KINGSLAYER

♕ 3 | 3 ♕

Act 2 Chapter 33
JAYLAH

The next days were quiet and mostly filled with travel. We were a bit further than halfway through Razorwood. When I heard that milestone was passed, something in me loosened with relief. We had not won the race to Westyard yet, but I never thought we would get this far. Which was strange, because I never imagined dying either, only temporarily when it was staring at me in the face.

During the days where travel was light, we bounced between jobs, helping whichever women requested it. Yesterday, I worked with Ghislaine, Sonia and Margaux as they fashioned new arrows for their next hunt. They talked and teased each other the whole way through, and I even threw in a comment here or there. I found I enjoyed their company, no matter how boisterous.

But today, I was lucky enough to work alongside Viviane Bélanger again, a woman nearly old enough to be my grandmother who was filled with stories of her life in the capital. She even told me of the time she and her late husband caught a glance of the elusive northern Queen as we folded laundry together. When her husband passed early and she was looked down upon for not remarrying, she joined the huntresses as a motherly figure for the younger girls. Viviane reminded me of Klymene. Just like Ourania, I imagined she would have liked it here. But not my mother. She was not the type brave enough to run away. Oh, how I resented her for it.

If I was just an orphaned peasant woman and not one with the weight of several empires on her shoulders, I likely would have escaped to be with these women. All of them came from such fractured pasts, but somehow they managed to put each other back together. I think I would have liked for Viviane to be a motherly figure for me growing up.

During the nights, while everyone else slept, I taught Alexander daily. From the night when he approached me at dinner asking to learn again, I did not skip a night. He did not seem to mind missing out on a few hours of sleep until the early mornings when he was crabby, and I figured it would do me good to take my mind off Daggen for a bit. Sometimes it made me taken aback when I looked at how singleminded my thoughts could get. If I was not careful, it would swell into a consuming obsession.

Alexander was now familiar with the entire alphabet and could recite it front and back. I imagined he could say it in his sleep, even. Once I introduced the few extra letters found solely in the Eastern Language, he progressed into reading and writing basic words. It was difficult; I could see there was a reason he had not been introduced to the ideas before his life was ruined by my people. The case was not that he was lazy or stupid or forgetful at all. He simply did not learn the same fashion I did, what I imagined as a simple, easy way. Some things needed to be drilled into his mind in different manners. Nevertheless, now I suspected the worst was behind us. Though he was nowhere near literate, he improved a little each day.

Tonight, I was writing short sentences in the dirt and he was reading them back to me by the light of a firestick.

"I pledge my...loyalty...to Jay—okay." He was not amused.

"Alright, alright," I said, turning away from the dirt clod he threw at me. "Read this." I etched out the next phrase.

Like with each of them, the words came very slowly. "My st—stupidity...knows no end." When he looked over at me, eyes flat with indignation, I held back a laugh.

"You should be thanking me—if I did not have to dumb it down, I would have integrated much more complicated words."

He gave a mockery of a flourish, as if making up for a dire misstep. "When Seifer Daggen hired me to kill you he didn't disclose to me how bountiful your kindness is."

"It is something I reserve only for my most detested nemeses."

"Well then, detested nemesis, I will consider myself blessed." A pause. "Now give me something to read that doesn't insult me or I'll tell Zensa you're plotting to kill one of her friends."

Knowing he was the type to keep his word, I wrote out more sentences that used as many letters as possible. He read them painfully slow. But he read them.

"When can I expect you to take up your end of the bargain?" I asked once he read them all. I smoothed the ground with my boot.

"If we ever reach civilization."

"There is no absence of people here. I am surprised you have not taken the opportunity to swindle these women."

Throwing his hands up a bit, he said, "I am not going to teach you to pickpocket using a bunch of women who have been nothing but good to us."

I rolled my eyes. "Now you decide to have a moral code."

There was a glint of his teeth. "Only when it's most inconvenient."

"Not all these women have been good to us."

"Who do you mean—Zensa? No. She earned my respect when she expressed how terrible of a person she thinks you are."

"You were included in her slander," I pointed out. "And I do not understand it; it was proven we are who we said we were, was it not? I do not know why she insists on holding a grudge."

"Well," he said, not sure how to break the news. "You do have a way of making people feel inferior to you."

My brows pinched together. "So do you."

"Obviously. But my charm overrides it."

Not this again. "People with real, undying power have no need for charm."

His smile was cold. "Perhaps you've just found your match in callousness."

"Impossible."

"That may also be true. You are terrible, after all."

"How kind of you to remind me. I'm surprised you and Zensa have not hit it off yet. It seems you two would get along swimmingly."

"Perhaps if she was my reading instructor, I would have been literate by now."

I pulled a sour face. "Do not blame me for your pitiful failings." I gave a flick of my fingers. "Perhaps if you were not of lesser intelligence you would have been literate by now."

"That's it. Tomorrow I am going to befriend Zensa and we will kill you together for our first bonding activity."

Blowing out the firestick, I finished with, "I cannot wait."