Chapter Nineteen

THE TEACHER

Aitape was a medium-size city tucked away on Valgor’s southwestern coast renowned for its pebble beaches, temperate climate, and sophistication. It contained the confederation’s second largest university, a world famous library, and – not coincidentally, people said – a first-rate sanitarium. Royo had visited the city during the war, but all he remembered about it was the marble statue on the waterfront, a facsimile of a mythical mermaid who lured unsuspecting fishermen to their watery deaths. As he watched the statue pass his line of sight from his taxi, he recalled a fellow sailor insisting that someone must have bested the mermaid. After all, how else would anyone know of her beauty? Royo chuckled to himself as the taxi sped through the downtown toward a leafy suburban neighborhood.

It had been five years since Royo left Kirkwell for Ethosia. Since then he had held a variety of eclectic jobs, including bricklayer, hardware store clerk, teacher, and, most recently, literary magazine editor. Whatever his occupation, he had deliberately avoided setting down roots and making friends. He wanted to put his past behind him, but worried that someone might show up seeking revenge for something he had done. As a result, although he tried to be kind and considerate, he maintained a reserve that discouraged any intimacy and made it easier for him to leave and start his life anew. If he was often lonely, he was rarely unhappy; hard work, he had learned long ago, was the best antidepressant. Besides, he believed that his paranoia served him well. The People’s Syndicate was making inroads in Ethosia, moving into the power vacuum left by the crumbling Rowowan empire. Unlike many of his colleagues who were seduced by Syndicate rhetoric about serving the people, Royo recognized its hypocrisy from the start. He knew that a Syndicate-ruled Ethosia meant the end to whatever freedoms its citizens had enjoyed under either the Allerians or the Rowowans. For this reason he seized the opportunity to move to Valgor.

An acquaintance of an acquaintance had hired Royo as editor of a small fledgling literary magazine after learning of Royo’s love of books. As things turned out, Royo had an eye for talent and an understanding of the public’s tastes. Royo published mostly short stories about Ethosian life, but also dabbled in Allerian, Valgoran, and even Rowowan literature. His magazine gained a regional following among both the hoi polloi and critics. Royo, though, doubted that the magazine would survive the Syndicate takeover he was sure was coming – not in its current form anyway. He was therefore receptive when the headmaster of an elite Aitape school sent him a letter asking him to consider taking a well-paid post there teaching literature.

Vineyard Academy consisted of several sturdy brick buildings surrounded by a high stone wall. Its founder, Jacob Vineyard, had established the school fifty years earlier to prepare the scions of Aitape’s finest families for university work. Although it looked idyllic, it had fallen on hard times until a new chancellor expanded the school’s recruiting efforts to include the children of exiled Allerian and Ethosian families. After his taxi dropped him off, Royo walked through the iron gates and found his way to the administration wing. There a secretary introduced him to the headmaster, a tweedy balding man named Kyle Ronquillo. He seemed like the kind of person perfectly happy and comfortable pushing paper. The two men exchanged pleasantries for several minutes before getting down to business. For a half hour they discussed the job’s responsibilities, expectations, salary and benefits, and pedagogy. Royo was not an especially good interviewee, but Ronquillo’s questions seemed perfunctory and pro forma, as if he was merely going through the motions for a decision already made. Sure enough, at the interview’s end, Ronquillo said, “Thank you, Mr. Czezarchek. I’m authorized to offer you the position starting in the fall term. I really hope you will accept it.”

Although Royo asked for a few days to think about it, he knew he would take the job as soon as Ronquillo offered it. He suspected that it was only a matter of time before either the Syndicate conquered Ethosia or the principality degenerated into chaos. Either way, he wanted to be as far away as possible when it happened, and Valgor seemed as good a place as any to ride out the coming storm. After he left Ronquillo’s office, Royo walked around the campus, exploring its dorms, classrooms, and grounds. He especially enjoyed the star motif in the new chapel. He then took a taxi back to the hotel and the next day boarded a ferry for Ethosia. Once he reached Highrealm, he telegraphed Ronquillo to accept the job, submitted his resignation to the magazine, and packed his few belongings into a trunk. A week later he moved into one of the small apartments on campus that the school reserved for new single faculty.

