by Ginn Hale
Javier said, “It’s hard to put into words. I felt something yesterday but it’s more distant today.”
“Something?”
“An epiphany.” Javier laid his hand lightly on the railing of the bridge. He gazed into the distance as if searching. “The Bahiim say that every living thing is linked through the elements of the world around us and through the shajdi. I know the connections are there but today I can’t find them.”
It was not the response Kiram had been bracing himself for and he felt relieved.
“Maybe you’re too hungry to concentrate,” Kiram suggested. “We did miss dinner.”
“Probably.” Javier’s expression lightened. “That’s adhil bread that woman is selling, isn’t it?”
Kiram glanced to the cart where a deeply tanned Haldiim woman poured batter into coal-heated pans. Moments later she flipped golden rounds of adhil bread out onto dried grape leaves with easy expertise. Customers already crowded her cart. Kiram’s mouth began to water.
“It smells good,” Javier said.
“Why don’t you allow me to buy you some?”
They ordered six fresh adhil rounds between them as well as four skewers of sugared fish. They ate beneath a stand of almond trees. The silence between them seemed almost comfortable as they devoured their breakfast.
A courier in a dusty gray uniform rushed passed them with a bulging mail pouch. Kiram watched the man, thinking of the letter he’d sent off just two days earlier. Then a sudden realization came to him.
“I know you promised Alizadeh, but you might not have to go through with fully becoming a Bahiim. There might be another way to defeat the curse.”
Javier raised his brows in question as he continued chewing his last sugared fish.
“The day before my return party Alizadeh said that if Scholar Donamillo’s mechanical cures were able to protect Fedeles, then at least some of the symbols on the machine had to be related to the curse. If we could figure out which ones were, then we’d know exactly how the curse worked—”
“We would?” Javier asked with an amused smirk.
“Well, Alizadeh would know,” Kiram admitted. “He said that if we knew, we’d have a way to stop it.”
“You mean Alizadeh would have a way to stop it.” Javier made a grab for one of Kiram’s fish but Kiram pulled the skewer away.
“I’m trying to help you and you steal my food?”
“You didn’t seem too interested in eating it.”
“I hadn’t eaten yet,” Kiram took a bite of his fish and chewed, “because I was in the midst of telling you that I wrote to Scholar Donamillo and asked him about the symbols. If he writes back directly and the couriers are quick, we could have an answer in two weeks.”
“An answer that won’t mean anything to anyone but Alizadeh or another Bahiim.” Javier sounded oddly smug.
“Yes, but I’d put my money on us having that answer before you’re trained enough to take your vows in the Circle of Red Oaks.”
“Probably,” Javier conceded. He frowned at Kiram. “So are you suggesting that once you get word from Scholar Donamillo, you’ll have Alizadeh break the curse and then I should betray him by refusing to become a Bahiim?”
Kiram scowled at Javier’s words. He hadn’t thought of it in those terms, but he supposed that was what his idea amounted to. It suddenly seemed shameful.
“I was just thinking that there might be some way refit Scholar Donamillo’s mechanical cure. With my steam engine powering it, we might be able to break the curse. Then you wouldn’t need to become a Bahiim.”
“I swore an oath yesterday,” Javier replied.
“But only because you didn’t think there was any other way to save Fedeles.” Kiram still felt a flare of anger at Alizadeh for demanding the promise of Javier.
“That doesn’t change the fact that I gave my word, does it?”
“It might.” Kiram ate the crisp tail of his fish. “An oath given under duress—”
“Duress?” Javier demanded. “Have I become a such a frail maiden in your eyes that lunch in a garden merits duress?”
“It wasn’t just lunch! Fedeles’ life was held over your head.” Kiram lowered his voice to a harsh whisper. “And I didn’t say anything about frail maidens.”
Kiram noticed the way Javier’s eyes flicked away from him at the words.
“Damn it, Javier. You’re a man. I know that. I love that. And just so we’re clear, nothing we did last night changes that.”
