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Kaveh finally confesses in the gray hours of the morning when the silence of the desert unfolds like a funerary shroud. By noon, under blood and sun and the circling shadows of raptors, he’s sentenced to death.
The Tanit tribesman who coaxed a confession from him with hot blades is the one who escorts him. Kaveh’s wrists chafe beneath the tightness of their ropes as he’s pulled toward the crumbling structure over the valley rift that the Tanit have chosen for their execution grounds. Under a heavy hand, he falls to his knees on burning sandstone. Sweat soaks his neck, salting his wounds.
“Akademiya spy.” Matriarch Babel’s voice is the death knell, her words his verdict. “You have confessed to the crimes of espionage and trespass upon Tanit lands. By the judgment of the Mother of All Oases, I affirm your sentence of death by beheading.”
Kaveh’s fingers twitch, but he keeps his hands folded in his lap—something to ground himself. There is no further ceremony; the air before him is disturbed when the executioner hoists his greatsword skyward. Kaveh holds his breath, but his teeth still chatter. In a fraction of a second, it will be over. In a fraction of a second, he will be dead.
“Akademiya spy? Him?”
The voice doesn’t belong to a tribesman.
“Who are you?” Babel demands. Her guards close around her, longbows pointed toward the apex of a ruined pillar. Kaveh dares to follow with his eyes.
The man sitting there, one arm draped around his knee, is familiar. Kaveh doesn’t know him well, but he does know him: the reclusive Vahumana scholar from the Interdarshan Championship—the one he only knows as “Hat Guy.”
“Who I am doesn’t matter.” Hat Guy is unconcerned by the threat of the archers, hardly sparing them a glance. “What matters is that both of us get what we want.”
Babel’s lip curls. “What plot are you concocting, outlander? Know that even now, you trespass upon Tanit lands!”
Hat Guy uses Anemo to boost himself to his feet. Then his gaze finds Kaveh. “You have no need of him other than to sate your bloodlust. Hand him over, and I’ll give you something far more valuable.”
Kaveh’s heart leaps and crashes against his breastbone. It’s a thread of salvation at the absolute last moment.
Babel holds out her arm to her men—stand down. “Make your offer.”
From within the folds of his tunic, Hat Guy withdraws a bundle of thin, weatherbeaten journals held together by a piece of twine. “Research purged from the Akademiya.” He tugs the twine loose and holds the topmost book open, thumbing through the yellowing pages before stopping on one. “‘The Tanit are a hardy, clever, but brutal people. If we are to bring them into the civilized world, it must be by the Akademiya’s intervention.’ Huh. Seems the author didn’t think very highly of you.”
A muscle twitches in Babel’s cheek. “So the Akademiya has been observing us. But why do you want this man?”
Hat Guy snaps the journal shut. “I have my own business with him. Give him to me, and you’ll never see him again.”
Kaveh’s frantic heartbeat makes him dizzy as Babel considers this. Finally, she says, “The research first.”
Hat Guy drops the journals to the ground without comment. A soldier scrambles to retrieve them, and Babel nods to the executioner. “Give him to the outlander.”
Kaveh is seized by the back of his tunic and dragged to the pillar, his head thunking against stone when he’s thrown to the ground. He pushes back the urge to vomit as pain thunders behind his temples. Distantly, he hears the clinking of glass. Things appear in double when he blinks open his eyes, but he can make out the familiar shape of his Vision. He reaches for it on instinct, but movement triggers pain, and he submits instead to the encroaching blackness of unconsciousness.
—
When Kaveh wakes, it’s to the burn of sand and wind against his cheek. The twin sensations of weightlessness and motion overtake him, and he opens his eyes to find himself slung over Hat Guy’s shoulder hundreds of meters above the ground. He squirms, his stomach roiling with nausea.
“Quit it!” Hat Guy snaps, tightening an arm around Kaveh’s waist. “If you’re awake, you can walk!”
