“ENUFF!” repeated Mistress Jek. “Everyone shut yer mouths RIGHT NOW!”

Everyone froze, from Master Jek, who was scowling at his finger; to the boys, who were swarming Taila and trying to pry open her hands; to Taila herself, who was stamping her feet in the beginnings of a major tantrum. Poor Bobo had been frozen all along while her employers fought.

“I’ve had ENUFF!” Mistress Jek stomped up to her husband, shoved her face into his, and shouted, “I am not a drunk or a crazy or a capper neither! The god came right down here to OUR yard.” She stabbed a finger at the spot where Flicker had appeared. “He told us IN PERSON that that turtle is an emi – emis – emis’ry of the gods. You will treat it with respect, because if you don’t, then you are DISRESPECTING THE GODS and Heaven will smite you with lightning!”

That was one lady with good lungs, I thought, impressed and even faintly awed by the display. That pitiful traveling mage, Floridiana, could have taken lessons from Mistress Jek. Who needed to learn magic to project your voice when you could develop lungs like that?

Master Jek had taken a hasty step back when his wife began to bellow, and as she continued her harangue, he seemed to shrink. It was as if the physical force of her words – and probably her breath – were striking him and compressing him into a doll-like caricature of himself.

(Yes, humans can shrink like that. I’d done it myself to many of Cassius’ officials, albeit not by shouting. Smiling vitriol can accomplish the same effect with a much lower energy cost, while boosting your social standing. Maybe I should teach Mistress Jek sarcasm along with proper diction.)

In the end, Master Jek mustered a final defiant “Don’t be so extra, woman,” but in such a low mutter that he had plausible deniability if she called him out.

She didn’t. Chest heaving, she spun on her offspring. “Okay. Taila, gimme the emis’ry.”

Eyes as huge as a lemur’s, Taila deposited me in her mother’s hands.

Mistress Jek cupped me in her palms with satisfying reverence, raised me to eye level, and apologized, “Great One, I am so, so sorry about my fam’ly. My husband’s just shook. Please forgive us. It won’t happen again. You said something about ‘etikit’ lessons? We’re ready now.”

Etiquette was what I’d planned to start with, but now I was wondering if writing should come first. Because if none of the Jeks could write, then how would they take notes that they could review on their own? I certainly wasn’t going to supervise them all hours of the day. And I doubted their brains were up to the task of remembering every word I uttered. You got the occasional human with an eidetic memory, but these ones looked pretty ordinary to me.

Except – even if I taught them how to write, they didn’t have paper either, so what would they write their notes on? Bark? Corn husks? Ugh, civilization really had benefits. Maybe I shouldn’t have deconstructed the empire quite so thoroughly.

Well, whatever. If I didn’t know the best place to begin, then I’d start in the middle, the way I had when I entered Cassius’ court. You couldn’t expect all learning to be as systematic as a dance manual.

Thank you, Mistress Jek. I gave her a gracious dip of my head to reward her support. We will commence with an overview of basic etiquette.

“What’s ‘co-mens’? What’s an ‘over-vu’? And what’s ‘etikit’?” whispered Nailus to the oldest boy, who elbowed and shushed him.

I didn’t bother to define the words for him. If he were smart enough, he’d pick them up from context. Immersion learning and all. Some of the Imperial tutors had championed it during their endless debates on the best pedagogical method to institute for the princes and princesses. Amusing that now Cassia Quarta had come full circle.

In Mistress Jek’s palms, I rotated so I could see everyone. Then I started with the most important rule: First, never interrupt a superior who is speaking.

Mistress Jek scowled over my head at all four of her children. Apparently, that was a lesson she’d tried and failed to teach them.

Bobo. I looked down at the viper.

She slithered to Mistress Jek’s feet and stood up on the tip of her tail. “Yes! Yes! Rosssie! I’m here! What do you need? How can I help?”

