The Ardoon King Read online

  Chapter 22: Taming of the Shrew

  Alone in the Queen’s Suite, Fiela glowered at the thick book Thal had placed on her nightstand: Sumerian commerce in the era of the Madihee, Volume III.

  “You’ve got to be shitting me!” she mumbled. “There’s a third volume?”

  This was getting out of hand, Fiela decided. She had spent the past five days trying to find a way to convince Thal to abandon her assigned role as mentor. Fiela pretended not to understand some things the woman tried to teach her and willed herself not to understand others. She slouched and slumped and made a point of seeming always bored, even when a topic interested her. She performed all tasks assigned to her as slowly as possible.

  It didn’t matter. Thal did not relent.

  The young queen wished she understood the mystical power of others, including even the Ardoon, to not do what they were told to do by those in charge of them. If she could simply disobey Thal, that would put an end to this learning nonsense quickly, she was sure. Yet she could not grasp how such a thing was done. True, she could vocalize the word ‘no’ when given a command, and if she mustered all her will she could even delay her acquiescence by a second or two. But that was the limit of her power. Even these small acts of defiance resulted in long periods of depression and anxiety.

  She had asked Disparthian, who had broken the genetic spell cast on the Peth, to explain disobedience to her. He had said that only age permitted the mutation. Perhaps in a decade she might be able to taste a little rebellion. He warned her that the mutation was imperfect and drove most Peth insane, as it had Moros. When she asked what disobedience felt like, he could not answer. His parting counsel was that Fiela not ponder such things just yet. There were, after all, only two people in the entire world who had had authority over her – and they loved her.

  Fiela decided he was right.

  Until now.

  Thal entered the Queen’s Suite to find Fiela angrily slamming a wardrobe door closed. The girl was wrapped in a towel, her red hair wet and her skin glossy with freshly-applied lotion. She cursed and turned and took a step back when she realized that she was not alone in the room.

  “I thought you were in the library,” Fiela said awkwardly, pulling the towel tighter around her body.

  Thal walked toward a large ottoman, a book in one hand. “I was. But it’s boring there without Ben to talk to. I thought I might take this opportunity to do some guilty-pleasure reading.” She held her book in the air to allow Fiela to examine the cover. It was a pulp romance with an elegant damsel being carried across a bridge by a long-haired swashbuckler. “It’s terrible, truly. I can almost feel my brain’s neurons misfiring as I read this stuff. We all have our vices.”

  “I guess,” Fiela said as the woman plopped into the plush chair and began reading.

  “Why aren’t you dressed?” asked Thal.

  “The fetches are late,” replied Fiela unhappily. “My wardrobe is empty. I don’t have any clean clothes.”

  Without looking up, Thal said, “No, the fetches have been here. They brought my clothes just this morning.”

  “Where are mine?”

  The other woman lowered her book. “I assume they are in the clothes hamper, and still dirty, unless you asked that they be laundered.”

  “I saw fetches collect your laundry yesterday! They should have collected mine, also!”

  “Did you ask them to, Fiela?”

  “No. Why didn’t you ask them to?”

  “Because while you are my responsibility, your clothes are not.”

  Fiela stamped a heel on the floor. “Oh! Why must you be inconsiderate?”

  “Inconsiderate?” The woman looked shocked. Throwing the book aside, she rose and rapidly walked to the empty wardrobe. Opening the door, she removed a dozen wire hangers, which she carried to the bathroom. As Fiela watched, mystified, the woman placed them on the sink counter and knelt. She opened a bottom cabinet door and withdrew a large plastic bottle.

  “This,” she said, turning and waving the bottle at Fiela, “is laundry detergent. You can fill the tub with water and wash your dirty clothes there, rinse them in the sink, and then hang them above the bathtub to dry.”

  Fiela, seeing the repercussions of her outburst, said, “I am sorry, Thal. I did not mean to raise my voice. I can call a fetch and-”

  “No. You’ll do your own laundry in the manner I have prescribed. After that you will mop and wax the floor.”