He begins a rapid descent, and Kaveh grasps at his clothes as the ground approaches with sickening speed. Hat Guy staggers as he touches down in the sand, carried by his momentum. A moment later, he drops Kaveh into the reeds along the muddy bank of an oasis pool and grabs his left shoulder, working his arm in a circle.
“I’m done carrying you around,” he grouses.
Kaveh struggles to sit up. His body aches, and he’s disoriented—from dehydration or head trauma or both. Hat Guy addresses the first almost at once, thrusting a waterskin under his nose. Kaveh takes it between his bound hands and sucks it dry before he can even consider saving some for his rescuer.
“Sorry,” he rasps when he realizes it. His throat is dry with sand and disuse, and it hurts to speak. Nevertheless, he feels obliged to add, “Thank you, um…Hat Guy, right?”
“Enough with the ridiculous nickname.” Hat Guy snatches back the empty waterskin. “Kuni. That’s what she calls me, anyway.”
Before Kaveh can inquire as to who “she” is, Kuni has already scrambled up the embankment and disappeared inside a concave Eremite tent.
Kaveh sits on his knees in the reeds, considering if his legs are strong enough to support his weight. He doesn’t know where they are exactly—the desert is dotted with little oases—but the pool is surrounded by Eremite tents, seemingly abandoned. Despite the heat, a shiver rises up his spine. Kuni is either working with them—or did something to them.
Kuni returns with an ensemble of Eremite clothing, which he tosses at Kaveh’s knees. “Go clean yourself up and change. You’re covered in blood.”
Kaveh eyes the garments. “Did you”—he hesitates—“did you kill them?” Right now, he can’t stomach the thought—the permanence—of death.
Kuni breathes out a laugh. “I only made staying not worth their while when I stopped to rest here earlier. She would lock me up again if I killed anyone outside of self-defense.”
“She?” Kaveh echoes.
Kuni smiles acidly. “My jailer.”
Kaveh can’t tell if he’s joking or not. He can’t get a read on him at all.
Kuni notices his perplexity and waves him off. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Are you a criminal?” Kaveh blurts out.
Kuni doesn’t even flinch. “The less you know about me, the better. After all, we’re stuck with each other now.”
He crouches, snatching up Kaveh’s arms. With a quick swipe of his fingers, he slices the bonds apart with a blade of Anemo. “Do what I said, then meet me in the tent. I’ll dress your wounds once you’re clean.”
With that, he departs.
Gingerly, Kaveh strips out of his clothes. If Kuni wanted him dead, he reasons, he’d have left him to his fate. He puts it out of mind. The water stings his wounds as he submerses himself in it, but the coolness is a relief to his sunburns. He reaches over his left shoulder, trying to rub the dried blood off, but he cringes when the movement only pulls at his wounds. The last thing he needs right now is to reopen them.
So he sits still in the water, trying not to think as he hugs his knees to his chest and the sun sinks beneath cinnabar dunes.
When the night starts to chill and the water with it, Kaveh rises. He dries off with the cleaner scraps of his clothes, then slips on the underthings and rough Eremite trousers that Kuni left. Wringing out his hair, he grabs the loose tunic and heads to the tent.
Kuni is sitting on an unrolled sleeping pallet with his chin in his hand when Kaveh enters. He looks up, eyes fixating on Kaveh’s shoulders and back under the glow of a lantern. He doesn’t seem perturbed. Kaveh knows what was done to him, and somehow, Kuni’s lack of visceral response to his wounds is a relief.
“Kneel,” Kuni orders, tapping the spot before him with his foot, and Kaveh does. Kuni reaches for a metal canister and a roll of bandages.
“What is this?” he asks, shoving the open canister under Kaveh’s nose.
Kaveh examines the steely powder within. “Ground up Sand Grease Pupa, I think. The desert folk say it helps protect and restore wounds.”
“You better hope they’re right,” Kuni mutters, and he slathers a handful of the substance over Kaveh’s back and shoulders. Kaveh flinches at the sting, but it just as soon fades to numbness.
