Chapter Ten The First Lesson #2
She shook her head fiercely. “I am curious. But it isn’t right for you to know their secrets to begin with, and if it was too painful for them to share it with their daughter, it would be wrong for me to learn them from you.
Don’t—” she spluttered for a moment, her stutter returning at the swarming hive of emotions lodged in her throat.
“I promise to tell nobody any of this,” he said calmly.
“Do not go after them again,” she spat. “They have no part to play in what we’re doing. You have no right to their stories.”
“I swear to you in the eyes of the Maker and the Merciful I will not. I was curious, and I see now that has offended you. I apologize.” He sounded genuinely contrite, like a child realizing his impulses had done wrong.
Is he putting on an act? She honestly couldn’t tell, the supposed sincerity in his eyes confounding her.
He continued, “You needn’t be so alarmed. I just wanted to understand you, that’s all.”
“You don’t deserve to know anything about me,” she said harshly.
“Perhaps I don’t,” he admitted. “But I must confess, there were things I empathized with.”
She glared at him, curious, but unwilling to encourage him.
He fidgeted with the cuffs of his sleeves before speaking quietly, “Like how you were apparently mute as a child. Your neighbors say you didn’t speak a word for years.
They all thought the demons in your mother’s head had made her give birth to an idiot child—but you weren’t an idiot.
No, you had a tongue, you just didn’t know how to use it right.
I suppose you grew up in a house of so few words, you just didn’t understand the need for them until you were older. ”
Lythlet nodded, tiredly. She didn’t see the point in hiding anything anymore—Master Dothilos knew everything.
“I was six when my father realized they had done something wrong with my upbringing. He hoped proper schooling would help me find my tongue. They scrounged together what few coins they had to send me to the nearest one.”
“And yet it wasn’t an easy journey, was it? I hear it still took some time for you to speak, and your words came slow. A speech impediment, they said.”
She reddened and lowered her face.
“But one you overcame in time. Perhaps through the steadfast companionship of a fellow schoolmate and his mother, the schoolmarm?”
“Desil,” Lythlet said softly.
“You went to live with them for a time, didn’t you?”
“My mother fell sicker than usual.” She was certain he already knew this, but perhaps by saying it herself, she could control some part of her narrative.
“She could no longer work, and then my parents couldn’t afford me.
When Desil heard of what we were going through, his family insisted on taking me in.
I lived with them for half a year before my mother’s condition had improved and my father saved enough to take me back. ”
“And you went back a child with a fully functioning tongue, at last. One with a rather dramatic way of speaking. Dare I say from listening to Desil’s mother read stories to you every night?”
In truth, Lythlet had never pieced this together herself.
But it hit her then where her vocal cadence and love for overwrought dialogue came from.
“Both his father and mother. They’d take turns telling me stories, encouraging me to read along.
It was the first time a voice had ever made so much sense to me.
It was language with a pattern I could follow, far from the depressed silence of my father and the demented murmurs of my mother.
I can’t put into words just how much I loved living with the Demothis, how much I owe them for the brief respite they granted me. ”
Master Dothilos nodded with a fond smile. “Yes, some stutters are cured by adopting a distinctive manner of speaking. I can attest to that myself.”
She stared at him, wide-eyed.
He winked. “You think I’ve always spoken like this?
A mighty baritone that shakes the world with a single syllable?
No, my child. Look at you, slouching, mumbling, your gaze dithering about nervously.
You’re the perfect picture of me when I was young.
Part of me wants to run from you for how much you remind me of that time, another part just wants to pity you. ”
He sighed, hand falling limp by his thigh.
“I, too, came from a deeply unhappy family. I was soon abandoned to an orphanage, and in time, I fell further and became unregistered. Yes, my dear, I came from nothing—from your part of the world. I know how it feels to be stuck in an endless rut of poverty, where no matter what choices I made, I would never rise to the level of those highborn folk.”
He looked down hesitantly, then spoke again, “I recall from our interview that you have debt. Forgive the discourtesy of my prying, but my servants discovered during their investigation that the debt is under Desil’s name.
Apparently, it’s quite the substantial sum—though I don’t know the precise number.
