Chapter Five #4
“What do you call that?” Wes asked, gesturing toward Fern’s house. “And you’re a noble and a captain, so you can do whatever you please when you leave the service.”
Delauney felt more than a little uncomfortable at Wesley’s cutting words.
Of course, he knew that he had a comfortable life ahead of him.
He knew that the moment he came home, he would be thrown into a circuit of dinner parties and balls that would occupy him for some time.
And yet, he couldn’t help but feel as though someone was marching him head-first into a cage.
“I can’t,” he said, and his voice was so strained that Wes turned to fully face him, his scowl falling away. “I can’t do what I like, Wes!”
“Of course you can,” Wesley said.
“No.” Delauney felt breathless and strange, as though he were about to burst at the seams with all the restless, bewildered energy building up inside him.
“I can’t. Because what I want—what I’ve wanted since I was a boy—is to work alongside Professor Monroe at the Aviary, and I can’t, because I’m an idiot! ”
Wes stared at him, lips parted, for a long breath before his brows snapped together and his familiar scowl returned. “What did you just call yourself?”
“I can’t read,” Delauney said. “I can’t write. It gives me a frightful headache if I try, and I keep getting the... the words mixed around, and they don’t stick the way they do for other people. It all blends together into a sludge, because I’m an—”
Wes put a hand over his mouth. “I heard you the first time. Don’t say it again.” If he were a dominant, Delauney might actually have obeyed that stern, hard voice. “You use letters in your equations.” Delauney pointed to Wes’ hand, and Wes removed it.
“Equations are almost as bad,” Delauney said. “I have to take them slowly. I’m not clever, Wes. I figured all this out about the stars despite myself.”
“Huh.” Wes ran a hand over his face. Delauney felt thoroughly miserable.
If he could have only kept his mouth shut, Wes would still respect him.
“You know how I read about history sometimes. That’s because there is one member of my family who I like, and he died about three hundred years ago.
He was a historian. He translated accounts from one of the earliest nations in Iperios, and he couldn’t read until he was twenty-five. ”
Delauney looked up into Wes’ eyes, but he couldn’t bring himself to speak.
“He had something in his mind that... filtered the words differently,” Wes said.
“Like that prism you talked about. So he had to change how he did it. I don’t know his method, but I know something of what affected him passed down through my mother’s side, because my sister had trouble with her letters, too.
I did mention that she runs a bookshop? And that my ancestor wrote over forty books? Forty, Delauney. Was he unintelligent?”
Delauney opened his mouth, then shut it again. Wes grabbed Delauney by the shoulders.
“Was he?”
“Clearly not,” Delauney said, in a faint voice. “But my tutors all agreed, and my parents said that there was no helping it.”
“Are they the ones in your head, Delauney?” Wes asked. “Did they figure out that the stars moved and that the sun wasn’t stone? Can they understand what those lines mean?”
“But the Aviary rejected me,” Delauney said. “You need to write a study to prove you belong there, or convince one of their representatives.”
“And a study can’t be dictated?” Wes asked. He was still holding Delauney, refusing to let him look away. “You can’t talk it over with one of their people instead? Did anyone ever give you time to figure this out, or did they just call you names and set you aside?”
“They didn’t set me aside,” Delauney insisted, wanting to defend his parents. But what Wes said reminded him uncomfortably of what Leo had told him when he’d run off with his makeshift spectroscope. “They meant well.”
“If you want to study in Gerakia, you should do it,” Wes said fiercely, digging his fingers into Delauney’s shirt. “For fuck’s sake, you’re the only interesting noble I’ve ever met. Be interesting!”
Delauney felt as though he’d been jolted out of a dream. “I don’t know how I’d start.”
“Start with this,” Wes said, finally letting go of him. “Work out what the sun is made of. Write it down. I’ll tidy it up for you if you’d like. Do you know where these Gerakian university representatives are?”
“There’s one in Redmason,” Delauney said. “Ulysse Berger.” He’d looked him up once in a desperate state of pique, half wondering if he could convince anyone to reconsider.
“Great. We’ll write your findings, and we’ll present them to this Ulysse fellow the next time we’re in Staria. We’ll have plenty of time to work on reading.”
“We?” Delauney asked.
“I like bullies less than I like the aristocracy,” Wes said shortly. “And it seems as though you’ve been surrounded by both for some time. So yes, it’s ‘we.’”
“But I am of the aristocracy,” Delauney said with a helpless shrug.
“Oh, well.” Wes said, slapping Delauney on the arm. “We can’t all be perfect.”