Kuni is brusque when he winds the bandages. Kaveh cringes as his torso is wrapped, but Kuni doesn’t let up on the pressure. He’s skillful, his technique clearly honed. Perhaps it’s because he’s a criminal that he’s had to learn to take care of himself.
It’s when Kuni is tightening bandages around his wrist that Kaveh finally says, “I forgot to thank you before for saving me. If you hadn’t been there, I—” His voice cracks and dies.
“Your gratitude means nothing. You’d better think of how best to repay me. I was ordered to dispose of that research by my jailer, but now those fools have it.” Kuni heaves a sigh. “I wonder how she’ll punish me when I inform her of my failure?”
Kaveh blanches. “I’ll make it up to you—I swear it!”
But Kuni only laughs. “Relax.” He pins the bandages near Kaveh’s elbow and sits back on his calves. “Did you think I was being serious? She’s a bleeding heart. She’ll probably praise me for ‘doing a good deed.’”
He almost sounds resentful about it. Before Kaveh can question it, Kuni throws a leather Eremite bag at him. “There’s jerky and dried fruit in there. Eat, then go to sleep. I’m not carrying you again tomorrow. Oh, and—” He reaches inside the fold of his tunic and tosses something at Kaveh—his Vision.
“Thank you,” Kaveh says, cradling it.
Kuni settles himself at the tent’s entrance, lying back on one arm to gaze up at the moon in silence.
Though he has no appetite, Kaveh forces himself to eat a strip of crocodile jerky and a handful of Ajilenakh nuts. Then he slips under the quilt atop the pallet but doesn’t put the lantern out; he feels safer with it on, like a child who needs a light to sleep. He closes his eyes. Kuni will protect him, he assures himself, again and again until even his obsessive thoughts can no longer resist the pull of oblivion.
—
Kaveh’s sleep isn’t colorless like he wishes it would be. He dreams in fragments of pain so visceral he’s certain it must be real. An Eremite holds him down with his face to the sand while another carves stripes into his shoulder with a machete. Matriarch Babel looms over him, her face distorted, and demands he tell her his true objective in coming here. He does—he tells her he’d only come to the desert to clear his head and study Deshret’s ruins for inspiration. But the Tanit don’t believe him—hadn’t believed him. He’d been careless to stumble into their territory.
In one particularly poignant nightmare, he sees his father, led by the arm into a roaring sandstorm by the ash-gray ghost of Sachin. Babel awaits them in the distance, long sword glinting under a sheen of blood.
Kaveh wakes covered in sweat, his wounds aching like they’re on fire. His breath rattles in his chest.
“You get used to them.”
He whips his head around. The moonlight fractures at the tent’s entrance around the silhouette of another—Kuni. Kaveh remembers now.
“What?” he manages after a moment.
Kuni doesn’t look at him. “Nightmares.”
“Oh.” Kaveh pauses. “Do you get them, too?”
Kuni doesn’t answer. In the awkwardness of the ensuing silence, Kaveh casts around for another topic of discussion. His eyes land on his Vision beside his pillow.
“You’re Inazuman, but your Vision case is from Sumeru,” he recalls. “Have you lived here long?”
Kuni finally turns to face him, casting his eyes down to the Anemo Vision hanging right over his heart. “What a useless question,” he huffs. “It isn’t even dawn—go back to sleep.”
Kaveh tries. But the dark thoughts he’s usually able to keep at bay with work and distractions now crowd his head. He thinks about his father. He wonders, grimly, if it was a blessing that the quicksand got him before he could witness firsthand the cruelty of humanity. Kaveh had hoped—prayed—that Sachin was wrong.
But even Kuni had divined the naked truth with bleak brevity: The Tanit only wanted to sate their bloodlust.
Kaveh inhales a shuddering breath. And then there’s Kuni himself—a criminal by his own admission. What ulterior motive could he have in rescuing a stranger in the desert?
