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Malik was slung out over his chair, weight tipped back, and lazing in the pool of sunlight streaming into his office. The assistant - that the museum insisted Malik keep underfoot - had been sent out, and told to inform anybody that Malik was in an important meeting. Presumably with Ra, given Malik was lazing in a sunbeam like a contented cat. Despite Malik's instructions, a quick-hearted rat-tat-tat at the door cut through Malik's catnap.
Yawning, Malik only bothers to open one eye. "Hazem?"
"...My Lord?"
Definitely not Hazem, only clan would call him that. Displeased, back arching, Malik stretches to his feet with an affected grunt. "Yeah, yeah, come in," he gestures absently, digging through his desk like a river clawing through a rock. By the time the clan member has actually stepped into the room, Malik was prepared with a boneless handshake, and a slightly dusty bottle of karkade.
"Nasir," Malik had to gesture the bottle a few times until the man actually took the damn thing. "This is unexpected."
"I apologize for disturbing your...meeting." Nasir shifts his gaze about the room, and Malik shamelessly keeps eye-contact as he shakes Nasir's hand. "Is the Lady Isis well? She is in Germany at the moment, yes?"
"She's fine. Germany, yes." Malik is far too impatient for the polite social fog their culture demands of them; he is awake, and his attention a quick-flicker of a thing. Easily bored, and easily roused. "What's wrong?" There is a hesitant pause, and Malik's eyebrow piques. "That serious? You should be talking to Rishid, not me--"
"It concerns your brother," Nasir sounds pained.
There is a blunt silence, before Malik states even more bluntly, "you should be talking to Rishid."
"Malik-- My lord!" Nasir blurts his name out, hastily covering it up, and flushing shamefully. Both of Malik's eyebrows furrow, but he's listening closely now. Still, Nasir's mouth works a little uselessly, obviously picking through his words like a shy horse might pick its way onto a shoddy bridge. At last, Nasir coughs, voice lowered, "I- I understand that this is a matter of secrecy, believe me, Lord Malik, I do know that. I am as loyal to the Lady Ishtar as ever."
"Isis?" Fuck, what was she doing dividing the clan politics against Rishid.
Nasir looks at Malik queerly, before shaking his head. "No. The Lady Inara," he bids, "your mother."
Slowly, confused and unsure of himself, Malik slides into his chair with a heavy stare. "My mother," he repeats. Has he heard that right? There is a thick, almost cloying grief that makes the clan reluctant to discuss Malik's parents; he hasn't heard his mother's name in years, and it is like being struck in the sternum. "Go on," he prompts Nasir, voice chafing in his throat.
"Then- please know I do not mean to cause harm." Nasir is doing his level best to not look Malik in the eye. "That is why I came to you," a slightly ruffled pause, before Nasir says firmly, "privately."
It's a question, Malik realizes abruptly. "Of course. Privately."
"Privately. Really, I don't mean harm, but I could not stand by. Not anymore...It was only right-"
Malik's head is almost throbbing with his own questions, and finally he snaps at Nasir, "Spit it out."
Jolting, Nasir clears his throat, eyes widening like a spilling pool of violet. "Your brother? Rishid? His- his mother is dying." Malik has nothing to say, unsure if his tongue is bleeding from how suddenly he bites it. Mouth numb, aching, Malik has nothing to say. "I know that it's not my place. I do know this is a secret, and I do not mean- I realize how it must look, my Lord," Nasir doesn't look guilty, merely meets Malik's gaze again, "But she has so little time left, and- it isn't fair for the secret to stop him saying goodbye. That isn't what the Lady Inara would have wanted..."
He has to speak up, but all Malik can do is grip Nasir by his shoulders like iron, and Nasir quails under the grip. Malik cuts him off; hard, fast, sharp...
"I didn't know."
It comes out; all at once, then little by little, like rain collapsing in a sheet and trailing away. It should be strange, but Malik feels so far removed from the situation. After-all, he'd been born long after the dust had settled. That his parents had difficulty conceiving is something he was told often, his father often telling him what a blessing he had been. The tangle in Malik's stomach is as hard as steel, and he shifts in his spot.
