Guns of the Temple (The Polaris Chronicles Book 1) (12 page)

“You finally awake?” Hadassah said. She leaned against a nearby wall picking her teeth with a piece of scrap wire which looked suspiciously like a lockpick. Taki nodded and looked around the cell. It was a communal affair meant to hold a squad, rather than the oubliette he had festered in for two days before the trial. It was also warmer, much to his relief.

Draco sat nearby, reading a dog-eared, leather-bound text. His eyebrows arched delicately as he pored over the words, giving him an uncharacteristically academic appearance. On hearing Hadassah speak, Draco snapped the book shut and shuffled over on all fours.

“Hey, Natalis,” he said contritely, but without looking Taki in the eyes. “About what happened in the stockade, I mean, it’s a bit weird for a man to stay—how should I say this—pure at your age, but I didn’t mean to insult you or anything-”

“Where’s the captain?” Taki snapped, cutting Draco off.

“She’s with the archangel Jibriil,” Hadassah said. “He summoned her shortly before you came to.”

Taki frowned. “For what?”

“Dunno,” Hadassah said with a shake of her head. “Creepy bastard’s always had a thing for her, though, so I hope she’s doing alright. But you know what they say. ‘Never force yourself on a woman who can crush your skull with her thighs.’”

“That sounds like something you made up,” Draco said.

“Doesn’t make it any less true.”

Taki rubbed at his eyes and tried not to smear ointment into them. The captain was in a private audience with one of the triada? If the trial had shown anything, it was that Lotte knew how to negotiate her way out of a bad situation. Draco had been right about one thing, at least.
Perhaps she’s trying to get me transferred?
He shook his head. That was just ludicrous, unwarranted optimism. With a courts-martial verdict now on his record, no other unit would accept him and he was forever stuck as a Tirefire.

He regarded the others. They were good fighters both, but still small-minded dead-enders. They had no chance of advancement in the Temple hierarchy, and would be drummed into menial servant labor the moment they lost their fighting edge, or a limb. Dying in battle would be a mercy.
But if I play my cards right, and impress my captain, I might at least get promoted. Make officer-candidate and then perhaps one of the better units will overlook my early mistakes.
Taki clenched his jaw. Whatever came next, he’d come out on top. All he needed to do was work hard, distinguish himself, and please Lotte. And he also needed to fix the problem of his virginity.

Taki patted his cheeks and rose to his feet. It was time to play to his strengths. As usual, Draco and Hadassah were bickering again. When an opportunity came, he snatched the book from Draco’s hand.

“Oy, what’re you doing?” Draco asked.

“Remember that I said I’d teach you how to write, and Mikkelsen how to read? I intend to keep my word. So, no more leisure until you’ve learned your letters.”

Hadassah twirled a lock of hair around a finger. “
I said
I didn’t wanna learn.”

“So you like it when the major insults you?” Taki scoffed.

“No, but…”

“How sweet are Thy words unto my palate! Yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth,” Taki intoned. “A psalm of the most renowned king of the Israelites. A command to his people to be literate so they could know the word of the Lord for themselves. If you won’t do that then you’re not one of them.”

“T-that’s really underhanded, Newboy.”

“Dassa, you should let him teach you,” Draco said. “It’s your only chance to learn. Else, you’ll spend your old age scrubbing floors and whelping kids for the only nice Jewish boy in the Temple. And
he
lies to his own mother.”

Hadassah crossed her arms, rolled her eyes, and let out a fitful sigh. “Oh, fine!”

“Oh, hush. I can tell you’re actually excited about it.”

“Shut your gob, schoolboy.”

Draco clapped his hands. “Then it’s decided! Natalis, you’ll teach Dassa to read and me to write.”

Taki nodded. “I’ll teach both to each of you. We’ll start now by scratching in the dirt, but ideally you should have a quill, ink, and parchment.”

“Oh, I can get those now,” Hadassah said.

“In here?” Taki scrunched his brow. “In the brig?”