  Fiela’s eyes almost popped out of her head. The Queen’s Suite, with its checkered, marble floor, was larger than most Las Vegas penthouses had been. “What? Lilitu is coming. Remember? You asked her to come here to practice Akkadian with me!”

  “I think it is within your ability to speak and clean at the same time.”

  “That is unfair! I have apologized. Why are you so strict? Do I not always do what you require of me?”

  Thal placed the detergent next to the sink and walked back into the room, stopping in front of the girl. “Yes, you are a highly obedient sloth. If I task you with chores you take forever to complete them in order to avoid additional chores, or in hopes of avoiding your lessons. You rarely, if ever, take the initiative to get anything done. You protest our situation by remaining idle until I tell you to do something and then move without any sense of purpose. You intend to wear me down.”

  “I do what you require! That is all I am charged to do. It is unfair that I should have chores, anyway. We have fetches!”

  “I only make you do such things as a punishment for being obstinate.”

  “Then strike me!” the girl yelled, her temper boiling over. “I am Peth! I was beaten regularly at the academy for far less. Torture me if you like! It is your right! But do not treat me like a servant!”

  Thal glared at Fiela. “Strike you? Torture you?” she asked, amazed. “Do you think me capable of such hideous acts? Do you truly think I would ever raise a hand against you?”

  Fiela shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?” Her mentor crossed her arms. A long, uneasy silence followed. At last she said, “Fiela, I have shown you nothing by kindness. I am trying to equip you for your role as queen. I am trying to protect you. I am trying to help you protect yourself. You are more than twenty years of age, a queen, and a wife, yet you behave like a spoiled Ardoon teenager.”

  As Fiela readied a sharp retort, her mentor made a pathetic sound and hastily turned, bringing a hand up to her face. The sob that followed was almost undiscernible. It sucked the air out of Fiela’s lungs.

  “Don’t,” she said, taking a step forward. “Please, Thal. I spoke rashly.”

  The woman, her back still turned, waved the girl way. “Wait,” she said in a husky voice, wiping at her eyes with a forearm.

  Several minutes passed. Fiela, chin down, waited, her sense of guilt almost unbearable. She was very close to crying herself. She wanted to rush forward and hug her mentor and beg forgiveness. She would promise to behave. All would be well, then. The only thing that prevented her was the woman’s command. Wait.

  After what seemed like many lives to Fiela, Thal turned, her cheeks dry but her eyes still moist. “I’m sorry,” the woman said. “That was unprofessional.”

  “Unprofessional? To cry?”

  “Yes. It won’t happen again.”

  Fiela didn’t know what to say. Thal was apologizing to her?

  “Tell me,” the woman continued, “does Lilitu beat you? Is that why you said what you said? Does she mistreat you, Fiela?”

  “What?” responded Fiela, shocked. “No! She loves me!”

  Thal nodded, again wiping at her eyes. She looked disgusted at her inability to stop the tears. “She has never struck you? Tell me the truth, Fiela. I am aware of her reputation.”

  Panic seized the girl. She was unable to lie to an authority figure. Not well, at least. “Please do not ask me that, Thal! Let us pretend this never happened. Can we not start over?”

  Thal froze. “She
has abused you?”

  “No!” whined the girl, her stomach in knots. The situation was spiraling out of control. “Not really. She has never done anything I did not deserve, truly. She is not evil, Thal. You take things the wrong way!”

  “What did you do that justified her striking you?” challenged the woman.

  “Oh please!” said Fiela. “I beg you, do not ask me these kinds of things! It is not your affair. If Ben learned-”

  “If Ben learned what?”

  “It was only once, okay? She only struck me in anger once. Once! We have known each other our entire lives! Even that once she only did so because she had to. It was a punishment and it was a merciful one. I was not doing my part. I was being a child then just as you accuse me of being a child now. Can you not see why she would be angered? I put our entire kingdom in jeopardy!”

