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Kai had never really tried swimming before, but he imagined that it might feel something like this. Drifting in dark water, at the mercy of the tides, weighed down by the immensity of the dark water pressing in from above and below. Every movement was a battle against that heavy, pressing darkness, every thought cloudy and syrupy-slow, the world of light and air unreachable above the impossibly distant surface.
There were voices, though, muffled and slow to reach him here in the depths. Kai listened, and for a long time the sounds washed over him without recognition. The syllables were strange, far too sharp and staccato to be real words.
“...shouldn’t be taking so long to wake.”
“Are you sure it’s not normal, with this type of injury?”
“No. It’s all supposition, I’ve never seen…”
Slowly, very slowly, the weight began to lessen, and as the dark water receded Kai’s scattered thoughts pieced together that the language was not Saredi. It was a long moment before he recognized it as Old Imperial, and longer still until he remembered how to parse the words.
“... know what happened?” one of the voices was asking. Kai knew that voice, but the name slipped away like sand between his fingers when he tried to grasp it.
“It must have been a cursebreaker,” another voice replied.
“Yes, that much is obvious, thank you.” That was the first voice again, sounding tense and unhappy.
He shouldn’t sound like that, Kai thought with certainty, and then wondered, who’s “he”?
“If it was so obvious then why did you ask?”
“He meant, do we know which one of our supposedly loyal soldiers was holding that cursebreaker when it was used on Kai,” a third voice responded.
That’s Grandmother, Kai thought vaguely, and then, in a forceful moment of clarity, no, no, it’s Ziede.
Like the realization was a beam of light piercing through the dark water, the rest of the names were abruptly clear again. Tahren said:
“There was a great deal of chaos at the time. As I understand it, the courtyard was nearly overrun with the expositors’ demons before your cadre arrived to reinforce Kai’s position. I don’t think it will be possible to find out exactly what happened to him, not unless Kai can tell us.”
“I’ll ask him when he wakes,” Bashasa said. There was a pause, during which Kai abruptly gained the wherewithal to wish he could see what was happening, but everything still felt too far away to try opening his eyes.
“You’re staying, then?” Ziede asked after a moment.
“Of course,” Bashasa said.
“I think Lahshar was looking for you.”
“All the more reason to stay here.”
Ziede snorted. “Alright. I’ll put off your officers, if any of them ask for you.”
“Thank you, Ziede,” Bashasa said gratefully, and there was a rustle of movement that must have been Ziede and Tahren leaving the room.
It was probably a room and not a tent, Kai decided. His mind was finally clearing enough to recall that it had been a fortress that they were fighting over that day, and if they had won the battle then they would probably have stayed there for a few days at least. Kai thought they had won. If they hadn’t, he suspected he wouldn’t be waking up at all, or would be waking up without a body.
A rush of panic surged through him, as for an instant he wasn’t entirely sure that he did have a body. Maybe that was why it was so hard to move, to think? Would he be conscious at all if he’d left Talamines behind like he’d left Enna?
The fear gave him the jolt of strength he needed to crack his eyes open, and in doing so discovered that he did, in fact, still have eyes, and that they were set in a head that throbbed with every heartbeat and a body that ached all over. He grimaced and tried to shift to ease the discomfort, but moving sent a bolt of white hot pain through his chest and he stiffened, a sharp breath escaping between his gritted teeth.
“Kai?”
He turned his head a little and saw Bashasa sitting on a camp chair beside the bed. There were spots of dried blood on his sleeves and a smudge of soot on his cheek, and his face looked pinched with anxiety and lack of sleep.
Kai blinked slowly, trying to put these pieces together into a picture that made sense, and the worried crease between Bashasa’s eyebrows deepened. He stood up and moved to sit on the edge of Kai’s bed instead, and picked up his hand where it lay on top of the covers.
“Kai?” he repeated. He sounded even more worried than he looked.
