50 - Yah Clunk

Kyrus and Kyrus stood in silence, clenched hard around one another, learning each other breath by breath, a connection each had yearned for, unknowing. Ilax waited, watching, smiling,  with tears on his cheeks.

At last, when they had their first draught of each other, like a sand crawler with lips wet when they'd thought the oasis a mirage, they pulled back slightly, still clinging. “Son? Might it be that we could sit in my tent? And share tea?”

“None of the baby sweeteners…”

“—no! Only butter and chutney for a growing young man.”

Ilax’s smile became a grin. “Perfect timing both of you. We’re about to have—“ A pattering of drops announced the arrival of a mountain rainstorm and the three ran for the crack in the rock.

**

Kyrus, the boy, paced around his father’s tent, absently scrubbing the water out of his hair with a towel and looked. It was as if he couldn’t fill up his eyes enough with the image of his father, sitting on the cushion next to the brazier, carefully measuring the scoop of pressed coal into the glowing bowl.

“You’ve lived here… inside the mountain for ten years? With Ilax as your deovar.” The word was a masculinisation of ‘married’ or ‘connected’ in Lainz… more… ‘other half’. The word normally was dava.

Ilax on the second cushion, leaning back with his elbows on the bed, nodded. “We lied. Both of us… look since both of you are Kyrus may I call the younger Ky? It would just get too confusing around here if every time I said ‘Kyrus’ and both of you answered?”

Kyrus looked at Kyrus, they both shrugged. “It makes sense to me, deovar.”

Then the two men smiled at each other in a way that had Ky blushing and hiding his face by bending over and towelling his hair more vigourously. “Lad… you can come out now. We aren’t going to go all gushy on you –“

“—much,” Ilax broke in.

“Much… I think your hair is dry.”

Ky, blushing dark, hung the towel on the peg on one of the sun-posts and sat down on the third cushion as Ilax continued. “Everyone thought he was dead. Nivika looked enough like your father… and with a veil and his armour… I…” He drew a deep breath. “I lied to my people.”

Kyrus, the man, shook his head, making the moa feathers at his temple spin and tremble. “No. You took me out of the war. Without me, and without General Cambysus, and Pilift murdering the Lainz Heir and making it look like it was you…there was no more momentum for the Empire. You pushed us… them… the Lainz back to the border where the Emperor came, himself, to negotiate with you. That was a rare thing. No one thought the old man had it in him but he did it.”

Ilax shook his head. “I’m just as glad he was willing to see reason… The old man and I and his then-spymaster found out that the war had been started because of a coup-plot designed to kill Kraganzh and Emperor Diryish. Not the water-rights that we were supposedly fighting over.”

“You and His Radiance worked out the river rights deal in about the time it takes me to brew tea,” Kyrus said, pouring the boiling water.

Ilax ran his hands through his hair. “Thus setting up this lovely situation with the Nadumari. They’re building a dam across the Heiriem river… you know… the one we fought over? They are telling me that they will control the water coming to both of us. But the Rumon have been raiding them and fighting over grazing rights so…they haven’t done more than threaten yet. I’ve sent a letter to Diryish in case the Nadumari didn’t. Both Milar and Lainz have a problem if they carry through with their plan.”

Ky stared at Ilax. “I thought when you were in your office, working instead of teaching me, you were peacefully listening to your people argue about taxes until everyone fell over dead of boredom!”

“No, Ky. I’d hoped it would be peaceful for the rest of my tenure as surdeniliarch. I quite like having the higher pay, you know.” Ilax grinned at his own grim little joke.

“But if the Nadumari do that... well, Lainz and Milar are going to have to work together or we’ll all die of thirst… or they get us as vassals, paying with this and that part of ourselves for the water.”

Kyrus looked grim at that idea.  “The Nadumari have an official existence.  Everyone else has the status of tachtka or ungetziefer.

Ilax nodded.  “It’s what I’ve been dealing with.”

The boy looked between the two men. “Owners be damned, our countries are legitimate because we exist.  The rights of survival are still in effect aren’t they?”

Kyrus looked over at Ilax. “I’m so proud of this boy I could burst my crop. Two heartbeats after he finds his old father still alive he’s doing political analyses with my lover and one of the best polititians I know!”

Ilax nearly snorted tea through his nose. “Of course, inam. But now that you and he both know of each other… you can take over his warrior training and I can try and beat off the Nadumari with more words.”

For a moment there was silence in the tent, the thick winter felt walls keeping the sound close and muffled around them and the damp of the mountain cavern and the quick downpour outside well away. Ky looked at the two men. “Why can’t life just be easy? Why does it have to get more complicated every time someone opens their mouth?”

Kyrus looked at his son and sipped his tea. “Because we’re human, son, and we all want things. If we realized there is enough we wouldn’t have to fight over them. And Light and Dark know that there is enough and more than enough to feed and keep us all… but only if we work together, home star witness.”

“Yes… d..fa…um…”

“I’d like it if you called me Da, though I haven’t earned the title yet.”

“Hey… Da…” Ky sipped his own tea. “Inna Basin a Da’s when he says. Simple. Then h’its just diggin’ an’ smokin’ and buzzin’.” You think you need to earn me calling you ‘Da’? All right. ‘Digging and smoking and buzzing’ were just terms for ‘doing the work’, ‘honouring your word’ and ‘following through’.

Kyrus rose to the challenge raising one aristocratic eyebrow, the Basin slang smooth enough, though very strange in his mouth. “Yer honeyin’ fer Darkblasted cheek, yah clunk. I sayit. I amit. Nuff.” Cheeky boy, you know well enough that I’ve claimed you. More back-talk and I’ll prove it. You can stop.

“Yes, Da.”

Ilax drained his cup, set it down with a click. “Inam. I’m going to mercilessly throw you to the wolf here,” he nodded at Ky. “You two have a lot to talk about and years to catch up on and I have children to reassure and the Rumon ambassador to meet early next morning.” He climbed onto his feet.

Kyrus got up as well. “Rumon, hmmm? Never mind. We can talk about that later. Young man, the first thing you can do for me as a student is a map.”

“Yes, Da.”

Kyrus and Ilax caught each other in a hug, a full bodied, a heartfelt kiss, passionate enough to make Kyrus seize a cushion and hide his face behind it, groaning with embarrassment. “I’ll make some time for us tomorrow, inam.” Ilax said quietly. “Have fun.”

“You know where I’ll be.”

Ky could hear the kiss in the silence after, even though he still used the cushion as a shield. Do they have to embarrass me like that?