Two Eyes Cenote Dinner & Diatribes

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and quite a story it was.

khusobek's lips flicked in a quick smile. "you should never have been underestimated." machiavelli spoke with such a warmth that the crocodile might have thought the torment in the cells a dream — had he not seen his own marks bit into the same muzzle which now spoke in such airy tones.

though he would not say it, though there was no reason to bring up what had been buried, the very silver of machiavelli's tongue was why khusobek had moved to bind it. disarming, personable, cunning; he saw the survivor's iron beneath the sculpted beauty.

he had seen it inside other prisons and within harems; he had seen it in the terrified, dying eyes of a selfish priest's young concubine. forbidden to the holy man by dint of his very worship, the girl had been a possession. like machiavelli. but unlike the man before khusobek who had leveraged many parts of himself to become something more, she had died, hidden in the early stages of her labor until it was too late for the midwives to intervene.

he had seen it then, and he saw it now. what existed between khusobek and machiavelli was the profane unsaid, the sum of trials that carved both into what they now were.

such things needed no words to be understood. "you have earned your trust," the man spoke all the same, shifting as he watched the servant.

"the palace has that effect," he said quietly. "perhaps you should see akashingo also. there could be — efforts for you to pursue in both places. a school, maybe, for fellahin." testing, awed by his own thought; the crocodile was silent now.