  “Explain,” said Thal.

  Horrified, Fiela said, “You must not say anything to Ben, Thal. Promise me!”

  “Tell me.”

  Fiela feel to her knees. “Please, Thal? He will be very angry! Do you not see what that would do? Can you not see how that would destroy my life?”

  The other woman studied the girl’s pained expression and relented. “Tell me,” she said. “I will not tell Ben. Or anyone else. But you must be honest.”

  Fiela complied. She explained how, just prior to the apocalypse, Lilian had whipped the soles of her feet with a bamboo rod for failing to quickly seduce Ben. The girl insisted that the woman was drunk and driven by frustration and fear that if Fiela did not seduce Ben, he would abandon Steepleguard. If had done that, Steepleguard would have fallen into Lord Moros’s hands. Lilian would have been killed, as would Fiela and all the supporters of the Fifth Kingdom. Ben’s benevolence would have been replaced by Moros’s tyranny. She told Thal how Lilian had cut short the planned punishment and had cried for days afterwards, begging the girl’s forgiveness.

  “It was the right thing to do,” pleaded Fiela. “Don’t you see?”

  Thal considered the story. After a moment she said, “Foolishness. As if you needed to seduce Ben. Gods, he loves you, Fiela! He did even then, I’m sure. How would beating you until you pissed on yourself-” She stopped herself and took in a deep breath. “I’m sorry. That was inappropriate.”

  “Your promise,” muttered Fiela. “You will not betray me, will you? Or my sister?”

  “I will keep my promise,” she said quietly. “You will not allow it to happen again, though.”

  “Thal, she would not-”

  “Things are different now,” interrupted Thal. “If she were to try that now there would be no way to keep it a secret. There are spies everywhere.”

  “Your spies.”

  “Not just Orduna spies, Fiela. The world is not as simple as that. That is what I am trying to teach you. There are circles within circles and without. There are individuals without circles who would love to see your family in anarchy. Opportunists. That, in truth, is why I will keep your secret. Acting on it would bring down your House. But what happens next time?”

  Fiela slowly rose. “I swear she has not struck me since then. I am sure she never will. I know her, Thal. Please believe me.”

  Her mentor stared at her for a long moment. “Very well. Call a fetch to pick up your laundry. I have clothes you may wear until then. When you are dressed go to Lilitu and tell her that your Akkadian lesson with her is cancelled.”

  Fiela perked up a bit. “Truly?”

  “Yes,” said Thal, moving back to the chair she had been sitting in. She plopped into it and retrieved her abandoned book from the adjacent table. “I will be your tutor tonight. My Akkadian is not nearly as good as hers, yet I will find a way to better motivate you.”

  “As you say,” the girl said uneasily, wondering what the woman meant, and thinking it probably wasn’t good.

  Fiela was panicked. Her Akkadian lesson was in ten minutes and she wasn’t prepared. She had hardly cracked her books open since being given the assignment by a Thal four days ago. She had not been worried before because Lilian, her supposed tutor, would go easy on her. When Thal wasn’t present, Lilian and Fiela merely gossiped, the Akkadian grammar books largely ignored. Even when Thal was present, Lilian went very easy on her student, overlooking even the most Draconian errors. Lilian thought the entire exercise as pointless as Fiela did.

  Consequently, the girl was ill-prepared for her upcoming session with Thal, who had been led to believe that her student’s vocabulary was many times as large as it really was. The woman would be more than unhappy when she discovered that she had been deceived. She was already in a foul mood as a result of the earlier confrontation, so the girl had spent every hour since in a desperate but vain attempt to absorb what she was supposed to know.

  I’m screwed, she thought, banging the ancient book with her forehead.

  The door to the room opened and she jerked upright. Feigning good humor, she said, “Hi, Thal!”

  “Hello, Fiela,” replied her mentor, entering the room. “Are you ready to begin?”

  “Uh…yes.”

