ENEMIES & SHADOWS

Book Seven of The Rifter

Ginn Hale

Enemies & Shadows

Book Seven of the Rifter

By Ginn Hale

Published by:

Blind Eye Books

1141 Grant Street

Bellingham, WA 98225

blindeyebooks.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may used or reproduced in any manner without the written permission of the publisher, except for the purpose of reviews.

Edited by Nicole Kimberling

Cover art, maps and all illustrations by Dawn Kimberling

Proofreading by Jemma Everyhope

This book is a work of fiction. All characters and situations depicted are fictional. Any resemblances to actual people or events are coincidental.

First edition September 2011

Copyright © 2011 Ginn Hale

ISBN 978-1-935560-07-4

For my always clever and lovely wife, Happy Birthday!

—Ginn

The Story So Far:

Kyle left behind his name and home when he was ordained as the Kahlil of the Payshmura Church. In the foreign world of Nayeshi, he watched over the destroyer incarnation of the god Parfir, though the young man—John Toffler—had no idea of his deadly potential.

Only once in ten years did Kyle desert his duty, leaving Nayeshi to rescue his sister, Rousma, from the burning convent of Umbhra’ibaye. After a deadly battle against the witch Ji Shir’korud, he returns with his sister only to discover that John and two of his friends have intercepted a message meant for the Kahlil alone: they’ve taken the golden key that unlocks the Rifter’s death.  Unwittingly, John and his friends have used the key and traveled to Kyle’s home world of Basawar.

Though the Great Gate is damaged, Kyle follows John in order to stop him from unleashing untold ruin on his home. However, the passage back to Basawar not only throws Kyle forward in time but leaves him badly injured and deeply changed. He neither bears the ugly red scar that once disfigured his face, nor does he possess the Prayerscars that marked him as Kahlil—instead he carries a small, red Fai’daum tattoo. But most jarringly, his memories are a jumble of contradictions.

Fortunately, Alidas, a captain of the Bousim rashan’im in the vibrant city of Nurjima, takes Kyle in. Kyle spends two years as Alidas’ secret weapon—an assassin who can walk through walls and kill with just a touch of his hand.

When Kyle is deployed to stop an assassination against the leader of the Fai’daum—a powerful sorcerer called Jath’ibaye—he uncovers a much larger plot among a small group of nobles to seize control of Basawar and breach the world of Nayeshi. While the ambitious and seductive Ourath Lisam seems to be in control, Kyle soon learns that he and his Bousim conspirators are in league with a man from Kyle’s shattered past—his nemesis, Fikiri. At the same time he discovers that Jath’ibaye is John—the Rifter. Unlike Kyle, who was thrown forward in Basawar’s history, John fell into the past and has altered the world’s history as well as events in Kyle’s early life.

Despite orders to the contrary, Kyle intervenes in the assassination attempt against Jath’ibaye. Both the Bousim heir, Nanvess, and another noble gaunan, Esh’illan, are killed in the ensuing battle. Though injured, Kyle takes possession of the mystic blade, the yasi’halaun, which Fikiri planned to feed on the Rifter’s blood and use to open a gateway to Nayeshi.

In the aftermath of the killings, Jath’ibaye evacuates his people, including Kyle, to the Fai’daum lands in the north. Misled by Ourath, the gaun’im rally their armies to avenge Nanvess and Esh’illan and march on the Fai’daum stronghold of Vundomu.

 In Vundomu, Kyle is welcomed by the Fai’daum, but soon he realizes that he is not the man who some of them believe him to be—Jath’ibaye’s dead lover, Ravishan. Kyle ventures to the far northern edge of the kingdom where Ravishan died. There, he encounters monstrous, undead creatures, the so-called hungry bones, that Fikiri and his Lady have unleashed against the people in the north. With Jath’ibaye’s aid he destroys several of the hungry bones and escapes back to the city-fortress of Vundomu. There, he takes on a student and dedicates himself to destroying Jath’ibaye’s enemies. With the gaun’im’s armies gathered at the foot of Vundomu, Kyle infiltrates the Lisam’s camp and discovers Fikiri’s and Ourath’s plan to crush the Fai’daum between the gaun’im’s troops and an army of hungry bones. They need only wait a week for Jath’ibaye to break the frost and then the hungry bones will become active.

Hearing this, Jath’ibaye decides that he will use his power to destroy the gaun’im and hazard the destruction of countless innocent lives, but not before the Fai’daum have exploited every opportunity that one week can offer them to make peace and expose Ourath Lisam’s treachery. In desperation, the Fai’daum leaders choose to invite the gaun’im into their fortress in the hope of breaking the gaun’im’s unity. 

Now, as Ourath Lisam enters Jath’ibaye’s holdings, Kyle must withdraw and leave Jath’ibaye exposed…

Chapter Sixty-Six

Kahlil scowled at the entourage of attendants and guards as they filed, all dressed in the tawny gold Lisam colors, through the gates of Jath’ibaye’s household. He wanted to be up there watching for treachery. Most of all, he wanted to be there so he could have the pleasure of driving his fist into Ourath Lisam’s far too handsome face.

Instead, he attempted to content himself with glaring out from an observation tower in the kahlirash’im’s barracks. It didn’t offer him the vast, expansive views that Jath’ibaye’s watchtowers had. He could only see the comings and goings on the grounds below and those of the nearest buildings. Not even using the telescopes could he observe what transpired within the walls of Jath’ibaye’s household.

“Those are meant for watching the stars, aren’t they?” Pesha asked shyly. She had taken her assignment as Kahlil’s personal attendant rather seriously. Kahlil hadn’t been alone since early this morning.

“I think so.” Kahlil placed the telescope back in its delicate cradle of tiny gears and clasps. He wasn’t used to being so closely observed. He leaned back against the stone wall. Pesha gazed at him expectantly. Kahlil realized that the day was going to be something of a disappointment for her. She probably expected that the life of the Kahlil would be much more exciting.

She had no idea how much of his life had been spent in silent observation. He’d tried to make the first part of the day interesting, demonstrating the battle forms for the Unseen Edge and the Silence Knife. He’d even acquiesced to attending midafternoon prayers in the Temple of the Rifter with the rest of the kahlilrash’im. But once the gaun’im began to arrive, he could not fight the irresistible urge toward surveillance.

He still hadn’t spotted Ourath, though Kahlil was now very familiar with the faces of the Lisam porters, having spent the better part of an hour observing them toting luggage up and down Vundomu’s many staircases.

Kahlil went back to the window to view the grounds below. The elite kahlirash’im were gathered for battle practice. Unlike the rashan’im of the gaun families, most of the kahlirash’im rode small, fast does instead of massive bucks. Their maneuvers exploited the speed and lightness of both female animals and riders. Targets splintered as the kahlirash’im fired their rifles from the backs of their bounding mounts.

Kahlil had never been much of a rider. He’d never needed to be. It was strange and fascinating to watch the precision of both the riders’ movements and their tahldi’s responses. Pesha moved a little closer to Kahlil, following his gaze out to the kahlirash riders. They both watched as a slender rider swung down to grasp a new rifle from a kahlirash kneeling on the ground. The rider came back up in an instant and fired. Another target cracked apart.

“Incredible,” Pesha whispered. That was probably the kind of activity that Pesha had been hoping to engage in today.

“Very impressive,” Kahlil agreed.

“Wah’roa said that Jath’ibaye had work that he needed you to complete.” Pesha’s dark eyes flicked quickly from the riders to Kahlil.

Kahlil nodded. Translating an archaic botanical tome was probably the last thing that Pesha would want to do all afternoon. And he didn’t find it all that appealing either.

“Could I ask what it is?” Pesha clearly expected something secret and dangerous.

“You don’t want to know,” Kahlil said.

Pesha frowned and returned to watching the kahlirash riders. For a moment Kahlil felt the urge to offer Pesha some exciting lie. Perhaps he could claim that they were supposed to spy on Ourath from the silence of the Gray Space. He smirked at his own absurd desire to impress a teenage girl. Of course, there was also the fact that he wanted any excuse to return to Jath’ibaye’s household and watch Ourath. But if he did that, then Jath’ibaye would feel his presence and know that Kahlil was, once again, disobeying his orders and being where he should not be.

Once again Kahlil found himself staring at the walls surrounding Jath’ibaye’s holdings. The stone faces and black iron gates gave him no consolation. Ourath was probably already inside, posing in Jath’ibaye’s doorway and offering lurid apologies in his low, velvety voice.

Jath’ibaye would turn Ourath away, Kahlil told himself.

Still, the thought of the niru’mohim nagged at him. Ji had assured him that the niru’mohim wouldn’t harm Jath’ibaye but she hadn’t said it wouldn’t affect him. Both Fikiri and Ourath had been willing to stake their futures on the potion’s power. What if they were right? What if Jath’ibaye couldn’t resist it? What if, at this very moment, Ourath was lying back in the bed that Kahlil had left this morning? The idea seared through Kahlil. He would kill Ourath if he found him in Jath’ibaye’s bedroom.

He brought his hand up to split open the Gray Space, then stopped himself. He couldn’t just go storming into Jath’ibaye’s rooms and he definitely couldn’t murder Ourath. It would start a war. Kahlil shoved his hands back into his coat pockets. He just had to trust Jath’ibaye. He had to believe that Jath’ibaye could and would resist Ourath’s advances.

For distraction, he tried to rekindle his interest in the riders and tahldi below. Steadily, his gaze began to rise again to Jath’ibaye’s holdings. If only he could know what was happening up there.

He turned and strode to the windows on the opposite wall of the room. Here, the only view was of the kitchen gardens and the storehouses. The barracks of the kahlirash’im surrounded the small, open square with heavy black walls. The furrows of dark soil and rows of hardy green herbs drew Kahlil’s thoughts back to Jath’ibaye. And to Ourath. The first time he had seen them together it had been in a garden. That night Kahlil himself had unknowingly brought Ourath’s poison—a gift of niru’mohim—to Jath’ibaye.

He should have killed Ourath at the Bell Dance.

Kahlil hated this train of thought. He needed to find something else to occupy his mind or otherwise he was just going to spend the entire day planning executions for Ourath Lisam.

“Is something wrong?” Pesha followed him to the window and stared down expectantly at the clumps of winter herbs in the garden.

“No, I’m just restless,” Kahlil said. He cocked his head slightly as a slender figure strode out of the kahlirash’im’s barrack and crossed the open courtyard coming towards the observation tower. The woman’s red coat and dress were unusually bright for the fabrics of Vundomu. Her black hair was pulled back in three thick braids. Two attendants hurried after her.

“Hirran?” Kahlil wondered aloud. It certainly looked like her.

“Representative Hirran?” Pesha stared down at her with an appreciative expression. Her eyes moved over Hirran’s voluptuous figure in curious fascination.

“I think she’s coming up here,” Kahlil commented. A moment later she disappeared through the doors below them.

“To us?” Pesha flushed a little.

Really, Kahlil thought, Pesha was very lucky to have been born in Vundomu. Otherwise, her blatant attraction to her own sex would have gotten her into real trouble.

Aloud he said, “It could be her.”

Kahlil eyed the door hopefully. Perhaps she had something for him to do. At this point, Kahlil thought he might welcome almost any task that would take his mind off Ourath.

Kahlil listened to the sound of footsteps mounting the stone stairs. Seconds later there was a soft rap at the door. Kahlil opened the door and beckoned Hirran in. She looked much more composed than she had the previous night, but there were still signs of exhaustion in her face. Kahlil guessed that she had slept as little or less than he had.

“Kyle’insira,” Hirran inclined her head to him, “I’ve been looking for you.”

“What do you need?” Kahlil asked. But Hirran didn’t answer right away.

Hirran’s two attendants reached the top of the stairs and hurried to their places behind her. They were both young women who resembled Hirran. Kahlil imagined that they might have been her younger sisters. They, like Hirran, wore low-cut flaring coats that emphasized the curves of their bodies. Pesha regarded them with a kind of awe. Few of the kahlirash women ever dressed so flatteringly. The younger of Hirran’s attendants offered Pesha a flirtatious smile, which caused Pesha to flush to the roots of her hair. Then the attendant pulled the door closed.

“The matter might require a little discretion.” Hirran glanced to Pesha, then returned her attention to Kahlil meaningfully.

“Pesha has sworn loyalty to me as my ushiri and attendant. She can be trusted,” Kahlil replied. Out of the corner of his eye Kahlil caught the look of pride that his words gave Pesha. Kahlil guessed it was the least he could do to make up for the tedious day. Hirran accepted his statement with a nod.

“Last night,” Hirran said, “I had the impression that you were not utterly hostile towards all of the gaun’im.”

“I wouldn’t support them against Jath’ibaye,” Kahlil replied, “but I certainly don’t despise them all.”

“You’ve had an association with the Bousim house,” Hirran said.

“True.” Kahlil wasn’t ready to commit to anything more at this point. But it seemed to be enough because Hirran went on.

“I also have an association with the Bousims—not as a servant of theirs. Nothing like that. But because of the shared border, there have been times when my forces have encountered those of the Bousim commander. My people and his are somewhat familiar with each other. So, over the last few years, he and I have exchanged a few letters…” Hirran trailed off.

“You’re in correspondence with Commander Joulen Bousim?” That might benefit them, though common knowledge of it wouldn’t make Hirran terribly popular among her fellow representatives.

“Yes, I had hoped that it would help pave the way towards future trade relations,” Hirran admitted. “But now I just want—well, you know what I want. I believe we share that goal.”

“So, what would you like me to do?” Kahlil asked.

“I want to meet with him,” Hirran said. “I think I might convince him to aid us against Ourath Lisam.”

“He and his uncle are guests in Gin’yu’s house. You could call on him there, couldn’t you?” Kahlil asked.

“I would rather not be seen doing so by Gin’yu.” Hirran lowered her voice slightly. “You may have noticed how little warmth the old woman has for me. And this is not the time that I would choose to reveal my relations with a gaunan. I’m sure that Commander Bousim is in much the same situation.”

“So, you need to arrange a private meeting with him?” Kahlil asked.

“Not private,” Hirran corrected. “Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t know him so well that I want to be alone with him. My idea is to propose a meeting with him later this evening in the Silverlake Gardens. You could be present and at the same time remain unseen, couldn’t you?” Hirran gave him a speculative glance.

“I certainly could.” Now it was all quite clear to him why Hirran had searched him out.

“And you could pass through Gin’yu’s household to deliver a letter to Commander Bousim without anyone noticing?” Hirran asked.

“It would be simple.” Kahlil was well ahead of her. He would need to have Pesha pretend to be practicing with the Gray Space in case Jath’ibaye noticed the disturbance. Hirran’s letter would have to be wrapped in heavy leather, or better yet, a metal case to keep it from being torn to shreds by the Gray Space.

“Will you help me?” Hirran asked.

“How could I say no?” Kahlil smiled at her.

Hirran looked almost startled and then smiled back at him as if he’d just saved her life. Beside him, he saw Pesha stand a little straighter, perhaps realizing that someday she might also be asked for such a favor by a beautiful woman.

“Thank you,” Hirran said.

•••

By the time Kahlil slipped through the walls surrounding the Silverlake Garden, it was nearly dusk. From within the Gray Space the lush braids of trellised vines and clusters of tiny snow blossoms looked like they had been cut from newspaper. None of the humid scents that filled the huge greenhouse reached him. The massive iron supports of the building and its countless panes of glass resembled Jath’ibaye’s glass palace in Nurjima. But Jath’ibaye’s garden had been much more diverse. It had seemed natural in its random bursts of foliage and flowers.

The plants in the Silverlake Garden reminded Kahlil of the industrial agriculture he had seen in Nayeshi. It was not nearly so advanced, but the same aspiration for control and production seemed to underlie the Silverlake Garden’s design. Huge beds of single crops stretched out in long rows. Between them, cobblestone avenues stretched like city streets. There was a mechanical precision to the distances between the beds, the rows in the beds, and even to the spacing of the plants themselves.

Most of the young starts poking up from the ground seemed to be tender vegetables. Older, hardy herbs loomed up in the beds beyond those. And far to the west were the enclosed orchards, his destination.

Kahlil hurried back towards the trees. He passed a few young couples lingering at the edges of the herb gardens. A few solitary individuals seemed to be sketching or taking botanical notes. Now and then Kahlil noticed a Silverlake insignia decorating the sleeve of a guard or a gardener. But most of the people seemed to have been drawn to the gardens just to take in the sight and scent of the first blossoms.

Later in the year, the orchards would be more popular. But now, at the end of winter, they were too cool and shadowed to appeal to many people. At least that was what Hirran had told him. From within the Gray Space, the orchards didn’t seem much different from the rest of the garden. Kahlil was aware of faint beams of light filtering down between the slender branches of fruit trees. Many seemed to be blossoming, but the flowers and leaves were all the same dull gray to him. If it was colder under the expanses of branches, he didn’t feel it. Everything was cold in the Gray Space.

As Kahlil strode through the orchards, he saw that Hirran had been right about their overall attractiveness. The only people who seemed drawn to the avenues that lined the orchards were Bousim militia. Kahlil discovered two captains waiting in the deep shadows near a wall. Three more rashan’im strolled along an avenue and then turned back, patrolling a stretch of trees near the west wall of the garden. None of the men were in uniform but Kahlil recognized the captains from his night in the Bousim camp. The rashan’im gave themselves away in the precision of their movements. No laborer in Vundomu squared his shoulders so stiffly or held his head so perfectly upright.

Hirran had not arrived, but Joulen was already waiting. He didn’t look older out of his uniform, but stripped of the insignias of his rank, his boyish face didn’t seem so surprising. He leaned against a railing that surrounded a stand of trees, absently drumming his fingers on the black wroght iron.

Kahlil walked past Joulen, easily brushing through the railing. It would be simple enough to remain in the Gray Space and watch over Hirran. But he wouldn’t be able to hear anything. He contemplated the stand of trees for a moment. They weren’t big, but their branches seemed strong enough to take his weight and the blossoms would hide him.

Kahlil shifted his direction within the Gray Space, rising with each step, until he crouched up in the tree branches. He braced himself and then dropped out of the Gray Space. Humid heat rushed over him. The fragrance of flowers and freshly tilled earth engulfed him. For just an instant, the texture of the tree bark seemed to bite painfully into his palms. Then his senses adjusted. The pain and heat receded. The smell of flowers saturated the air. All around Kahlil, slim branches bowed with the weight of their white blossoms. A low hum pulsed through the air as dozens of pale yellow bees buzzed between the heavily clustered flowers.

Kahlil watched Joulen take a cigarette from the case in his coat pocket, toy with it, and then put it back. Beyond Joulen, Kahlil recognized Hirran’s graceful figure. She walked slowly. One of her attendants lagged behind her, taking notes. Hirran paused at a bed of firebloom, her long red coat and dress seeming to rise up from the scarlet flowers. Her black hair was startlingly dark by contrast and her skin looked like porcelain.

Joulen stared at her, the cigarette case forgotten in his hand. Kahlil wondered if Hirran had known she would be so eye-catching. He guessed that she did. She hadn’t struck Kahlil as the kind of woman who wouldn’t use her beauty to an advantage.

As Hirran came closer, Joulen frowned slightly. He glanced past Hirran as if expecting to see someone else on the avenue. Hirran stopped at the iron railing near Joulen and gazed at the white blooms that hung down close to her.

Joulen’s frown tightened. He continued to watch the cobblestone avenue. Absently, he opened his cigarette case, then snapped it closed, and put it away in his pocket. Hirran watched him. After a few moments, she turned and looked down the avenue as well. Kahlil followed both their gazes. There was no one.

Hirran took a half step closer to Joulen.

“Was someone following me?” Hirran said, undervoiced.

Joulen started in surprise. “I beg your pardon, madam?”

“Have I been followed?” Hirran repeated.

“Not that I can see,” Joulen replied. He seemed strangely awkward, as if almost unwilling to acknowledge Hirran’s presence. She scanned the rows of trees and cobblestone avenues surrounding them. Catching sight of the two rashan’im, Hirran moved even closer to Joulen.

“Have you been followed?” Hirran whispered urgently.  

Joulen sighed and at last turned to face her.

“Madam,” Joulen said, “I’m sorry, but I’m expecting to meet with a businessman. Though I find you quite charming, quite lovely in fact, I haven’t the time to dally. Perhaps another day?”

Hirran appeared to be flabbergasted and Kahlil almost laughed out loud. Joulen didn’t know who she was. In typical gaun fashion, he had mistaken Hirran’s assurance and interest for the advance of some prostitute.

“Dally?” Hirran demanded. Then she looked suddenly worried. “You are Joulen Bousim, are you not?”

“Yes,” Joulen replied, “but I assure you that I am not so rich as people say. There are other men from the gaun’im who would be more worthy of your interest.”

Hirran’s brows knit together in consternation as Joulen continued to watch the empty avenue.

“You don’t know who I am,” Hirran said suddenly.

“No.” Joulen glanced to her. He seemed amused by the idea that he would know of her. “Should I?”

“Yes, you should.” Hirran’s voice carried an edge of indignation. “I am Hirran of the Ironheights.”

Joulen gaped at her as if she’d claimed to be Gaunsho Bousim himself.

“I wrote that I would be wearing a red coat and my hair would be in three braids.” Hirran pointed to her head. “I wrote that you were to meet me at the iron railing surrounding the snow pears at the fifth bell.”

“Yes. But you can’t be…” Joulen continued to stare at Hirran. A slight flush began to color his cheeks. “You didn’t say you were…I had imagined that you would be a man.”

“I never said I was a man.”

“No, you never did,” Joulen admitted, after a thoughtful silence. “I assumed…” Joulen glanced to the single attendant who hung far back behind Hirran. “Are you sure that this is safe for you?”

“The Five Districts Council could call me up for questioning, but technically I have not done anything wrong. So long as we are discreet, I think that can be avoided,” Hirran assured him. “What about you?”

“Fine,” Joulen replied, though he hardly seemed to have heard the question.

Kahlil realized that Joulen was not worried for Hirran’s political career. No woman of the gaun’im would have met a man in a secluded garden with only a little attendant girl to protect her. Even in Nurjima, women traveled in large groups or were accompanied by fathers, husbands, or brothers. To Joulen, Hirran would seem to be at the mercy of any man who crossed her path.

“It’s getting dark,” Joulen commented.

“I know. They’ll be clearing the garden soon,” Hirran spoke quickly and softly, “but I couldn’t meet with you any sooner. I suppose we should be as expeditious about this as we can.”

“Yes, we should,” Joulen agreed. “So why did you send for me?”

“Because this entire matter has gotten out of hand,” Hirran replied. “You have to know that Jath’ibaye did not kill Nanvess.”

“Do I?” Joulen asked, his dark brows rising. “Why did he flee from the Bell Dance then?”

Kahlil tensed, hoping that Hirran had the good sense not to mention him. Telling Joulen about Kahlil’s part in the debacle would only make Hirran’s story seem more implausible.

“Because he went in pursuit of the real murderer,” Hirran answered and Kahlil was impressed by how easily she made it sound like the truth.

“And who was that?” Joulen asked.

“His name would mean nothing to you.” Hirran dismissed Joulen’s question with a wave of her hand.

“That’s unfortunate, since you’re trying to convince me of his existence,” he replied.

“The murderer is called Fikiri. He is a devil who steals our children for their bones.” The anger in Hirran’s tone carried despite her lowered voice. “He is in league with Ourath Lisam to destroy Vundomu and the gaun’im as well. He wants us to kill each other in a war.”

“In league with Ourath Lisam?” A spark of hope lit Joulen’s face. “You have proof of this?”

“None that would convince you or the rest of the gaun’im,” Hirran admitted. “But you have to know that the gaun’im would not survive a war against Vundomu.”

Joulen stiffened slightly at her words.

“I’m not attempting to threaten you, Commander,” Hirran went on, seeing Joulen’s reaction. “I don’t think either of our nations would survive a war. That’s why it’s imperative that our nations find a way to make peace. You’re the only gaun that I would trust to approach like this.”

For the first time Joulen offered Hirran a kind smile. No doubt his exaggerated sense of the danger that Hirran had braved to see him lent a deeper ring of desperation to her words. If it hadn’t been a matter of war that they were discussing, Kahlil thought he might have found the two of them amusing.

“So, what are you willing to do to keep the peace?” Joulen asked.

“Anything,” Hirran replied and Joulen flushed deep red.

“I meant as the representative of your holdings,” Joulen said quickly.

“Yes,” Hirran said, nodding, “anything that I can. But it isn’t up to me.”

“It might be,” Joulen said. “My uncle plans to demand exclusive trade rights with the Iron Heights as compensation for Nanvess’ murder. If you would submit to that, then the Bousim house will be satisfied.”

