Unbound (3 page)

"
Kaam!
Your name is
Kaam
!"

Oddly, she didn't even feel him let go. She only knew that he had turned away to focus on his endless, steady writing, and for a moment she clutched her arm close to her chest, trembling, unable to bear to move it . . . and then she realized the pain was completely gone.

Her wrist was whole. Her bones were unbroken.

Her father grabbed her and pulled her up and away, and she realized that he'd been released, too. He pushed her toward the door and advanced on the captive, on Kaam, with his knife. She knew he would kill him. She could see the rage.

Kaam raised his free right hand without turning from the wall and his constant, rhythmic writing, and said, "Anger is not your sin, Chatar. Thank you for bringing her. Now tell her the truth."

He was writing her name now. Over and over and over, in flowing white letters on black stone.
Samarjit. Samarjit. Samarjit.
Like a silent chant, madness and chalk on stone.

Her father stopped. She could see his muscles twitching with the desire to act, to protect her, but he sheathed the
kirpan
and backed away. Then he grabbed her and hurried her out of the room, down the chalked hallways, down the stairs. She didn't care where she went now. Part of her would never leave that room.

He pulled her to a stop at the thick plastic barrier. Through it, she could see the two soldiers standing guard, and the area beyond that was the world and not the Citadel. They were in the Citadel. That was the antechamber, worlds away. She understood now that what was out there was not . . . this.

This, here, was real.

The barrier, however thick, however secure, was not strong enough to hold in Kaam. All this high-tech security was a lie told by children to master their terror. A candle against a hurricane.

Her father was breathing so hard that she feared for him. His face beneath his beard looked stark and pale.

"God forgive me," he said. "God forgive me for bringing you to him."

"He didn't hurt me." He had, but it was gone now. What was broken was healed, except for the hidden things, secret things, which would never again be whole.

"It doesn't matter. Samarjit, your name is
on his wall
."

"He said you'd tell me the truth. Please. Tell me—" She reached out to him, but he backed away. And on some horrible level, she understood why. She felt numb now, and the sound of chalk scraping on stone continued relentlessly in her ears.

She felt a shudder go through the stone beneath her feet, an awful, unsteady pulse, and grabbed for the stone of the wall beside her. "What is
that
?"

"It's him." Her father strode to the keypad and entered his code; he hesitated before he hit the last button and looked at her with unfathomably sad eyes. "You wanted to know what I called him," he said. "You named him one of the five evils in our religion.
Kaam
, for lust. For me, he was
Moh
."
Moh
was attachment. All Sikhs sought to keep their passions in balance—lust, greed, pride, anger. Even attachments like love. She had always been her father's biggest struggle, because his love for her had been too great, too out of balance. "He makes us destroy ourselves, Sammy. It's the only power he has. We have to go.
Now
."

He put the last number in, and the plastic gates slid open.

Her father plunged through.

Sammy didn't follow.

Chatar Singh realized at the last second and turned; the full blue skirts of his chola flared as he spun around toward her, but the gates were already crashing shut between them. Soundproofed, she realized. She couldn't hear his scream. Couldn't hear the shouts of the guards as they restrained him from the keypad.

She wished she could have explained it to him. She only knew that somehow, she had no choice.

He makes you destroy yourself,
her father had said, and maybe that was true. But she also understood something else, something deeper than that.
We are his demons. This is his hell.

She had to try to free the captive.

* * * * *

The world shuddered again, and when she blinked, there wasn't a gate anymore. Where the gate had been was a black rock wall. The boxes of chalk were still in the room, and despite all the lurching and falling, not a single one had shifted on the shelves.

Something fundamental had shifted.

She could hear Kaam still writing, three floors up, the constant raw hiss of chalk on stone. She wondered if it was her name being written, over and over, like an incantation. It terrified her to think that it might be . . . and, she had to admit it, it thrilled her.