“Yeah. Our pudgy little gaoler needs ‘em to fool his mother into thinking he’s a respectable academic.” She slunk up to the cell door, grasped two of the rusty iron bars, and started to shake them with her prana gates fully opened. A deeply unsettling rattle echoed off dripping stones and forced Taki to clap his hands over his ears. Before long, the masked executioner stomped up to where Hadassah was and slammed his cudgel against the bars.

“Enough! You’ve giving me indigestion,” Herschel whined. “Why can’t you just be
good?
”

Hadassah stuck her hand out and poked him in the belly. “I want to use your scribe set. Give it up, fatty.”

“No.”

“I promise to return it, and return it looking used. You
know
how valuable that is for you, right?”

Herschel crossed his arms. “But you can’t write. How do I know you won’t just draw cocks all over the parchment?”

“You don’t. But there’s also a kid in here who wants to teach letters, so maybe I’ll just draw a few and make you look like you actually scribble for a living.”

Herschel pouted, but then shrugged in defeat. “If that’s the case, I suppose I can lend you the set. If I see more than one dong on it, though…”

“Yeah, yeah. You’ll shove the pear of anguish up my hoo-hah and turn the needle to eleven.”

Herschel seemed taken aback, even through his mask. “What? No, that’s horrible! I really wouldn’t do that to you! Not even if the Archangels ordered it.”

“Aw, you’re a sweet boy,” Hadassah said with a smile, and patted Herschel’s cheek. “That is, when you’re not being a leather fetishist.”

“Oh, just shut up and take the set,” Herschel said, and grumpily tromped away. A few beats later, he returned and shoved a goatskin roll through the bars. Hadassah let out a melodic giggle and flitted back to Taki.

“Here, all the stuff we need,” she said.

Taki accepted the roll and opened it on the floor. Within were pristine wooden quills with sharpened metal nibs, fresh bottles of inks in black and blue, a flat-bladed ruler that doubled as a scraper, sealing wax, and several sheets of unmarred vellum. A far finer array of tools than any he had used back at the academy. He pressed one of the velvety sheets to his nose and inhaled its musky fragrance.

“This is great, Mikkelsen!” Taki gushed.

“It’s really nothing,” Hadassah said, suddenly looking embarrassed. “I just know a guy, that’s all.”

“She knows everyone in the Temple, practically,” Draco said, patting her on the back. “Despite her disagreeable personality.”

“I’ll show you disagreeable, goatfucker.”

“Now that’s just rude.”

Taki cleared his throat. “If you don’t mind using the floor as a desk, we can start now.” He took the largest of the precious leaves of calfskin and a quill, uncorked a bottle, and inked the nib before starting to scrawl away. Before long, he finished and laid out the sheet before his would-be students.

“This will be your master reference. I’ll write numbers in later, since they’re another subject entirely and I don’t want to confuse things. Here,” he said, pointing to the top-left of the page. “This is Aelph, also called Alpha. Next is Ve, once known as Bet: Hence, ‘AlphaBet’ as the name for this chart. Combine the letters of the alphabet and you form words. Combine words and you can make sentences. Combine sentences and you have stories and books.”

“So I could be an author one day?” Hadassah asked, her eyes widening.

“Yes,” Taki said. “Anyone who can write can make books to be read later. You can tell truths, you can lie, you can go in between. It doesn’t matter what your sex is or if you’re a demonspawn or a human. As long as words are written, most readers will assume them true. But before you compose histories, let’s have you both start simple and write your given names. That way, you’ll have a signature that no one can duplicate. Prepare your quills and get a sheet of vellum each. Don’t worry about writing small or in straight lines for now, because we’ll just scrape the ink away later. Use the alphabet in front of you as a guide to how to form your letters.”

“Let’s see,” Draco said, and dipped his nib in ink. “Probably for me it’s a Delta, then Rho, then Aelph, and then Gammad?”

“I’d use Chi, with or without an Omicron. Otherwise, you made good choices,” Taki said. He turned to Hadassah. “Your name is longer, but still doable. What do you think you’d use as the first character?”

