Rasia did not go through the front door when she returned home. Instead, she went around back and climbed in through her bedroom window. It was more of a mess than it usually was, tossed apart from trying to get Kai dressed, and generally not cleaning it for the past year.
She pulled on a pair of pants and flipped her caftan right-side out again. With a further moment of consideration, she packed up all her items of import—her money and her maps, rolled up her leather smuggling belts, stuffed a few clothes into her scorpion armored vest, grabbed a couple of weapons, and pushed it all out of the window.
Then Rasia left for the kitchen and grabbed the bread and the bowl of gonda noodles Ysai had set aside for her and entered the serving room. Kiba-ta sat at the head of the table. Jilah and Ysai sat on the longer side. Rasia sat down on Kiba-ta’s left. Tah didn’t say a word as she ate. Across from her, Ysai communicated with well-practiced eyebrows and discreet eye gestures.
‘Why the fuck is tah so mad?’
Rasia tilted her head out the doorway, wiggled her brows, and rolled her eyes. ‘I got got.’
‘Why didn’t you take the down streets?!’
They all flinched when tah’s soup ladle slammed atop the table—her breakfast finished. Rasia braced herself.
“You are mere drums away from your Naming Ceremony,” Kiba-ta began, “and yet you risk losing all that you have achieved on some defective skink? If any of the neighbors had seen the two of you last night, your entire Forging would have been up for forfeit. You have shamed me before, you have embarrassed me before, but I never thought you’d be so carelessly foolish.”
Kiba-ta moved a hand to one of her pockets and sent an object flying at Rasia’s face. By reflex, Rasia caught it one-handed out of the air. She looked down at the almost empty vial of gonom. “We didn’t—”
“Drink it,” tah commanded. “Death knows the day you get seeded by the runt of the Grankull is the day I kill you myself.”
Jilah coughed, then literally choked on her food. She mouthed, ‘Kai?’ at Ysai in question.
Guess it couldn’t hurt. Rasia swallowed the gonom and then almost retched. It tasted too much like the gonom venom it was diluted from. For a moment, she flashed back to the taste of vomit in her throat and the excruciating pain. Her hands shook. Under tah’s hard stare, she forcibly swallowed down the contraceptive. Then she snatched for her tea to wash down both the taste and the memory.
“Today was your morning for breakfast,” tah continued. “While you are still living in my house, you will not neglect your responsibility to this family, regardless of any late-night proclivities. Understand?”
“I understand.”
“There were reports yesterday of you buying things for him at the market,” tah said, with a disgusted sneer. “Is this some kind of arrangement? Are you buying him things for sex? I’m not surprised he’d turn out a fucking whore.”
This was exactly why Rasia didn’t want Kai anywhere near Kiba-ta. His self-esteem was already shit, and she didn’t need her tah tearing it further apart. She never feared physical harm from her tah, but conversations could be more vicious and dangerous than any Desert skirmish. Rasia had seen her tah eviscerate adults to tears.
“You’re wrong about him, Kibari Oshield,” Jilah spoke up in her cousin’s defense. “He helps Juno-ta with scribe-work all of the time, and he’s rather accomplished at it. It is my understanding he’ll be a scribe after the Naming.”
“You might be sitting at my serving table, but I never invited your opinion to this conversation. Close your mouth or stick poh’s dick in it for all I care, but do not interrupt me again.”
Jilah immediately quieted and shrunk.
“Tah,” Ysai began but one glare, and he folded in half beside Jilah. He once used to defend Jilah against every cutting remark but learned the hard way that tah treated Jilah even worse afterward.
“Jilah’s right,” Rasia said, uncowed. “I bought him things yesterday because I like him.”
Tah raised a disgusted lip. “You can have anyone you desire, and yet you choose the biggest embarrassment of the entire Grankull? I wish I could be more surprised, but when have you ever chosen anything conventional? You’re the first child in my entire family who didn’t attend school and instead ran around like some untrained child from the Tents. You embarrassed me by throwing your bones halfway across the Desert. Now, you’re entertaining a flame with the one kid who should have been scraped from his tah’s womb in a back alley. I’m hardly surprised by anything that you do anymore. The one comfort I have is the certainty that your attention never lasts for long. You’ll get bored. You’ll throw him away, like you do with everything else.”