You are my teaching assistant, I reminded her. You will enforce the lessons I teach. For example – I pointed a foreleg at the middle brother, who was entertaining himself by digging a hole in the dirt with his toe – when a student isn’t paying attention, you will hit the back of his hand as punishment.

Bobo’s eyes practically popped out of her skull. “Hit! I will hit them? But Rosssie! I can’t hit….” Her voice trailed off at my glare.

I won’t repeat myself. Hit the back of that boy’s hand. Now.

“With what? How?” she pleaded.

“A stick. Your tail. I leave it to you. Just do it now.”

Terrified, Bobo looked from me to Mistress Jek, who nodded her permission.

That would not do. Bobo’s first allegiance needed to be to me. But I’d fix it later.

The viper crept around the yard until she found a small twig. Curling the tip of her tail around it, she went up to the middle brother. “Ma-Ma-Massster Cailus,” she stammered. “Pleassse…pleassse put out your hand.”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“You can’t hit me, Bobo,” he informed her, totally confident in his immunity from his parents’ hired help.

Said hired help cast a pathetic glance at me and Mistress Jek, who ordered, “Cailus! Yer hand! NOW!”

With a roll of his eyes, he thrust it at Bobo, and she tapped his knuckles with the twig.

Harder, I snapped. It’s not punishment if he can’t feel it.

Squinching up her face and cringing, she tapped him a little harder.

This was not going to work.

Mistress Jek apparently came to the same conclusion, because she transferred me to her left hand, strode forward, and smacked her son across the side of his head. There was a very satisfying crack.

Cailus yelped and cradled his skull. “Ma!”

“Behave! Or no dinner tonight! That goes for all of you!”

“Yes, Ma,” chorused the other children, shuffling their feet and avoiding looking at their brother.

I rewarded Mistress Jek with another nod. Thank you for your assistance. Now, let’s get back to work. Like I said, first of all, never interrupt a superior who is speaking. Second, never look sullen.

That one was mainly addressed at Cailus, who didn’t seem to take discipline well. His expression didn’t change one whit, but I didn’t want his mother to break his head in front of me either, so I went on.

Third, never talk with your mouth full. Fourth, never stand with your hands on your hips. Fifth, never slouch. Sixth, never clomp around on the flats of your feet….

The list went on for a while, as I threw in everything they did that bothered me. By the end, the adult Jeks’ eyes had glazed over, Bobo had tapped all of the children’s knuckles with her twig at least once, and Mistress Jek had clouted them for good measure. And, like his son, Master Jek had completely failed at not looking sullen.

Exhausted, I surveyed their blank faces. Do you remember all of that?

Led by Mistress Jek, they bobbed their heads, but I could tell they were lying.

Do you remember all of that? I asked Bobo, whose eyes slid away from mine.

“Ummm, it went a little fassst,” she said hesitantly. “Maybe if you sssaid it one more time…?”

Just like I’d thought. Without the ability to take notes, their memories simply weren’t up to the task. I’d have to teach them to write first after all.

Heaving a long, inward sigh, I announced, All right. Change of plan. You need to learn how to write. Bobo, hand me that twig and clear a patch of ground with your tail. Mistress Jek, put me down.

“Write?” blurted out the oldest boy. “Like a scholar?”

Yes. Do you have a problem with redressing your ignorance?

He blinked at me, then looked uncertainly at his parents. At the mention of writing, their faces had grown grave.

But Mistress Jek set me on the ground as I’d commanded, and told her son, “Do as the emis’ry says, Ailus.”

Most useful ally ever. The woman was growing on me, rough skin, chapped lips, coarse hair, and all.

I picked up the twig with my mouth – and then realized that I had no idea what to write. The Serican language consisted of tens of thousands of characters, which you memorized by copying them over and over, ad nauseam. I vaguely remembered the Imperial tutors arguing (they did that a lot) over some sort of phonetic syllabary that one of them had developed as a teaching device, but I couldn’t remember what it looked like or the arguments for and against its use.