“It’s impossible.” Hirran shook her head.

“Not even to prevent a war?” Joulen asked.

“No, you misunderstand me.” Hirran stepped closer to Joulen and gazed up at him. “To save our two nations, I would give everything I possessed, but I can’t give it twice. Gethlam Anyyd plans to demand exclusive trade rights to all of my lands as payment for Esh’illan’s death.”

“That’s absurd. Esh’illan was a drunk and a wastrel.” Despite his words, Joulen appeared to be troubled.

“Ourath Lisam has convinced Gethlam that he has as much right to make his claim as your uncle has,” Hirran said.

“How do you know this?” Joulen asked.

“We had a spy watching Ourath.” Hirran bowed her head as if embarrassed. She looked quite pretty in the pose and Kahlil could see that she was having some effect on Joulen. The young guan lifted his hand as if to reassure her but then caught himself.

“I imagine that you have spies in every gaunsho’s camp,” Joulen said.

“No.” Hirran glanced up at him earnestly. “It’s only because of Ourath’s alliance with Fikiri that we sent out a spy.”

Joulen’s expression softened as he gazed down at Hirran. She really knew what she was doing, Kahlil thought.

“I had been worried that Gethlam might do something like this,” Joulen said. “But we Bousim have the stronger house. The Anyyd will back down eventually.”

“There won’t be time,” Hirran informed him. “In one week Fikiri’s forces in the north will be gathered. He and Ourath Lisam plan to attack then.”

“This Fikiri has forces in the north?” Joulen asked.

“An army of hungry bones,” Hirran said. This time there was nothing appealing about her expression. Joulen paled.

“I thought the bones were Jath’ibaye’s creations,” Joulen said.

“If you’ve seen him among them, it was as an enemy,” Hirran said. “The hungry bones are Fikiri’s creations. If Jath’ibaye didn’t fight them, they would destroy Vundomu and then advance into the gaun’im’s lands. Until now, Jath’ibaye has been the only thing standing between Fikiri and his conquest of all of Basawar.”

Joulen’s expression turned skeptical. He toyed with his cigarette case.

“I know you find it hard to believe,” Hirran went on, “but I swear it’s the truth. Say the name ‘Fikiri’ to anyone in Vundomu and you’ll see what a monster he is—how he’s tormented these lands!”

“And yet I’ve never heard of him,” Joulen replied.

“But you’ve seen him,” Hirran said suddenly. “In Ourath’s tent. He’s a gaunt old man with scars all up and down his arms and hands. He has dirty blond hair and skin that looks as if it has been scrubbed raw.”

Joulen looked thoughtful but didn’t say anything.

“He appears out of nowhere,” Hirran went on quickly, “but there’s always this terrible rending noise and a flash of fire. And there’s a smell afterwards.” Hirran shuddered. “I have nightmares about that smell.”

“The man you’re describing was in Ourath’s tent last night,” Joulen admitted.

“You see.” Hirran’s expression was triumphant.

“But that doesn’t prove anything,” Joulen added quickly. “He could as easily have been your own spy as this Fikiri.”

“You have to believe me.” Hirran suddenly caught Joulen’s hand in her own. “If we don’t find a way to stop Ourath within a week, then Fikiri will attack and Jath’ibaye will have to—”

“Have to what?” Joulen demanded.

“He’ll have to treat all of the gaun’im as allies of Fikiri’s,” Hirran said softly. “He’ll destroy everything.”

“Everything?” Joulen frowned at this. “I don’t think we’ll just allow him to destroy—”

“What you think won’t matter,” Hirran insisted. “Ask your captains—the old ones who fought in the Seven Years’ War. Ask them what Jath’ibaye can do.”

Kahlil could see the worry creeping into Joulen’s countenance. Plainly, he already knew the old stories of the wars against Jath’ibaye. Kahlil, too, had heard them when he had lived in the Bousim barracks in Nurjima. Jath’ibaye’s sorcery was said to have destroyed armies in minutes, showing no man mercy, allowing no surrender and taking no prisoners. Kahlil now wondered how much of that had been true.

Knowing John, Kahlil imagined that Jath’ibaye would have forced the Fai’daum to adopt some strange Nayeshi code of honor regarding prisoners of war. He would have tried to enforce the Geneva Convention the same way he tried to install democracy and fishing regulations.

But Jath’ibaye was still the Rifter and Kahlil suspected that very few of his enemies had survived his assaults long enough to be taken prisoner.

“If this war comes,” Hirran met Joulen’s gaze directly, “Jath’ibaye will not restrain himself. He will destroy every last gaunan and all of your lands. The cities will burn and the lands will crumble into the sea. He will not forgive an alliance with Fikiri.”

Joulen said nothing for several long moments.

“So what would you have me do?” he asked at last.

“You must remove Ourath Lisam from power,” Hirran told him.

Joulen pulled his hand from Hirran’s, his frustration plain on his face.

“I don’t have that authority,” Joulen told her. “And even if I did, I don’t have any grounds. All I have is your word.”

“I swear that I’m telling you the truth.”

“I believe you,” Joulen replied. “But I can’t act against a gaunsho without any evidence of his treachery. Not even my own family would support me.”

Hirran leaned against the iron railing, frowning up at the overhanging blossoms. Joulen watched her.

“Then I’ll get you your evidence,” Hirran said firmly.

“How?” Joulen asked.

“I don’t know, but it has to be done,” Hirran replied. “And I will see to it.”

Joulen gazed at Hirran intently and then nodded.

“If you can find any proof,” he said, “you should turn it over to my uncle, Governor Nivoun. He has the legal power to take action against a gaunsho.”

“Can I trust him?” Hirran asked.

Joulen did not answer right away. He seemed uncertain.

“He wouldn’t want a war,” Joulen stated finally.

“That will have to be enough, I suppose.”

“If you can present any proof, I will vouch for your character to Nivoun, I swear,” Joulen said.

“If I can’t, and the week passes?” Hirran asked.

Joulen frowned deeply and even from a distance Kahlil understood his meaning.

Hirran sighed.

“I was looking forward to meeting you in person, Joulen Bousim,” she said. “I wish it could have been under better circumstances.”

“Yes,” Joulen said. “I’m sorry.”

“I had hoped that one day the Bousim house would be an ally to the Iron Heights. I had such hopes…You can’t imagine.” Hirran looked sad but still quite lovely.

Very carefully, Joulen reached out and brushed a fallen blossom from Hirran’s hair.

“I’m glad to have met you.” Joulen didn’t seem able to take his eyes off her. “Even if this is a terrible time, it’s an honor to have met you after only knowing you from your letters.”

Hirran smiled at Joulen and Kahlil could see that this was a smile without artifice. He understood from her expression that she’d harbored her own personal hopes for Joulen Bousim—hopes completely unrelated to trade.

She said, “I will do all I can to ensure that our next meeting will be better.”

Joulen couldn’t seem to lift his gaze from Hirran and Kahlil thought the young commander might be on the verge of stealing a kiss. But Hirran straightened and drew back.

“I can’t be gone too long,” Hirran said.

“Your husband will miss you, no doubt.” Joulen scowled at the flower petals at his feet.

“I’m not married,” Hirran informed him.

Even from where he crouched in the tree branches, Kahlil could see how this information pleased Joulen. He bowed deeply to Hirran and stared after her as she and her attendant hurried away from the orchard.

Kahlil dropped back into the Gray Space, and several blocks past the Silverlake Gardens, he emerged at Hirran’s side. She was startled but managed to retain her dignity. Her young attendant yelped and jumped, almost falling off the walkway.

 “You were there?” Hirran asked. The flirtatious tone she had used with Joulen dropped from her voice.

“The entire time,” Kahlil said.

“You would make a very dangerous enemy, I think,” Hirran said.

“I could say the same for you,” Kahlil responded with a shrug.

Hirran seemed deflated. “I’d love to think so, but I don’t know that I accomplished much with that meeting.”

“The commander seemed impressed,” Kahlil said.

“Yes, but it won’t do us any good if we don’t have any evidence to present to him,” Hirran said. “Joulen is fond of women but he’s not going to commit treason just because a pretty girl asks him to. We have to find some proof.”

“Any ideas how?” Kahlil asked.

“I don’t know.” Now surly and annoyed, Hirran abandoned all pretense of demure reserve; she eyed Kahlil. “You were a spy. You must have some connections.”

Kahlil went silent, thinking that Hirran didn’t know much of spymasters or the insulating isolation they imposed upon their agents. In two years of assassinations, he’d never been told another agent’s name—he’d never asked. He’d simply done what Alidas had required. Though, considering the political delicacy of certain assignments he’d received, Kahlil had realized that Alidas must control an entire network of informants and agents.

“We only have a week,” Hirran muttered.

“If that,” Kahlil agreed. They needed to act quickly and directly. If he were going to get anything from Alidas, he would have to return to Nurjima and that meant going into enemy territory.

“I need to see Jath’ibaye,” Kahlil said.

“But you aren’t supposed to…” Hirran began.

“There are a lot of things neither you nor I are supposed to do,” Kahlil said. “And yet here we are. Will you help me get to him or not?”

“How could I say no to such a gallant proposition?”

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Music poured through the long corridors of Jath’ibaye’s household. Even from the servant’s entry, Kahlil could hear a singer’s voice rising above the low murmur of guests. The kitchens were close by and he could smell meats and feast breads. Heat from the huge ovens radiated through the rooms, saturating the air with fragrant warmth.

Servants with trays of baked fish, roast lamb and precious fruits hustled past Kahlil on their way to the great hall. Ourath and his rashan’im seemed to be receiving quite a warm welcome.

Kahlil’s lip curled at the thought. A moment later he schooled his expression into the same neutral interest of the two men ahead of him. They were runners from Hirran’s household. Kahlil was taller than either of the two young men and older by a good ten years. He kept his head down. If any of the servants in Jath’ibaye’s household recognized him, they gave no indication. Most rushed past after a cursory glance at the Iron Heights insignia on the sleeve of his coat. With his scarlet uniform and his newly cropped hair, he fit their expectations of one of Hirran’s runners. No one bothered to examine him much beyond that.

Then again, few of the kitchen servants had seen his face up close. The real trick would be getting to Jath’ibaye without Ourath noticing him. That was assuming he could elude Eriki’yu, Saimura and Besh’anya.

It would be so much easier if he could just slip into the Gray Space. But he had already pressed his luck too far today. Another disturbance, much less one within Jath’ibaye’s own house, would doubtless bring Jath’ibaye roaring down on him. And who knew how many onlookers that would attract?

As he and the two runners stepped through the doors into the great hall, the sound and brilliant light of the vast room flooded over them. Bluish flames burned in the gas lamps high above the gathering. On the tables, expensive beeswax candles offered faint honey scents as well as their warm glow. Silver platters of meats, breads, and fruit filled the wooden tables where high-ranking Lisam rashan’im feasted beside Fai’daum intellectuals and merchants. All were dressed in their finest; for the gaun’im’s forces that meant brushed silk and polished amber, while the Fai’daum wore their wool coats and iron rings with obvious pride.

None of the golden splendor of the gaun’im’s palaces adorned Jath’ibaye’s household. Still, the atmosphere reminded Kahlil of the night he had infiltrated the Bell Dance in Nurjima. Heat and laughter rolled over him. A slim, handsome singer crooned from amidst the circle of musicians gathered near the fireplace. Music poured through the lapses in conversation, creating a sea of contented sound. Servants hurried from the tables to the kitchens and back.

Kahlil glanced immediately to where the guest of honor sat at the high table at the far end of the room. For a moment he couldn’t keep from glaring at Ourath’s stately profile. His red hair gleamed like copper. His skin seemed to glow with the luster of gold. The close tailoring of his silk clothing offered glimpses of his graceful body as he moved. His full lips parted in a sensual smile. 

The woman seated across from him gazed helplessly at him and she wasn’t alone. All through the chamber women stared at Ourath. Men stole quick, guilty glances again and again. Servants standing near him lingered too long.

Even seething with anger towards him, Kahlil had to admit that Ourath radiated attraction. A disturbing edge of arousal crept into Kahlil’s loathing as he continued to watch. Something cruel and sexual stirred inside him. The sensation infuriated Kahlil, killing what little longing there had been. He wanted to strangle the life out of Ourath for even briefly tainting his desire.

Immediately, Kahlil searched the room for Jath’ibaye. He glanced up and down the rows of tables. People moved, gesturing and laughing. Kahlil took them in dozens at a time and disregarded them just as quickly. Just glimpses of backs, profiles, even gestures, told him that none of these people were Jath’ibaye.

He caught sight of Besh’anya, sitting quite near Ourath. There was an almost glistening flush to her skin. She toyed obsessively with an amulet that hung around her neck.

She and Saimura were supposed to be bearing as much of the effect of the niru’mohim for Jath’ibaye as they could, but Saimura was nowhere to be seen and Besh’anya looked like she was being cooked to death from the inside out. She swayed slightly in her seat and then drained the water glass in front of her.

Out of the corner of his eye, Kahlil noticed Eriki’yu’s slender form. Already he made his way toward the runners. There was no doubt that he would recognize Kahlil up close.

“That’s the house steward.” Kahlil indicated Eriki’yu to the two runners. “You should distract him before he gets much closer.”

Kahlil pulled his jacket off and folded it over his arm. Without the Iron Heights insignia he looked less like a servant. Now he waited for a momentary lapse in Eriki’yu’s attention. It came quickly enough. Eriki’yu paused as a water boy passed him and then for an instant he gazed sidelong at Ourath.

“Go now,” Kahlil told the two runners. As they moved forward, Kahlil stepped back into the crush of kitchen servants. He moved quickly between them, inquiring after the nearest bathroom. In direct contradiction to their brief instructions and the few annoyed gestures that they made, he walked to the back staircase. Then he bounded up the narrow stairs to the balcony overlooking the great hall.

The balcony was dark, and as Kahlil moved past, the bright flames of the gas lamps briefly blinded him. The air around him seemed to stir. Then, suddenly, he felt a strong hand catch his shoulder. He knew the touch even before his eyes adjusted to the darkness.

“You aren’t supposed to be here,” Jath’ibaye said.

“I know. I had to talk to you,” Kahlil said.

“Of course you did.”

The noise of footsteps came from above—a servant tromped down the staircase with an armload of beeswax tapers. Jath’ibaye pulled Kahlil away from the stairs. As he allowed Jath’ibaye to guide him into an alcove, Kahlil’s eyes adjusted completely to the darkness. At one time sentries had probably been stationed here in order to keep watch over the great hall. Now it was just a recessed area containing nothing but a simple wooden bench.

Jath’ibaye looked strange. Not ill. Rather, he seemed almost too well. A healthy flush colored his tanned skin. The muscles of his long, lean body radiated heat. His motions were fluid and fast, as if every muscle in his body was hungry for action. He looked alert and a little too excited.

“I should have known you wouldn’t stay away even one day.” Jath’ibaye’s voice was low and rough. “Particularly if you were ordered to.”

Kahlil couldn’t help but remember how agitated Jath’ibaye had been in Nurjima when Ourath had last exposed him to niru’mohim. That had been the night he had choked Kahlil to near unconsciousness.

“Shouldn’t Saimura be here with you?” Kahlil found himself surreptitiously edging out of Jath’ibaye’s reach and forced himself to stop.

“Saimura is not in any kind of condition to make a public appearance right now.”

“Is he sick?”

“No, he just looks like he’s walking around with a flagpole in his pants.” Jath’ibaye smirked. “I think he’s managing it well enough in his room.”

 “I see,” Kahlil said. He supposed Besh’anya was dealing with her own difficulties as well. The thought embarrassed him somewhat.

“Are you…” Kahlil wasn’t sure how exactly he should word his question.

“Desperately happy to see you?” Jath’ibaye supplied for him. His smile turned almost shy. “I am. But if you hadn’t come I would have managed. You don’t have to worry. I’m not going to fuck Ourath, not even if he douses himself in buckets of niru’mohim.”

The insecurity that had gnawed at Kahlil’s stomach all day melted away. He felt somewhat amazed that this was all that it had taken to dissipate his anxiety. He’d just needed to hear a single reassurance from Jath’ibaye.

“But I am very glad that you did come.” Jath’ibaye drew Kahlil close. His breath felt pleasantly hot against Kahlil’s skin.

The bench was no use to them. It was too near the edge of the balcony. Instead, they knelt in the deep shadows of the alcove. They said nothing, understanding easily the motions of longing and pleasure. Kahlil exhausted Jath’ibaye’s restless body with his hands and mouth. Jath’ibaye responded with assurance and knowing. His quiet skill, both tender and demanding, left Kahlil gasping and certain that Jath’ibaye knew his body better than Kahlil did himself. At last they lay still, curled close atop Jath’ibaye’s coat. Their shirts were wildly disheveled; their pants hung open in obvious indecency.

Feeling Jath’ibaye’s sticky, hot skin against his own, Kahlil grinned. If Ourath could see the result of his niru’mohim right now, he’d probably tear out fistfuls of his carefully coifed hair. Then Kahlil abandoned any thought of Ourath. He leaned back against Jath’ibaye, enjoying the way Jath’ibaye’s fingers stroked the back of his neck and brushed through his hair.

“Your hair was short like this the first time we met,” Jath’ibaye whispered. He kissed the back of Kahlil’s neck.

Kahlil remembered it distinctly, though he knew that it was Ravishan’s past that he recollected. Still with the taste of Jath’ibaye on his lips and the heat of him so close, Kahlil felt the memory as if it were all his own. It had been just a day after he had found a golden key—the ush’hala—one of the three symbols of the Kahlil, lying in the snow. Jahn had looked like a wild man, all lean muscle and knotted hair. Savage. Barely able to speak. Dressed in animal skins and still, somehow, beautiful.

Kahlil almost said that that hadn’t been the first time they had met. The first time they had met had been when he had answered John’s ad for a roommate. Or perhaps it had been when John had just been a boy, in that briefest instant when the issusha’im had forged the bond between them. But he didn’t say anything because it didn’t matter right now. At this moment all that mattered was that they had met and now they were here together.

Jath’ibaye sighed and drew back slightly. He dug a handkerchief out of the pocket of his discarded coat and offered it to Kahlil.

“Always prepared,” Kahlil commented.

“Well, I was a Boy Scout.”

“Yeah, I remember.” Kahlil accepted the handkerchief and cleaned himself up. He straightened his clothes and watched as Jath’ibaye finished buttoning up the front of his own pants.

“I don’t suppose you’d have a breath mint on you?” Kahlil asked.

Jath’ibaye shook his head, then leaned forward and kissed Kahlil. “Your breath is fine.”

“Yeah,” Kahlil grinned, “and my hair looks great too.”

“Now you’re just trolling for compliments,” Jath’ibaye replied.

“They help to soothe my seething jealousy.”

“Really?” Jath’ibaye cocked his head questioningly. “You’re not actually jealous, are you?”

“Yes, but I’m trying to work through it.” Kahlil couldn’t help but glance past the balcony rail. He didn’t want to think about Ourath and Jath’ibaye, but it was hard not to. He just didn’t understand what could have brought them together. Maybe it had just been the niru’mohim. Kahlil wanted to believe that. But he doubted that their entire relationship could be blamed on a single potion. Niru’mohim might be strong but Jath’ibaye was good at resisting his own desires if he needed to. Kahlil knew that from the years the two of them had spent together in Rathal’pesha.

It wasn’t as if Jath’ibaye was incapable of killing a man who opposed him either. Kahlil could still vividly recall the way Jath’ibaye had broken Esh’illan’s neck. He could have been swatting a gnat for all it concerned him. No, if Jath’ibaye had wanted Ourath out of his way, the niru’mohim would not have stopped him. Nothing could stop Jath’ibaye but his own compassion.

That was why Loshai still lived. Jath’ibaye cared for her too much to kill her, even if it would be for his own good. Ourath seemed to have the same kind of hold on Jath’ibaye. That grasp worried Kahlil. It threatened his assurance. He expected to be united with Jath’ibaye against their enemies. But then there were these troubling exemptions. In Loshai’s case, years of friendship haunted Jath’ibaye. But with Ourath, Kahlil had no idea. It had to be much more than mere sex. Sex was easy to come by; a man with Jath’ibaye’s power and wealth would have to be turning it away. Ourath had to have some other connection to Jath’ibaye—something that ran as deep as hatred and shielded Ourath as if it were love.

“What would you do if I killed him?” Kahlil suddenly asked.

Jath’ibaye didn’t have to ask who Kahlil was talking about. He looked troubled.

“I’d hope that you didn’t start a war when you did it,” Jath’ibaye said at last.

The answer came too late and with far too much sorrow to be honest. Jath’ibaye’s concern wasn’t just pragmatism. If he had been pragmatic, he would have killed Ourath at the Bell Dance or even before then.

“Why the hell do you care so much for him?” Kahlil demanded.

“I don’t. I feel…responsible, I guess.” Jath’ibaye caught Kahlil’s skeptical expression and went on, “He was young when he met me and I wasn’t in the best state of mind.” Jath’ibaye leaned back against the shadowed wall. He glanced to Kahlil but then looked quickly away. “You—Ravishan had been gone so long…and Ourath reminded me of him—of you as well—”

“In what possible way is he even slightly like me?”

“It’s hard to see, especially now,” Jath’ibaye replied, “but when Ourath was younger…he was different.” Jath’ibaye went quiet and Kahlil could see him trying to find the words to explain. “He was always beautiful and I’m sure that was the first resemblance I noticed. But he was also so desperate and out of his depth at the same time.”

“I’m not out of my depth.” Kahlil couldn’t stop himself from making the comment. He hated the idea that anyone could look at Ourath and find a likeness between them.                         

“You aren’t out of your depth now, but that night when you—when Ravishan—approached me in Candle Alley, you were. You were hardly a smooth operator in your youth.” Jath’ibaye smiled just briefly.

“I wasn’t out of my depth. I was—” Kahlil couldn’t divide his own youth from Ravishan’s. At this moment, he simply felt the truth of his words. “I was in love,” Kahlil finished, as if it were an offhanded thing to say.

Again Jath’ibaye gave him that flickering smile.

“Well, I don’t know if Ourath was in love.” Jath’ibaye looked doubtful. “I like to think that he wasn’t. I feel a lot less guilty. But either way it still comes down to the same thing. I wasn’t very good to him. I just used him. It made me feel sick with myself and I almost broke it off with him, but then he started wearing the niru’mohim. That made it easy for me to just erase the man Ourath was and see someone else in his body. I started using Ourath like a drug. I called him by the wrong name more than once. He just took it. By then he was involved with Nanvess and Fikiri. He couldn’t have gotten out even if he had wanted to.” Jath’ibaye looked sad and weary and Kahlil hated to think that it was for Ourath’s sake, because the man had plotted to murder him.

“If he’d just met someone else,” Jath’ibaye said, “someone who’d appreciated him, maybe he wouldn’t have gone to Nanvess for the niru’mohim in the first place. Maybe he wouldn’t have ended up like this.”

“Or maybe he would have,” Kahlil responded. “And ending up like he has isn’t as bad as all that. The man is a gaunsho. It’s not like he’s somebody’s slave.”

“I know. I’ve told myself the same thing. But I can’t help but still feel guilty.” Jath’ibaye’s gaze flickered from Kahlil down to the floor. “I shouldn’t have been with him at all. I should have waited for you. I just wanted someone.”

“Waited for me?” Kahlil frowned at Jath’ibaye. “I was dead.” Only belatedly did he realize that he’d spoken up as if he were Ravishan. It was happening more and more and he didn’t know if he should fight it or not. Today he didn’t, because he needed Ravishan’s insight into Jath’ibaye—and he wanted to win this argument.

“And yet here you are,” Jath’ibaye responded.

“By sheer luck, yes. But you couldn’t have known that. I didn’t even know it and I’m me.” Kahlil cocked his head slightly as a sudden, new thought came to him. “So what are you thinking? Ourath’s murder attempt was some kind of just punishment for your infidelity to your dead lover?”

Jath’ibaye’s silence told Kahlil that he’d guessed correctly.

“That’s just stupid,” Kahlil said. That at least prompted a wry laugh from Jath’ibaye.

“You were always one for tact, weren’t you?” Jath’ibaye asked.

“Well, it is stupid.” Kahlil shrugged. “You don’t deserve to be punished just because you don’t die and I do,” Kahlil said. “Sooner or later I’m going to die. Then you’re going to have to get over my death and move on.”

The instant he said the words Kahlil knew he shouldn’t have. The mortality of his friends and lovers was the one thing Jath’ibaye had no defense against. His expression was stricken, almost sick.

