"It's a boy, my lady."
The voice came from somewhere above me.
A woman was holding Namur in her arms. I could feel her hands trembling beneath the cloth wrapped around his small body, though I could not make out her face. Everything around him was nothing more than blurred shapes.
"Bring him here..." another voice said, weak with exhaustion.
"Yes, my lady."
A moment later, another pair of arms took him. The woman brought him closer to her face, and for the first time, Namur could see her clearly. The first thing I noticed was her pale blue eyes.
Was this his mother?
"Why isn't he crying?" she asked, a faint tremble entering her voice. "Is something wrong with him?"
The servant leaned closer to examine him.
"He appears healthy, my lady. Perhaps he is simply a quiet child."
The woman gently brushed the tip of one finger across Namur's cheek. He continued staring at her without reacting.
A weak smile appeared on his mother's lips.
"You're very brave" she whispered. "I only wish your father didn't have to work today. He would have been so happy to see you."
She held him tighter and rested her forehead gently against his.
"Your name will be Namur" she said. "So that you will always have a home, wherever life takes you."
A short while later, the servant took Namur again. They washed him, wrapped him in clean cloth, and eventually placed him beside his mother on the bed.
…
Now that I knew I would have to live through his entire life, I stopped worrying about my own situation and simply paid attention to everything happening around him.
The months passed quickly. His vision gradually became clearer.
Namur lived in a fairly large house near Uruk's market. It made sense once I learned more about his family. His father, Tirak, was the captain of one of the palace guard units and rarely spent much time at home.
Even without him, the house was rarely quiet.
Namur had two older siblings, Aren and Shala, both around four or five years older than him. There was also a young black dog named Gi that seemed to follow them everywhere, several servants moving constantly through the house, and, of course, his mother, Zana.
She doted on him.
She talked to him while she fed him, sang to him as she carried him around the house, and was always making faces or wiggling her fingers in front of him, trying to make him laugh.
"Come on, little one. Give me a smile."
Zana puffed out her cheeks, opened her eyes wide, then let the air out with a ridiculous sound.
Aren and Shala burst out laughing whenever they saw her do it.
Namur never did.
At first, Zana did not seem worried. But as the months passed and Namur's behavior did not change, she began to grow concerned.
Namur did not smile.
He did not startle when someone raised their voice. He never reached for his mother when he saw her approaching, and he did not even cry when he was hungry.
Once, Shala pinched him, and he immediately started crying. Pain, at least, made him react.
That was when I began to understand what was different about him.
The contrast with Liraya was impossible to miss. With her, every sensation seemed to turn into an emotion.
Namur was different.
His emotions were there, but they felt distant and muted. Because of that, everything else stood out far more clearly.
…
As the years passed, Namur's lack of emotion became harder and harder to ignore. His parents became increasingly worried, while Aren and Shala simply seemed to think there was something odd about their little brother.
But I could understand it in a way they could not.
At first, Namur's thoughts had been simple and repetitive. As he grew older, they became more complex, but one thing never changed. They were strangely rational.
Namur was incapable of feeling any strong emotion toward another person, even his own family.
That unsettled me.
I had thought Namur was just good at hiding his emotions. I was wrong. There was nothing to hide.
He could like something. He could feel comfortable. He could even be surprised. But none of it was strong enough to show on his face.
Namur himself gradually began to notice the difference.
The people around him constantly reacted in ways he could not understand or imitate. His mother smiled at things that meant nothing to him. His siblings laughed, became angry, cried, or got excited over things that barely caused a reaction in him.
'Why are they making that face?' I heard that thought more than once as he watched them.
'When am I going to start doing that?'
One afternoon, Namur looked at himself in a basin of water.
Earlier, Shala had smiled when someone gave her a sword. Namur pulled the corners of his mouth upward with his fingers, trying to make the same expression.
'It doesn't look right.' he thought.
He tried again.
Then he pulled his eyebrows together and looked at himself again. A few seconds later, he tried the smile once more.