Again, when in doubt, start in the middle.

All right, everyone get a stick. I’m going to write some basic words on the ground, and you’re going to copy them until you remember them.

What might a basic set of words look like? What was a simple sentence that a peasant might say? “I am a peasant”? No, too complicated. They probably didn’t know what “peasant” meant. Let’s go with “I am a farmer.”

Laboriously, I scratched “Ego sum agricola” into the hard earth while reading the sentence out loud. All of the Jeks and Bobo cocked their heads and followed my progress with fascination.

“So that’s how you write ‘farmer’,” muttered Master Jek to himself.

I considered instituting a rule that students couldn’t speak without permission, but it seemed like too much effort. Plus I wasn’t sure how well he’d would take to having Bobo rap his knuckles or his wife clout him across the ear. Enforcing the rule might cause more disruption than sporadic interruptions.

Now, here’s how you write “You are a farmer.” I scratched that into the ground too, and then proceeded to show them all the other variants: “He/she/it is a farmer,” “We are farmers,” “You are farmers,” and “They are farmers.”

As they set to work copying the sentences in hideous, deformed characters, I sat back and thought about what else literate people had to know. Unfortunately, Serican had tons of different endings that you added to nouns depending on how you used them in a sentence. The language also had tons of different conjugations for all the verbs depending on the tense, voice, and mood. Oof.

I’d spent a good decade at a public primary school in rural northwestern Serica, learning my reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic. And then when I’d moved to the nearest city, I’d had to unlearn many grammatical errors and relearn most of the syntax. The Jeks were going to have an even tougher time.

Well, no time like the present to start. I wrote out all possible declinations of the noun “farmer,” plus the full set of conjugations for the verb “to be.” It took a while.

All right. Memorize these. I’ll test you tomorrow morning.

“Tomorrow mornin’?” blurted out Master Jek. He threw down his stick and jumped to his feet. “You said it was just now. You di’nt say nothin’ about tomorrow!”

I glared at him, but this time he didn’t curl in on himself.

Even Mistress Jek sucked on her cheeks, worried. “Um, Great One, the plowin’…. Um. How long will this take? Don’t scholars take years to finish book learnin’?”

That was true, but – If you can’t write, then you can’t take notes. And if you can’t take notes, then you can’t remember everything I teach you. And if you can’t remember everything I teach you, then you can’t act as a good role model for Taila. She is the most important thing here.

All eyes turned to Taila. Surprisingly, the little girl still had her fist clenched around a sharp rock. With her tongue sticking out in concentration, she was carving lines into the packed earth that actually bore some resemblance to “I.”

Master Jek’s expression warred between fretful and proud. “My wife said you said sumthin’ about great things for Taila. What great things?”

What indeed?

Modeling my voice after that of Lady Fate, I intoned, The ways of the gods are mysterious. All shall be revealed in due time.

All of a sudden, I remembered something. Secrecy. I needed to bind them to secrecy.

This must remain a secret, I warned. If you tell anyone, the gods will become angry – at least, some god somewhere would be angry at Aurelia for circumventing the rules – and take away Taila’s great destiny – probably by recalling me to Heaven and re-reincarnating me as something horrible – and Taila will die young. Which, without me to protect her, she almost certainly would.

At those last four words, Mistress Jek nearly stopped breathing. Master Jek’s mouth opened and closed a few times.

“Well, of COURSE this will be a secret!” declared Mistress Jek, and Master Jek nodded vehemently. “Right? None of you would DARE tell your little friends, RIGHT?” She gave her three sons a hard stare.

“Aww, c’mon, Ma, who’d believe us?” they protested.

Satisfied that no one was going to brag and blab the story all over the Claymouth Barony, I ordered the Jeks back to work practicing characters and memorizing endings until the sky was pitch black. Then I finally dismissed them to finish their farm chores while Mistress Jek started a fire to cook dinner.

As for me, I headed for Caltrop Pond with Bobo. I needed to relax.