Post by devilinthedetails on Jan 10, 2018 14:23:17 GMT 10
Title: Your Word is Your Bond
Summary: Zahir is reluctant to be the king's squire.
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Ties that Bind
Warnings: Racism (including internalized racism), sexism, references to child abuse, and references to bullying.
Your Word is Your Bond
As far as Zahir ibn Alhaz was concerned, the novelty of being a squire hadn’t worn off yet. It didn’t even matter that he hadn’t been chosen as a personal squire to a knight yet. There was a freedom like charging through the desert on a bareback mare in being unattached, especially since he didn’t have much faith in Tortallan knighthood.
He didn’t trust progressive knights—who thought women should make war like men, putting them in positions to be killed or raped when they should have been safe behind their veils, and who would only select him because of the dusk of his skin to prove how enlightened they were—farther than he could throw them in a sandstorm.
Ideologically, he might have more common ground with the conservatives except they were as proud to be northern as he was to be Bazhir. He knew that the conservatives would sooner spit on him than have him squire for them, and the politically indifferent were social climbers who would never want their name sullied by association with a sand scut.
Zahir’s father had sent him to the palace to be knighted like a northerner in the hopes that it might make the northerners accept him—that he might be able to forge friendships or at least alliances with some of the children of powerful northern nobles—but Zahir’s father hadn’t understood because he had never been in the north that nothing would have made even the most progressive northerner truly accept a Bazhir into their culture. No matter how wealthy, how titled, how trained, and how seemingly assimilated, a Bazhir would always be an outcast.
With a knot of knights around the fences of the practice court where he was training with the other new squires, Zahir once would have felt pressure to showcase his skill: to prove that he was even better than any northerner. Now he knew that nobody was looking at him. They were studying potential squires, not gawking at the Bazhir oddity. Being a Bazhir was the same as being invisible in polite society.
He had made the mistake of allowing himself to get distracted, he realized a second later as he felt the sting of a practice sword slicing into his forearm. Some blue-blooded knights applauded the hit, and Zahir flushed in mingled shame and fury.
“Got you.” Garvey grinned as he launched another attack.
Returning his awareness to the duel, Zahir somersaulted backward, and then twisted to assail Garvey from the left, cutting off the hem of Garvey’s tunic.
“Missed me by a league,” taunted Garvey, dancing a retreat. The gleam in his eyes told Zahir that his former friend (now Zahir wasn’t certain exactly what he was) was having fun.
His lips tightening, Zahir thought that Garvey might be having fun, but he was serious as a heart attack. Reversing swiftly, he ducked and rushed at his opponent. Satisfaction welled inside him when Garvey stumbled in surprise. The blue-bloods groaned and cursed at the wily sand scut trick, and Zahir smirked, glad to remind them that he was a poisonous desert snake poised to strike the heels of any who stomped on him.
Taking advantage of his year-mate’s unbalance, Zahir dictated the pace of the battle rather than leaving that to Garvey. He attacked aggressively and then stepped backward to lure the other boy forward. When Garvey moved into his trap, Zahir landed a blow on Garvey’s arm in revenge for the cut on his forearm.
As the sun pounded down on the practice court, he was grateful for growing up in the desert because he wasn’t sweating like an ox as Garvey was. That meant that his right hand wasn’t slippery when he gripped his sword, and his vision wasn’t blurred by his own sweat.
The heat was plainly tiring his opponent, though, and Zahir pressed his opening, leaping forward to lightly touch Garvey’s neck with his weapon. “Yield or lose your head,” he declared, acting as if this were a true duel instead of a training bout.
“I yield.” Garvey raised his palms in surrender, and Zahir lowered his blade.
The courtyard resounded with boos at Zahir for beating an heir to one of Tortall’s noblest families, and Zahir felt a surge of vindication thrum through his veins. He had proven to the northerners who scoffed at him as a savage that Bazhir blood was better than the bluest northern blood. They might revile him but only because he was superior to them.
The only spectator who didn’t boo was the Voice, whom Zahir hadn’t noticed in the crowd until he called in a clear baritone that sliced through the scorn, “Well-fought, Zahir!”
“Sire.” The northern honorific sounded foreign to his ears as he bowed in treason to his Bazhir heritage that was born to fight the northern king to the death, not scrape before him like a sycophant.
As Garvey and Zahir crossed to the far end of the yard to stow their practice weapons in the barrel, Zahir commented, as custom required, “Good fight, Garvey.”
“Don’t tell me it was a good fight when you won, not me.” Garvey snorted.
