Post by devilinthedetails on Jan 1, 2022 7:10:19 GMT 10
Title: Strange Homecoming
Rating: PG-13 for references to racism, sexism, and imperialism/colonialism.
For: Seek
Prompt: A two for one, combining exile/stranger in a strange land, and a Bazhir-centric story.
Summary: Zahir’s strange homecoming.
Notes: Happy Wishing Tree and happy soon-to-be 2022, Seek! I wrote this little story as a thank you for the moving Baird and Neal one you wrote for me. I hope you enjoy it, and best wishes for the New Year!
Strange Homecoming
As soon as he rode between the tents of his tribe for the first time in too many years, Zahir felt like a stranger in a strange land where the natives were hostile to his existence and arrival.
Boys chasing each other through the hot sand beneath a blazing sky halted to gape at Zahir, their laughter and mischievous taunts fading to silence as an armored knight of the realm appeared in their midst.
Inwardly, Zahir cursed himself for wearing armor–blinding silver in the reflected sunlight–that made him look like one of the faceless enemies who had sought to conquer the desert by fire and sword a mere two generations ago. A heartbeat by the reckoning of the long-memoried Bazhir.
He flipped back his visor. Trying to prove that his skin was the same shade as theirs. That he was one of them. That he hadn’t come to shed their blood when it was the same blood that flowed in his veins.
His gesture didn’t have the intended impact. Instead of closing the gap between himself and his people, it widened the gulf until it threatened to swallow him and his beloved mare.
Women, peeling vegetables and shelling nuts on woven blankets outside their family tents, stopped in mid-current of what Zahir was certain was a stream of female-centered tribal gossip: who was marrying, who was pregnant, who was taking entirely too long to become pregnant, and whose children were particularly troublesome and prone to breaking a poor mother’s heart. Eyeing Zahir behind their black veils in a hard manner that made it clear he was one of the worst offenders in the category of sons who broke their mothers’ hearts.
All because he had obeyed his father when ordered to go north and train as a knight in the king’s court.
It was his father who had made an exile of him. He hadn’t chosen to make an outcast of himself, had he? It was all so confused. Had been so confused for years since he left the desert. (Bazhir weren’t supposed to leave the desert. In all the nighttime myths and stories he had heard by campfires beneath salt stars speckled across a pepper sky, it was death sooner or later for a Bazhir to leave the desert.)
Did his mother confide her sorrows to these women or did she keep them tucked beneath her dark veil? Hidden in the shadows of her heart?
Zahir could hear the whispers begin to break out amongst his people who were no longer truly his people. Even more rejecting and painful than when northern knights hissed he was a filthy sand scut who didn’t belong amongst their noble ranks and he didn’t bother to carve them with his sword unless their insolence and insults somehow crossed into calumnies against the king.
He did not belong among the northerners, but he was no longer welcome among the Bazhir either. He belonged nowhere. Was destined to be a hated stranger in a strange land wherever he went.
“Who is that?” an unveiled girl who had to be at least seven years old asked her mother, pointing an almost accusing finger up at Zahir mounted on his horse. Not riding bareback as a Bazhir warrior would.
Zahir didn’t know the girl’s name which meant it had been at least seven years since he had last visited his tribe. It was a disconcerting thought. As a rule, he didn’t count the years of his exile that he called service to the crown because then he might be tempted to regard all that time as lost. Gone from him forever like sand slipping between the fingers of a clenched fist.
Once, he thought as if remembering the life of someone else–someone who had lived and died long ago–he had known the name of every member of his tribe. That had been before he was ten. Before he had rode north to train as a knight.
Now he was among the best and most honored of those northern knights. The newly named and minted King’s Champion. Riding into his tribe on the king’s orders with what should have been pride because it had been a smiling King Jonathan himself who had commanded Zahir to return to the desert and celebrate with his people. King Jonathan who had decided that it had been too long since Zahir had been among the Bazhir. Not Zahir who had made such a determination or requested a leave of absence as some northern knights did when the demands of duty became too intense for them.
Zahir himself would never request a leave of absence. It might reflect poorly on him and his people. Might give rise to speculation that he wasn’t loyal enough to his king after all. He had to hold himself to a higher, more perfect standard than any northern knight. That was how he had become King’s Champion when the Lioness finally retired and laid down her sword.
“The chief’s son. Returned at last.” The girl’s mother answered with the only identity and relationship that mattered among the Bazhir. He was a knight of Tortall–a King’s Champion–reduced to a wayward, wandering son. Stripped of all ranks and titles earned by his own merit and courage. Back to being a truant little boy running and laughing in the sand when there were chores to be done. A little boy in need of stern correction from a father’s firm hand. Swatting her daughter’s finger down, the mother added almost as an afterthought, “Don’t point. It’s rude.”
