A Dictionary of Fools (The HouseOf Light And Shadow Book 2) Page 21

  Then Keshav told him about Karan, and the disaster at home.

  Kisten listened in silence, appalled. He loved the empire, and his desire to serve it was genuine. What, he wondered with a pang, was happening to his home?

  He stumbled slightly, exhausted, and felt his brother’s arm around him. He hoped they reached their destination soon, wherever—or whatever—it was. Now that the initial thrill of being rescued was wearing off, he realized once again that he was almost dead on his feet. Literally. His heart had begun to race at odd times, and his head spun.

  He would have objected to anyone else helping him, but with Keshav it was different. Keshav was different.

  “We’re almost there,” Keshav told him. It seemed that the little band was making for a hidden shuttle. The rebels’ command of their airspace wasn’t good; flying was safer than attempting the trek overland. And from the shuttle to the ship that was scheduled to bring him, along with Keshav and Aros, home to Brontes. It was a military vessel; there would be medical care, and food, and most of all safety.

  But Kisten’s concerns were more immediate. “All I want,” he told his brother, “is a shower and a razor.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  Kisten was beginning to feel almost human again, even if he didn’t look it.

  He looked, he thought when he examined himself in the mirror, like a prop from a low budget film department. He’d been aboard the Gannet now for about a fortnight and spent the better part of that time asleep. Even his most cherished ambition, that of finally being clean, had of necessity been postponed until after he’d rested and been seen by a doctor.

  That doctor, who said he’d seen horrors but never anything like this, had scooped handfuls of lice out of Kisten’s hair before directing an orderly to shave it off. It’ll grow back, he’d said. Kisten, who’d worn his hair short his entire adult life—the navy required that hair protrude from the scalp no more than two inches—felt more comfortable bald. More disgustingly, some of the lice had had to be expressed from pockets on his neck and scalp. The medical staff’s matter of fact attitude had helped; they’d made off-color jokes about his open, suppurating wounds while swabbing them with iodine and strangely he’d felt less embarrassed after they’d all shared a good laugh.

  They’d shaved him, too, which had been a godsend.

  According to Doctor Natali, actual food was dangerous to a man in his condition and he’d been fed for the first week intravenously. After that, a jovial nurse named Mangal had given him broth. Solid food was still too dangerous, and would be for another week or so. Mangal had sat with him while he ate, and updated him on Aros. Kisten’s flesh had bruised horribly around the IV ports, and his hands shook. Perversely, he’d almost felt more healthy when he’d been incarcerated; at least then he’d had nothing to compare himself to.

  But here, he was acutely conscious of how different he looked from everyone else and how different he looked, most of all, from his brother. That’s what I used to look like, he couldn’t help but think. He ran a hand over the fuzz of hair that had just begun to grow in.

  Mangal appeared in the door behind him. “You ready?” he asked.

  “I do not require assistance to shower,” Kisten said, summoning his haughtiest tone.

  “Yes you do.”

  Kisten gritted his teeth. He did not care to be reminded of his condition, even if the nurse was only doing his job. “This,” he forced himself to admit, a moment later, “is embarrassing.”

  Mangal shrugged, indifferent to Kisten’s plight. “Ain’t nothing I haven’t seen before, chief.”

  Kisten repressed the urge to reply that the proper term of address was commander. Mangal knew that; he’d been in the navy for fourteen years. The nurse called everyone chief, and Kisten’s attitude bothered him not at all.

  “I don’t,” Kisten grated, “see how this is helpful.”

  He helped Kisten into the bathroom, where Kisten stared at himself in the mirror while Mangal reached past him to turn on the water.

  “Well,” the nurse said thoughtfully, “seeing as how you’re not at your best, the hot water might make your blood pressure spike. And then you’d be flat out with your skull cracked open on the side of the tub and all us nice folks would’ve wasted our time rescuing you. You don’t want to put us out like that, do you?” He sounded so goddamned reasonable. “Now get in the shower.”

