Chapter 40 Zayd: Lazy Old Fox

Chapter 40 Zayd: Lazy Old Fox
Zayd: Lazy Old Fox

The room was silent, the uncomfortable kind of silence. I looked around, skimming over the white pieces of furniture across the large room.

Matt saw me first. 

His expression flickered as usual when I walked into a room he occupied, a brief flicker of something caught between reverence and calculation, and he smoothed it over quickly into blankness. He was good at that.

My father didn't look up from the tablet in his lap.

Malik Ali Rayyan sat in his automatic wheelchair near the floor-to-ceiling window, the city spread out behind him like something he owned, which, in many ways, he did. The chair was new. Matte black with whisper-quiet motors, the kind of engineering that announced money without making noise about it. 

Just what he likes.

The old man himself was dressed simply, in a dark shirt and brown trousers, silver threading at the collar, reading glasses low on his nose. His hair had gone fully white now. I had noticed that the last time I'd seen him, whenever that was. 

Months ago or longer.

Matt was bent slightly at the shoulder, pointing at something on the tablet screen, explaining in a low and measured tone he reserved for when he wanted to sound indispensable.

I didn't announce myself.

I crossed the room, found the sofa furthest from the window, and dropped into it. One arm over the back, one leg crossed over the other. 

The leather was cold and I appreciated that. I tipped my head back and studied the ceiling for a moment, then looked sideways at a painting on the wall that I had never once liked, a smear of dark blues and greys that someone had once told me was worth more than a mid-range apartment building.

Ugly, that’s my simple thought about it.

My father continued scrolling.

Matt cleared his throat.

Neither of us acknowledged the other.

It went on like this for perhaps three minutes, which, in that particular silence, felt considerably longer. 

Then he spoke.

"The 6th hall." His voice was the same as it had always been. 
Unhurried. 
Precisely modulated. 

A voice that had never once needed to rise to command a room. "I want to understand how it came to be attacked before my own people brought it to my attention."

"Ask Matt," I said. I didn't move. "He controls the 6th hall."

Matt's jaw tightened. I didn't look at him directly but I had spent enough years in the same rooms as him to read his posture the way other men read words.

"He has operational oversight," my father said carefully. "The hall falls under your…"

"The hall falls under whoever is responsible for what happens in it." I finally tilted my head forward and looked at my father properly for the first time since walking in. 

He was already watching me. He had been, behind the stillness of his expression, behind the glasses and the scrolling. He was watching and measuring the way he always did. 

“Matt was there. I wasn't. He can explain the sequence of events better than I can."

He looked at Matt briefly, then back to the tablet.

"Were there losses?" he asked, and the question was directed at the air between us, at neither one of us specifically.

"No," I said.

He looked up again. 

This time something shifted slightly at the corner of his mouth. It wasn’t a smile, the old man did not smile the way other people smiled.

"You sound certain."

"I am."

"And why is that?"

I held his gaze. "Because I trained those men."

The room was quiet again.

Matt said nothing. There was nothing for him to say.

My father set the tablet down on his knee and folded his hands over it, entwining his long fingers which were exactly like mine except for the slightly aged skin that was barely visible 

"You visited the hall recently," he said. It was not a question.

"I visit when I want to."

"And you trained them."

"I trained them because no one else was doing it properly."

Another pause. 

He studied me for a moment.

"You could have been there when it happened," he said quietly.

"But I wasn't."

"No." He picked up the tablet again. "You weren't."

And that was that. He returned to his scrolling. Matt shifted his weight and began explaining something about the security footage from the hall's perimeter cameras. I stopped listening after the first few sentences.

The painting on the wall was still ugly.

I stretched my legs out and let the silence reassign itself, no longer heavy with expectation, just the ordinary quiet of men who had long since stopped requiring anything comfortable from each other.

It is nothing serious I guess. I would just sit through the silence until he goes away or something. I need to go back to Amrah as soon as possible.

Just when I got closer, this senile old man summoned me. 

I couldn’t help but wonder how we got so distant from each other. 

“You should go back to the 6th hall for now, don’t leave until I say otherwise” his hard voice brought me out of my straying thoughts. 

I frowned, showing how displeased I was with his decision.

“I have school…”

“You don’t need it”

“You can’t confine me in there because of someone else’s mistake” My voice came out harder than intended, I was letting my emotions run wild. 

I just couldn’t wait to get back to Amrah!

“You have made a lot of mistakes as well.”

“What…” 

“Van-Arther’s daughter”He cut me off again, leaving me speechless for a moment.

Of course, he knows… Why did I think I could hide that from him? 

“You can’t touch her”

“Depends on your performance, Rayyan”