Because Royo returned to Aitape late in the summer, he had only a few weeks to prepare for the fall term. Fortunately, he had taught before and was thoroughly familiar with the material. He also possessed considerable experience starting over in strange places. He knew that the thing to do was to work hard, keep his head down, and be kind to everyone. He explored the city, especially its bookstores and libraries. He was heartened by the faculty’s friendliness and comradery. It was a diverse mix of old and young, male and female, Valgoran and foreign, married and unmarried. He took a liking to the young math teacher, a roguish fellow whose wife insisted that he eat dinner with them once a week. The buxum librarian seemed interested in him. At lunch the teachers regaled him with war stories of their classroom experiences. They also poked fun at Ronquillo and his stiff bureaucratic ways, as well as the chancellor’s regal primness.

The evening before the first students arrived for fall term, Royo attended the academy’s traditional pre semester dinner. It was a formal affair, so Royo had to buy a new suit for the occasion. Approximately thirty faculty, staff, and administrators gathered in the cafeteria before the meal. Royo talked with the math teacher and flirted with the librarian. As they sat down around the long rectangular wooden table, the chancellor entered the room. The teachers nicknamed her the “ice queen” for her distant and unemotional ways. She had been gone all summer hobnobbing, fundraising, and recruiting. Royo was curious to meet her, but only caught a glimpse of her before everybody took their seats. From the other end of the table, Royo noticed that she looked a bit like the photos he remembered of Iona’s mother. She certainly lived up to her nickname: blonde hair tied up in a tight bun, spectacles, long-sleeved black blouse buttoned up to her neck, and a rather tight skirt down to her ankles.

Royo tried to avoid thinking much about Iona. The truth was that he felt some responsibility for her suicide. After all, he penned the letter that brought the Rowowans to Kirkwell in force and compelled the royal twins to flee for Valgor. He was also the one who placed on Iona the burden of stopping her brother. He had always believed that she was strong enough to handle such challenges, but apparently not. He was looking at the chancellor when someone down the table called her name. As she turned in her seat to respond, her eyes locked with Royo’s. It lasted only a second – less than that, really – but he recognized a spark of…something. Recognition? Acknowledgment? Affection? All of them? Royo was taken aback. By the time he refocused on her, she was speaking to Ronquillo and gave no indication that he existed. But he knew there was something there. As she continued her conversation with the headmaster, Royo gazed at her hair, her eyes, her face, her breasts. He had once memorized Iona’s features, but that was long ago when she was young. He stared at her hands. She had one around a bowl of peach cobbler. The other was tapping away furiously at a glass of wine. Just like Iona.

But Royo was not positive. After all, Iona had committed suicide years ago, and although her body was never found, every investigation concluded that she was dead. Moreover, when the chancellor introduced the new faculty after the dinner, she mispronounced Royo’s last name. Nor did she give any evidence of knowing him during their perfunctory introduction later. By the time Royo returned to his apartment at the evening’s end, he wondered if he imagined the whole thing. Perhaps the chancellor’s vague similarity to Iona caused some wishful thinking? He tried to convince himself that he imagined that look. His gut, though, told him otherwise.

Royo had few complaints about his job. The pay was good, and his students seemed interested in his lectures and reading assignments. Indeed, Royo had a knack for teaching and made it look easy. The chancellor, though, was like an itch he could not scratch. She did not mix much with the faculty, so Royo rarely saw her. When he did, she showed little interest in him, and in fact seemed to go out of her way to avoid him. For instance, she invited each teacher to lunch that term to discuss his or her classes, except for Royo. Instead, Ronquillo met with him for a few minutes at the end of the day. Puzzled, Royo made some discreet inquiries about her. He learned that she was an Allerian refugee who the board of directors hired as chancellor because its members assumed from her aristocratic demeanor that she had money to pump into the troubled school. As things turned out, she did not, but she turned the academy around by locating new donors and students. The story was that she told one generous benefactor that she was disappointed in the small amount of money he was giving to the school and demanded more. When he cut her a check, she looked at it, tore it in two, and insisted that he try again. Royo fed all this information into his mental hopper and sifted through it during his evening walks around the neighborhood. He thought about simply asking her, but he knew he would feel terribly foolish and embarrassed if she denied it. He needed to find another way.