In the corner of Rasia’s eye, Ysai shook his head. The way to survive a conversation with tah was never to rise to the bait. Rasia could overlook the brutal name-calling, but she gritted her teeth and found it difficult to let tah’s accusation go unchallenged. Because in the deepest recess of her joints, she did fear a day she got bored of Kai. Thus far, he’d defied all expectations but what if her attention didn’t hold? What if he was a passing flame?
Rasia raised her chin stubbornly, and said, as much a declaration as to dispel her own doubts, “He is not a phase nor a passing flame to throw out the window. Kai is my kulani.”
Kiba-ta physically and mentally froze. Rasia found it almost satisfying to find tah so startled for failing to predict every twist of a conversation. Simultaneously, she worried about tah’s reaction. She had intended to keep Kai a secret at least until the Naming Ceremony. It was an easier truth to swallow if Kai had a face, and Rasia had seen firsthand the abuse Jilah suffered because of tah’s disapproval.
Finally, tah released a twisted sneering laugh. “Real funny.”
It was an out. Rasia could have taken it. She should have taken it. But she refused to be ashamed of Kai. “I’m serious. He is my kulani, and I won’t hesitate to defend him. You will not talk to my kulani. You will not touch him. You will not call him ‘runt’ or ‘skink’ or any derogatory term anymore. If you do, I will take all our contacts and all our receipts to the Council, and I will destroy you, and I will destroy this family.”
That got tah’s attention. Tah’s fists clenched at the threat, but it had to be made. Rasia would not see Kai suffer the same way Jilah had. Tah turned to Ysai, a last-ditch effort to expose this for the prank she thought it was.
Ysai glanced helplessly between Rasia and Kiba-ta. “They are well-matched. He seems a good partner for her.”
To tah’s credit, she took the sudden world shift in stride. Plenty of people would have laughed at Rasia, would have questioned her capability to match with anyone. But she was Kiba-ta’s child, and her steely cold-blooded tah had matched souls with a face from the Tents. Their experiences weren’t all that different. . . Okay, maybe a shortened version of it. Shamai-ta had courted Kiba-ta for three years, then they committed for two years before legally carrying each other’s names.
When Kiba-ta was ready to settle down, she had reviewed her options and picked the person she wanted to see the most in her children. Kiba-ta had wanted her children to have Shamai-ta’s ambition and ingenuity, and her steel and pragmatism. That was it. That was Kiba-ta’s cold logic. Rasia didn’t think Kiba-ta had anticipated how good Shamai-ta would be for her. They had been a good match in the end. All Rasia wanted was the same.
“You’re not your jih,” tah said. “For all your faults, you’re not some child who stupidly believes that the first person to make you cum is your kulani. Whatever this is, it’s not forever. It’s a flame. A Forging flame. It’s not going to last. The stories have you believing that a kulani is about destiny and fate—but it’s hard work, responsibility, and commitment. We are not born with a soulmatch, we learn to live with one. And you, my dear child, are not ready.”
“Maybe I’m not, but we’re figuring it out,” Rasia argued. “I choose him. Like you chose Shamai-ta. Kailjnn is my equal.”
Tah laughed. “I was there when that runt was born. I guarded the Ohan’s family for five years. That pile of skin and bones is not worth a face.”
“I don’t care what you think. We’re both going to be adults by the end of the day and after the Naming, we’re free to carry each other’s names. I don’t need your approval. I never expected to have it.”
“You killed a dragon,” tah snapped out, frustrated.
“He killed one too!” she snapped, just as frustrated.
“You have your choice of job available to you. You could have anyone you want. Anyone you set your eyes on will worship you. Explore your options. Make mistakes. Live your life. You think you know what you want, but you don’t. You can barely stay in the Grankull for more than a couple of days. What makes you think you can take care of a kulani? What you’re experiencing right now? It’s a flame. It’ll peter out. That’s not a kull-of-two, and eventually, with more experience, you’ll learn to know the difference.”
“I know the difference.”
“You know nothing. The only reason you want to carry his name is to prove me wrong.”
Rasia narrowed her eyes and bit out, “It’s not always about you.”
