6. SIX #3
“I came to finish our discussion. If you remember, I said we would speak on the matter of your father at a different time.”
Boiling blood flowed to his limbs. He didn’t want this conversation any more than he wanted Thero’s talent for belittling him.
If Calisto could tell, he paid no regard. “You know I trained Thadinar for fifteen years.”
Calver bit his tongue.
“Thadinar was tenacious. Loud. Reckless. Didn’t like to obey authority.
” He raised his grey eyebrows and shot an approving look at Arleena.
“But he was the most compassionate young man I’ve yet to know, beside yourself, Calverous.
And he valued loyalty above anything. His friends cherished him for it. ”
“W-w-why-why.” Calisto waited patiently for Calver as he scowled at his own incompetence. “W-why are you t-t-telling… me this.”
“Because it would be a crime for Thadinar’s own son to disown him.”
Calver’s nails dug into his palms. “I know what he did. I’m n-not a child.
You don’t have to t-try to—” He spared a glance at Arleena, who hadn’t yet been told the truth by a half-dozen sons of military command—come home with bleeding knuckles, only to learn she was in the wrong.
He’d expected to see her listening with eyes narrowed; she had a frightening capacity to dissect information, for a five-year-old. But she had drifted back to sleep.
“No,” Calisto said, pushing his withered appendage into his pocket. “You don’t know what he did. But you must trust me when I tell you that he loved you more than anything. He wouldn’t have betrayed you for a thing in all the world.”
“He l-left.”
“He had no choice in the matter. But he entrusted me to take care of you and your mother, which is why you come to my studio every day despite your circumstances.”
So, his training in the dowaga was a charity case after all. He’d wondered. The others were kings in comparison, even despite Kaidech’s economic turn. Dowagian cost more than a willing pupil.
“There is more I can tell you when the day comes. But that day is not today. Just know that you and your family are precious to me. I will not abandon you, and I am here for you as often as you need it. Not only because your father asked me, but because I care for you dearly.”
Calver didn’t know whether to believe him. He looked up to Calisto more than anyone, but the anger lingered like a bad cold.
“What g-good will it do for me to trust you? It—it doesn’t make a d-difference now. He’s gone.”
Calisto’s eyes went distant. “Two men were stranded in a desert.”
Fates, not this again. Parables, parables. Some days Calisto couldn’t speak in a straight line any more than he could fight with his withered arm.
“One man saw only the lack of vegetation, of wildlife, and trusted that there was no water to be found. The other man trusted that, if he kept searching for it, he might find it.” His eyes pinned Calver to his seat, making him resist the urge to squirm. “Only one man lived.”
Calver picked at his fingernails. Arleena’s soft snores rumbled in the corner.
“What did you learn?”
“That a man d-died in the Fated d-d-desert.”
Calisto chuckled with remorse and leaned back in the creaky wooden chair. His eyes, again, sought clarity from something in the room’s corner. Something Calver lacked the ability to see. “Sometimes, if you do not trust, you will not find water.”
Saying nothing had always seemed more appropriate than forcing a response. Tonight, however, silence left Calver feeling as empty as his pockets.
Without prompt, Calisto stood and moved for the door, white brows pinching together. “No need to tell any of your friends about our discussion.” It was not a question, but a request. “I expect I’ll be seeing you tomorrow in class?”
Calver wondered what he could have said that would have been both honest and pleasing to his instructor. Calisto’s hand was on the handle. “W-w-wait.” He was embarrassed the moment the words passed from his lips. “Can you st-st-stay?”
Calisto looked at Calver for a long while. “Do you remember how I lost use of my arm?”
Calver fixed his eyes on the smoldering hearth. “You hesitated.”
“Because?”
“Because you were afraid.”
Calisto’s eyes closed. He nodded. “Be not afraid, Calverous. Victory over the mind can only come with an embrace of the void. Understand the void, and you’ll find everything you need to not fear.” He returned to his seat at the table. “But this time, I’ll stay until Androtia returns.”
Calver dipped his head, hoping it might hide his coursing relief. He got into bed.
With his eyes closed, Calver began to imagine odd things, like Pim in a lady’s turban, cooking eggs at their shanty hearth. Then he and Arleena were in a boat, but grown, pulling something green and slimy from the water. “You made me come fifteen hundred miles for this?” she teased.
He awoke the next morning with Arleena’s head cradled into his chest. His mother was cooking at the hearth, not Pim. A feast of injera, eggs, and cassava with tomato and ghee sprawled across the table in the place of their normal sorghum porridge.
Calisto had gone.