The First Binding, page 67
“I suppose it wouldn’t be a good look if the Ashram only welcomed and taught the better educated and civilized. After all, Brahm had compassion for all things and even the animals.”
The boys and girls in his group shared an uncomfortably uniformed laugh.
A few of the other students along varying tables joined in.
I glowered at him. My hand tightened around my spoon.
Radi, to his credit, caught the action. He moved to undercut the building tension. Strum. The strings of his mandolin quivered and he sent his fingers into a blur.
“There once was a boy named Nitham,
who came to trouble in Binding class.
He rose from his seat
and gave us all a treat
when he proved to be a witless ass.”
Radi let loose the strings, having them fall into a gentle thrum that quieted just as sniggering broke across the tables.
Nitham flushed and looked about. Some of his own group lacked the grace to keep their crooked smiles clean from their faces. Instead of turning his fury on Radi, Nitham glared at me. “You should have taken Rishi Ibrahm’s advice and left, Sullied trash. I’ll make you regret staying here.”
Every man has his faults. I am no exception. And mine has long been my lack of patience with bullies and the cruel. Makham. Gabi. Koli. Mithu. It didn’t matter what name and looks they came with. I hated them equally and intensely with a passion that could set a thing on fire.
And it often gets me into trouble.
“The last time someone tried to make me regret something, their body landed on the ground several floors below—broken, bleeding, and very much dead.” I popped another spoonful of chickpeas into my mouth. I chewed slowly, loudly, and filled the air with every smack of my lips.
Nitham’s chest heaved, but I could see the thoughts turning behind his eyes. He’d been there when Rishi Ibrahm spoke of the bloodletting—the murder. How much of it did he believe? I don’t know. But the idea was there, and the fear.
He swallowed and turned, his group following as he left.
Radi exhaled beside me. “Brahm’s blood and ashes, Ari. You don’t settle for anything less than the most problematic trouble and drama to stir up, do you?”
I grinned and finished my food. “Is there any other kind?”
Radi plucked his mandolin. A sharp sour note twanged from it. It vibrated until a low hollow sadness hummed from it. “There are. But I think you choose the worst kinds.”
The strings stopped.
* * *
“The Seven Principles of Binding are…” Rishi Ibrahm stopped as he caught sight of me sinking into my seat beside Radi. He rubbed the space between his brows and sighed.
A sharp elbow crashed into my shoulder, drawing a hiss from me. I glared at Radi.
“Don’t antagonize him today. You’ve already riled Nitham. Keep pushing, and he’ll start throwing his weight around. You don’t want that and the Master Binder frothing mad at you.”
I nodded, not wanting to draw attention to the pair of us.
“The Seven Principles of Binding. Does anyone want to take a guess?”
A young woman’s hand shot into the air.
Rishi Ibrahm smiled. Not his crazed and self-indulgent thing. It was honest, warm, and welcoming. “Yes, Kaethar Eira.”
“They are: One, Faith. The all is the belief it is. It is the belief to connect with and will it. The universe is faith. Two, Connection. From you to the world around you. With the world around you. Three, Resonance. Movement. Everything has a resonance to connect with. Nothing is still and immovable to the mind that understands these three things so far. Four, Duality. All things have a nature and an opposite—a way and a way they can be made to be. Five, Rhythm. There is a gentle tug and flow to all things. To bind, you must learn this and how to affect it and how it affects you.” The voice stopped.
My hand had blurred all the while, turning every word I heard into a messy scrawl that no one but me could hope to decipher. I dared not let a single piece of binding knowledge go unrecorded. When her voice stopped, the writing reverie went with it, and then I looked for her.
If anyone could have been said to hold the kingdom of Ghal’s beauty in them, it was her. She held all the fairness of mountain snow in her face and even her hair. A brightness touched the dark of her eyes. She chewed one corner of her lip in what could have been anxiousness.
“Very good, Kaethar Eira. You’re correct.” Rishi Ibrahm tapped a finger to his nose. “I’ll cover the last two before explaining them in greater detail.” He cleared his throat into a fist. The hand blurred.
I snapped straight, heart hammering. Tch. The jarring nature of attending to every one of Eira’s words, to the break in her speech, and now waiting for the Master Binder to teach left me no stability in my mind.
I reached and fumbled for the folds. One came to me, and turning it into two felt like trying to count to a thousand by odds only. I managed to reach four before the stone reached the same point it always did before trying to come down on my skull.
I felt the weight of our wills finally contend. The Master Binder must have only ever attempted to come at me with four folds of his own.
If Mahrab’s mind had been something like a bull crashing against the walls of mine, Rishi Ibrahm’s came with the force of an avalanche. It battered mine with the fury of stone and ice propelled by the power that drives all things to the ground eventually. Nothing escaped it. And nothing weathered that kind of assault.
I refused to relent—a stupid thing in truth. And I didn’t think to craft more folds and commit to them under the pressure of the moment.
“It’s just … hanging there?” said a voice I couldn’t recognize.
