"And now I can say — what was entrusted has returned to its rightful owner."
Something shifted in Kinan's face at those words. The stranger rose from his chair and moved toward him quietly, placing a hand on his shoulder.
"What is it, Kinan? Are you surprised?"
Kinan couldn't answer. He hadn't yet absorbed what was happening around him. Anwar stepped in with his usual directness:
"Boy — stop going rigid every time someone speaks to you. Talk. Respond. Enough of this fear."
"Don't confuse him, Anwar. Leave him be. He's tired from the long journey, that's all." The stranger returned to his seat.
Anwar gestured for Kinan to follow him to his room. The boy went — surrendering to it — though his eyes stayed fixed on the stranger.
What did he mean by 'what was entrusted'? That was what Kinan was turning over.
The room was ordinary in every sense: a mattress fraying at all its edges, a small square wooden table beside it, and across from the door a window with no latch. Kinan swept the room with indifferent eyes, then went straight to the mattress and sat.
"Be polite, boy. The Master doesn't like difficult children — or maybe he does, I'm not certain — but be polite regardless," Anwar said, and left.
The door closed behind him. Kinan sat in the dark and let his mind wander. The thoughts had been multiplying since the moment he'd stepped out of the Peach House, and the questions had grown louder than before.
"What a strange feeling." He stopped mid-thought and looked at his own hands with a blank kind of wonder. "How did everything change this fast? And I'm starting to feel as though they brought me here to use me for something — as though I was the target from the beginning, not Amro."
He got up from the bed and stood before the small window. He raised his face toward the darkened sky and watched the stars faint and distant, burning quietly to themselves.
⁂
Outside the house, beside the old oak tree, Anwar and the stranger sat together in silence for a time. Then Anwar exhaled with irritation.
"I noticed something."
"What?"
"The boy genuinely knows nothing about his past. We'll have to construct a story for him to believe, and that is deeply inconvenient."
The stranger allowed himself a brief, passing smile.
"We won't be constructing anything."
Anwar's brow furrowed.
"What? You want to tell him the truth — that you tried to kill him when he was an infant?"
The stranger looked toward the door, then back at Anwar, his voice dropping:
"Don't raise your voice like that. The boy will hear you."
Anwar lowered his to a whisper.
"Fine. But let's say you do tell him everything — can you guarantee he stays on your side after that? Answer me, Sarem."
The one called Sarem rose from his place and walked a few steps toward the edge of the slope, then said:
"He'll stay. The boy has no other option. And besides — you're here." He turned toward Anwar with a quiet smile and continued. "You know how to work with words. I don't imagine deceiving a simple-minded boy like him will prove difficult for you."
Anwar looked away with visible displeasure, then turned toward the house door.
"The boy is exhausting, honestly. He goes rigid every time a stranger speaks to him. No ability to engage with people. No real courage when it comes to making decisions. He wears me out — I feel like I'm handling a five-year-old, not someone nearly grown."
Sarem stepped toward him, tapped him lightly on the chest, and walked away.
"You'll get used to him. It seems the boy simply isn't accustomed to situations like these."
Anwar had no reply. He swallowed his irritation and followed behind Sarem — but before Sarem crossed the threshold, he stopped. His voice came out cool and level.
"I want to ask you something, Anwar."
Anwar stopped.
"Ask."
Sarem turned, half his face toward him.
"Why do you keep insisting on working with me? After all this time?"
The question landed like a stone. Anwar absorbed it for a fraction of a second, then retreated behind his usual armour of light deflection.
"Why that question now? Don't you think it's a strange thing to ask — ha."
"Don't perform, Anwar. You know me. I cannot tolerate working with people who carry hidden intentions — because I will almost always sell them out when the roads diverge."
Anwar dropped the pretence. He stepped in front of Sarem, his voice cold and flat:
"Since you want to know — I suppose I should prove my honesty as a follower. Otherwise I'll end up on the wrong side of that sword." His eyes moved briefly to the blade at Sarem's side.
A thin smile appeared on Sarem's face. His hand rested on the hilt — a quiet signal.