“That thing that looks like crosshairs, except with an ‘X’ through it,” Hadassah said, triumphantly.

“That’s Zhe, so it won’t work. But you have some options, even though our Alphabet doesn’t have the same ‘chha’ sound as the original Hebrew. You can use Ghe or Khe. Notice how the overall pronunciation ends up the same.”

“But it doesn’t look as cool,” she pouted.

“Not spelling like a bumpkin is much cooler,” Taki said.

“Oh, fine. Is there a character for ‘ahh?’”

“Use Aelph. Then Delta, Aelph, Sigma once or twice, then another Aelph.”

“Wait, which one is Sigma?”

“This,” Taki said, and pointed to a spot on the chart. “It looks like a snake, doesn’t it? Think ‘sss’ like a hissing serpent.”

“I guess that makes up for the lameness of the first character. I can have double snakes.”

“Yes, you can. So, write it down.”

After a few minutes of tense concentration and a chorus of scratching, Draco proudly presented his efforts.

“What’s this?” Taki asked with a frown.

“My name. Right?”

“No, this is gibberish. It’s full of hesitation marks and stray ink, and I can tell your hand trembled like a leaf. Also, you used Omega instead of Omicron. Failure.” With that, Taki whipped his hand out and rapped Draco atop his head with the flat of the ruler.

“Ow! Damn you, Natalis, I thought you said you wouldn’t go at this like they did at the Academy,” Draco said while rubbing at his aggrieved scalp.

“It’s the only way you’ll learn as an adult,” Taki said with a shrug. “
Children
get sweets and coddling.
Men
get whacked.”

“In that case, I quit.”

“You should quit being a pansy,” Hadassah said to Draco, and swatted at his rump. “Didn’t you tell me you wanted to be a historian, and write lies and blasphemy for saps like you to read thousands of years later?”

“I did, but—”

“This is the only way you’ll ever get to do that. So harden the hell up and
write gooder!”

“Godrotting heretic,” Draco whined and writhed. “Okay, fine! I won’t quit. Do your worst, Natalis. I’m a man. I can take it.”

“Thank you, Mikkelsen,” Taki said. “Now, show me yours.”

“Ta-da!” Hadassah shoved her vellum forward. Taki looked at it and then looked blankly at her.

“This is a picture of a cock. Failure!” Before she could hop away he swatted her shoulders with the ruler.

“But I’m a woman! I thought you said only men get whacked!”

“No man desires a woman who doesn’t take her education seriously. Do this right or don’t do this at all.”

“How’d you suddenly turn into such a hardass, anyway?” she complained. “Weren’t you just bawling your damn eyes out at a little paddling?”

Taki glowered. “My letters are my strength, and without them I’m a worthless virgin. I can at least do
something
right with my life. Now, write your names again. We won’t stop until you’ve got it correct. Then, we’ll start making basic words.”

“How do we write ‘virgin,’ anyway?” Draco chortled. “Ve then Upsilon?”

Taki swung his ruler and whacked Draco again.

An hour later, Draco’s scalp was red with welts and Hadassah’s shoulders looked as if she had spent days harvesting deuterium salt on the beach. However, their hands were steadier and their letters more legible, and now, each could write his or her name without looking at the Alphabet as a guide. So engrossed were the trio in their studies that when the door to their cell bloc finally opened from afar, they almost didn’t notice it.

“I hear the Captain talking!” Hadassah whispered and bounded excitedly to the door. Unbidden, Draco also sidled up next to her and strained to peer out between the bars. Taki set his vellum down and carefully cleaned the nib of his quill before joining them.

“You have my answer, milord,” Lotte said to someone they couldn’t see.

“No. You can’t continue like this. Mezeta will only lead you to ruin.” Taki’s eyes widened with recognition. The voice belonged to the archangel Jibriil.

“The major owns me. I owe her a debt, and am bound to pay it.”

“She forces you to accept humiliation, and me to punish you and your men. Be my wife, instead. I’ll treat you well. I’ll protect you from Yuriel and Michail.”