The Grand Didaskalos dragged the young boy, as he kicked and screamed, into the classroom. Ervin could tell by the strength of his grip and the cool smile on his face that this was truly a veteran. He had no hope in the face of a true grandmaster.
The didaskalos handed Ervin a book and a mandate - “You have to answer 5 random questions when I come back. Aikaterine, you will teach him. If he answers all 5 correctly, then I will allow you to skip this week's number puzzles.”
In an instant, a fire was lit in the girl's emerald eyes. She finally had her out.
The boy gave a respectful glare at the grandmaster, fully aware of what he had done. The boy turned around and looked at the grandmaster's weapon, a short girl with a nonchalant look on her face.
Ervinos Mukuru grew up on stories of how bandit gangs survived despite being hunted by the knights. He understood well that to survive in enemy territory, one must try to make allies.
“How are you?” asked Ervin, bowing and introducing himself one more time. “I am Ervinos Mukuru of the great Mukuru family. Who are you?”
“Greetings, I am Aiketerine.” answered the girl as she opened a page in the book “I’m a student here, anyway let’s get star-”
“Do you live here?” came the follow-up question.
“I do. I go to Thalassanqaba every now and then because my mother keeps moving back and forth, but I mostly live on campus. What about you?”
“Paligxulu. It’s by the swamp-”
“Lands and the Mol River!” interrupted the little girl with some joy entering her voice, “I’ve heard so much but I’ve never visited. Alex brings me gifts whenever he makes the journey, so I can’t wait to see it for real.”
“If you come by I’ll make sure to show you the great Mol ravine, it's the most beautiful chasm in the nation.” offered the Mukuru, trying to ignore the fact that seemingly everyone called his father informally these days, “How do you know my father, by the way? Does he work closely with yours? What does he do?”
“Oh,” started the girl, now with a sullen look on her face, “My father….. He isn’t around any more.”
Ervin could see he had asked an unnecessary question, he apologised and quickly tried to change the topic, but the young girl was done with the small talk.
“I’d love to keep chatting, but what I want more is to skip my puzzles for the week.”
“You don’t have to bother” declared Ervin, forcing a confident smile, “My didaskalos at home has already taught me from that book. You can just take a nap or something.”
“Oh that’s great!” cheered the young girl, shutting the book in her hands, “Let’s just do a practice test then - 50 years ago the kingdom of Ikona instituted the Brilliant Mind doctrine, which set out the goal of making sure every single citizen can read and write our language. How far are we from that goal? If we picked 100 adult citizens from Ikona, how many of them would not be able to read and write?”
Ervin gave a meagre laugh, he was not prepared for any real investigation into his supposed knowledge. “Come on now, the exact number doesn’t matter so much. True learning is not about memorisation, it’s about the-”
“None of them!” shouted Katerine, who was beginning to feel like the boy was lying through his teeth. “What’s there to memorise? Are you sure you’ve ever read the book? This fact is in the first chapter! Or rather, are you a member of the efficiency school of thought? I know a lot of people refuse to learn the first chapter because they feel like spending all that money to make sure peasants and commoners are literate is a waste of money. If you’re a disciple of that school, then give me your reasoning instead.”
“That sounds wrong.” refuted Ervinos, his face growing less jovial, “I believe that a good scholar can come from anywhere, even if they have common blood. These children did not choose to be born peasants, denying them a school is punishing them for something they didn’t do. My problem is just I’m very bad at memorizing numbers and dates.”
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Ervin paused after he delivered that line. He was surprised at how much of Symeon Umpetha’s vocabulary he had imbibed, despite the remaining disagreements between them. For some reason, the emerald-haired girl had calmed down a little, with an approving look on her face.
“Okay, if you can’t memorise numbers then answer this: 10 years ago when didaskalos Injeli invented the blast furnace, what policies did the king pass to ensure its widespread adoption? Why did Ikona do this when the Diafthoreat Empire and Tian Mahajanapada did not?”
Ervin stayed silent, he had been exposed. “Listen, I’m probably not going to be able to answer those questions whether you teach me or not.” started the boy, picking a new line of attack.
“But I’ll tell you what, on my way here I saw a bazaar which looked amazing. I’m sure we’ll find something fun to do and nice to eat, how about we just sneak out there instead?”
The emerald-eyed girl paused and contemplated the offer. She remembered a fight she had earlier with her brother where he teased her for not having any friends to go to the bazaar with, so this would be a great way to show him his place. She also remembered her brother trying to teach her that if someone makes any sort of offer, she should never accept it on first asking; she stood her ground.
“That bazaar is up every weekend.” she responded, glibly, “There’s nothing there I haven’t seen.”