“My winning is what made it good,” explained Zahir, his tone mocking as he shoved his practice sword into the keg. All the northern knights who had watched him defeat Garvey deserved to be taken down a peg. “If you’d won, it wouldn’t have been any good at all.”
“It wouldn’t have been any good for you.” Garvey dropped his weapon into the hogshead. “For me, it would’ve been.”
“I’m not worried about what’s best for you.” Zahir shrugged as they made their way across the practice court. Alliances in the pages’ wing were always fleeting, motivated by necessity and self-interest. They were never self-sacrificing. “I’m concerned with what’s best for me.”
They were passing the cluster of knights along the fence when a hand reached out to grab Zahir.
Reflexively whirling to see who had seized hold of him, he expected to stare into the seething face of a conservative knight offended at the thrashing he had given Garvey. Instead, he found himself gazing up at the king, who arched an eyebrow. “May I have a word with you, Zahir?”
“Of course, Your Majesty.” Zahir bowed, and, wondering what the Voice would wish to speak with him about, followed his king down the dusty path away from the practice court.
“You fought well, but he was able to hit you.” The Voice’s eyes were as piercing as truth, and Zahir couldn’t look away. “You’re quicker and more agile than him, and he shouldn’t have been able to strike you, but he was since you were distracted.”
“I’ve much on my mind, sire.” Zahir scuffed his shoes through the dirt, though he knew that wallowing in filth was more befitting a pig than a squire.
“If you’ve much on your mind, squire, you should release your thoughts during the evening communion with the Voice.” Everything about the king’s remark—from his assumption that Zahir would open his mind like a northern book to be read every sunset to the almost personal address that suggested Zahir was his squire instead of just one of the many unattached palace squires—was filled with a casual confidence that made Zahir bristle. “You shouldn’t allow your thoughts to distract you in the middle of a battle, even against one you regard as an inferior opponent. It can get you killed in the field.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” Zahir accepted the reprimand with an incline of his head, and then added, lifting his chin in defiance, “I haven’t participated in the communion with the Voice for years.”
“I haven’t felt your presence in the nightly communion since before you began page training.” King Jonathan plucked at his midnight beard as he contemplated Zahir with a furrowing forehead. “Why not?”
“I attend the weekly Mithran services in the chapel and pray to him before every meal, sire.” Zahir folded his hands in a mimicry of prayer. “I’ve become quite a devout follower of Mithros in my time at the palace.”
It was a Player’s farce to feign faith in Mithros, Zahir had discovered living among the northerners. To worship a northern god, no baring of the soul—as during the communion of the Voice—was demanded. Rote words were recited without feeling and going through the motions of kneeling, sitting, and standing at the prescribed moments with everyone else in the chapel was all that was required to be considered faithful. It was much easier than revealing every despicable thought, spiteful action, tortuous doubt, terrible guilt, hidden sorrow, and agonizing joy each night to the Voice for judgment.
“That doesn’t explain why you stopped joining the communion of the Voice before you left the desert to begin training.” King Jonathan shook his head. “Try again.”
“When I was little, my mother told me that every night I should whisper my pain to the Voice—to you, sire—because every tear I’d cry, you’d hold in your hand, and I’d never be alone if I was communing with you.” Zahir scratched at his cuticles until they hurt, but the pain was a welcome distraction from the memory of the nights he had stifled his sobs into his pillow, weeping over the welts his father’s rod had left in his bleeding back. Everything had ached on those nights, but what had hurt the most was that the Voice had never answered Zahir’s cries. The Voice had never comforted or rescued him. The Voice hadn’t listened and hadn’t spoken; he’d been deaf and mute. “That wasn’t true, though. You left me alone every time I cried out to you after my father whipped me. I was hurt, and you didn’t care enough to listen to me. Is it any wonder I stopped calling out to you?”
“I did listen to you, Zahir.” King Jonathan squeezed the nape of Zahir’s neck, and Zahir resisted the urge to squirm away since stiffening was more dignified. “It broke my heart to hear you weep.”
“Then why didn’t you do anything, Your Majesty?” Zahir’s question was choked out in jagged edges that were as broken as him. Something inside him shattered as he realized that his Voice had listened to his cries and done nothing to save him. His king had heard him suffer and not strained so much as a finger to help him.
“It is the Voice’s duty to listen to his people during the communion.” King Jonathan sighed. “It is not the Voice’s duty to act upon what he hears during the communion. It might disturb the balance.”