Malik leaned back in his chair, and breathed out hard. "Rishid was meant to be found?"
"Mm..." Nasir looks down at his glass of sake. He hasn't touched it, Malik thinks fuzzily. Damn, probably just took it to be polite.
He feels impolite, feels it down and deep in his bones, like an itch down his spine.
"We never knew." Malik turns his glass in his hand. Nasir's gaze slips up, meeting Malik's across the open room. "I gather it wasn't much of a secret."
Nasir's eyes jerk back down. "No. Lord Ikram was not to be told, and the records of his birth were obviously destroyed. Officially speaking, he was born dead."
"Officially speaking." Malik's voice is slow, thin in his throat. He smiles tightly, "but Ishtars do not keep their secrets on papyrus."
"No, Lord Malik."
"No," he's still burning a stare into his drink, "and where did..." he trails off.
"Your cousin," Nasir murmurs. "He is the son of your mother's sister."
The knot lurches, and Malik is on his feet before he can help himself. Nasir's face is blanched, and Malik should feel guilty for the force in his voice, and flash in his eyes, but in clipped, angry tones, he corrects Nasir, he corrects his father: "He is my brother."
"Lord Malik," Nasir quavers before him, but stares up at him with a gaze that won't be turned away. "That is not all he is."
He must tell Rishid. He must, and yet, Malik is here, in the doorway of a home he has been before, and how had he not seen it? His uncle, Nebibi has Rishid's cheekbones, and Malik knows he has seen Rishid's straight nose on Isis' face. How has he not seen these connections? How has he not known?
"My Lord," Nebibi's head ducks.
"I must-- can I see her? Is she well enough?" Malik is breathless. Breathless, and yet he must not command here. He owes these people a debt of blood that maybe they do not understand yet. Malik is not rightly sure he does, and that is why he is here.
He must tell Rishid, and yet, Nebibi moves aside, and Rishid does not know that Malik is here, stepping into the house of Nebibi Ishtar.
"Please, Lord Malik," Nebibi asks, leading Malik down the darkened hallway. "She is well enough to meet with you, but the illness has progressed greatly."
This is Rishid's father. There is the arch of his cheekbones. There is the blood of his blood. Something in Malik roots, and tangles, and takes in a way it never has before.
"I will not disturb her long," he promises, but pushes past Nebibi into the dim room. She is a thin shape in the bed, and before he can breathe, Malik is on his knees besides her. "My Lady."
This is Rishid's mother -- he can see Rishid's eyes when she opens hers, and when her eyebrows furrow, there are pieces of Rishid here and there, and Isis. Long roots, bloodlines that tangle and trace around them, burying deep under their skin, and under Malik's scars.
"My Lady."
"My Lord," she seems amused. "You look like your father."
"You look like my sister," Malik's voice softens, matching her quiet, weak tone. He bites his lip, and then- "and my brother."
"Rishid."
Malik kneels in the house of Leila Ishtar, and he bows his head.
Over the next week, Malik begins to see how it is that nobody told them. How his mother carried this secret with her across the river, without even whispering it. It is simultaneously the most important revelation of Malik's life, placed side by side with the death of his father and the truth of that murder -- and just as unlikely, it is insignificant. It has succeeded in changing everything, without changing anything. Everything is different, and nothing has changed.
He tells Isis first, calling her across an ocean, across miles. It is a simple conversation, and it curdles in Malik's stomach.
"Sister," Malik sounds uncertain, because he is, "how do I tell him?" He feels helpless, hoping that Isis will step forward and take that task from him. The same way she took the task of leading Atem into the afterlife. He is her younger brother, and he needs her.
This time, she demurs so implicitly, so deliberately, Malik is embarrassed: "You must tell him."
"But how can I? He will think we do not want him."
"Only if you let him," which is not comforting in the least.
