6: Broken Fortress (8 page)

“But you remember his life? You remember…” Jath’ibaye didn’t seem able to say anything more. His jaw clenched and he shook his head.

“If I don’t think about it, then Ravishan’s memories come to me as if they were my own,” Kahlil admitted. “But then I realize that they can’t be. When I try to straighten out what’s mine and what’s his, it all gets garbled and confused. Everything I know about myself is suddenly contradicted by this other life I didn’t live. It’s like my memory is haunted.”

“How do you get through the day like that?” Jath’ibaye lifted his hand and for a moment Kahlil thought he might reach out to touch his cheek, but then Jath’ibaye caught himself and dropped his calloused hand back to the book in front of him.

“I try not to think about the past too much.” Kahlil shrugged. “You’d be surprised by how little you have to know about yourself to just get through the day.”

“Sounds like hell,” Jath’ibaye replied.

“When I first arrived it was, but lately…” Kahlil sighed. “I don’t know. Either I’m getting used to it or my memories are beginning to settle out.”

“Settle out?” Jath’ibaye asked.
 

“I can think about the past a little more easily. There are still two histories, but instead of just crashing into each other, it’s more like…” Kahlil tried to think of a way to describe the interplay of the two sets of memories in his mind.

“You know when you look out this window,” Kahlil said at last, “there’s the view outside but there’s also your reflection in the glass. You can watch everything going on outside, but the reflection is always there. And every now and then you notice it, and the entire view outside goes out of focus. But if you shift your focus, the view comes back. That’s kind of how it is for me.”

Kahlil noticed Jath’ibaye’s gaze flick to the window. He nodded. “So which life is it that you plan to focus on?”
 

“I don’t know,” Kahlil replied. “This entire world is Ravishan’s. His history is consistent with everything that has happened here. But this is also the world that killed him. His place in this history ended twenty-seven years ago, didn’t it?”

“It shouldn’t have,” Jath’ibaye said. He didn’t meet Kahlil’s gaze but instead stared out the window to the courtyard below.
 

“But it did.” Kahlil shrugged to cover the edge of disappointment that moved through him. He knew that Jath’ibaye would prefer him to become Ravishan, his brave heroic dead lover, resurrected. But as much as Kahlil wanted Ravishan’s life, he couldn’t be any man but who he was. “The way I see it, neither he nor I belong to this world anymore. But I’m the one who lived and he—for better or for worse—died. I can’t change that…Not even you can change that.”

Jath’ibaye averted his bright gaze from Kahlil’s face down to the stack of pages Kahlil had translated. “There are people here who knew him—people who were his friends. When they see you, they’re not going to know what to do. They’re going to want you to be him.”

“I know,” Kahlil said.

“They’ll make mistakes. They’ll want you—” Jath’ibaye cut himself short, and swallowed before continuing, “They’ll want you to remember them the way they remember you. What will you tell them?”

“I’ll just have to tell them that I’m not Ravishan.”
 

“But you are fundamentally the same man. Not only are you the same flesh and blood, but you also had the same parents, the same upbringing—”
 

“No. When I prayed to Parfir to send me a new teacher, a man better than Dayyid, I got no one. He got you. It changed his life forever.” Seeing the way Jath’ibaye’s jaw clenched just slightly, Kahlil felt bad for disappointing him and also more jealous of Ravishan than he had imagined possible. “I can’t be Ushiri Ravishan’in’Rathal’pesha any more than you can be John Matthew Toffler from Arlington, Washington.”
 

Jath’ibaye looked truly surprised at the mention of his own name. Kahlil wondered if he had somehow managed to forget it. He supposed that it had been decades since anyone had called him by his real name.

At first, Jath’ibaye seemed like he might offer some further argument. The muscles of his jaw clenched and flexed but he remained silent. At last he simply said, “It’s getting late.”

Kahlil nodded. The hour would have been early in Nurjima but Vundomu didn’t seem to support the same wild nightlife.
 