Kahlil knew that they were going to have to have this conversation some day but not today, not while Vundomu was on the verge of war. Kahlil cursed his own thoughtlessness.

“And as for Ourath,” Kahlil said in an attempt to shift the subject, “you’re going to have to get over him and not just because I don’t share well. We can’t afford to play nice with him any longer. He’s an enemy to your entire country, not just your personal pain in the ass.”

“I know,” Jath’ibaye said.

“Good, because I think I may have a way of keeping us from going to war, but Ourath’s going to have to die to get it done,” Kahlil informed him flatly.

Jath’ibaye didn’t object.

“Hirran has an acquaintance among the Bousim gaun’im—”

“Her pen pal, Joulen Bousim,” Jath’ibaye said.

“You know about that?” Kahlil wasn’t sure why he was surprised.

“I try to keep track of things like that. She’s been writing to him for a few years now.” Jath’ibaye shrugged. “So something’s come of it?”

“If we can bring Joulen evidence of Ourath’s alliance with Fikiri and his involvement in the assassination plot, then Joulen’s agreed to remove Ourath,” Kahlil said.

“On grounds of treason?” Jath’ibaye asked.

“That’s right. Even if we can only show his involvement in the assassination attempt against you at the Bell Dance, there are still grounds for treason, because he lied to the rest of the gaun’im and misled them to the brink of war. Joulen will have Ourath executed and the gaun’im will have to withdraw.”

“Joulen doesn’t have that kind of authority,” Jath’ibaye said.

“He believes his uncle, Nivoun, will support him if we can provide some proof of Ourath’s treachery.” Kahlil moved a little closer to Jath’ibaye. It was difficult to read his expression. Perhaps he was troubled or perhaps he was just thinking deeply. “With Ourath removed from power, the rest of the gaun’im won’t fight us. If we can do this, then we’ll end a war before it can start.”

Jath’ibaye nodded but his expression didn’t lighten.

“You came here to tell me you’re going to go back to Nurjima, didn’t you?” Jath’ibaye asked.

“That’s where our evidence will be if there’s any to be found,” Kahlil said.

“It has to be you,” Jath’ibaye said quietly, almost as if he were speaking to himself.

 “I can get there the soonest and I have connections with the Bousim house,” Kahlil replied. “I think I might be able to convince Alidas to help me.”

“Alidas?” Jath’ibaye asked.

“He’s the Bousim captain who took me in when I first returned to Basawar. He’s a good man.”

“Should I be jealous?” Jath’ibaye asked lightly.

“No.” Kahlil smiled at the idea that Jath’ibaye would be.

“So, he’s a Bousim captain…” Jath’ibaye paused for a moment. “He wouldn’t have a limp, would he?”

“Yes, his right leg. You know him?” Kahlil asked.

“Maybe. I might have met him a long time ago. We both did, actually. If he’s the same man I’m thinking of, then he took the train with us to Nurjima when you were going to receive your Prayerscars.”

Kahlil hardly remembered the journey except for his welcome in Vundomu and that first night he had spent alone with John in Nurjima.

“You’d think he would have recognized me,” Kahlil said.

“Maybe, but it couldn’t have made sense to him. To be the man he rode with on the train you’d have to be much older,” Jath’ibaye said. “It would probably be best not to complicate things with old history if it can be helped.”

“Don’t worry. Alidas and I have enough fresh history to keep us occupied,” Kahlil commented.

Jath’ibaye frowned and Kahlil went on quickly before Jath’ibaye could ask.

“I don’t know how long it will take but if it comes to the end of the week I’ll return no matter what.”

“I’ll talk to Saimura. He has friends who may be able to house you. You’ll need money and clothes as well,” Jath’ibaye said. Kahlil waited for Jath’ibaye to say something more but he was silent. Then suddenly he moved forward and wrapped his arms around Kahlil in a hard, anxious embrace.

“Be careful,” Jath’ibaye whispered into Kahlil’s ear.

Kahlil returned Jath’ibaye’s embrace. He’d been an idiot to bring up his own death. Now it was probably all Jath’ibaye would think about.

Kahlil hugged Jath’ibaye fiercely, as if he could impress his own strength and confidence upon Jath’ibaye physically. He knew he would die someday, but not now. Not for years. He wanted to say as much but knew better than to speak of it. Just as he had to trust Jath’ibaye to have the will to resist and refuse Ourath, so Jath’ibaye simply had to trust that Kahlil would come back alive.

Chapter Sixty-Eight

Nurjima hung beneath Kahlil, silent and colorless as a photograph. For a moment Kahlil simply watched the dark waters roll beneath the Blackbird Bridge. Two years ago he had looked over this same great expanse of river and had gazed out at the winding streets and densely packed buildings knowing that it was all wrong. He had known that he had failed in his duties and destroyed Nurjima’s glorious, holy future. And yet the great city had survived his failure.

This time he doubted it would. If Jath’ibaye tore open the earth, Nurjima would crumble.

Utterly unaware of how near their ruin lay, fishermen pushed their boats out into the river to begin their day’s work. Deliverymen drove their tahldi across the bridge. Bread sellers were already out on the streets. Soon the roads would be packed with carts and wagons. Clusters of women and children would press through the crowds of men on the walkways. Alidas was already riding the morning patrol of the Bousim districts.

Kahlil had already visited Alidas’ private room in the rashan’im barracks, but the captain was gone. Kahlil had left him a note explaining that he would go by Alidas’ rooms in Redbrick in the early afternoon before returning to the refuge of the Gray Space. That left Kahlil the remainder of the morning to waste as he would.

Now he stood within the cold, colorless silence of the Gray Space and watched the morning rituals of the men and women of the city. They were each so involved in their own activities—an old man picking at something in his teeth, a girl pausing a moment to catch her reflection in a shop window. Two boys stole buns from a bread seller’s cart and ran as the man caught sight of them.

None of them knew of the Great Gate, Loshai, or the Rifter. The vast powers that threatened and protected their lives were as hidden from them as the atoms that underlay their very bodies. In a way, Kahlil supposed their ignorance offered them a luxury that he had personally never known. They were free to indulge in fantasies of their own importance. If they believed in Parfir, it was as a being both too distant and omnipotent to be understood. He was beyond them. They whispered their troubles to prayer stones and imagined Parfir listening in limitless, radiant perfection. They did not want to know that their god had troubles of his own. They did not want to know that he could bleed or vomit or that he might forget their names. It would probably terrify them to see his pain and savage anger or to know that even their god struggled and suffered through life.

 Kahlil wondered what it would be like to know none of those things. Would it be bliss? Would it offer deep sleep and easily forgotten dreams? Would it offer security in petty charms and talismans? A few months ago he had been close to knowing. But that ignorance had come at the cost of his own memories. There had been no solace in the restless jumble of his identity. All he had felt then was a pervasive sense of dislocation. For him, it had been a relief to discover the truth. His purpose and place had come with that knowledge.

But he wasn’t sure how welcome the same revelation would be to Alidas. No man would want to discover that his god was on the opposing side of a war. It wasn’t so surprising that none of the gaun’im recognized Jath’ibaye as Parfir’s incarnation. They called him a demon or a profane Eastern sorcerer. But none of them would want to believe he was the Rifter.

In the deep shadows of a huge pylon, Kahlil dropped out of the Gray Space. He strolled from the bridge towards the tightly packed streets of the Redbrick District. All along the walkways he saw clusters of women sitting at simple throwing wheels, turning wet lumps of rust-red clay into delicate cups.

Stacks of glazed and fired dishes filled wooden tables. None of the women even met Kahlil’s glances. Brightly dressed sons and husbands proposed a variety of prices as Kahlil passed by. He declined with a polite smile. The deep blue suit he had borrowed from Saimura seemed to convey enough wealth to make the street sellers feel he was worth their time. More than one man followed him a little way, attempting to interest him in a variety of goods and services. Farther down on Water Street, bone vendors called to Kahlil in the same respectfully friendly tones. He glanced at their displays of carved dice and combs without much interest. The delicate knives carved from animal bones gave Kahlil a moment’s consideration. All of them were white, obviously untainted by curses. He wondered if anyone but him even knew how to curse bone blades anymore.

A merchant noticed Kahlil’s gaze and quickly picked up one of the fine white knives. He smiled and offered it to Kahlil.

“This one was carved from a Lisam bull’s thigh bone.” The balding man smiled knowingly at Kahlil. “It guarantees success with women.”

Kahlil could not restrain a laugh at the notion that he would ever want success with women. He shook his head to decline the merchant’s offer.

“But that’s no worry for a young man like you.” The merchant smoothly replaced the blade with another longer one. “But who doesn’t need a little luck with money these days?”

“True,” Kahlil agreed. “In fact, I probably couldn’t afford that knife.”

The merchant seemed about to make an offer but Kahlil cut him off.

“What about something to defeat my enemies?” Kahlil asked. He couldn’t help but wonder what the merchant would present him with.

“I’m no witch.” The merchant stiffened and narrowed his eyes piously at Kahlil. “We only deal in blessed bones here.”

“Of course,” Kahlil replied. “I was just curious.” He stepped away and crossed the street before the merchant could say anything more.

Many of the merchants displayed carved, blessed bones. All of them were in the form of knives. It amused Kahlil to look at them. Their origin as curse blades was so obvious and yet they were being sold as lucky trinkets. Kahlil couldn’t remember how many men he had killed with his own black curse blade. No doubt the mere sight of it would have horrified all these proper shopkeepers.

 As he walked on, the merchants and storefronts became more rare. The air began to thicken with the scents of animal carcasses and rendering kitchens. The tightly packed brick buildings lining the street reverberated with the noise of butchering saws. The bone talismans and fine leathers Kahlil had seen in so many store displays were no doubt being produced by the hundreds in the workhouses Kahlil now strode past. Kahlil turned and paced quickly back behind a bone carver’s shop. He stopped at the door of Alidas’ rooms.

Kahlil couldn’t help but wonder why Alidas would rent rooms in this part of the city. It was filthy and loud and so close to the gallows that Kahlil suspected that some of the bone knives could have been carved from the remains of criminals. The noise and slaughterhouse odors could disguise any number of terrible deeds. Torture came quickly to Kahlil’s mind. But he couldn’t imagine Alidas bothering to fill a torture chamber with all those books and old photographs. Nothing about the small rooms, the worn carpet or soft bed had seemed conceived with cruelty in mind. And yet the location of the rooms offered no other advantage.

 Anyone hearing of Alidas’ rooms in the Redbrick District would assume that they were used to interrogate and dispose of enemies of the Bousim family. Perhaps that was what Alidas wanted. Maybe he chose the Redbrick District because it disguised his nature.

Maybe the rent was just cheap.

When it came to Alidas, Kahlil realized that he didn’t really know much of anything. Even with everything Jath’ibaye had told him, Kahlil still couldn’t guess how Alidas would react to his news. Kahlil wasn’t even certain that Alidas would respond to the message he’d left. The last time they had spoken Alidas had warned Kahlil that he had orders to kill him. He didn’t want to contemplate what he would do if he had to fight Alidas. He knew where to attack and how the noise and filth of the Redbrick District would serve him. But he didn’t want to think like that, not about the man who had rescued him two years before.

He knocked lightly on the door. Almost immediately, Kahlil realized that the surrounding noise of saws, hammers and shouting workmen had probably drowned out such a tentative knock. He lifted his hand to try again just as Alidas opened the door. He stepped back to allow Kahlil to enter, then locked the door behind him.

“I didn’t expect you to bother to knock,” Alidas remarked.

“I don’t have a key anymore,” Kahlil replied. They both knew that a key made no difference. Kahlil could have walked right in if he had wanted to. But he owed too much respect to Alidas to trespass in such a presumptuous way.

Several silent moments passed as both of them stood in the small room, surrounded by shelves and stacks of books and Alidas’ old photos, staring at one another.

Alidas still wore his riding clothes. Road dust dulled the glossy leather of his boots. He must have come directly from the barracks, Kahlil thought. Alidas studied Kahlil openly, as if he were a new rashan at his first inspection.

“You look good. Life in the north must suit you. That is where you’ve been, isn’t it? In Mahn’illev, at least,” Alidas asked coolly.

“Mostly in Vundomu,” Kahlil answered. He had no reason to lie to Alidas.

“You seem to have gotten a very nice suit out of it,” Alidas commented. There was an almost hurt bitterness in his tone. Kahlil decided to overlook it.

“It’s borrowed,” he replied.

Alidas smiled slightly at this, as if he had expected as much.

“So, you’ve come a long way to see me,” Alidas said, “and at a bad time as well. What do you need?”

“I don’t need anything. I have information,” Kahlil said.

“It’s too late to buy your way back into the Bousim house, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Alidas shook his head and for the first time Kahlil caught a glimpse of sadness in Alidas’ expression. “I can’t help you. I’m sorry, Kyle.”

“It’s not what you think,” Kahlil said quickly. “I’m not deserting Vundomu and I’m not trying to buy my way back into your service. I’m bringing information that Jath’ibaye wants you to have, information that you need if we are to avert a war.”

Alidas considered Kahlil and then offered Kahlil a seat in one of his two chairs. Alidas himself leaned against the edge of his wooden writing desk.

“Well then,” Alidas said solemnly, “tell me what you’ve come to say.”

“The good news is that I’ve gotten my memory back,” Kahlil began.

“And the bad news?”

“I guess the bad news is who I turned out to be.”

Kahlil tried to keep things simple. But the truth wasn’t simple. Slowly, he unfolded revelation after revelation to Alidas. First there was the matter of his own identity. Alidas listened and even admitted that he had suspected something like the truth but had never known how it could be possible.

“Your face was always familiar,” Alidas remarked. “And so were your skills. I remembered them from Amura’taye, when the ushman’im and ushiri’im opened the God’s Razor on the Harvest Fair. You were too young, but you looked so much like Ushiri Ravishan.”

“I am Ravishan,” Kahlil said, “but not exactly the one you knew. I changed Basawar’s history when I sent John back from Nayeshi to Rathal’pesha. He arrived years before I even became Kahlil. You knew him as Jahn.”

“Yes, until he took the name Jath’ibaye.” Alidas’ expression darkened. “And destroyed the entire Payshmura faith.”

“If it was anyone’s right, it was his,” Kahlil replied evenly. “He is the Rifter.”

Alidas stared at Kahlil in silence. Kahlil could see Alidas’ resistance to the idea and then the slow spread of realization as he considered Jath’ibaye’s power and history. Jath’ibaye had walked out of the ruins of Rathal’pesha unscathed. He had held Vundomu against all seven of the gaun’im’s armies. Rivers rose against his enemies and the earth trembled with his rage. What could he be but the Rifter? Alidas pressed his eyes shut. Troubled creases flickered through his expression like small shocks of pain.

“The Rifter…” Alidas said softly. “All this time he’s been here. It’s no wonder no one can defeat him. But why didn’t he reveal himself?”

It was a good question and one that Kahlil had often contemplated himself. His only answer was a guess, but he gave it to Alidas anyway.

“He doesn’t want to be worshiped,” Kahlil said. “It makes him uncomfortable to think that people would obey him thoughtlessly. It’s odd, but if he weren’t the Rifter himself, I don’t think he would believe in Parfir. He’s not quite what one expects.”

“Not quite?” Alidas said.

“When you know him well it makes more sense,” Kahlil said. “The man he was on Nayeshi never had faith in religions or churches. I think he only felt reverence for the natural world. So now, even as a god, he doesn’t want temples full of worshipers or devotees bowing before him. It’s the living world that he feels is sacred and that’s what he would have people pay homage to. Not to just one man.”

“I knew him but I never even suspected.” Alidas picked up a small book that lay on his desk but didn’t open it. “How can a devotee be so near his god and never feel his presence?”

“He didn’t want to be known,” Kahlil replied. “I was his Kahlil and even I wasn’t sure until he took Vundomu. After that there could be no doubt.”

Alidas looked almost sick. Kahlil had known that learning the truth would be a terrible exertion for Alidas. But there was a resignation in Alidas’ expression that told Kahlil that he was prepared to go on. Kahlil felt suddenly proud of Alidas for this. The foundations of his faith had just been crushed beneath him and yet he was willing to accept the truth and even face further revelations.

“He changed the entire world,” Alidas said.

“Yes,” Kahlil said. He explained the way John’s presence had altered their history. How Fikiri had been destined to die but had not because John had saved him.

“Then I should have died with Fikiri as well,” Alidas said quietly.

“You were saved by Parfir’s own incarnation. If anything, that means you were destined to live,” Kahlil replied.

“And all the men of Rathal’pesha were destined to die, then?” Alidas asked.

“They brought the Rifter down upon themselves.” Kahlil heard his own voice echoing Wah’roa’s flat condemnation.

“Not all of them deserved to die,” Alidas countered. “Many were filled with faith.”

“Innocent people die,” Kahlil said. “You know that. We both do.”

“Yes, but you want to believe that it’s different in the realm of the divine.” Alidas gazed at the book in his hands. “You want to believe that Parfir will sweep down and cradle those who have served him so long and faithfully.”

“I think he would if he could,” Kahlil replied. “But even he can’t protect everyone.”

“No.” Alidas sighed heavily and set the book aside. “He would have saved his sister and brother if he could have.”

 “I think he would have saved a lot of people if he could have. But even he can’t change death once it comes.” Kahlil met Alidas’ gaze. “Look, if we don’t stop the gaun’im from going to war against the Rifter, then many more innocent people are going to die. And not just soldiers. Nurjima, and everyone in it, will certainly be destroyed in the cataclysm. Jath’ibaye has said as much himself.”

Alidas’ eyes widened in horror. Without hesitation, he asked, “What needs to be done?”

Kahlil couldn’t keep from smiling at that. This courageous pragmatism had been one of the reasons he had always found Alidas so inspiring.

“We need to find a way to remove Ourath Lisam,” Kahlil said. He described what he had seen in the gaun’im’s camp and what Ourath planned. Their conversation felt familiar and natural. Kahlil had spent two years reporting secrets and assassinations to Alidas. Kahlil relaxed back into his chair. Alidas, too, seemed to sink back into a remembered ease. As he listened to Kahlil his expression grew tranquil; he allowed himself to fall into his private habit of massaging the chronic ache of his right knee.

“Niru’mohim?” Alidas’ tone conveyed his disgust. “Only an idiot would use that stuff. I’ve seen dock whores with burn scars like ropes from using niru’mohim.”

“I don’t think Ourath cares,” Kahlil replied.

Alidas just shook his head and Kahlil went on with his report. He described the council meeting in Vundomu and the arguments of the representatives. Alidas looked a little startled suddenly.

“Wah’roa?” Alidas asked. “The kahlirash?”

“Yes,” Kahlil said. “He’s in charge of Vundomu’s defense.”

“I thought he had died,” Alidas said.

“You knew him?” Kahlil asked.

“A long, long time ago.” Alidas glanced to an old, yellowed picture. “It doesn’t matter. Go on with what happened after the council meeting.” 

 Kahlil described the events of the past two days. Alidas only interrupted him once for the details of Joulen’s promise to Hirran. After that he listened thoughtfully. At last, Kahlil came to the end of all he had to say.

“So, you do need something from me,” Alidas said. “Evidence.”

“Yes, you’ve got me there.” Kahlil offered Alidas a sheepish smile. “Will you help me?”

Alidas studied Kahlil for a moment and then sighed and said, “Yes, of course I will.”

“Can you get me the reports on Ourath’s treachery?”

“Not directly,” Alidas said. “I’m not in possession of any of your reports or those of our other sources. But I do know a man who has access.”

“If he knows where the reports are kept, then I can get them.” Kahlil flashed his best arrogant grin. “The matter might be settled by the end of the day.”

“This isn’t something you can just steal,” Alidas said. “Joulen will expect the proper seals and signatures. Otherwise you might as well hand him a stack of papers you’ve written yourself. If Joulen is going to stake his position on this, it has to be convincing. The reports must be genuine.”

“You’re right.” Kahlil frowned in annoyance. Why couldn’t this just go easily? “So, you don’t think I could find the seals or perhaps reports that have already been signed?”

“I doubt you would find anything you’d recognize.” Alidas shook his head. “Hial’luyyn keeps everything encrypted. Any report would need to be decoded before you could even know what you were looking at.”

Kahlil scowled even more deeply. He wasn’t used to coming up against obstacles that he couldn’t affect. But Alidas was right. If the evidence he needed were gibberish, then no amount of walking through walls would change that.

“So what do we do then?” Kahlil asked.

Alidas studied the piles of letters and papers on his desk. He picked up a small white card. It looked like the business card of a dining club. Alidas slipped it into his pocket. Then he glanced back to Kahlil.

“I suppose,” Alidas said at last, “that we’ll just have to go to Hial’luyyn.”

“He’s a friend?” Kahlil asked.

“He and I move in a few of the same circles.”

“Did he serve with you as a rashan?”

“No.” Alidas appeared to be unduly amused by that thought. “He and I simply know a number of the same people. We both belong to the same private club.” Alidas seemed oddly reluctant to explain how such a tenuous connection would aid them.

“That will be enough to convince him to help us?” Kahlil asked.

“He will, if we have something to offer him in exchange.”

“Such as?” Kahlil asked.

Alidas smiled in a manner that Kahlil had rarely seen. He looked rather handsome but also somewhat sinister.

“Something like what?” Kahlil asked again.

“Something like you.”

Chapter Sixty-Nine

The Domu’lam Club inhabited what had once been a Payshmura guesthouse in the wealthy Silver Row District. Like most of the shrines and chapels that had been converted after the ban of the church, this building bore few signs of its past. The golden suns and moons had been chiseled off of the masonry. The blessings that would have been carved into nearly every surface had been sanded down to minute grooves. The few embellishments that remained above the door had been painted over with glossy black enamel.

Kahlil could still feel their presence as he passed through the doorway. Familiar warmth radiated over him with a strength that belied the three decades that had passed since the blessings had last been spoken.

The entry hall of the tall, narrow building was quiet. The walls were papered with a subtle pattern of tiny gray stars. Several subdued prints of tahldi hung in simple frames. There were no signs of the prostitutes and dancing girls who usually adorned men’s clubs. Only one pallid young doorman stood there to greet them. He welcomed Alidas formally as ‘Rasho Alidas’in’Bousim’ and then glanced to Kahlil but did not ask his name.

“My guest,” Alidas supplied.

“Welcome to the Domu’lam Club, sir,” the doorman spoke softly, as if he were worried about waking someone.

“Thank you.” Kahlil kept his own voice low.

The doorman bowed slightly and then escorted them through the hall to a set of double doors that led to the rest of the building. The clink and metallic rasp of the doorman’s keys seemed unusually loud in the silence. As Kahlil followed Alidas through the heavy doors, he heard the hard noise of the lock being secured behind them.

“We like to keep the club private,” Alidas said when he noticed that Kahlil had turned back to study the locked door.

“I can see that,” Kahlil replied.

Much of the ground floor of the building seemed to be taken up with reading rooms and libraries, many of which seemed to be locked, though a few doors hung ajar. Through these openings, Kahlil caught glimpses of stacks of old books heaped beside chairs and across tables. Groups of men, young and old, sat around tables, discussing passages of text in hushed voices. The few men who noticed Kahlil’s gaze looked slightly startled but immediately relaxed when they saw Alidas.

The club’s dining room was relatively small, seating only forty or fifty men at the dark wooden tables. The chairs were all expensive and new, but none exactly matched the others. They each seemed personalized for particular occupants. Place settings had already been laid out in preparation for dinner service. As they walked past, Kahlil spotted the Bousim crest embroidered along the edge of one folded napkin, while the one next to it was decorated with the Milaun crest. Many more of the settings were emblazoned with the seals of universities. One entire table was inlaid with mother-of-pearl to spell out a scholars’ honorific. Kahlil tried to guess which of the seats belonged to Alidas. There was one that was not so deep as the others and a little higher. Kahlil thought that it would accommodate Alidas’ injured leg.

“Are we staying for dinner?” Kahlil could smell roasting meat wafting up from a kitchen somewhere in the back of the building.

“Possibly,” Alidas said, shrugging. “It depends on how long this takes.”

He led Kahlil through the dining room and down another hallway to a locked door. Kahlil wasn’t surprised to see that Alidas had a key, though he still found it odd that the club should keep so many doors locked.

Inside the room, shelves of ancient books lined the walls and there were racks for scrolls as well. The space was cramped and only lit by a single gas lamp mounted on the wall. The perfume of incense and age that hung over the books and scrolls was reminiscent of the scent of the archive rooms at Rathal’pesha.

“Have a seat if you like.” Alidas briefly laid his hand on the back of one of the chairs.

“Are we going to have to wait long for Hial’luyyn?” Kahlil asked.