One September day Royo turned his class over to a colleague and walked over to the administrative wing. Royo knew that Ronquillo was out of town and the secretary was at lunch, so the chancellor was the only person there. When she saw him enter the suite, she looked around frantically for a second, and then pretended she did not see him. Royo knocked on her open door to get her attention.

The chancellor looked up. “Mr. Czezarchek. Mr. Ronquillo isn’t here. Perhaps you can return tomorrow.”

Royo stayed put. “I’m sorry, but he asked me to give him an update on two of my students. He said it was urgent. Can I simply tell you?”

“Yes, of course.”

“The two students are Mr. Winters and Miss Scranton,” Royo said. He waited a couple seconds and narrowed his eyes. “Ma’am, you have lipstick on your teeth.”

Embarrassed and flustered, the chancellor grabbed a handkerchief from her top drawer and rubbed her front teeth with it.

Royo stayed silent until she said, “Well?”

“Oh,” said Royo. “It’s box in and box out for Mr. Winters.”

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“Box in and box out” was an old expression of unknown origin that students used at the royal academy when Royo and Iona were there to signify approval and satisfaction. Royo had never heard it anywhere except there.

The chancellor smiled. “Oh, that’s good to hear. What about Miss Scranton.”

Royo repeated the phrase. “Box in and box out for her too.”

“Good. Thank you, Mr. Czezarchek.”

Royo arched his eyebrows. “No problem. Good afternoon.”

As Royo walked out of the office, the chancellor called after him. “Mr. Czezarchek, I understand that you are doing a fine job for us. We’re glad you are here.”

Royo stopped and turned to her. “Thank you, ma’am. It’s good to be here.”

After he was gone, the chancellor exhaled deeply and resumed her work. Then, after she had replayed the conversation in her head, she exclaimed to herself, “That son-of-a-bitch!”

Royo was now sure the chancellor was Iona, but his certitude spawned more questions than answers. Why was she still alive? What was she doing working as chancellor of a Valgoran school? The questions that applied to his situation were creepier. Why had she arranged for him to teach there? Why was she hiding her identity from him? To complicate things, Iona had most likely figured out his ploy in her office and knew that he was on to her. Royo toyed with confronting her, but he again rejected the idea because he did not know how to respond if she simply denied who she was. Royo instead opted to take the path of least resistance and continue to behave normally. It was not difficult because in the ensuing weeks she became so distant that he did not even see her for days at a time.

At the same time, though, Royo increasingly resented the bizarre situation in which he found himself. He felt like Iona’s lab rat. It seemed that Iona had for unknown reasons tricked him back into an unpleasant life he had left behind, a life in which she haunted and dominated his thoughts. It was like his time at the royal academy all those years ago. One afternoon he noticed a group of children playing in a field across the road from his apartment. When one of them became unhappy with the game, he simply walked away. It suddenly occurred to Royo that he had the same option. He could simply leave the school at the end of the term and start his life over again – away from Iona and his past. He had done so before, albeit under different circumstances. He sent out inquiries to various magazines and journals on Valgor. Because his previous work in the field had garnered some attention, he got several offers based solely on his reputation. He opted to accept the post in the Valgor capital of Moresby as an assistant editor to Valgor’s largest and most respected literary journal.

Royo hoped to avoid an awkward farewell meeting with Iona. Indeed, he wanted as little to do with her as possible. On the last day of the term, he finished his work and submitted his grades. He then wrote a brief and direct resignation letter, including a forwarding address, and placed it in interoffice mail before he left for his apartment. He figured that by the time Iona opened it on Monday morning, he would be long gone. After packing his few belongings, he took a taxi to the train station, bought a ticket, and found a seat in the back corner of one of the cars. Although a part of him felt craven for leaving without saying goodbye to anyone, another part felt liberated. For much of his life he had been drawn into the orbits of people wealthier and more powerful than himself, often with tragic results. Those days, he promised himself, were over. He shut his eyes and dozed as he waited for the train to depart.

