"Look through it all you like." Javier sat down on the edge of his bed and began pulling off one of his boots. "Only the eyes of the damned can read it."
The soft leather cover felt hot against Kiram's palm. "That's not possible. Any script written can be learned and read."
"Of course it can be learned, but only for a price." Javier's tone was unconcerned, but when he looked up at Kiram his expression seemed so serious that Kiram found it difficult to meet his intense, dark gaze. "Relinquish your soul to me and I will reveal every mystery of the white hell to you."
Kiram didn't believe in the white hell but there was a strange appeal to the way Javier offered him the knowledge, like some exotic, dangerous proposition right out of the storybooks of his childhood. Such proposals always led the young heroes to adventure and romance.
Javier suddenly laughed and tossed his boot down on the floor.
"Are you actually considering the offer?" Javier shook his head. A lock of his black hair fell across his face and he shoved it back brusquely. "You'd sell your soul to me in exchange for a reading from my insane great-grandfather's diary? And they say all you Haldiim are clever conmen."
"I didn't agree," Kiram objected though he could feel a guilty heat flush his face. "I didn't even believe you."
"You did," Javier replied with a smile. "I could see it in your face."
"No, I didn't." Kiram sat down on his own bed. "I just didn't know what to say to you. You haven't even introduced yourself and here you are offering to buy my soul. How am I supposed to know that you aren't a madman?"
"Indeed." Javier relented so easily that it surprised Kiram. "Who's to say I'm not a madman?"
For a few moments there was silence. Kiram couldn't think of anything to say and Javier seemed intent on removing his remaining boot. At last, he placed the second boot beside the first and pushed them both to the foot of his bed and began to unbutton his jacket. "I assumed that Scholar Blasio told you who and what I am."
"He said that you were the only student here that had nothing to lose by having me in his room."
"Well, nothing except my privacy, it would appear." Javier's gaze flicked to the book in Kiram's hand.
"I explained that already." Again that intense heat flushed across Kiram's face. He prayed that the natural darkness of his skin would hide his guilty blush. "I apologized and I swear I won't do it again."
For some reason Javier laughed at this. "Do it all you like. Just remember that I may require payment of you in return."
Kiram thought Javier was joking again but he couldn't be absolutely certain.
Javier tossed his jacket onto his bed and then slid his long white fingers through the laces that held his shirt closed. He wore a gold medallion of some kind around his neck. Kiram wondered if it was another crest but his attention quickly slipped from the medallion as Javier pulled his shirt entirely off. Kiram couldn't help but notice how black the hair of Javier's chest looked against his pale skin. The sharp pattern of it was nothing like the blonde down of Kiram's own body.
Javier glanced to him and Kiram looked quickly away.
"To be honest, there's nothing of much interest in the book. Those marks around your bed are blessings to protect you in your sleep when your soul is vulnerable. This here," Javier pointed to one of the designs beside his stocking feet, "is a ward to keep the white hell that lives in me from hunting while I sleep. You should be safe."
"You really believe that there's a hell within you?" Kiram asked.
"I know there is," Javier replied and this time there was no trace of humor in his voice.
Javier loosed his belt buckle and pulled the leather belt out from the loops in his pants. Then he started working the tiny gold buttons of his pants apart. A surge of shock rushed through Kiram, though he could not quite bring himself to avert his gaze.
"Are you taking off all your clothes?"
Javier cocked his head slightly and regarded Kiram. "Why else would I be unbuttoning my pants?"
"Why are you taking them off?" Kiram ignored Javier's question.
"Well, while you might bathe fully dressed," Javier said with a smile, "I prefer to wash naked."
Kiram didn't have a reply for Javier's sarcasm. He busied himself with unpacking the belongings in his trunk. He heard Javier's pants fall to the floor.
"Did you leave any water?"
"What?" Kiram glanced back at Javier. Only the gold medallion remained on his body; otherwise he was a perfect expanse of white and black, like a figure seen at night when all the color had drained from the world. Only the faintest hint of red colored his nipples and genitals. As Kiram took in the sight he felt his face flushing once again.
"Water." Kiram belatedly remembered Javier's question. "There's enough water left for another bath."
"Excellent," Javier replied. "Saves you the work of hauling a bucket up for me."
He strode to the bathroom but didn't close the door behind him. Was that a normal Cadeleonian behavior or more hell-branded eccentricity? Almost unwillingly Kiram stole a glance at Javier's naked back.
Javier slid a ceramic tile aside to expose a cupboard in the bathroom wall. A shaving razor as well as towels, soap, and scrub brushes filled the space. Another clever design.
"Hey." Javier glanced back over his shoulder at Kiram. "Come over here and give me a hand."
"With what?" Kiram demanded. He hoped this wasn't more of Javier's strange humor.
Javier simply waved a scrub brush at him. Kiram rose and joined him in the bathroom.
There were dozens of common bathhouses back home in Anacleto but most were in the Cadeleonian section of the city. Kiram's family had two private baths and certainly would never have expected Kiram to have to scrub the back of some strange man. The idea of it both excited and unnerved him.
"What should I call you?" Javier asked as he soaped himself. Kiram watched the thick white bubbles slide along the curves of Javier's muscular shoulders and thighs. He wondered if all Cadeleonian men were so at ease in front of one another. Was it so common that the scents and sights of their naked bodies no longer affected them?
"Kiram is fine, unless students at the academy go by their family names."
"Given names, otherwise half the school would be answering to the name Grunito. There are two enrolled right now and more on the way."
"What about you," Kiram asked. "Just Javier?"
"Upperclassman Javier, if we're in public."
Kiram ran his hand over the bristles of the scrub-brush. They felt too stiff to use on skin as fine as Javier's. Though now that he was standing so close, Kiram could see that there were imperfections in Javier's body. The most noticeable was the raw, half-healed scar that ran up his left wrist.
Kiram placed the scrub brush against Javier's back and drew it gently up along the line of his spine and then over his jutting shoulder blades. Javier leaned back into Kiram's ministrations just slightly.
Other scars nicked and cut across Javier's lean body but most of those were much older and had faded to white. On Javier's right shoulder there was a circular scar that looked almost like a written word. Kiram didn't recognize it, but the shape was familiar. Kiram had no doubt that this, too, was written in that same hellscript. Scholar Blasio had called Javier hell-branded. Kiram wondered if this was the actual brand.
"Put some force into it," Javier instructed. "You're not brushing a kitten, you know."
Kiram scowled at Javier's back. He had wanted Javier to like his touch, not mock his ignorance. Kiram shoved the bristles of the scrub-brush hard against Javier's skin leaving a red track. Javier pulled back from him.
"Touchy, aren't you?"
"I'm just ensuring that you will be clean." Kiram could hear the petulance in his own voice.