3: Black Blades (4 page)

“My mother was a witch.” Kahlil didn’t know why he said it, except that the knowledge had just come to him. “She taught me about goatweed, yellowpetal, and fire vines...” He couldn’t remember much else about her, except that they had burned her. He’d been young.

He closed his eyes. He didn’t want to remember anything more. Not about himself or his life. He just wanted to slip away into the respite of a thoughtless, dreamless darkness.

“Kyle,” Yu’mir whispered his name.

He could feel her hands against his forehead again and then touching the pulse at his throat. He must have fallen asleep for a few minutes. The silent dark had been so alluring.

“Kyle,” she said again, “are you still awake?”

“I’m sorry. I’m not thinking very clearly.” With an effort, he opened his eyes. “Have I told you that I think you’d make a good mother?”

“No.” Yu’mir looked a little startled.

“Not for my children,” Kahlil smirked at the impossibility of that, “for yours and Fensal’s.”

Even in the faint light Kahlil could see the blush that swept across Yu’mir’s cheeks.

Then Fensal came through the doorway. For the first time, Kahlil realized that Fensal was only wearing his thin cotton underpants. The skin of his bare chest and arms looked blue in the cold morning light. He must have gone straight from his bed to get Yu’mir.

He had a clay cup in one hand and a pitcher of water in the other. He set the pitcher and cup down, then crouched beside Yu’mir. Next to her, Fensal looked rangy and unkempt. His brown hair stuck up in clumps from where he’d slept on it. Yu’mir’s hair was pulled back into a smooth bun at the back of her neck. She’d probably been up for a few hours already, overseeing the morning baking.

“So, he’s poisoned?” Fensal asked Yu’mir.

“I’m not sure.” Yu’mir poured more water for Kahlil and handed him the cup.

He drank slowly, letting the cool liquid soothe his throat. The bruises Jath’ibaye had left on his throat were probably beginning to darken by now. They’d be black and yellow in a day. He didn’t know how he’d explain them. Perhaps he’d be gone by then. Maybe sooner.

“Kyle.” Yu’mir lightly touched his hand as he set the empty cup down. “Can you tell me more about the plant you ate? The goatweed?”

“It won’t kill me,” Kahlil assured her. “I just got some on my hands and forgot about it when I ate dinner. I wasn’t thinking.”

“I’ll say.” Fensal frowned at him, then looked to Yu’mir. “So, this goatweed will wear off eventually. It’s not going to kill him, is it?”

“Why do you keep asking me?” Yu’mir asked. “I’ve never even heard of the stuff before now.”

“It grows in the north, on scrub hills. Three gray leaves with orange tips,” Kahlil said. “If the leaves are eaten they purge the body. Only goats and sheep can keep it down. It’s an unpleasant plant, but the leaves alone won’t kill a grown man.”

“I’m just going to tell Desh’oun and the others that you’re ill. Don’t tell anyone else about this weed-eating of yours. It just makes us all look stupid.” Fensal paused for a moment and then added, “Particularly you. It makes you look the stupidest.”

“I won’t do it again.” Kahlil couldn’t help but find Fensal’s terrible bedside manner somewhat endearing.
           

“Stop lecturing him,” Yu’mir said, “and get him to his bed. I have to go before the other runners see me here.”

“Go, go.” Fensal waved her away. “Thank you for coming.”

Yu’mir smiled when Fensal turned his back to her. Then she slipped quietly away.

“Can you walk on your own?” Fensal asked.

“I think so.” He stumbled out of the bathroom back into the quiet barrack. The canvas panels were still spread around the other runners’ beds, creating an illusion of emptiness. Kahlil went to his own bed. He stripped off his thin, stinking underclothes and lay down naked. The cold sheets smelled clean.

Fensal followed him to the edge of his bed. Kahlil had expected that Fensal would just go back to bed himself, but then he realized that it was too late for that. Thin rays of dawn sunlight were already seeping through the small windows.