Staring and whispering about someone was rude too, Zahir thought bitterly as he reached his father’s tent and dismounted. He took his time brushing and watering his mare–who seemed like the most pleasant company around for miles–before resigning himself to the notion that he could delay the inevitable no longer and entering the tent where he had been born and raised. Still wearing his armor. Prepared for battle.
The opening arrow was fired by his father as soon as he dared to enter the tent. “So I have a son after all. I had forgotten because he was gone so long. Not caring for his aging parents. Not concerning himself with the affairs and governance of the tribe he will one day lead when I am nothing more than ashes blowing in the desert wind.”
“I am a knight of the realm, Baba. The King’s Champion.” Zahir’s hand dropped to his hip. To the hilt of the Raven Armory sword the king had presented him with at the formal ceremony where he was invested as King’s Champion. Taking comfort from the solid feel of the weapon beneath his fingers. A weapon given to him by a man who–he was aware of the presumption of the thought–sometimes felt more like a father to him than the man who had given seed to him. “You could be proud of that. Of me.”
Any northern father would have been proud of a son who was named King’s Champion, but that was the difference between northerners and Bazhir. Northerners had been swearing fealty to kings for centuries, and Bazhir had never knelt so easily. Bazhir didn’t even kneel for their Voice. Bazhir would die before they knelt. The truth of that had been written in blood across the crimson desert sands.
“You are more faithful to the northern king than your own father,” Baba snapped, the words ringing like a slap across Zahir’s face. “You forget that a son’s first duty is to his father, and that he isn’t your father.”
“I never said the king was my father.” Zahir’s cheeks went moon-pale. He would never give voice to his thought that King Jonathan was like a father to him. It would have felt too much like a usurption. A claim to a royal blood he did not have. But sometimes when King Jonathan’s hands rested in gentle benediction over his head, Zahir would feel warmth flow through him because he was being touched and blessed almost as a northern father would touch and bless a northern son. “I wouldn’t presume–”
“You don’t need to say it.” Baba gave a dismissive snort. “Your actions announce it. Shouting louder than any words.”
“You sent me to serve the king in the north when I was ten and wanted to stay in the desert forever,” snarled Zahir, hating this man who had made him an exile among his own people and then had the nerve to blame him for this sad state of affairs. “Threatened to beat me when I begged to remain here, and now you wonder why I don’t see this tent you forced me out of as my home. The first rejection was yours, Baba. Don’t pretend otherwise in this revisionist history you’re creating for yourself.”
“You have the nerve to speak to me of history, boy, when the grandfather of the northern king you grovel before lied to your great-grandfather. Tricked him into fighting other Bazhir when the only true enemy was the insidious northerners.” Baba spat onto the carpets and pillows lining the tent floor. The ultimate gesture of contempt and disdain from a Bazhir.
“I know the history from both sides.” Zahir stuck up his nose, haughty as a vexed lion with a tugged tail. As a boy, he had heard all the campfire stories spun from the chapped lips of the old ones of his tribes. Accounts of the downfall of his proud people–tales that painted every northerner with a broad brush as untrustworthy, evil, and thirsty for Bazhir blood. Then, as a page, he had been subjected to the cringeworthy lessons on the Bazhir Wars where Sir Myles had the gumption to refer to Bazhir who didn’t lie down quick enough when northerners stole their land as troublesome. “I don’t need to hear it recited again. I find it tiresome.”
“You speak as if the history is so ancient that it doesn’t affect you.” Baba’s lips whitened and thinned. “As if it doesn’t still shape your life and dominate your destiny. As if the northern king you serve won’t break every promise he ever made to you.”
“King Jonathan isn’t his grandfather.” Zahir shook his head stubbornly. Not speaking the name of King Jonathan’s grandfather. A man who had been so hated and feared among the Bazhir that his very name was a curse to them.
“No.” Baba sounded sad. Defeated. Almost despairing. “He’s a far more dangerous and clever conqueror than his grandfather ever was.”
With that, Baba strode from the tent as if he couldn’t bear to look at Zahir, his traitorous son, any longer.
Zahir’s mother emerged from behind the vibrantly-threaded curtain that separated the men’s half of the tent from the side where the women cooked and wove. A women’s side of the tent that must seem so empty to Ummi now that both her daughters, Zahir’s younger sisters whom he had once teased, were married and living in their husbands’ tents. Married to men Zahir barely knew beyond their names because he hadn’t bothered to attend either of their weddings.
Ummi carried a steaming pot of saffron tea and a platter of goat kebabs spiced with cumin and turmeric, which she set on the low table. The timing of her appearance was so perfect that Zahir suspected she had been lurking out of sight, waiting for Zahir’s argument with his father to end. Hunkering down until the storm abated as it always did.