My gums ached and only then did I become aware of how hard I’d been clenching my teeth. Something warm trickled over the top of my lips. I tasted copper and salt a second later.
The folds snapped and my eyes opened and I slumped against my seat, breathing like I’d re-climbed the thousand steps up to the Ashram.
A hand snapped out in front of mine and caught the stone before it slammed into my face.
What little strength I had was just enough to look at Radi and give him silent thanks.
For reasons I couldn’t work out, Radi tossed the stone back to the Master Binder.
The man caught it without thought. “Seems you still have a few things to learn, ah?” He grinned, tapping a finger to his nose again.
If I could have managed it, I would have scowled. Maybe spat a mixture of blood and saliva in his direction. The best I could do was double over toward my parchment, letting him know with quiet cussedness that I would still attend to his words and learn whatever I could about the bindings.
He saw it for what it was and frowned. But he went on with the lesson. “The remaining two principles, then. Six—In … and Out.” He lobbed the stone into the air, stepping back from it. His mouth moved. The rock hurtled to the ground with the speed and force of having been dropped from the top of the world. It shattered a second later. “Everything happens in regard to something put in and something coming out of that action, be they words, actions, bindings. Love is like this.”
A few people snickered.
Rishi Ibrahm added a laugh of his own, cutting it short to silence the rest of the voices. “You think I’m joking? Tell me, how many of you have been able to find love without putting your own love out there? How many of you have ever even tasted a piece of it? The touch of someone’s lips? Can you? Can you without leaning forward and putting your own out there? What about affection? Kindness? Can you in fact receive it without being willing to open up to it … and offer your own?”
No one had an answer.
And if he expected one, he didn’t show it. He left us with that thought and went on. “The last principle: Seven. Nature. All things have a nature you must come to understand, and all things have within them the nature of man and the nature of woman. No one is wholly one or the other. Without this, you can never learn to bind the great things of our world.” He gestured to one of the mountain peaks. “Be it mountain, stone, ice, water, the wind, or things such as fire. They have a nature, and some have something older—stories of their own. To bind them, you must learn them.”
The pain from my exercise against the Master Binder dulled and my hand moved almost with a will of its own. I wrote down every word he said, not caring if I wasted parchment in the process.
The story of fire. The possibility to bind it.
Like Brahm.
The thought stayed with me until the consequences of that afternoon caught up with me.
“We’ll begin the first framing exercise in understanding how to properly visualize. A prerequisite before even thinking of binding.” Master Binder picked up another stone and I tensed, wondering how many folds I’d need to employ to counter a throw.
I didn’t think I had the energy after the mental pummeling from earlier.
“Ari, Sulhi. Son of…” The source of the voice cleared their throat. “Son of nobody!”
We all turned toward the new voice.
The man didn’t have the age to have gone naturally bald, leaving me to think he was a monk in the Ashram. He had the customary robes, the only difference being the red sash cinching tight around his waist. Broad shouldered and lean, he stood a head taller than any of the masters and had all the severity of cold marble in the lines of his face.
“Which of you is Ari?”
I didn’t even have the chance to answer.
“That’s him.” Nitham came to the bald man’s side, jabbing a finger in my direction.
The man nodded, then placed a hand on Nitham’s chest. He stayed him, then came over to me. “You will come with me to the Admittance Chamber.”
I rose from my seat, giving Radi a short look over my shoulder.
My friend shrugged and said nothing.
I followed the bald man and Nitham, aware of all my classmates’ eyes on my back as I left.
* * *
The Admittance Chamber had lost none of its dark and ominous appearance since I’d last been there. I had hoped it had looked that way more due to my nerves than anything in its construction. Since then, I’d learned the students referred to it as “Mines,” mostly for its deep dark look and its endlessly high ceiling.
I stood before the collective masters, separated from Nitham by the bald monk between us.
The man idly bounced the tip of a heavy wooden baton in one palm.
Is that to use on students?
We waited in silence until Rishi Ibrahm joined us and made his way to the table.
“That’s everyone then?” Master Spiritualist looked to both sides before steepling his fingers and resting his chin on them. “Good. Kaethar Nitham and Accepted Ari are both called here before the masters of the Ashram to discuss a formally lodged grievance. Do either of you have anything to say before we begin?”
I didn’t, and nor did Nitham.
The Master Spiritualist nodded. “Very well. Accepted Ari, you have been charged with Threats of Extreme Violence, violating the Ashram’s laws.”
I hadn’t known the place had its own set of laws, but it explained why a monk had brought me before the masters rather than the kuthri or any other armed facet of the Empire’s law.
“Do you understand this?” The Master Spiritualist gave me a long patient look.
“Not really.”
“Kaethar Nitham is saying that you’ve threatened him with extreme harm that could go as far as his death. Do you understand now?” Nothing in his tone said he was patronizing me.
I nodded. “Yes, Headmaster.”
“And is Kaethar Nitham correct? Did you in fact threaten him to this degree.”
“No.”
