Post by devilinthedetails on Apr 1, 2022 12:34:35 GMT 10
Title: A Double-Edged Swords
Summary: In the desert, Zahir and Jonathan negotiate questions of succession.
Rating: PG-13 for references to racism, colonialism, and child abuse.
Warnings: For the racism, colonialism, and child abuse I mentioned.
Author's Note: I continue to think that Jonathan being Voice would be a complicate thing for the Bazhir to accept and that there would probably be some lingering opposition and resentment to it among the Bazhir. So I have Zahir and Jonathan wrestle with that in this fic.
Double-Edged Swords
Zahir ibn Alhaz rode through the desert on horseback at dawn with his father. King Jonathan and an entourage including the Crown Prince and Zahir had come south, and the king, in his eternally persuasive manner, had insisted that Zahir take a few days away from his duties as King’s Champion. Visit his family and tribe.
Feeling more of an outcast among his own family and tribe–people whose blood flowed in his veins but who no longer understood him–than he did among the northerners, Zahir had tried to gracefully refuse this offer. Only to discover for what felt like at least the hundredth time since he had become the man’s squire so many years ago that King Jonathan could not be gainsaid or denied.
Especially when he was determined to commit what he–in his benign naivety–regarded as an act of kindness rather than tyranny. Too often tyranny and deluded, misguided kindness wore the same face. Kindness was a double-edged sword that could cut deep, Zahir thought.
“The king has rode south,” Baba commented as they crested a sand dune. Referring to the Voice by the northern title. A minor rebellion, Zahir knew. A staunch refusal to acknowledge a northerner as Voice of the Tribes. To grant someone not born and bred among the Bazhir–an eternal outsider–that greatest of honors. “With his eldest son. His heir.”
“With the Crown Prince.” Zahir nodded, staring into the sunrise that stained the sky the same yellow-orange hue as the sand. “Yes.”
“Why would he bring the Crown Prince into the desert with him?” Baba’s eyes were narrow. Hard. Squinting into the distance where he doubtlessly saw deception, treachery, and no reason to trust northerners who had broken every promise they ever made to the Bazhir. Perpetually stabbed the Bazhir in the back.
“He has brought the Crown Prince to the desert many times before.” Zahir mentally conceded that many times might be an exaggeration. Still, he could remember Prince Roald even as a small, somber-eyed child being brought to Bazhir gatherings and functions by his father, the Voice. The prince had always been quiet. Passively absorbing his surroundings to reach private, never-expressed judgments. A serious boy who had grown into a grave man. “He wants to ensure that his heir knows the Bazhir, and the Bazhir know his heir. He wants his successor as king to be familiar with our ways and customs. It is an honor to us, Baba. Not a slight.”
It became such a challenge to try to translate the actions of the king he loved–who had become like a father to him in the course of his squireship–to the man who had given seed to him. Had sent him north to train as a page and felt far from him ever since. As if they lived in two different countries. Two different worlds. Two different times. Spoke two different languages. Perhaps they did.
“Is it or is it preparation to announce that he will be training his son as Voice after him? An effort to smooth the road for that decree?” Baba’s question was shrewd. Pointed as an arrow. “Does he only intend for his heir to be king after him or king and Voice? Just like him. What are his succession plans regarding the position of Voice? Has he disclosed them to you?”
“No.” Zahir stared down at his mare’s mane. It was easier than looking at his father. “Nor does he have to.”
“Ah.” Baba’s tone was mocking. Whether of Zahir, the king, or both, Zahir didn’t know. Didn’t feel in the mood to guess. “But I thought you were in his counsels. Surely, that is why he keeps you so close to him. Almost on a leash like a trained pet. A lion without claws.”
“I am the King’s Champion. His sword.” Zahir bristled at his father’s demeaning depiction of himself and the life he led. A life that any northern father would have been proud of but that filled his father with scorn. “Not his councilor.”
“You could ask him if he intends to appoint his son as his successor as Voice,” Baba remarked archly. “A grand dynasty of northerners to rule over us in that way. The final conquest and insult.”
“I could.” Zahir responded to the first statement. Didn’t dignify the subsequent ones with an answer or attention. If he lost his cool, his standing would diminish even further in his father’s hawk-sharp eyes. He had to be strong. Confident. Unrattled.
“Will you?” Baba’s eyebrow lifted.
“If you command it, Baba.” Zahir bowed on his horse. A northern gesture combined with a Bazhir address. The uneasy fusion of cultures that defined his existence. Rendered him part of neither world. Unwelcome in both societies. Made him an island in his own country.
Bazhir sons obeyed their father or were beaten bloody with a rod. Northern knights served their king without questioning unto death. Loyalty, too, could be a double-edged sword to impale oneself upon if one wasn’t cautious, or, perhaps, even if one was. How to remain faithful to both those roles? Fulfill both those expectations without ignoble failure and unforgivable disappointment?
“I do.” Baba scowled. “Since that is apparently the only way to get you to do your duty to your people. Your tribe. To shame and order you into it.”
“I’m a knight of the realm.” Zahir drew his spine up stiffly. Offended beyond belief at his father’s dismissive portrayal of him as some feckless son honor had long since abandoned. “My people are bigger than this tribe. Bigger than the Bazhir. All Tortallans are my people. My allegiance has to be to all of Tortall and its king.”