“Your father only sent you away because the king–the Voice–ordered it. Persuaded him that it would be bad for your future and the future of our tribe if you did not go north to serve the Crown as a knight.” Ummi’s tone was hushed as a whispering sand dune as she poured a cup of saffron tea and offered it to her son.
Zahir accepted it with a grateful nod and sank into the pillows surrounding the low table, sipping at the tea and savoring the taste of saffron that was far rarer in the north than in the desert. The Bazhir had saffron and other rich spices in abundance. Spice was one thing the northerners had not completely been able to steal from the Bazhir no matter how hard they tried.
Zahir’s silence as he drank his tea seemed to give Ummi the courage to continue. “You were stronger, smarter, and faster than the sons of every other chief. You were the most talented archer and rider. The king saw that and wanted to claim you for his own as northerners always do. Anything that sparkles and shines, the northerners have to hoard for themselves. And you burned brightly, Zahir. Brighter than any other boy. That’s why your father and I named you as we did.”
“Zahir.” Zahir murmured his own name. Rolling it around on his tongue as he never had before. Considering how it could define him. Recalling its meaning in the old tongue of the Bazhir. A tongue older than Persopolis. “The bright and shining one.”
“Yes.” There was nothing but heartbreak–the heartbreak of a mother for her lost child–in Ummi’s words now. No pride. Just endless grief for a son who had not yet died and been returned to the desert wind. “And the king stole you away from us. Turned and twisted you against us. Like northerners always do.”
“The king is the only reason I am here now.” Zahir scowled. Not caring how cruel and heartless a son he sounded. Convinced that he would be a pathetic King’s Champion if he permitted such aspersions to be cast against his liege without challenging them. “He was the one who commanded me to go home and celebrate my new rank with my family.”
“I’m supposed to be grateful for that?” Ummi was tart as a squirt of lemon juice. “The king steals a loaf of bread from me and I should be happy when he remembers to toss me a few meager crumbs of the bread I made?”
“That’s the nature of kings.” Zahir rolled his eyes, weary of explaining the obvious to his obtuse and obdurate parents. “They give and take away. And we Bazhir cannot pretend that our chiefs don’t do the same.”
“You defend your king so fiercely.” Ummi fiddled with her veil. A sure sign of her distress. “You don’t realize that you are only a shiny bauble to him. Just another jewel in his crown.”
“It is my duty and my honor to serve my king,” Zahir said stiffly, echoing by rote the words he had been made to memorize as a page under Lord Wyldon’s stern and severe education. Engaging in hollow repetition so he wouldn’t have to question whether his mother might be right. Wonder if even Prince Roald–whom men now called the Just in recognition of his capacity for impartial judgments–and Queen Thayet the Peerless were only gems in the radiant crown, gold as the noon sun in the desert, of King Jonathan the Magnificent?
That was all he could say. If he didn’t have his service and his duty, he didn’t have his honor. And without his honor, he had less than nothing and belonged nowhere.
Two weeks later, back in the Royal Palace and sipping with a faintly wrinkled nose at Tyran wine he had been too courteous to refuse, Zahir asked his king the question burning a hole in his tongue, “Your Majesty, did you order my father to send me north to train as a page?”
“Yes, I did.” King Jonathan’s response was the one Zahir had dreaded the whole ride north. Unvarnished and unflinching. Unapologetic and unashamed. But what cause would a king have to feel abashed about orders he had issued?
“Why?” Zahir felt as if the words were ripped from him as he tried to piece together the torn fabric of his life.
“Because–”King Jonathan cast an assessing gaze, cool and blue as an oasis, over Zahir– “I sensed you could be great. Was I wrong?”
“No.” A bolt of pride lanced through Zahir like lightning. “But I didn’t have to train in the north to become great, sire.”
“You did to be respected as great by the northerners,” King Jonathan told him, and Zahir bit back an urge to scoff that the northerners didn’t respect him. Still sneered at him as a sand scut. That would sound too much like self-pity unbecoming in a knight or a proud son of the Bazhir desert born and raised beneath a harsh desert sky. “To be a knight and have the chance to prove yourself worthy of being my Champion. To earn titles that can truly be respected by northerners when they negotiate with your tribe when you are chief of it. To give you more leverage when you deal with the northerners as you must when you are chief of your tribe.”
There was no profit, Zahir decided, in him observing archly that his tribe didn’t seem too enthused by the prospect of him inheriting his father’s position as chief and that Baba himself doubted Zahir’s commitment to leading the tribe when he spent so much time away from the desert, serving a northern king.