Jath’ibaye gathered the pages Kahlil had translated and then stood. “I should let you get some rest. Tomorrow we’ll talk more about your duties and your disciplinary problems.” He smiled almost ruefully as he said those last words and Kahlil couldn’t help but smile back at him.

“Until then, good night.” Jath’ibaye moved quickly to the door.

Kahlil tried to think of something to say, some other topic to introduce so that Jath’ibaye would not leave. But Jath’ibaye was already at the door. He glanced back at Kahlil once, just briefly. He was dirty and tired and there was an emptiness to his gaze that struck Kahlil as utterly defeated.
 

“Take care,” Kahlil called out, but Jath’ibaye had already gone. The door closed on Kahlil’s last words.
 

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Kahlil slept badly and only for a few hours. In his dreams, the walls of Vundomu collapsed around him. A desperate voice called to him. As he searched through the crumbling ruins, arcs of flames exploded through the halls. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed something white stalking him. With insectile speed, it skittered between the jumping shadows. As he watched he noticed more and more of the sudden flashes of motion. Bones, he realized, hundreds of hungry bones were crawling up through the wreckage.

He startled awake. Despite the cold night air, his body was damp with sweat. He heard people rushing through the hall outside his room. The sun hadn’t even risen. He kicked the sheep skins and quilted blankets off his body and sat up in his massive bed, feeling disoriented and unsure of where he was or why he was here.
 

Then he remembered.
 

Vundomu.
 

After his dream of stalking bones, the sound of people running outside his rooms disturbed him. He got out of bed and wandered out into the empty greeting room.
 

He glanced out his window to Jath’ibaye’s chambers. The rooms blazed with the bright green light of mashaye lamps. The silhouettes of a half-dozen people jumped and shifted as the light flickered across the white curtains.

Kahlil went to the bathroom. When he returned, the noise in the hall had stopped but Jath’ibaye’s chambers looked packed. Kahlil guessed that there were at least twenty people gathered there.

He wondered what was going on. Had something gone wrong? It certainly looked that way. Did it have to do with the gaun’im in the south or with the hungry bones in the north? Or something else that he didn’t even know about yet? There were too many possibilities for Kahlil to guess what had happened. But he wanted to know.

He pulled on his dark wool pants and then found the cleaner of his two shirts. His socks were getting a little ripe even by his low standards. Absently, he wondered where he was supposed to go to get his clothes laundered.
 

The thought slipped from his mind as he continued watching the people gathered in Jath’ibaye’s chambers. He easily recognized the unique shadow cast by Ji’s canine body. She was up on something—a chair or a table—shaking her head as she spoke. Her back arched slightly, hackles up.

Kahlil reached to unlatch his window, with the idea that he might be able to overhear them. Just as he slipped the latch open there came a loud knock at his door.

When he opened it, he found the young woman he’s spoken with aboard Jath’ibaye’s ship standing on the other side. She was no longer dressed in sailing gear, but now wore the heavy russet coat and black pants that seemed standard issue for Vundomu.

“Besh’anya?” Kahlil was almost certain that was the dark-haired girl’s name.

“I didn’t know if you’d remember.” She smiled charmingly.

“How could I forget?” Kahlil supposed he looked a wreck, but then it was the middle of the night. Her expectations probably hadn’t run too high.

“I’m going to guess from the late hour that this isn’t a social call?” Kahlil hoped it wasn’t a social call at least. Especially not a private one.

“I’m sorry. It’s not,” Besh’anya replied. “The Five Districts Council has asked for you. They’re holding a meeting in Jath’ibaye’s apartments right now.”

“I noticed the commotion out the window,” Kahlil remarked.

Besh’anya nodded. “I think everyone in the fortress has been called up in front of them. Ji sent me to get you.”

“Let me get my boots.” Kahlil stepped back from the door, allowing it to swing open. Hesitantly, Besh’anya followed him into his rooms.
 

“I’d offer you a seat, but I don’t have any chairs yet.” Kahlil went to the bedroom and found his boots.