“How did the races go?” Kahlil whispered.

Fensal grinned and sat on the edge of Kahlil’s bed.

“Good. The only one who came close to me was Nam. He’s one of Jath’ibaye’s runners. The bastard is a beast on hills. But I know the streets better. I took him at Baker Cross. He pulled off when he saw the trolley coming and I tore right past him.”

“I’m sorry I missed it.”

“There’s always next year.” Fensal rose. “I’m getting the rest of the men up now. You stay here and sleep. I want you well tomorrow.”

He pulled the canvas panels around Kahlil’s bed closed. Kahlil could hear Fensal rousing the other runners. It sounded like he was assaulting them with their pillows this morning. They groaned, coughed, and grumbled. Kahlil watched their blue-toned shadows jump and stretch across the white folds of the canvas panels. Fensal laughed at something. One of the younger runners started singing a song about his morning erection.

Kahlil rolled his eyes at the absurd lyrics.

He had allowed the Rifter to live, but the whole world hadn’t been ruined for it. People still laughed and made their livings all across the country. These men didn’t even know that their fates were meant to have been different. He wondered who they would have been if things had gone differently. If he had killed the Rifter, would it have changed their lives? Would some of them have become priests or heretics? Would there have been a new war?
 

There was no way for him to know.
  

Kahlil heard water running in the bathroom. The shouts and conversations sounded distant and dull. They grew softer and then fell into silence as the runners departed. Kahlil slept.

He dreamed of another room, one with the same strong smell of men, but higher walls and sharp northern light. He was sitting on a large bed, reading a book. A lean blonde man sat on the edge of the bed next to him. He smelled like pine and rain. Kahlil could feel heat radiating from his body even through the heavy gray clothes they both wore.

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

The man smiled and said, “You haven’t forgotten about the key, have you?”

Kahlil woke suddenly. Instinctively, he grasped Alidas’ key, though he now realized that it had never been the key he had wanted it to be. Still, holding it reassured him.

The canvas panels twitched and Yu’mir peeked between them. Seeing that he was awake, she waved. The bright noonday light edged her brown hair in gold. Kahlil secured the blankets around his waist and sat upright.

“Feeling better?” Yu’mir asked.

“Yes.”

Though they were alone, she looked nervous. Kahlil glanced down and noticed the folded piece of paper in her hands. She curled her fingers around it, but not enough to crumple it.

“Fensal’s bed is to the left of mine.” Kahlil pointed in the general direction.

Yu’mir lowered her face as a scarlet blush flooded across her cheeks.

“I wasn’t...”
 

“The note is for him, isn’t it?”

Yu’mir nodded. “I wasn’t going to wake you up to ask you, but I thought that if you were already awake...”

“I’m awake.”

“You don’t think I’m being too forward, do you?” Yu’mir asked and Kahlil knew she didn’t mean about waking him.

“Not at all. I left a secret note for someone myself. Yesterday, in fact.” It seemed as if it had been weeks ago. “I won’t tell anyone that I saw you here.”

“Do you promise?”

“I swear,” Kahlil assured her.

She rushed to Fensal’s bed. Kahlil took advantage of the canvas panel hanging between them to get dressed. His clean pants were cold from hanging against the wall.

“Put it under his pillow,” Kahlil advised. “Otherwise the other runners will see it and want to know what it says.”

“They should mind their own business.” Yu’mir hesitated at the edge of the canvas panels. “Are you getting dressed?”

“Yes, I’m nearly decent.” Kahlil dug through the box under his bed for his spare shirt and some socks.

“Was it Wounin’an?”

“What?” Kahlil tucked his shirt in. The sleeves were too short for him, so he rolled the cuffs.

“The woman you sent the note to, was it Wounin’an?”

“Wou—” Kahlil began to ask who she was, but then he remembered the kitchen girl with the freckles. “No. Did she get a note as well?”