So he kept his own counsel as King Jonathan went on, fingers drumming against the stem of his wine goblet, “I know it was painful for you to leave your parents and for your parents to be separated from you, but sometimes things are necessary despite the hurt. Sometimes the amputation must occur to save the entire body from rot.”
“Amputated limbs shouldn’t hurt once they’ve been severed from the body, should they, sire?” Amputated. Severed. Zahir despised himself for repeating the king’s detached phrasing to describe the unutterable absence of a lost limb. A lost part of oneself. A missing piece that could never be restored to the body.
“Phantom limbs ache all the time, Zahir.” King Jonathan smiled faintly. “Ask any halfway decent healer.”
“That’s what you’re trying to do.” Zahir studied his king and Voice. “Heal the Bazhir and northerners.”
“I am trying to build a strong kingdom. One that will outlast me. That will endure long after I am dust in the Conte crypts.” King Jonathan’s eyes pierced Zahir’s. “You are part of that kingdom. So are all the Bazhir and all the northerners.”
The idea of King Jonathan–who had always loomed as a figure of awe in his life whether in the north or in the desert–sealed in a tomb disconcerted Zahir.
“I’ll tell my mother you’re weaving a bright tapestry with a grand design and all of us as threads next time I see her,” Zahir mumbled to distract himself from the thought of King Jonathan dying. She would appreciate the weaving metaphor, Zahir knew, even if his father wouldn’t. “Though I’ve no idea when that will be.”
“You may always ask leave to visit your family, Zahir,” remarked King Jonathan mildly. “I won’t hesitate to grant it.”
“I don’t like to return home.” Zahir was certain he sounded as awkward as he felt making this admission that should have filled him with shame at being a most disloyal son. “It’s too painful. Too much like trying to do the impossible and turn back time.”
“Ah.” King Jonathan’s lips quirked, and Zahir had the sense his former knightmaster was trying to lighten the mood. “Now you are talking almost like a progressive.”
“Gods all protect me from such a fate.” Zahir made the sign against evil he had learned from the northerners. “I find progressives and conservatives equally foolish and naive.”
“How are progressives and conservatives equally foolish and naive?” King Jonathan arched an eyebrow. “That is a riddle you must explain to me.”
“Conservatives are foolish because they are so fixated on returning to the past that they don’t realize it’s impossible to do so.” Zahir’s jaw tightened. “And they are naive because they want to return to the past so much they forget how terrible it could be sometimes.”
“I see you have started your answer with a critique of the conservatives to avoid offending me, a progressive,” commented King Jonathan wryly.
“I have been at court long enough to learn some tact, sire.” Zahir flashed his most charming, luminous grin.
“Now that you’ve buttered me up, you must continue with the second half of your answer,” the king reminded him. “You must explain how progressives like myself are naive and foolish.”
“Very well.” Zahir boldy seized the bait that had been waved in his face multiple times in a single conversation. “Progressives are foolish and naive because they believe that the future is something wonderful that should be raced toward with wild abandon. They don’t understand that the future isn’t something we have to run to because it will break upon us like an awful wave anyway, and we’ll have to grit our teeth and endure it when it does.”
“An extremely pessimistic view that deosn’t give us much power to forge our own destinities.” King Jonathan stroked his beard as he contemplated Zahir.
“Bazhir history of recent generations doesn’t leave much space for optimism to grow, Your Majesty.” Zahir shrugged.
“I understand and am working to change that.” King Jonathan squeezed Zahir’s shoulder. “What you must understand is that few people would face the future fearlessly if they didn’t believe it would be filled with hope–for themselves, for their families, for their country.”
“And it’s your role as king to inspire such visions of hope in your subjects.” Zahir remembered being a page. Being breathless along with a mess hall full of northern boys. All of them captivated by the charisma of the king they would one day swear to serve as knights.
“One of my roles, but the inspiration and hope flows both ways.” King Jonathan favored Zahir with the wide, dazzling smile that could charm the moon and stars down from the sky. Cause them to fall flaming and hard to the earth so far below. “My people can inspire me and fill me with hope for the realm’s future. You can inspire me and fill me with hope.”
“How?” Zahir shot his former knightmaster his most skeptical look. “I’m a cynic, not a raging optimist, as we discussed.”
“At your noblest and most idealistic, you aren’t a cynic.” King Jonathan ruffled Zahir’s hair. A gesture of affection among northerners. A degrading insult among the Bazhir. “It’s when you’re at your noblest and most idealistic that you inspire me and fill me with hope for the future, because you are part of the future of this kingdom, Zahir.”
Zahir. The name his parents had given him because he burned brightly. Burned so brightly even a northern king noticed and wanted his service as a knight sworn to the Crown.
Zahir felt his life, only half over he hoped, coming full circle in a way he never could have predicted. As if he had come home in an unexpected, strange fashion, but he supposed there was no other way for an exile to return home after a long absence.