“So tell me,” he called from the bedroom as he laced his boots up, “what is this Five Districts Council that I’m being called before?”

“You don’t know?” Besh’anya asked.

“Not yet,” Kahlil replied.

“They’re an elected council that makes decisions concerning the five districts of Vundomu. Wah’roa represents all of us here in the Fortress District. Tai’yu speaks for the Greenhills District. Hirran represents the Iron Heights in the east and Gin’yu speaks for the Silverlake Islands.”

“That’s only four,” Kahlil remarked.

“Litivi supposedly represents the Westcliff District, but really he’s just his mother’s proxy—Gin’yu, I mean.”
 

“Jath’ibaye isn’t a member?” Kahlil asked. He grabbed his leather coat as well as the yasi’halaun, which he strapped across his back.

“No.” Besh’anya smiled at him in a shy manner that assured Kahlil that he couldn’t be looking all that bad. “Jath’ibaye acts as a representative for the council when he visits the gaun’im in Nurjima.”

“Really?” Kahlil went to the door and Besh’anya followed him. “I don’t think the gaun’im know that.”

“No,” Besh’anya replied, “the gaun’im fear Jath’ibaye. So it’s better if he presents the council’s decisions.”

“And no one is worried that he might just be presenting his own decisions?” Kahlil couldn’t help but ask. He was honestly much more comfortable with the idea of Jath’ibaye as a solitary ruler than as a representative to some council. An elected council could not claim any divinity. Its members were only human and likely to fall prey to the rivalry, bribery, ambition, and short-sightedness of all mortal men.
 

“Of course not. Jath’ibaye is beyond reproach.” Besh’anya gave Kahlil a rebuking look, but then went on, “On the few occasions that Jath’ibaye has gone ahead with a decision without the council’s approval, they have always agreed that it was the right choice afterwards.”

“Then, when it comes down to it, Jath’ibaye is in charge,” Kahlil said, grinning.
 

Besh’anya studied Kahlil briefly, then hesitantly she nodded. “If Jath’ibaye wished, he could overthrow the council, but he never would.”

“No,” Kahlil said, “that wouldn’t be like him.” Doubtless, government by an elected council had been Jath’ibaye’s idea in the first place. It was the kind of idealistic system that a native of Nayeshi might implement.

“Ji says he just doesn’t like to be involved in politicking,” Besh’anya admitted.

“Why are they meeting in his chambers then?” Kahlil asked.

“The council originally called on him to discuss the withdrawal of our people from Nurjima. But now—” Besh’anya lowered her voice and said, “—they’re asking about the death of Nanvess Bousim. Ji sounded pretty frustrated when she sent me to get you.”

“That doesn’t sound too promising,” Kahlil remarked. He had been the one to kill Nanvess, but only he and Jath’ibaye knew that—or perhaps not, if Jath’ibaye really did report to this council. It was difficult for Kahlil to imagine Jath’ibaye reporting anything to anyone. He just wasn’t naturally forthcoming—at least he hadn’t been when Kahlil had known him.

“Tell me as much about this council as you can, will you?” Kyle asked, and Besh’anya did her best to inform him and keep up with his fast, agitated strides.
 

Outside Jath’ibaye’s apartments, they were greeted by several guards dressed in russet coats with the red Prayerscars of the kahlirash’im marking their brows. To his surprise, Kahlil noticed that two of the five were women. Doubtless, this was another of Jath’ibaye’s progressive ideas.

Outside the heavy door Kahlil caught the tones of raised voices, but when he and Besh’anya entered the expansive greeting chamber, the crowd of some twenty people gathered around the huge marble table went quiet. All their attention turned to Kahlil.

He refused to feel intimidated. He’d faced greater audiences than this in far more unsettling surroundings. Kahlil allowed himself to take in Jath’ibaye’s private suite. It appeared to be laid out much like Kahlil’s own, with high ceilings and wide, deep window casings. But where the red marble inlay of Kahlil’s walls stood bare, Jath’ibaye’s were lined with tall wooden pharmacy shelves.