“Liar!” Nitham took two steps toward me before meeting resistance in the form of the monk’s club against his chest. The man hadn’t thumped Nitham, just put it in front of him so the student ran into it, getting the silent message. Nitham exhaled and composed himself. “He did, Headmaster, in fact threaten me. I can call a number of witnesses—”
“All your friends whose tongues know how to lie for you as well as they know the taste of the inside of your ass since—”
“Accepted! You will not speak like that in the presence of the masters here or any other rishis throughout this Ashram. Am I understood?” The headmaster rose, staring at me hard enough to crack stone.
I nodded. “Yes, Headmaster. I’m sorry.”
That seemed to mollify him and he sank back into his seat. “Good. See that it doesn’t happen again or I will add another grievance.”
That blunted my tongue a bit.
“The boy raises a good point.” Vathin stood up. “Master Philosopher, Rishi Vruk.” Vathin waited for permission to continue after he’d introduced himself by rank and last name.
The headmaster made a lazy motion with a hand, gesturing for Vathin to go on.
“Thank you. Accepted Ari has a point regarding Kaethar Nitham’s friend circle. We all know his family, and that he runs with equally blooded nobles and the wealthy. The sort of students who can buy their way out of most trouble … or put a student of no caste into whatever trouble their purse can manage.”
A few of the masters murmured in agreement.
The headmaster cut through the chatter. “Kaethar Nitham, would you care to tell us what exactly Accepted Ari said to you?”
“He said he’d leave my body dead at the bottom of the mountain.”
“I said no such thing!”
“Quiet!” The headmaster stared daggers at us before settling his attention on Nitham. “What did he say exactly?”
Nitham shifted in place, his gaze shying away from the headmaster’s. “He made a comment about people he’s killed before in regards to something I said that he could have taken as an offense. The implication was clear: He would kill me in a similar manner to how he’s killed others.”
That was a mild twist of the truth. Yes, the implication had been there, but the threat had been empty. Nothing more than to scare Nitham and his pissling band of friends away from me.
“Is that true, Accepted Ari?”
I waggled a hand. “Nitham did offend me, true. But I can’t take that too much to heart since I’m certain he causes offense everywhere he goes on account of his face. I’m certainly not the last he will offend, nor am I the first. I believe that was his mother, so with that, it’s not a problem.”
A few of the masters stifled laughs before the headmaster glowered at them. “Accepted Ari, you are coming close to earning yourself another grievance.”
I reined my tongue in better than before. “I never threatened him. Nitham and I had a heated exchange. I did at one point reference something from my past and what I was forced to do in self-defense. But I never once threatened Nitham with the same treatment. He may have taken it that way, but then it could be argued he made himself an imaginary target to bring all this about.”
Vathin winked at me.
I fought to keep from smiling. His philosophy lessons were coming to my aid now.
“Oh, like hell. You damn well meant it, you filthy bloodless Sullied cur!”
I noted that the headmaster didn’t come to my defense when Nitham crossed the line into indecorous.
“Ooof.” Rishi Ibrahm pursed his lips. “Right in the caste.”
A few of the masters turned to stare at him. He met their looks and shrugged. “What?”
The Master Artisan cradled her head in a hand.
“So, it can be taken that your words could be interpreted as a threat. No matter the stretch, there is enough truth in what you said that Kaethar Nitham could have felt himself in danger?”
I shrugged. “Only if we were in Keshum, him a criminal in possession of weapons, white-joy, and harming children. Oh, and standing at the edge of a building. Other than that, I feel Nitham’s stretching things a great deal.”
The headmaster sighed and rubbed the heels of his palms against his eyes. “I think I’ve heard enough. The rest of the masters?”
They muttered amongst each other before nodding.
“Very well. Kaethar Nitham is fined in equal measure to his family’s donation to the Ashram. Two gold rupai for needless antagonization and clearly levying this complaint as a way to cause further grief to Accepted Ari.”
I choked.
How wealthy must his family be to easily donate two rupai, and then him not flinch one whit when asked to pay that sum again?
“Accepted Ari will be fined in equal measure to his donation this season for—”
“What?” I felt my eyes grow owlish as I looked to Vathin more than any of the other masters, hoping he could give me some explanation.
“Ari, you threatened a member of the Ashram; no matter how clever you may have made your words, the implication was there. Enough for Nitham to feel at risk. That cannot be allowed to pass. As such, you will be fined three silver doles and be sentenced to a punishment.” The headmaster’s expression held more hard ice in it than anything in Ghal’s frozen climate.
“Disciplinarian Banu, what are the punishments we can levy on Accepted Ari for this offense?”
The monk fastened a leather thong at the end of the club to a loop on his robes, clasping his hands together afterward. “The student may be whipped up to eight times. They may be placed in a cold cell for up to a set of days, missing all classes, to reflect on their misdeeds. The student will be responsible for addressing all work and studies they have missed over that time. Lastly, the student may opt to do penance that measures the severity of their transgressions.”
The headmaster inclined his head. “Thank you, Banu.” He turned to me. “Well, Accepted Ari. You have a choice. Which would you like?”