Rating: PG-13 for references to racism, sexism, and imperialism/colonialism.
For: Seek
Prompt: A two for one, combining exile/stranger in a strange land, and a Bazhir-centric story.
Summary: Zahir’s strange homecoming.
Notes: Happy Wishing Tree and happy soon-to-be 2022, Seek! I wrote this little story as a thank you for the moving Baird and Neal one you wrote for me. I hope you enjoy it, and best wishes for the New Year!
Strange Homecoming
As soon as he rode between the tents of his tribe for the first time in too many years, Zahir felt like a stranger in a strange land where the natives were hostile to his existence and arrival.
Boys chasing each other through the hot sand beneath a blazing sky halted to gape at Zahir, their laughter and mischievous taunts fading to silence as an armored knight of the realm appeared in their midst.
Inwardly, Zahir cursed himself for wearing armor–blinding silver in the reflected sunlight–that made him look like one of the faceless enemies who had sought to conquer the desert by fire and sword a mere two generations ago. A heartbeat by the reckoning of the long-memoried Bazhir.
He flipped back his visor. Trying to prove that his skin was the same shade as theirs. That he was one of them. That he hadn’t come to shed their blood when it was the same blood that flowed in his veins.
His gesture didn’t have the intended impact. Instead of closing the gap between himself and his people, it widened the gulf until it threatened to swallow him and his beloved mare.
Women, peeling vegetables and shelling nuts on woven blankets outside their family tents, stopped in mid-current of what Zahir was certain was a stream of female-centered tribal gossip: who was marrying, who was pregnant, who was taking entirely too long to become pregnant, and whose children were particularly troublesome and prone to breaking a poor mother’s heart. Eyeing Zahir behind their black veils in a hard manner that made it clear he was one of the worst offenders in the category of sons who broke their mothers’ hearts.
All because he had obeyed his father when ordered to go north and train as a knight in the king’s court.
It was his father who had made an exile of him. He hadn’t chosen to make an outcast of himself, had he? It was all so confused. Had been so confused for years since he left the desert. (Bazhir weren’t supposed to leave the desert. In all the nighttime myths and stories he had heard by campfires beneath salt stars speckled across a pepper sky, it was death sooner or later for a Bazhir to leave the desert.)
Did his mother confide her sorrows to these women or did she keep them tucked beneath her dark veil? Hidden in the shadows of her heart?
Zahir could hear the whispers begin to break out amongst his people who were no longer truly his people. Even more rejecting and painful than when northern knights hissed he was a filthy sand scut who didn’t belong amongst their noble ranks and he didn’t bother to carve them with his sword unless their insolence and insults somehow crossed into calumnies against the king.
He did not belong among the northerners, but he was no longer welcome among the Bazhir either. He belonged nowhere. Was destined to be a hated stranger in a strange land wherever he went.
“Who is that?” an unveiled girl who had to be at least seven years old asked her mother, pointing an almost accusing finger up at Zahir mounted on his horse. Not riding bareback as a Bazhir warrior would.
Zahir didn’t know the girl’s name which meant it had been at least seven years since he had last visited his tribe. It was a disconcerting thought. As a rule, he didn’t count the years of his exile that he called service to the crown because then he might be tempted to regard all that time as lost. Gone from him forever like sand slipping between the fingers of a clenched fist.
Once, he thought as if remembering the life of someone else–someone who had lived and died long ago–he had known the name of every member of his tribe. That had been before he was ten. Before he had rode north to train as a knight.
Now he was among the best and most honored of those northern knights. The newly named and minted King’s Champion. Riding into his tribe on the king’s orders with what should have been pride because it had been a smiling King Jonathan himself who had commanded Zahir to return to the desert and celebrate with his people. King Jonathan who had decided that it had been too long since Zahir had been among the Bazhir. Not Zahir who had made such a determination or requested a leave of absence as some northern knights did when the demands of duty became too intense for them.
Zahir himself would never request a leave of absence. It might reflect poorly on him and his people. Might give rise to speculation that he wasn’t loyal enough to his king after all. He had to hold himself to a higher, more perfect standard than any northern knight. That was how he had become King’s Champion when the Lioness finally retired and laid down her sword.
“The chief’s son. Returned at last.” The girl’s mother answered with the only identity and relationship that mattered among the Bazhir. He was a knight of Tortall–a King’s Champion–reduced to a wayward, wandering son. Stripped of all ranks and titles earned by his own merit and courage. Back to being a truant little boy running and laughing in the sand when there were chores to be done. A little boy in need of stern correction from a father’s firm hand. Swatting her daughter’s finger down, the mother added almost as an afterthought, “Don’t point. It’s rude.”