Sammy took the stairs two at a time, up two floors, then the third at a slower pace. Her ears led her straight to him. He'd moved again, into a pristinely clean room, and was just starting a new wall. He was lying flat on the stone floor, writing backward from right to left, and as he finished the first line, he moved up just enough to allow the letters space and began the next.

"You didn't leave with him," he said. "Sammy, that is not wise. How do you know I won't kill you?"

"Maybe you will," she said. "But I'm your demon, right? You're not mine. And as long as I stay away from you, you can't stop writing long enough to kill me. Can you?"

He tapped his right hand gently on the floor as he continued to move chalk over stone, and a bone exploded in her own hand and blew shards bloodily out from the skin, as if she'd been shot with an invisible bullet from the inside out. She screamed and clutched the hand to her chest, and blood flooded out over her shirt, sticky and hot. She almost fell.

He tapped again, and it was all gone. All fine. Her hand worked, the bones intact, skin unbroken.

She was still splashed with fresh blood.

"And now we understand each other," Kaam said. "But it's too late now, Samarjit. Too late to run from what you are."

She was shaking so hard that she sank down to a graceless sitting position, staring at him. At the movement of the chalk, drawing out words and phrases, lines and paragraphs. "What do you think I am?"

"Something new," he said. "Something extraordinary."

"Why am I extraordinary?" she asked him and settled into a crouch some feet away. He didn't turn his head.

"You stayed," he said.

"That's not really an answer."

"Oh, I have to answer to you now?"

"Yes," she said, "or I won't bring you chalk."

There was the slightest hesitation in his writing, a stutter, hardly even noticeable. "That's a stupid threat to make, Samarjit."

"It's Sammy, thanks, and I know. Answer me or no more chalk."

"You are extraordinary because I cannot answer that question."

"God, you do go in circles," she said, and laughed. She couldn't think why, because she knew she should be frightened out of her mind, desperately afraid. She had been, when she'd first seen him, but now that he had a name,
Kaam
, she was fascinated. She'd named him after a sin because that was what he made her think about. Sins. Sins of the body. Graceful, longed-for sins. "All right. These things you're writing. How do you know them?"

"How does anyone know anything, Sammy?" If she'd hoped that hearing her nickname instead of her full, formal one would sound less intimate on his lips, she was wrong. If anything, it was
more
intimate . . . as if she'd allowed him to see parts of her that were only properly meant for someone else. "I am remembering. Before it's all lost."

She wanted to ask him more about that, but she had bigger problems. "Are you what the Christians would call . . . the devil?"

He laughed. It was a pure, funny sound, contagious and joyous, and she found herself smiling when it was over. Tears glittered cool in her eyes. "No, sweet Sammy, I am not the devil. I am not God. I am not
anything
. That is the point. I am nothing, but this, this is everything. The act of chalk on stone. Words on the skin of the world."

"I don't understand."

"I didn't think you would. I am just answering your question."

She sat in silence for a while, watching him. He used up a stick of chalk to a nubbin, and before that crumbled into dust, he fetched another from the box with his right hand and passed it to his left to keep writing without pause. Smooth. Seamless.

Beautiful, really.

"You're going to have to let me go soon," she told him. "I'm human. I'm going to need food. Water. Bathrooms. Things like that."

"You'll find them downstairs," he said. "They're there when you need them. I don't have many visitors who want to stay, but when I do, I look after them."

She left and explored. He was right. There was a clean steel kitchen downstairs with a vast pantry stocked with food . . . and a microwave, which was good, because she was a terrible cook. The bathroom was the same black stone, sinks and shower and tub and toilet, but it was all beautiful. The towels were thick black cotton. In the bedroom she found next to it, there was a bed on a platform of black rock, with crisp white sheets. A mirror and dresser. A closet full of clothes in her size.

I am not the devil. I am not God.
If he wasn't either of those things, she didn't understand him at all.