“You are a traitor and a coward,” Baba snapped. Slapping Zahir across the face.
Forcefully enough that Zahir’s head shot back, cracking his neck. That he might have toppled off his mount if he wasn’t such a skilled rider who could not be dislodged even by an unexpected assault.
Though why his father’s blow should have been a surprise to him was a mystery. After all, ever since he was a boy, Baba had never hesitated to hit him when he was deemed displeasing, deficient, disobedient, or disrespectful in any manner. His entire existence now seemed to be an affront to his father. Every word somehow disrespectful or displeasing.
Zahir’s fingers instinctively flew to his scabbard, but, in the end, he was too much of a loyal Bazhir son to pull a weapon on his father.
“You have your orders.” Baba turned away. “Do not return to my tent until you have obeyed them, son.”
Son. So he had not been disowned. Exiled completely. Banned from his father’s tent. Disinherited and outcast from his tribe. Thrown into the shifting sands. Still a son expected to obey. Even after a slap on the face.
Zahir watched his father ride back toward the tent where he had been born and spent the first ten years of his life. Where he was now not welcome.
Since his parents’ tent was forbidden to him, Zahir took refuge in an uncle’s tent–a man who was older brother to his mother.
His mother herself appeared in the tent moment after Zahir arrived as if she had sensed that her disgraced son would seek shelter with her brother’s family.
Ummi cradled his cheek in her soft palm as if he were still a boy crying over every scrape and bruise. Not a valiant knight of the realm. Accustomed to pain. Oblivious to it when he could be and glorying in it when he couldn’t be.
“Why did you have to antagonize your father, Zahir?” she tutted in a fashion that suggested she despaired of there ever being a time he wouldn’t irk his father enough to get backhanded and possibly tossed out of his parents’ tent. The idea that it might be her husband and not her son to blame never occurring to her.
“I only spoke the truth.” Zahir jerked away from her touch. Suddenly hating the feeling of her fingers on his skin. That was another double-edged sword. Truth and honesty. A double-edged sword that had just sliced through him. “I am a knight of the realm. My duty extends beyond this tribe. This desert. The Bazhir. It encompasses all of Tortall.”
“Your father does not like thinking of you as a knight.” Ummi shook her head, and Zahir could feel the memory of the thousands of northern knights who had brought death and destruction by sword to the desert during Jasson’s conquest living and breathing between them. How could any Bazhir forget that shame? Forgive that suffering and slaughter? Serve a northern king as if it had never happened? Don their armor? Swear their oaths of fealty? Kneel before their throne? “As a Tortallan. Not a Bazhir.”
“Baba is fighting a war that ended long ago.” Zahir scoffed, even though he knew that his father’s war had never ended. Would never end. Could never end until the northerners left the desert. “We are all Tortallan now. Whether he accepts it or not. The desert was lost long ago. Before any of us were born.”
“He wants you to be a son to him.” Beneath her veil, Ummi’s dark eyes were fixed unwaveringly upon Zahir. “Not to live at the beck and call of the northern king.”
“The northern king showed me great favor when he chose me as his squire and again when he named me his Champion. I owe him leal service in return.” Zahir’s gaze was stone. So was his heart. Becoming stone, inside and outside, was the only way he could survive encounters with his parents. “I will return to the northern king tomorrow. There’s a question Baba wants me to ask him. So you see I am a devoted son too.”
Zahir was bitter as a blood feud. Ummi must have sensed it for she rose with a rustle of fabric. Left her brother’s tent without a farewell to her son or a kiss on his swelling cheek. Zahir tried not to feel that as another blow. Didn’t entirely succeed.
The next morning, after a breakfast of goat yogurt and herb flatbread spread with mashed fava beans made by his aunt, Zahir rode out into the desert again. Away from his tribe and family. Toward the northern king he loved and served. Who always seemed to draw him back like a magnet no matter how many miles were between them.
Honesty might have been a double-edged sword but Zahir didn’t cease wielding it when he returned to the king’s company. That night, as a blue twilight studded with sterling stars unfurled like a banner across the sky, Zahir walked on desert sand beside the man who had once been his knightmaster.
It was after sunset. After the communion with the Voice. The communion with the Voice that Zahir had refrained from participating in this evening because he didn’t want King Jonathan to be aware of the turmoil inside him. Of the doubts that dogged his loyalties like baying hounds chasing a scent.
“You returned from your family sooner than I expected.” King Jonathan cast Zahir a sidelong, considering glance. Eyes blue as the star-strewn twilight overhead. “Not that I am unhappy to see you again.”
“My father dispatched me, sire.” Zahir’s lips were thin. Tight. “He has a question he wishes me to ask you.”
“Ah.” King Jonathan’s eyebrow quirked. “One he couldn’t ask me himself?”
“He could’ve asked himself.” Zahir snorted like a distempered stallion. “He preferred to use me as a messenger boy, Your Majesty.”
“Well.” The king waved an inviting hand. “What is the question your father wishes you to ask?”
“He wonders.” Zahir paused. Took a deep breath. Continued, “What your plans are for the succession of the Voice? Whom you intend to be Voice after you?”
