Shel looked to Samuel, begging him with his eyes to stop Audrel. “Can’t you see she’s drunk,” he yelled, his mouth tasted like tin and he licked his lip, which had broken open. “Get her off of me!” Shel squirmed against Audrel’s knee, again trying to free himself. Audrel was a large woman and incredibly strong. Her leg was large and solid, and he could not budge it. He tried to twist his face as far away as possible from her hand, which she had cocked for another strike.

The manipulation left Shel’s lips before he thought through it. He knew Samuel’s weakness and preyed on it without thought. He pushed Samuel to stand up to his daughter even though he knew that guilt alone would not force Samuel over that edge. Even in his excited state, he saw himself unconsciously use what Audrel had taught him. His mind still reeled and he had not yet found calmness—the slap was too fresh and his thoughts still confused at her violence—but when he realized what he was doing, he understood that he had not yet crossed the line into animal reaction.

“Audrel, please, let him go. Let’s talk about this,” Samuel said. There was a desperate almost resigned tone to his voice. Samuel stepped closer to Audrel, but stopped a few steps away. He seemed reluctant to get involved, almost as if he feared what Audrel would do.

“Father, leave. Go help at the tavern while I take care of this. There are some lessons that your kindness can not teach, and this is one of them. Shel must understand the risks of what he does, and he should feel lucky that it was only me that caught him and not the Empress’s or the Church’s soldiers.” Audrel swayed a bit and Shel tried to use the opportunity to squirm out from under her. He figured if he could make it to the door, he could hide in town until tomorrow when he hoped Audrel would have calmed down enough to hear reason. For all his squirming, however, he was unable to slip out from Audrel’s knee.

With a sense of resignation, Shel watched Samuel as he walked past him toward the door. Samuel did not look in Shel’s direction even when he whimpered as Samuel opened the door. Samuel did not turn around as he closed the door behind him. The rain increased in its frequency and Shel listened to it pound against the ceiling. It sounded like rocks dropped from the sky. A large thunder strike shook the house, its volume silenced the rain for a moment, before the rain picked up its cadence again.

The unfairness of the situation struck Shel. He had not even seen the Empress’s soldier, and while he might have planned to do wrong, he had not actually done wrong. He knew that Audrel should not punish him for what he planned to do, since there could be no wrongness in thought, only in action. Shel never even made it to the square, and the unfairness of being punished for a plan that he never achieved felt wrong and misguided. He thought about arguing this point with Audrel, but one look at her unsteady head made him realize that she would see no reason this night.

“I will beat you into unconsciousness,” Audrel said, her hand still held near Shel’s face, and her voice shook like the thunder with a dreadful conviction. “You are no longer a child. I have tried to teach you what I know, but you seem more interested in your curiosity than in the risks.” Audrel slapped Shel against his face again. “So be it. It’s time I struck with something other than my palm.”

“You’re drunk, Audrel. We should talk about this when you’re sober.”

“You stupid boy. The one thing I can do is handle my drink.” Audrel placed her hand on top of Shel’s forehead and pulled her fist back to make ready to punch him in his exposed face. Shel felt tears forming and swallowed hard, the phlegm already building at the back of his throat. He squeezed his eyes until he was sure he had stopped any leakage of tears. He refused to give her the satisfaction of seeing him cry.

Audrel lifted her knee and stood. Shel was surprised and kept his eyes closed, sure that he was missing something. When he opened them, he saw Audrel standing with her arms crossed over him. He lifted himself slowly to a sitting position. His clothes were drenched. It felt like Audrel had dumped a river over him. Shel looked up at Audrel. Her black hair, which curled when it was wet, looked glued across her head. Her eyes were wild, and the small amount of makeup she wore when she worked at the tavern was smeared across her face from the rain, giving her the look of a wild madwoman.

Audrel was nothing if not unexpected. Shel rubbed his cheeks where Audrel had slapped him and looked at her warily. He was not sure if she was done with violence yet. Audrel had always been very precise with her violence. She had not spared Shel punishments, but instead struck quickly and usually unexpectedly. This night seemed no different, and Shel was not yet sure if it was over.

“Tell me everything that happened,” Audrel said. “And don’t leave out any detail. I have already heard the story from Neal, and I will know if you’re lying. Spill it all or those slaps I gave you will be just the beginning of tonight’s activities.”

Audrel had taught him well to think through his choices. Even when he felt overwrought and outmaneuvered, he thought through what she said and tried to judge the veracity of her statements. For whatever she was, Audrel was a good teacher. His panic subsided as he began to realize that she was not going to continue beating him, and he reached for a calmer place. Audrel told him never to make decisions in a state of emotion. He tried to leave his emotion behind. He felt his anger and his embarrassment slowly fade. So she wanted the truth. She will get her truth, but the truth as she had taught him, the disciplines of truth.