“Hurting people don’t care about the balance.” Zahir’s jaw clenched. “They just care about being saved from their pain. When they cry out to you and you do nothing to help them, why should they think that you are listening, sire, and what does it avail them if you are when you do nothing on their behalf? You’re worse than deaf if you hear and do nothing.”
“I’ve done much to help the Bazhir, Zahir ibn Alhaz.” The king’s tone was stern. “Just because I can’t answer the plea of every beaten child doesn’t mean I don’t hear it.”
“I understand that I’m as small as an ant to you, Your Majesty, and you could trample over me without even noticing it.” Zahir’s hands fisted around his breeches as he struggled to control his temper. “You don’t need to remind me of how meaningless I am to you, but since I’m but a speck before your magnificence, please don’t pretend to care about me.”
“I do care about you.” King Jonathan grasped Zahir’s shoulders gently. “That’s why I’m asking you to be my squire.”
“I beg your pardon, sire.” Zahir’s anger faded into bemusement, as his ears seemed to have decided to play a prank on him at a most inopportune moment, a conversation with his monarch. It was impossible that the king could have asked him to serve as squire in an almost offhand manner as if mentioning a known fact rather than imparting a revelation that threatened to smash Zahir’s life like a catapult. He knew that Prince Roald, who, as heir should have been the king’s squire (even Zahir, the savage from the southern desert understood that), had rode off to Port Legann as Lord Imrah’s squire, but he hadn’t registered that detail as relevant to his life beyond court gossip. Lord Imrah had a crater face, and Zahir would’ve bet fifty gold crowns under fear of being stoned for gambling if his crime was ever revealed in the desert that Lord Imrah had a sense of humor to rival Lord Wyldon’s, but he was an important commander of the realm’s coastal defenses. The Crown Prince would learn battlefield tactics, while the king sounded as if he were suggesting that Zahir, who had all the subtlety of a mace tearing through a helm, stay trapped amidst the political machinations of a northern court where he was at best rejected and at worst despised. “I was careless and didn’t hear, but I could’ve sworn you just asked me to be your squire.”
“You heard correctly.” King Jonathan’s lips quirked, as if he found it amusing to disconcert Zahir. “I am asking you to serve as my squire.”
“I can’t serve as your squire, Your Majesty.” Zahir shook his head, not caring how tactless he seemed by northern standards. He was a Bazhir, and the Bazhir valued ugly bluntness over beautiful lies. To the Voice, a Bazhir was bound to be especially honest, and the truth was that Zahir didn’t want to be around the Voice every day for four years—it risked giving the Voice too much access to the parts of himself Zahir tried to keep hidden while allowing Zahir to see even more clearly the Voice as a mere mortal, not the savior Zahir had been taught that he should be. He had just enough sense to realize that saying so would be planting his foot in his mouth even by his Bazhir standards and fell silent instead of elaborating on why he couldn’t serve as the king’s squire.
“Why can’t you be my squire?” King Jonathan arched an eyebrow, and Zahir thought he might have succeeded in catching the king, who had probably never before been refused by a squire he had offered to serve as knightmaster, off-guard. “If you’re willing to swear fealty to me as a knight, why are you reluctant to do so as a squire?”
“Do you believe I want to be a knight? Do you think I had any choice about coming here, sire?” Resentment burned like bile up Zahir’s throat and out of his mouth before he could clamp his lips shut. “I only entered page training because my father ordered me to and threatened to beat me bloody every day until I agreed to travel north to become a knight. That’s why I’m here, not because I’ve an overwhelming desire to serve the Crown in a strange land with foreign customs where northerners spit on me and stare at me. Don’t flatter yourself into thinking I’m here because of an uncontrollable urge to serve you when I’m only here because I would’ve been beaten until I broke otherwise.”
King Jonathan gaped like a fish out of water. “Zahir—“
“Most pages only show up to training because it’s their duty, not because they want to, Your Majesty.” Zahir thought the king should know that Keladry of Mindelan, the lunatic girl who wanted to be a knight, might have been the only page or squire who had a genuine desire to serve the realm as a knight. Everybody else was there because it was expected, and questioning that expectation would only earn vicious punishment. “Look at any page, and chances are, he’s only pursuing knighthood because his parents demand that of him—perhaps even threatening him with whippings or disownment. Bazhir parents aren’t any better than northern ones, and no worse.”
King Jonathan still seemed stunned but managed to reply with enviable composure, “You admit yourself that you are training to be a knight out of duty, not out of desire. It is your duty to be my squire if I ask it of you.”