Kai’s fingers twitched. Something about this felt strangely familiar.
“I didn’t switch bodies again, did I?” he croaked. His throat felt dry and scraped raw, like he’d swallowed a mouthful of hot sand.
Bashasa smiled, some of the tightly coiled tension in his shoulders easing. “No,” he said with palpable relief. “This is still the same body. It seems to have taken some injuries, though.”
Kai glanced down at himself. He couldn’t see much beneath the blanket, but there were bandages wrapped around the throbbing pain in his chest with a damp patch of blood beginning to seep through at the center. That didn’t bode well, Kai thought. It was dark outside the window and it must have been hours since the battle ended. The wound should have long since closed by now.
Bashasa squeezed his hand and Kai glanced up. He found Bashasa watching him carefully.
“Is there any water?” he asked, and Bashasa obligingly reached for the pitcher and cup waiting on the sideboard. He slipped one hand under Kai’s head to lift it from the pillow and held the cup to his lips with the other when it became clear that Kai was too weak to sit up and hold it for himself. The water soothed his throat a little, but it was terrifying to find himself so helpless, and he settled back onto the pillow feeling worse and more uneasy than he had been before, the liquid sitting like lead in his stomach.
Bashasa made himself busy for a moment with setting the cup back down and refilling it from the pitcher, then straightening both into a pointlessly tidy arrangement on the side table. Then, as gentle as he was with the frightened refugees newly arrived in their war camp, he asked: “Kai, do you remember what happened?”
“Yes,” he said, not at all sure why Bashasa was being so careful, why he was handling him like he might break. “We were trying to take the courtyard below the main tower, the one the expositor was in.” He paused, suddenly worried that this was why Bashasa looked like something had gone so terribly wrong. “We did win, didn’t we?”
But Bashasa just nodded. “Yes, we won. My cadre came to reinforce yours at the tower, and we broke through the defenses. Ziede handled the expositor. I meant, do you remember what happened to you?”
Kai considered the question. “You mean the cursebreaker?”
“Yes,” Bashasa said, something changing in his eyes. “Do you remember who it was that struck you with it?”
Kai tried to shrug, then his whole body went rigid as the motion set the wound in his chest to burning like a white-hot poker had been jammed into it. He hissed, not quite succeeding in keeping the sound inside as his hands clenched convulsively on top of the covers. That wound wasn’t from any cursebreaker, Kai thought grimly.
“Kai? Are you alright?”
Kai noticed then that he’d squeezed his eyes shut and forced them open again, finding Bashasa’s worried face hovering over him. He blinked the spots from his vision, trying to get his breathing back under control.
“I’ll call the physician back,” Bashasa decided, and half stood before Kai’s hand darted out to seize his wrist. Bashasa froze. It took a moment for Kai’s brain to catch up with his body, and then he forced himself to let go. Mortals didn’t generally like being grabbed by demons, even mortals as mad as Bashasa.
“I’m fine,” Kai said. “I don’t need the physician.”
“You’re in pain,” Bashasa said. It wasn’t a question, and Kai didn’t do him the discourtesy of denying it with an obvious lie.
“All the better for the next time I try an intention,” he said instead, meaning it as a joke, but the obvious strain in his voice made it fall flat and Bashasa’s frown only deepened. “It’ll heal on its own soon,” he tried again, which he hoped very much was the truth. Then, in case that wasn’t enough, he took a page out of Bashasa’s own book and tried a distraction. “And it was just some soldier. The one with the cursebreaker.”
Bashasa still looked doubtful, like he wanted to call for the physician anyway, but he reluctantly sank back down onto the edge of the bed and allowed himself to be diverted to the original topic. “One of ours?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Did you know them?”
“No, they weren’t part of my cadre,” Kai told him. “Hiranan’s, maybe?”
“But would you recognize them if you saw them again?” Bashasa pressed.
