Ginn Hale - Lord of the White Hell book Two

They ordered six fresh adhil rounds between them as well as four skewers of sugared fish. They ate beneath a stand of almond trees. The silence between them seemed almost comfortable as they devoured their breakfast.

A courier in a dusty gray uniform rushed passed them with a bulging mail pouch. Kiram watched the man, thinking of the letter he'd sent offjust two days earlier. Then a sudden realization came to him.

"I know you promised Alizadeh, but you might not have to go through with fully becoming a Bahiim. There might be another way to defeat the curse."

Javier raised his brows in question as he continued chewing his last sugared fish.

"The day before my return party Alizadeh said that if Scholar Donamillo's mechanical cures were able to protect Fedeles, then at least some of the symbols on the machine had to be related to the curse. If we could figure out which ones were, then we'd know exactly how the curse worked-"

"We would?" Javier asked with an amused smirk.

"Well, Alizadeh would know," Kiram admitted. "He said that if we knew, we'd have a way to stop it."

"You mean Alizadeh would have a way to stop it." Javier made a grab for one of Kiram's fish but Kiram pulled the skewer away.

"I'm trying to help you and you steal my food?"

"You didn't seem too interested in eating it."

"I hadn't eaten yet" Kiram took a bite of his fish and chewed, "because I was in the midst of telling you that I wrote to Scholar Donamillo and asked him about the symbols. If he writes back directly and the couriers are quick, we could have an answer in two weeks."

"An answer that won't mean anything to anyone but Alizadeh or another Bahiim." Javier sounded oddly smug.

"Yes, but I'd put my money on us having that answer before you're trained enough to take your vows in the Circle of Red Oaks."

"Probably," Javier conceded. He frowned at Kiram. "So are you suggesting that once you get word from Scholar Donamillo, you'll have Alizadeh break the curse and then I should betray him by refusing to become a Bahiim?"

Kiram scowled at Javier's words. He hadn't thought of it in those terms, but he supposed that was what his idea amounted to. It suddenly seemed shameful.

"I was just thinking that there might be some way refit Scholar Donamillo's mechanical cure. With my steam engine powering it, we might be able to break the curse. Then you wouldn't need to become a Bahiim."

"I swore an oath yesterday," Javier replied.

"But only because you didn't think there was any other way to save Fedeles." Kiram still felt a flare of anger at Alizadeh for demanding the promise of Javier.

"That doesn't change the fact that I gave my word, does it?"

"It might." Kiram ate the crisp tail of his fish. "An oath given under duress-"

"Duress?" Javier demanded. "Have I become a such a frail maiden in your eyes that lunch in a garden merits duress?"

"It wasn't just lunch! Fedeles' life was held over your head." Kiram lowered his voice to a harsh whisper. "And I didn't say anything about frail maidens."

Kiram noticed the way Javier's eyes flicked away from him at the words.

"Damn it, Javier. You're a man. I know that. I love that. And just so we're clear, nothing we did last night changes that."

A flush colored Javier's pale face, and for a moment he wouldn't meet Kiram's gaze.

"Nothing's changed," Kiram repeated.

"You're wrong." Javier closed his eyes as if the view before him were too much to bear. "Everything has changed."

Kiram's stomach churned and his throat felt too tight to let him swallow. He should have known better than to have taken Javier last night. Kiram glared down at his own dusty shoes.

Then he felt Javier's fingers caress the back of his hand. When he met Javier's gaze, his expression was calm.

"I can't go back now." Javier gave a weirdly soft laugh.

"Do you want to?"

"Maybe a little. You know, ignorance being bliss and all that tripe." Again Javier's eyes flicked away from Kiram. "I wasn't prepared for it to feel…good. Stupid, isn't it? After all my talk in the bath about being a bender. When you started I thought I'd grit my teeth and endure it. You know, take it like a man."

"You did take it like a man."

"A little better than most men, I think." A sardonic smile curved Javier's lips.

"That's nothing to be ashamed of and it doesn't change who you are."

"It does." Javier stared intently into Kiram's face. "It's like the very first time I saw myself in a mirror. I could hardly credit it. I kept thinking, that's really me? Before then I'd thought I was like everyone else. But afterwards I was different. I was myself and I couldn't go back to being just like Timoteo or Elezar."

Kiram almost blurted out that he didn't think Elezar was all that different from either of them but stopped himself. It seemed petty and beside the point.

"Now, I know-deep in my flesh and bones-that I'm-" Javier paused, plainly rejecting the first word that came to his mind and choosing another, "I'm an adari. And I don't want to be anything else. I don't even want to pretend anymore, but I have to. We both do"

Kiram nodded. Neither of their lives would be lived in the safe, walled confines of the Haldiim district. And even if they could have been, there still would have been Kiram's mother to contend with.

"I don't know how I'm going to keep my hands off you after this," Javier finished.

Kiram laughed but Javier frowned at him.

"I'm serious. You wouldn't believe the nightmares I had last night. About being caught together and what they did to you."

"I know. Really, I do." Kiram said. He'd felt the same kind of anxiety at the Sagrada Academy. He also knew that brooding on it would only make it worse. "But we won't be caught. We'll be careful and smart."

Javier nodded slowly.

"Though I have to point out that taking vows as a Bahiim is neither of those things," Kiram added.

"I know that."

"Then you shouldn't-"

"I have to," Javier cut him off. "And not just because I made a promise, but because the Bahiim belief is right. There is a unity to all life. I felt it yesterday. For a few minutes with Alizadeh, there were no barriers between me and the surrounding world. I could reach out and catch the wind in my hands. When I took a breath, the air rippled with the vibrations of birds' wings and I could feel you and your uncle Rafie speaking like whispers against my skin." Javier gazed up into the branches of the almond tree above them. His expression seemed to light up as he spoke. "It was just an instant but I felt something real and holy. Something I have never felt in any Cadeleonian chapel. Now that I've experienced it, I can't turn my back on becoming Bahiim any more than I can stop being an adari"

His tone and rapturous expression told Kiram as much as his words, perhaps more. Javier had already converted; oaths would just be a formality. Kiram didn't know what to say. He'd never considered the possibility of Javier genuinely experiencing the Bahiim religion, probably because he wasn't all that religious himself. Even now his first thought was purely pragmatic.

"You're going to keep your conversion a secret, aren't you?"

"I'm becoming a Bahiim, not an idiot," Javier replied with a crooked smile. "Obviously I'm going to keep it secret."

"Just making sure." Kiram tried to reason past his own anxiety to reach practical thought. "We have to find some excuse for you to be in the Haldiim district if you're going to keep studying with Alizadeh. And you need to have your hair trimmed."

"I know. I know." Javier laughed. "I'll cut my hair. I was just being obstinate last night. I wanted everything my way."

"Who doesn't?" Kiram replied. A cluster of young girls in bright green school vests crossed the Ammej Bridge, singing their multiplication tables. Kiram vividly remembered how proud he'd been wearing his own school vest. That seemed so long ago now. Javier watched the students too, but absently.