“Isn’t it? I tell you not to do something and you do it anyway. That’s how it always goes. It’s pointless to tell you to stay away from him, so I’m not even going to waste my breath. But if this is the path you choose, then you walk it alone. You are no longer my child, and you are no longer welcome in this house. Make your mistakes and learn the hard way. Go be an adult.”
Rasia pushed herself up from the table. She had anticipated this moment since she returned to the Grankull with Kai’s namesake around her neck. Kiba-ta had never approved of any of her choices. It did not surprise her that Kai would be the breaking point.
“Tah, how is that fair?” Ysai argued. “You didn’t kick me out when I introduced Jilah.”
“She might not have been what I wanted for you, but at least you weren’t permanently tying yourself to the biggest mistake of your life.”
“Too bad giving birth to me is the biggest mistake of yours!”
“Get out!” tah bellowed.
Rasia didn’t hesitate.
“So . . . that happened,” Rasia said as Ysai and Jilah joined her atop the neighbor’s roof a short time later. Even though Rasia had been the one kicked out of the house, both Ysai and Jilah stood in silent contemplation.
“She caught you with Kai this morning?” Ysai asked, to confirm aloud.
“Dead center of the Spine,” she spat, annoyed. She and Ysai had come up with several contingencies on how to deal with Kiba-ta, but none of them included the possibility of tah finding out about Kai before the Naming. “The plan doesn’t change. We knew she wouldn’t approve of him. We knew this could happen. I’ll sleep on the windship.”
“I don’t want to live here anymore.” Jilah’s small hurt whisper shocked both Ysai and Rasia. That wasn’t something either of the siblings foresaw.
“I know. I’ll put in another housing application.” Ysai sighed. Without saying anything aloud, they all knew it wouldn’t make much difference.
Every time he applied for housing, his application was denied. The administration office considered a lot of factors—the number of years worked, your value to the Grankull, and how much money you could slide under the table—but ultimately, they both knew tah influenced the application because she disapproved of Jilah and wanted to keep Ysai close to home.
Rasia, on the other hand, was finally free.
She honestly felt bad for them both. In the beginning, Jilah moved in with Ysai hoping to eventually win over Kiba-ta. She had stubbornly refused to listen when Rasia told her that was a lost cause.
“I don’t want to live here anymore,” Jilah repeated, again. “I’m tired of being treated like some flame you’re fucking around with. I’m tired of being afraid of her. I’m tired of you being too afraid to defend me. And if you do . . . then you’re kicked out and excommunicated from the family like Rasia? It’s ridiculous. We’re moving in with my parents.”
Ysai opened his mouth to argue, then deflated at Jilah’s glare. Honestly, Rasia was impressed Jilah had endured for this long, but in the end, Kiba-ta gave an impossible test that Jilah could never have passed.
“Wait,” Rasia said. She rushed behind the house and scooped up her pile of belongings from under the window. When she returned, she shoved the blatant clack of bone chips into Ysai’s hands. “No matter how much tah has threatened the administrative office, this should be enough to bribe them.”
“Rasia, this is all your savings. You might need this.”
“I’m free. No one deserves to be stuck with tah forever.”
Before, Rasia had reveled in the way their tah treated Jilah. She had secretly hoped Jilah would turn tail and run for the dunes. But something had changed. Jilah wasn’t the enemy anymore.
Ysai broke into a watery smile and shoved Rasia into a hug, one of those hugs they used to have, when it was her and Ysai against the world. For so long, she thought she had lost her jih, thought she’d never get him back if Jilah had her hooks in him.
In the end, it was Rasia who had lost her way.
“Thank you,” Ysai said.
“I’ll always have your back,” Rasia promised, and then with a twist of her lips, snarked, “even if that includes Jilah-ji.”
Ysai pulled back to look at her, surprised. “Did my little jih finally have a change of bones?”
“My bones have been doing a lot of twisting and turning these days.” She looked at Jilah meaningfully. Jilah gave a tentative smile, then rushed forward to join the hug. Ysai melted happy and content with his arms wrapped around them both.
“This isn’t over, you know,” Ysai whispered seriously between them.
He was right. This was far from over.
Kiba-ta never let go of things easy.