Namur had learned to recognize emotions in other people. He knew what happiness, anger, and fear looked like. What he could not understand was why those expressions came naturally to everyone else but not to him.
After that, whenever he noticed an expression on someone's face, he would try to copy it later.
One day, Aren caught him doing it.
"What are you doing?"
Namur let go of his cheeks.
"Practicing."
Aren frowned. "Practicing what?"
"Smiling."
For a second, Aren looked like he was about to laugh.
"Very funny."
"I'm not joking."
The smile faded from Aren's face. Namur looked back at his reflection.
"I'm trying to learn how to do it properly."
Aren said nothing. His expression slowly changed, as if the truth were finally sinking in. Namur was not pretending. He really did not know how to smile.
Aren took a step back.
After that, he began avoiding Namur whenever he could and usually took Shala with him, claiming they had to train.
Zana never changed the way she treated him. She remained as loving as ever, even as he began to find her attention annoying.
Namur did not see much of his father. Tirak continued to spend most of his time with the palace guard, and even when he was home, he was often accompanied by other officers.
One evening, however, he returned alone. Namur was already in bed when he heard his parents arguing in the next room.
"You need to be here more often" Zana said. "He needs his father."
"I know."
"Do you? Because some weeks he barely sees you."
For a moment, Tirak said nothing.
"He is getting worse, Tirak. Aren is afraid of him now. The servants whisper about him when they think I cannot hear them, and Namur..." Her voice dropped. "I don't know what to do anymore."
Tirak sighed.
"What do you want me to do, Zana?"
"Be here."
"You know I can't."
"You think I don't know what I'm missing?" he asked. "Aren and Shala are growing up without me too. Half the time I come home, I find out something happened days ago because I wasn't here to see it."
Zana did not answer.
"But I command an entire unit. Those men depend on me. The palace depends on us. I cannot simply decide not to go because my family needs me that day."
His voice grew quieter. "I wish I could."
Namur listened from his bed without moving.
But nothing changed after that night.
Tirak continued spending most of his time away from home. Aren and Shala avoided Namur more and more, and even some of the servants had begun speaking to him only when they had to.
Zana was the only one who never pulled away.
Well, almost the only one.
Gi, seemed to seek him out more than anyone else did.
Zana was happy to see how close Gi had become to Namur. Maybe she thought the dog could help him in a way she could not.
So she asked Namur to help take care of him.
Before long, Gi was always at Namur's side. He saved food for him, played fetch with him, and even let the dog sleep beside him at night. To everyone else, they looked inseparable.
Namur did not feel the same way. Taking care of Gi was more of a nuisance than anything else.
…
When Namur turned eight, he began sword training like his older siblings. It did not take him long to discover something about himself.
He did not like pain.
That alone was enough to make him lazy when it came to training. He avoided it whenever he could, put in as little effort as possible, and quickly learned which excuses bought him a little more time away from the practice yard.
Tirak did not take it well. He seemed to believe that training would help Namur somehow, that discipline and routine might fix whatever was wrong with him.
More than once, he tried to punish Namur for it, but Zana almost always stepped in. Even Gi would sometimes place himself between them.
Whatever Tirak hoped to accomplish, it did little to change things at home. Aside from Zana and Gi, everyone else still avoided Namur whenever they could.
Namur did not care.
He never felt lonely.
By then, he knew he was different from everyone around him, and he had stopped wondering when that would change.
He had also learned how to deal with people.
Whenever he did something wrong, he apologized.
Not because he regretted what he had done, but because he had learned that people became easier to deal with after hearing the words.
Around that time, I also started to understand when Namur had lived. I would not be born for many years yet.
…
By the time Namur was twelve, little had changed.
One afternoon, he was sitting in the courtyard with Gi sprawled beside him, scratching the dog's belly. Not because he particularly wanted to, but because it was one of the few things that kept Gi still for more than a few seconds.
"It's an honor to have you in my home. What can I do for you?"
