3: Black Blades (3 page)

His presence dominated the room. Even now, with his back turned, bent over a drawer, Kahlil could focus on nothing else. Physically, he was intimidating, taller than Kahlil, with a sharp, muscular body. Even pale and poisoned, he seemed like he would be a tough man to take on.

But he was more than a physical presence. He had destroyed the Payshmura and held back the armies of the gaunsho’im. As one of the rare few who had altered the world to his will, Jath’ibaye both fascinated and frightened Kahlil. Yet he seemed strong, quiet, and perfectly human. And that made him even stranger. Kahlil expected demons and gods to change the world,
not mere men.

“So.” Jath’ibaye straightened. Whatever he had been looking for he had either found or given up on. “You have something to give me?”

He turned but didn’t look at Kahlil. Instead, he seemed to be taking in the measurements of his room. Again Kahlil noticed how pale and bright his eyes looked. But this time he knew why. It was the brilliance of a fever.

Kahlil dug the letter and box out of his satchel. He offered Fensal’s seal but Jath’ibaye didn’t seem to care about it. He yanked the small white box and letter from Kahlil’s hands. With angry efficiency, he tore open the envelope and flipped the letter out and read. After a while he crushed the letter and dropped it to the floor. He tossed the box onto his bed, unopened.

“So,” Jath’ibaye’s voice was almost a growl, “am I supposed to take one look at you, fall to my knees, and hand you the keys to the kingdom? Is that it?”

Kahlil had no idea how to respond.

“I...don’t know. I didn’t read the letter,” Kahlil said. What was Jath’ibaye talking about?

“God,” Jath’ibaye whispered, “even your voice...”

He rounded on Kahlil, his expression cold and disdainful. “Well then, let’s play our little drama out, shall we? Shouldn’t you tell me your name?”

Kahlil stepped closer to the door. “Kyle’insira.”

“Kyle...of course!” Jath’ibaye’s smile was hardly more than a flash of his white teeth. “Very clever. Go on. You have to have more lines than just that.”

Kahlil stood silent. Until this moment, it hadn’t occurred to him that when Jath’ibaye had looked at him with recognition, it might have been the crazed expression of familiarity that a fevered man had for his hallucinations.

“Stage fright?” Jath’ibaye demanded. “Or did Fikiri just tell you to stand there and bat your eyelashes?”

“Fikiri?” At last Kahlil had some idea of what to say. “No, I’m not with him. I’ve been sent to stop him—to save you.”

“Nice delivery,” Jath’ibaye replied. “Very believable.”

“I’m telling you the truth—” Kahlil began, only to be cut off.

“I could kill you for this,” Jath’ibaye ground out. “I should.”

“But I’m not who—”

“Of course you’re not,” Jath’ibaye snapped. “You’re just an innocent boy who wandered in looking like this and delivered me a bottle of poison.” Suddenly Jath’ibaye caught hold of Kahlil’s shoulders and pulled him close. His grip was hard and burning hot.

“If they told you I wouldn’t hurt you, they lied,” Jath’ibaye growled.

He was so close that Kahlil could smell the blood in his bandages. He wasn’t about to stay here and find out how Jath’ibaye preferred to punish his enemies. Kindness to Fensal, duty to Alidas, and even his own curiosity weren’t worth this. Kahlil jerked his arm back and slammed his fist into Jath’ibaye’s wounded left side.

He felt the warm wet of blood soaking up against his knuckles. Jath’ibaye’s grip loosened fractionally and
 
Kahlil sprung back from him.
 
With a flick of his hand Kahlil tore open an entry to the Gray Space, but it crumpled closed before he could step in.

Horrified, he looked back to see Jath’ibaye clenching his hand into a fist. Kahlil felt the air shuddering around Jath’ibaye. Somehow he had closed the Gray Space. True fear surged through Kahlil and his heart pounded like a wild thing kicking in a trap.

He lunged for the door, but Jath’ibaye sprang forward, again blocking his escape. Kahlil stumbled back, evading Jath’ibaye’s grasp.