“I thought it was a squire’s choice to accept or refuse any offer, Your Majesty.” Zahir scowled. A squire’s right to accept a knightmaster was the only decision that he was guaranteed to have in the lopsided relationship, and Zahir didn’t appreciate having it snatched from him.
“Are you refusing your king?” The king’s question sounded like a trap.
“If I became your squire, I’d only be a political prop to you, sire.” Zahir stuck his nose in the air, a proud Bazhir unwilling to be anyone’s accessory. Being paraded about as constant evidence of how accepting of Bazhir and how resistant to tradition King Jonathan could be was a prospect he found abhorrent. He considered being chosen as squire because of his ethnicity to be as bigoted as not being selected because of it. Zahir didn’t want to be a pawn in the king’s political chess, important only because of his heritage. “I’d be nothing more than a way for you to prove how progressive you are, how enlightened you are to see beyond my ethnicity. I don’t want to be just another point in the political game you play with the conservatives.”
“You aren’t just a political point to me, Zahir.” King Jonathan pinched the bridge of his nose as if Zahir were complicating what he had expected to be a simple agreement.
“I didn’t arrive at court yesterday, Your Majesty.” Zahir’s lips thinned. “Do you expect me to believe that you aren’t interested in me because I’m a Bazhir?”
“Of course I’m interested in you because you’re a Bazhir.” King Jonathan steepled his fingers as he studied Zahir. “As Voice, I care about every Bazhir however much you may doubt that, and, as a king trying to integrate the Bazhir more thoroughly into my country, I find the idea of a Bazhir knight in service to the Crown intriguing. I’d prefer if that Bazhir knight felt a personal rather than an abstract connection to the Crown.”
“If I were your squire, I’d have that personal connection to the Crown.” Zahir frowned, thinking that the only thing worse than being manipulated was being told that he was being manipulated.
“Yes, but taking you as my squire isn’t the only way I could forge such a connection with you.” King Jonathan’s teeth flashed in a charming smile that almost made Zahir believe he was being confided in, trusted with the entire truth. “I promise that I’m not choosing you for political gain.”
“Then you’re picking me out of pity, sire.” Zahir bit his lip, tasting the bitter tang of blood that was better than shame. The only thing worse than being a political pawn—as the Bazhir always were exploited by northerners—was being pitied. Zahir was one of the fiercest warriors among the pages, and he didn’t wish to be condescended to by anyone, not even the king.“In that case, thank you for your offer, but I refuse it. I have my pride, and I need no pity.”
“I would never take a squire out of pity.” King Jonathan’s eyes were ice freezing Zahir in place. “You have your pride, Zahir ibn Alhaz, and so do I. I happen to take pride in having squires with promise. Before you became a squire, you were the best archer and horsemen among the pages, and among the best swordsmen. As king, I strive to surround myself with people who are among the best or who have the potential to be that. I see such potential in you, and I would help you develop it if you would be my squire.”
Hearing the king describe his strengths convinced Zahir that he wasn’t being chosen purely out of politics or pity. Figuring that he wouldn’t get another offer and at least the blue-bloods would have the shame of a sand scut being favored and being acknowledged as better than northerners, Zahir forced himself to bow. “I accept, Your Majesty.”
“Good.” King Jonathan’s gaze didn’t thaw. “Then there is one more understanding that must be reached between us. I have it on good authority that you have quit your hazing, and that is why I’m willing to take you as my squire, because I will not tolerate bullying from you. I will have your vow now that you’re truly finished with bullying.”
Zahir wished he could explain that he’d only picked on younger pages because he had believed it would make him fit in: that in participating in the hazing ritual he had endured when he had first arrived at the palace, he would finally feel as if he belonged in the north, but, no matter how many times he taunted and punched, he’d remained an outsider. None of the names he hurled at first-years had made the “sand scuts” shouted at him less sharp.
He was broken, and he had thought that beating on those below him—because so few were below a Bazhir in the north—would make him feel whole again, but he had only been torn by remorse and self-loathing at becoming the bully he hated when he began page training. In brutality, he hadn’t found freedom just more torment. Bullying was worse than a waste of his time—it was a trampling of his conscience as well as the dignity of another—and when he had finally realized that, he had dropped it like a hot potato that had scalded skin.
Afraid of sounding weak when he needed to be strong, Zahir lifted his chin and locked eyes with his new knightmaster. “I swear not to engage in any bullying behavior. Carve out my tongue if I lie, sire.”
“If you lie, I’d punish you, though not in so gruesome a fashion as that.” There was a twinkle in King Jonathan’s eyes as he clapped Zahir on the back. “I don’t doubt your honesty, however. I know that your word is your bond.”
