A Name Like Mine

He crouches by the water, watching the green reflection of the jungle covering. He doesn’t know what he is doing here. He knows that this is forbidden. He knows that he can never go back home. But he can’t help the fact that he’s drawn to it. It’s irresistible, the untouchable dreams of his past.
He extends out a hand, hoping, reaching, wishing.
Then he jerks it back. He can’t touch the water. He was banished, cursed away from the sea. The Monomak Journeymen don’t play lightly when they pull at Life Threads. One touch of this water, even with the minute amount of salt that it has… one touch and his Thread unravels. He hasn’t dared to test that ruling, see if magic is real.
He reaches out again.
He watches the reflection of his light skin play over the twisting water.
Then he takes his hand back. He won’t test whether magic is real. Not here. Not today. But there is something lovely about water nonetheless. He misses it, the perfect floating submergement deep under or the fight against the waves at the top. He misses the sway of a deck beneath his feet, the comfort of knowing his place.
There.
He admitted it. He misses home.
“You’re one of the athen, aren’t you?” a voice startles Karx. Karx whirls away from the waterfront, dagger out. The blade is against the intruder’s neck before he can even blink an eye. No one should know that word, let alone know that is what Karx is. No one should be able to sneak up on him like that either.
He looks up at this huge stranger, disconcerted by the large scar on his cheek. White mourning paint covers his heavily tanned skin, which is as rough and wrinkled as tree bark. Brown dreadlocks trail down his back, and his stance seems just a bit wider and steadier than the average land-bound.
Karx inspects the large man’s blue eyes.
“Gondre yhden hather,” Karx concludes, in Moak.Yhden hather: to live like me. As for the first part... someone might translate is as “you, cousin of mine”.
It’s an accusation and a question: you, cousin of mine, you live like me. You, cousin, are one of the athen, aren't you? If the man can respond than he is one of the seas-cursed like Karx. If the man responds, he is a criminal, exiled from his people. If he doesn’t… then he knows too much about the Monomak for his own good.
“Am yhden ather,” the man admits wearily, “am yhden ather.”
That I am... that I am.
Karx’s grip on his knife is relaxed, as any good assassin’s is, but he relaxes it slightly more.
“What did you do to get banished?” he asks, wondering if the large man will answer. The man's veins pop slightly, his muscles suddenly tense. Karx simply sighs. Then he takes his knife away from the man’s neck and sheaths it under his tunic.
I wouldn’t answer either, he thinks. Karx faces the seas-cursed stranger there in the red soil and listens distractedly to the water lazily tumbling by. For a moment, it is as though time itself has frozen, the two of them standing as still as the air sits.
The large athen breaks the silence first, “The name’s Bryn.”
“Karx.”
The athen laughs, surprised. Karx grits his teeth. In the long years on foreign land, he had forgotten what it was like to be among people who spoke his language. He had forgotten that they would know what his name meant, that they could see into his whole childhood by just hearing an introduction.
The large athen just guffaws and Karx waits, frustrated, tired, reminded of too many unpleasant memories. The huge man finally stops laughing and lifts his gaze to Karx. They stare at each other for a little bit. Then he sees that Karx wasn’t making a joke. His weary brows raise, his eyes happy.
“You're really named that?" Bryn asks, trying to hide his amusement, "Arx? Child?"
Karx just waits for the next question, the inevitable horrible question. He hates this, this same pattern that happened every time he met a new friend. Bryn huffs a last breath of laughter before it finally occurs to him.
"What’s the k for?"
Karx twists his mouth sourly, not happy to have to stalk the steps of a dance he forgot long ago. This is how it always used to go.
“The K is for kel,” Karx whispers, “My birthing name was Kelarx.”
Bryn’s laughing eyes turn sad, like a father looking upon a broken child. Karx remembers this too, this infernal play that never seems to change.
“Kelarx,” the huge athen pronounces, rolling the letters around his tongue. His eyebrows knit sorrowfully. It’s been so long since this torture, this horrid play. Karx doesn’t want to play the part of the pitied or the broken again. His blood boils. He is done with this.