“I have not decided who my successor will be. I have many years left to choose and train a successor.” King Jonathan’s tone was tart. “Many years left before I die according to the vision I had when I became Voice.”
“It won’t be the Crown Prince then, sire?” Zahir had to ask. Had to press. His father would expect him to, after all. Besides, he had his own curiosites that must be satisfied now they were aroused.
“Roald?” King Jonathan sounded genuinely astounded. “No, I would never lay that burden on him. Make him walk the path I do as king and Voice. It is not a straightforward path to tread, Zahir.”
It couldn’t have been an uncomplicated path to travel, attempting to reconcile a divided north and south in one being, Zahir realized. Only his knightmaster would have dreamed of doing that. Would have the ambition and strength of will to dare to attempt that.
When Zahir stayed silent, staring at his Voice and king, his former knightmaster added, “The Voice is not a hereditary position like kingship. It has never been an inherited position passed from father to son. There is no precedent for that among the Bazhir.”
“Does that matter to you, Your Majesty?” Zahir burst out before he could bite his tongue around the sardonic words. Paradoxically, he was driven to be the loyal Bazhir son–expressing all of his father’s doubts and objections–in front of his king, while before his father, he was the faithful Tortallan knight. Devoutly reciting his unquestioning mantra of service to Tortall and its king. “There was no precedent for a northerner becoming Voice, either, and that didn’t stop you from becoming Voice.”
“I expected to hear that attack from some people’s lips, Zahir.” King Jonathan’s eyes were sharp. His tone even sharper. “Not from yours. Never from yours.”
“Because my loyalty is beyond question?” Zahir couldn’t resist taking refuge in sarcasm again. Sarcasm. That final defense of the weak and the proud. The weak and the proud who were inevitable disappointments to any who placed trust in them. “Beyond reproach? Because I am your devoted, unthinking servant in all things?”
“Because I thought you had more faith in me than that.” King Jonathan strode on. Brisk as a desert wind whipping through sand dunes. Forcing Zahir to increase his pace if he hoped to match his monarch’s speed. “Tell your father that I will name my successor as Voice when I judge the time is right, and that my successor as Voice will not be my son. Will that promise satisfy him?”
“Do you want the truth, sire?” Zahir would not normally have quibbled like a courtier over being unflinchingly honest with his king, but now he did. As much as he ached to be honest–to give vent to all the contradictions tearing his heart asunder–he also didn’t want to anger or hurt the man he loved like a father. Respected above anyone else in the world. The person who had his ultimate loyalty no matter how grumpily given.
“I always want the truth from you, Zahir.” King Jonathan sighed. Grim as death. “Go on. Be brutally honest with your king. I give you my permission and my command.”
“Be honest with my king or my Voice?” Zahir didn’t know why he asked. Why it mattered. Only knew that somehow, beneath desert stars, it did.
“Whichever would compel a greater degree of honesty from you.” King Jonathan’s rejoinder was dry. Zahir supposed he should have anticipated nothing less. “Your Voice or your king.”
Zahir didn’t know which would compel a greater degree of honesty from him. Only understood that each, in their own way, drew the truth–no matter how ugly, raw, and unpleasant–from him like puss spilling from a lanced boil. “Very well. To be brutally honest, Your Majesty, I do not believe my father will ever be satisfied with any promise from a northerner. Even if that northerner is the Voice of the Tribes. My father doesn’t trust northerners any farther than he can throw them against the wind in a sandstorm.”
“In that case–” King Jonathan steepled his fingers– “I don’t know what will satisfy your father. My word will never be enough surety for him. He does not have confidence or faith in me. Therefore, I am left with the question of what he wants.”
“He doesn’t want a northern Voice.” Zahir thought it should have been obvious what his father wanted. What many Bazhir, hidden in their tents, still dreamed of having: independence. A desert that was truly theirs again. Their freedom restored to them with no expectation of serving a northern king. “Or a northern king.”
Disloyal words from a Bazhir or a northern tongue. Words that skirted dangerously close to treasonous territory, perhaps, but the king had demanded Zahir’s honesty, hadn’t he? How could Zahir be less than upfront after that? Fail to advocate for his father and his people? Take this one chance to be a true-blooded son of the desert?
“Then he wants what will never be and would be wise to want something else instead.” There was steel in King Jonathan’s tone. In his eyes, as well. Zahir could see it shimmering silver in the moonlight. “The desert is part of Tortall. Part of this kingdom and will remain such. To be passed on to my son, his heir, and so on through the generations.”
The king would be implacable about this. He was a northerner, through and through, in this regard, and northerners were ludicriously attached to their principle of primogeniture. Of not splitting land between heirs and only permitting the firstborn son to inherit every inch of property. From the northern perspective, to divide land was to fracture power. And a king would never fracture his own power. Reduce his own legacy. Winnow down the land he could pass along to his heir.
The Bazhir were different. A nomadic people, restless as the wind that swept across the desert, they did not believe in land ownership as the northerners did. They understood that they only traveled and lived among the sand dunes during their appointed time beneath desert sun and stars.
Nor could the king bring himself to deny his own legitimacy–forsake his own claim and that of his heirs–to this land by admitting that the sand on which he stood was stolen ground. Ripped by bloodshed and violence from the Bazhir.
