Native Slip of the Tongue (Theon!)

The lines of text that had once marched so primly toward the false horizon of the book’s thick spine doubled, trebled, and danced, running quilions and serifs along each other in the most obscene fashion imaginable.  Irritably, Akadias slammed the book’s cover closed, but it did little good – the letters danced on, writhing on the backs of his eyelids.  He scowled, opened the dark brown orbs, and blinked rapidly, a farseeing storm crow’s trick to spot weather brewing on the horizon.  Perhaps it was just his frustration speaking, but he could feel the potential of a storm developing, a vague and charged weight that colored his mood and perceptions, and indeed, the entire day.  A weather sense was valued and valuable amongst his people, but this chopped, serrated way of making words was as alien to him as he was to the Atha’an Miere, now.

The Accepted’s eyes roamed the neat rows of desks, most containing a young woman who fit upon the seat and could write on the little platform attached to the chair – on the right.  When her gaze fell on him, she made no secret of hiding her expressive sigh.  “You are meant to be reading, Novice,” she instructed, and a small wave of titters and giggles accompanied it.  It was the fourth time he’d been reminded what he was meant to be about, and while he had argued the first two times, earning more laughter from the girls in their seats – he was seated upon the floor for two reasons, one being his sheer size versus the dainty desks – he was silent now.  There was no sense arguing, he could see, that his left was the hand he preferred to hold the quill in, and definitely no sense at all in knowing that the first way he had been taught to read was the way he wished to continue.  The Accepted had seemed friendly at first, but as Akadias clung to the pictorial system he had been accustomed to, her patience had ebbed.  Now, he dreaded her classes.  He had managed to miss two of them, but that had only resulted in his receiving a new penance for skiving off his classes.

He opened his book again, obedient in deed if not in spirit, and glared rebelliously down at the intercourse of ink and paper.  Saved from another episode like the one before by the blessed sound of the bell, Akadias bounded to his feet – but he didn’t make it through the door before the Accepted sprang her trap, ensnaring him with a clearing of the throat and a calm, uninflected “Please remain seated, Akadias.”  Comforting himself by at least slamming the volume in his hands shut, trapping the trite untruths of “A Voyage with the Sea Folk” between its covers, Akadias heaved a sigh.  A few of the girls lingered a moment, likely hoping to hear the brunt of the abuse he was about to take, but to his gratified surprise, Accepted Arwyn waited until the last of the girls had fled, lest they be punished for tardiness, before she opened her mouth. 

Of course, the moment the words began flowing out, Akadias fiercely wished she’d kept it shut.

“You are not doing well in your studies in my class,” the Accepted told him, one nervous hand twining a curl over two chubby fingers until they pinkened from the trapped blood within.  “I have taken the liberty of informing Candance Sedai that you are not.”  He frowned, opening his mouth to argue (it seemed he was fighting more and more often, and the same battles, again and again, too) but the Accepted cut him off by plucking the book from his nerveless fingers.  “I have done all I can.  I gave you engaging material,” she said, nodding at the book, which Akadias detested, as the writer might as well have been living in the Panarch’s menagerie as a raker for all the truth revealed – “and,” she continued, “I have given you concessions, such as your outlandish determination to use the wrong hand and make teaching you even more difficult.  I have tried.  Candance Sedai suggests that you be asigned to a tutor.”

Akadias glared at her, his eyes narrowing to obsidian chips.  No way was he going to let one of Arwen’s simpering chit pets declare that he’d tried to get her alone – not that.  He knew that that was what she had in mind – scouring the Tower clean of the male influence by discrediting each male Novice within reach.  Steeling himself to hear the name of his own future accuser, he blinked as Arwyn’s lips formed a sour moue.  “She suggested a candidate for your tutoring, as well.  You’re to seek out Theon Mavidante tonight in your free time before lights-out.”

Theon?  The same as had been in his seizing class all those weeks ago?  Grimacing, Akadias weighed his options, and found them to be so slender as to be nonexistent.  Any port in a storm – and the farther away from the sour Accepted, the better.

*************

That evening, when the candles in their sconces were flickering low, Akadias picked up his battered exercise book, the simplistic primer that Arwyn had given him with a saccharine smile as she wished him good luck, and instead of prowling the Gardens, searching anywhere for an escape route, he braved the knot of male Novices in the common area provided to them.  Floors stretched above them in an empty yawn: there were so few male Novices and so much space to be had on their “side” of the cylindrical Tower.  He knew most of the faces around himself, having been here several months now, but tonight, that was disturbing, not reassuring.  Clutching his books to himself, he sought one particular face.  Theon was not difficult to find, crouched over a table working through endless mathematical equations.  He was, however, difficult to face.  Coaxing himself every step with the image of being sent to Candance Sedai for insubordination again, he crossed the room and set down his books beside the Tairen man’s.

“I was sent to you to be tutored,” Akadias said, a blush sneaking up his neck to color his cheeks.  “In reading.”