story - part 2 - lessons - 737 words

In the mornings, things are different. We both shake off our midnight memories and pretend that the aches and pains have faded away. He is the prince and the heir, no longer a frightened child, his bruises and crooked spine hidden beneath royal finery edged in gold. I am a servant again, my own back and shoulders warped beneath the loose cloth of a black cloak. They assume I am a hunchback. I let them believe that.

I sit in on his lessons, and watch him fumble his way through mathematics, history, law, religion - I take a perverse kind of pleasure in watching his face twisted with frustration, the quill gripped so tightly in his hand that I am certain it will break, his jaw clenched as he crosses out number after number in his neat noble’s handwriting. He is sixteen, now, but he is still a child at heart, and probably will always be.

I was always good at my schoolwork, when I was his age. Perhaps I was more grateful for what it meant, or perhaps it was because I was not as coddled, as sheltered, as he is now. Things fell into place for me - and when they did not, I worked until I could understand and explain, so that I could describe concepts or teach the complicated timeline of events to someone else.

Imagine a young man, the age of ten, sitting quietly behind a desk. He is the only student in the room, and his teacher is a strict old man with tight lips and a sharp nose, the kind of beady eyes that pick up on everything that happens under his watch, that nothing can escape. The boy isn't afraid of him. He meets those hazel eyes with his own mellow grey, eyebrows lifted and expression intent.

He knows how important this is, even when he is this young. They have tried to shelter him from who he is, where he came from, but his father doesn't realize just how much he hears. Whispered conversations about her crime, fears that he will turn out the same as she. Occasionally they dare to hiss her name between clenched teeth, but usually they call her "Two-Crescent." His aunt, his father's sister, his mother. The woman who delivered him to the castle while he was still a tearful child of three or four, terrified of being left alone.

No coddled young prince was I. An illegitimate, unwanted child of incest, it became very clear very fast that I would have to fight to retain my place; and even after my battles, my struggles, I was sent out into the cold and into her strong hands [her hands are nimble]. And if they knew now who I really am, I would be delivered back out into the wilderness. She is the only one who has ever wanted me.

Tumaire knows nothing of this. All he understands, all he can think of, is himself. He throws temper tantrums, he shoves his books to the ground and refuses to work, he flings quills and balled up paper around the room. He sits sulkily in the chair with an expression of decided indifference and ignores the long lectures on the needs of the common people. What kind of King will he be, if he does not understand what his subjects need? How can he make new laws if he does not understand the current ones?

His attitude makes me want to scream, or to slap him, but I know better. A harsh word and one solid blow would not be enough to teach him that the world does not revolve around him. All it would do would give him something new to whimper about, or to turn in my direction. Some new excuse not to do his work, not to attend his father's open court and to listen to the problems voiced therein, a way to lie in bed and complain about the ache in his crooked spine. Another reason to look down his nose at me, to attempt to break my mask and crack into those secrets he can see in my eyes. Perhaps he can sense that edge of hatred, perhaps something sneaks into my voice despite my attempts to keep it calm and flat, perhaps it is something about the way I meet his haughty stare. Perhaps it is blood calling to blood.