There must be something he wants from me.
Before he even fully realizes what he’s doing, Kaveh is throwing off his quilt and struggling to strap on a pair of Eremite sandals. He needs to go. He can’t stay here in the desert where hope for humanity can only wither and die.
Kuni narrows his eyes as he watches him. “What are you doing?”
“I just want to get to Aaru Village. I can make it before sunrise if I start now. Thank you for everything.”
Kaveh pushes past Kuni, wounds flaring, and stumbles onto the sand. The moonlight will be enough to navigate by. A relief—a lantern would draw attention.
Before he can advance even three steps from the tent, however, a hand on his collar stops him short. He lets out a strangled cry.
“Do you have a death wish?”
Kuni is hovering by the power of his Vision, his eyes glowing pale blue under the moon.
Kaveh pulls against him. “Let me go.”
But Kuni doesn’t budge. “I gave up that research for you. If you wanted to die, you should have let the Eremites finish you off and spared me the trouble!”
He drags Kaveh backwards. Kaveh sobs as he struggles against him.
“What research was worth my life?” he cries as Kuni forces him back into the tent.
Kuni taps down onto the earth, the glow in his eyes fading. “You tell me—you were the one who ordered it disposed of, after all.”
Kaveh’s breath catches. Surely it isn’t—
“Sachin’s research?” he asks when he finds his voice again. “But how? It was given to the Dendro Archon to be hidden away. How did you get it?”
Kuni makes a noise of annoyance. “I wasn’t going to say anything because it only complicates matters. But there’s no point in hiding it now. I’m currently in Lesser Lord Kusanali’s custody—and, as you can see, running errands for her.” He rolls his eyes.
Kaveh stares. “Lesser Lord Kusanali? The Dendro Archon is your jailer?”
Kuni crosses his arms. “Yes. Although, I’m on supervised release right now. She could have had me executed—and would have been well within her rights to do so. But despite my past crimes, she showed me mercy after…a certain incident. I’m just repaying my debt to her.”
Kuni, the strange Vahumana scholar who seemed to appear out of nowhere, is a criminal and a ward of the Dendro Archon. It’s almost too surreal to believe, but he has no reason to lie.
“Then why?” Kaveh demands then, emotion threatening to overspill. “Why did you save me?”
Kuni had no reason to. The Lesser Lord had not ordered it. In fact, Kuni had gone against her orders to do it.
“That research didn’t mean anything to me,” Kuni says at length. “And there was no sense in someone as simple as you dying out there. Lesser Lord Kusanali would have been upset if someone died over something like that research.”
Kaveh tries to parse out the meaning behind those words—the intention—but his head is spinning. Nothing adds up.
“Go to sleep already,” Kuni says, shoving Kaveh onto his backside on the bedroll. “If you fall behind tomorrow because you’re tired, I’m not waiting up for you.”
He seems almost embarrassed. In his muddled state, Kaveh can’t make sense of it—of him. Kuni is a criminal whose crimes warranted the death sentence. Yet, Kaveh thinks, Kuni also saved his life. The apparent contradiction should stymie him, but somehow, he feels like he can understand. People are complex. Even the Lesser Lord showed mercy to Kuni. That has to count for something. She’s the God of Wisdom, after all.
Kaveh wants to ask Kuni more. He wants to ask him if he’s changed, and if so, what was the catalyst for it? And if he hasn’t, what about the Dendro Archon made him disobey her direct order just to rescue Kaveh for the sake of her feelings? Kaveh ponders over the true nature of their relationship; it can’t just be jailer and inmate. Kuni mentioned repaying a debt. A debt owed to the Lesser Lord for sparing his life? Kaveh has the feeling that Kuni will be resistant to divulging such intimate details to a near-stranger. Reluctantly, he reins in his curiosity. He’s too tired to try and figure it out tonight
“Stop thinking,” Kuni says then, his hand coming down hard on Kaveh’s head, “and sleep.”