"You genuinely puzzle me. Even in difficult moments you keep your sense of humour. And you're remarkably good at flattery."
He turned fully and said, in a voice with something veiled inside it:
"You're safe this time, Anwar. Now prove your loyalty — stay with the boy. It's time for me to go meet an old companion."
Anwar bowed, eyes toward the ground. After Sarem had gone completely, he raised his head.
His expression had emptied. The kind of emptiness that comes just before a person does something they haven't fully calculated.
⁂
I.
Back to Kinan — lying on the bed now, staring at the ceiling, hands folded behind his head. His posture suggested nothing of ease. His soul hadn't yet made peace with sleeping anywhere other than the Peach House. That had been the house of his whole childhood.
And lying there in the dark, memory came up without being summoned — eight years ago.
He had been seven. The air was bright and hot, the kind of heat that belongs only to deep summer. Young Kinan stood at the front door of the house, watching people pass. He was counting them — those going, those returning. He always stopped at seven. Seven was the number Amro had taught him that year. Every year, one new number. Amro had been patient with the counting, and Kinan had been very proud of it.
He was counting when his finger stopped on a man and a woman walking with their child held between them, one hand each. The child moved with the unworried confidence of someone who had never needed to wonder who belonged to him.
Kinan felt something he didn't have a name for yet — a wanting, a lack. He had never been held like that. Not once. Amro always told him that such things didn't suit the man he was becoming — a man who had come here to learn a trade. But that moment was the first time Kinan had seen a family and understood, in some wordless way, what it was.
What is a family? Do I have one? Is Amro — is he a family?
The questions started there and never stopped. From that year forward he asked Amro, again and again: "Where is my family?" — "Are you my father?" — "Where is my mother?" And every time, Amro gave the same answer: "We are here to learn the trade. Your family sent you with me so you could learn."
He never believed it. If he had, he would have stopped asking.
But he never stopped.
II.
Somewhere else entirely, a metal door opened — the sound it made was a deep, grating shriek that filled the air. When it had opened fully, it revealed a man in chains. His clothes were soaked in old blood. His hair was matted, his beard darkened by the same. He raised his head with effort, barely managing to open his eyes — and then, the moment he saw his visitor, he jolted upright and screamed with a force that had nothing to do with how wounded he was:
"You — release me. Untie me, you filth, and you'll see what I do to you."
The visitor raised both hands, his voice tranquil in a way that was deliberately maddening:
"Calm yourself, old friend. I didn't come here to harm you. I came to check on you."
"Damn you and your checking. Where is the boy? Where did you take him?"
The visitor turned to one of his men and gestured. A wooden chair was brought. He sat in silence and let the man in chains exhaust himself against the bars, screaming into the stone walls.
"Are you finished?"
The man stopped. He breathed hard, his chest heaving.
The visitor moved his chair closer.
"Amro. Fifteen years. And here we are." His voice had taken on a warmth that was almost indistinguishable from sincerity. "Tell me — what does it feel like to see your old friend after all this time apart?"
Amro turned his face away. He refused to look at the visitor — who was Sarem. The same stranger who had defended them two days before. The same man operating inside the criminal network under the name Sahir. Sarem: Amro's oldest friend.
Amro's expression, when he finally did look, was something that made no sense for a reunion — it was pure hatred.
"I want to be honest with you before I close this visit," Sarem said. "I didn't take the boy from you to kill him. I took him to punish you. I want you to see that what you were doing was wrong — that protecting the son of that butcher of a leader was a mistake."
Amro lunged against the chains and his voice came out at full force:
"Silence — be silent. Don't speak that name with that tongue, you hypocrite. I swear if I get free I will tear your tongue out and leave what's left of you for the street dogs."
Sarem raised his hand — and Amro found himself pinned to the floor without anyone touching him.
"What — what is happening—"
"You left me no choice, old friend. So be still. Listen to me. Perhaps today — after you hear the story I'm about to tell you — you'll change your mind."
He paused.
"The story of the leader you served with blind loyalty your entire life."
To be continued…