“His table was already set, so he’s here,” Alidas said. “Probably he’s upstairs in his room. But I think I should speak to him alone first. This is all going to come as something of a shock to him.”

“You said that he would want me to do something.”

“No,” Alidas said, smiling. “I said that he would want you, the Kahlil. And he will. But I’m not sure he’s ready to just have you and all your revelations sprung on him at once. Let me go up and break it to him.”

“Will he believe you?” Kahlil asked.

“I’ve never lied to him,” Alidas said. “And this would be an odd way to start.”

Not knowing Hial’luyyn or Alidas’ relationship with him, Kahlil couldn’t really say if that was true or not.

“So you just want me to stay here?”

“Yes, I know it’s not in your nature to let someone else act for you, but in this case you must trust me. Hial’luyyn is an old man. We want him on our side, not dead of a heart attack. Just wait here and behave yourself.”

“Behave myself?” Kahlil asked.

“Yes.” Alidas smile faded a little. “Sometimes you seem to have a knack for trouble.”

“Not today.” Kahlil held up his hands in the sign of peace. “I’ll be good and wait.”

“All right then.” Alidas stepped back to the door. “I’m going to lock you in. It should keep most other members of the club from bothering you.”

Kahlil nodded, but he couldn’t help feeling uneasy as he listened to the sound of the deadbolt sliding into place. It shouldn’t have bothered him at all. Normally, doors and locks meant nothing to him. He could leave or enter any room at any time he liked. No prison could hold him except one that had been altered by binding rituals. As he thought of the ritual, he realized what had unnerved him. This club felt so much like a holy place. It reminded him too much of Rathal’pesha and the dark rooms where he had been helplessly confined.

Kahlil placed his hand against one of the walls and silently opened the Gray Space. There was no resistance. If he wanted he could walk out of the room at this moment.

He let the Gray Space snap closed.

He dropped back into a chair, pulled a book from the closest shelf, and flipped through the pages. It was an old book and all of the illustrations were simple engravings. It appeared to chronicle the lives of several obscure Payshmura saints. Kahlil slid it back onto the shelf and grabbed another volume. This one was a history of Jevir, the second Kahlil to unleash the Rifter. Kahlil frowned and chose a third book. This turned out to be a catalog of ancient prayers. Kahlil scanned the titles of the other books. All of them were religious texts and all of them were banned by the Gaunsho’im Council.

The volumes on the upper shelves were tattered and the spines of some were dark with scorch marks. Kahlil stood and took one of them down. He recognized it at once. It was a textbook explaining how to perform an ushman’s first blessings and curses. Kahlil held it carefully as he turned the brittle, yellow pages. Many of them were torn or obviously cobbled together with binder’s paste and tissue. Kahlil glanced at the dark leather cover and noticed the faint lines of what would once have been gold embossing. At one time the image of the Black Tower had been embossed on the scarred and damaged cover.

Kahlil gazed around the room in amazement. People had been hung for possessing just one book like this one. The gaun’im might bring back the practice of burning people alive for a collection of this size. Suddenly a few locked doors and one young doorman struck Kahlil as far too little security. He couldn’t help but wonder about the men in the club. They had to be risking their lives just to read these books.

Kahlil had encountered people who still kept the Payshmura faith. They were often older, like Alidas. Most of them owned a polished stone or kept a tiny carved sun hidden in a drawer somewhere. None of them would have dared to keep even one of these books, much less an entire library. The members of this club couldn’t have been men of ordinary faith; they had to be zealots, priests and ardent believers.

No wonder Alidas had worried about springing Kahlil on Hial’luyyn. It probably could kill a man to learn that his god—whose holy books he had been risking his life to defend—stood in opposition to almost everything in those texts. What would become of a man’s faith after such a revelation? Alidas had managed it. But Alidas was not only extraordinarily resilient but also had a streak of pragmatism that allowed him to adapt. How many of the men in this club could be the same? Kahlil didn’t think many. He guessed that most of them would rather die as martyrs to the old Payshmura faith than accept Jath’ibaye and his many heresies.

Kahlil gently returned the fragile book to its place on the shelf.

He wondered what Alidas was telling Hial’luyyn. Alidas had said that he had never lied to the man, but that wasn’t the same as always telling the truth. Kahlil wondered how much Alidas was leaving out.

Kahlil heard a key turning in the lock and then Alidas leaned in through the doorway, looking happy and relaxed.

“You can come and meet Hial’luyyn now,” he said.

Though Kahlil expected to be led upstairs, they instead returned to the dining room. It was nearly full now. With his new insight into the club’s purpose, Kahlil had expected most of the members to be Alidas’ age or older, but there were a surprising number of men in their late twenties and thirties. Many of them wore scholars’ coats and collars. Kahlil took in the interested faces of the men gathered at the tables. It obviously wasn’t common to have someone new brought into the club. They watched him with a kind of fascination that Kahlil found a little disturbing.

Alidas led Kahlil to the black table with the mother-of-pearl inlay that Kahlil had noticed earlier. The old man sitting there reminded Kahlil a little of Wah’roa. He was lean with sharp features. But where Wah’roa’s skin was tanned to a dark leather hide, Hial’luyyn’s was pale and translucent as wax. He studied Kahlil as if admiring a well-made clock.

“Lamansho Hial’luyyn’in’Jitamur.” Alidas’ voice carried easily in the hush of the room. “I present to you Kahlil Ravishan’in’Vundomu.”

Hearing Alidas say his true name and title gave Kahlil a small shock. It seemed to lay him entirely bare. Ravishan, Kahlil allied to Vundomu. Most of his life the title of Kahlil had been his secret, an identity to which he had sacrificed his birth name and all acknowledgement. Now everyone in this room knew. More than that, they now knew that he had come from Vundomu and what that implied. He served Jath’ibaye. Kahlil heard audible gasps and someone made a strange choking sound.

Hial’luyyn remained unruffled. His serene countenance reminded Kahlil of the mystics who sought wisdom through fathi. But his eyes were too focused. He was not a man lost in a dream.

“It is an honor.” Hial’luyyn bowed in his seat. The man’s words were formal and almost musically elegant. Kahlil knew his own harsh northern speech would never match Hial’luyyn’s scholarly refinement. But he couldn’t just stand there like a mute, either.

“The honor is mine as well, Lamansho Hial’luyyn.”

Hial’luyyn beamed at Kahlil as if his unlovely accent was exactly what he had expected to hear.

“Will you join me for this evening’s meal?” Hial’luyyn asked.

“Certainly.” Kahlil seated himself in the chair Hial’luyyn indicated. “Thank you.”

“Alidas,” Hial’luyyn said, “I have been presumptuous in having your seat brought to my table. I hope that you would be so kind as to indulge me.”

“It would be a pleasure.” Alidas’ words were not as elegant as Hial’luyyn’s but they were far more formal than what Kahlil was used to hearing from him. Alidas seated himself with a practiced ease.

“So.” Hial’luyyn returned his attention to Kahlil. His gaze moved intently over Kahlil’s features. “Alidas tells me that you are the Kahlil that never was.”

“I suppose you could call me that,” Kahlil replied. He wished he knew all of what Alidas had said. He stole a glance to Alidas but simply received a brief smile. He continued, “The ushman’im never wanted the common populace to know that a Kahlil was being trained. They published a denial of my existence the week that I arrived in Nurjima for my final blessings.”

“Yes, I remember that there was a great deal of controversy at the time. The Usho and ushman’im were afraid the Gaunsho’im Council would rebel at the thought of unleashing a Rifter. Perhaps rightfully so,” Hial’luyyn said. “Very few church documents concerning your existence survived the fall of the Black Tower. Three of them are in my possession. One is a portrait. You hardly look changed at all.”

“I’m older,” Kahlil said, embarrassed by the old man’s warmth. “I was only twenty when I came to the Black Tower.”

“Yes, but your eyes, your mouth, even your build are all the same. It’s like looking at a document that has come to life.”

Kahlil wasn’t sure how to respond, but he was saved from having to do so by the entrance of two serving men maneuvering a large silver cart of steaming dishes. The servants, like the doorman, were both pallid and young. They seemed a little unnatural as they swiftly and silently distributed covered dishes to the men at the tables. Once the meal had been served, the two servants withdrew. Absently, Kahlil wondered how the club members ensured the loyalty of those who served them.

The ushman’im of the Black Tower had used holy words and sacred blood to bind stubborn initiates. Though maintaining that control had required the constant chanting of an attendant. Still, the blank expressions of the servants did remind Kahlil of a bound initiate.

“I hope you are not offended, but Alidas took the liberty of choosing a meal for you,” Hial’luyyn told Kahlil. “Have you had bull’s meat before?”

“Yes,” Kahlil replied. “In Nayeshi. It is much more common there than here.”

“Really?” Hial’luyyn carefully cut his own steak into small pieces. “Bulls are common there? It must have been a strange world.”

“It was,” Kahlil agreed. “The sun was blindingly intense and the nights were blacker than you can imagine. It took me years to adjust. Almost everything there was pungent and brilliant and loud. Sometimes it overwhelmed me.”

“And the inhabitants, were they like ourselves?” Hial’luyyn inquired.

“Physically, you couldn’t tell the difference. But their languages were entirely foreign. They knew nothing of Parfir.”

“No, I theorized that they would not.” Hial’luyyn looked slightly pleased and ate another bite of his steak. “He is the god of our world, not theirs.”

Listening to Hial’luyyn, Kahlil suddenly realized that this man wasn’t the ardent priest that he had expected. He was something utterly foreign to Kahlil: a scholar.

“What of the Rifter himself?” Hial’luyyn asked. “What was he like there?”

“He wasn’t as powerful but he still affected the world. Even in Nayeshi, the plants, the soil, the water, everything seemed to feel his presence. It responded to him, but in small ways.”

“Really? That is peculiar.” Hial’luyyn set his knife and fork aside. “I think that goes a step towards proving that the world of Nayeshi is related to our own world. A cousin, if you will.”

 “Perhaps,” Kahlil replied. He had never tried to analyze Nayeshi’s relatedness to Basawar. He had simply accepted that both existed as they did by divine will.

“I think Mohimiri may be right that the two worlds were physically connected at one or more points in their ancient histories.” Alidas made this comment casually to Hial’luyyn, as if this were the kind of thing he normally spent dinner discussing. Kahlil stared at Alidas for a moment, then speared a tiny herbed dumpling with his fork and ate it.

Alidas continued, “It isn’t believable that both worlds should have the same race of people living on them by mere chance.”

“Oh yes,” Hial’luyyn replied, “I quite agree. But what is the relation? Did our race cross through a Great Gate to colonize Nayeshi? Could the reverse have occurred?”

This was not at all the conversation Kahlil had imagined having. He had been preparing to talk to a zealot, a religious fanatic. But instead Hial’luyyn was bringing up questions that Kahlil himself had never even thought of pondering. He had simply perceived Nayeshi as a divine world cloaked in mystery. He had never considered why men, or bulls for that matter, existed in both worlds and why tahldi were exclusive to Basawar and cats only existed in Nayeshi. He had just accepted it all as Parfir’s will.

He began to have the feeling that he might be the only religious fanatic in this room. As he listened to the quiet conversations of the men at the other tables, he became even more convinced. Many of them were talking about him. But they were not discussing his holy rank or how he had betrayed it. Instead, most of them seemed to be arguing about the extent of a Kahlil’s abilities. How much was myth and how much was fact? One young man had raised his voice just enough to carry his words over all the other whispers. He asserted that Nayeshi was not a real place at all but a metaphor which Payshmura mystics dreamed up while indulging in too much fathi. The Kahlil was just a divine drunk.

A deep anger flushed through Kahlil. He had risked his life to reach Nayeshi. He had nearly died returning. It was for access to the wealth and plenty of Nayeshi that Ourath was willing to risk war with the Rifter. Nayeshi was not just some deranged priest’s fantasy of women in men’s clothes and roads packed with strange machines.

Kahlil turned toward the young scholar unable—and indeed unwilling—to conceal his growing sense of indignation. The young man leaned a little closer to his dinner companions, though he didn’t lower his voice. “It’s a pity that a sentimental, old man should be taken in so easily. I almost feel embarrassed for him.” He glanced meaningfully to Alidas’ back.

Insulting Alidas brought Kahlil’s tolerance to an end. He snapped open the Gray Space between himself and the young scholar and without warning slammed his fist into the scholar’s smug face. The scholar’s head rocked back with the force of the blow and he toppled from his seat. He scrambled back to his feet, his face flushed brilliant red.

“Who did—” the young scholar began to demand but then stopped as he at last noticed Kahlil glowering at him. The rest of the men in the room had gone silent. Those who had witnessed Kahlil’s fist appear from nowhere gaped at Kahlil in shocked horror. The majority of the men, however, had seen nothing but their fellow club member’s sudden fall. They peered around in confusion. Across the table from Kahlil, Alidas shook his head ruefully.

Immediately Kahlil regretted his action. He had come here to ask a favor. Punching one of the club members was hardly going to help him in that. But Hial’luyyn’s demeanor had not changed.

“Are you all right, Tevar?” he called out to the young scholar.

“I am, sir,” the young man replied, hand still cupped to his face.

“Then I trust you can return to your seat.” Hial’luyyn gave the command with a gentle smile. Instantly, the young scholar obeyed. Hial’luyyn then returned his attention to Kahlil. His benign smile took on a hint of genuine amusement.

“I was going to ask for a demonstration of your abilities but I see that they are all that has been written of them.”

“I’m sorry I—” Kahlil began, but Hial’luyyn raised a hand to silence him.

“There’s no need to apologize.” Hial’luyyn’s voice rose over the murmurs and whispers that filled the room. “Some of the younger men here are not used to thinking of the immense conviction behind the texts that they study. A holy man of the old faith is a rarity now and some people do not know how to behave respectfully in such a presence. I hope you’ll forgive the rudeness.”

“Of course,” Kahlil replied.

“Thank you.” Hial’luyyn lowered his voice so that just Alidas and Kahlil would hear him now. “When you opened the Gray Space just now, it was so silent. After the reports I have read of Fikiri’s comings and goings, I’m quite amazed.” Hial’luyyn was again gazing at Kahlil with delighted fascination. And Kahlil realized that for Hial’luyyn he really was an ancient relic brought to life.

“It is rude to ask these things at the table, but would you do me the immense favor of reading something for me?” Hial’luyyn asked. “I know that your time is limited. You must return to Vundomu as soon as the papers you need have arrived from my office, but I would appreciate it.”

“Yes, certainly.” Kahlil felt a rush of relief. Alidas had already told Hial’luyyn everything and Hial’luyyn had already sent for the papers. Seconds before, the world could have ended in a matter of days. Now, salvation had been presented to him as if it were a common courtesy, as if it were his for the asking. Kahlil didn’t think anything in his life had been so easily achieved. It seemed unreal to him. His relief verged on joy.

“Here it is, then.” Hial’luyyn lifted a small parcel from his lap. Kahlil could see that it was a book swathed in several layers of silk.

Kahlil pushed his plate aside and took the book. The silk had not just been wrapped around it, he now saw. A finely embroidered case had been sewn for this book. Tiny pearl buttons clasped the case shut. Carefully, Kahlil removed the cloth. He stared at the book for several moments in surprise. It was not an original but an exquisitely detailed duplicate of the Nayeshi text, Dan the Milkman. The drawings had a distinctive Basawar style. The details of Dan’s clothing were much too beautiful. His milk truck had taken on a mythical appearance.

“Can you read it?” Hial’luyyn’s question came with quiet intensity.

“Certainly,” Kahlil said.

“I knew that the Kahlil would be able to read it,” Hial’luyyn said, beaming.

“I’d be happy to,” Kahlil replied.

After they had finished their meal, Kahlil read and translated the short book as well as two other partial texts from Nayeshi. Hial’luyyn often asked him to repeat lines as he took notes.

“So many of the most profound Payshmura documents were written in the holy language,” Hial’luyyn commented. “I almost despaired of ever reading them. But with these translations it should be much easier.”

“I’m glad to help,” Kahlil replied. Alidas simply leaned back against the edge of the table and looked pleased. He closed his eyes and listened as Kahlil read, first in the holy language and then in common Basawar. The younger men at the surrounding tables sat silently, straining to hear every word.

Three hours later the papers arrived from Hial’luyyn’s office. Hial’luyyn signed them and then stamped each one with the Bousim seal. After slipping them into a tough leather pouch, he handed them to Kahlil.

“Thank you,” Kahlil said.

“It is my pleasure,” Hial’luyyn replied.

“Will everything be all right here?” Kahlil asked Alidas. “The man I hit—”

“Tevar?” Alidas smirked at the name. “That was probably the best thing that has ever happened to him. Don’t worry. Even if Tevar did take offense, Hial’luyyn could silence him with a word.”

Kahlil nodded. It followed that Hial’luyyn, a spymaster for the Bousim house, would know how to guard his own secrets. Kahlil wondered briefly what word it was that Hial’luyyn could use to silence Tevar. Was it an ancient binding spell from the Payshmura texts or some Eastern ritual, which Hial’luyyn had painstakingly translated?

Kahlil bowed to Alidas. “I must go now, but I wanted you to know that I’m in your debt.”

He raised his hands in the Payshmura sign of peace. Alidas nodded and returned his gesture, though slowly, as though his fingers had not formed the sign in years. 

“If I ever show up at your door, put me up for the night, all right?” Alidas asked the question lightly but Kahlil knew him well enough to answer seriously.

“You will always be welcome,” Kahlil assured him.

Out of habit, he considered waiting until he’d exited the dining room to vanish into the Gray Space but saw in Alidas a certain anticipation building. Of all the men in the room, only Alidas had seen Kahlil’s real skills. And everyone already knew who he was anyway. He might as well show off a little, for Alidas’ sake. He opened the Gray Space and stepped inside.

He paused for one brief instant, surveying the shocked expressions on the faces of the men of the Domu’lam Club. Then he moved away, through the club walls and out of the city.

It astounded him that everything had gone so well and so easily. For all of the skills he possessed, the Unseen Edge, the Silence Knife, all he had really called upon was his friendship with Alidas. The thought offered Kahlil a reassurance that life was not always hard or cruel. Sometimes it could be miraculously kind.

Chapter Seventy

Two hours later Kahlil stood at the window of his room in the kahlilrash’im’s barracks, watching banks of dark clouds roll in from the distant north. Both Jath’ibaye and Hirran had arrived late and inconspicuously dressed. After Kahlil had presented them with the papers from Nurjima, the two of them had set about reading through them in silent intensity. In just over an hour they’d both read through every page and sorted the reports into a timeline of Ourath’s treachery. Neat piles of crisp pages were spread across Kahlil’s wooden table. Hirran’s face looked almost luminous with joy. But Kahlil noted that Jath’ibaye’s countenance had turned grim.

Outside his window, a fine rain began to fall and lightning crackled.

“No,” Jath’ibaye said softly, “it won’t work.”

Kahlil glanced to him. Jath’ibaye scowled down at a single page with Ourath’s name written clearly across it.

“What do you mean? Of course it will!” Hirran eyed Jath’ibaye. “Joulen asked for evidence and this is it. Ourath Lisam is clearly indicated time and time again as a conspirator against the interests of the Gaunsho’im Council. Three of these reports show that he was behind the attempted assassination at the Bell Dance. Just these three could send the gaun’im packing.”

“If they got to the rest of the gaun’im,” Jath’ibaye replied.

“Joulen swore that they would,” Hirran insisted.

“Yes, but Joulen’s authority comes from his uncle, Nivoun,” Jath’ibaye said.

“Nivoun can’t object to these papers. They’re from his own house. Even he will have to—”

“Not if he is also in league with Fikiri,” Jath’ibaye snapped. Kahlil felt a jolt at the thought of that.

“What do you mean?” Hirran looked startled.

“Here.” Jath’ibaye picked up one of the pages and handed it to Hirran. Frowning intently, she scanned the page.

“It says nothing of Nivoun here,” Hirran said.

“The agent didn’t recognize him well enough to name him,” Jath’ibaye replied.

“But you do?” Hirran demanded.

“I know things that the agent didn’t. He reports here that Ourath thanked a hidden man for the Tah’iss texts. Ourath got those books from Nivoun Bousim. He told me so himself. The hidden member of the group, the man who introduced the others to Fikiri, is Nivoun.” Jath’ibaye scowled. “I should have realized that Fikiri would have sought out an ally here in the north as well as in Nurjima.”

“So what if Nivoun is involved?” Hirran asked suddenly. “I say we give the evidence to Joulen and—”

“And then he will present it to his uncle, Nivoun, who will either dismiss it as rubbish or see to it that Joulen has an unpleasant accident.” Jath’ibaye collected several pages and straightened them.

“What if we tell Joulen that his uncle is involved?” Hirran asked.

“And what would Joulen do then?” Jath’ibaye asked. “Even if he believed us, Joulen wouldn’t have the authority to take action. He can’t bring charges against Ourath without Nivoun’s authority. How is he supposed to start legal proceedings without Nivoun?”

Hirran sagged visibly. Kahlil watched the northern sky illuminate with sheets of lightning. Jath’ibaye was as frustrated as Hirran. Kahlil frowned out at the storm. They had been so close to success.

“What if we took these reports to another of the gaun houses?” Hirran asked.

“You think they’d just accept evidence presented to them by their Fai’daum enemies?” Jath’ibaye asked.

“They could confirm the authenticity…” Hirran trailed off as she realized whom they would turn to for confirmation of the authenticity of any document from the Bousim house. Nivoun Bousim.

“If we had more time…” Jath’ibaye began but didn’t bother to go on. They didn’t have more time. They only had a few days. “I’m sorry, Hirran.”

Hirran bowed her head into her hands and Kahlil thought that she might be crying. He looked back out at the churning storm clouds while Hirran wiped her face and then straightened.

“What about Ji?” Hirran asked. “Has she had any luck?”

“Some,” Jath’ibaye said, but he didn’t sound hopeful.

Kahlil scowled at the white pages that littered the table. He had been so pleased with himself when he had brought them back. The ease of obtaining them had overjoyed him. It had filled him with a giddy optimism, an almost childlike sense that the world was on his side. Everything would be all right.

 Kahlil silently cursed Nivoun. He hardly knew the man, but at this moment Kahlil hated him with a passion. He wished he could just kill Nivoun and remove this obstacle. But that would ensure a war. If only Nivoun would just drop dead on his own. If only he and Ourath would both fall into a pit and break their necks. Then no one could blame Jath’ibaye for the deaths.

Kahlil paused for a moment to think, not just fantasize. What if he could arrange for Nivoun and Ourath to remove each other? Then these reports might still be put to use. There would have to be more evidence. He would need a weapon that couldn’t be traced back to Vundomu. Already, Kahlil’s thoughts worked over the details of the execution. The blood would be tricky. His timing would need to be perfect.

“I think we can still bring Ourath down.” Kahlil looked to Jath’ibaye. “But I need to know some things about him, about his preferences. I’ll need you to get into his rooms.”

Jath’ibaye didn’t seem pleased by Kahlil’s sudden announcement but said, “I’ll get whatever you need.”

“What are you thinking?” Hirran asked Kahlil.

“I’m thinking that we’ve been too honest and too kind to our enemies,” he replied.

Jath’ibaye nodded just slightly, as if he already knew that it would come to murder.

It would have been relieving, even uplifting, if this one victory had come easily. But Kahlil had not lived a life of easy success gained through great social connections. His strength and skill lay in violence and always would.

Chapter Seventy-One

Kahlil turned the small pistol over in his hands. It looked absurdly beautiful. Engraved bulls charged over the silver filigree of the barrel. Delicate, curling initials had been etched into the casings of the silver bullets. Kahlil carefully loaded one after another into the chamber. The gun felt heavy but looked sleek. Even in the Gray Space, light gleamed along its edges. The gun seemed almost too attractive to function, but Jath’ibaye had assured him that it shot straight and smoothly. 

Kahlil peered down the sight, taking aim at the side of Nivoun’s face. It wasn’t much of a challenge. Nivoun sat only a foot from where Kahlil stood. Nivoun resembled his son, Nanvess, strongly. He bore the same delicate features, even the same slightly upturned lips, which gave the impression of a smile where there was none. But he was older. Streaks of gray shot through his braided black hair like ribbons. Deep wrinkles cut across his brow and creased the corners of his mouth. Nivoun shifted in his seat. He picked up a supply request from his desk and read it over. Eventually, he signed the document and added his seal to the bottom.

Kahlil moved to the left and took aim again from the new angle. The shot wasn’t quite clear. The bronze figurine of a young woman shielded much of Nivoun’s bowed head. Kahlil moved again.