He had never and would never, Zahir knew, apologize for what his ancestor Jasson had done in conquering this desert. Perhaps if he had or would, Zahir’s father might have been able to forgive him for the terrible wrong committed generations ago. It would undermine the king’s legitimacy to make such an apology. So he would never make it, and Zahir’s father would never trust and never forgive.
Honesty–the ability to trust that a man meant what he said–mattered most to the Bazhir. Legitimacy was most important to the northerners. It turned out there was a vast chasm between the two. An unbridgeable gulf Zahir had no notion how to cross. One wide enough to swallow two cultures.
“People want what they can’t have all the time, sire.” Zahir steered the conversation away from the cliff’s edge. Didn’t leap over it. That would be suicide. “That’s why it’s called wishing. Not reality.”
“That is fine up to a point. As long as they recognize their wishes aren’t reality and don’t seek to transform their wishes into reality. Don’t rise up in revolt.” King Jonathan clasped Zahir’s shoulder firmly. “Just as a house divided cannot stand, so too a kingdom at war with itself will not survive. The Bazhir must accept that they are Tortallan as much as the northerners are. This hatred and distrust between Bazhir and northerners must not persist.”
“Perhaps Bazhir would be quicker to see themselves as Tortallan if northerners treated them as such. Behaved with honor and respect toward them.” Zahir folded his arms across his chest. Obstinately resolved to defend his people. “Didn’t refer to them as sand scuts and savages. It wouldn’t hurt the northerners to ask themselves how they earned the hatred and distrust of the Bazhir. How they might make amends.”
King Jonathan didn’t respond to this. Not directly. Maybe the idea of northerners making restitution to the Bazhir for everything that had been stolen from them was too radical even for this famously progressive king to fathom.
Instead he turned. Cupped Zahir’s cheek gently. The same cheek his father had struck a day ago. The broken mirrors and tangled patterns of his life. Observed with a certain sorrow as if Zahir had failed and disappointed him with a lack of vision,“One of the main reasons I chose you to be my squire, Zahir ibn Alhaz, was so that you might come to see the realm as I do. Might come to love it as I do.”
The realm. Zahir had, in his time as page, squire, and knight, seen more of it than most Bazhir or northerners. Many Bazhir preferred to never leave the desert. (In most Bazhir myths and fables, it was death sooner or later to abandon the desert that was lifeblood to the Bazhir.) Most northerners who weren’t nobles and didn’t join the army tended to be born, eke out a hardscrabble existence on land they didn’t own (only rented as tenants from an often cruel lord), and die within a few miles of where they first drew breath.
Not so for Zahir ibn Alhaz. He had seen the golden sand dunes of the southern desert. Watched white-foamed waves crash against the rocky coast of Port Legann. Explored the tidepools of Blue Harbor with their curious creatures. Coughed in the red dust of the eastern hills where famine and bandits were common foes. Stared at the yellow fields of wheat–blowing mesmerizingly in the breeze–that were Tortall’s breadbasket. Shivered in the cold of the snow-capped northern mountains as he defended the border at Northwatch during the Scanran war.
“I do love the realm, Your Majesty.” Zahir felt rather breathless as the epiphany–the revelation of his own feelings–overcame him. “Even though it doesn’t love me. Cannot love me.”
When Zahir was five, in a conversation he had forgotten until this moment, Baba had once told him something similar about the desert. About how it couldn’t and didn’t love them. How it would let them get lost and die of heatstroke in it. Or how it would fool them with mirages or allow them to die without water far from the nearest oasis. How the Bazhir had to love the desert anyway. Because the desert was their home, and they belonged to it.
Perhaps Zahir was more of his father’s son than he realized. Maybe he could only appreciate how much of his father’s son he was when he was away from his father. Being too close to his father seemed to have a distorting effect. Warping his perspective.
“The realm does not and cannot love anyone. It demands everything we have and gives us nothing in return.” King Jonathan smiled slightly. Patted Zahir’s cheek. “So you will continue to serve the realm? Serve me?”
Zahir dropped to his knees before his king. Somehow that felt appropriate to this place and time. An echoing of the posture he had assumed when he was first knighted. First formally pledged fealty to this man. “I swore I would serve you and the realm unto death, sire. I will not break my vow.”
“And my son?” The king’s fingers coiled in Zahir’s hair. Brushing through it almost like a benediction. “Will you serve him when I am gone?”
Zahir was quiet for a moment. Contemplating the Crown Prince. He didn’t love Prince Roald as he did King Jonathan. The Crown Prince in general was the placid sort who did not inspire either the depths of devotion (except perhaps in Princess Shinkokami, his wife) or antipathy that the king did.
Prince Roald was courteous to all but did not have the charm or charisma of his father. Was diplomatic and endeavored to understand every point of view. Would carry those traits to his relations with the Bazhir. Might have been even fairer than his father. Would surely strive to be just to the Bazhir.
It was this last thought, more than anything, that offered Zahir his answer. “Your son has earned my respect, Your Majesty. I will serve him faithfully as I serve you when you are gone. You have my oath, and I will not break it.”
