There are markers in the language of his answer that Kahlil recognizes. Someone important to me. Them instead of her. It reminds him of one of his last conversations with Yu'mir, about how easily she assumed his own someone was a woman, a prostitute no less. That couldn't be further from the truth, but he couldn't tell her that the note he'd left earlier for that day was for a man, even if his intentions weren't romantic. It would have been suspicious in an already precarious situation.

The other truth was, though, that he did feel something for the man he worked for. And to confide in Yu'mir... he doesn't know what would have gone over worse: that he was reporting to a rival gaunsho's captain, or that he's attracted to men.

It was always, always better to let people assume what they naturally wanted to, in both parts of his life. In Basawar, in Nayeshi -

Here, it's different.

There was...someone important to me. We couldn't be together, because everything got in the way.

"I was roommates with someone for almost a year," he starts, meeting Wilhelm's guarded gaze. His own expression is regretful, and his brow pinches slightly. He glances up at the bare tree branches.

"He was very handsome, and kind, and smart. Sometimes I wondered what it might have been like if we met under different circumstances - I think he thought I was very strange, and I... didn't want to make things more awkward."

It's not Alidas he means, but John.

Jahn, Jath'ibaye. The Rifter. Kahlil's whole reason for being. The god he failed to kill, the god gave his life to. But for almost a year, on those nights and mornings they sometimes spent watching baseball or eating breakfast, he wasn't the Kahlil. He could pretend to be only Kyle, and John was just John - a graduate student obsessed with environmental sciences and a sports team that never seemed to win anything.