#30 - Will I Call You Teacher?

The doors were no longer being locked.  There were no guards.  Ahrimaz just couldn’t make himself leave the cell by himself.  Any time someone called him out, he would go.  Not willingly but he would step outside as he was asked.

He looked up from the remains of his breakfast, peasant oat cakes in the winter and found Rutaçyen standing on the other side of the bars.  He startled back then set his hands flat on the table.  “Don’t DO that,” he snapped.

She tilted her head to one side.  She was wearing the plain cottons most of them wore indoors.  “Do what?  Walk? Stand?”

“Sneak UP on me like that,” he snarled.

“I see.”  But she didn’t apologize. “ Finished breakfast?”

“Just,” he snapped and drained the dregs of his malik.  “Now I’m done.”

“Good.  We need to get you working out regularly instead of all these wild attempts at killing followed by your exhausted collapse.  It’s not good for you.”

“You who were my mother’s fetch are truly a war teacher here?”

“Yes.”  She turned and walked out of the hall.  “Come along.  You’re lucky,” she said over her shoulder as he stood up, fuming that she was just strolling away from him.  “I don’t take many students anymore.”

He snatched the cell door open, trotting after her.  “New student?  I’m Limyé’s patient not your student!” He reached out to grab her shoulder and found he had hold of nothing, stumbling forward as she turned and put one finger under his elbow and somehow he was falling. He rolled to his feet and found himself with her flat hand resting gently against his nose even before he could get his hands up.

“Let us continue this in the salle, shall we?” She turned, waving her hand to indicate they should continue walking just as if he had never tried to grab her. He set his teeth and clenched his hands together at the small of his back, walking beside her as if they strolled in a garden.

“I suggest we do some work and then you decide if you wish to accept me as teacher,” she said mildly.  “I am busy and do not really need another private student, but if you decide then I will grant you that.”  She looked at him sideways.  “How damaged is my other self?”

He snorted.  “Like a burnt out building.  Nothing in her life but embroidery and power games that were going to get her executed one day.”

“Attempting suicide by Emperor?” He stopped and stared at her.

“Exactly.  I never thought of that.  Father ruined any chance of her doing anything but replacing m… m…mother.”

“I’m astonished how close our two worlds are, even as they are so wildly different.  I didn’t find out I had a vocation for warrior priestess until our Ahrimaz was captured by the mad old Cylak.”

“When was that?”  He found himself curious.  He held the door for her without thinking and she smiled and bowed herself in.  He followed, bowing himself in, formally.

“About fifteen, maybe sixteen years ago.”

Ahrimaz stopped.  “That was when… that was when…”

“When your father killed my sister in that world and forced my other self to take her place.  No wonder she’s broken.”   

The river wasn’t running through the salle today, shut off completely, leaving a dry stream bed in the middle of the room.  She led him to a low table with cushions and a stack of paper.  “Sit down, hhhm.  What shall I call you?  I can just use your name but find I want to address you as student, or lad, but those are not appropriate and I refuse to call you Shit-Head.”

Ahrimaz had a laugh startled out of him.  “Um… Ahri?  You and I are closer than almost anyone here.”

“Ahri it is.  Please sit.”  He settled.  “I’d like you to mix the ink please.”

“You don’t have fountain—ah.  It is the old brush.”

“Indeed.  Ink stone, brush. Paper.”

He took up the stone, chipped a fragment off and ground it to powder.  Tipped it into the ink well, and did it again as it was not enough.  “Tedious.”

She sat opposite him, hands open in her lap, watching.  “Interesting that you know how much is enough, when you have pre-made ink for you at home.”

He shrugged, added a bit of gum to the grind and then fluid from the eyedropper bottle. “I had a calligraphy teacher when I was a little boy.” She nodded.

“Draw me a line,” she said.

Ahrimaz stared at her, shrugged, dipped the brush and then realized he’d not laid out the paper.  He set the brush down, grabbed the top sheet, and the brush rolled to spatter on the floor.  He cursed under his breath. “Scorch.”

“Breathe,” she said.

He snapped his gaze up at her, suddenly enraged, drew breath harsh through his nose.  He laid out the page, picked up the brush, smashed it into the ink pot and slashed a line across it.  “There!”

“Good,” she said.  “Again.”

“Why?  This is stupid!” He laid another ragged, splattered and blotched line down.  Then a third when she nodded.  “I’ve never had a fight teacher have me do something so asinine!”

Ink spots spattered the page and his hands, made dark circles and smears on his pants and shirt.  He was suddenly aware that he must have ink on his face.

“In your world do you have the book ‘Sword of Ink’?”  She asked.

“No.  It sounds like witchcrafty stuff and was likely burnt or hidden in the forbidden archives.”

“I see,” she said and held out her hand for his damaged, mangled brush.  She drew it softly through a cloth and laid out a sheet of paper on the floor by her knee.  She dipped the brush and drew three graceful lines on the page.  “Like so.  Each line is a sword stroke.” As she finished the last line the brush was empty of ink and she placed the poor battered think in its rest.  “Come run with me.”

He rose to run the circuit around the salle with her, fuming at his own ink-spattered state and whining inside that her hands and clothes were clean.  “Sword of Ink?” he asked, drawing up beside her.

“It’s a good book,” she said.  “A little faster.  I’m going to be careful today.  Limyé advised me how much you could do.”

“I can do it,” he snarled, and stepped up his pace to match hers, hands clenched.  “I can do more.”

“Of course.”