As the morning progressed, Nivoun worked through the stacks of papers and letters piled on his desk. More than once he glanced to the empty chair where his secretary should have been seated. Today the secretary was in his own room, feeling sick. One of Besh’anya’s potions had ensured that he would remain ill for the entire day.

Kahlil circled the desk, mapping out his best shots. Again and again he took aim at Nivoun and then checked his surroundings. He had to be careful of the windows. They were wide and offered several nearby buildings a view of much of the room. Fortunately, Nivoun had chosen a room on the third floor of Gin’yu’s guesthouse. Most of the surrounding buildings were only two stories high.

The cumbersome carved furniture that filled the room was both an advantage and a problem. Huge bookshelves offered Kahlil cover, but the iron studs and thick wood troubled him. The legs of the chairs were so sturdy that they reminded Kahlil of ship timbers. He wondered if the wood was thick enough to stop a bullet. With a small handgun like this one, there was a definite possibility that it could. He couldn’t waste his one shot on a piece of furniture. As soon as the guards outside heard the report of a gun they would come rushing in. That meant he had one chance.

The door opened. One of the guards allowed Pesha into the room and then closed the door behind him. Pesha was dressed in the quilted clothes of a common street runner and a bulging courier’s satchel was slung across her chest. In one hand she casually held the leather pouch that Hial’luyyn had given Kahlil. Nivoun frowned at the pouch. No doubt, he was recognizing the Bousim crest embossed into its surface.

Kahlil could hear nothing of the words that were exchanged, but he knew what Pesha was saying. He’d tutored Pesha in exactly what to say. He was surprised at how well Pesha acted. As she told Nivoun that the package had come from Ourath Lisam, Pesha’s gaze lingered on a pretty figurine on Nivoun’s desk. Pesha looked far more interested in the gleaming bronze than her apparent work. There was something inherently believable about her air of unconcerned distraction.

Nivoun took the leather pouch and dismissed her. He closed the door firmly the moment Pesha was out of the room. Kahlil watched Nivoun’s features as he pulled out the pages of evidence and slowly read through them. Even from the Gray Space, Kahlil could see Nivoun go pale. An expression of growing horror spread across his face. Halfway through one of the reports, Nivoun suddenly strode to the windows and pulled the curtains closed. He collapsed back into his chair and continued reading. After he finished, Nivoun simply sat in his chair staring at the far wall.

Then, in a sudden burst of energy, he gathered the pages and stuffed them back into the pouch. He stood and paced around his desk, glancing again and again at the leather pouch. He had to be wondering what Ourath had meant by sending this to him. How had Ourath gotten his hands on these reports? Why hadn’t he destroyed them?

Kahlil moved close to Nivoun, keeping pace beside him. Now everything depended on what Nivoun would do. If he were the kind of man who waited, then Kahlil would have to force the situation. But Kahlil was betting that Nivoun would not allow events to simply unfold. He would act. He was, after all, a man who plotted assassinations and planned to seize power over two worlds.

Nivoun went to the door and shouted out to the two rashan’im standing guard. Kahlil watched his lips form Ourath’s name and demand that he be brought at once. Nivoun slammed the door shut. Kahlil smiled to himself.

Nearly two hours passed. Nivoun paced. He sent his lunch away untouched.

Ourath arrived looking impeccably groomed and annoyed. A boyishly pretty secretary trailed behind him, as did two guards. Kahlil didn’t like having so many people in the room and neither did Nivoun. He snapped something at the secretary and the young man flushed. Almost immediately Ourath sent his attendants away.

As soon as the door was shut, Nivoun hurled the leather pouch to Ourath. Kahlil watched as Nivoun demanded to know what the meaning of it was. Nivoun’s face was dark and Kahlil knew his voice was raised enough to carry through the door. The guards outside would know something was wrong. They would hear an argument brewing.

Ourath opened the parcel. He read a few lines and then looked up at Nivoun in outrage.

Kahlil’s pulse raced. He cocked the pistol and stepped out of the Gray Space. The heat of the room surged over him. Ourath’s voice roared in his ears.

“How dare you—” Ourath demanded of Nivoun. Then he went suddenly silent as Kahlil appeared almost on top of him.

Nivoun opened his mouth, began to call for his guards, and Kahlil fired the pistol. Nivoun’s head rocked back. A gush of scarlet blood sprayed up from his forehead. He stumbled on his feet and then hit the floor. A breathless gasp escaped Ourath.

Kahlil dropped the pistol and threw himself back into the cold silence of the Gray Space.

The guards came through the door instantly. Nivoun lay on the floor, dead but still bleeding. Ourath stood staring in horror, spattered in Nivoun’s blood. His pistol lay at his feet. The guards seized Ourath. He offered them little resistance. His face was white with shock. He still gripped the leather pouch in one hand. One of the many pages declaring him a traitor had fallen to the floor where Nivoun’s blood began to soak through its white surface.

Joulen arrived minutes later. His expression was both sickened and lost as he knelt beside his uncle’s body.

Kahlil watched Joulen’s face as Joulen noticed the blood-stained page on the floor. In accordance with their plan, Hirran had already informed Joulen that she had sent the evidence against Ourath to Nivoun. Joulen caught sight of the pouch Ourath held. His sorrow contorted into raw fury as he tore the leather pouch from the other man’s hand. Joulen dropped one hand to the holster at his hip, pulled out his gun, and aimed it at Ourath’s face. For a moment, Kahlil thought that Joulen might shoot. Instead, Joulen holstered his weapon and turned away. He ordered the guards to shackle Ourath and remove him.

After the guards had gone, Joulen knelt back down beside his uncle’s body. He bowed over the old man and wept.

Kahlil left him his privacy.

•••

Kahlil hunched under the water spigot, scrubbing at the dark brown spatters of dried blood. The water was almost steaming hot, but he still felt cold. A slight tremor passed through his hands as he brushed the soap into a lather and washed his hair. He thought he might vomit. The feeling passed.

This happened sometimes, after he had killed a man. When he was a boy it had been far worse. Now, this sick self-revulsion rarely came over him. It never lasted long.

Kahlil closed his eyes and rinsed the soap from his hair. The image of Joulen bowed in grief came vividly into his mind’s eye.

He hadn’t wanted to witness that. Kahlil had known, watching Joulen sink to the floor, seeing the way Joulen’s hands touched Nivoun’s body with such tenderness, that he would be sick with himself.

He did not regret killing Nivoun. Nivoun had needed killing.

Kahlil regretted the pain that Joulen had to suffer. The thought of mourners always disturbed Kahlil. He knew what they felt. The shock. The desolation. Their grief resonated through him. Kahlil usually went to pains not to witness the aftermath of his murders. But this time he had needed to be sure that Ourath was accused of the killing.

Another unwanted image flickered through his mind: his little sister screaming as the black smoke of their mother’s witch’s pyre rolled up before her. Rousma had screamed as though she had been in that fire herself. She had shrieked like she was dying, but the murder of their mother had saved her life. It had saved his life.

At times like this that knowledge did not console him. If he were honest with himself, it had never consoled him.

At times like this, he wondered if it would have been better if they had all died that day, so that his father, his mother, Rousma and him could all be cradled in the arms of Parfir together.

There was a little song that the street girls used to sing in Amura’taye.

No one likes the butcher

No one likes the hunter

No one likes the man

With blood on his hands

He did not remember the rest of the song. But he recalled, even as a youth, thinking that people might not like a butcher but they still wanted to eat their meat. It was work someone had to do. It was work that took courage to do, because it was hateful and it left a man feeling ugly. But it had to be done; and it had to be done right.

Kahlil had done his work right. Neither Nivoun nor Ourath could now threaten Vundomu. All of the people of Nurjima would be saved because he’d had the strength to get blood on his hands. He could be proud of that. He had to be proud of that.

He stood and stepped out of the bath. The tremors that had shaken him so badly were nearly gone. Kahlil toweled his hair to a damp mass. His face looked pale in the shaving mirror.

He dressed. The clothes were new. They smelled of nothing and felt stiff in his hands. His old clothes were now ashes in the fireplace of the adjoining bedroom.

The bedroom was cold, the fire having died out completely. He must have lost track of time. He sat down on the bed. The room Wah’roa had given him was more spacious than most in the kahlirash’im’s barracks, but it was still simple and unassuming with its bare, gray stone walls. A writing table and shelf had been crammed close together in the far corner like decorations that no one was ever expected to use. The old botanical tome that Kahlil had been translating sat alone on the shelf.

Translation: there was work that didn’t leave a wake of orphans and widows. Of course, it was also work that in no way suited Kahlil. It bored him. He could only translate a page before his thoughts wandered and he began to long for something else to do. As a rule he approached it like a kind of penance. When he knew he had done something wrong he worked on it. The last time he had gotten more than a few pages done had been after he had infuriated Jath’ibaye by disappearing off to the northern chasm.

Kahlil stared at the book. No, he didn’t feel that guilty. In fact, he didn’t feel guilty at all. He just felt sad that a lying traitor like Nivoun still had people who cared for him. He wondered suddenly who would mourn Ourath. He had wives and children. Would they feel the same deep loss that Kahlil had felt when his own parents had been killed?

Would Jath’ibaye mourn? Kahlil hated to think that he would. Kahlil stood and walked to the window, trying to read Jath’ibaye’s reaction to Ourath’s death in the sky. A few faint white clouds clung to the horizon, telling him nothing.

Ourath didn’t deserve Jath’ibaye’s sympathy. He had betrayed Jath’ibaye unforgivably. He had planned the ruin of Vundomu and risked the destruction of all of Basawar. There should be parades and celebrations to mark Ourath’s death. Kahlil couldn’t help but imagine himself riding through the streets of Nurjima, hearing the joyous roar of the surrounding crowds cheering him for saving the whole world.

He had ridden into Vundomu like that once.

Kahlil smirked slightly at his own fantasy. In reality, he had been incredibly uncomfortable when the crowds of priests and kahlirash’im thronged around him in open worship. He had been overwhelmed by the walls of strangers who shouted his name. He had hated how their admiration had taken Jahn from his side.

Outside, the sinking sun began to streak the sky with gold and orange. Ranks of kahlirash’im filed into the big, brick dining hall. Kahlil supposed that he should join them. His nausea had long since passed and he was beginning to feel hungry. He wondered what would be served and hoped it wasn’t dog.

There was a knock at his door. Kahlil guessed that it was Pesha coming to get him for dinner. Kahlil strode across the room and opened the door. Jath’ibaye stood with a heavy tray of covered dishes in one hand.

“I thought you’d be hungry,” he said.

“I am.” Kahlil stepped aside to allow him in. “If I had known you’d be delivering it, I’d have called for room service earlier.”

“Well, you know, I can always use the tips.” Jath’ibaye set the tray down on the writing desk. He turned back to Kahlil. “Joulen presented the evidence to the leaders of the other gaun’im’s armies.”

“Already?” Kahlil asked.

“He has the authority to do so now that he’s inherited Nivoun’s position,” Jath’ibaye said. “They found Ourath guilty of murder and treason. Joulen executed him about an hour ago.”

“How did that go?” Kahlil asked.

“Fast,” Jath’ibaye replied. “Joulen’s a good shot.”

Kahlil nodded. He had expected more distress in Jath’ibaye’s voice, more sorrow in his expression.

“I thought it would be worse than it was,” Jath’ibaye said after a few moments. “It’s funny. I almost feel guilty for being so relieved that he’s dead.”

“You shouldn’t feel guilty for anything.”

“I don’t, really. I’m relieved that you did what I couldn’t do. You saved countless lives today.” Jath’ibaye frowned down at his own hands. “I don’t always express myself all that well…particularly not when it’s something that I feel strongly about.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed that.” Kahlil smirked at Jath’ibaye’s understatement.

Jath’ibaye offered him a wry smile in response.

“Well, today I want to make sure that you know that I’m proud of you and I’m incredibly thankful that you are here with me. I wouldn’t—I don’t want…anyone else.” Jath’ibaye lapsed into a sheepish quiet.

“You said it well enough.” Kahlil felt his cheeks warming. This was all the parade he could have wanted, Jath’ibaye standing before him with such open admiration and affection in his expression.

Kahlil stepped closer to Jath’ibaye and began unbuttoning his shirt. The tension melted from Jath’ibaye. He kissed Kahlil deeply.

The food could wait.

Chapter Seventy-Two

The gaun’im’s withdrawal reminded Kahlil of an awkward apology. Everyone involved wanted it over with quickly. The forces, which had so dramatically converged on Vundomu, now hurried away in disorderly regiments. No banners flew. Some rashan’im didn’t even bother with formal formations. They simply packed and rode for the ships that would carry them downriver.

Kahlil watched the steady stream of departures from his vantage point in Jath’ibaye’s watchtower at the height of Vundomu. He focused his telescope on the road south of Mahn’illev. A convoy of Milaun supply wagons came to a sudden halt. Two of the tahldi had become tangled. The driver jumped down and went to straighten the harnesses. He shouted angrily. Anyyd riders filed past the man. None of them offered any assistance. They were all far too demoralized to care about a Milaun supply wagon.

The gaun’im’s armies had come as a unified force, bent on avenging their own, and then they had discovered that it was their own who had betrayed them. Ourath, Nanvess, and Esh’illan had plotted an assassination and died for it. There was no honor or justice in avenging them and certainly no grounds to demand compensation. That knowledge had destroyed more than the gaun’im’s cause. It now fueled the petty rivalries and grudges that they had attempted to put aside. No doubt, many of them would have preferred to remain ignorant and justified. Now they looked like fools. And they could only blame themselves.

 Small squabbles regularly broke out between the retreating ranks of the rashan’im. The clashes were particularly violent between the Lisam riders and those from the Bousim house. Their usual rivalry was blossoming into outright hatred. More than once the kahlirash’im had to intervene to avert bloodshed.

Oddly, there were very few transgressions against the people of Vundomu or any of the surrounding river towns. The gaun’im’s armies seemed almost too embarrassed to involve themselves with even cursory looting.

“It’s nice to see so much dissent among our enemies.” Kahlil glanced from the telescope to Jath’ibaye.

“It’s just good to see their backs,” Jath’ibaye replied.

“Particularly with each other’s knives in them,” Kahlil added.

Jath’ibaye smiled in response.

“Do you think things will have settled down by the Bell Dance next year?” Kahlil asked.

“Why? Are you hoping I’ll take you?”

“Well, the last one I attended went so well…”

“Yes. It went so well that I doubt either of us will be attending another for a few decades, at least,” Jath’ibaye said.

“Decades? You really think it will take that long for the gaun’im to accept you again?”

“No, they’re too greedy for iron,” Jath’ibaye said. “But it might take that long before I’m willing to attend another of their social functions.”

“At least you have an excuse for declining now. Before, it probably just seemed like you were some kind of a stick-in-the-mud.”

“Stick-in-the-mud,” Jath’ibaye repeated. “You remember the oddest phrases.”

Jath’ibaye gazed thoughtfully out the wide window. Kahlil returned to his study of the stranded Milaun supply wagon. The driver appeared to be hurling filthy rags at the Anyyd riders as they passed by. Kahlil guessed there would be another fight soon.

“I couldn’t have imagined that we would find a peaceful way out of this,” Jath’ibaye said.

“Peaceful for us,” Kahlil commented. “I think this Milaun boy is going to get his head knocked in.”

Jath’ibaye gazed out over the scene, then asked, “Is that underwear he’s throwing?”

“Don’t know. I can’t make it out,” Kahlil replied. “If it is, where did he get it all?”

“No idea.” Then after a moment, he offered, “Maybe he’s the launderer for the Milaun camp.”

“All of them? No wonder he’s so blithe about throwing his life away.” Kahlil set the telescope aside.

Jath’ibaye leaned out the window, closed his eyes, and drew in a deep breath of the warm spring air. Kahlil couldn’t remember the last time he had seen Jath’ibaye simply enjoy a breeze. For the last week Jath’ibaye had closely controlled the weather, balancing the need for future crops with the threat of hungry bones in the north. He had manipulated the wind, humidity and cloud cover so intensely that Kahlil had almost forgotten that Jath’ibaye could let the weather do as it would. Watching Jath’ibaye now, Kahlil remembered how much John had loved the feel of wind on his skin.

Kahlil wanted to relax as well, but he didn’t trust the sense of relief that pervaded him. Though the gaun’im might be leaving, Fikiri and Loshai remained, and as long as they lived, Kahlil’s work was unfinished.

He turned to the northern windows of the watchtower. The hungry bones would be hunting soon.

Jath’ibaye glanced up at him. He frowned as he noticed the direction of Kahlil’s attention.

“I need to practice moving through the Gray Space north of the Greenhills District,” Kahlil said. “The last time I tried to follow Fikiri he lost me out there.”

“You don’t have to…” Jath’ibaye began but then stopped himself, studying the northern horizon.

“I must do this,” Kahlil said. He expected an argument.

“I’ll go with you.” Jath’ibaye suddenly looked tired again.

Kahlil felt like an ass for ruining Jath’ibaye’s carefree mood. But they couldn’t allow victory on one front to lull them into a sense of safety while the other front still plotted their doom. Once Fikiri and Loshai were dead, they could enjoy spring breezes.

Kahlil said, “I’ll get my coat.”

Chapter Seventy-Three

At the northern tip of the Greenhills District, the Gray Space was thick and damaged. Scarred. The farther north Kahlil went, the worse it grew. The Gray Space here had a dense, ropey texture that resisted his passage. Other areas folded over the landscape, distorting Kahlil’s view as if he was looking at it through warped glass.

A mile from the white edge of the northern chasm, Kahlil discovered another phenomenon. Each time he attempted to move forward through a particular patch of the Gray Space, it tossed him back twenty yards to the left. The motion sickened and disoriented him. Kahlil remembered it from the time he had attempted to follow Fikiri from Nurjima.

Kahlil studied the patch of the Gray Space. It hung in front of him, severed from the rest. As he moved around this thin, dark irregularity, he watched how the colorless world outside distorted. The irregularity was two fingers wide. It was as if someone had taken a narrow slice of the hills just to Kahlil’s left and pasted it over the snow-flecked plain in front of him.

He could see a section of the abandoned stone path that he and Jath’ibaye had passed by earlier. Tough spring weeds edged the broken flagstones. Jath’ibaye stepped into Kahlil’s view. He followed the path down the hill, passing out of the glimpse afforded by the fragment in the Gray Space.

Kahlil looked back to where Jath’ibaye approached. Jath’ibaye searched the Gray Space. Every day for last six days Jath’ibaye had tracked him down and brought him lunch. Perhaps it was an excuse just to make sure that Kahlil was still alive, but Kahlil appreciated both the company and the food. Today, Jath’ibaye only carried a rifle.

 Kahlil stepped into the distortion. For a sickening instant he felt his body whip back. He dropped out of the Gray Space a few yards behind Jath’ibaye. Jath’ibaye instantly spun on him. A hard look flickered over his features, then disappeared.

“I could have sworn that you were up ahead of me,” Jath’ibaye said.

“I was.” Outside the Gray Space, the sun shone bright. The air felt hot. The few thin crusts of snow that remained on the ground glistened with beads of water as if they were sweating. “The Gray Space here has displaced patches. Almost like windows. They jump from one spot to another. I’m working out how to use them.”

Kahlil strolled down the path towards Jath’ibaye. A warm breeze rolled over him and he could feel the sun on his face. After so long in the Gray Space, the fresh moving air felt cleansing.

“How’s the planting going?” Kahlil asked.

“Good. The ground is warm enough to till.” Jath’ibaye closed the remaining distance between them. His eyes lingered on Kahlil’s neck. “You’re cut.”

“I hit a rough spot earlier. I had to force my way through.” Kahlil was beginning to see why Fikiri moved through the Gray Space the way he did. “I got a couple scratches. Nothing bad.”

Kahlil moved close to Jath’ibaye so that their shoulders brushed against each other. Jath’ibaye touched his hand lightly.

“No lunch?” Kahlil asked.

“I thought we should eat back at the Greenhills watchtower.” Jath’ibaye studied the distant white strand of the northern chasm. “Hungry bones will be waking soon and the district guards are testing the new landmines today. I don’t imagine it’ll be particularly peaceful out here.”

Kahlil disliked the fields of mines that surrounded the northern front of the Greenhills District. In his youth, those same fields had been filled with golden taye. Minefields seemed like a terrible misuse of the land. When the people of the Greenhills District no longer had to protect themselves from hungry bones he’d be happy to see them again fertile, though he had no idea how they were going to remove all the landmines.

As soon as he had the thought, he knew the solution. Jath’ibaye would do it, of course. Probably using something like a shovel.

“Anyway,” Jath’ibaye said, “Ji thinks she may have worked something out with the yasi’halaun, but she will need more of my blood to test it.”

He lifted his arm, displaying his bandaged wrist. The fact that Jath’ibaye’s wounds always healed quickly and mostly perfectly didn’t make the sight of them less disturbing for Kahlil.

They followed the broken path back to the narrow dirt roads that the men and women of the Greenhills District used. Low stone walls lined the roads, creating a patchwork of crumbling old bricks, new black iron, and stone.

They walked close and at an easy pace. Jath’ibaye wasn’t in a hurry to return to the Greenhills watchtower. Kahlil paused to study the collapsed remains of a cottage. It had to have been abandoned decades ago. The cracked weasel hutches now sheltered dozens of birds’ nests.

“Blackwing flycatchers,” Jath’ibaye said.

“It’s amazing that anything lives out here,” Kahlil said.

Just ahead of them the weedy plains gave way to open fields. Row after row of small white flags and earthen mounds filled the fields for miles. The flags designated newly laid mines. The only irregularities in the fields were random, blackened craters. Powdered ash and pieces of pale bone stood out starkly against the scorched soil. There used to be small farms all across these lands.

Now the inhabitants of Greenhills lived behind huge walls and kept vigil from their watchtowers. Kahlil looked up to the south. Even at this distance, the watchtower wall looked huge. Heavy guns and godhammers stood out from the red walls like black spines. Kahlil noticed a flash of reflected light from a telescope lens. Guards always stood ready at the watchtower waiting for movements from the north.

Kahlil waved.

“Making a new friend?” Jath’ibaye asked.

“Maybe.” Kahlil wondered what kind of people chose to remain in the Greenhills District. He knew that many did not. Most of the people he’d met at the Greenhills watchtower were older. Perhaps they had faced worse odds in the first years of Vundomu. Perhaps they were just too stubborn to move.

Jath’ibaye began walking again and Kahlil strode next to him.

“Hirran arrived today,” Jath’ibaye said.

Kahlil accepted the new subject without concern. Jath’ibaye was not a fluid or subtle conversationalist.

“She wants me to attend Nivoun’s funeral in the Bousim lands,” Jath’ibaye added.

“She probably wants you to show your support for Joulen. I think she has far-reaching plans for that unsuspecting fellow.”

Jath’ibaye nodded but didn’t say anything.

“But you’re worried about the hungry bones and about leaving when you know Fikiri could still attack,” Kahlil told him.

Jath’ibaye gave a slight nod.

“We should see what Ji has managed to come up with. We may be able to deal with the hungry bones and still allow you to go,” Kahlil said.

Again Jath’ibaye nodded, though more reluctantly than previously.

“Your presence at Joulen’s request would help to cement his authority. If you can go, you should.” Kahlil watched Jath’ibaye’s profile for any kind of telltale nod or headshake however minute. None came. “You don’t want to go, do you?”

 Jath’ibaye smiled a little as if appreciating a private joke.

“What?” Kahlil asked.

“You’re so easy to talk to,” Jath’ibaye said.

“I’m easy to not talk to,” Kahlil offered, since Jath’ibaye hadn’t really said much at all.

“That too,” Jath’ibaye agreed. He seemed to be studying the tall, red wall ahead of them. They were close enough now that Kahlil could see two figures moving between the gun turrets that lined the top of the wall. A woman in scarlet strolled beside an angular, older man. It had to be Hirran and Tai’yu.

Hirran ducked under the barrel of a heavy gun. Catching sight of Kahlil, she waved. He returned the gesture.

 Jath’ibaye turned off the main road and onto a side path that ran parallel to the Greenhills wall. Kahlil followed. The new path was sunken and so narrow that Kahlil had to walk behind Jath’ibaye. A low wall ran alongside, giving it the feeling of a trench.

“So is there anything I left out?” Kahlil asked.

“I hate these kinds of things.”

“Funerals or state functions?” Kahlil asked. Then he added, “Or days that people test land mines?”

“I’d be hard pressed to say which I hate most,” Jath’ibaye said. “Funerals, I suppose.”

“I can’t imagine that you’d be expected to do more than stand there looking somber,” Kahlil said. “You do that all the time. There will be nothing to it.”

