Layers, G
Summary: Jon wants to peel back Zahir's character.

Zahir had many layers. Jon knew that when he chose him as a squire, yet the young man was frustratingly difficult to penetrate. It was three years later, and Jon was sure that he'd only seen a part of him.

On the outside was the proud, prickly Bazhir. His family was as old as the Conte line, if not older, and the man was extremely aware of that fact. It gave him a haughty tone to every word, and gesture, and likely thought, judging from the slight sneer that often settled on his lips.

That was not everything, though. It had taken Jon nine months to see more than a glimpse of the next layer, one fundamentally opposite to the surface. The next layer was uncertainty, seen in nervous fingers on a sword hilt. Once Jon spied him in the practice courts at night, shirtless against the night chill, as he worked practice patterns and prayed upon a hapless straw dummy.

That was not all.

Jon was still not certain that the next layer of Zahir existed. He'd only seen flashes of it personally, but more often he saw the aftereffects. An extra portion of grain in his mount's feeding box, for one, but that could be contributed more to care of an animal than genuine kindness. The same was true for the gleaming coats on both of their horses after a morning ride.

What confirmed it for Jon was when he heard that his squire had defended a servant girl from a few teasing boys. Being curious, the king confronted his squire, but Zahir simply went cold and shifted to his ever-present surface layer. The Bazhir sneered as he derided the pack of boys as 'mongrels preying on the weak,' but Jon saw his clenched fists. Clearly, they had struck a nerve in his cold, layered squire.

One day, weeks later, Jon passed the door leading to his squire's room. He hardly noted it as he strode through - his mind was on some piddly problem that apparently only the king could solve - but the low sound of weeping stopped him in his tracks. Shocked, he put his ear to the door and decided that it most assuredly was his squire.

Jon quietly knocked but didn't wait for an answer. He opened the door to see Zahir, head cradled in his hands, glistening tears seeping through his hands. One of the tomes on Bazhir history lay open in front of him.

Zahir glanced up at his knight-master, then looked away, ashamed.

The core of Zahir was laid open, cut to the quick, and Jon drew in a quick breath. All of the bravado, the posturing, the pride, that was all a mask, not a true layer at all. Or, he amended, it was a mask that had been worn so often that it had become the truth, but at this moment, Jon looked upon the real Zahir.

Jon quietly shut the door and leaned against it, peering with soft eyes at his worn, red-eyed squire.

The silence stretched out until it became a physical presence in the room and Zahir finally burst from it. "How do you do it?" he cried.

Jon smiled sadly. He understood completely, needing no explanation. "One day at a time. It's not easy, but it's necessary."

Zahir gestured towards the open book. "I can't believe that you know all of this. I grew up with these stories, but..." He trailed away helplessly.

Jon carefully lowered himself to the floor and picked up the book. Quickly, he skimmed it, cleared his throat, and read it aloud in the original Bazhir tongue.

The look on Zahir's face was priceless.

Jon finished the end of the passage and carefully passed back the fragile book. "I had a very good teacher," he said. "The Voice before me gathered a detailed history of his people. Our people. He read aloud to me every day for months until I could recite it back."

"That's... daunting," admitted Zahir. "I would not have been able to do such a thing." There it was, the next and final layer. Fear, and the burning desire to overcome it.

The king shrugged. "You already have, as a young boy coming to a land far removed from your own, speaking and reading a different language, and adjusting to foreign customs. You had no assurances but that of your old enemy."

"And the Voice."

Jon nodded. "As I've come to learn, the two must be mutually exclusive. That is why you will make a better Voice than I. Though the tribes may not war upon the Voice, there are other ways to demonstrate unhappiness, and there are many forms of subtle rebellion. You are Bazhir."

Zahir shook his head and laughed a low, rueful chuckle. "I am hardly Bazhir after seven years in the land of our ancient enemy."

"Nor are you Tortallan. You are a mix of both, and that will allow you to divert future conflict." Jon stood up, ignoring the protesting in his joints from sitting on a hard surface. "You asked how I can do it? Ask that of yourself, for you are the only one who can."

At the forlorn look in the boy's eyes, Jon stretched out a gentle hand and placed it on his firm shoulder. "Everyone has doubts and uncertainties, Zahir. Even kings and Voices. You will be better than I ever could hope to be."