The Royal Thief

Chapter Twelve: A Tutor

I thought I'd done a good enough job of scaring off my teachers that none of them would be left to deal with me. I was wrong.

"Good morning, Miss...?"

I gaped up at the stringy twig of a boy who apparently had the keys to my rooms. "Who are you?"

"That's what I was just asking you. I was told my charge could be found in this room but not her name. So, I repeat, good morning Miss..."

It took me a moment to realize he wanted me to fill in my name. "Morane," I muttered, dumbfounded. Where had he come from? He couldn't have been older than twenty, and he clearly wasn't a noble. He didn't have the weary, toneless voice of the tutors I'd scared off yesterday, or the lowered gaze of a servant. I couldn't classify him. He certainly wasn't a guard; no guard would ever presume to walk around the palace without their uniform, and he was wearing a green tunic, white long-sleeved under shirt, and slightly heeled boots. No-- not a guard, nor servant nor noble and certainly not a royal, so what was he doing here?

He sighed patiently. "Do you have a last name, Miss Morane?"

"Oh. Yeah. I have last name."

"And it is..."

I scowled inwardly, wondering how this boy had, within ten seconds, managed to make me look like an idiot twice. Of course I had last name. But, to my embarrassment, it had been so long I'd used it that it took me a moment to even remember. "Morane... Laerhart."

"Miss Laerhart." A crease appeared between his eyebrows. "I have a friend by that name-- but never mind. It is no matter." He set his arm-full of books on my table and I found myself gaping again. I don't think there had ever been so many books in my room at once. "Miss Laerhhart, I am Caer Solentude, your history teacher for the time being. At least, until my father calms down enough to tolerate your presence for longer than thirty seconds."

His words clicked in my brain and suddenly I saw the resemblance in his young face to the lined old man who had had all the dusty maps in the library. The one I had called rat-like. "Are you going to try and teach me, too?"

"As I am filling in as your tutor, yes. I am. So." He pulled a chair up to the table and slouched down in it like he was in his own room. "What do you want to know?"

"What?"

"What do you want to know?" He repeated, slower.

"Isn't the point of teaching that you tell me what I'm supposed to know?" I asked, cautious.

He shrugged. "Normally, that's how I would go about it. But I highly doubt you would pay any attention to me." He paused, a bit of a grin tugging at his mouth. "Your reputation precedes you."

The fact that I apparently had a reputation made me a bit less hostile to him. I felt myself smile. "You're smarter than your father."

"So I've been told. Not by him, of course." Caer leaned closer to me as though he was about to share a huge secret. In a loud whisper, he confided, "I think he's jealous."

It was against my code of general hostility to ninety-eight percent of the human population to let anyone get that close to me, so I leaned away slightly. I had a reputation to uphold, after all.

"Anyway," He returned to his normal voice and slouched back in his seat. "Now you tell me what you want to learn about."

"Guardians." I hadn't meant to say it but the word slipped out of my mouth with no conscious decision by my brain.

He paused in his fiddling with his books to arch one eyebrow skeptically. "You are a guardian. Shouldn't you know everything about them?"