Unbeknownst to Royo, Iona and her secretary usually stayed late on the term’s last day to tie up the inevitable loose ends. As a result, the secretary was still at her desk when Royo popped his resignation letter in the dropbox. She retrieved it and the other pieces of mail and placed them in a pile for Iona to pick up on her way home. Iona did so before walking to her modest house across the street and uphill from the faculty apartments. Tired from a hectic week, she poured herself a glass of wine and ran a hot bath. Keeping the academy afloat and functioning was a grueling job. Although she had had considerable success, there was nothing easy about fundraising and recruiting. She was good at it though. It had been a steep and often embarrassing learning curve, but she had figured out that the key was to never approach anyone as a supplicant. Her success was no doubt a product of her imperious personality and forceful intellect. She was proud of her accomplishments because she had achieved them without the help of her family name, money, or connections. Unfortunately, there was also a downside. The long hours were not as bad as the accompanying loneliness. She could not share her past with anyone without risking her true identity. She instead erected a thick and impenetrable wall between herself and others. Intimacy was simply something she could not afford.

After easing herself into her bath, Iona reached for the stack of mail and began opening and skimming each letter, making mental notes on which required her personal attention and which she could delegate to others. Upon reading Royo’s resignation letter, she jumped out of the tub, grabbed a towel, and rushed over to her window. Looking downhill, she saw that Royo’s apartment lights were off, including the one above the stove that he always left on. She made some calculations, then threw on a dress. Although she rarely left her house without make-up and lipstick, she made an exception now. Grabbing her purse as she left, she climbed into her car and drove as fast as she could to the train station. By the time she arrived, the train to the capital was getting ready to depart. She did not have time to buy a ticket, and anyway she did not have any money, but she knew from her hardscrabble days that she could duck under a barricade on the far side of the platform and board the train undetected. Once onboard, she moved rapidly from car to car in search of Royo while at the same time keeping an eye out for the conductor. The cars were crowded and the lights dimmed, making the process difficult. Passengers stared at her because of her long blonde hair and thin dress clinging to her body. Finally, she spotted him dozing in the back next to a couple and their toddler. She hurried over and used her hip to carve out a spot for herself next to him, knocking the toddler off the seat and into the aisle in the process.

Royo knew it was Iona even before he opened one eye to look because he recognized her breathing pattern. It occurred to him that this was an odd and disturbing way of identifying someone. He was not happy to see her and did not want a confrontation.

“What are you doing here?” he whispered.

Iona wedged herself in closer to him and intertwined her arm with his. “I came to see you.”

Royo guffawed. “You had plenty of opportunities over the past four months to see me. Why now?” Before she could answer, he renewed his questioning. “Why did you even bring me here if you didn’t want to talk to me? What is wrong with you?”

Iona had been so focused on locating Royo that she had not thought much about what to say to him. Moreover, she was unsure of her feelings and motivations. Flustered by his barrage of questions, she started to respond, but could not articulate her complicated feelings. Finally, she opened her purse, fished around in it, and withdrew a clear vial that she placed in Royo’s hand.

“What’s this?” Royo asked.

“Poison.”

Royo narrowed his eyes. “Why are you carrying around a vial of poison?”

“I procured it the day I saw your name on the masthead of that magazine you used to work at,” Iona said.

“Why?”

“I blamed you for everything that happened to me. You betrayed our kingdom by working for the Rowowans, and your presence on Kirkwell set off the chain of events that led to…everything. You cost me my royal status. Now the Syndicate is overrunning and brutalizing my country and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Royo exclaimed.

The people in the seats around them turned to see what was going on. An embarrassed Iona implored to Royo, “Let me explain. Can we go somewhere quiet and talk? Can you meet me in the bar car while I go clean up?”