  Thal took a seat on one of the suite’s several sofas. Patting the spot next to her, she said, “Come here and we’ll get started. No, don’t bring your book. You won’t need it. Let’s just play it by ear.”

  The girl moved slowly toward the sofa and sat. “I don’t feel very well,” she said.

  “That’ just nervousness. Don’t worry. As I told you, my fluency is far below that of Lilitu. Consider yourself lucky. I don’t know half the words she knows.”

  Fiela’s shoulders slumped. Lucky?

  Thal said something to her.

  “What?” the girl asked.

  Thal repeated what she had said and looked at her student expectantly.

  Oh gods, she’s speaking Akkadian!

  “Uh…”

  Her mentor frowned and said something else. Something completely different. Something shorter and equally unintelligible.

  Fiela shut her eyes. “I…uh….can you say that again, please?”

  Thal complied. Fiela slumped.

  Thal scowled at her. “You haven’t a clue what I’m saying, do you?”

  Fiela buried her head in her hands. “No,” she wailed. “I’m sorry, Thal! I have studied all day -”

  “What about yesterday and the day before?” The woman’s volume rose. “Hasn’t Lilitu taught you anything?”

  Her student lifted her head and grasped one of Thal’s arms. With a pained expression, she said, “Thing are different now. But yesterday, and before, I just…” Her planned excuse was losing momentum. “I promise things are different now. Since you and I talked, I mean. This morning. We have worked things out now. I understand what is expected of me.”

  “You have been deceiving me all this time?”

  “Not deceiving, exactly. You told me to study with Lilitu. I did, truly. We just got distracted. I hardly see her anymore. We had a lot of things to talk about.”

  Thal nodded, and not in a good way. “But things are different since the unpleasantness this morning?”

  “They are, truly.”

  “Then why have you waited until now, the very last minute, to confess your deficiency? If you had done so earlier today, I could have spent the day working with you.”

  “I thought you’d be angry.”

  “You did not think I’d be angry now?”

  Fiela shrugged. “I did. I didn’t know what to do. I’m sorry.”

  “I see.” Thal’s eyes drifted to one side and she said nothing for a long time. Fiela watched her, worried. The woman was pondering her options. That wasn’t a good thing. She was beyond smart.

  “Very well,” said Thal in a tone that was strangely calm. “Go and get you book. The primer.”

  Fiela complied, concerned about the woman’s peculiar serenity. She would have preferred Thal to be yelling at her. Before she could sit down, the woman held up her hand.

  “No, lie down on your stomach, as
if you were studying on the bed. Just keep the book in front of you. Face away from me.”

  Fiela looked at the sofa. “There is not enough room for both of us.”

  “Yes there is. You can just place your feet in my lap. I don’t mind.”

  The girl began to protest, but seeing the other woman’s expression, did as she was instructed, feeling awkward. She didn’t like having her back to anyone, especially when in a prone position. She felt Thal raise her arms to accommodate her legs.

  “Read the first sentence to me,” her mentor said when the two were comfortably situated.

  Fiela complied, struggling with the pronunciation. Thal corrected her and told her to try again. Fiela repeated the sentence, this time only bungling one of the words, which, in all fairness, had six syllables.

  “Again,” said Thal.

  Fiela tried again and again failed. “It is a very hard word,” she complained.

  “True,” said the woman behind her. “It is unfortunate you waited until now to attempt it.”

  The girl sighed. “Can we not move on to the next-” She yelped, nearly jumping out of her skin - and off the sofa. “Thal!” she yelled, “please do not do that! My feet are very-”

  “Ticklish?” responded the woman.

  Fiela felt a sensation slide down the arch of her right foot. “No!” she half laughed, half screamed. “Don’t!”

  “Stay put, Fiela,” warned her mentor. “You have brought this on yourself. When you told me that Lilitu whipped your feet, I wondered why she would choose such an odd punishment. At first I suspected it just another of her myriad fetishes. She has a great number of them, hasn’t she? Still, she only did it once, which means it was not a fetish, so I continued to wonder.

