I promise. I'll be safe. The words do nothing to soothe the worry in Rehoboam's chest, but he cherishes them all the same for the comfort they might bring him once Azizi is gone. In his early adolescence, Reh had always assumed that his father's insistence on safety and caution were overblown, results of his own complicated past and unmoored in their family's present. The older he got, however, the more clearly he saw the dangers that lurked around every corner, waiting to ensnare those he cared about.
Azizi's face predictably fell at his command but he seemed to accept Rehoboam's implied reasoning; the Dunes were not safe for him while Nyimara continued to rule. The tobiano was pretty certain that she would not hesitate to take him to try and lure Shenzi in after what Azizi had told him, and doubly so if she knew what Azizi meant to Rehoboam.
As Rehoboam then went on to ask for Azizi's help with Shenzi, he could see the anger stirring in the sudden change in his companion's demeanor.
You shouldn't have promised her anything, the boy grumbles and his words cut more deeply than he intended. Azizi didn't know how right he was. There were a lot of things Rehoboam
shouldn't have done, but he had done them, and he could not take them back.
To his surprise, Zi's next words weren't rebuttals but a further divulgence of the boy's relationship with his mother. He hadn't realized that the two of them had seen each other again after the terrible fight between them, and the knowledge left him torn. Clearly it had not gone well, which meant that telling Azizi of the nebulous maybe-child might make it seem as though he had chosen sides in a war he hadn't not realized had escalated.
"No-" Reh answers quickly, painfully aware of much the tables had turned.
"She didn't make me do anything Zi." If anything, the blame was to lie with him, not with Shenzi. Much of that scuffle was a blur too wrapped up in the sensation and heat of the moment to allow for a clear timeline of who did what, much less to ascertain who had pushed it to something
else first. But it had, and Reh's conscience was far too guilty to allow Shenzi to take the blame.
Again the confession rises to his tongue, sitting sourly in his mouth while he watches Azizi's brows crowd together in concern, cowering in his own private agony. They stay there, stuck hard and fast while the gentler, softer things flow around them.
"I will," Reh promises, not knowing if he'll be able to keep it. He doesn't imagine Nyimara would have allowed him to exist this long if she meant to see him dead, but she's hard to predict and Salem is not an easy place to live.
The information that Azizi offered next was surprising, but the more Rehoboam thought about it, the more it made sense. Shenzi's absence did not make sense given that she was free, unless by some small happenstance neither Nyimara nor the Barb knew of the other's status. Reh had been half-dreading, half-eagerly awaiting the visage of Shenzi's face on the horizon ever since he'd arrived here, and yet it had not come.
Was it him?
Was his presence here the reason that Shenzi had not come back to Nyimara?
She might not know that he was neither here voluntarily nor was his imprisonment here related to her, but maybe she didn't know that. Maybe she'd simply learned that he was here and had decided to avoid him, lest either of them be forced to deal with the emotional consequences of that day.
"Maybe it's me?" There was no certainty in his voice, and the words tripped out of him before he could stop them. Heat rushed to his cheeks, and he tried in vain to cage his tongue again, but now that he had opened the tiniest crack into the prison he'd built for the truth, it was all pouring out.
"Look, Azizi, there's no easy way to say this." His eyes kept trying to slip away from him, terrified to see the anger and the hatred that would surely be reflected on Zi's face once he learned.
"When I saw your mom, we were sparring." Which was an understatement given the massive backlog of emotion that both of them carried, but was close enough to the truth.
"But after, we-" his face felt as if all of Salem's light was beaming directly down upon him all at once, exposing every secret that he had. He didn't imagine Azizi wanted any of the details (or really to know this at all), but his awkward start had left room for dastardly assumptions.
"She-"
His voice cut off again and he struggled to find the words, his eyes flicking across Zi's face.
"She, um," he swallowed hard, his skin twitching.
"What I mean to say," he said, drawing in a steadying breath. There was no going back now, no saving face or carefully lying. Enough of it had been spilled that if Zi were to actually find Shenzi, he would likely piece it together himself, and resent Rehoboam for not being man enough to say it.
"You might have a new sibling." The words felt heavy in the air, thick and dangerous and malignant. At the time, when it had happened, he hadn't been thinking about how much he might be costing himself, or Shenzi, or Azizi. Only that it had seemed right in the moment, an extension of their volatile history, and a messy, haphazard sort of glue for their broken family unit.