Summary: Zahir is reluctant to be the king's squire.
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Ties that Bind
Warnings: Racism (including internalized racism), sexism, references to child abuse, and references to bullying.
Your Word is Your Bond
As far as Zahir ibn Alhaz was concerned, the novelty of being a squire hadn’t worn off yet. It didn’t even matter that he hadn’t been chosen as a personal squire to a knight yet. There was a freedom like charging through the desert on a bareback mare in being unattached, especially since he didn’t have much faith in Tortallan knighthood.
He didn’t trust progressive knights—who thought women should make war like men, putting them in positions to be killed or raped when they should have been safe behind their veils, and who would only select him because of the dusk of his skin to prove how enlightened they were—farther than he could throw them in a sandstorm.
Ideologically, he might have more common ground with the conservatives except they were as proud to be northern as he was to be Bazhir. He knew that the conservatives would sooner spit on him than have him squire for them, and the politically indifferent were social climbers who would never want their name sullied by association with a sand scut.
Zahir’s father had sent him to the palace to be knighted like a northerner in the hopes that it might make the northerners accept him—that he might be able to forge friendships or at least alliances with some of the children of powerful northern nobles—but Zahir’s father hadn’t understood because he had never been in the north that nothing would have made even the most progressive northerner truly accept a Bazhir into their culture. No matter how wealthy, how titled, how trained, and how seemingly assimilated, a Bazhir would always be an outcast.
With a knot of knights around the fences of the practice court where he was training with the other new squires, Zahir once would have felt pressure to showcase his skill: to prove that he was even better than any northerner. Now he knew that nobody was looking at him. They were studying potential squires, not gawking at the Bazhir oddity. Being a Bazhir was the same as being invisible in polite society.
He had made the mistake of allowing himself to get distracted, he realized a second later as he felt the sting of a practice sword slicing into his forearm. Some blue-blooded knights applauded the hit, and Zahir flushed in mingled shame and fury.
“Got you.” Garvey grinned as he launched another attack.
Returning his awareness to the duel, Zahir somersaulted backward, and then twisted to assail Garvey from the left, cutting off the hem of Garvey’s tunic.
“Missed me by a league,” taunted Garvey, dancing a retreat. The gleam in his eyes told Zahir that his former friend (now Zahir wasn’t certain exactly what he was) was having fun.
His lips tightening, Zahir thought that Garvey might be having fun, but he was serious as a heart attack. Reversing swiftly, he ducked and rushed at his opponent. Satisfaction welled inside him when Garvey stumbled in surprise. The blue-bloods groaned and cursed at the wily sand scut trick, and Zahir smirked, glad to remind them that he was a poisonous desert snake poised to strike the heels of any who stomped on him.
Taking advantage of his year-mate’s unbalance, Zahir dictated the pace of the battle rather than leaving that to Garvey. He attacked aggressively and then stepped backward to lure the other boy forward. When Garvey moved into his trap, Zahir landed a blow on Garvey’s arm in revenge for the cut on his forearm.
As the sun pounded down on the practice court, he was grateful for growing up in the desert because he wasn’t sweating like an ox as Garvey was. That meant that his right hand wasn’t slippery when he gripped his sword, and his vision wasn’t blurred by his own sweat.
The heat was plainly tiring his opponent, though, and Zahir pressed his opening, leaping forward to lightly touch Garvey’s neck with his weapon. “Yield or lose your head,” he declared, acting as if this were a true duel instead of a training bout.
“I yield.” Garvey raised his palms in surrender, and Zahir lowered his blade.
The courtyard resounded with boos at Zahir for beating an heir to one of Tortall’s noblest families, and Zahir felt a surge of vindication thrum through his veins. He had proven to the northerners who scoffed at him as a savage that Bazhir blood was better than the bluest northern blood. They might revile him but only because he was superior to them.
The only spectator who didn’t boo was the Voice, whom Zahir hadn’t noticed in the crowd until he called in a clear baritone that sliced through the scorn, “Well-fought, Zahir!”
“Sire.” The northern honorific sounded foreign to his ears as he bowed in treason to his Bazhir heritage that was born to fight the northern king to the death, not scrape before him like a sycophant.
As Garvey and Zahir crossed to the far end of the yard to stow their practice weapons in the barrel, Zahir commented, as custom required, “Good fight, Garvey.”
“Don’t tell me it was a good fight when you won, not me.” Garvey snorted.