A flush colored Javier’s pale face, and for a moment he wouldn’t meet Kiram’s gaze.
“Nothing’s changed,” Kiram repeated.
“You’re wrong.” Javier closed his eyes as if the view before him were too much to bear. “Everything has changed.”
Kiram’s stomach churned and his throat felt too tight to let him swallow. He should have known better than to have taken Javier last night. Kiram glared down at his own dusty shoes.
Then he felt Javier’s fingers caress the back of his hand. When he met Javier’s gaze, his expression was calm.
“I can’t go back now.” Javier gave a weirdly soft laugh.
“Do you want to?”
“Maybe a little. You know, ignorance being bliss and all that tripe.” Again Javier’s eyes flicked away from Kiram. “I wasn’t prepared for it to feel…good. Stupid, isn’t it? After all my talk in the bath about being a bender. When you started I thought I’d grit my teeth and endure it. You know, take it like a man.”
“You did take it like a man.”
“A little better than most men, I think.” A sardonic smile curved Javier’s lips.
“That’s nothing to be ashamed of and it doesn’t change who you are.”
“It does.” Javier stared intently into Kiram’s face. “It’s like the very first time I saw myself in a mirror. I could hardly credit it. I kept thinking, that’s really me? Before then I’d thought I was like everyone else. But afterwards I was different. I was myself and I couldn’t go back to being just like Timoteo or Elezar.”
Kiram almost blurted out that he didn’t think Elezar was all that different from either of them but stopped himself. It seemed petty and beside the point.
“Now, I know—deep in my flesh and bones—that I’m—” Javier paused, plainly rejecting the first word that came to his mind and choosing another, “I’m an adari. And I don’t want to be anything else. I don’t even want to pretend anymore, but I have to. We both do.”
Kiram nodded. Neither of their lives would be lived in the safe, walled confines of the Haldiim district. And even if they could have been, there still would have been Kiram’s mother to contend with.
“I don’t know how I’m going to keep my hands off you after this,” Javier finished.
Kiram laughed but Javier frowned at him.
“I’m serious. You wouldn’t believe the nightmares I had last night. About being caught together and what they did to you.”
“I know. Really, I do.” Kiram said. He’d felt the same kind of anxiety at the Sagrada Academy. He also knew that brooding on it would only make it worse. “But we won’t be caught. We’ll be careful and smart.”
Javier nodded slowly.
“Though I have to point out that taking vows as a Bahiim is neither of those things,” Kiram added.
“I know that.”
“Then you shouldn’t—”
“I have to,” Javier cut him off. “And not just because I made a promise, but because the Bahiim belief is right. There is a unity to all life. I felt it yesterday. For a few minutes with Alizadeh, there were no barriers between me and the surrounding world. I could reach out and catch the wind in my hands. When I took a breath, the air rippled with the vibrations of birds’ wings and I could feel you and your uncle Rafie speaking like whispers against my skin.” Javier gazed up into the branches of the almond tree above them. His expression seemed to light up as he spoke. “It was just an instant but I felt something real and holy. Something I have never
felt in any Cadeleonian chapel. Now that I’ve experienced it, I can’t turn my back on becoming Bahiim any more than I can stop being an adari.”
His tone and rapturous expression told Kiram as much as his words, perhaps more. Javier had already converted; oaths would just be a formality. Kiram didn’t know what to say. He’d never considered the possibility of Javier genuinely experiencing the Bahiim religion, probably because he wasn’t all that religious himself. Even now his first thought was purely pragmatic.
“You’re going to keep your conversion a secret, aren’t you?”
“I’m becoming a Bahiim, not an idiot,” Javier replied with a crooked smile. “Obviously I’m going to keep it secret.”
“Just making sure.” Kiram tried to reason past his own anxiety to reach practical thought. “We have to find some excuse for you to be in the Haldiim district if you’re going to keep studying with Alizadeh. And you need to have your hair trimmed.”
“I know. I know.” Javier laughed. “I’ll cut my hair. I was just being obstinate last night. I wanted everything my way.”