  There’d been a bite to that last comment. Giving in, Kisten stripped off the cotton broadcloth pajamas he’d been wearing to more of Mangal’s color commentary about how it was “just us boys, here” and he didn’t see what Kisten was so exercised about. “I don’t see anything worth covering up,” he said, sliding back the shower door. Kisten favored him with a glare. No one could make hurling abuse seem as perfectly reasonable as a nurse.

  Kisten did begin to feel light-headed after a few minutes, and had to lean against the tiled wall for support. Mangal offered no comment; he was kind, after his own fashion. The water felt wonderful, magical, even, and Kisten never tired of feeling it pelt his skin and slip down over it to the drain below. He massaged shampoo into his scalp with his bony fingers and then, while it rinsed away, lathered himself with a bar of plain, white, navy issue soap. It was no hand-formed bar infused with sandalwood oil, but it seemed to him to be the very best soap he’d ever beheld.

  He got out and let Mangal help him into his bathrobe and back into his adjoining cabin. Washing had exhausted him, and his head was swimming. He sat on the edge of the bed while Mangal swabbed his wounds. Kisten remembered, with horror, the awful wriggling sensation. The burrowing. He’d think of it now and then, and shudder, for the rest of his life.

  Afterwards, he had some broth before getting back into his pajamas and crawling into bed. Mangal refilled the carafe of water on his bedside table and left him to his own devices. He lay on his back, staring up at the featureless ceiling and thinking about what had happened. As grateful as he was to be alive, he couldn’t help but feel that he’d done something wrong by surviving when so many other—undoubtedly better—men had died. Men with families. Men who, like Aros, had no one to come rescue them.

  He knew, from his doctor and from his own common sense that a certain degree of difficulty was to be expected.

  But still.

  A certain degree of difficulty hadn’t prepared him for this.

  Doctor Natali called it repatriation neurosis, but Kisten’s feelings about what had happened to him, and what was happening to him now, were far more complex than such a simple term might suggest. And, indeed, Doctor Natali had made clear that this wasn’t so much a condition as a catch-all for the host of conditions that had been observed over the years. You may experience none of these, he’d told Kisten. You may experience all of them. You may experience something completely different. There is no wrong, in terms of response. Only, he’d added, to be aware that what feels normal, and seems reasonable might not be. Which had been a gentle means of pointing out that Kisten shouldn’t take himself too seriously—at least not for the time being. He had a long road ahead of him, an internal battle that would far outlast his outward symptoms.

  Those diagnosed with repatriation neurosis suffered from various physical issues including premature aging, visual impairments, difficulty gaining weight, abnormal liver function, bronchitis, emphysema, tuberculosis, heart problems, and abnormal adrenal gland function.

  But physical issues were only the beginning: chronic depression, sleep disturbance, night terrors, loss of pleasure, irritability and exaggerated startle reactions were all common—and Kisten had experienced them all, particularly irritability. And, he had to admit, depression.

  It was so debilitating, at times, that he couldn’t get out of bed. He’d lost all sense of time; the last fortnight felt like a second one moment and a lifetime the next. He had no interest in anything; he’d become convinced that he was impotent. He’d touched himself that morning, as an experiment, and nothing had happened. Luckily, he’d had no part
icular desire to masturbate. For the first time since he was twelve, he had no interest in sex at all. The thought would have frightened him, if he could have brought himself to care.

  But as he didn’t think he’d ever be able to face a woman again anyway, what difference did it make?

  His life, as he knew it, was over. All he wanted was to be left alone.

  He sighed. A little while later, he slept.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Keshav sat in the chair next to the bed, as still and silent as a statue. And equally as elegant; he looked, as usual, like something that should be posed in a museum rather than allowed to mingle with the normal world. Smoke curled upwards in a thin trickle from the cigarette he wasn’t smoking. It lay idle between his thin fingers, which rested on his knee. One leg was crossed negligently over the other in a deceptively casual pose that belied his razor-sharp attention. As lazy as he appeared, precious little escaped that flat gaze.

