Chapter 21
Vas cried, fat tears rolling down his cheeks, a grin plastered on his face. With a deft twist of his wrist he sent the thick wedges of onion tumbling into the nearby pot. Siniq-elb wiped his own stinging eyes and glared at Vas’s pot. No matter how many times he watched the stout, dark-haired man, Siniq-elb could not seem to duplicate the graceful cuts. His own work looked childish in comparison: uneven slices, some thin as paper, others wider than his thumb, with flecks of brown onion-skin dotting the white vegetables. He stabbed down with the knife, the dull blade sticking in the offending onion and spraying slices of onion across the thick board that rested across his lap.
Vas let out a laugh and wiped his eyes. “Problem?”
“What am I doing wrong?” Siniq-elb asked. “It’s a gloried onion. I feel like I’m fighting a Setin dream-dancer the way this thing slides away.”
“It’s not that hard,” Vas said. The smile had not left his face since they had arrived at the kitchen; it had taken the smuggled pastry, and the promise of more to come, to break down the wall that Vas had raised, but now that it was down, the dark-haired man acted as though nothing had happened. “Take your time at first; it’s like everything else. You just need practice.”
“I haven’t felt like this since I was a child,” Siniq-elb said, making another uneven cut. “Tair around us, you’d think one blade would be like another. It’s not as though I’ve never held a knife before.”
Vas laughed again as he dumped another row of perfect onion wedges into his pot. “We’re all children, Siniq-elb. Just in different ways.”
A fool’s words. Words that didn’t carry the right meaning. Siniq-elb pushed those thoughts down. Ignoring Vas was a mistake; the man had some skills, obviously, and Siniq-elb was not fool enough to overlook the few advantages that remained to him. At least, Siniq-elb was not fool enough to overlook them twice.
“What do you mean?” Siniq-elb asked after a moment. “That we’re children because we aren’t good at things? Will I be an adult when I can chop onions?”
Vas stared at the fireplace, where flames danced against copper, the knife dangling from one hand. “Not because,” he said. “It’s not causal. Maybe it’s the opposite even; maybe because we’re children, we aren’t good at some things. But then, even adults aren’t good at everything. Still, I wonder . . . Take, for example, the tair, the god-made-flesh. The eses hold him up as the point of perfection, divinity given form. We are children in comparison, undeveloped, born of blood and earth. The tair would be beyond even an adult, but still our father—not the First Father, but a father nonetheless. But the rebels have proved that, for all their power, the tair are mortal. Can the god-made-flesh then be flawed, like any other adult? Is he a child, and not a father? Or is he both?”
The noise in the kitchen—the clang of a spoon against the rim of a pan, Shehr’s empty chatter, Jela’s instructions on crimping a pie crust—seemed too loud. It pressed in on Siniq-elb, against the chill that ran up his spine at Vas’s words. He shifted and looked around the kitchen, trying to see if anyone else had heard the stout man’s words.
“Father and tair forbid,” Siniq-elb said, his whisper sounding too loud in his own ears. “Watch what you’re saying! We’re in the temple itself, you fool.”
Vas started, as though coming back to himself, and gave the knife and the onion a startled glance. Then he seemed to remember where he was. “Sorry,” he said. An apologetic smile and a shrug. “I forget myself sometimes. I’m still a child too, I guess.”
“You’ll not live to be an adult if you keep talking like that,” Siniq-elb said.
“What?” Vas said. “What I just said? The eses won’t mind; sometimes they even come to talk to me about it, ask me questions. Most of it’s in the book I wrote, although the last bit, about the tair being both—that’s new. I’m still working on it, you see, but when I’m finished, the eses promise they’ll help me put out a new edition of the book.”
“You wrote it down?” Siniq-elb said. He couldn’t keep the horror from his voice. “You wrote down your brilliant ideas that imply a link between the First Father and the tair? Your little comparison between the two? Father take me, no wonder you’re in the Garden. You’re lucky they didn’t harvest you on a pile of your own books.”
“They don’t keep us in the Garden because of what we did,” Vas said. His smile had faded somewhat, only the faintest tugging at the corners of his mouth. “And I had to write the book, Siniq-elb. It was the right thing to do.”
“It was a foolish thing to do.”
“Foolish or not,” Vas said, “it was right. The Thirteen Paths have lived long enough apart, isolated, communities that do not speak to each other, that do not speak to themselves. We have to speak. Expressing my thoughts about the tair won’t hurt anyone.”
“It hurt you,” Siniq-elb said.
Vas shook his head. “You don’t understand; that’s not why they keep us here.”
Jela marched up, dress and apron as stained as the day before, and said, “Those onions won’t cook themselves; get them started, then add the garlic and celery that Zeyn prepared. You know how to make a simple soup, I assume?”
Grin back, Vas jumped down from his stool, gathered his pot and Siniq-elb’s, and said, “I made the most delicious soup once, asparagus and shallot with cream and twice toasted bread. The way it felt in the mouth, I wish I could tell you—do you have any asparagus?” As he spoke, he hurried toward the fireplace, words rolling over Jela. With a single, bemused glance at Siniq-elb, the balding woman followed Vas, as though she were the servant and he the chef.
Setting aside the board that Jela and Vas had rigged up for him to use as a cutting block, Siniq-elb scooted over to a pail of water that Jela had ordered for his use and washed his hands. Even after his best efforts, though, the smell of onion clung to him, buried in his skin. He wiped his hands dry, washed the board and knife, and set them aside to dry. The evening meal would be served soon, and the first full day of kitchen work had been a complete success. Not even being carried by Crook and Bald to the Garden for visiting hours had been able to ruin Siniq-elb’s good mood.