Staring and whispering about someone was rude too, Zahir thought bitterly as he reached his father’s tent and dismounted. He took his time brushing and watering his mare–who seemed like the most pleasant company around for miles–before resigning himself to the notion that he could delay the inevitable no longer and entering the tent where he had been born and raised. Still wearing his armor. Prepared for battle.
The opening arrow was fired by his father as soon as he dared to enter the tent. “So I have a son after all. I had forgotten because he was gone so long. Not caring for his aging parents. Not concerning himself with the affairs and governance of the tribe he will one day lead when I am nothing more than ashes blowing in the desert wind.”
“I am a knight of the realm, Baba. The King’s Champion.” Zahir’s hand dropped to his hip. To the hilt of the Raven Armory sword the king had presented him with at the formal ceremony where he was invested as King’s Champion. Taking comfort from the solid feel of the weapon beneath his fingers. A weapon given to him by a man who–he was aware of the presumption of the thought–sometimes felt more like a father to him than the man who had given seed to him. “You could be proud of that. Of me.”
Any northern father would have been proud of a son who was named King’s Champion, but that was the difference between northerners and Bazhir. Northerners had been swearing fealty to kings for centuries, and Bazhir had never knelt so easily. Bazhir didn’t even kneel for their Voice. Bazhir would die before they knelt. The truth of that had been written in blood across the crimson desert sands.
“You are more faithful to the northern king than your own father,” Baba snapped, the words ringing like a slap across Zahir’s face. “You forget that a son’s first duty is to his father, and that he isn’t your father.”
“I never said the king was my father.” Zahir’s cheeks went moon-pale. He would never give voice to his thought that King Jonathan was like a father to him. It would have felt too much like a usurption. A claim to a royal blood he did not have. But sometimes when King Jonathan’s hands rested in gentle benediction over his head, Zahir would feel warmth flow through him because he was being touched and blessed almost as a northern father would touch and bless a northern son. “I wouldn’t presume–”
“You don’t need to say it.” Baba gave a dismissive snort. “Your actions announce it. Shouting louder than any words.”
“You sent me to serve the king in the north when I was ten and wanted to stay in the desert forever,” snarled Zahir, hating this man who had made him an exile among his own people and then had the nerve to blame him for this sad state of affairs. “Threatened to beat me when I begged to remain here, and now you wonder why I don’t see this tent you forced me out of as my home. The first rejection was yours, Baba. Don’t pretend otherwise in this revisionist history you’re creating for yourself.”
“You have the nerve to speak to me of history, boy, when the grandfather of the northern king you grovel before lied to your great-grandfather. Tricked him into fighting other Bazhir when the only true enemy was the insidious northerners.” Baba spat onto the carpets and pillows lining the tent floor. The ultimate gesture of contempt and disdain from a Bazhir.
“I know the history from both sides.” Zahir stuck up his nose, haughty as a vexed lion with a tugged tail. As a boy, he had heard all the campfire stories spun from the chapped lips of the old ones of his tribes. Accounts of the downfall of his proud people–tales that painted every northerner with a broad brush as untrustworthy, evil, and thirsty for Bazhir blood. Then, as a page, he had been subjected to the cringeworthy lessons on the Bazhir Wars where Sir Myles had the gumption to refer to Bazhir who didn’t lie down quick enough when northerners stole their land as troublesome. “I don’t need to hear it recited again. I find it tiresome.”
“You speak as if the history is so ancient that it doesn’t affect you.” Baba’s lips whitened and thinned. “As if it doesn’t still shape your life and dominate your destiny. As if the northern king you serve won’t break every promise he ever made to you.”
“King Jonathan isn’t his grandfather.” Zahir shook his head stubbornly. Not speaking the name of King Jonathan’s grandfather. A man who had been so hated and feared among the Bazhir that his very name was a curse to them.
“No.” Baba sounded sad. Defeated. Almost despairing. “He’s a far more dangerous and clever conqueror than his grandfather ever was.”
With that, Baba strode from the tent as if he couldn’t bear to look at Zahir, his traitorous son, any longer.
Zahir’s mother emerged from behind the vibrantly-threaded curtain that separated the men’s half of the tent from the side where the women cooked and wove. A women’s side of the tent that must seem so empty to Ummi now that both her daughters, Zahir’s younger sisters whom he had once teased, were married and living in their husbands’ tents. Married to men Zahir barely knew beyond their names because he hadn’t bothered to attend either of their weddings.
Ummi carried a steaming pot of saffron tea and a platter of goat kebabs spiced with cumin and turmeric, which she set on the low table. The timing of her appearance was so perfect that Zahir suspected she had been lurking out of sight, waiting for Zahir’s argument with his father to end. Hunkering down until the storm abated as it always did.