“‘Unwanted Child’,” Bryn interrupts Karx's anger, shaking his head, “Who would name their blood-born that?”
Something snaps in Karx’s heart. He is himself and that is much much more than some poor child you comfort for your good deed of the day. He grips his knife again, a wild temptation to throw it into the jungle, or into this athen's vulnerable chest. So many people’s pity is piling upon him; he has had enough! Their hollowly good intentions, their oh-so-careful dancing around him like he is nothing... it all lights his vision up to a fiery red.
“I don’t want your pity,” he snaps out, this rare anger shattering his usual calm.
Bryn raises his eyebrows, but holds his hands up and backs up, a universal symbol of peace. Karx hates the way that this older athen acts like Karx is the one being unreasonable. He hates everything about this dance, this pattern. Yet somehow the conciliatory gesture reminds him of where he is. Karx soothes the fury. He breathes deeply, lets go of his knife handle.
“Why did you get rid of your tattoo?” he asks, calm again. Karx can’t help but let it bother him. Not only did Bryn commit a crime worthy of banishment, he renounced even his origin. That tattoo is the pride of any child that reaches adulthood. It’s a source of competition for everyone to see who found a better tattoo artist, who has the most complicated design. It’s something just essentially Monomak. And this man cut his own skin off to get rid of it.
No answer.
Then Bryn heaves a huge breath.
“Why didn’t you?” he asks, resigned, “We’re not Monomak anymore. We’re just land-bound like the rest of the poor lot.”
Karx grinds his teeth. This man, Bryn, says he’s not Monomak, but he sure as hell isn’t Aelgari, or Rauhiri, or anything really. The Fleet is all Karx had as home, he’s not going to pretend like he’ll be welcome anywhere else.
“If we’re not Monomak,” he demands, “then why do we speak in this language? If we're not Monomak, then what are we?”
Bryn laughs at that. He just laughs and laughs and laughs.
“Ath ajk yhden Monomak. Ath yhden aran ajk etta,” Bryn says, still laughing.
Someone might translate, “We don’t live on the sea anymore. We live however we want.”
But Karx knows what he means. Yhden is not just to live, it is to be, to belong, to exist as a part of the world, of your people. Bryn didn’t say where they were living, how they would live. He said something that struck something far close to Karx’s heart, something far worse.
Bryn had said, “We’re not Monomak anymore. We can be anything we want to be.”
And yet he laughs.
Karx pulls at the sleeve of his tunic. This man is everything Karx does not want to be, everything he swore not to be. Karx takes a step back, shakes the hair out of his eyes. That man gave up on his country, on any real life. He lives only for himself.
The huge form of the man finally stops shaking with laughter and straightens himself up. Karx just shakes his head.
“What?” Bryn inquires, genuinely curious, “Does freedom scare you?”
Karx feels something break. Wytten. It means freedom, but freedom in the Monomak sense, the type that implies a strong wind at your back and an open sea in front of you. What they have now is not freedom. It’s exile.
Karx inspects Bryn's old eyes, blue and weathered. They're good Monomak eyes, yet they've seen so much more than just the sea.
“We may both have been banished,” Karx decides, “but I have more in common with krakens-cursed Councillors than I do with you.”
Then he walks past Bryn into the city. His back is to the large athen, and every muscle in his body is tense from turning his back to a stranger. Yet if Bryn has any traces of vestigial Monomak honor, he would never strike someone from behind. Karx measures his pace slowly. It's a test, a reckless one, but one he can't resist giving.
When Karx reaches the dark jungle covering with his heart still beating, he knows. He turns.
"Gondre yhden Monomak," he tells the old exile.
You, my cousin, belong to the Monomak. You, my cousin, still live on the seas.
Bryn glances up, a weary look on his face, but something in his eyes is alive, yearning for the sea like Karx does. He shakes his head, looks to the ground. Then he says something so quiet that Karx cannot hear.
"Dywan."

Always.