“Who doesn’t?” Kiram replied. A cluster of young girls in bright green school vests crossed the Ammej Bridge, singing their multiplication tables. Kiram vividly remembered how proud he’d been wearing his own school vest. That seemed so long ago now. Javier watched the students too, but absently.
“Your father is building a fountain right now, isn’t he?” Javier asked.
“He’s nearly done.” Kiram noted Javier’s pleased expression. “Next he’s thinking of trying his hand at a new design for a water clock. Why?”
“I need a reason to be in the Haldiim district,” Javier began and Kiram immediately followed his thoughts.
“If you commissioned my father to design and built a fountain or—”
“—Or a water clock,” Javier put in and Kiram nodded.
“Either way it would seem perfectly reasonable for you to be down here, directing the work and observing the progress.”
“Perfectly reasonable,” Javier said. “I’d probably have to stay the night on more than one occasion.”
“You’ll definitely have to stay the night.”
The two of them exchanged excited grins and suddenly Kiram’s exhaustion seemed to dissipate.
“Should I approach your father directly with the commission or would it be better if you brought it up to him?”
“You should talk to him. He’ll be thrilled to design something for the Duke of Rauma.” Kiram bounded out from the shade of the almond tree and sunlight warmed his skin. “Come on. He’ll be up and in his workshop by now.”
The two of them raced up Gold Street as morning bells rang out and a flight of doves took to the sky.
Chapter Fifteen
After an initial consultation with Kiram’s father, Javier took the excuse of tending to Lunaluz to visit Alizadeh for another session of Bahiim training. Kiram spent rest of the morning in his father’s workshop, helping him complete his fountain so that he could begin work on Javier’s commission immediately.
Across the room his father beamed and hummed to himself as he drew up extravagant designs for a water clock worthy of the Duke of Rauma. Kiram didn’t think Javier could have done anything that would have won his father’s favor more completely than commissioning this machine.
“What do you think of a second series of waterwheels that track the date?” Kiram’s father looked up from his papers. “Perhaps a gold sun and a silver moon that could rise and set as well.”
“Brilliant.” Kiram tightened down the screws on the decorative case, which housed one of eight small spigots. The work was precise and delicate and Kiram found it soothing.
“He’ll want some motif,” Kiram’s father commented.
“A white horse,” Kiram replied without looking up from his tiny screws. “He loves his stallion, Lunaluz. Most Cadeleonians like horses.”
“A horse…” his father repeated, as if it were a suggestion of uncanny genius. “Yes, that would work.”
Kiram secured copper pipes to spigots with locking bolts and plumbing wax. The fountain was nearly complete. Kiram could already see it as it soon would be: three delicate peacocks with tails made of gold feathers augmented by plumes of water. It would be lovely when it was done.
The two of them might have missed lunch entirely if Dauhd hadn’t called them to the table. She rolled her eyes at the sight of them and tossed them a dishtowel to clean the machine oil and graphite dust from their hands and faces.
“We’re entertaining guests today.” Her smile assured Kiram that she hadn’t really expected him or his father to be any more presentable than they were.
“Oh, and a letter came for you today, Kiram.” Dauhd pulled the small packet from her vest pocket. “Looks like it’s from someone at your school.”
Kiram broke the wax seal and quickly read while Dauhd attempted to smooth down their father’s wild white hair. He knew that this missive couldn’t be a response to the letter he’d sent earlier—no mail wagon traveled that quickly—still he found it relieving to recognize Scholar Blasio’s handwriting.
Blasio apologized for having not wished Kiram goodbye when he’d left the academy. Apparently his brother, Scholar Donamillo, had taken ill that afternoon. Blasio expected that he would recover soon enough and assured Kiram that Fedeles was fine, as was Genimo. Then he wished Kiram a happy vacation and a safe return to the school this summer.
“Bad news?” Dauhd asked.
“I hope not.” Kiram didn’t want to make too much of it. His worry certainly wouldn’t help Donamillo’s recovery and Blasio had assured him that Fedeles was very well. “Just a note from one of my instructors.”