“My winning is what made it good,” explained Zahir, his tone mocking as he shoved his practice sword into the keg. All the northern knights who had watched him defeat Garvey deserved to be taken down a peg. “If you’d won, it wouldn’t have been any good at all.”
“It wouldn’t have been any good for you.” Garvey dropped his weapon into the hogshead. “For me, it would’ve been.”
“I’m not worried about what’s best for you.” Zahir shrugged as they made their way across the practice court. Alliances in the pages’ wing were always fleeting, motivated by necessity and self-interest. They were never self-sacrificing. “I’m concerned with what’s best for me.”
They were passing the cluster of knights along the fence when a hand reached out to grab Zahir.
Reflexively whirling to see who had seized hold of him, he expected to stare into the seething face of a conservative knight offended at the thrashing he had given Garvey. Instead, he found himself gazing up at the king, who arched an eyebrow. “May I have a word with you, Zahir?”
“Of course, Your Majesty.” Zahir bowed, and, wondering what the Voice would wish to speak with him about, followed his king down the dusty path away from the practice court.
“You fought well, but he was able to hit you.” The Voice’s eyes were as piercing as truth, and Zahir couldn’t look away. “You’re quicker and more agile than him, and he shouldn’t have been able to strike you, but he was since you were distracted.”
“I’ve much on my mind, sire.” Zahir scuffed his shoes through the dirt, though he knew that wallowing in filth was more befitting a pig than a squire.
“If you’ve much on your mind, squire, you should release your thoughts during the evening communion with the Voice.” Everything about the king’s remark—from his assumption that Zahir would open his mind like a northern book to be read every sunset to the almost personal address that suggested Zahir was his squire instead of just one of the many unattached palace squires—was filled with a casual confidence that made Zahir bristle. “You shouldn’t allow your thoughts to distract you in the middle of a battle, even against one you regard as an inferior opponent. It can get you killed in the field.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” Zahir accepted the reprimand with an incline of his head, and then added, lifting his chin in defiance, “I haven’t participated in the communion with the Voice for years.”
“I haven’t felt your presence in the nightly communion since before you began page training.” King Jonathan plucked at his midnight beard as he contemplated Zahir with a furrowing forehead. “Why not?”
“I attend the weekly Mithran services in the chapel and pray to him before every meal, sire.” Zahir folded his hands in a mimicry of prayer. “I’ve become quite a devout follower of Mithros in my time at the palace.”
It was a Player’s farce to feign faith in Mithros, Zahir had discovered living among the northerners. To worship a northern god, no baring of the soul—as during the communion of the Voice—was demanded. Rote words were recited without feeling and going through the motions of kneeling, sitting, and standing at the prescribed moments with everyone else in the chapel was all that was required to be considered faithful. It was much easier than revealing every despicable thought, spiteful action, tortuous doubt, terrible guilt, hidden sorrow, and agonizing joy each night to the Voice for judgment.
“That doesn’t explain why you stopped joining the communion of the Voice before you left the desert to begin training.” King Jonathan shook his head. “Try again.”
“When I was little, my mother told me that every night I should whisper my pain to the Voice—to you, sire—because every tear I’d cry, you’d hold in your hand, and I’d never be alone if I was communing with you.” Zahir scratched at his cuticles until they hurt, but the pain was a welcome distraction from the memory of the nights he had stifled his sobs into his pillow, weeping over the welts his father’s rod had left in his bleeding back. Everything had ached on those nights, but what had hurt the most was that the Voice had never answered Zahir’s cries. The Voice had never comforted or rescued him. The Voice hadn’t listened and hadn’t spoken; he’d been deaf and mute. “That wasn’t true, though. You left me alone every time I cried out to you after my father whipped me. I was hurt, and you didn’t care enough to listen to me. Is it any wonder I stopped calling out to you?”
“I did listen to you, Zahir.” King Jonathan squeezed the nape of Zahir’s neck, and Zahir resisted the urge to squirm away since stiffening was more dignified. “It broke my heart to hear you weep.”
“Then why didn’t you do anything, Your Majesty?” Zahir’s question was choked out in jagged edges that were as broken as him. Something inside him shattered as he realized that his Voice had listened to his cries and done nothing to save him. His king had heard him suffer and not strained so much as a finger to help him.
“It is the Voice’s duty to listen to his people during the communion.” King Jonathan sighed. “It is not the Voice’s duty to act upon what he hears during the communion. It might disturb the balance.”
“Hurting people don’t care about the balance.” Zahir’s jaw clenched. “They just care about being saved from their pain. When they cry out to you and you do nothing to help them, why should they think that you are listening, sire, and what does it avail them if you are when you do nothing on their behalf? You’re worse than deaf if you hear and do nothing.”