  “Eventfully the answer came to me. You’re Nocte Sicarius. She knows you’re almost impervious to pain. But the soles of your feet are highly sensitive to stimulation. Much more than mine, for example, and I’m extremely ticklish. Your breeding as a night assassin requires this particular weakness, though, doesn’t it? Your specialized feet allow you to sneak up on your victims. That’s why you’re always running around barefoot. It’s your natural condition. That’s why you hate shoes.

  “Look here,” she said. She leaned forward and stretched out an arm until Fiela could see what was in her hand. She held a tiny feather, no more than two inches long, with brown and black stripes. It was attached to a small elastic ring. “This is the proverbial ‘rod’ that should not be spared. I have no stomach for the real thing. I am confident this will be an effective substitute.”

  With that, the woman returned to her upright position and ran the feather up the girl’s other foot. Fiela yelped again and began to pull her legs away. “Please don’t!” she squealed.

  “Stay where you are,” commanded Thal. “I’m not hurting you, am I?”

  Gasping for breath, Fiela said, “You’re tickling me! I can’t take-” She squealed again, and laughed, then moaned. “Stop, please!”

  Above her, Thal said, “It’s a shame I’m not into this kind of thing. You’re a dream catch for that special somebody. No, stay put. You may kick and squirm and do whatever your body compels you to do. Once the gyrations are complete, you will return to your original position. Do not slam those powerful legs into me, please.”

  As the girl continued to laugh and twist about, Thal said, “I’m against violence, Fiela. That means that I must be clever. Is this not clever? Instead of whipping you, as any oaf might do, I am making you laugh. That’s a far kinder form of motivation, don’t you think?”

  “No!” the girl squealed.

  “No?”

  “I mean, yes! I mean yes!” She burst into another round of choked laughter, trying with all her might to obey the command that she keep her feet in place but having a very hard time of it. Her brain was endeavoring to reconcile two different signals: flee and obey.

  “Good,” said Thal. “I believe we do have an understanding, then.” She ran the feather diagonally across the bottom of the girl’s foot, which resulted in a violent, hysterical, reaction. Thal struggled to maintain her composure, glad Fiela couldn’t see her amused expression. It was impossible to remain angry with anyone laughing so hard.

  The woman said, “You saw the attached elastic, didn’t you? From today forward, you will wear this as you would wear an anklet. You will place the feather on the inside, low enough to rub against your arch but not so low as to touch the floor. Do you wish to know why?”

  “Yes,” Fiela said in a raspy voice, nodding vigorously. “Yes!” At that moment she wanted anything the woman with the feather wanted if it might bring the tickling to a stop.

  “First, I want it readily available, and that is an ideal location. Second, it will remind you of your station as my student, which you seem to easily forget. And third, it will torment you just a tiny bit each day. In this you will learn humility, knowing that such an innocuous little thing, a feather that has no edges and weighs less than a tenth of an ounce, has such power over a mighty warrior such as yourself.”

  Fiela had buried her head in a pillow to mute her continued laughter and shrieks. “Whatever you say!” she yelled, her voice muffled. “Just please stop!”

  Thal stopped. She clasped her hands together and rested them on her student’s trembling calves, the feather’s elastic band wound about one thumb. “Should anyone ask you why you have a feather attached to our ankle, you will say that I have given it to you as a good luck charm. Or you may tell them the truth, though I doubt you’ll do that. You may remove it only for bathing. If I otherwise find you without it, there will be a very stiff price. Do you understand me, Fiela?”

  “Yes!” exclaimed the girl, catching her breath.

  “Don’t worry. This feather may fray but there is an endless supply available. I will ensure the one you wear about your ankle is always fresh. Now, try that first sentence again, please.”

  Fiela stared wide-eyed at the printed words in front of her.

  She tried again.

  “Excellent!” exclaimed her teacher. “The second line, please?”

  The second line was tougher.