His oath and his sword. That was all he was. Drifting in desert dust beneath sterling stars.
Summary: In the desert, Zahir and Jonathan negotiate questions of succession.
Rating: PG-13 for references to racism, colonialism, and child abuse.
Warnings: For the racism, colonialism, and child abuse I mentioned.
Author's Note: I continue to think that Jonathan being Voice would be a complicate thing for the Bazhir to accept and that there would probably be some lingering opposition and resentment to it among the Bazhir. So I have Zahir and Jonathan wrestle with that in this fic.
Double-Edged Swords
Zahir ibn Alhaz rode through the desert on horseback at dawn with his father. King Jonathan and an entourage including the Crown Prince and Zahir had come south, and the king, in his eternally persuasive manner, had insisted that Zahir take a few days away from his duties as King’s Champion. Visit his family and tribe.
Feeling more of an outcast among his own family and tribe–people whose blood flowed in his veins but who no longer understood him–than he did among the northerners, Zahir had tried to gracefully refuse this offer. Only to discover for what felt like at least the hundredth time since he had become the man’s squire so many years ago that King Jonathan could not be gainsaid or denied.
Especially when he was determined to commit what he–in his benign naivety–regarded as an act of kindness rather than tyranny. Too often tyranny and deluded, misguided kindness wore the same face. Kindness was a double-edged sword that could cut deep, Zahir thought.
“The king has rode south,” Baba commented as they crested a sand dune. Referring to the Voice by the northern title. A minor rebellion, Zahir knew. A staunch refusal to acknowledge a northerner as Voice of the Tribes. To grant someone not born and bred among the Bazhir–an eternal outsider–that greatest of honors. “With his eldest son. His heir.”
“With the Crown Prince.” Zahir nodded, staring into the sunrise that stained the sky the same yellow-orange hue as the sand. “Yes.”
“Why would he bring the Crown Prince into the desert with him?” Baba’s eyes were narrow. Hard. Squinting into the distance where he doubtlessly saw deception, treachery, and no reason to trust northerners who had broken every promise they ever made to the Bazhir. Perpetually stabbed the Bazhir in the back.
“He has brought the Crown Prince to the desert many times before.” Zahir mentally conceded that many times might be an exaggeration. Still, he could remember Prince Roald even as a small, somber-eyed child being brought to Bazhir gatherings and functions by his father, the Voice. The prince had always been quiet. Passively absorbing his surroundings to reach private, never-expressed judgments. A serious boy who had grown into a grave man. “He wants to ensure that his heir knows the Bazhir, and the Bazhir know his heir. He wants his successor as king to be familiar with our ways and customs. It is an honor to us, Baba. Not a slight.”
It became such a challenge to try to translate the actions of the king he loved–who had become like a father to him in the course of his squireship–to the man who had given seed to him. Had sent him north to train as a page and felt far from him ever since. As if they lived in two different countries. Two different worlds. Two different times. Spoke two different languages. Perhaps they did.
“Is it or is it preparation to announce that he will be training his son as Voice after him? An effort to smooth the road for that decree?” Baba’s question was shrewd. Pointed as an arrow. “Does he only intend for his heir to be king after him or king and Voice? Just like him. What are his succession plans regarding the position of Voice? Has he disclosed them to you?”
“No.” Zahir stared down at his mare’s mane. It was easier than looking at his father. “Nor does he have to.”
“Ah.” Baba’s tone was mocking. Whether of Zahir, the king, or both, Zahir didn’t know. Didn’t feel in the mood to guess. “But I thought you were in his counsels. Surely, that is why he keeps you so close to him. Almost on a leash like a trained pet. A lion without claws.”
“I am the King’s Champion. His sword.” Zahir bristled at his father’s demeaning depiction of himself and the life he led. A life that any northern father would have been proud of but that filled his father with scorn. “Not his councilor.”
“You could ask him if he intends to appoint his son as his successor as Voice,” Baba remarked archly. “A grand dynasty of northerners to rule over us in that way. The final conquest and insult.”
“I could.” Zahir responded to the first statement. Didn’t dignify the subsequent ones with an answer or attention. If he lost his cool, his standing would diminish even further in his father’s hawk-sharp eyes. He had to be strong. Confident. Unrattled.
“Will you?” Baba’s eyebrow lifted.
“If you command it, Baba.” Zahir bowed on his horse. A northern gesture combined with a Bazhir address. The uneasy fusion of cultures that defined his existence. Rendered him part of neither world. Unwelcome in both societies. Made him an island in his own country.
Bazhir sons obeyed their father or were beaten bloody with a rod. Northern knights served their king without questioning unto death. Loyalty, too, could be a double-edged sword to impale oneself upon if one wasn’t cautious, or, perhaps, even if one was. How to remain faithful to both those roles? Fulfill both those expectations without ignoble failure and unforgivable disappointment?
“I do.” Baba scowled. “Since that is apparently the only way to get you to do your duty to your people. Your tribe. To shame and order you into it.”
“I’m a knight of the realm.” Zahir drew his spine up stiffly. Offended beyond belief at his father’s dismissive portrayal of him as some feckless son honor had long since abandoned. “My people are bigger than this tribe. Bigger than the Bazhir. All Tortallans are my people. My allegiance has to be to all of Tortall and its king.”