It is, of course, an appealing suggestion. So Kaveh crawls under the quilt without even bothering to kick off his sandals. He closes his eyes, again assured of his safety under Kuni’s watch. And within that tenuous comfort, he sleeps.
—
Kuni wakes Kaveh before the first lights of dawn.
“Unless you want to walk under the sun all day, get up.”
Kaveh’s body is stiff with pain and cold. He had to sleep on his stomach because he couldn’t abide the pressure on his back and shoulders. Slowly, he pushes himself up onto his forearms, cringing as the wounds under his bandages throb. He doesn’t relish the idea of a long trek back to Aaru Village.
But the thought of staying in the desert terrifies him, and so he forces himself to his feet, wincing from the effort.
Kuni has the Eremite bag slung over his shoulder, but he holds it out when Kaveh exits the tent. “Get something to eat if you’re hungry, then let’s go.”
He sounds even more irritable than before. Kaveh wonders if he’s angry over what happened last night—over what he’d had to divulge. For some reason, he seems resistant to being seen as anything other than an unrepentant criminal. Kaveh wonders if it’s self-deprecation born from guilt. But if Kuni truly is remorseful, he should pay his dues to society and move on with his life, not define himself by his crimes and go on despising himself forever.
But perhaps that’s just Kaveh’s foolish idealism rearing its head again.
Still, if Kuni’s wound is sore, Kaveh has no desire to aggravate it. He accepts the bag with only a soft, “Thank you.” His appetite still hasn’t returned this morning (strange, he thinks, when his stomach ached throughout his captivity with the Tanit), so all he does is take a long drink from a waterskin before returning it to the bag. Kuni snatches it back and slings it over his shoulder.
“I could get out of here a lot faster without you,” he says, laying his hand over his Vision. “So don’t hold me up any more than you already are.”
With that, he turns and starts walking toward the east where the sun will soon rise. Kaveh scrambles to follow him.
They walk in silence. Kuni keeps up a brisk pace that Kaveh struggles to match, but he also refuses to fall behind. His wounds strain and ache from the effort, and maybe some of them reopen. But he’s even more eager than Kuni to put as much distance between himself and the desert as possible, and so he forces himself onward through the pain.
Still, he can’t help but wonder if Kuni will really leave him. After expending so much effort and resources on it, surely he realizes it would be a net negative to just let Kaveh fall behind. But if it came to a fight—an all-out battle against the Tanit—would Kuni leave then? It only makes sense for him to prioritize his own wellbeing. That’s the conclusion Sachin would have reached.
Nothing gets better. Things can only get worse. That was how Sachin saw the world.
And yet Kuni saved me, Kaveh thinks again.
Perhaps now is the time for a little experiment. He doesn’t have much else to lose.
Exhaustion already fills his bones. It isn’t even entirely by choice that he has to stop beneath a rocky overhang to catch his breath.
When he realizes Kaveh is no longer following, Kuni turns and folds his arms. “Are you going to collapse?”
He says it casually, as if the answer doesn’t interest him either way.
Kaveh grimaces, pressing the heel of his hand harder against the rock wall. “Are you going to leave me behind?” he asks instead.
Kuni considers this for a moment. “I wanted to see how far you could go,” he says at last, dropping his arms to his sides. “But if I leave you to die here, I’ll have disobeyed my orders for nothing.” He heaves a sigh. “Lesser Lord Kusanali has me under watch even out here in the desert. She already knows what I’ve done. And I don’t want to lose my freedom to move around again.”
Kaveh almost laughs at that—at how self-centered Kuni has to make even his acts of kindness seem. But Kaveh has to wonder if his hypothesis is true: Kuni had never intended on abandoning him. His words have always been duplicitous and full of excuses.
So perhaps it’s time to question if Sachin’s conclusions aren’t just the personal nihilism Kaveh hopes they are.
“You keep saying the Lesser Lord makes you do this and that,” he says to Kuni. “But to me, it sounds like an excuse you’re hiding behind.”