“Your father only sent you away because the king–the Voice–ordered it. Persuaded him that it would be bad for your future and the future of our tribe if you did not go north to serve the Crown as a knight.” Ummi’s tone was hushed as a whispering sand dune as she poured a cup of saffron tea and offered it to her son.
Zahir accepted it with a grateful nod and sank into the pillows surrounding the low table, sipping at the tea and savoring the taste of saffron that was far rarer in the north than in the desert. The Bazhir had saffron and other rich spices in abundance. Spice was one thing the northerners had not completely been able to steal from the Bazhir no matter how hard they tried.
Zahir’s silence as he drank his tea seemed to give Ummi the courage to continue. “You were stronger, smarter, and faster than the sons of every other chief. You were the most talented archer and rider. The king saw that and wanted to claim you for his own as northerners always do. Anything that sparkles and shines, the northerners have to hoard for themselves. And you burned brightly, Zahir. Brighter than any other boy. That’s why your father and I named you as we did.”
“Zahir.” Zahir murmured his own name. Rolling it around on his tongue as he never had before. Considering how it could define him. Recalling its meaning in the old tongue of the Bazhir. A tongue older than Persopolis. “The bright and shining one.”
“Yes.” There was nothing but heartbreak–the heartbreak of a mother for her lost child–in Ummi’s words now. No pride. Just endless grief for a son who had not yet died and been returned to the desert wind. “And the king stole you away from us. Turned and twisted you against us. Like northerners always do.”
“The king is the only reason I am here now.” Zahir scowled. Not caring how cruel and heartless a son he sounded. Convinced that he would be a pathetic King’s Champion if he permitted such aspersions to be cast against his liege without challenging them. “He was the one who commanded me to go home and celebrate my new rank with my family.”
“I’m supposed to be grateful for that?” Ummi was tart as a squirt of lemon juice. “The king steals a loaf of bread from me and I should be happy when he remembers to toss me a few meager crumbs of the bread I made?”
“That’s the nature of kings.” Zahir rolled his eyes, weary of explaining the obvious to his obtuse and obdurate parents. “They give and take away. And we Bazhir cannot pretend that our chiefs don’t do the same.”
“You defend your king so fiercely.” Ummi fiddled with her veil. A sure sign of her distress. “You don’t realize that you are only a shiny bauble to him. Just another jewel in his crown.”
“It is my duty and my honor to serve my king,” Zahir said stiffly, echoing by rote the words he had been made to memorize as a page under Lord Wyldon’s stern and severe education. Engaging in hollow repetition so he wouldn’t have to question whether his mother might be right. Wonder if even Prince Roald–whom men now called the Just in recognition of his capacity for impartial judgments–and Queen Thayet the Peerless were only gems in the radiant crown, gold as the noon sun in the desert, of King Jonathan the Magnificent?
That was all he could say. If he didn’t have his service and his duty, he didn’t have his honor. And without his honor, he had less than nothing and belonged nowhere.
Two weeks later, back in the Royal Palace and sipping with a faintly wrinkled nose at Tyran wine he had been too courteous to refuse, Zahir asked his king the question burning a hole in his tongue, “Your Majesty, did you order my father to send me north to train as a page?”
“Yes, I did.” King Jonathan’s response was the one Zahir had dreaded the whole ride north. Unvarnished and unflinching. Unapologetic and unashamed. But what cause would a king have to feel abashed about orders he had issued?
“Why?” Zahir felt as if the words were ripped from him as he tried to piece together the torn fabric of his life.
“Because–”King Jonathan cast an assessing gaze, cool and blue as an oasis, over Zahir– “I sensed you could be great. Was I wrong?”
“No.” A bolt of pride lanced through Zahir like lightning. “But I didn’t have to train in the north to become great, sire.”
“You did to be respected as great by the northerners,” King Jonathan told him, and Zahir bit back an urge to scoff that the northerners didn’t respect him. Still sneered at him as a sand scut. That would sound too much like self-pity unbecoming in a knight or a proud son of the Bazhir desert born and raised beneath a harsh desert sky. “To be a knight and have the chance to prove yourself worthy of being my Champion. To earn titles that can truly be respected by northerners when they negotiate with your tribe when you are chief of it. To give you more leverage when you deal with the northerners as you must when you are chief of your tribe.”
There was no profit, Zahir decided, in him observing archly that his tribe didn’t seem too enthused by the prospect of him inheriting his father’s position as chief and that Baba himself doubted Zahir’s commitment to leading the tribe when he spent so much time away from the desert, serving a northern king.
So he kept his own counsel as King Jonathan went on, fingers drumming against the stem of his wine goblet, “I know it was painful for you to leave your parents and for your parents to be separated from you, but sometimes things are necessary despite the hurt. Sometimes the amputation must occur to save the entire body from rot.”