Siniq-elb found a spot against the wall where he could relax while still keeping an eye on Vas and Dakel’s door at the same time. Being able to watch the su-esis’s habitation had not gained him much; the man seemed to spend almost all his time in the room. Turning his gaze to Vas, Siniq-elb felt his anxiety about Vas’s comment evaporating. It was hard to reconcile the heresy of Vas’s thoughts with his passion for asparagus soup. How dangerous could such a sincere man be? Dangerous enough to warrant the Garden, it seemed.
“Your friend has interesting ideas,” a deep voice said.
Siniq-elb started; Dakel stood next to him—opposite the door. It should have been impossible for him to get past Siniq-elb, but there he stood, chocolate eyes fixed on Vas.
“I didn’t know you cared for soup so much,” Siniq-elb said.
A broad smile—friendly, even—appeared on Dakel’s lips. “I do love a good soup,” the su-esis said, “but I was talking about his book. And your earlier conversation.”
“Then you heard him talking about talking to each other, importance of communicating, all that. Hardly the words of a revolutionary.”
“Perhaps,” Dakel said. “But the rhetoric of revolt is not always easy to spot. Where would you stand if he proposed the overthrow of the god-made-flesh, Siniq-elb, squad leader in the army of Khi’ilan?”
Prickling heat crept up Siniq-elb’s shoulders and into his cheeks. When he spoke, his voice was thick. “I am no longer a squad leader.” He cleared his throat and added, “Nor am I a soldier. You saw to that.”
“Perhaps,” Dakel said again. “I think you do not give yourself credit; your own actions, as much as my own, brought you here. And if you are not a soldier, you are still a very dangerous man. So I ask you again, what would you do if you found him plotting against the god-made-flesh?”
?
??Father take your questions,” Siniq-elb said. “What do you mean, my actions? What did I do to be brought here? What is my crime?”
“I asked first,” Dakel said.
Siniq-elb clenched his fists. As tempted as he was to hit Dakel, he knew that the repercussions would be severe—severe enough to jeopardize the small gains he had made. If they threw him from the kitchen, or if they beat him so that he could not work . . . after a tight breath, Siniq-elb relaxed his hands, although he kept them pressed against the gritty wood.
“I do not care about the god-made-flesh,” he said, biting the words off in his anger. “I care about the people of Khi’ilan. That’s why I joined the army; I couldn’t do anything about the eses, who have their hands full terrorizing honest citizens. The only thing I could do was keep other armies from coming to our city to do the same.”
Dakel frowned, his dark eyes still locked on Vas, who now stooped over the pots, stirring with a spoon in each hand. “A few months ago,” Dakel said, “I would have called you a liar. But you speak your mind, and I cannot fault that. I will tell you, though, that others here will not be as patient.”
Siniq-elb tried to keep the shock from his face; who was this man?
“And my question?” Siniq-elb said.
“May I ask you another?” Dakel said, his chocolate eyes finally shifting to Siniq-elb’s face. “I promise I will answer you.”
Siniq-elb nodded.
“Will you still fight to protect the people of Khi’ilan?”
Siniq-elb felt anger and humiliation flood through him. “A fine joke, su-esis,” he said, struggling to keep his voice even. “Whom will I protect? The people who lack both arms and legs?” He gestured at the bandaged stumps.
“You misunderstand me,” Dakel said. “I mean only what I say.”
Siniq-elb shook his head. “I have nothing more to say, su-esis. You have taken everything else from me. At least leave me some peace in this place.”
Bright red spots appeared in Dakel’s cheeks, and he bit his lip. After a moment, the su-esis said, “You were taken for the Garden because of who you were. You were so good at what you do. Valiant soldier. Handsome. Son to influential merchants, and engaged to the daughter of another rich man. A valuable commodity. One that Sword-bearer Qilic used to pay a debt. That is the answer to your question.”
The words struck like knives; Siniq-elb closed his eyes against them, prayed to the tair that he could close his ears. Sword-bearer Qilic? The gruff old man who had only interacted with Siniq-elb once, stopped to clap him on the shoulder and congratulate him on a reconnaissance mission. Why? To pay what debt? And how did Siniq-elb’s imprisonment in the Garden pay anything?
Dakel crouched next to him. “If you will no longer fight to protect these people because it is your duty,” he said, his voice now pitched low and urgent, “then fight them for your own gain. I will pay you, make it worth your while. Enough that you will not have to work in a kitchen; you can bribe the eses, make a good life for yourself here, locked away from your old responsibilities.”
Head still swimming from Dakel’s revelation, Siniq-elb struggled to focus. “What do you want from me?”
“Khylar,” Dakel said. “I want to know where he goes, what he does. You’ve been following me. You do it well. Now follow him, tell me everything. You will not go unrewarded.”
A part of Siniq-elb wanted to refuse, to tell this su-esis how much Siniq-elb hated him. But Dakel could ruin everything—take away Siniq-elb’s work in the kitchen, the tiny advantage Siniq-elb had been able to get.
“Fine,” Siniq-elb said. “But keep your coin; I don’t want any favors from you. I’ll do this until I know for myself whether or not he’s a threat to the people of Khi’ilan.”
Dakel nodded, his face pale and composed under the dark, foreign hair. Without another word, Dakel straightened and, with a stir of displaced air, vanished. Siniq-elb clenched his fists against the dirty wood, his heart hammering. Qilic had sold him like a piece of chattel. Qilic had condemned him to the Garden. The thought was like acid in Siniq-elb’s gut.
One thing was clear, though. Dakel wanted something, and it had to do with Khylar. He had shown how very much he wanted it. Siniq-elb had never wanted to be a merchant, but even he knew that the first rule in bargaining was never to show desire. If Dakel wanted this information, then it was valuable, and there would be others who would want it as well. People who might be able to help Siniq-elb with what he himself wanted: escape; revenge.