Jath’ibaye stopped and looked back at him.

“I do not just stand around looking somber,” Jath’ibaye said. “I also wander around looking somber.”

Kahlil laughed and said, “Maybe Hirran can tether you to a spot.”

“Maybe,” Jath’ibaye said. “Could you come with me?”

“Possibly.” Kahlil’s attention strayed as they passed a crumbling section of stone wall. Pieces of bone jutted from it like shrapnel. Kahlil thought he heard hissing voices rising from the bone fragments.

“You don’t want to?” Jath’ibaye asked.

“What? No, I’d like to be with you,” Kahlil said. “I’m somewhat nervous about Joulen Bousim seeing me right away.”

Jath’ibaye shot him a questioning glance.

“He noticed me when I was spying in Ourath’s tent. Only for a moment, but I’d like there to be more time before he sees me again,” Kahlil said.

“You shouldn’t come then.” Jath’ibaye stepped closer to Kahlil. “Let’s not go back to the watchtower. We could spend the day away from everyone else.” Leaning forward, Jath’ibaye kissed the side of Kahlil’s neck and then his lips.

Kahlil’s initial flush of embarrassment ignited into a rush of desire. He slipped his hands inside Jath’ibaye’s coat and traced the lines of his body. He unbuttoned the top of Jath’ibaye’s shirt. Jath’ibaye’s skin was hot. His heartbeat quickened under Kahlil’s touch.

“If you lean back against the wall—”

The rest of Jath’ibaye’s whispered proposal was interrupted by shouts of, “Clear the field! Clear the field!”

Kahlil and Jath’ibaye both turned to look.

A group of heavily bundled men and women came running over the slight hill and threw themselves over the low wall onto the path. An instant later, a low muffled explosion sounded and a geyser of dirt kicked up into the air. Heavy clods plunged directly back to the ground. A spray of fine grit and dust rose on the wind and blew over both Kahlil and Jath’ibaye.

“Did I mention that they would be testing the new mines today?” Jath’ibaye asked.

“Yes, I recall now that you did,” Kahlil said.

Kahlil glanced to the group of men and women crouching behind the wall. Several of them returned his gaze with expressions of confusion and surprise. His and Jath’ibaye’s embrace was clearly not the sort of sight they expected to encounter on the narrow roads between their cratered minefields.

“Maybe we should keep moving,” Kahlil suggested.

Jath’ibaye nodded. He looked to the group of men and women.

“Anything up ahead we should know about?” Jath’ibaye asked.

One younger woman shook her head.

They turned and continued walking. Behind them, Kahlil thought he heard someone mumble Jath’ibaye’s name and his own with a tone of slight uncertainty. He wondered how long it would be before everyone at the watchtower knew. Then he wondered if it would matter if they did.

“I’m going to give you a bad reputation,” Kahlil said.

Jath’ibaye shrugged. “It couldn’t be worse than some of the things people just make up about my sex life.”

“Like what?”

“Bones, demons. A few years ago, someone started a story about how I went out impregnating mountains and rocks.” Jath’ibaye slipped his hand into Kahlil’s.

“Rocks.” Kahlil smirked. “That’s a little macho, even for you.”

“Just a bit,” Jath’ibaye replied with amusement.

They walked farther along the winding path. A few stands of black saplings occasionally broke the barren minefields. The black trees were familiar to Kahlil. He studied the gentle hills, imagining them once again cloaked in forest. He knew this area, he realized. They weren’t that far from where Amura’taye had once stood.

Kahlil was sure of it when they reached an old stone bridge. The bridge and narrow stream below were exactly as he remembered. He stopped.

Jath’ibaye looked back at him.

“I think I’ve been here before,” Kahlil said. “We’ve been here before. Together. In the winter.”

Jath’ibaye glanced at the bridge and then nodded. Kahlil studied the aged stones. He wasn’t surprised to find his own initial awkwardly scratched into one of them. He crouched down and carefully pulled a single cracked stone aside. For a moment he actually expected to see the key still lying there, where he had hidden it so long ago. But only cobwebs filled the nook now. Kahlil stood back up, feeling oddly disconcerted.

“I’m confusing his memory and mine again,” Kahlil murmured. He hadn’t spoken to Jath’ibaye about his memories since the first night they’d slept together. He wasn’t certain that he should now, but he wanted to be honest, if only with Jath’ibaye. “I keep thinking that I’ve got my life and his separated and then I come across something like this bridge and his memories all come back to me like they were my own.” Kahlil closed his eyes only for an instant, but the memory poured over him. “I can smell the veru oil and blood. I remember how cold you felt in my arms…” Kahlil looked up at Jath’ibaye and recognized that careful stillness in him.

“It’s not just his bad memories,” Kahlil assured him. “There are glorious, wonderful moments of his that I recollect as well, like the week he spent in Nurjima with you—”

“But you don’t want those memories?” Jath’ibaye asked.

“Of course I want them. Who wouldn’t want the happiest memories of two lives? I just—I don’t know that I deserve Ravishan’s memories,” Kahlil admitted.

“Because you aren’t the same man?” Jath’ibaye asked.

Kahlil nodded.

“But you are the same man.” Jath’ibaye held up his hand, cutting Kahlil off before he could object. “I’ve been thinking about this for a while now and just for a moment hear me out, will you?”

Kahlil felt an odd nervousness at the prospect of what Jath’ibaye might say, but he nodded.

“You’ve lived through two different histories and you’ve taken different paths in different circumstances,” Jath’ibaye said. “But you have always been the same courageous, reckless, beautiful man.”

Jath’ibaye moved close, placing his long hands on Kahlil’s shoulders gazing intently into his face.

“I don’t know if you remember this, but when we were in Rathal’pesha, I told you that I knew you’d become a fearless Kahlil. I knew that because I’d met you—Kyle. And you are fearless and resilient and loyal and strong and…” Jath’ibaye sighed as if he couldn’t find a word to sum up all that he wanted to say. Then he pressed on, “No matter what circumstances have been thrown at you—whether I was with you or not—you’ve never stopped being any of those things. You are Ravishan and you are Kyle. It isn’t one or the other.”

Kahlil could feel his face flushing. He hadn’t expected such an outpouring of adoration and emotion from Jath’ibaye.

“You have been giving this some thought, haven’t you? Who knew you had so much free time?” Kahlil commented, if only to save himself from being drawn into further analysis of his own character. He’d known such failings and been so weak, but he didn’t want Jath’ibaye to know those things about him.

“I have a vested interest in you, you know.” Jath’ibaye seemed to sense Kahlil’s desire to let the subject go because he added, “Where else am I going to find someone who can understand my pained memories of the Chicago Cubs?”

Kahlil laughed then and the two of them continued walking together. They conversed easily about unimportant things and absurd notions. Many of the intersecting paths they crossed offered more direct routes back the Greenhills watchtower, but Jath’ibaye didn’t take them. Kahlil didn’t mind. The two of them hadn’t had much time alone lately. And he enjoyed the way Jath’ibaye’s thoughts moved over such a range of subjects.

One instant he was noting the origami-like folds required for a beetle to hide its wings within the confines of its glossy wing case and the next he was pondering the Gray Space.

“It makes you wonder if the weave of time and space does unravel in places,” Jath’ibaye commented.

“You think about the strangest things,” Kahlil replied. “The weave of time and space?”

“I know it sounds odd, but don’t you think that the connection is exceptionally tenuous within the Gray Space?”

“The connection between time and space, you mean?” Kahlil asked. He suspected that if Jath’ibaye and Hial’luyyn ever met they’d have a great deal to discuss.

“Yes,” Jath’ibaye replied. “When you move through the Gray Space, it seems like you slip out of sync with normal time. Not as much as when you travel between worlds—”

“Through the White Space,” Kahlil supplied.

“The White Space,” Jath’ibaye said, “may be pure space stripped of all relation to time.”

“But the Gray Space?” Kahlil asked and he found himself truly interested.

“It seems to only be loosely linked to time. Obviously time passes when you’re in the Gray Space. And it always moves forward, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, always,” Kahlil replied. He had never really thought of the Gray Space like this.

“So, time exists in the Gray Space, but just barely. In a few seconds, you can move across distances, which in normal space would encapsulate days or longer.” Jath’ibaye sounded thoughtful. “I wonder how exactly it functions.”

Kahlil thought as well, trying to find an adequate answer as they continued along.

It made Kahlil smile. Here Jath’ibaye was, a god, attempting to understand the holy world as science.

And yet, Jath’ibaye’s words make Kahlil think as well. If he traveled through space without time, then the issusha’im traveled through just time. They never left their physical location but they saw hours, years, decades, even centuries beyond the realms of their bodies.

“Damn it.” Jath’ibaye’s quiet curse snapped Kahlil out of his contemplation.

A large party of familiar people walked up the path towards them. Ji was in the lead. Behind her Kahlil could see Saimura and Besh’anya. Tai’yu and Hirran, as well as their various attendants and secretaries, followed. Kahlil even thought he glimpsed Pesha at the back of the long procession.

Besh’anya waved. Kahlil reluctantly waved back.

“Someday you and I are going to go somewhere where no one else will find us,” Jath’ibaye muttered.

“Who’d cook?”

“We’ll pack sandwiches.”

“Jath’ibaye!” Tai’yu called out as they came closer. “Ji said we would find you here.”

Kahlil noticed the brief annoyed glance Jath’ibaye shot at Ji and her responding smile.

“What is it that you need?” Jath’ibaye asked. His tone had lost the relaxed warmth of his private conversation with Kahlil. Even his posture altered. His back was suddenly rod straight, his shoulders squared. His grip on his rifle tightened as he lifted it so that the barrel rested against his shoulder. He strode forward with mechanical precision. Kahlil followed Jath’ibaye but gave him a little more room.

“Hopefully we won’t need anything but blood,” Ji replied. “If the rituals I’ve used on the yasi’halaun don’t hold, then we may need you to deal with hungry bones, but otherwise, just blood.”

Jath’ibaye began to unbutton his cuff.

“I’ve already used the yasi’halaun to destroy the souls trapped in shards and fragments of bones,” Ji went on. “Now we need to see how it will affect those that are still intact.”

Kahlil took in the gray hilt that jutted up from the sheath strapped across Saimura’s back. It looked longer than Kahlil remembered. Kahlil wondered how big it would get after devouring hungry bones the size of fishing boats. They might need a cart to move it after a while.

Jath’ibaye turned back to Kahlil. “We’ll have to go back to the chasm. It could take all day. You don’t have to come along if you don’t want to.”

“I’ll come,” Kahlil said firmly. The thought of Jath’ibaye and the yasi’halaun both so close to Fikiri and Loshai worried him. “But maybe you shouldn’t. The yasi’halaun was created to—”

“I know. But I have to go. Ji is right about needing me to deal with the hungry bones.”

“Then we’ll both go,” Kahlil stated. “Together.”

•••

Afternoon sun radiated off the white sands running along the edge of the northern chasm. Waves of heat distorted the gray line of the horizon. Kahlil pulled off his coat and folded it over his arm. Pesha had already discarded her jacket in a heap along with Besh’anya’s medical bag and Saimura’s coat.

Kahlil glanced to Jath’ibaye. His face was flushed with heat.

“Give me your coat. I’ll put it with the others,” Kahlil said.

Initially, he thought that Jath’ibaye hadn’t heard him. Jath’ibaye simply stood, staring out past the edge of the chasm where the mist rose up from the ocean far below like a bank of clouds. Kahlil could just make out the faint silhouette of a tower. Jath’ibaye was never at ease near the northern chasm. Here, almost at its edge, his agitation intensified into a fixation on a single point. He watched the mists writhe over the remains of Rathal’pesha. He seemed almost unwilling to even look at Kahlil.

“You’re going to smell like an old sweat sock if you don’t take your coat off,” Kahlil said.

Jath’ibaye automatically removed his coat. The cuffs of Jath’ibaye’s shirt barely hid the mass of bandages that wrapped his wrists. It embarrassed Kahlil to feel so sickened by the sight of them.

 Jath’ibaye’s gaze remained fixed on the tower in the north. He shifted the weight of his rifle against his shoulder. His expression was set in a hard frown. When his gaze did flicker to Kahlil, he flinched as if seeing him here, and remembering Ravishan’s death in Rathal’pesha, caused physical pain. Kahlil took Jath’ibaye’s coat and said, “It’s not going to happen again.”

“I know.” Though Jath’ibaye’s expression softened, he didn’t relax his vigilance.

Far south of the white bone sands Kahlil saw the flash of glass lenses in the brilliant sun. Both Hirran and Tai’yu had chosen to wait with their attendants and secretaries far back on the plains. They would be watching the demonstration through telescopes. They would be safer there and probably more comfortable as well.

It was hard to believe there had been snow on the ground that morning. Saimura moved slowly around Ji, enclosing her in a circle of carved stones. The ring would protect Ji when the yasi’halaun drew the souls from the hungry bones. Besh’anya followed Saimura, whispering Eastern incantations and daubing each of the stones with blood from a large brown glass bottle. Kahlil couldn’t help but stare at the bottle full of Jath’ibaye’s blood. Besh’anya carried it almost like a child, slung between her hip and the crook of her elbow. Ji lay on the sand, stretched out and panting.

Kahlil strode to where Pesha sat guarding the yasi’halaun. Kahlil tossed his and Jath’ibaye’s coats into the pile with the others.

Pesha squinted up at Kahlil.

“Do you think the devil will come?” Pesha asked in a whisper. Like Jath’ibaye, Pesha scanned the horizon, but Pesha didn’t know what she was looking for. Her dark eyes darted from one rolling mass of mist to another.

“He might,” Kahlil admitted.

Pesha shuddered.

Kahlil crouched down next to her. The sand was searing hot and for a moment Kahlil wondered how Pesha managed to sit cross-legged on it. Then he realized that Pesha was sitting on Besh’anya’s coat.

“If Fikiri does appear, you aren’t to stay here, you know that?” Kahlil said.

Pesha glanced at the long sheathed blade of the yasi’halaun.

“I take the yasi’halaun and get back to Vundomu,” Pesha said quietly, as if Fikiri might somehow overhear the plan.

Kahlil nodded. Pesha had managed several crossings through the Gray Space now. She couldn’t go far, but she would be able to get the yasi’halaun out of Jath’ibaye’s physical proximity. That would leave Kahlil free to deal with Fikiri.

“What about Besh’anya and everyone else?” Pesha asked.

“They know what they’re doing,” Kahlil replied. He glanced to Jath’ibaye’s back. “You have to trust them to defend themselves, you know.”

Pesha frowned down at her scratched hands.

“What if Fikiri comes after Besh’anya? He tries to make women like her into hungry bones.”

“So, you’d rather stay and defend her?” Kahlil asked.

Pesha flushed a little.

“I know how you feel,” Kahlil said. “But you have another duty.”

Pesha looked up at him with a startled expression.

“You like Besh’anya?” Pesha asked.

“No, that’s not what I meant.” Kahlil almost laughed at the flustered jealousy in Pesha’s tone. “I’m not attracted to Besh’anya. I just meant that I know how it feels to want to protect someone.”

Pesha nodded, seriously.

Kahlil watched Saimura and Besh’anya. He could hear Ji whispering low invocations beneath Besh’anya’s chanting. Saimura stayed silent, but he swayed with the distinct rhythm.

Kahlil thought he could hear other sounds. Tiny whispers rose from the thousands of bone pebbles all around him. Kahlil listened intently, trying to pick out a coherent sentence or a single voice. There were just noises, animal growls, groans and gasps. They drifted into each other, becoming an ambient hiss that sounded like the breaking waves of the ocean far below the chasm.

Kahlil’s attention drifted to Jath’ibaye’s back. He studied Jath’ibaye’s broad, straight shoulders and gazed at the way his body tapered down to lean hips. His heavy black pants hid the muscle of his buttocks and thighs, but Kahlil knew how taut they would feel under his hands. Jath’ibaye’s skin would be hot.

“What’s he like?” Pesha’s question suddenly intruded into Kahlil’s thoughts.

“Who?” Kahlil asked. Then he saw that Pesha, too, was studying Jath’ibaye. Her expression was troubled. “Jath’ibaye?”

“I’ve never seen him smile,” Pesha said.

“Surely you have.”

“Only at you,” Pesha responded. The truth of Pesha’s words embarrassed Kahlil.

“He’s very private.”

“He’s so powerful. Why does he need a Kahlil?”

“To protect him,” Kahlil responded.

“What could hurt him?”

“Anything that hurts a man can hurt him,” Kahlil informed her. “Almost nothing can kill him, but hurting him is a different thing. He feels everything you and I feel. Sometimes I think he feels more. If you become his next Kahlil, it will fall to you to keep him from harm.”

Pesha stared at Jath’ibaye solemnly. “Wah’roa says that the Kahlil must be bound to him.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“What does that mean exactly?” Pesha asked.

“It’s a ritual.”

“But what does it do?” Pesha moved slightly closer to Kahlil.

“It links the two of you. You feel his presence and it draws you to him.” Kahlil shrugged as if it were nothing. He knew that it would only worry Pesha to tell her how Jath’ibaye’s presence electrified his body and aroused his spirit. When he was near Jath’ibaye, the wind felt alive and the air tasted lush and exotic. 

“Does it hurt?” Pesha inquired.

“No,” Kahlil assured her.

“Will it change me?” Pesha asked. She glanced briefly to Kahlil, then looked quickly down at her hands.

“Of course,” Kahlil said. “But it won’t make you into someone you aren’t.”

“But could it make me feel different about Jath’ibaye?” Pesha’s voice was so quiet that Kahlil had to strain to hear her. Kahlil studied Pesha’s bowed head, unsure of what Pesha was attempting to ask. Then he remembered Jath’ibaye’s comment about Wah’roa lecturing the kahlilrash’im on the sacred bond between the Rifter and his Kahlil.

“It won’t make you his lover, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Kahlil said.

“It won’t?” Pesha’s relief was visible.

“No.” Kahlil shook his head. “But being Kahlil means that your life is dedicated to him. You don’t have to be his lover but you must love him. That doesn’t come from the bond. It has to exist within you. Either the feeling is there or not.”

“If it isn’t?” Pesha asked.

“You shouldn’t be his Kahlil. There are lots of other things to do with your life,” Kahlil said.

“Would you still train me, if I didn’t…” Pesha’s question drifted into embarrassed silence.

“So long as you are willing to be trained, I will train you,” Kahlil replied. “I’m not going to throw you out just because you’re attracted to Besh’anya and not to Jath’ibaye.”

“I tried to feel that way about him,” Pesha admitted. “But I just couldn’t.”

“There’s no point in forcing yourself.” Kahlil smiled at Pesha. “I wouldn’t really appreciate the competition, anyway.”

Pesha looked up at him, startled. Then she shyly returned Kahlil’s smile. “I guess you wouldn’t.”

Besh’anya painted the last stones with Jath’ibaye’s blood. The blood glowed as it soaked into the carved surface of the stones. Black symbols seeped out from the stones, letters of Eastern script. Kahlil couldn’t read them. They twitched like tiny spiders.

Besh’anya and Saimura both went silent. The low murmurs of Ji’s voice rolled through the air. Her words throbbed like the echoes of thunder.

Ji spat on the ground and the black symbols rushed in over her like a swarm of insects. The symbols crawled through Ji’s yellow fur and dug down to her skin. Tiny black forms crawled over her face. They swam over her yellow eyes. Her tongue and the pink flesh of her mouth darkened as she continued speaking strange Eastern words.

“Is that supposed to happen?” Pesha whispered to Kahlil.

Kahlil glanced to Saimura.

Saimura watched the black symbols with calm interest for a few moments, then returned to his own work. He braided copper wires around a pure white stone. Besh’anya watched Ji in fascination. Jath’ibaye glanced back once and then returned to studying the northern horizon.

“I think so,” Kahlil replied.

Ji went suddenly silent. With a loud crack, all of the stones split and a wave of searing wind rushed in over Ji. The black symbols encased her, glowed red, yellow, and at last, a blinding white.

“Bring the yasi’halaun. Now.” White light glowed from Ji’s mouth and throat as she spoke. Kahlil grasped the yasi’halaun and brought it to her.

“That’s good,” Ji said once Kahlil had come within reach of her. “Unsheathe it.”

Kahlil did as Ji instructed. The yasi’halaun was longer than it had been and also thinner. The hilt in particular had changed. It had shaped itself into a sharp tip, like an ice pick.

“Drive it into the ground, blade up,” Ji said.

Carefully, Kahlil pushed the hilt of the yasi’halaun into the pebbled ground. He expected it to fall but it remained upright. The tip of the blade nearly reached Kahlil’s chin. It was flatter than before and there were marks that had never been there. Hundreds of long parallel lines etched the surface of the blade.

“Besh’anya,” Ji called, “anoint the blade.”

Immediately Besh’anya moved to Kahlil’s side. She lifted the jar of Jath’ibaye’s blood and poured just a few drops over the blade. The blood trickled down the tiny grooves in the blade. The bloody trails began to steam and glow.

“Get back!” Ji commanded.

Besh’anya rushed behind Ji. Kahlil strode towards the chasm, keeping his body between Jath’ibaye and the yasi’halaun. Jath’ibaye stepped closer to him and their hands brushed against each other.

“Don’t go too far,” Jath’ibaye said.

Ji began chanting again. This time she spat words quickly, with the angry intensity of commands. The yasi’halaun shuddered. The needle-thin grooves in the blade began to separate into long spines. They spread like fingers fanning out. Arcs of light leaped from the tips and danced over the ground. Kahlil could hear the pebbles of bones gasp and then go silent. The bones looked powdery, like the ashy remains of coals. They crumbled and scattered on the breeze.

Arcs of light bolted from the yasi’halaun towards Ji. The blazing symbols that covered her flashed like lightning. The yasi’halaun’s hungry arcs split and speared the surrounding ground. Steam rose off of Ji’s hide. She clenched her eyes closed and continued her furious chanting.

Saimura stood and held up the stone he had bound in copper wire. It resembled a skull but was far smoother. Saimura whispered something over the stone and then he laid it down on the ground. Kahlil felt a soft throb pass through the ground.

“It will summon hungry bones,” Jath’ibaye said. “Hopefully no one else.”

The arcs of light from the yasi’halaun danced and bolted over the ground, devouring hundreds of trapped souls at once. The arcs snapped and crackled and split into more and more tongues of light as they continued feeding. Again and again the yasi’halaun attempted to feed on Ji but her protections held.

Jath’ibaye tensed slightly and turned to the east and said, “The bones are coming.”

 At first the waves of heat rolling over the white sands disguised the hungry bones. But steadily Kahlil differentiated the white serpentine form from the white hills around it. It moved like a centipede and with alarming speed. Most of its massive body had come from some huge undersea creature. A skull that was nearly all teeth gnashed through the pebbled sands. Long quills of bone arched from its spine. Kahlil imagined that they might have once been the supports for huge dorsal fins.

The bones that supported the creature were obviously the remnants of dozens of tahldi. Their legs bounded over the sands. Their skulls snapped furiously from where they hung amidst the huge sea creature’s ribs. The bodies of animals it had already devoured hung inside the hungry bones like organs. Some were newly impaled and still bleeding. Kahlil thought he could make out the form of a human torso. The roar of the hungry bones drowned out the distant ocean and split through Ji’s chanting. 

Jath’ibaye lifted his rifle.

A sound almost like a sigh came from the yasi’halaun. Suddenly the arcs of light shot out and burst through the hungry bones. The roar of the hungry bones became a wrenching scream. It writhed and jerked as the bones of its body crumbled to ash. Kahlil could feel its body slamming into the ground as it tried to shake free. But the light of the yasi’halaun was like a voracious disease. It leaped from bone to bone in thousands of blazing arcs. It flashed across the surface of the bones and the bones blew away in streams of ash.

It was growing stronger, Kahlil realized. He glanced back to Ji. Her head was bowed. Steam rose from her body and escaped her open gasping mouth.

The moment that the hungry bones collapsed completely, the yasi’halaun’s lights arched back and slammed down against Ji. The symbols protecting her burned a dull yellow. She swayed slightly but continued her chanting, her voice low and commanding.

Steadily the yasi’halaun folded closed. Its greedy tongues of light flickered, crackled, dimmed and then disappeared.

Ji sighed heavily. Saimura went to her side and offered her water from his canteen. She flopped down on his lap.

“I’d call that a success, wouldn’t you?” Ji asked breathlessly.

“It was amazing!” Pesha’s voice and face showed her unabashed awe.

Kahlil looked to Jath’ibaye, whose attention remained fixed on the distant ruins in the north. The gray mists churned and rolled. Flickers of red light exploded through the darkening clouds. Kahlil wondered what sort of sorcery those lights portended.