“But that’s where you’re wrong.” pounced Ervinos Mukuru, he was ready with his comeback “There’s this mysterious-looking travelling show that only just reached the kingdom. It’s called ‘The Origins of Life’, and it’s supposedly leaving Ikona by next week. This might be your only chance.”
Aikaterine was a curious girl, the mention of something new rarely failed to get her interest. But was she really going to do this? She had never disobeyed Grand Didaskalos Lumkile so blatantly before! The old man had annoyed her too much with those incessant puzzles of his. “Just so we’re clear.” she warned, “I’m not paying for anything you buy, okay?”
“Oh well, if you insist,” complained Ervin, stopping a victorious smile from showing on his face. No studies, and this girl won’t require him to pay for her? He had prepared to sacrifice far more than that.
Ervin caught Aikaterine’s hand, checked his surroundings, and then deftly sneaked out of the Heart of Learning. “By the way, Aikaterine.” whispered the boy, as they made their way out of the area, “You seem like a smart girl who likes studying, what’s so different about these puzzles the grand didaskalos has you doing?”
“Don’t get me started.” grumbled Aikaterine, “It’s not particularly fun, but I can add or multiply any two numbers you give me, but the didaskalos gives me these weird number word puzzles with no instructions on what you have to do with the numbers in the first place!”
“Ah, I know the type.” chuckled Ervin, these problems weren’t especially difficult for him, he failed to answer all of them just like he failed to answer most other questions posed by his didaskalos back home.
“And if I somehow get the answer right, the didaskalos switches out the numbers for these weird symbols, and then asks me to give him an answer!” continued the green-haired girl, “I don’t understand what he wants me to do. I've not got a single one of those puzzles right!”
For the first time, Ervin felt like he could relate to the girl's pain, he had never been assigned these ‘number-less number puzzles’ but was sure he would hate them if he ever was. “It seems you’re still better than me” vexed the young warrior, “My didaskalos keeps knocking me on the head when I make a mistake in the multiplication tables.”
Katerine couldn’t help but giggle when she saw the traumatized look on Ervin's face. “Memorization isn’t a problem for me,” smiled the scholarly girl, trying hard not to boast, “I can remember anything I see or hear perfectly. If I read a book once, it’s almost like the words are stuck in my head forever. It’s been this way all my life.”
“Amazing!” exclaimed Ervin, growing more impressed with his new bazaar partner. “I wish I had something like that. You must know everything that's been written down, then? What’s left for you to learn?”
“I wish.” deflected the young girl, not wanting to seem haughty, “Remembering is very different from understanding, there are many books that I can recite perfectly, but I don’t really understand what they mean and what their lessons are. I just don’t need to spend any time memorizing and can focus on understanding the meaning of things.”
The young girl noticed the building awe in her companion's eyes and switched the topic quickly. She never liked being idolized by her peers, she would much rather just be friends.
“Still, Ervinos, I don’t understand why you dislike learning about matters of the state so much.” wondered Aikaterine out loud, “Do you have any interests at all?”
“What’s there to like?” groused Ervinos, “It’s so hard to focus on all the little details and in the end I just don’t care about what King Agamemnon Ikona IV did during his reign. My true passion is the challenge of life and death - battle and war!”
“Hey, how can you say that?!” objected the administration enthusiast, pulling the boy by his shirt and dragging him towards a gulley on the side of the walkway.
Ervinos stared at the dirty stream of water trickling through the drain, unsure what to feel but disgust. “Aikaterine, You aren’t making a very convincing sales pitch here”, he said dismissively.
“This is one of a dense network of sewer drains that uses seawater to carry all of our waste back out into the North Sea.” lectured the frustrated young girl, “They keep expanding it, but the foundations were laid down by King Ikona I, back then Sufundiso was just a settlement!”
Ervin continued to stare blankly, now directly into the girl's soul, “OK but so what?”
“Look around you, these pretty buildings, the Heart of Learning, the bazaar we’re going to, none of this would be possible without a lot of people living so close together.” began Aikaterine, “But if you have people living close together, and you don’t properly dispose of their wastes and rubbish they start falling sick and the city will collapse. Do you think Sufundiso could support so many residents if this system wasn’t there? The founding king was able to see centuries into the future, he saw a small settlement, realized what it would be one day, and then invented a sewage system that was easy to maintain and could grow with the city.”
Ervin thought for a second, he couldn’t carelessly deny the value of a system that brought him the bazaar he was so excited to see. Within another second he had his answer, “You see, Aikaterine.” purred the young strategist with a teasing smile, “I never said matters of the state aren’t important, just that they’re so boring it feels like I’m going to fall asleep when studying it. Nothing can compare to the thrill of a well-executed battle, if I can have that, why should I bother about what our kingdom did hundreds of years ago.”
“Such a boy” exclaimed Aikaterine, clearly this one was too far gone to be saved. She put on her most disapproving face and walked into the bazaar.