The next day, Volithur went through the same routine prior to dinner: breakfast, insane conditioning, hard sparring, cultivate during free time, lunch, hide and cultivate some more. After dinner, he found his way to the library, moving carefully to avoid encountering any of the nobles with a tendency to cause him problems.
He found Khana waiting for him. “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t show, Ward Harridan.”
“I have a longer walk to get here.”
Khana shrugged. “I’ll account for that tomorrow. Now teach me your method of calculating.”
“Can we use the chalkboard in the classroom?”
She hesitated. “Will you wash the board when we’re done?”
“Never mind. We can just do it mentally.”
“Would the chalkboard help?”
“Yes.”
Khana glared up at the ceiling. “I’ll clean the chalkboard after we’re done. I might as well prepare to perform domestic labor.”
When they stood in front of the chalkboard, it quickly became apparent that Khana could not divide numbers at all and could only multiply with great difficulty. She also lacked accuracy when it came to adding and subtracting large numbers, often forgetting to carry the one. Volithur decided that he might as well dive into the deep end and started teaching her the method of long division he’d learned on his home world.
Several frustrating hours passed before Khana called a halt, claiming her head hurt from thinking too hard. When Volithur inquired about his lesson on band communication, Khana sighed dramatically. “Your lesson can be first tomorrow so I don’t get too tired to teach again.”
“To keep it fair, maybe tomorrow should be only my lesson.”
Khana scoffed at the suggestion. “I need lessons more than you do.”
“And your needs count for more than mine because you are a noble,” he snapped, his irritation with her as a student finally boiling over.
“Yes,” she stated.
Volithur shook his head to clear it. Of course she thought that. Petty nobles were still a higher class than commoners, even if they might work in the same jobs. The fact that he could interact with her as an equal during their lessons shouldn’t be allowed to distort the reality of the world. “Well, I insist my lesson come first from now on.”
“I already said it would,” Khana snapped. “You are very annoying, Ward Harridan.”
He didn’t get another word in before she stomped out of the room. As he stared at the board covered in their chalk marks, Khana stomped back in with a rag and pail of water. “I’m not cleaning for your viewing pleasure, Ward Harridan.”
He performed an exaggerated bow. “Then I take my leave of you, Lord Khana.”
“Very humorous, Ward Harridan. Mock my drop in status. Next you can recount how I professed my love on stage for a man who has refused to even speak to me since.”
Volithur almost apologized, but he suspected she didn’t enjoy pity any more than he did. Instead, he left the palace for his hammock and another day.
Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!
His new schedule continued for two more days before Master Aramar and Master Dorian departed with their retinue. The brutal workouts and bruising sparring reverted to morning mobility and light sparring. Volithur continued the long stretches of aural and mental cultivation, finding he still enjoyed the peace found in those moments even as traumas faded into the past.
The exchange of lessons with Khana continued. They had each retreated away from open antagonism by shifting to a more formal relationship. For his part, Volithur felt bad that he had added in some small way to the misery of the girl’s current circumstances. Though she might not have it as bad as him, she also had yet to complete her fall from grace.
Khana’s demeanor towards him shifted when he showed up with a serious lump on his cheekbone the second day of their lessons. She had asked if he needed to return to the infirmary, and the way he had laughed it off as a minor bump seemed to have impressed on her the fact that he did not lead a charmed existence that would let him smoothly slide into the orbit of the Lord General.
Her improved attitude did not translate into competent instruction. Though she constantly remarked that Volithur must have a natural talent for the mental arts, the fact remained that he developed his mental voice slowly. To ‘speak’, he had to send vibrations into the mental band. It was a challenging skill to make any intelligible noise at all, but the sign of proficiency was duplicating the sound of your physical voice. True masters of the art could mimic any noise they heard onto the mental band.
Volithur’s goal was to achieve rudimentary competence. He didn’t quite know what his future would hold. Maybe he would become one of the servants who ran the cosmic chamber. Maybe he would be the guy who called out the time every fifteen minutes while the sun was up. Hopefully not a soldier. In addition to the moral reservations that Thassily expressed, Volithur neither wanted the risk nor enjoyed the lifestyle.
When it came to his role as a tutor, Volithur saw mixed results. Khana’s skill at mathematical operations improved greatly, but she could not grasp algebra – what the Xian termed variable calculations. Rather than obsess over the topic, Volithur concentrated on what he could do. If she intended to become the primitive equivalent of an accountant, then she wouldn’t need to be able to do more than she already could – just so long as she could quickly and accurately do what she already knew.
To that end, Volithur taught her every trick and shortcut he knew to improve her speed. Moving the decimal point to multiply by ten. The finger trick for nines. Memorizing multiplication tables for smaller numbers. It would not be accurate to say Khana was enthusiastic about learning, but she displayed some amount of pride in her progress.
Days passed in quick succession. The soldiers all shared a small canister of rum to celebrate the departure of the thirty-second son. Thassily had been there when the daughter of the brewer delivered the canister, and apparently instantly fallen into lust. From what he could put together from Thassily’s descriptions, the woman had an ample bosom and ample behind, both of which his friend appreciated.
Thus began The Adventures of Thassily, the tale of an untrustworthy narrator’s attempts to win the heart of the hot chick whose dad makes booze. The story mostly involved sneaking out after curfew to visit the distillery and offer free labor so that he could talk to the girl. There was a lot of flirtatious double entendre that Volithur was almost certain didn’t happen. In almost every installment the narrator performed a feat of strength that impressed either the girl or her father. There were challenges getting past the gate guards, who Thassily would avoid or bluff his way past. Volithur suspected the truth of those encounters could be summed up as his friend being recognized due to training with those soldiers.
Thassily told another installment of his adventures at breakfast each morning, which soon became the highlight of Volithur’s day. Though he knew them to be mostly embellishments, with a few overt lies sprinkled in for flavoring, they presented a narrative that was silly and fun. And there was some truth to the stories. His friend really did sneak out to the city every night. Whether or not the budding romance actually existed outside of Thassily’s head… well, that was the dramatic tension.
The most surprising development, as far as Volithur was concerned, was his progress in weaponless combat. A couple of new soldiers had joined the militia recently, young adults only a few years older than him. They were bigger and stronger, yet Volithur not only held his own in sparring, he could clobber them if he felt like turning up the heat.
The new guys would face squarely off with him and attack straight on like fools while Volithur cut angles to close the distance, then threw punches and kicks, hitting high and low, left and right, mixing up his striking to open up paths for the next hit. He finally had an inkling of what the older soldiers had been doing to him in sparring.
Those insights proved to be a very minor help when he faced off against better opponents. He began to sense how combinations were being used to draw him out of a solid defensive posture. Yet knowing the tactics being employed against him was only half the battle. Volithur still had trouble reigning in his impulses to flinch and reach with his blocks.
His steady efforts at cultivation didn’t show instant results, but Volithur knew the next level would take four times as long as the previous one. Level three took almost a month, so he was looking at four months. Longer, truthfully, since he no longer cultivated the entire day like he had in the infirmary.
It didn’t matter. Volithur had no intention of stopping.