“We should get back to the watchtower,” Jath’ibaye pronounced.

 Kahlil went immediately to retrieve the yasi’halaun. It had grown still longer and the fine lines that had marked the blade were now pronounced grooves. Kahlil felt an electrical hum pass through his hands as he pulled it from the ashen ground. The buried hilt had grown as well. It stretched out like a thirsty taproot. It was too long for its scabbard now, stretching up almost as tall as him. Kahlil wrapped it in his coat.

Jath’ibaye walked to his side.

“You want me to carry it?” Jath’ibaye gestured to the yasi’halaun.

“It’s not as heavy as it looks,” Kahlil replied. He studied Jath’ibaye. “You look worried.”

Jath’ibaye nodded. Kahlil knew he was thinking about Loshai and Fikiri. Kahlil didn’t want to bring it up, particularly in front of other people.

“Can’t figure out what you’re going to wear to Nivoun’s funeral?” Kahlil asked.

Jath’ibaye smiled at the question. “Yeah, that’s what I’m wondering about.”

As they marched back over the ash and sand, they heard cheers rising from the rocky plains. Tai’yu whooped. Hirran bounced up and down, waving her arms and grinning like an overjoyed child. The line of a dozen attendants and secretaries had easily tripled. Common men and women as well as guards clapped and hooted. Kahlil thought he recognized several of the people from the group who had been testing mines. There were no traces of confusion or horror in their faces now. They laughed and grinned as joyously as the rest.

Chapter Seventy-Four

Kahlil sprinted forward. Behind him, hungry bones tore through the dunes of white sand and dark ash. The hisses and growls of the hungry bones rolled over Kahlil like waves breaking above his head. Sand slid under his feet. He stumbled and forced himself to keep running. His lungs burned. His thighs felt like they were turning to liquid as he broke over the rise of the last dune.

Below, he could see white arcs burst up from the yasi’halaun’s dark form. Ji looked tiny beside it. Besh’anya, Saimura and Pesha were farther back. Kahlil threw himself forward, half-running, half-sliding through the sand and ash.

Behind him, the hungry bones surged over the rise. They leaped down after him. Their immense bulk loomed over him, blotting out the sun. Kahlil dropped into the Gray Space. The frigid cold struck him like a shock of ice water. The hungry bones slammed into the sand and tumbled down the dune.

Even from within the Gray Space, the arcing white lights of the yasi’halaun were blindingly brilliant. They shot out instantly, ripping through the hungry bones and devouring the souls trapped within. In seconds only heaps of ash remained.

Kahlil stepped out of the Gray Space and collapsed down next to Pesha.

“That one was huge,” Pesha said.

Kahlil just nodded. His heart was still hammering in his chest.

“Have some water.” Besh’anya handed her canteen to Kahlil. He drank deeply.

“Thanks.” Kahlil returned the canteen to Besh’anya.

“Are nine enough or are you up for another run?” Saimura only glanced up briefly from the stones and wires in front of him. “None of these summoning stones are ready yet.”

Kahlil looked to Ji.

Arcs of the yasi’halaun’s light lashed continually at Ji’s defenses now. Eastern wards flared from Ji’s body, forming luminous halos around her. Ji ignored them and continued to chant the ritual that controlled the yasi’halaun. Steam rose off her as if she were cooking from the inside out. Three days of controlling and resisting the yasi’halaun’s hunger had burned away what little flesh there had been on her body. Her hide hung over her bones like a discarded washcloth. The few remaining hungry bones were those hunting along the edge of the chasm. They had to be lured closer to the yasi’halaun by a living body.

The sooner they finished with the hungry bones the better.

“I can try for another if Ji’s up to it,” Kahlil said.

Ji didn’t even bother to open her eyes. She gave the briefest nod of her head. Kahlil got to his feet and dusted the ash off his legs. The muscles of his thighs trembled. Just one more run. There couldn’t be many more hungry bones remaining.

 Already the white sands of the northern chasm were transforming into miles of gray ash. Twilight breezes easily lifted the fine ash and sent vast plumes rolling across the yellow sunset, turning it orange. The air smelled of fires.

Pesha coughed. Besh’anya handed her a kerchief to tie over her nose and mouth.

“I told you that you’d want one,” Besh’anya said.

“And you are as wise as you are lovely,” Pesha replied. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Besh’anya laughed at the flirtation and offered Pesha a motherly smile. “Though you should save a little of that flattery for the Greenhills girl you were charming last night.” Then Besh’anya’s attention shifted to Kahlil.

“If it gets much darker, you won’t be able to see.” She stepped closer to Kahlil and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Ji needs to rest. She just won’t say so.”

Kahlil nodded.

“Yeah, now that I’m standing I can really feel the strain in my legs,” he said. “I don’t know if I could make another run like that last one. Sorry, Ji, but I think we’ll have to call it a day.”

Kahlil noticed the look of relief that flickered over Saimura’s expression. He wondered if Saimura had purposefully refrained from finishing any more summoning stones.

Again Ji offered only the slightest nod of her head. The low words of her chant changed. Slowly the needlelike spines of the yasi’halaun began to fold back down into a massive blade. Kahlil sat back down next to Pesha.

The knowledge that he wouldn’t have to run again was like a release for the exhaustion he had been holding back. Now fatigue flooded his body. He closed his eyes, forehead resting on his arms. Maybe tonight he would sleep well. It had been hard with Jath’ibaye gone. His dreams had been more troubled. That voice kept calling him, whispering to him all night.

“Kyle’insira?” Pesha’s whisper unnerved him, but he didn’t open his eyes.

“Yes?”

“I wanted to ask you about something.”

“Is it important?” Kahlil asked. He prayed it wasn’t more about Besh’anya. He didn’t know how much more he could manage to speculate about her attributes with Pesha.

“I don’t know,” Pesha said. “It’s just a strange patch of space I’ve been watching.”

Kahlil instantly opened his eyes and sat up.

“Where?” Kahlil demanded. “Don’t point. Just tell me.”

“Just in front of Ji,” Pesha said. “All afternoon the yasi’halaun kept striking that spot, but there’s nothing there, is there?”

As Kahlil watched, a last tongue of the yasi’halaun’s light crackled at the empty air again and again. Something there attracted the yasi’halaun’s hunger. None of them could see it, but the yasi’halaun sensed it. Something was there, waiting in the Gray Space.

“Shit.” Kahlil bounded to his feet.

The yasi’halaun had already snapped closed. Ji knelt down on the ground in utter exhaustion.

“Ji,” Kahlil shouted. “Move!”

The Gray Space screamed as it ripped open wide. Ji shoved herself back up to her feet. She swayed unsteadily. Geysers of flame licked the torn edges of the Gray Space and the massive centipede-like bulk of hungry bones surged out. Behind it, Kahlil caught a glimpse of Fikiri.

“Pesha,” Kahlil yelled, “move your ass now!”

Behind him, Kahlil heard Besh’anya’s startled cry. Saimura screamed Ji’s name.

The hungry bones smashed down on top of Ji. Her body crumpled under them. Kahlil heard her yelp. Then he plunged into the silence of the Gray Space. The hungry bones pounded over Ji’s broken body as they bounded toward Pesha, Saimura and Besh’anya.

Fikiri was still somewhere in the Gray Space. Kahlil concentrated on the texture of the Gray Space. Then he caught Fikiri’s movements. A faint ripple passed through the colorless landscape as Fikiri moved just beneath its surface.

Fikiri strode toward the yasi’halaun. Kahlil raced through the Gray Space after him. Fikiri was closer but Kahlil was faster.

Fikiri dropped out of the Gray Space. His form became perfectly clear. He smiled in triumph as he extended his hand towards the yasi’halaun. Kahlil only had an instant to stop him. He lunged into the space occupied by Fikiri’s body and slashed through the thick Gray Space, aiming to rip the other man in half from the inside out.

Fikiri felt Kahlil’s presence a moment too soon. As Kahlil tore his way out of the Gray Space, Fikiri dropped back into it. For a sickening instant, their two bodies passed through one another.

Kahlil burst out of the Gray Space. Nausea and dizziness rushed over him. He staggered and almost fell. His vision briefly blurred into a haze. He clenched his eyes shut to help them clear.

“Pesha!” Kahlil shouted blindly. “Get the yasi’halaun out of here!”

He could hear the roar of the hungry bones and Besh’anya shrieking out a string of Eastern invocations. Finally, his vision cleared.

The hungry bones arched up over Besh’anya. Besh’anya stood with her hands raised, gripping a heavily engraved stone. With each word Besh’anya shouted, a dull gold light pulsed from the stone. Saimura knelt beside Besh’anya, desperately drawing symbols in the ash at her feet. His low voice droned beneath Besh’anya’s. The hungry bones swayed back and forward in time with the pulses of the stone in Besh’anya’s hands. Steam rose from between her fingers.

Neither Fikiri nor Pesha were anywhere to be seen.

Kahlil turned back to the yasi’halaun. The long dark blade still jutted from the ashen ground. Beside it, Ji’s crushed body lay in a pool of dark blood. A sharp pang of anguish shot through Kahlil. This time he would find Fikiri and kill him.

Kahlil plunged back into the Gray Space.

He found his enemy at once. Fikiri had broken into the Gray Space that Pesha occupied. Their desperate movements sent waves of distortion through the colorless landscape. They heaved and rolled as one mass. Kahlil made out the shadows of thrashing limbs.

Kahlil moved next to them and punched through the membranous wall of the Gray Space. He tore deep into the Gray Space but not through to the outside world. His entire body ached from the exertion. The texture of the Gray Space bit into his hands as he ripped it farther open.

His fingers brushed over moving bodies. He groped for a hold on Fikiri. At last he caught hold of a mass of Fikiri’s dirty blond hair. He gripped tightly and jerked Fikiri back from Pesha. The membrane of the Gray Space tore further as Kahlil wrenched Fikiri through it. The ragged edges slashed them both. 

Kahlil caught only a glimpse of Pesha. Dark blood poured from her nose and mouth. Her eyes were wide in fear.

 The opening between them snapped closed, leaving a ropey scar in its wake. Kahlil prayed that Pesha would have the presence of mind to do her duty.

Fikiri twisted in Kahlil’s grip and pulled free. He spun to face Kahlil. Both of them drew their black curse blades. Guns were worthless in the Gray Space. The bullets simply didn’t move quickly enough. They circled each other. Kahlil needed this to be a fast fight. He didn’t have the strength left for a drawn out battle. He guessed that Fikiri knew as much.

A strangely smug smile flickered over Fikiri’s features. Fikiri bolted backwards. Kahlil lunged after him. Fikiri threw himself through a faint distortion in the Gray Space. Kahlil charged past it. He wheeled around, searching for Fikiri.

Yards ahead, Fikiri dropped out of the Gray Space almost on top of the yasi’halaun. He grabbed the hilt and jerked it up from the ground. Kahlil raced for Fikiri, but he knew he was already too late. Fikiri staggered slightly as the full weight of the yasi’halaun slumped against his body. He would be gone in an instant.

At Fikiri’s feet, Ji suddenly jerked upright. Her hide was black with blood and pieces of her bones jutted up from her flesh. She pushed herself up onto her broken hind legs.

Fikiri started back at the sight of her. The weight of the yasi’halaun kept him from moving quickly. Ji fell as much as lunged forward. She sank her teeth deep into Fikiri’s forearm and jerked him back violently. Fikiri’s mouth opened wide in a howl of pain. The yasi’halaun fell to the ground. Fikiri plunged his curse blade into Ji’s throat.

Kahlil burst out of the Gray Space. He heard Ji’s soft whimper like a roar. Ji fell limply to the ground. Kahlil wanted to kneel beside her, to pull her into his arms and protect her. But he knew she was already dead. Not even she could survive such a wound.

Fikiri thrust forward with his curse blade. Kahlil barely managed to block the blow with his own blade. Fikiri fell back, breathing hard. His blade arm drooped slightly. Kahlil started after Fikiri. Then he caught the flash of Fikiri’s smug smile. Fikiri wanted him to advance. Kahlil stepped back. His heel bumped against the hilt of the yasi’halaun.

It was like Fikiri to try and draw him away. In battle practice he had always relied on feigning. Kahlil refused to be drawn. For a moment Kahlil and Fikiri stood simply watching one another and waiting.

Behind Fikiri, Kahlil caught the huge mass of the hungry bones striking at Saimura. He felt the force of the hungry bones’ impact against the ground. He heard bones breaking. Saimura rolled to his feet and hurled a summoning stone away into the hills. The hungry bones surged after it. Again there was an earth-shaking crash as the hungry bones smashed themselves into the ground.

The noise almost drowned out the sound of the Gray Space wrenching open. Kahlil’s attention flashed back to Fikiri. He hadn’t moved. Instead Pesha burst out a foot from Kahlil. She looked terrible. Dried blood colored her nose and mouth. Deep scratches crisscrossed her face and arms. She stumbled towards Kahlil.

Fikiri seized the moment. He charged Pesha, curse blade forward. Kahlil instantly dropped into the Gray Space and threw himself between Pesha and Fikiri. He sliced the Gray Space open. Fikiri came hurtling in. Kahlil pounced on him and drove his own curse blade into Fikiri’s body. His blade skidded across a hard surface. It was that damn armor he wore beneath his tattered black robes.

Kahlil stabbed again, this time aiming for the soft joint of Fikiri’s groin. But Fikiri jerked back. Kahlil’s blade ripped through the fabric of Fikiri’s robe and tore a deep furrow into the white bone armor beneath it. Fikiri kicked at Kahlil. An inscription on the armor flashed. The kick landed incredibly hard, pounding through Kahlil’s body like a hammer blow. Kahlil staggered back and Fikiri stumbled free of his grip.

At the edge of his vision, Kahlil saw Pesha lift the yasi’halaun and then drop into the Gray Space. Fikiri noticed the motion as well. He spun from Kahlil and immediately charged the faint shadow of Pesha’s movements.

Kahlil lunged after Fikiri, slamming into him. Pain exploded through his beaten chest as the collision sent two of them went sprawling forward. Rough patches of the Gray Space slashed Kahlil’s arm. His curse blade slipped from his grip.

Then suddenly he and Fikiri were jerked wildly through space. A sick sensation flooded Kahlil. The landscape surrounding him changed completely as they fell through another distortion.

Carved pillars jutted through crumbling stone walls. Archways of marble steps rose from cliffs and stretched out into empty air. A huge doorway stood alone on a stone stoop. Payshmura suns and moons decorated nearly every surface. They were in the ruins of Rathal’pesha.

Corded scars twisted and tangled through the Gray Space like spider webs. Kahlil jumped to his feet. Countless rough patches of the Gray Space scratched his skin and ripped through his clothes. It would be insane to move more than a few feet through the Gray Space here.

He saw Fikiri drop out of the Gray Space a few feet ahead of him. With an intense effort Kahlil tore his way free of the Gray Space as well.

The heat of the outside world rushed over Kahlil. His injured right arm burned. A shallow gash ran from the back of his hand to his elbow. He took a deep breath and pain shot through his chest. He couldn’t allow Fikiri to land another kick like that last one.

Fikiri spun on Kahlil. His weathered face was scratched and bloodied. He glared at Kahlil in open fury.

“You will die, Ravishan!” Fikiri growled. He drew his curse blade and sprang forward.

Kahlil’s own weapon was lost. He flicked his fingers apart, ripping the intensely resistant Gray Space into a Silence Knife. He thrust the Silence Knife into Fikiri’s curse blade. The curse blade shattered. Kahlil plundged his Silence Knife up into Fikiri’s chest.Fikiri’s  armor sent Kahlil’s hand skittering. Kahlil struck again and felt the armor crack. His Silence Knife slash through flesh.

Fikiri cried out  then bolted back from Kahlil and sprinted for the cover of the ruins.

The foolishness of pursuing Fikiri into unknown territory gave Kahlil momentary pause. He didn’t know what could be lurking in the ruins. And his body was already at the edge of collapse. But he couldn’t bear to turn back. Not after what Fikiri had done to Ji. How could he tell Jath’ibaye that he’d let Fikiri escape?

The muscles of Kahlil’s legs shuddered, but he forced himself to rush after Fikiri. He pushed himself harder, closing out the sharp cramping pain. He’d endured worse pain for less.

Cracked flagstones littered the ground. The footing was uneven but also innately familiar. Kahlil recognized the ring of broken stones that had marked the common baths at Rathal’pesha. Water still bubbled up from the natural hot spring, but now it reeked of sulfur.

Kahlil raced after Fikiri through familiar and strange corridors. A crumbling hall filled with eroded statues and apple trees led into an old library. Rotting shelves slumped against each other. Tatters of ancient scrolls lay on the floor. All the books were gone.

Kahlil chased Fikiri down a long hall. Shafts of light shot through holes in the roof. Kahlil noticed the remains of priests’ bodies. Hand bones, ribs, cracked skulls and even a few complete skeletons littered the floor. The remnants of clothes still clung to some of them. Kahlil saw Fikiri briefly crouch down beside one body. He clutched something and raced through a doorway.

Kahlil rushed after him. His chest burned with each breath he drew but he forced himself to sprint ahead despite the pain. Fikiri was slowing down already. His hand still bled badly. Kahlil easily picked out the fresh splashes of Fikiri’s blood from the ancient dried stains that discolored the stone floors. Fikiri couldn’t run much longer.

Kahlil burst through the door only seconds behind Fikiri. He sensed something different in the air of this room. It felt dank and subterranean. Dull green light glowed from corroded lamps hung high in the vaulted ceiling. Kahlil’s eyes adjusted to the dim interior quickly. The stone walls were dark and covered in minute inscriptions. The only door in the room was the one behind Kahlil.

Fikiri had run himself into a dead end.

He stood against the far wall, gasping for air. As Kahlil advanced, Fikiri lifted an old Payshmura pistol. Rust caked the side of the barrel. Fikiri must have taken it from one of the priests’ bodies. Fikiri took aim with his left hand.

Kahlil continued his advance. Even if Fikiri managed to get the corroded pistol to fire, Kahlil could destroy the bullets with an Unseen Edge. Kahlil lifted his hands. He expected the Gray Space to resist. Instead he felt nothing, as if the Gray Space were not there at all.

Suddenly, Kahlil realized why the air in the room felt so disconcerting. This was one of the chambers where the ushiri’im had been trapped and punished.

Fikiri grinned as he saw the look of shock on Kahlil’s face. Then he fired the pistol. Kahlil dodged to the side but outside of the Gray Space he could not outmaneuver a gunshot. The bullet punched deep into the muscle of his right bicep. Kahlil clutched his arm as hot blood welled up from the wound.

Fikiri cocked his pistol and took aim again.

Fury surged through Kahlil like strength. He refused to die like this. He would not allow Fikiri to have this cheap, easy victory over him.

 Kahlil charged Fikiri. He heard the loud burst of a second shot and felt a sharp pain tear across his abdomen. Kahlil ignored it. Fikiri attempted a third shot, but the pistol misfired. Then Kahlil seized him.

He punched Fikiri in the face and the man’s head smacked back against the wall. Kahlil punched again. Fikiri brought up his armored arm, blocking Kahlil. But all Kahlil felt was rage. He threw his weight against Fikiri and slammed him back into the wall again. Fikiri attempted to kick free of Kahlil. Again Kahlil hurled Fikiri against the wall with brutal force. Blood smeared across the stone. Fikiri buckled. Kahlil gripped his throat and hammered his head back into the stone wall again and again.

He continued beating Fikiri’s skull against the stone, until Fikiri’s weight went dead in his hands. Kahlil’s arms failed him. Fikiri’s body slumped to the floor.

Kahlil swayed on his feet. His hands were caked in blood, hair, and a pulp of flesh and bone. Exhaustion welled through Kahlil. His legs trembled under him. His arms and side throbbed with pain. He wanted to collapse.

He couldn’t afford that. Not in this room. He had to get back to Vundomu.

He turned. In front of the door stood two large spiderlike hungry bones and a small blond woman. Even swathed in heavy black robes, her body looked unnaturally thin. Her face was surprisingly young and pretty. Her eyes were nearly as intensely blue as Jath’ibaye’s. She lifted a delicate skeletal hand and pointed at Kahlil.

“Hurt him,” Loshai said quietly to the hungry bones.

And for a long while, they did.

Chapter Seventy-Five

Arc Six: Fai’daum Underground Uprising

The big tahldi charged through the drifts of snow. Its white breath rose like steam through the slowly falling flakes. Each motion of the tahldi’s body sent waves of pain through John’s broken legs and hands.

The tahldi bounded easily over a frozen stream. The jolt of its landing crashed through John’s body. He clenched his jaw closed against a cry of pain. His vision went white at the edges. The black branches of the surrounding trees suddenly seemed to recede. He slumped forward against the tahldi’s thick neck.

“Jahn?” Ravishan tightened his grip around John’s chest to keep him from falling. “Do you need to stop?”

Ravishan pulled at the reins, slowing the tahldi to a walk.

“No. I’m all right.” John straightened.

The buttons of Ravishan’s coat felt soothingly cold against his back. Huge snowflakes tumbled down onto his face as he lifted his head. They melted almost instantly against his fevered skin. John welcomed the numbing cold that seeped through his tattered clothes.

The smell of another man’s sweat rose up over John. The clothes he wore had been stripped from the bodies of the city guards Ravishan had killed. Blood, veru oil, and smoke caked the fabric.

Far behind him, the black smoke of the bodies still smoldering on the Holy Road streaked the white winter sky. John focused on the clouds overhead. He imagined frigid water vapor condensing around the particles of smoke. Perfect crystalline symmetries encased the black, charred remains in patterns as ornate as Lisam lace. No doubt, the flakes of snow falling over him carried ashen nuclei.

John tried to concentrate on those tiny flecks of carbon at the center of each snowflake. He tried to think of their elemental futures. Perhaps a hundred thousand years from now they would become tiny diamonds.

“Just a little longer,” Ravishan said. “We’re very close now.” He had been saying the same thing for hours.

Or maybe it just felt like hours. The intense surges of pain distorted John’s sense of time. Agony stretched seconds like a black hole pulling light into infinite darkness. He’d blacked out more than once. Maybe they had only been riding for an hour.

“I’m fine,” John said. Then he laughed at the obvious untruth of his words. His voice sounded weirdly thin.

Ravishan’s left arm tightened across John’s chest. John braced himself for a new jolt of pain as Ravishan reined the tahldi ahead faster.

Pain burst up from John’s legs. All thoughts burned from his mind. He slumped back against Ravishan. It would pass. The pain always passed.

It was just a matter of his neurotransmitter receptors reaching saturation. At some point they simply would not be able to convey more of the agony of shattered bone and torn muscle. There was a limit. John took that as a consolation.

Snow poured down, filling the tracks from their passage as they rode farther into the forest. Dark pines and evergreen brambles formed tight thickets. Snow blanketed every surface, as if erasing the world around them. The passing scenery blurred into swells of white and brief glimpses of dark branches. It all looked the same. But John felt the miles passing.

He felt the sharp hard stone of the mountains giving way to soft earth. Beneath the drifts of snow, the soil grew richer. Loam and decaying leaf litter sheltered nests of sleeping weasels. The glassy surface of a frozen stream cut across the land.

The tahldi slowed.

“Jahn,” Ravishan whispered his name softly.

John opened his eyes. They had stopped on a frozen stream. A stone bridge arched up ahead of them. Ravishan dismounted from the tahldi. He kept one hand up against the small of John’s back. He led the tahldi to the left bank of the stream beneath the shelter of the bridge.

“No one uses the Voun Bridge in the winter,” Ravishan said. “We should be protected from the wind here.”

Dismounting from the tahldi was torturous. Ravishan took as much of John’s weight as he could bear. But John still had to drag one broken leg over the tahldi’s back. Sweat streamed down his back and thighs. He didn’t want to scream in front of Ravishan. He clenched his jaws and concentrated on the white sky far above him. He felt the flex and shudder of his leg muscles but he focused on the winds rolling through the clouds high overhead.

Clouds moved effortlessly. They entwined in immense columns of ice crystals and water vapor. They tumbled and stretched across the sky. Wind lifted them, rolled them, wrapped them into white knots. John longed to lose himself in those painless motions.

He slumped clumsily onto Ravishan. His calves felt like they were going to explode. He clung to Ravishan with the crook of his elbow. His hands were too swollen and twisted to grip anything. They were hardly recognizable. Still the reflex to clench flickered through his fingers in sharp pangs. Ravishan pulled John under the shelter of the bridge and eased him down to the ground.

John expected the cold wetness of melting snow to soak through his clothes. But Ravishan had laid his own coat over the snow. He crouched down and pulled the front of the coat closed around John. It didn’t cover him completely.