“You always were a class pet,” Dauhd teased but she let the subject go at that.
In the sunroom, three of Siamak’s friends joined them—all of them silk-clad daughters of wealthy mothers—as did Majdi’s red-bearded Mirogoth navigator. Kiram’s father immediately announced to them all that he was designing a water clock for the Duke of Rauma. Such pride lit his expression that Kiram wondered if his father hadn’t always longed to receive such commissions. If he hadn’t married and settled in the confines of the Haldiim district, doubtless he would have long ago achieved much wider fame for his mechanisms.
As their father described his innovations in loving, drawn out detail, Dauhd quietly grilled Kiram about his meeting with Musni at the gymnasium.
“He was drunk and fell on me,” Kiram whispered. He poured tea for Siamak and her three well-dressed friends, then sat back down beside Dauhd.
“Chebli says that Lord Tornesal nearly ran Musni through. You wouldn’t believe the things people are saying about that.” Dauhd’s pale eyes gleamed with excitement.
“He didn’t even draw his sword. And since when do you talk to Chebli anyway?” Kiram demanded between bites of almond and lamb-stuffed grape leaves.
“He’s not so bad.” The slightest flush colored Dauhd’s face. Kiram raised his brows.
“You used to tease him because he stank like pickles.”
“That was years ago. He’s in the Civic Guard now,” Dauhd defended. “And he comes from a very good family. His grandmother directed the treasury for forty years.”
“Who’s this?” Majdi asked, suddenly taking note of their whispered conversation.
“Chebli Kir-Wassan,” Kiram provided and Dauhd pinched him.
“Chebli.” Majdi smirked at Dauhd with knowing. “Now he has certainly filled out from the scrawny, vinegar-seller he used to be, hasn’t he?”
“His mother is looking for a home for him, I hear,” one of Siamak’s friends commented.
The rest of the meal passed in a flurry of teasing and speculation as to how Dauhd would ever claim Chebli now that he’d matured into such a handsome and obedient young man. Dauhd beamed at the attention. It soon became clear that she had spoken quite extensively and seriously with Chebli’s mother and eldest sister. Siamak and her friends gave her advice.
The Mirogoth navigator traced a heart-shaped sign on Dauhd’s palm as a charm to let her capture love in her hand.
Majdi just sighed and Kiram refilled everyone’s tea once again. He and Majdi would have a new brother soon. Kiram wondered if Chebli still snorted when he laughed. That could get annoying.
Then he realized that it didn’t matter. By the time Dauhd brought Chebli into the house Kiram would probably be living far to the north in either Cieloalta or Rauma. Briefly he felt a wave of sadness at the thought of leaving.
But it passed as he thought of the relief that distance would provide. He would have the opportunity to make his own way instead of settling with a pharmacist’s son only five blocks from his mother’s house.
Besides, he would visit often.
Kiram wondered if Majdi felt the same way, spending so much of his life at sea and in distant lands with strange people. He always returned but never to stay, no matter how their mother tried to settle him in a wife’s home.
Even now Majdi and his navigator discussed their next voyage to the western provinces of Yuan. They would set sail just before the Flower Festival while the winds were best. They planned to return next fall with silk and rare plumage from exotic birds.
When Siamak pointed out that two of Mother Rid-Fisse’s daughters had expected to court Majdi this summer, Majdi simply shrugged as if putting out to sea was a physical necessity.
“Perhaps your little brother will be sailing with us?” The navigator’s accent was strong but Kiram found it pleasant.
“I still have another year of school ahead of me, but after that…” Kiram realized it would be wiser not to say what he was thinking. After that he would be in the north with Javier. “Who knows where I’ll go then?”
Siamak’s friends, all of them mature women with their own children and businesses, indulged Kiram with kind smiles. They no doubt saw his future much as his mother and sisters did. He would be an indulged son, living close to home and demonstrating his family’s wealth with his amusing little mechanisms. For the first time Kiram felt pity as well as adoration when he met his father’s gaze.