“I’ve done much to help the Bazhir, Zahir ibn Alhaz.” The king’s tone was stern. “Just because I can’t answer the plea of every beaten child doesn’t mean I don’t hear it.”
“I understand that I’m as small as an ant to you, Your Majesty, and you could trample over me without even noticing it.” Zahir’s hands fisted around his breeches as he struggled to control his temper. “You don’t need to remind me of how meaningless I am to you, but since I’m but a speck before your magnificence, please don’t pretend to care about me.”
“I do care about you.” King Jonathan grasped Zahir’s shoulders gently. “That’s why I’m asking you to be my squire.”
“I beg your pardon, sire.” Zahir’s anger faded into bemusement, as his ears seemed to have decided to play a prank on him at a most inopportune moment, a conversation with his monarch. It was impossible that the king could have asked him to serve as squire in an almost offhand manner as if mentioning a known fact rather than imparting a revelation that threatened to smash Zahir’s life like a catapult. He knew that Prince Roald, who, as heir should have been the king’s squire (even Zahir, the savage from the southern desert understood that), had rode off to Port Legann as Lord Imrah’s squire, but he hadn’t registered that detail as relevant to his life beyond court gossip. Lord Imrah had a crater face, and Zahir would’ve bet fifty gold crowns under fear of being stoned for gambling if his crime was ever revealed in the desert that Lord Imrah had a sense of humor to rival Lord Wyldon’s, but he was an important commander of the realm’s coastal defenses. The Crown Prince would learn battlefield tactics, while the king sounded as if he were suggesting that Zahir, who had all the subtlety of a mace tearing through a helm, stay trapped amidst the political machinations of a northern court where he was at best rejected and at worst despised. “I was careless and didn’t hear, but I could’ve sworn you just asked me to be your squire.”
“You heard correctly.” King Jonathan’s lips quirked, as if he found it amusing to disconcert Zahir. “I am asking you to serve as my squire.”
“I can’t serve as your squire, Your Majesty.” Zahir shook his head, not caring how tactless he seemed by northern standards. He was a Bazhir, and the Bazhir valued ugly bluntness over beautiful lies. To the Voice, a Bazhir was bound to be especially honest, and the truth was that Zahir didn’t want to be around the Voice every day for four years—it risked giving the Voice too much access to the parts of himself Zahir tried to keep hidden while allowing Zahir to see even more clearly the Voice as a mere mortal, not the savior Zahir had been taught that he should be. He had just enough sense to realize that saying so would be planting his foot in his mouth even by his Bazhir standards and fell silent instead of elaborating on why he couldn’t serve as the king’s squire.
“Why can’t you be my squire?” King Jonathan arched an eyebrow, and Zahir thought he might have succeeded in catching the king, who had probably never before been refused by a squire he had offered to serve as knightmaster, off-guard. “If you’re willing to swear fealty to me as a knight, why are you reluctant to do so as a squire?”
“Do you believe I want to be a knight? Do you think I had any choice about coming here, sire?” Resentment burned like bile up Zahir’s throat and out of his mouth before he could clamp his lips shut. “I only entered page training because my father ordered me to and threatened to beat me bloody every day until I agreed to travel north to become a knight. That’s why I’m here, not because I’ve an overwhelming desire to serve the Crown in a strange land with foreign customs where northerners spit on me and stare at me. Don’t flatter yourself into thinking I’m here because of an uncontrollable urge to serve you when I’m only here because I would’ve been beaten until I broke otherwise.”
King Jonathan gaped like a fish out of water. “Zahir—“
“Most pages only show up to training because it’s their duty, not because they want to, Your Majesty.” Zahir thought the king should know that Keladry of Mindelan, the lunatic girl who wanted to be a knight, might have been the only page or squire who had a genuine desire to serve the realm as a knight. Everybody else was there because it was expected, and questioning that expectation would only earn vicious punishment. “Look at any page, and chances are, he’s only pursuing knighthood because his parents demand that of him—perhaps even threatening him with whippings or disownment. Bazhir parents aren’t any better than northern ones, and no worse.”
King Jonathan still seemed stunned but managed to reply with enviable composure, “You admit yourself that you are training to be a knight out of duty, not out of desire. It is your duty to be my squire if I ask it of you.”
“I thought it was a squire’s choice to accept or refuse any offer, Your Majesty.” Zahir scowled. A squire’s right to accept a knightmaster was the only decision that he was guaranteed to have in the lopsided relationship, and Zahir didn’t appreciate having it snatched from him.