“You are a traitor and a coward,” Baba snapped. Slapping Zahir across the face.
Forcefully enough that Zahir’s head shot back, cracking his neck. That he might have toppled off his mount if he wasn’t such a skilled rider who could not be dislodged even by an unexpected assault.
Though why his father’s blow should have been a surprise to him was a mystery. After all, ever since he was a boy, Baba had never hesitated to hit him when he was deemed displeasing, deficient, disobedient, or disrespectful in any manner. His entire existence now seemed to be an affront to his father. Every word somehow disrespectful or displeasing.
Zahir’s fingers instinctively flew to his scabbard, but, in the end, he was too much of a loyal Bazhir son to pull a weapon on his father.
“You have your orders.” Baba turned away. “Do not return to my tent until you have obeyed them, son.”
Son. So he had not been disowned. Exiled completely. Banned from his father’s tent. Disinherited and outcast from his tribe. Thrown into the shifting sands. Still a son expected to obey. Even after a slap on the face.
Zahir watched his father ride back toward the tent where he had been born and spent the first ten years of his life. Where he was now not welcome.
Since his parents’ tent was forbidden to him, Zahir took refuge in an uncle’s tent–a man who was older brother to his mother.
His mother herself appeared in the tent moment after Zahir arrived as if she had sensed that her disgraced son would seek shelter with her brother’s family.
Ummi cradled his cheek in her soft palm as if he were still a boy crying over every scrape and bruise. Not a valiant knight of the realm. Accustomed to pain. Oblivious to it when he could be and glorying in it when he couldn’t be.
“Why did you have to antagonize your father, Zahir?” she tutted in a fashion that suggested she despaired of there ever being a time he wouldn’t irk his father enough to get backhanded and possibly tossed out of his parents’ tent. The idea that it might be her husband and not her son to blame never occurring to her.
“I only spoke the truth.” Zahir jerked away from her touch. Suddenly hating the feeling of her fingers on his skin. That was another double-edged sword. Truth and honesty. A double-edged sword that had just sliced through him. “I am a knight of the realm. My duty extends beyond this tribe. This desert. The Bazhir. It encompasses all of Tortall.”
“Your father does not like thinking of you as a knight.” Ummi shook her head, and Zahir could feel the memory of the thousands of northern knights who had brought death and destruction by sword to the desert during Jasson’s conquest living and breathing between them. How could any Bazhir forget that shame? Forgive that suffering and slaughter? Serve a northern king as if it had never happened? Don their armor? Swear their oaths of fealty? Kneel before their throne? “As a Tortallan. Not a Bazhir.”
“Baba is fighting a war that ended long ago.” Zahir scoffed, even though he knew that his father’s war had never ended. Would never end. Could never end until the northerners left the desert. “We are all Tortallan now. Whether he accepts it or not. The desert was lost long ago. Before any of us were born.”
“He wants you to be a son to him.” Beneath her veil, Ummi’s dark eyes were fixed unwaveringly upon Zahir. “Not to live at the beck and call of the northern king.”
“The northern king showed me great favor when he chose me as his squire and again when he named me his Champion. I owe him leal service in return.” Zahir’s gaze was stone. So was his heart. Becoming stone, inside and outside, was the only way he could survive encounters with his parents. “I will return to the northern king tomorrow. There’s a question Baba wants me to ask him. So you see I am a devoted son too.”
Zahir was bitter as a blood feud. Ummi must have sensed it for she rose with a rustle of fabric. Left her brother’s tent without a farewell to her son or a kiss on his swelling cheek. Zahir tried not to feel that as another blow. Didn’t entirely succeed.
The next morning, after a breakfast of goat yogurt and herb flatbread spread with mashed fava beans made by his aunt, Zahir rode out into the desert again. Away from his tribe and family. Toward the northern king he loved and served. Who always seemed to draw him back like a magnet no matter how many miles were between them.
Honesty might have been a double-edged sword but Zahir didn’t cease wielding it when he returned to the king’s company. That night, as a blue twilight studded with sterling stars unfurled like a banner across the sky, Zahir walked on desert sand beside the man who had once been his knightmaster.
It was after sunset. After the communion with the Voice. The communion with the Voice that Zahir had refrained from participating in this evening because he didn’t want King Jonathan to be aware of the turmoil inside him. Of the doubts that dogged his loyalties like baying hounds chasing a scent.
“You returned from your family sooner than I expected.” King Jonathan cast Zahir a sidelong, considering glance. Eyes blue as the star-strewn twilight overhead. “Not that I am unhappy to see you again.”
“My father dispatched me, sire.” Zahir’s lips were thin. Tight. “He has a question he wishes me to ask you.”
“Ah.” King Jonathan’s eyebrow quirked. “One he couldn’t ask me himself?”
“He could’ve asked himself.” Zahir snorted like a distempered stallion. “He preferred to use me as a messenger boy, Your Majesty.”
“Well.” The king waved an inviting hand. “What is the question your father wishes you to ask?”
“He wonders.” Zahir paused. Took a deep breath. Continued, “What your plans are for the succession of the Voice? Whom you intend to be Voice after you?”