Jath’ibaye stalked slowly after him. Softly, he said, “Didn’t they tell you what I am? Didn’t they warn you?”

The back of Kahlil’s leg struck the bed.

Jath’ibaye dove forward and slammed into Kahlil, hurling him back onto the hard mattress and pinning him against the bed. He caught Kahlil by the throat. His fingers burned like heated irons against Kahlil’s skin.

Kahlil fought against Jath’ibaye’s grip, but his hands only tightened. He kicked Jath’ibaye’s leg as hard as he could, but the other man barely seemed to register it.

Jath’ibaye leaned forward over him. His blue eyes burned like phosphorus. “Didn’t they tell you that I am the Rifter?”

Kahlil’s arms and legs began to tingle. He clawed at Jath’ibaye’s tightening grip. He could put no force behind his kicks now. He gagged and gasped hopelessly.

“Do you understand what I could do to you?” Jath’ibaye whispered over him.

Kahlil’s ears rang; his mouth felt numb.

Then, abruptly, Jath’ibaye released him and stepped back from the bed. Kahlil sucked in a desperate breath of air.

“Get out,” Jath’ibaye said coldly.

Kahlil had already struggled to his feet. He stumbled toward the door.

“If I ever see you again, I will kill you,” Jath’ibaye warned him.

Kahlil didn’t stay to hear anything else. His mind burned with just one word, one thought.

Rifter.

 
Kahlil lay curled on the cool surface of the tiled floor. Nausea welled up in him, rolling and rising. His throat ached. Painfully, he swallowed.
                

The Rifter. After a decade of watching over John, how could he have let his true identity slip from his mind? He had bled himself nearly to death just to pursue the Rifter, just to kill him. How could he have forgotten?

He squeezed his eyes closed and pressed his face against the floor. He remembered the overwhelming feeling of guilt that had enveloped him when he had first tried to find the Black Tower of the Payshmura. Even then, he had known its absence was his fault, his failing. He had allowed the Rifter to escape, and now the Payshmura were no more.

The sacred convent of Umbhra’ibaye and the holy Black Tower had both been lost in an instant, as if devoured by the earth. Rathal’pesha and the city of Amura’taye had been consumed by geysers of molten stone. The entire northland, where he had grown up, rendered a shattered ruin in a day. Whole mountains had fallen, chasms of magma and steaming waters swallowing them. People had died, thousands of them, in the first disaster and then more in the following wars.

It all could have been stopped, but he had failed.

Maybe that’s why he’d chosen for so long to forget.

Kahlil pushed himself up to his knees and lurched over the cold porcelain basin. His stomach heaved, bringing up nothing but bile. He coughed. There was nothing left in him to vomit up, but he couldn’t stop feeling sick with self-loathing.

He folded back down against the floor.

He had wanted to forget. He had needed to forget. That very first day when he had arrived in Nurjima he had known, somewhere deep in himself, that he had already been too late.

Now the solace of amnesia had been stripped from him.

He remembered the torn envelope, the letter with its single word: Don’t.

Don’t fail.

Don’t forget.

Don’t let him live.

Only one word to obey, and he hadn’t managed it.

Dayyid had been right: the taint in his blood, the weakness in his soul went even deeper than Parfir’s blessing in his bones. They should have burned him along with his mother.

He’d been sick for hours now, purging everything from his body as if it could somehow empty him of his guilt. He leaned his forehead against the edge of the basin. Strings of his long black hair hung against his damp face.

“Kyle?”

He glanced up to see Fensal, and then hung his head back over the basin, glad of the predawn dimness. No matter how bad he felt, somehow having a witness to his pathetic state made it worse.

“You’ve been at it all night. Are you dying?”
   

“I wish,” Kahlil managed to croak.

A smaller figure stepped out from behind Fensal. Yu’mir stared at him with wide, worried eyes. Kahlil hung his head in shame, suddenly aware of how badly he stank. Though men in the barrack routinely witnessed each other’s wretched states, it seemed somehow wrong to expose a woman to the sight of him.