He wants to believe—has to believe—that people are capable of change for the better.
Kuni narrows his eyes, lifting a hand to touch the brim of his hat. Kaveh sees it for what it is: a defensive maneuver. “What are you babbling about?”
“You didn’t have to save me. You even went against your orders.” Kaveh’s eyes begin to water, but he blinks the tears away. “Maybe it’s because I’m a fool… But right now, I just can’t bring myself to believe that you’re a bad person.”
For a split second, he swears he sees a glimmer of something like mortification on Kuni’s face—wide eyes, flushed cheeks, the beginnings of denial forming on his lips. The moment passes, and Kuni pulls his hat down and turns away, hiding his eyes.
“How ridiculous,” he breathes instead.
But even he doesn’t deign to refute Kaveh. That speaks louder than his words ever could.
“Thank you,” Kaveh says again, “for helping me.”
Kuni scoffs. “Save your breath.”
They start walking again, this time in a somewhat more companionable silence, or so it feels to Kaveh. Kuni’s guarded but uncontesting response has given him a rush of motivation, of hope, and it helps him push past his limits, ignoring the ache of his muscles and the burn of his wounds. Within the hour, Aaru Village appears at last on the horizon, silhouetted by the mid-morning sun.
They reach the village just as the desert heat is starting to become unbearable. Kuni rents a room at the inn for a week—his allowance from the Lesser Lord, he quips—and orders Kaveh to stay until he’s well enough to travel. Just as he turns to leave the reception booth, dropping the room key into Kaveh’s palm, however, Kaveh reaches out and grabs his sleeve.
“Can’t you stay?” he asks, his cheeks heating at how desperate he must sound. “We can even set out again tomorrow. I just”—he hesitates, his blush swelling—“can’t bear to be alone right now. If you could escort me back, I’ll get my roommate to pay you. Please, I…”
He trails off, feeling equal parts anxious and foolish.
“Incredible,” Kuni says after a few moments, as if he’d needed the time himself to formulate a response. “I’ve never encountered anyone who wants to stay in my company.”
That surprises Kaveh. “Well, you’re prickly for sure,” he admits. “But believe me, I’m used to that.” He snorts, envisioning Alhaitham’s smug face. “Still, it’s as I said: I can’t believe that you’re a bad person. Not entirely, at least.” He pauses, and then, quieter: “You saved my life.”
Kuni grabs the rim of his hat again and turns away, hiding his face. “Stop saying that,” he grumbles. “You’re making me ill. I didn’t do it for your sake.”
But for whose sake he did it, he doesn’t elaborate. Kaveh doesn’t push it but allows himself one brief, satisfied smile.
“Fine,” Kuni mutters after a while. “I’ll escort you back to Sumeru City. But we leave first thing tomorrow morning. And if you can’t keep up—”
“You’ll leave me behind,” Kaveh finishes wryly. “Yeah, I got it.”
“Hmph. If you understand, then go lie down and rest. I’m going to get us some fresh fruit and supplies for the road.”
Without another word, he departs, heading for the market square.
Kaveh lets himself into the inn’s small clay outhouse and makes a beeline for the dusty divan in the corner. It’s cooler inside away from the glare of the sun but still warm, and so he strips down to his underthings and collapses onto the bedsheets without bothering to draw the mosquito nets. The exhaustion hits him all at once now that he feels safe enough to relax. He’s finally out of the woods, so to speak.
As he hovers near the boundary of sleep and wakefulness, he thinks about the purged research now in Babel’s hands. Within the span of only a week, from the Tanit’s cruelty to Kuni’s kindness, Kaveh has experienced the worst and best of humanity. It occurs to him that perhaps Sachin’s conclusions weren’t wrong, just incomplete, colored by personal experience—and not without the man’s own selfishness throughout his life.
Kaveh closes his eyes against the silk pillow covering. Perhaps his own research into the subject is only just beginning, born from this smallest epiphany.