Will you be able to afford it without the jackpots? ”
Her silence was answer enough.
He frowned. “How large is this debt?”
She grimaced, shaking her head. “The principal was not particularly remarkable. It’s the terms of interest that keep us in debt.”
“Ah,” Master Dothilos said, suddenly understanding. “One of those predatory usurers?”
She nodded.
“What are the terms exactly?”
“One hundred and thirty percent per annum, applied on a bimonthly schedule.”
Master Dothilos stared at her in horror. “And Desil was foolish enough to accept this?”
“This was some years ago. He didn’t know any better—we were still young, and he had never learned how to interpret a usury contract. They’re written in a way to deliberately confuse people, after all. He signed without understanding, and in great desperation.”
“Whatever for?”
“For me,” she said quietly. “He borrowed that money for me.”
“I was wondering why you felt obligated to pay his debt for him. What happened?”
“I’d fallen ill. He carried me to the health ward but could not afford the treatment.”
“And standing not too far away was a usurer kindly offering his services,” Master Dothilos finished with a grim, knowing look.
She nodded.
“I can’t imagine you’d agree to such a loan. Couldn’t you have stopped him?”
“I was unconscious. I hadn’t eaten for days, and flesh failed me at last.”
“What happened to you?”
She fell silent. These questions were unearthing more and more dangerous memories, memories she’d buried a long time ago.
Madam Kovetti .
She had a violent reaction to the name, jerking backward into her seat with a sharp inhale.
Master Dothilos looked at her in concern.
She answered quickly, before he could ask further, “I had a job I couldn’t handle the stress of. That’s all.”
“Ah, my servants did say you had a string of employment under various lowlifes and swindlers—”
Her heart began thumping against her chest, wondering if he knew.
“—but I didn’t bother looking into it that deeply.” He shrugged. “I figured it was just the typical dodgy bookkeeping.”
She nodded, relieved.
He was about to speak further, but she cut him off: “I know what you’re trying to do. You’re going to say that if I want to pay off Desil’s debt, I need to stay in the arena.”
“You don’t need me to say that for you to know it,” the match-master answered easily.
“An ordinary job isn’t going to cut it, not for the kind of debt he signed on for.
And I know you have found an ordinary job in the recent weeks—minding the books at an inn, I believe.
But that’s not going to get you out of debt.
Poverty is a vicious cycle, and it’s going to take a stunner of a miracle to spring you free from the poverty trap and into the cycle of wealth. ”
She eyed him. “And now you’re going to say conquessing can be that miracle.”
He laughed, caught red-handed. “Couldn’t it? Weren’t you just saying three is the number of poetic fortune? So why not hold on for the third round at least and win another jackpot?”
“Because behind all the lucky and unlucky numbers, there’s an important lesson,” Lythlet said.
“Three may be the number of poetry in motion, but four is the number of death, as it was on the fourth day of creation the first death of a mortal was recorded, mercilessly slain by a wild beast. Eight is the number of divine blessing, for it was on the eighth day of creation that the Sunsmith heard the lamentations of the grieving and granted them bloodrights so they could fend for themselves against the wilderness. But nine is the number of suffering, the number of trials one must endure in the halls of damnation. Three and four, eight and nine—to me, the pattern is clear: taking your good luck too far will lead to your own downfall. I’ve been lucky so far, but perhaps crossing the line by even one step will turn luck into misery. ”
“Yet I don’t think you truly want to quit, Lythlet.
You wouldn’t be here otherwise, searching for something to justify staying.
I still think of what you said during your interview, when I pushed you for the truth.
I just want to be happier . A perfectly daft answer, I thought at the time.
But now I realize you were being honest on a level most people wouldn’t dare approach.
You harbor a quiet dream within, and you wish for the chance to realize it. ”
“Dreams are dangerous for slumdogs,” she said stiffly. “Dreams are hope, and we are not allowed that privilege.”
He flashed her a pitying expression. “Sad words to hear from someone so young. Yet so familiar, so bitterly familiar. But indulge me, please. You must have one dream, however small it may be.”
The first thing that came to her mind was, I’d like to pay off my parents’ debt and return them to a life aboveground , but it felt much too personal to share.
So she shyly pointed up above.