Page 18 of King Among the Dead

For a moment, he looked lost: eyes wide, pupils enlarged, mouth half-open, caught mid-sentence. Then he sat back, composed again, and turned to Kay.

Rose dropped belatedly back into her own chair; she’d been half-out of it, balanced on her elbows and toes, like his voice was a rope that had pulled her up out of her seat.

“Lunch would be perfect,” Beck said. “What are you making?”

Kay snorted. “You leave it up to me and that’s how you get canned Spaghetti-Os.”

“We don’t have any canned Spaghetti-Os,” Beck said in the voice of someone who’d just picked up someone else’s used tissue.

“You haven’t seen my closet.”

“I shudder to think. We’ll have hot sandwiches, I think,” he said, pushing his chair back. “To go with the leftover soup from last night. Sound good?” The last he directed at Rose, along with a look softer than she’d dared hope to receive.

“Sounds good.”

~*~

They settled into an every-other-day rhythm with her lessons. One day of lectures that were more like conversations, and the next day off so Beck could work in his study and Rose could read the passages he’d assigned to her and catch up on household chores. In the mornings, when she was freshest, they worked on science: studied electricity, and rudimentary chemistry, and the ways the Atmospheric Rift had affected everything from the energy industry to the ocean’s ecosystems. Hydroponics, and efforts to reduce pollution, though they’d yet to touch on the Rift itself. Rose had the impression Beck kept sidestepping it on purpose; the great unspoken elephant in the room.

Before lunch it was world history, from the fall of Constantinople to the fall of the Reichstag. Everything up to the geopolitical upheaval of the world just before the Rift, and the crash after.

After lunch, it was mythology, and literature. She gobbled novels like candy, and he teased her opinions of them out, one gentle prompt at a time; offering counterpoints occasionally, but never dismissing, never ridiculing.Literature isn’t full of hidden meanings,he told her,but there’s no limit to individual interpretations of a work once you strip away the author’s intent.

She took to languages shockingly well, or so he told her.You have an ear for them. Spanish, and French, and the start of Latin. Beck also spoke Dutch, German, and a little Russian.You never know what might come in handy, depending where life takes you.

Rose’s head felt overfull; she dreamed of verb conjugations and the periodic table. By dinnertime, she was drowsing over her plate, glazed and overwhelmed by the amount of information she’d consumed. But she was hungry, too. The more she learned, the more she wanted to learn.

Beck would quiz her in French at the table, and Kay would grumble about it. “It’s rude to talk about people right in front of them when they don’t even know what to defend themselves about.”

“Kay, what makes you think you’re an interesting topic of conversation?” Beck asked sweetly, and Rose stifled choking laughter into her napkin.

It was a routine in which Rose thrived. She was awake before the alarm in the morning, tossing the covers off with relish, no matter how exhausted she’d been the night before. She took the stairs two at a time, and found herself humming as she vacuumed and dusted. “What’s that?” Kay asked her one night as they did the dishes. She’d been whistling a bit of Bach, one of the old vinyls Beck had been playing during their lessons.

She noticed the physical changes in herself, too. One morning, she paused in front of the mirror, midway through combing out her hair. Hair that was fuller, shinier, bouncier. Her face had filled out, and the bags had gone from beneath her eyes. Her blue eyes had a sparkle to them. Her clothes, all the new, wonderful clothes that Beck had bought her, fit better; didn’t hang off her like she was an emaciated department store mannequin. She had color in her cheeks, and a softness to her skin, and she was healthy. Was getting an education, and was…

More useful. More ready to go out into the world on her own.

An oddly crushing realization.

“Rose, is everything alright?” Beck asked, cutting off partway through an explanation of the Pythagorean theorem. “You seem distracted.”

She’d been mindlessly tapping the end of her pen on her notebook page, and forced herself to still. Glanced up at him guiltily. “Sorry. Just thinking about something.”

He’d been pacing slowly back and forth beside their table – sometimes lecturing filled him with a restrained passion for the material that took him up out of his chair and across the room, like his wonder at the topic was too powerful to be channeled sitting down – and returned to his chair, forearms resting on the tabletop, head cocked. “Something troubling, it looks like.”

“Oh, no. It’s not.”

His brows went up.

“It’s just…” She sighed. “I guess I’m wondering if all of this” – she gestured to the books and notebooks between them – “is preparing me for a career. If I’m supposed to go out and find a job. My own place.” Her voice betrayed her on the last sentence, a slight quiver.

His face smoothed. “Is that what you want to happen?” he asked with what felt like a careful lack of inflection. Beck wasn’t a demonstrative sort, but she’d learned to read him, his little tics and the slight shifts in his voice and bearing. She could tell now that he intended to betray nothing of his own thoughts or feelings.

She didn’t want to answer.

“It’s like I told you once before,” he said, and she glimpsed the faintest sparking of emotion in his gaze, one quickly snuffed. “You can pretend if you want to,” he said, “but you don’t have to. I won’t ever think less of you. You can be honest with me, about this, about anything.”

She tried to take a breath, and couldn’t. Instead said, “No. No, I don’t want to leave.” Her voice shook and crackled; she didn’t even recognize it as her own. “But I will if you want me to. If that’s the plan. I won’t blame you. I won’t be mad.”

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