“You should have called me sooner, Fensal.” She crouched down beside Kahlil.

“You shouldn’t be here.” Kahlil’s voice splintered as he tried to speak. His breath tasted of vomit.

“You’re hardly in any condition to take me by force,” Yu’mir said, misunderstanding his concern. “And I’m not too worried about falling victim to your seductive charms either.”

He heard the snort of Fensal’s repressed laughter.

“I brought whiteshell tablets.” Yu’mir took a small paper packet from the pocket of her apron and placed it in his hand. “Do you think you can keep them down?”

 
He didn’t know what he could keep down, or even if he wanted to keep anything down. A pathetic, tired part of him just wanted to die and have done with it. How hard could it be to simply die?

The moment the thought came to Kahlil, he rejected it.

He had failed. He had ruined the world. No amount of remorse would change that, and he had no right to expect the release of death. He had no right to dream of it, as he did each night. He deserved to feel bad and he deserved to suffer, but he didn’t deserve to die yet. He had too many obligations.

Just sagging here, making himself sick like this, was both pathetic and self-indulgent. Only he knew of the world that might have been, of the world that had been lost. To everyone else this was simply life. Fensal and Yu’mir had their own concerns. Alidas had his. They were all present and real. Kahlil’s guilt and sickness stemmed from an unalterable past and he needed to pull himself together and see to his present duties.

He opened Yu’mir’s paper packet and dumped the chalky whiteshell tablets into his palm. They smelled of salt. Certainly a fresher odor than the one currently clinging to Kahlil. He swallowed them with a gulp of the cool water.

Yu’mir placed the palm of her hand against his forehead.

“I don’t think you have a fever. Did you eat something bad?”

“Goatweed, I think.” Kahlil took another drink of the water, using it to rinse his mouth out a little. “There was some growing in Jath’ibaye’s garden and I was playing with it.”

“I’ve never heard of it.” Yu’mir glanced at the cup in Kahlil’s hand. “Do you need more water?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“It’s no trouble.” She took the empty cup and handed it back to Fensal. “Get him some more water.”

“Me?” Fensal asked.

“Yes, you. You’re in his debt,” Yu’mir replied firmly.

“So you’ve told me,” Fensal said. “But this is only going to last so long. I’m not going to be serving him hand and foot from now on.”

Yu’mir rolled her eyes at Fensal’s retreating back.

She said, “He can be such an ass sometimes.”

“He’s not so bad,” Kahlil told her, “especially if you ignore everything he says.”
 
              

Yu’mir smiled. It made her look pretty. Not beautiful, she didn’t have that kind of face, but she had a kindness to her expression that could make her quite pretty.

“Feeling any better?” Yu’mir asked.

Kahlil nodded. “I think the worst of it’s over.”

“So, goatweed?” Yu’mir asked. “What is it, exactly?”

“Just a plant.” Kahlil leaned back against a tiled wall.

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“Yes, you said that.” Kahlil watched as she straightened her dress around her. He wondered if Fensal had the good sense to find her pretty.

“You look a little dazed,” Yu’mir said. “Should you move back closer to the—”

“No.” Kahlil shook his head. “I’m just tired. I think the tablets are helping.”

“They usually do. If not, then dewroot will,” Yu’mir assured him.

“You’re quite the physician, aren’t you?” Kahlil smiled. Fensal really should marry her, he decided. She’d make a good mother.

“It’s mostly herbalism.” Yu’mir dropped her voice a little. “That’s why I’m curious about your goatweed.”

“Oh.” As his miserable nausea faded, Kahlil began to realize how exhausted he was. The bruises across his right leg and his throat throbbed with a dull pain in time with his heartbeat.

Yu’mir obviously waited for a better response.

 
“It’s not as though I’m practicing witchcraft,” Yu’mir suddenly explained. “Just teas and a few tablets like the ones I gave you. Nothing...”

A shadow of worry crossed her face, though he was the last person she needed to fear. Her small concoctions of flowers and leaves were the soul of innocence. They were simple medicines, more cookery to them than power. Kahlil had seen true witchcraft.