“I don’t know. You two seem to flirt all the time.”

“I don’t think she’s serious.” Kahlil found his belt and threaded it through the loops of his pants.

“Why is it,” Yu’mir asked, “that whenever a man isn’t serious he says that he thinks the woman isn’t?”

“An attempt at delicacy, I don’t know. You can come in now. I’m decent.”

Yu’mir stepped back through the panels. She frowned when she saw Kahlil lacing up his boots.

“You’re not going out, are you?”

“I need to see if there’s been any response to my note.” Kahlil combed his tangled hair back from his face with his fingers. He probably still looked like hell.

“But you’re supposed to be sick.”

“I’m fine, thanks to your medicine,” Kahlil assured her.

“Was that an attempt at flattery?”

“Did it work?”

Yu’mir sighed. “Fensal will be annoyed if he sees you running around the city. He gave you the day off to recover, not to chase some street girl.”

“Street girl?”

“You know what I mean.”

“A prostitute?” An undignified image of the fifty-year-old Alidas working a street corner came to his mind and Kahlil almost laughed aloud.

“Just because I’m a decent woman, it doesn’t mean I don’t know about the other kind.” Yu’mir crossed her arms over her chest. “Is she very pretty?”

“No, not particularly,” Kahlil answered.

“You’re supposed to say that she’s the most beautiful woman in the world,” Yu’mir told him. “You’re not going to get very far telling her she’s not particularly pretty.”

“That’s not what’s important between us.” Kahlil pulled his coat from its wall peg.

“Is she pregnant?”

“Pregnant? No!” Kahlil gaped at her. He was always forgetting things like that. Wives, mistresses, children, all the domestic relations of other men’s lives fell outside his experience. Pregnancy had a kind of irrelevance to his existance that surpassed even that of abstract math.

“You never know,” Yu’mir told him.

“I know,” Kahlil insisted. “I have to go if I’m going to get back before Fensal does.”

“Fine.” Yu’mir turned and started out of the room. “But if the baby’s a girl you better name her after me.”

Kahlil waited for her to leave, then stepped into the Gray Space.

A few moments later he let himself into Alidas’ rooms.

Because of the weather, they were colder than before. The air felt crisp, despite the sun. He wondered if it would snow again.

“Is anyone home?” Kahlil called out.

No response. The rooms appeared to be the same as when he had left them yesterday, but the notes he had left were gone. He searched all three rooms but found nothing to tell him what response Alidas might have had.

Kahlil knew he shouldn’t linger, but still he sat down on the corner of Alidas’ bed as he had done the day before. He lay back and stared up at the ceiling.

What was he going to do when he returned to the Lisam palace? Still try to stop the assassination and save the Rifter?

There was more than a little irony to that.

Should he let Fikiri, Ourath, Nanvess and Esh’illan all try their best to kill the Rifter? Only the key could truly kill him and as far as Kahlil knew Jath’ibaye was the one who had it.

They could all just go on without him while he lay on this soft bed.

He heard the click and groan of the front door opening.

Alidas stood in the doorway. The bright noon light at his back cast his features into deep shadow. Sweeping his eyes across the rooms, he caught sight of Kahlil. Brief surprise registered on his face as he stepped in and closed the door behind him.

“It’s cold,” Alidas said from the front room. “You should have started a fire in the wood stove.”

“I didn’t think I’d be here long.” Kahlil became suddenly self-conscious about being caught lying in another man’s bed. He sat up and joined Alidas in the front room.

“I just came to see if you got my note.”

Alidas bent over the wood stove, feeding scraps of paper into the dull, glowing embers.
              

“I got it last night.” He balled up a piece of paper from his pocket and tossed it into the growing flames. “There’s a bundle of wood on the step outside the door. Grab it, will you?”

Kahlil found the scrap wood, untied the rope holding the bundle together, and handed Alidas a stick to add to the fire.

Already the first wave of heat radiated out into the room.