Chapter 14 Yaaf #2
She said it with clinical detachment, as if discussing a kitchen rotation schedule. The emotional cost of referring to the men who fathered children on her and the other women was hidden beneath the same feigned casualness she'd used when talking about the visitors.
"Lord Navuh also wants the boys to get a better education before they're sent to the camp.
More books, better teaching materials, animated movies in different languages so the children pick them up early.
English, Mandarin, Arabic, Russian, Spanish, Hindi.
The idea is that when the boys are deployed, they'll have an easier time learning the local language. "
"That's clever," Number One said.
Navuh's decision was strategically sound. Exposure to multiple languages during childhood made language acquisition exponentially easier later. The Brotherhood's previous approach of drilling languages into teenage recruits through repetition and compulsion was crude and inefficient by comparison.
Luckily, immortals were exceptionally good at acquiring foreign languages, and it took them a fraction of the time it took humans.
"It is clever for the boys," Sullha agreed.
"The lord doesn't care what the girls learn, of course.
As far as he's concerned, they can draw pictures all day long, but since he's not forbidding us to learn, we take advantage of the new books and read them, and when the language programs play, we listen together with the children whenever we can.
The same goes for the teaching materials we receive. We use them for everyone."
She said all of that with quiet pride. The women were educating themselves and their daughters using resources intended for the sons, turning the Brotherhood's investment in smarter soldiers into an investment in smarter women as well.
It was another form of quiet rebellion, but since education wasn't forbidden, she'd felt free to share it with him.
Those in charge of the enclave didn't mind the women gaining some basic education because they didn't consider the women capable of utilizing it for anything that could undermine the program, and smarter mothers produced smarter sons.
"The library has many more books now," Sullha continued.
"Novels, history, science. Some of them are in English, some in other languages.
The selection is still limited, and we don't get to choose what we get, but it's more than we had in the past." She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, the quick, impatient gesture that Number One remembered from childhood.
"I've been reading everything I can get my hands on.
It's the only way to know what's out there in the big world. "
Her vocabulary confirmed it. The Sullha he'd known at thirteen had spoken like a child raised in an enclosed environment with minimal educational resources. The Sullha sitting beside him now used words like compartmentalize and disassociate.
She had made herself smarter, and she was rebelling.
"Not that we will ever benefit from all that knowledge because we are never going to leave the enclosure, but it's good to keep the brain sharp."
Tell her we might be able to get her out, Number Eight urged.
Not yet, Number Two countered immediately. He needs to build more trust first.
He shouldn't tell her anything before we have a plan, Number Four reasoned. It's cruel to give her hope when the plan might fall apart.
The collective was right. The timing wasn't right. Yaaf needed Sullha to trust him enough that when the moment came, she would believe what he told her and act on it without hesitation.
That kind of trust wasn't built in a single conversation.
Still, the urge to tell her, to see the brightness in her eyes expand at the possibility of a different life, was strong enough that suppressing it required effort.
"Can you show me Tomek?" he asked. "I'm curious about how the classroom looks these days."
The brightness flickered and then dimmed as wariness crept back into her expression. Her lips parted, then closed, and he could see the competing impulses moving behind her eyes. The mother who wanted to show off her extraordinary child, and the protector who didn't want an armed soldier near him.
"I'm sorry," he said immediately, raising his hands with his palms open. "That was just an idea. You don't have to."
She studied him for a long moment, her dark eyes moving across his face with an intensity that made its way through him to the collective.
Whatever she found apparently passed inspection, because she stood up, brushed the dirt from the knees of her work coveralls with quick, decisive swipes, and looked down at him.
"I'll show you," she said. "But you have to stay out of sight. The children will be scared if an immortal warrior walks into their classroom."
He nodded and rose to his feet.
The height difference was stark now that they were both standing.
The top of her head barely reached his shoulder.
She had always been small, and that hadn't changed when she'd matured, but her spirit had always been much bigger than her diminutive body, and that hadn't changed either.
She hadn't allowed the breeding program to hollow her out like it had so many of the other women.
Yaaf fought the urge to slouch or curl his shoulders to reduce the disparity.
In the camp, height and size were advantages to be maximized, and the training had wired his posture for maximum physical presence.
Making himself smaller went against every conditioned reflex he had, but he didn't want to intimidate Sullha.
He liked it that she was comfortable with him, and he didn't want to spoil it by towering over her.
But Sullha didn't seem to mind. She didn't lean away from him or angle her body to create distance. She just looked up at him with an expression that was evaluating rather than fearful.
Not sure he was reading her right, he tracked her heartbeat, but it had returned to its normal resting rate, seventy-two beats per minute, steady and unremarkable.
During the early part of their conversation, it had been racing at over a hundred, spiking at a hundred and twenty when he'd crouched beside her.
Now it was calm.
She had decided that he wasn't a threat.
The knowledge created a warmth that spread through him with a long-forgotten softness.
The collective registered it, the others noting the sensation with the attention of scientists observing a new phenomenon.
It wasn't love. He didn't have enough experience or context to identify it as such.
But it was something adjacent to it, a precursor perhaps, the way the first green shoot was a precursor to the plant it would become.
She started walking and he fell into step beside her, matching his stride to hers, which required shortening it considerably.
They walked along the path that ran between the dormitory buildings, and as they passed, women appeared in doorways and windows, watching with expressions that ranged from alarm to curiosity to the blank wariness that seemed to be the compound's default.
None of them spoke to Sullha or to him. They just watched as if he were a stray dog, assessing whether he was dangerous and how quickly they could get to safety if he turned out to be.
Sullha walked with her chin up and her pace steady, not hurrying, not dawdling, projecting a confidence that he suspected was at least partly performed for the benefit of the women watching.
Look. I'm walking beside him, and I'm fine. He's not going to hurt anyone.
She was leading by example, and she probably didn't even realize she was doing it.
They reached the covered area beside the dining hall, and Sullha stopped at the corner of the building and gestured for him to stay back.
"Wait here," she whispered. "You can see the children from here, but they can't see you."
He positioned himself against the wall and looked around the corner.
The classroom was an open-sided structure with a corrugated metal roof and benches arranged in a rough semicircle.
A woman was standing at the front with a stick, pointing at letters drawn on a large blackboard that was mounted on a movable stand.
Chalk lines formed the shapes of the alphabet, and the children were reciting the letters in a ragged chorus.
There were about fifteen of them, ages ranging from three or four to perhaps six. They sat on low benches or on the ground, some paying attention, some fidgeting, one picking his nose with dedicated concentration.
Tomek was in the second row, sitting with his legs crossed and his back straight, his attention fixed on the teacher with an intensity that belied his young age.
He was mouthing the letters slightly ahead of the group, not showing off but simply unable to match his pace to his slower classmates.
His dark hair, shiny and a little wavy like Sullha's, fell across his forehead, and his brown eyes, big and expressive like Sullha's, were bright with the pleasure of learning.
Something cracked open inside Yaaf's chest.
He wanted to protect this child because Tomek was Sullha's, and Sullha loved him, and he deserved a chance to grow up somewhere that wouldn't beat the brightness out of him.
"He looks so much like you," Number One said.
What he had really wanted to say was that the boy was beautiful just like his mother, but some instinct stopped him.
Sullha wasn't ready to hear that from him, and maybe she never would be. With what had been done to her, she might have lost the ability to feel anything for a male who was not her son.