“I have not decided who my successor will be. I have many years left to choose and train a successor.” King Jonathan’s tone was tart. “Many years left before I die according to the vision I had when I became Voice.”
“It won’t be the Crown Prince then, sire?” Zahir had to ask. Had to press. His father would expect him to, after all. Besides, he had his own curiosites that must be satisfied now they were aroused.
“Roald?” King Jonathan sounded genuinely astounded. “No, I would never lay that burden on him. Make him walk the path I do as king and Voice. It is not a straightforward path to tread, Zahir.”
It couldn’t have been an uncomplicated path to travel, attempting to reconcile a divided north and south in one being, Zahir realized. Only his knightmaster would have dreamed of doing that. Would have the ambition and strength of will to dare to attempt that.
When Zahir stayed silent, staring at his Voice and king, his former knightmaster added, “The Voice is not a hereditary position like kingship. It has never been an inherited position passed from father to son. There is no precedent for that among the Bazhir.”
“Does that matter to you, Your Majesty?” Zahir burst out before he could bite his tongue around the sardonic words. Paradoxically, he was driven to be the loyal Bazhir son–expressing all of his father’s doubts and objections–in front of his king, while before his father, he was the faithful Tortallan knight. Devoutly reciting his unquestioning mantra of service to Tortall and its king. “There was no precedent for a northerner becoming Voice, either, and that didn’t stop you from becoming Voice.”
“I expected to hear that attack from some people’s lips, Zahir.” King Jonathan’s eyes were sharp. His tone even sharper. “Not from yours. Never from yours.”
“Because my loyalty is beyond question?” Zahir couldn’t resist taking refuge in sarcasm again. Sarcasm. That final defense of the weak and the proud. The weak and the proud who were inevitable disappointments to any who placed trust in them. “Beyond reproach? Because I am your devoted, unthinking servant in all things?”
“Because I thought you had more faith in me than that.” King Jonathan strode on. Brisk as a desert wind whipping through sand dunes. Forcing Zahir to increase his pace if he hoped to match his monarch’s speed. “Tell your father that I will name my successor as Voice when I judge the time is right, and that my successor as Voice will not be my son. Will that promise satisfy him?”
“Do you want the truth, sire?” Zahir would not normally have quibbled like a courtier over being unflinchingly honest with his king, but now he did. As much as he ached to be honest–to give vent to all the contradictions tearing his heart asunder–he also didn’t want to anger or hurt the man he loved like a father. Respected above anyone else in the world. The person who had his ultimate loyalty no matter how grumpily given.
“I always want the truth from you, Zahir.” King Jonathan sighed. Grim as death. “Go on. Be brutally honest with your king. I give you my permission and my command.”
“Be honest with my king or my Voice?” Zahir didn’t know why he asked. Why it mattered. Only knew that somehow, beneath desert stars, it did.
“Whichever would compel a greater degree of honesty from you.” King Jonathan’s rejoinder was dry. Zahir supposed he should have anticipated nothing less. “Your Voice or your king.”
Zahir didn’t know which would compel a greater degree of honesty from him. Only understood that each, in their own way, drew the truth–no matter how ugly, raw, and unpleasant–from him like puss spilling from a lanced boil. “Very well. To be brutally honest, Your Majesty, I do not believe my father will ever be satisfied with any promise from a northerner. Even if that northerner is the Voice of the Tribes. My father doesn’t trust northerners any farther than he can throw them against the wind in a sandstorm.”
“In that case–” King Jonathan steepled his fingers– “I don’t know what will satisfy your father. My word will never be enough surety for him. He does not have confidence or faith in me. Therefore, I am left with the question of what he wants.”
“He doesn’t want a northern Voice.” Zahir thought it should have been obvious what his father wanted. What many Bazhir, hidden in their tents, still dreamed of having: independence. A desert that was truly theirs again. Their freedom restored to them with no expectation of serving a northern king. “Or a northern king.”
Disloyal words from a Bazhir or a northern tongue. Words that skirted dangerously close to treasonous territory, perhaps, but the king had demanded Zahir’s honesty, hadn’t he? How could Zahir be less than upfront after that? Fail to advocate for his father and his people? Take this one chance to be a true-blooded son of the desert?
“Then he wants what will never be and would be wise to want something else instead.” There was steel in King Jonathan’s tone. In his eyes, as well. Zahir could see it shimmering silver in the moonlight. “The desert is part of Tortall. Part of this kingdom and will remain such. To be passed on to my son, his heir, and so on through the generations.”
The king would be implacable about this. He was a northerner, through and through, in this regard, and northerners were ludicriously attached to their principle of primogeniture. Of not splitting land between heirs and only permitting the firstborn son to inherit every inch of property. From the northern perspective, to divide land was to fracture power. And a king would never fracture his own power. Reduce his own legacy. Winnow down the land he could pass along to his heir.
The Bazhir were different. A nomadic people, restless as the wind that swept across the desert, they did not believe in land ownership as the northerners did. They understood that they only traveled and lived among the sand dunes during their appointed time beneath desert sun and stars.
Nor could the king bring himself to deny his own legitimacy–forsake his own claim and that of his heirs–to this land by admitting that the sand on which he stood was stolen ground. Ripped by bloodshed and violence from the Bazhir.