"Isis, what could I ever say?" He wants her home, desperately and abruptly. "After everything father said. After everything he did. How can I tell him this?" Malik swallows. "How can I tell Rishid he doesn't belong?"
"Malik," Isis murmurs, "is that what you think?"
Frustrated, Malik curls his hand into a fist, and cracks it against a wall. "Rishid is our brother. It's everyone else who thinks he belongs somewhere else, but he belongs with us. He's always belonged!" He is afraid, Malik realizes: that there is so much more to Rishid. He may not be the Main Branch, but he is part of his own proud Ishtar lineage, and the connections between Malik and Rishid feel thin- feel thinning- feel like they're leaving at his fingertips.
This has changed nothing, but it could change everything.
"They can't claim him," Malik says brokenly.
"Why not?" she asks him. "Who will punish him now? Father? You?"
"No!" Malik blurts out, the word cutting out of him. He breathes hard and fast. Breathes slow and unsteady. "What if he leaves?" He's almost silent, completely breathless.
There is a long silence from Isis, and Malik half-thinks she has retreated into herself, when he hears a steely, hurting breath in. She says nothing, silent and strong, senselessly keeping her feelings to herself, like secrets. Angry, furious with Isis' self-control, Malik snarls, agonized: "What if he thinks we don't love him? What if he doesn't love us-"
"He loves us," Isis' emotions burst out of her, and grimly, Malik scoffs.
"What if he doesn't love us enough?" Malik explodes. "He has a brother, sisters--hell, he has a father. One who didn't beat him. Sisters who didn't stand aside and watch their fathers whip him. Brothers who haven't used him. We don't love him enough. We never have. So what he deserves to know- know that he doesn't owe us shit. And his mother?" He knows Leila Ishtar is dying, dying, and she is taking Rishid away from him, and from Isis, and Isis is letting it happen. "She doesn't deserve him. She gave him up."
It comes out of Isis, sounding like it's been knocked out of her, "he deserves to know."
Furious, Malik defies her, "he deserves to know father was right? That he's blood, but not blood enough? You want that for hi--"
"Mother would want him to know," Isis says coldly, frost bursting out of her, and hangs up.
Rishid's sisters are kind to Malik, but that kindness is nervous, and when Malik looks at them, they look at him with watchful green eyes. Rishid's elder brother looks nothing like Rishid, and Malik stares, and stares, and stares until he can see the curve of Rishid's lips. Finding that one feature is enough to make Malik furious. He cannot stand Rishid's siblings, the quiet nature of Rishid's father, how kind he is to his children, and how kind they are in answer. Malik grew up with siblings who lived in fear, freezing in the shadows of doorways, grew up watching his brother terrorized, his sister neglected, and grew up to terrify too.
Malik has never felt more like the image of his father, than when he speaks with Nebibi Ishtar.
But when he stands before Leila Ishtar, he feels humbled. He feels drawn to his breaking points. She does not fear him, she fears nobody anymore, and Malik feels no shame when he asks her: "why did you give him to us?" Malik's heart is breaking in his chest, shaking, shaking, shaking and clutching at her hand. His breath catches and springs into a sob, tears running down his face and streaking his kohl. "Why did you let us happen to him? Didn't you love him?"
"I loved my sister too," Leila says simply.
She knows.
She knows that Rishid grew up with bruises streaking his skin. She knows that Rishid cut his own face open for Malik. She knows what they - father, mother, sister, brother - have done to Rishid, who is kind, so kind. She knows, and it makes Malik feel sick.
"But I-- but my father--" He is sobbing in earnest now. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm--"
Leila touches Malik's head with the gentlest weight of her hand. "You do not apologize to me," she tells him, "you were, and still are, only a child, Lord Malik."
She absolves him, she absolves him and Malik keens, knowing he cannot keep Rishid from her. He can deny neither Rishid, nor Leila any longer.
It does not go as Malik imagined, and he stares at Rishid. Mutely, Malik opens his mouth, and then closest it again. Finally, strangled he speaks up: "You won't go to her?"