Royo looked at her in both horror and disgust, but finally nodded. With difficulty they pried themselves of out their seat. Royo walked down the aisle to the bar car while Iona ducked into the women’s restroom. She shut the door and tried to make herself presentable. She suddenly felt panicky and out of control, as if she had just realized that she was betting far more than she could afford to lose. At the same time, though, she could not understand her emotions. Meeting Royo had opened floodgates to feelings she forgot she possessed.

After throwing some water on her face, trying without success to put her hair in some order, and smoothing out her dress, Iona opened the restroom door. Two conductors were waiting for her. “That’s her,” said one. “I saw her sneak on the train.”

“Wait, wait,” Iona pleaded as the men hustled her off the train. “I have to meet someone. Let me go!”

The men ignored her protests and yanked her onto the platform just before the train pulled away from the station.

“No! No!” she yelled as she kicked at the men. Breaking away, she ran down the track after the train, but tripped and fell over a railroad tie, cutting her face in the process.

The men lifted her up forcefully and held her tight as she continued to struggle. Within minutes a policeman arrived to take her to the police station. On their way there he explained to her that the railroad had been having a lot of trouble with people boarding its trains without tickets, and was making an example out of her. At the police station the policeman led her to a cell and locked her in. As she sat down on the cot, he said, “You look like a whore.”

Iona looked up and remembered the last time she visited a cellblock. “You’re not the first person to tell me that.”

Iona took advantage of the opportunity her solitude in her cell afforded her to sort out her emotions. She did not understand why she reacted so strongly to a man she had not talked to in a long time. Then it occurred to her that the question suggested the answer. For years she had kept her identity secret by hiding her past and keeping her emotions bottled up inside. Doing so was lonely and stressful. She longed to confide in someone, to tell her story. When they were young, Royo had the ability to unlock her heart and get her to reveal her innermost thoughts. Perhaps seeing him triggered an instinctive response. He was after all just about the only person left on the planet who shared and understood her history. But now he was gone. Although a part of her wanted to cry, she realized that she needed all the haughtiness she could muster to bluster and bluff her way out of this situation.

An hour later the guard returned with Royo in tow. He unlocked the cell, ushered Royo in, handed him a first aid kit, and left. Royo looked down at Iona. “The last time we were in a jail our roles were reversed. Of course, I was facing execution; you’re facing a stiff fine.”

“How did you find me?” Iona asked.

Royo grabbed a chair from the other end of the cell, dragged it over in front of Iona, and sat down. He opened the first aid kit, removed a cotton swab, lifted her chin, and dabbed one of the cuts on her cheek.

“When you didn’t show up at the bar car, I asked the conductor,” he explained. “He told me what happened. I jumped off the train and walked back to the station. Those folks said you were here.”

Iona smiled. “That’s sweet of you.”

“Yes,” said Royo, still focused on her cuts. “Of course, everything I own is on its way to Moresby, so that’s a problem. But I decided that you’re more important.”

For the first time in years, Iona blushed.

Royo paused and stared at Iona. “Why didn’t you poison me? You had plenty of chances to take your revenge.”

Iona flared at the slightly mocking tone in his voice. “Don’t talk to me like that!”

“Okay, sorry. But you haven’t answered the question.”

Iona sighed. “Well, it occurred to me that we both made deals with the devil to live our own lives. I realized that it would be hypocritical for me to hold that against you. I just wish I could have done more with mine.”

“You know,” said Royo, “You don’t have to be a princess to help Alleria and live a fulfilling life. You just need to be you.”

Iona pursed her lips. “I never thought of it that way. Of course, I can’t do anything until I answer for this particular crime.”

Royo laughed. “I already took care of that. You’re free to go.”

“What did you tell the police?” Iona asked.

“That it was a lovers’ quarrel.”

Iona thought for a second. “Was it?”

Royo looked her in the eyes. “Iona, why did you come after me tonight?”

“Why did you come back for me?”

Royo smiled at her. “For the same reason, I guess.”