He had never and would never, Zahir knew, apologize for what his ancestor Jasson had done in conquering this desert. Perhaps if he had or would, Zahir’s father might have been able to forgive him for the terrible wrong committed generations ago. It would undermine the king’s legitimacy to make such an apology. So he would never make it, and Zahir’s father would never trust and never forgive.
Honesty–the ability to trust that a man meant what he said–mattered most to the Bazhir. Legitimacy was most important to the northerners. It turned out there was a vast chasm between the two. An unbridgeable gulf Zahir had no notion how to cross. One wide enough to swallow two cultures.
“People want what they can’t have all the time, sire.” Zahir steered the conversation away from the cliff’s edge. Didn’t leap over it. That would be suicide. “That’s why it’s called wishing. Not reality.”
“That is fine up to a point. As long as they recognize their wishes aren’t reality and don’t seek to transform their wishes into reality. Don’t rise up in revolt.” King Jonathan clasped Zahir’s shoulder firmly. “Just as a house divided cannot stand, so too a kingdom at war with itself will not survive. The Bazhir must accept that they are Tortallan as much as the northerners are. This hatred and distrust between Bazhir and northerners must not persist.”
“Perhaps Bazhir would be quicker to see themselves as Tortallan if northerners treated them as such. Behaved with honor and respect toward them.” Zahir folded his arms across his chest. Obstinately resolved to defend his people. “Didn’t refer to them as sand scuts and savages. It wouldn’t hurt the northerners to ask themselves how they earned the hatred and distrust of the Bazhir. How they might make amends.”
King Jonathan didn’t respond to this. Not directly. Maybe the idea of northerners making restitution to the Bazhir for everything that had been stolen from them was too radical even for this famously progressive king to fathom.
Instead he turned. Cupped Zahir’s cheek gently. The same cheek his father had struck a day ago. The broken mirrors and tangled patterns of his life. Observed with a certain sorrow as if Zahir had failed and disappointed him with a lack of vision,“One of the main reasons I chose you to be my squire, Zahir ibn Alhaz, was so that you might come to see the realm as I do. Might come to love it as I do.”
The realm. Zahir had, in his time as page, squire, and knight, seen more of it than most Bazhir or northerners. Many Bazhir preferred to never leave the desert. (In most Bazhir myths and fables, it was death sooner or later to abandon the desert that was lifeblood to the Bazhir.) Most northerners who weren’t nobles and didn’t join the army tended to be born, eke out a hardscrabble existence on land they didn’t own (only rented as tenants from an often cruel lord), and die within a few miles of where they first drew breath.
Not so for Zahir ibn Alhaz. He had seen the golden sand dunes of the southern desert. Watched white-foamed waves crash against the rocky coast of Port Legann. Explored the tidepools of Blue Harbor with their curious creatures. Coughed in the red dust of the eastern hills where famine and bandits were common foes. Stared at the yellow fields of wheat–blowing mesmerizingly in the breeze–that were Tortall’s breadbasket. Shivered in the cold of the snow-capped northern mountains as he defended the border at Northwatch during the Scanran war.
“I do love the realm, Your Majesty.” Zahir felt rather breathless as the epiphany–the revelation of his own feelings–overcame him. “Even though it doesn’t love me. Cannot love me.”
When Zahir was five, in a conversation he had forgotten until this moment, Baba had once told him something similar about the desert. About how it couldn’t and didn’t love them. How it would let them get lost and die of heatstroke in it. Or how it would fool them with mirages or allow them to die without water far from the nearest oasis. How the Bazhir had to love the desert anyway. Because the desert was their home, and they belonged to it.
Perhaps Zahir was more of his father’s son than he realized. Maybe he could only appreciate how much of his father’s son he was when he was away from his father. Being too close to his father seemed to have a distorting effect. Warping his perspective.
“The realm does not and cannot love anyone. It demands everything we have and gives us nothing in return.” King Jonathan smiled slightly. Patted Zahir’s cheek. “So you will continue to serve the realm? Serve me?”
Zahir dropped to his knees before his king. Somehow that felt appropriate to this place and time. An echoing of the posture he had assumed when he was first knighted. First formally pledged fealty to this man. “I swore I would serve you and the realm unto death, sire. I will not break my vow.”
“And my son?” The king’s fingers coiled in Zahir’s hair. Brushing through it almost like a benediction. “Will you serve him when I am gone?”
Zahir was quiet for a moment. Contemplating the Crown Prince. He didn’t love Prince Roald as he did King Jonathan. The Crown Prince in general was the placid sort who did not inspire either the depths of devotion (except perhaps in Princess Shinkokami, his wife) or antipathy that the king did.
Prince Roald was courteous to all but did not have the charm or charisma of his father. Was diplomatic and endeavored to understand every point of view. Would carry those traits to his relations with the Bazhir. Might have been even fairer than his father. Would surely strive to be just to the Bazhir.
It was this last thought, more than anything, that offered Zahir his answer. “Your son has earned my respect, Your Majesty. I will serve him faithfully as I serve you when you are gone. You have my oath, and I will not break it.”
His oath and his sword. That was all he was. Drifting in desert dust beneath sterling stars.