  He’d been compared to a snake, more than once, and that was apt.

  Kisten said nothing. Keshav was the only person whose company he could stand, but he still didn’t want to talk. He knew that his reactions weren’t rational, but they felt rational and—goddamn it—he couldn’t help himself. The least expression of sympathy was intolerable, and when people treated him as they would anyone else it proved they didn’t understand.

  Kisten examined his dinner. He’d been upgraded to broth and toast, he observed. However could he stand the excitement?

  Fluidly, Keshav tapped his cigarette against the edge of a used coffee cup on the table next to him and raised it to his lips. He inhaled, exhaled, and thought. He was wearing a suit, beautifully tailored from expensive tropical weight wool. It was black, like all of his clothes. No one—except Kisten, of course—knew why Keshav wore black. He just did. He had since adolescence, barring those times when, for whatever reason, he and Kisten decided to trade places.

  Would they ever be able to again? He’d taken for granted the ease with which he and Keshav had inhabited each other’s skins. But ever since waking up in a hospital bed with a needle in his wrist, he’d felt a sense of separation from his twin. He was different; broken; defective; bad. Keshav represented what he had been and wasn’t, anymore.

  “You are not the only half of this partnership,” Keshav began slowly, “which has suffered.”

  The words cost him something. Where Kisten had always been hot-tempered, Keshav had been cold—and suffered the more for it, in the end. He buried whatever he felt so deep inside himself that he might as well not feel anything at all. Kisten thought that, unlike himself, Keshav wanted someone to love. Someone that he could take care of, who’d see in him more than the monster even their parents thought he’d become.

  “I know,” said Kisten. He did.

  “I….” Keshav stubbed out his cigarette and regarded his brother. “I didn’t know. No one did.” He meant about the conditions at Palawan, of course. “We’d been told that there were a handful of prisons, and that the conditions were unfortunate—but nothing life-threatening. As to the rest….” He rested his head in his hand, pinching the bridge of his nose.

  Kisten had met other twins, each of whom had at least one anecdote about feeling each other’s pain. The mere fact of multiple birth wasn’t a guarantee, he supposed, but he’d never met an identical twin who hadn’t experienced something of the kind. But none of them shared the kind of relationship that he and Keshav did; those other twins were more emotionally stable, able to function on their own as separate human beings. The only separation between Kisten and his twin had been intentional, and still agonizing for all that.

  When Kisten was shot, Keshav had collapsed.

  They’d bought the same present for their mother, for her birthday, while shopping in different cities. On different planets. At the same time. They ordered the same meals in restaurants. Keshav knew what Kisten had endured—although, he’d pointed out, he’d attributed it after a point to the after-effects of torture.

  “I would have come sooner,” he said, “but I was collecting information that I hope will prove useful to the war effort.”

  Kisten nodded. He understood. He would have done the same thing, had he been in Keshav’s place. Keshav had had every reason to believe that Kisten could take care of himself, and Keshav had devoted himself completely to serving the empire. Everything else in his life, especially his own happiness, came second.

  Besides, he’d have been too late to save Kisten from being tortured whatever he’d done. He’d been on another planet. And by useful information, Keshav meant vital.

  “I didn’t know,” he said again, softly. This was, to him, the admission of a grave failure in regard to both Kisten and the empire. Intelligence wasn’t an exact science, and Keshav’s department had gotten it wrong—this time. A lesser, or perhaps a healthier man would have forgiven a mistake that rested on many shoulders other than his own. But Keshav, like Kisten, held himself responsible for the success of every endeavor in which he was involved.

  “If I had known,” he continued, “nothing would have stopped me.”

  “Then I’m glad you did not,” said Kisten, meaning it.

  The look that passed between them communicated everything: forgiveness where there was nothing to forgive, and understanding and, most of all, love. Acceptance, both of each other and of what had happened—on both sides. Kisten wished it were enough to bridge the void.