“I suppose so,” Kai said dubiously. He’d gotten a clear enough view when he’d grabbed the soldier’s arm, meaning to order them back to the main forces to call for reinforcements, and they had jerked around to look at him. Their wild-eyed, battle-fevered gaze had landed on his face, and Kai had seen the exact moment when they recognized the featureless black of his eyes. The cursebreaker in their hand had come up in an instant, and before Kai had time to speak, the weapon had been jammed up against his throat and everything had gone dark. “Why?”
“So that we can identify the person who attacked you,” Bashasa said, as though that should have been obvious. “And we can respond appropriately.”
Puzzled, Kai asked: “What would be an appropriate response?”
“That depends on their intentions,” Bashasa said. “If this was a deliberate attack, we’ll have to find out what their motive was – if they were acting alone or on behalf of our enemies – and respond accordingly. If it was an accident, at the very least they should not be armed with a cursebreaker again, but I think the more reasonable response would be to have them dismissed from their cadre.”
Kai blinked. “Why would you do that?” he asked.
Bashasa stared at him. “Why would I- Kai, you do understand that this person tried to kill you, don’t you?”
“Well, yes,” he said. The hole in his chest proved that rather decisively. “But that’s what they were supposed to be doing.”
Now it was Bashasa’s turn to look baffled, so Kai clarified: “Killing demons.”
“Kai, I really don’t feel that I should need to specify that our soldiers are meant to be killing the demons who are fighting for the Hierarchs. Not you.”
“No, that part was obviously a mistake,” Kai dismissed. “I mean that I grabbed a soldier in the middle of a battle against demons and they were quick enough to recognize me as one and to react with the cursebreaker before I could stop them. Their reflexes were good, and they even followed through with a spear afterwards.” Hence the hole in his chest. Then a thought occurred to him and he frowned a little. “If anything, they should be reprimanded for not finishing the job.”
“Finishing the job,” Bashasa echoed.
“In training I tell them to go for the head,” Kai explained. “Demons don’t always stay down with a chest wound. Obviously.”
It was actually a little concerning, now that he thought of it. They only had about thirty cursebreakers – liberated from the legionaries’ weapons depot in Descar-arik a few weeks ago – to share throughout their entire army, so they’d been very selective in distributing them. Only solid, experienced soldiers were armed with cursebreakers, and all of them had been trained in how best to kill demons. That this soldier had apparently forgotten their instructions and left Kai with only a spear through his chest was a major oversight.
Bashasa stood up and began to pace. Kai understood the urge. The soldiers really should understand this by now.
“I’ll go over it again in training,” Kai offered. “And someone should really check the demons killed in the battle this morning. If the soldiers are being careless like this, some of them might not have stayed dead.”
Bashasa stopped dead in his tracks and turned around to stare at Kai, aghast.
“Kaiisteron,” he said.
The sound of his full name in Bashasa’s mouth sent a funny little jolt through Kai’s chest, different from the kind that came from his stab wound every time he tried to breathe too deeply. “Bashasa?”
“Are you under the impression that I am upset because my soldiers did a poor job of murdering you?”
Kai narrowed his eyes. There was an obvious answer that Bashasa was clearly waiting for, but he was still somehow certain that he was missing some essential part of this conversation. “… No?”
Bashasa turned his back to Kai, put his hands over his face, and made a strangled, inarticulate noise of frustration. Then he just stood there for a moment, and Kai watched the slow rise and fall of Bashasa’s shoulders as he took several deep, deliberate breaths.
When he turned around again, Kai recognized the determined look on his face from a hundred moments before a hundred debates in which Bashasa laid out his persuasions one by one and, one by one, brought his opponents to their knees.
He marched back over to Kai’s bed, sat down, and again took Kai’s hands in his. His eyes, when they met Kai’s, were deadly serious.
“Kai,” he said evenly. “You are my most trusted ally, my most loyal captain, and my very dear friend. I value you immeasurably, and I hope I haven’t done anything to give you cause to doubt that.”