I recognized Tirak's voice immediately. Namur glanced over without much interest, and I saw someone I had not expected.
Kudur.
My uncle looked much younger than I remembered. He was walking beside Tirak across the courtyard, listening as the man spoke.
Kudur must have noticed Namur watching because his eyes soon shifted toward him.
"Is that one of your children?"
Tirak followed his gaze. For a moment, he looked almost at a loss for what to say.
"Yes... my youngest."
Something in his answer caught Kudur's attention.
"You don't sound very proud."
Tirak was quiet for a moment.
"It's complicated."
He hesitated before telling Kudur about Namur.
"There's something wrong with him" Tirak said. "I just don't know what. He seems... empty. He avoids training whenever he can, and he barely speaks to his brother and sister anymore."
Most children would have been hurt hearing their father talk about them that way.
Namur did not even blink. He simply kept scratching Gi's belly while the dog lay there with his tongue hanging out.
Over the next few months, my uncle visited the house several times. From what I could gather, he and Tirak were discussing some kind of assignment involving Tirak's unit.
And each time Kudur came, I noticed the same thing.
Sooner or later, his eyes found Namur.
There was interest there. Was he going to recruit him soon?
Namur was still being forced to train, so he eventually changed his approach. If he could not avoid it, then the simplest solution was to end each fight as quickly as possible. The sooner it ended, the fewer times he would be hit. And the fewer times he was hit, the less pain he would have to deal with.
So he stopped fighting the way his instructors expected him to.
He started aiming for places the other students instinctively protected even though they were supposed to be off-limits: the eyes, the throat, the groin.
No one liked it, but Namur kept doing it.
Pain still bothered him, but fear did not. He never flinched from an opening simply because taking it meant getting hit in return.
Whenever training ended, Gi would come running over and lick his hands while Namur sat on the ground catching his breath.
One afternoon, Namur was finishing a training session on his own when I heard someone clapping.
Namur looked toward the sound.
Kudur stood near the edge of the training yard.
By then, Namur knew enough to understand who the man was and how important he was. He immediately dropped to one knee
"Stand."
Namur obeyed and waited.
Kudur walked closer, studying him.
"What is wrong with you?" he asked. "Why do you always have that same look on your face?"
"I don't feel things the way other people do."
Kudur's expression changed slightly.
"Do you love your mother?"
"I don't know."
"Your father?"
"No"
"Your brother and sister?"
Namur shook his head. Kudur glanced toward Gi, who had settled beside Namur's leg.
"And him?"
Namur looked down at the dog. Then he shook his head again.
"My mother told me to take care of him."
Kudur stared at him for a few seconds. Then he reached for the dagger at his belt. He pulled it free and held it out by the handle.
"Take it."
Namur looked at the dagger, then at Kudur.
"Stab the dog."
"If I hurt him, my parents will punish me" Namur said.
Kudur looked around. "You won't be punished, and no one will know it was you. You have my word."
Namur thought about it for a moment. He walked over and took the dagger.
Gi's tail began wagging faster as he approached. The dog sat down and lifted his head, probably expecting food or a scratch beneath the chin.
Namur pinned Gi beneath one knee, using his weight to hold him down. Then he slipped a hand beneath the dog's jaw and drove the dagger into his throat.
Gi tried to pull away, but Namur held him in place as the dog thrashed against the ground. A wet sound came from his mouth.
Namur kept the blade there until Gi stopped moving.
Warm blood ran over his fingers.
I waited for something.
Guilt. Regret. Even fear after realizing what he had just done.
Nothing.
I was inside his mind. I could feel what he felt.
And there was nothing.
Namur looked back at Kudur. For a few seconds, my uncle said nothing. His eyes moved from the dead dog to Namur.
"You really felt nothing for him?"
"No."
Kudur held out his hand.
"Give me the dagger."
Namur handed it back. Kudur looked at him for another moment.
"I think you're going to be useful to me."
Namur never thought about Gi again.