Ravishan reached out to touch John’s hand and then stopped short. His naturally tan skin blanched to a pale gray.

“The bones will have to be set.” John only glanced briefly to the black and purple masses at the ends of his arms. It sickened him to think that they were his hands.

Ravishan pulled his gaze to John’s face.

“I could go get Hann’yu—”

“No.” John felt a spark of anger at how Hann’yu had already chosen to help him. He suppressed it. He didn’t have the energy to feel betrayed and guilty at the same time.

“Hann’yu already did all that he could,” John said. “We can’t involve him in this.”

“But I don’t know how to set bones, Jahn,” Ravishan said.

“I do.” John tried to sound assured. “I helped Hann’yu with broken bones in the infirmary.”

Ravishan frowned but remained silent.

“We’ll need supplies,” John went on. “Splints, bandages, plaster rags if we can find them…”

“There’s a physician in the village near here,” Ravishan said. “He should have what you need.”

“Do you think it would be safe for you to go?”

“Certainly, if no one sees me.” Ravishan smiled briefly. He looked exhausted. “Will you be all right here?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“You keep saying that.” Ravishan gently pushed an oily clump of John’s hair back from his face. He studied John intently. John gazed back up at him.

Ravishan looked so young, John thought. He looked like a kid who’d just survived a six car pileup. Dried blood spattered his cheeks and forehead. His dark eyes were all but wide black pupils. The pink scars at the edges of his mouth blazed next to his bloodless lips.

“I keep saying it because it’s true.” John sat up slightly, resting his weight on his forearms as if it were an easy thing to do. “Stop looking so worried. I will be fine.”

“I should have come for you sooner.” Ravishan bowed his head. “I should have come last night. I didn’t realize anything was wrong until Ushman Serahn told me that you had been condemned to the Holy Road.”

“You couldn’t have known any earlier.” John’s arms were beginning to tremble, but he maintained his pose.

“If I’d come sooner—”

“You came before they killed me. That’s all that matters.” Pain and fatigue lent a harsh edge to John’s voice.

Ravishan nodded. He kept his head bowed as if he were ashamed of himself.

“You aren’t to blame for this,” John said. “You shouldn’t act like any of it is your fault.”

“But you were punished for what we did in Nurjima,” Ravishan said quietly. “You were punished for me.”

“What are you talking about?” John demanded. “I wasn’t sent to the Holy Road for fucking you. I was condemned for killing Dayyid.”

Ravishan looked startled, as if he had somehow managed to forget the murder.

“But they blamed the Fai’daum,” Ravishan said.

“Hann’yu discovered that Dayyid had been killed with a Payshmura curse blade. He called me back to Rathal’pesha and I confessed.” John closed his eyes for a moment, pushing back the memories of Bill and Laurie, Fikiri and Lady Bousim. “It had nothing to do with what we did in Nurjima.”

“Why did you confess?”

“I couldn’t help it. They gave me fathi.” John couldn’t remain upright any longer. He slid back down into Ravishan’s coat. Above him, fine white needles of frost spread across the stones of the bridge. Clumps of bright green moss hunched in the sheltering cracks of the old masonry. John closed his eyes. He thought of the stone above him and the earth below him. The nearness of them comforted him.

“Jahn?” Ravishan’s voice was soft.

“Yes?” John didn’t open his eyes.

“I’m going now. I’ll come back as soon as I can.”

“Be careful,” John said.

“I will.”

John felt the warmth of Ravishan’s lips brush lightly against his forehead. The sensation was so different from that of the stone and earth all around him. John briefly opened his eyes.

“Be careful,” John said again.

Ravishan nodded. He stood. The hiss of the open Gray Space sent a shudder through John. Then Ravishan was gone.

John closed his eyes again.

Chapter Seventy-Six

John knew that it was still snowing. If he opened his eyes, he would see huge drifts of snow, crusted with brittle frost. Tiny icicles hung from the stone above him and clung to the fur of the tahldi crouched only a foot away. And yet the ground beneath John felt warm. He pushed himself back and the earth gave. Shocks of pain throbbed through his body. John ignored them. He concentrated on the soil beneath him. The sense of it washed through him, overflowing any awareness of his own injured flesh.

Below the snow lay a black and cinnamon mulch of fallen leaves, river grasses, and reeds. A rich swathe of carbon and nitrogen seeped from the decay. Lace-like threads of fungi spread through the ground, linking the deep roots of distant pines and wrapping like cocoons around the tiny gold grains of dormant seeds.

John drifted further. He felt the leaf lined burrows of weasels where dozens of the animals lay sleeping through the worst of the winter. Deeper in the ground, the clay and peat turned to stony lignite. The carbon remains of what had once been living matter shed cellulose and protein, returning to pure dark mineral. John’s senses slipped over glassy flecks of mica and rolled through the white velvet masses of kaolinite. Strung through the stone and soil, dendritic aggregates of gold and silver sprouted like mosses over granite.

 John found the rich veins of nickel and iron. The minerals wove through each other in intricate crystalline lattices. They spread over John with the architectural perfection of vast dark cathedrals.

Deeper still, the heat of molten lava radiated up with the warmth of a living body. The decay of isotopes throbbed through John like a steady pulse. The heat and strength of the world seemed to flow through him.

 Distantly, he was aware of lakes and rushing rivers. The sharp cliffs of the continent dropped into a deep, vast ocean. Islands rose in chains like immense mountain ranges.

He wanted to explore further, but an odd sensation tugged at him. It turned his attention west, across dark forests and steep hills. Far away in a vast field of snow, shadowed by a tiny stone bridge, he could see his own body.

He was nearly as white as the surrounding snow. His hair looked garish yellow against the pallor of his skin. Only his lips seemed to retain any color and they were a pale blue. His arms spilled out from his body like the limbs of a corpse.

Ravishan knelt over him. His hands pressed desperately at the white flesh of John’s throat, groping for any sign of a pulse. Tears began to pour down Ravishan’s face.

“Please, Jahn, don’t,” Ravishan whispered. “Jahn, please.” His voice broke and he drew his hands back over his face. An anguished howl tore up from him.

I’m not dead, John wanted to say, but he didn’t seem to be able to make his body move.

“Oh god,” Ravishan moaned into his hands. “Parfir, please hear me. Please. Save him. Please. I beg you, Parfir.”

Ravishan wrapped his arms around John’s chest and pulled him into his lap. It disturbed John to see the way his own limbs hung limply in the snow. His head lolled back.

“No,” Ravishan whispered. He lowered his face against John’s chest and wept.

Fear crept through John. He couldn’t be dead, could he? The Rifter couldn’t be so easily killed. The poison Hann’yu had sent had worn off, hadn’t it?

Slowly Ravishan lowered John’s body back down to the ground. Ravishan’s face was red from crying. His breath came in a shudder.

“No,” Ravishan whispered. He clenched his eyes closed and tears slipped down his cheeks. “I won’t live without you. I won’t.”

Ravishan drew his black curse blade. He lifted the blade to his own chest. Very carefully he placed the tip of the blade over his heart. Horror shot through John. Ravishan’s hand clenched around the hilt of the blade.

Suddenly heat and desperation engulfed John’s senses. John reached up and jerked the curse blade back from Ravishan’s chest.

“Don’t!” The word came out as a breathless groan. John’s lungs gasped for air. He coughed and forced himself upright.

Ravishan stared at him for a moment. Then he threw his arms around John and embraced him fiercely. John hugged him in return. Ravishan’s hands dug into John’s back.

 “I thought you had died.” Ravishan sobbed against John’s neck. “I thought I had lost you.”

“No,” John whispered. “I was just…drifting. I heard you and I came back to my senses.”

“You weren’t breathing,” Ravishan said. His arms tensed around John again. “When I came back, you were cold as ice and you weren’t breathing.”

“It’s all right,” John said softly. “It’s all right.” He didn’t know what else he could say. He held Ravishan close and tried not to think of how very much he was lying.

“Don’t die.” Ravishan pressed his face against John’s neck. “I wouldn’t be able to stand it if you died. I wouldn’t.”

“I’m not going to die. And neither are you.” John glanced down to where Ravishan’s black curse blade lay in the snow.

“Listen.” John pulled back slightly, so that Ravishan could see his face. “No matter what you think has happened to me, you can’t kill yourself.”

Ravishan stared at him. His face was still streaked from tears. “I have nothing left but you.”

“Don’t say that. You have your entire life and the whole world.” It terrified John to think of how close he had come to losing Ravishan. “Don’t just give up. No matter what happens. Don’t ever just give up.”

“I couldn’t go on without you,” Ravishan said. He bowed his head and his black hair fell over his face. “I’ll never be the Kahlil, now. I’ll never cross through into Nayeshi. Who knows what they will do to Rousma… You’re the only thing in this world that remains for me.”

 John couldn’t immediately find any words of comfort. Ravishan had lost so much in just this one day. His sacrifices had all been for John’s sake.

“I know things are bad right now,” John said. For a few moments he couldn’t go on. He thought of Bill’s death and Laurie’s imprisonment. He remembered Samsango’s cold dead body. He flinched back from his own knowledge.

He focused on Ravishan.

“Things will get better,” John said firmly. “So long as you’re living there’s always a chance that it will get better. You can’t give up.”

Ravishan lifted his face. John stared at him. He seemed suddenly, heartbreakingly beautiful. His dark eyes and full lips astounded John unreasonably. John leaned into Ravishan and kissed him. His lips were soft and warm. The slight scent of smoke clung to his skin.

When John drew back, Ravishan’s eyes were still closed. Ravishan lifted his chin slightly, inviting John to linger in his kiss. Then he opened his eyes. He smiled at John.

It wasn’t one of his brilliant, wide smiles, but right now John found any sign of happiness relieving.

He offered Ravishan a smile back, though he imagined it wasn’t nearly so handsome. His entire body was bruised and streaked with blood, soot, and veru oil. His stomach growled softly from hunger.

“I brought food. And I found the splints and plaster rags you asked for. But…” Ravishan trailed off, staring at John.

“What is it?” John asked.

“Your hands,” Ravishan murmured.

John glanced down at his hands. Immediately he realized what had shocked Ravishan. Black bruises and red scratches colored the skin of John’s hands but the bones beneath looked straight and strong. The extent of their recovery startled even him.

“Your hands were crushed,” Ravishan said.

John slowly clenched his hand into a fist. The movement was fluid and easy. Only a slight ache throbbed through the bruised flesh.

Ravishan lightly touched John’s knuckles and fingers.

Cautiously, John attempted to move his legs. The muscles ached and shuddered. But he could flex his toes and shift his feet. The bones had healed.

“There was no one to bear the wounds,” Ravishan said softly. “This is amazing.”

“I know.” John had felt the warmth and strength of the living world flow through him. It had healed his broken body when he had drifted in that deepest sleep.

“Parfir must love you, Jahn,” Ravishan said quietly.

John smiled at that thought.

“I’m serious,” Ravishan said. “This is a miracle.”

“It is surprising.”

“It’s more than that.” With great tenderness, Ravishan inspected John’s hands further. His expression turned solemn and deeply thoughtful. “Parfir wants you to live.”

John felt a little uneasy at how close Ravishan was to the truth. He should just tell Ravishan, he realized. There didn’t seem to be any point in keeping it a secret any longer, except that they had been through so much already. Still, Ravishan deserved to know.

John hesitated, trying to think of the best way to broach the subject. Ravishan went on with his own thoughts.

“When I came back and found you lying so still and cold,” Ravishan said, “I thought that Parfir had taken you from me as a punishment for what we did together in Nurjima. I wanted to die for what I had done to you.”

“That had nothing to do with it—” John began to say.

“I know,” Ravishan went on. “Parfir wouldn’t have healed you if he had been angry. He wouldn’t have allowed me to reach you before they burned you on the Holy Road. I realize that now.” As he spoke, Ravishan’s voice filled with assurance. He straightened. A new confidence almost radiated from him. “We have his blessing. He is with us.”

“Because he healed me?” John asked.

Ravishan nodded.

“When we first met, I felt that Parfir had sent you to me, to comfort me.” Ravishan looked slightly embarrassed. “I know it sounds vain and arrogant, but I truly felt that. From the first time I saw you I felt that you were meant to be with me.”

“The very first time?” John asked. “When I was dressed in weasel skins and hadn’t had a bath for months?”

Ravishan flushed. “That day, Parfir sent me a sign.”

“Oh?” John asked.

“I’ll show you. I’ve kept it hidden here. I didn’t want Dayyid to find it.” Ravishan stood and climbed easily up the bank of the stream and onto the bridge. John heard a stone scraping against the others. A moment later Ravishan dropped back down to the frozen stream. He crouched down beside John with something clutched in his right hand.

“Just before I saw you, Parfir led me to this.” Ravishan opened his hand. John stared at the golden key that lay across Ravishan’s palm. It was the same key that John had used to open the Great Gate and then had lost. All this time it had been in Ravishan’s possession. John thought that if there were a greater god, if Parfir was out there somewhere, he was laughing at John.

Ravishan gazed down at the key reverently.

“This is the holy key, the ush’hala,” Ravishan said. “It is one of the three symbols of the Kahlil.”

“I read about it. It’s made from one of the Rifter’s bones like the yasi’halaun.”

“Like the yasi’halaun, but different. It unlocks a god’s death.” Ravishan closed his hand around the key. “When I found it I had been on the verge of running away from Rathal’pesha. And then I found the holy key just lying in a field of snow. I realized that it had to be a sign from Parfir. He chose me to be his Kahlil. He entrusted me with the life of his holy incarnation. Even though Dayyid hated me, Parfir chose me. And then Parfir sent you to me.”

John simply nodded. He remembered the day they had first met. The trees had been bare and the land blanketed in snow, just as it was today. He had been looking for the key and Ravishan had appeared out of the thin air. Ravishan had been a lanky youth with short roughly shorn hair. John remembered how beaten he had looked, how tired and frustrated.

Bill had been alive then. John closed his eyes for a few moments.

“Everything seemed clear, until today,” Ravishan said. “I was going to become Kahlil and you were going to be with me in Nayeshi. And then…”

“Everything went to hell,” John said.

“Yes,” Ravishan agreed, but his tone held none of the desolation that sank through John’s own words.

“Everything changed,” Ravishan said, “and for a little while I thought that Parfir had abandoned us. But he hasn’t, John. He is still with us. I don’t know what his plan is, but I think that he must have meant this to happen. We have to trust that he has a purpose for us.”

For a brief, bitter instant John wanted to tell Ravishan that Parfir had nothing to do with it. He wanted to scream in frustration and shake the earth.

He didn’t.

Parfir’s blessing meant so much to Ravishan, John realized. It shouldn’t have surprised him. Ravishan had lived most of his life in a monastery. He had been groomed from childhood to serve his god. Being Parfir’s chosen one had been Ravishan’s only source of pride.

John couldn’t take that from him. Not now when Ravishan had lost so much already. Ravishan needed to believe that John’s recovery was Parfir’s blessing and part of a divine plan, not just a result of John’s Rifter nature.

John took in a deep breath, feeling the chill and agitation in the air. The snowfall intensified.

Stop, John thought.

But the snow continued to pour from the sky. High up in the rolling white clouds, John thought he caught a flash of lightning. Lightning and snow. That certainly wasn’t natural. John knew he was causing this. He had no idea how to stop it.

“Jahn.” Ravishan touched his shoulder.

John returned his attention to Ravishan.

“Here.” Ravishan swung his pack down from his back and pulled a wool blanket out. “The weather looks like it’s going to get worse.”

John took the blanket.

Ravishan unpacked a loaf of taye bread as well as a block of reed-wrapped goat cheese.

“We should eat,” Ravishan said. He sat next to John and shared the blanket. John tore off a hunk of bread and cut a slab of the pungent cheese. Ravishan helped himself as well.

It was good to eat something. The normalcy of it soothed John. He thought of the cheese sandwiches his mother had packed for his lunches. They had been made from vivid orange cheese, mustard, and white bread. This cheese was softer and made John think of the taste of walnuts. The bread was colored red from weasel eggs. It was good, John thought.

Ravishan leaned against him, just a little. John wrapped one arm around Ravishan’s waist.

“You’re so quiet,” Ravishan said.

“I was just thinking.” It wasn’t really true. He had been trying not to think.

“About what?” Ravishan asked.

John was silent for several moments as he formed a simple sentence in his mind. He didn’t want to think about any of it. Slowly he forced one word after another out, as if they couldn’t be linked to any meaning.

“Behr is dead,” John said. “And Loshai has been taken to Umbhra’ibaye. They’re going to induct her into the issusha’im.”

Ravishan paled. “What happened?”

John tried to repeat what Hann’yu had told him. He found the words breaking as he said them. He wanted to be clear and exact about it all. But he couldn’t speak of Bill’s murder or Laurie’s imprisonment without imagining the events themselves. He saw Bill’s body crumpling as a single bullet ripped through him. Laurie must have screamed as flames gushed up all around her. She would have clung to Bill’s dead body as the city guards dragged her away.

John’s voice failed him and he covered his face with his hands. Ravishan embraced him gently and waited. At last John managed to finish the few sentences that hurt him so deeply.

“I’m sorry,” Ravishan said softly.

John leaned against him. Snow fell in thick walls. John could hardly make out the trees across the riverbank. Ravishan’s body was warm. There was such comfort in just his nearness. John pushed his thoughts of death and loss aside. He thought of the warmth of Ravishan’s body and the taste of his mouth.

They clung close together beneath the stone bridge, sheltering each other from the storm that John pulled down around them.

To Be Continued…

Characters Appearing in Arc Five

Alidas–Rashan’im commander and spy master in Nurjima; partly crippled.

Besh’anya–Ji’s student.

Chyemon–Besh’anya’s brother, also on Jath’ibaye’s ship. 

Eriki’yu–Jath’ibaye’s house steward in Vundomu.

Esh’illan Anyyd –Gaunan killed by Jath’ibaye while attempting an assassination

Fikiri’in’Bousim–Once an ushiri, now attempting to destroy Jath’ibaye

Gin’yu–Representative for Silverlake District. Fai’daum war hero.       

Hirran–Fai’daum representative for the Ironheights District.

Ji Shir’korud–Escaped issusha oracle and Fai’daum leader.

Jath’ibaye–John Tofler, Jahn

Joulen Bousim–Bousim commander of norther forces. Gaunsho Bousim’s son.

Kahlil–Kyle, Kyle’insira, Ravishan

Laurie– Called Loshai in Basawar. John’s friend from Nayeshi

Litivi–Faidaum representative for the Westcliff District. Son of Gin’yu

Mosh’sira’in’Bousim–Gaunsho Bousim.

Nanvess Bousim–Heir to the Bousim house, killed by Kahlil when he attempted to assassinate Jath’ibaye.

Nivoun Bousim–Nanvess’ father. Governor of the Bousim’s northern holdings 

Ourath–Gaunsho Lisam.

Pesha–Young kahlirash with ushiri skills.

Piam– Sailor on Jath’ibaye’s ship.

Saimura–Ji’s son. Jath’ibaye’s informant in Nurjima and a trained witch.

Tai’yu–Representative of the Greenhills District. Hirran’s father. Fai’daum war hero.

Wah’roa–Leader of the kahlirash’im and representative for Vundomu.

Characters appearing in Arc Six

Arren- Head of Fighter’s district in the Warren.

Ashan’ahma – An ushiri studying at Rathal’pesha.

Alidas–A rider for the Bousim family; partly crippled.

Amha’in’Bousim–Lady Bousim, 3rd wife, exiled to the north.

Bill–Called Behr in Basawar.

Fikiri Bousim–An ushiri: son of Lady Bousim.

Hann’yu–An ushman exiled to the north: specializes in healing.

Issusha’im–The Payshmura oracles.

Ji Shir’korud–Dog demon; one of the Fai’daum.

John–Jahn

Laurie–Called Loshai in Basawar.

Nivoun Bousim– Governor of the Bousim’s northern holdings

Parfir–The earth god.

Rifter–The destroyer incarnation of Parfir.

Ravishan–The most promising of the ushiri at Rathal’pesha.

Rousma–Ravishan’s sister.

Sabir–The leader of Fai’daum.

Saimura–Ji’s son.

Serahn–Powerful Ushman in the Black Tower of Nurjima.

Tai’yu–Fai’daum fighter.

Wah’roa–Leader of the kahlirash’im at Vundomu.

Common Terms and Words

and  ———————-iff

animal / it  ————shir

asshole  —————-wahbai

bark (tree) ————istana

bee (honey)  ———behr

best  ———————-sho

black  ——————-yasi

blonde hide  ———jahn

blood  ——————-usha

blue  ——————— holima

bone  ——————-sumah

bones (holy) ———issusha

book ———————lam

brothers —————ashan

but / however ——hel

chasm  ——————kubo

city  ———————-tamur

cold  ———————polima

dead  ———————maht

deer (mount) —— tahldi

delicious  ————-mosh

dog (tame) ———-kohl

dog (wild)/wolf — sabir

exhausted ————renma

fast (speed) ———-sam

fire  ———————- daru

food  ———- ———nabi (grain)

friend  ——————pashim

from / of  ————-in

fuck  ———————faud

goat  ———————fik

good / pretty  ——domu

grain plant  ———-taye

green  ——————-ibaye

harm  ——————-ratim

hawk  ——————-alidas

hill  ———————-rousma

holy  ———————ushmana

hot  ———————-niru

how / because  —-ahab

idiot  ———————bai

joy  ————————amha

key ————————hala

key, death-lock —-maht’tu hala

knife ———————halaun

lazy  ———————-pom

little / diminutive —-iri

lock —————————tu

lost  —————————gasm’ah

love  ————————-mohim

man/ male  ————- vun

meadow  ——————pivan

meat  ————————nabi’usha

medicinal tree ———yasistana

monastery  —————ushmura

money  ———————jiusha

mountain  —————-rathal

no  —————————-iss

noble  ———————-gaun

none  ————————illin

orchard  ——————-umbhra

peace  ———————-tumah

place  ————————amura

quiet  ————————itam

rain  ————————-parh

red  —————————daum

river  ————————fai

road  ————————nur

run  ————————-sango

sacred books ———- ushmana’lam

sacred drink  ————fathi

same  ————————kin

shit  ————————-jid

similar  ———————ro

sky  —————————loshai

snow ————————pelima

solitary  ——————-jath

speak  ———————-vass

spill  ————————-ra

spoil  ————————lafi

still  ————————- tash

stop  ————————-nahara

strike  ———————-bish

terrible  ——————-tehji

time / year—————-ayal

to be lost  ————- —gasmya

to drink  ——————siraya

to eat  ————————nabiya

to harm  ——————-ratimya

to kill  ———————-rashiya

tree (fruit) —————isma

tree bark ——————istana

ugly/ bad  —————mulhi

unholy /unclean  —korud

water/drink ————sira

weasel  ——————-ganal

what  ———————-bati

when  ———————bayal

where  ——————-bamura

white  ———————pesha

who  ———————-ban

why  ———————-bahab

wine ———————- vishan

witch  ———————tahjid

woman/ female —-vur

yellow /gold————jima/ ji

yes  ————————-du 

Pronouns

he\ him  —————-vun

his  ————————-vun’um

they(all male) ——-vun’im

she/her ——————vur

hers ————————vur’um

they (all female) —-vur’im

they(mixed) ——— pun’im

theirs ———————pun’um

I/me  ———————-li

mine ———————-li’um

we/us  ———————li’im

ours ————————lim’un

you  ————————yura

yours ———————-yura’um

you (plural) —— —-yura’im

yours (plural) ——- yura’un

it  —————————-shir

it (plural)————— shir’um

Declensions and Conjugations

positive  ———————  dou

negative  ——————— iss

question  ——————— sa

object of action  ——— hir

source of action ——— ati

one who does————- hlil

plural  ————————  im

possessive (singular)- um

possessive (plural) —- un

future tense —————  ad

past tense  —————— ah

present tense ————- ya

(Ya literally means ‘to do’ or ‘to be’.)

possible  ——————— at

hoped for (future) —- atdou

hoped against   ———-atiss

command form ——— hi

gerund  ———————-yas

adjective ———————an

adverb  ————————al

Table of Contents

The Story So Far:

Chapter Sixty-Six

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Chapter Sixty-Eight

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Chapter Seventy

Chapter Seventy-One

Chapter Seventy-Two

Chapter Seventy-Three

Chapter Seventy-Four

Chapter Seventy-Five

Arc Six: Fai’daum Underground Uprising

Chapter Seventy-Six

Characters Appearing in Arc Five

Characters appearing in Arc Six

Common Terms and Words