  “I want to be me again,” he said.

  “I know.” Keshav lit another cigarette, and thought. “We’ll get through this,” he said, “together.”

  “When are you going back?”

  “I’m not.” Keshav flicked ash into the abandoned mug. “I did what I was sent to do, and in return I was awarded a medal I can neither display nor discuss and an extended vacation.” He smiled mirthlessly. “And I’ve been promoted.” Reaching into an inside pocket, he withdrew an envelope. “As have you. Congratulations, Commander.”

  He passed it to Kisten, who studied it thoughtfully and with mixed feelings. “Not quite the moment I envisioned,” he said. Unexpectedly, he laughed. Keshav joined him, and for a split second things almost felt normal.

  “Survival is an achievement,” Keshav pointed out dryly.

  “Indeed.” Kisten finished his broth and started on his toast.

  “In my particular case, I was promoted due to a sudden scarcity of personnel; half of my department at least has expired, and I wasn’t even involved. No,” he continued in the same bored tone, “extreme stupidity on the part of our director was the main culprit. With the result being a plethora of open positions and a dearth of men to fill them. They had to promote me or go without.”

  “No doubt your recent accumulation of medals helped.”

  Keshav shrugged. He knew that his reputation might pose a challenge to morale, although Kisten knew that the men he worked with loved him. As much as Keshav might downplay his accomplishments, the promotion was well deserved. The IIS was fortunate in their new section director. “After you’ve declared yourself fit for duty—and you’re being strongly encouraged not to rush the process—you’re being given command of the Nemesis.”

  Kisten didn’t ask how Keshav knew. The Nemesis was a famous ship and the star of her fleet. His being slated for such a fabulous command had to at least in part be political; the sheer fact of his survival had made him something of a celebrity and he’d brought home a little bit of useful information, himself. If only he hadn’t withered into a useless husk of a man unfit for command of so much as a bathtub.

  He’d finished his toast. It had been tasteless.

  Keshav stood up and, after divesting himself of his jacket and draping it carefully over the back of the chair, strode to the other side of the cabin and made two drinks at the small bar: a tonic water for himself and a Circassian malt with two fingers of water for Kisten. Kisten wasn’t supposed to be drinking, but he wasn’t really supposed to not be drinking either.

  He ac
cepted the drink and watched in silence as Keshav threw himself back into the chair and slipped one bespoke shoe off after another. He sipped his tonic water and Kisten had his first taste of alcohol in well over a year. He certainly hadn’t been drinking while he’d been in battle, and the usual post-battle celebrations had been postponed by the fact that the battle never quite seemed to end. Charon II had been one long, pointless bloodbath and he was well out of it. Part of him felt deeply ashamed of his desire to go home.

  “Shouldn’t I want to stay and fight?” he asked Keshav.

  Keshav arched an eyebrow. “Aren’t you the one who’s always claiming that an army marches on its stomach? If an army needs to eat, then presumably it needs to sleep as well. One serves the empire better by recognizing one’s own limitations, does one not, than by dismissing them as cowardice? In the former, one thinks of others; in the latter, one is selfish.”

  “I’m not being selfish,” said Kisten.

  “Aren’t you?” Keshav regarded him flatly, his cold eyes remarkably like those of a snake. “You’re thinking of yourself, and what you need to prove to yourself about who and what you still are.”

  When you put it like that, thought Kisten, it’s cruel.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he said quietly.

  “You,” said Keshav, “are going to come home. With me.”

  He stood up and, leaving his drink on the table next to the discarded mug, walked over to the bed and sat down on the edge. It was an uncomfortable bed, and narrow, but it felt divine to Kisten. Keshav undid his cufflinks, a pair of simple platinum things, and placed them on the bed table before switching off the lamp. Only the faint glow of the emergency lights at the door and hatches remained. Then he stretched out next to Kisten and laid an arm across Kisten’s thin chest, pulling him close. Kisten turned his head until their noses almost touched.