“Amputated limbs shouldn’t hurt once they’ve been severed from the body, should they, sire?” Amputated. Severed. Zahir despised himself for repeating the king’s detached phrasing to describe the unutterable absence of a lost limb. A lost part of oneself. A missing piece that could never be restored to the body.
“Phantom limbs ache all the time, Zahir.” King Jonathan smiled faintly. “Ask any halfway decent healer.”
“That’s what you’re trying to do.” Zahir studied his king and Voice. “Heal the Bazhir and northerners.”
“I am trying to build a strong kingdom. One that will outlast me. That will endure long after I am dust in the Conte crypts.” King Jonathan’s eyes pierced Zahir’s. “You are part of that kingdom. So are all the Bazhir and all the northerners.”
The idea of King Jonathan–who had always loomed as a figure of awe in his life whether in the north or in the desert–sealed in a tomb disconcerted Zahir.
“I’ll tell my mother you’re weaving a bright tapestry with a grand design and all of us as threads next time I see her,” Zahir mumbled to distract himself from the thought of King Jonathan dying. She would appreciate the weaving metaphor, Zahir knew, even if his father wouldn’t. “Though I’ve no idea when that will be.”
“You may always ask leave to visit your family, Zahir,” remarked King Jonathan mildly. “I won’t hesitate to grant it.”
“I don’t like to return home.” Zahir was certain he sounded as awkward as he felt making this admission that should have filled him with shame at being a most disloyal son. “It’s too painful. Too much like trying to do the impossible and turn back time.”
“Ah.” King Jonathan’s lips quirked, and Zahir had the sense his former knightmaster was trying to lighten the mood. “Now you are talking almost like a progressive.”
“Gods all protect me from such a fate.” Zahir made the sign against evil he had learned from the northerners. “I find progressives and conservatives equally foolish and naive.”
“How are progressives and conservatives equally foolish and naive?” King Jonathan arched an eyebrow. “That is a riddle you must explain to me.”
“Conservatives are foolish because they are so fixated on returning to the past that they don’t realize it’s impossible to do so.” Zahir’s jaw tightened. “And they are naive because they want to return to the past so much they forget how terrible it could be sometimes.”
“I see you have started your answer with a critique of the conservatives to avoid offending me, a progressive,” commented King Jonathan wryly.
“I have been at court long enough to learn some tact, sire.” Zahir flashed his most charming, luminous grin.
“Now that you’ve buttered me up, you must continue with the second half of your answer,” the king reminded him. “You must explain how progressives like myself are naive and foolish.”
“Very well.” Zahir boldy seized the bait that had been waved in his face multiple times in a single conversation. “Progressives are foolish and naive because they believe that the future is something wonderful that should be raced toward with wild abandon. They don’t understand that the future isn’t something we have to run to because it will break upon us like an awful wave anyway, and we’ll have to grit our teeth and endure it when it does.”
“An extremely pessimistic view that deosn’t give us much power to forge our own destinities.” King Jonathan stroked his beard as he contemplated Zahir.
“Bazhir history of recent generations doesn’t leave much space for optimism to grow, Your Majesty.” Zahir shrugged.
“I understand and am working to change that.” King Jonathan squeezed Zahir’s shoulder. “What you must understand is that few people would face the future fearlessly if they didn’t believe it would be filled with hope–for themselves, for their families, for their country.”
“And it’s your role as king to inspire such visions of hope in your subjects.” Zahir remembered being a page. Being breathless along with a mess hall full of northern boys. All of them captivated by the charisma of the king they would one day swear to serve as knights.
“One of my roles, but the inspiration and hope flows both ways.” King Jonathan favored Zahir with the wide, dazzling smile that could charm the moon and stars down from the sky. Cause them to fall flaming and hard to the earth so far below. “My people can inspire me and fill me with hope for the realm’s future. You can inspire me and fill me with hope.”
“How?” Zahir shot his former knightmaster his most skeptical look. “I’m a cynic, not a raging optimist, as we discussed.”
“At your noblest and most idealistic, you aren’t a cynic.” King Jonathan ruffled Zahir’s hair. A gesture of affection among northerners. A degrading insult among the Bazhir. “It’s when you’re at your noblest and most idealistic that you inspire me and fill me with hope for the future, because you are part of the future of this kingdom, Zahir.”
Zahir. The name his parents had given him because he burned brightly. Burned so brightly even a northern king noticed and wanted his service as a knight sworn to the Crown.
Zahir felt his life, only half over he hoped, coming full circle in a way he never could have predicted. As if he had come home in an unexpected, strange fashion, but he supposed there was no other way for an exile to return home after a long absence.