“Are you refusing your king?” The king’s question sounded like a trap.
“If I became your squire, I’d only be a political prop to you, sire.” Zahir stuck his nose in the air, a proud Bazhir unwilling to be anyone’s accessory. Being paraded about as constant evidence of how accepting of Bazhir and how resistant to tradition King Jonathan could be was a prospect he found abhorrent. He considered being chosen as squire because of his ethnicity to be as bigoted as not being selected because of it. Zahir didn’t want to be a pawn in the king’s political chess, important only because of his heritage. “I’d be nothing more than a way for you to prove how progressive you are, how enlightened you are to see beyond my ethnicity. I don’t want to be just another point in the political game you play with the conservatives.”
“You aren’t just a political point to me, Zahir.” King Jonathan pinched the bridge of his nose as if Zahir were complicating what he had expected to be a simple agreement.
“I didn’t arrive at court yesterday, Your Majesty.” Zahir’s lips thinned. “Do you expect me to believe that you aren’t interested in me because I’m a Bazhir?”
“Of course I’m interested in you because you’re a Bazhir.” King Jonathan steepled his fingers as he studied Zahir. “As Voice, I care about every Bazhir however much you may doubt that, and, as a king trying to integrate the Bazhir more thoroughly into my country, I find the idea of a Bazhir knight in service to the Crown intriguing. I’d prefer if that Bazhir knight felt a personal rather than an abstract connection to the Crown.”
“If I were your squire, I’d have that personal connection to the Crown.” Zahir frowned, thinking that the only thing worse than being manipulated was being told that he was being manipulated.
“Yes, but taking you as my squire isn’t the only way I could forge such a connection with you.” King Jonathan’s teeth flashed in a charming smile that almost made Zahir believe he was being confided in, trusted with the entire truth. “I promise that I’m not choosing you for political gain.”
“Then you’re picking me out of pity, sire.” Zahir bit his lip, tasting the bitter tang of blood that was better than shame. The only thing worse than being a political pawn—as the Bazhir always were exploited by northerners—was being pitied. Zahir was one of the fiercest warriors among the pages, and he didn’t wish to be condescended to by anyone, not even the king.“In that case, thank you for your offer, but I refuse it. I have my pride, and I need no pity.”
“I would never take a squire out of pity.” King Jonathan’s eyes were ice freezing Zahir in place. “You have your pride, Zahir ibn Alhaz, and so do I. I happen to take pride in having squires with promise. Before you became a squire, you were the best archer and horsemen among the pages, and among the best swordsmen. As king, I strive to surround myself with people who are among the best or who have the potential to be that. I see such potential in you, and I would help you develop it if you would be my squire.”
Hearing the king describe his strengths convinced Zahir that he wasn’t being chosen purely out of politics or pity. Figuring that he wouldn’t get another offer and at least the blue-bloods would have the shame of a sand scut being favored and being acknowledged as better than northerners, Zahir forced himself to bow. “I accept, Your Majesty.”
“Good.” King Jonathan’s gaze didn’t thaw. “Then there is one more understanding that must be reached between us. I have it on good authority that you have quit your hazing, and that is why I’m willing to take you as my squire, because I will not tolerate bullying from you. I will have your vow now that you’re truly finished with bullying.”
Zahir wished he could explain that he’d only picked on younger pages because he had believed it would make him fit in: that in participating in the hazing ritual he had endured when he had first arrived at the palace, he would finally feel as if he belonged in the north, but, no matter how many times he taunted and punched, he’d remained an outsider. None of the names he hurled at first-years had made the “sand scuts” shouted at him less sharp.
He was broken, and he had thought that beating on those below him—because so few were below a Bazhir in the north—would make him feel whole again, but he had only been torn by remorse and self-loathing at becoming the bully he hated when he began page training. In brutality, he hadn’t found freedom just more torment. Bullying was worse than a waste of his time—it was a trampling of his conscience as well as the dignity of another—and when he had finally realized that, he had dropped it like a hot potato that had scalded skin.
Afraid of sounding weak when he needed to be strong, Zahir lifted his chin and locked eyes with his new knightmaster. “I swear not to engage in any bullying behavior. Carve out my tongue if I lie, sire.”
“If you lie, I’d punish you, though not in so gruesome a fashion as that.” There was a twinkle in King Jonathan’s eyes as he clapped Zahir on the back. “I don’t doubt your honesty, however. I know that your word is your bond.”
Maybe once we'd have seen it during Smackdown!