Days passed, or she thought they did; no watch, no phone, no clocks. Her father must have been driven mad with terror for her, but she didn't feel afraid. She had plenty to read, if she wanted; the walls were densely covered for ten floors with written works—entire books. Some were sacred, many more profane. Science fiction was next to Middle English texts she could barely read. Dry technical papers next to lush romances. The eighth floor was covered floor to ceiling with a mathematical proof that she finally figured out was part of a calculation of pi
.

But most of the time, she found herself sitting in the room with him, kneeling close, passing him chalks.
We are here to serve
, her father had told her. Thousands of families took turns when the Citadel was in a place where the way was open, but for now, she thought, he only wanted to be with her. Only her. And she felt the heat between their bodies, the steady rising tide of desire.

His eyes were black—black irises, black pupils—and he never locked gazes with her again. His skin had a burnished, perfect look to it, as if it wasn't really made of human cells at all, but when their fingers brushed as she passed him chalk, he felt warm and real. She found she longed to trail a finger down that perfect skin. To see what he would do in return.

"Don't you ever rest?" she asked him, as he finished a piece of chalk and she handed him another. "Don't you
have
to rest?"

"There are many things I don't need. Food. Water. Sleep."

"You need someone to bring you chalk."

He smiled. It was too wide, too strange, and she felt a little pulse of disquiet. There were times when Kaam seemed perfectly sane, and she liked those quiet moments, but then there were times like this, when there was a wild, snapping energy inside him that frightened her. "I could make chalk appear," he said. "The ritual was meant to keep visitors coming here. I need visitors, Sammy. If I am left alone . . ."

"You close the exits. To keep me with you."

"Yes. Do you want to leave me?" It was a quiet question, but there was a kind of resignation in it, too, as if he knew she would leave him soon.

She didn't know that. When she was here, next to him, her whole body burned, tingled, soared. When he brushed his fingers on hers it took her breath away and brought tears to her eyes. Kaam made her feel more alive than she had ever known it was possible to be.

"I don't want to leave," she said, and then forced herself to laugh a little. "Although you
have
to put in an internet connection and a computer, or I'll go crazy eventually. And my—" Her voice died, because for the first time in a while, she thought of her parents. Of her father, saying her name as the Citadel lurched and went away. Of her mother, who hadn't known she was coming here. Were they together, united in fear and grief for their daughter? Or was her mother screaming in rage at her father for taking her here, to
him
? The prospect made her feel sick.

"I could tell you that your parents are fine, but that would be a lie." His voice changed, grew tight and strained. His hand began to shake, though the shapes still formed perfectly under the moving chalk. He had abandoned the musical notation he'd been writing and instead shifted to letters. Her name, over and over. "I have taken their daughter away. They can never be fine again."

"Kaam—"

"Everything fades. Everything falls. Everyone goes away." As Kaam spoke it, he wrote it. Then again, in French. In German. "Go away."

She did. She wandered the halls, feeling ever colder away from the warmth of his presence. She thought about her mother and father, searching; she thought of her friends, who must have been terrified by now. Maybe they all thought she was dead. Maybe they were dead—for all she knew, years could have passed. Decades. She had no sense of time.
I should be terrified
, she realized
.

But somehow, she wasn't.

On the tenth floor, written in the farthest corner, she found a letter written in Kaam's tiniest script, in English. It was a letter from him to her, Samarjit, and it poured out his hope, his fear, his longing to possess her in breathtaking ways.

He'd filled the tenth floor long, long ago. Before she was born, perhaps.

She reached out and touched her fingers to the chalk, closed her eyes, and said, "I feel it too."

He was there when she opened her eyes, writing frantically in the tiny spaces left between lines.
Samarjit. Samarjit. Samarjit.
Over and over and over, in letters she recognized and then alphabets she only vaguely knew. He wrote it in Punjabi, the language of the Sikh scriptures. In Chinese characters. In Cyrillic. In marks that no longer had meaning to modern eyes.

She put her arms around him from behind, and he stopped writing. The silence in her mind, which had been a constant hiss of chalk on stone, was deafening.