"I will not," Rishid has never defied Malik so openly, that Malik is again left unable to speak. Rishid's arms are crossed over his broad chest, green eyes - Leila's eyes - staring at Malik in return.
"But..." Malik can't understand. "But she's dying." Rishid's head inclines, and Malik is angry, and confused. "She's dying, doesn't that matter to you?"
"It is a tragedy," his brother says, expression blank. Neutral, to the point of calculation.
"Rishid--"
"Are you commanding me to see her?" Rishid asks, and Malik is left agape again.
It is a clean question, unemotional, and with such clarity, that Malik cannot think for a few moments. He swallows. Unable to bear what he knows he is going to do. "Yes," it is heavy, and weighs down on Malik, "yes of course I am. She is--"
"Dying," Rishid agrees, and shakes his head. "I must disobey you."
Malik can't breathe, can't anticipate what to do, he is left paralyzed by that prospect; the binds between him and Rishid snapping over the distance, that Malik cannot understand Rishid having now.
"She's... she's your mother," Malik finally whispers. He misses his own mother. He misses someone he has imagined a thousand times, and misses someone he feels he killed with his first drawing breath. He would give anything to say goodbye to her before she was gone, and he can't. He can't understand why Rishid would give this up.
Rishid's face twists for the briefest of moments, furious, Malik realizes. Rishid is furious with him. And then Rishid turns on his heel, leaving Malik alone in the hallway, shaking. They do not speak at all for two days.
Isis comes home, and she comes home to the ugly silence between Rishid, and Malik. It is the part when the talking has returned, but there is still nothing said between them. Rishid is withdrawn, and Malik is quiet, too injured by Rishid's rebuffs to reach out again. It is a loud, unbearable thing, and Isis is the piece of the circle that closes. She is the place where they speak, and meet again.
She sits them down across from one another and she asks Malik what has happened between them.
Aching, he stares downwards. "I would give anything to see my mother just once."
Rishid can't even look at him, not even when Isis asks Rishid the same question. For the second time in his life, Malik hears Rishid's voice break, dust-like.
"She is not my mother. My mother is dead." Rishid's hands are curled tight on his knees, head bowed, and shoulders shuddering. "And I would give anything to see one more time. I miss her more than I can stand--" Tears are running down Rishid's face, leaving a pattern down his scars. "I miss her more than I loved her. I miss her more than that, and how can I bear to know that I do." Rishid is falling apart before them. "She is not my mother."
Malik can feel his breath pull against his ribcage.
He will think we do not want him.
Only if you let him.
The circle shifts, Isis moving to take Rishid into her arms. She presses against him, piecing him together in her embrace, and their mourning is a thing that Malik can feel inside his throat. It tightens, and cracks. It aches, it aches like blood. They shared a mother, and they shared memories of her, and Malik's urge, his desire, and his grief is what doesn't belong. This has opened a loss in Rishid that is open in Isis, and what is missing in Malik, is wounded in his siblings.
They hold each other and cry, and they do not invite Malik into this smaller circle. He staggers towards them, plaintive, a child again. Ten, five, three, hiccoughing and pleading with them to hold him too. There is a deep pain in Malik, that they will not let him in, that he doesn't belong between them, that he killed their mother, that they blame him, that they blame him.
He doesn't know which of his siblings pulls him into their arms, only that they both are there. That the three of them are together, children in the kingdom of their own grief.
Isis stands at Malik's shoulder, and Rishid holds Malik's hand when they honour their mother's resting place, but when they rest Leila Ishtar's desiccated body into the ground, sand on sarcophagus on skin on sand, he is alone. He stands apart from Nebibi and their children, and lowers his head, lowers his eyes, and offers up the entirety of his owing to her.
Nasir is angry with him, Nasir's sisters look at Malik without kindness, and Nebibi cannot look at Malik at all, but Malik knows Leila is at peace with what he offers.
Afterall, he loves his brother too.