Page 39 of The Ruler
Khan:Damn right he does. If I didn’t have to babysit I would have gone already.
Boulder:Bring Pearl here. We’ll set the girls up with plenty of security and you, me, Finn, Magni, and the others can go and burn their fucking house down. You can’t stay home forever! They’ll think you’re afraid and hiding.
Khan:Afraid, ha! What a joke! I’m just trapped in my house because of her. It was never supposed to last this long. Maybe it’s time I assign my burden to someone else. I’m coming by tomorrow morning so we can discuss further.
“Pearl?” Christina looked at me with round eyes. “This is good news – maybe Khan will let you go? Oooh, I know; you could ask for Archer to be your protector.”
“Yes.” I smiled stiffly, but on the inside there was a strange sadness that I couldn’t explain. Khan was horrible to me at times. Well, most of the time, really. It shouldn’t surprise me that he saw me as a burden that he wanted to get rid of, but there had been moments when I had felt like he liked having me around. I looked out the windows again, my thoughts running back over the last many weeks – to the friendly banter that amused and entertained me, and the time he won a chess game and insisted his prize should be to teach me to burp out loud, just so he could corrupt me some more. We had laughed so hard and for a moment I’d been happy.
Khan was unpolished and brutally honest, and before I came here, I would have said those sides of a person were uncivilized. They were. But the truth was that I was beginning to find it a good thing that he spoke his opinion, as it made it easy for me to read him. If Khan was happy, he whistled or smiled. If he was mad, he expressed it without shame. He wasn’t worried that he would upset anyone.
“Let’s go downstairs and talk to the men about the school project,” Christina suggested and pulled me out of my ruminations. “Boulder loves children; I’m sure he’ll support the project any way he can.”
We found the men sitting outside on the staircase leading up to the entrance. They were shoulder to shoulder and talking with somber expressions.
“What are you two whispering about?” Christina asked, making them both look back.
Khan got up and threw a small rock from his hand in annoyance. He walked down the stairs while Boulder stood up and reached out for Christina.
“Khan and Pearl have a project they wish to discuss with you,” Christina told Boulder and took his hand.
Khan shot me a glance that I couldn’t interpret.
“Yes, the thing is…” I said and walked down the five stairs to stand on the ground closer to Khan. “We are trying to find a place that will be safe enough for an experiment that we’re planning.
“I’m listening,” Boulder said and pinned his piercing gray eyes on me.
I licked my dry lips. “We believe that any chance of a future union between our two nations would have to start with demolishing the many prejudices that exist on both sides of the borders. Therefore we would like to bring together twenty children and raise them to form friendships and create mutual respect. Ten from each side of the border.”
“Really?” Boulder grinned. “That sounds amazing!”
“But as you can imagine,” I continued, “safety will be a major concern for us in the council.”
“Of course.” Boulder’s eyes flew to Khan. “Can you imagine ten little girls running around in one place? What a glorious sight that would be.”
“Uh-huh.” Khan’s smile didn’t reach his eyes like it had the other times we’d spoken about this. Something was definitely troubling him.
“I was talking to Christina about your island.” I spread out my hands. “Are there any buildings we could turn into a school?”
“Let me think.” Boulder looked down in concentration, his left hand resting on his nape. “Maybe the church.” He paced in front of us. “It might work. It’s big and could easily be used as a classroom. There’s a side building for the congregation that could be turned into living facilities.” He stopped. “It would take work, but yeah, I think it could work.”
“Could we see it?”
“What, right now?” Boulder’s eyes were glowing with excitement. “Yeah, it’s just a few miles from here.
“Then let’s go,” Christina chirped happily.
Khan raised his wrist and gave a command to his security staff, who were positioned too far away to hear us speak. “Stay here; we’re going for a small picnic, but will be back in half an hour.”
A short reply came back. “Understood, Lord.”
“We’re taking your hybrid, Boulder.” Khan was already walking toward the big black thing that was twice the size of the drones we had at home. It was sleek and excessive but now wasn’t the time to discuss distribution of wealth.
“What do you think?” I asked Khan, when five minutes later we walked into the old stone building.
He was scanning the room with the vaulted high ceilings and stopped to stare at the large painted windows above the altar. A beam of sunlight streamed through the glass, creating a beautiful splash of color on the dusty floors.
“It’s big enough,” he said thoughtfully and walked over to slide his hand down the stone wall. “But I wonder how cold it’ll be in the wintertime.”
