood about what he couldn’t understand, Kahlil decided.

Instead, Kahlil turned his attention to the three ship hands working on deck. One of them was a young woman; the other two, men in their twenties. All wore knit caps, dull red coats and thick pants cut from oiled leather. Despite the chill in the air, none of them seemed displeased to be out in the open. While they worked, mending fishing nets, they talked among themselves.
 

It took Kahlil a moment to recall their names. Ji had introduced the entire crew to him two days ago, but he’d been dazed and exhausted at the time. Still, when the young woman glanced up at him and smiled, he recalled that her name was Besh’anya. Her curvaceous figure and thick black hair reminded him of one of the cooks he’d met in the Lisam house, though her expression struck him as far more inquisitive. The man beside her was Piam—the earlier introductions were coming back to him now. Piam couldn’t have been much past twenty, but his thick black beard made him look older. The second man bore the light hair and skin of an Eastern ancestry and Kahlil’s gaze lingered upon him the longest for that. He was called Chyemon. Despite the difference in their coloring, Chyemon’s fine features resembled Besh’anya’s closely enough that Kahlil couldn’t help but think that they were siblings.

They had all seemed friendly enough when they had been introduced. He supposed it wouldn’t hurt to sound them out. At the very least he might learn more about Vundomu.

As he approached the group, Besh’anya waved. The other two looked up to him and offered friendly smiles. He caught the smell of oil from their coats and wool from the clothes beneath. Their cheeks, noses, and ears had gone red from the wind and cold.