“No, of course you-”
Bashasa held up a hand and Kai stopped, stopped and marvelled at how perfectly Bashasa held him in his sway.
“When I came into that courtyard today and saw you lying there, I thought… Well.” Bashasa shook his head. “I don’t want to lose you, Kai. You matter a great deal to me. And I would much rather have you alive by my side than dead fighting for my sake.”
“I’m not fighting for your sake,” Kai said, when he remembered how to speak. “I’m fighting to kill Hierarchs.”
It was true. Kai knew it was true, and it had been all along, but the words still somehow tasted like a lie.
“A worthy goal,” Bashasa said seriously, and it was a mark of just how far they’d come that Kai’s statement wasn’t treated like a child’s declaration that they’d like to visit the moon. “But with ambitions like that, you had better not let any common Arike soldiers kill you first. I know I can’t ask you to promise to stay alive, Kai, none of us can promise that, but would you try to have a care for your own life sometimes? You don’t seem to know how precious it is. It frightens me.”
“I’m sorry,” Kai said.
“No, no, Kai, that’s not-” Bashasa shook his head, his hand tightening around Kai’s. “You haven’t done anything to apologize for. I just… I want you to know that I care about you. That’s all.”
Kai swallowed past the lump in his throat. “I’ll try to be careful,” he finally said, and when Bashasa smiled like the sun coming out from behind the clouds Kai thought he would make any promise in the world to see that again.
“Thank you,” Bashasa said. “Now, would you let me call for the physician? I know you heal quickly, but perhaps something can be done about the pain in the meantime.”
Kai nodded, and watched Bashasa stand and cross the room. He opened the door and stood there for a moment speaking quietly with someone outside. Salatel, Kai realized, catching a glimpse of her around Bashasa’s arm. She was still armed from the battle – a sword, always a sword, since she and all the other Arike women from Kai’s original cadre had refused to accept cursebreakers when they were offered – and under a layer of drying mud and blood she was pale and tired, like she hadn’t paused to wash or rest since the fighting ended. Kai, whose Saredi training rebelled against the idea of lying comfortably in bed while soldiers under his command went without rest, was on the point of getting up to tell her to go get a meal and some sleep when Bashasa closed the door and came back inside.
“Is she alright?” Kai asked.
“Salatel?” Bashasa said, settling back onto the edge of the bed beside him. “Yes, and at the last report the rest of your cadre was too. There were no deaths, and only a few injuries. Hartel was the worst off, and the physicians say that she will recover with time.”
“She looks terrible.”
“Yes, well, she’s been standing guard there in the hallway all day, and most of the night too,” Bashasa told him. “Your cadre has been taking it in turns to keep watch since we found you, but Salatel hasn’t let anyone relieve her yet. I’ve tried sending her off for some rest, but she wouldn’t hear of it. It’s a very insubordinate cadre you’re running, Fourth Prince. Either that, or an extraordinarily loyal one.”
Bashasa’s tone was light, but Kai was frowning. These Arike had such odd notions about the responsibilities of captains and those under their command. He ought to go and speak to Salatel and the others soon, to make sure they were all safe and looked after.
Soon, but not now. He was so tired still, and he ached, and even the effort of this single conversation had been enough to empty his reserves of strength. His eyelids were already trying to drift shut even as they talked.
“It’s alright to go back to sleep, you know,” Bashasa said, watching him struggle to keep his eyes open. “I’ll still be here when you wake.”
“Don’t you have other things to do?” Kai asked. Bashasa seemed to be perpetually in motion, never a moment passing without something urgently needing his attention.
“It can wait,” Bashasa said. “Go to sleep, Kai.”
That sounded unlikely, but Bashasa was very persuasive and Kai was very tired, and it just didn’t seem worth arguing. Not when that might give Bashasa a reason to stop holding his hand.
Kai closed his eyes.