Shel closed his eyes to organize his thoughts. When he opened them. Audrel had taken a seat on her sleeping pallet. Shel studied the water dripping from her hair and clothing, forming small puddles on the floor near the pallet. He organized his thoughts according to the dripping.

“No reason to delay it, tell me what happened,” Audrel said, breaking Shel’s concentration on the water. Again the anger and embarrassment flared, but now he saw it from an outsider’s point of view, as if it was the feeling of someone else. Shel still felt the weight of Audrel’s palm and the fatigue that had set in earlier in the day, but both of the weights seemed to be someone else’s weight, and his thoughts coalesced.

“I was thinking of where to start to give you the full story. It’s not a complicated story, but I did want to get it right.” Shel left off the end of the thought, the part about avoiding additional punishment, not because it was untrue, but because he wanted her to fill it in for him. The first step of manipulation was to set the audience’s expectations.

When Shel was finished, he had revealed a tale based in truth, but with him not as a central character. Audrel seemed very interested in the run in with Tommy and the littlelings, asking him to describe Tommy and what she said in more details than he thought Tommy was worth. He used the description of the Central Square, a place Audrel had been plenty of times, as a jumping off place to cover the fact that that had been his destination. He described the sweet buns and the crowd of children. He even described the chocolate filling, but left out the feeling of heat that had washed over him. He still did not understand it himself, especially not well enough to explain to Audrel.

When he came to the guards, he described them in detail. He spent much time on the Empress’s man dressed in white. After he mentioned the white laced up boots, Audrel seemed to lose interest. She had Shel describe every soldier he could remember that marched with the man in white. Audrel did not seem interested in any of them. She seemed to know something of the Empress’s soldiers, who accompanied whom, and she provided off-hand comments explaining the different ranks and abilities of the soldiers.

At the end of the telling, Audrel seemed satisfied. “I don’t approve of what you did, Shel. You should not have gone to the square, especially after I warned you about the Empress’s soldier.”

Shel wanted to interrupt her, wanted to tell her that he had not gone to see the Empress’s soldier, but decided that she seemed somewhat satisfied and calmer now, and he did not see the advantage of spinning his answers and further.

“But I do appreciate that you told me a plausible story, and that you kept your cool in the telling. These are all important parts of diplomacy. Many times you will be pushed to the edge of your reason, things will be unfair and you will want to explode in anger. But you must never do that. You must fight yourself and gain control and think through the disciplines.”

Another test! Shel could not believe what he was hearing. Why was everything in his life with Audrel a test? He had spoken about this at length with Neal, and Neal did not experience the same sorts of tests from his parents. They seemed content for him to learn a trade through an apprenticeship when he was old enough. At home, he learned the basics of helping out in the tavern, but he was never tested, never prepared for anything greater. The thought of Audrel preparing Shel for something greater brought a smile to his face. He hid it quickly, not sure if Audrel was done with her lesson, though.

“What are you preparing me for, Audrel? Where did you learn these disciplines and what is there purpose?”

“I don’t want you to worry about that now, Shel. You are a special boy. We’re not sure how special, but there is something great in your future and I want you prepared for it. You should check in on Neal tomorrow. The Empress’s guards left him with a black eye and you should make sure he doesn’t feel you betrayed him by running away.”

“But I didn’t,” Shel started, already beginning to spin the tale of why he had run away, preparing the story he would present to Neal the next day in case Neal really felt that Shel had betrayed him. He hated to think this way about his friend, but Audrel had been too good of a teacher to do anything but plan for all eventualities. He wished he did not have to think about eventualities with his friends.

“You know what you did, and it’s between him and you,” Audrel said. Shel searched her face to try and see if she was judging him, but he saw nothing. It really was a matter she was not interested in. “Now that I have some time away from the tavern, we should spend it practicing. Let’s start with the disciplines of judging.”

The rain continued to pound on the roof while Audrel started through her litany of lessons on the disciplines. The water dripped down the walls and onto the wooden floor. It was many hours before Samuel returned, and he slipped quietly into the house. Audrel was still deep in lecture on the disciplines of loyalty. Shel was half asleep on his pallet as Audrel lectured, and he did not notice Samuel until Shel rolled over on the sleeping pallet and almost rolled on top of him. He really was like a mouse.

Word Count: 2,027

Words Remaining: 30,249

Caffeination: Tall Americano (and a half a cup of drip coffee this morning as I tried to wake myself up to do some work).

Feeling: Yeah, I know I fudged his explanation. I hadn’t thought it all the way through, and I’m not sure if it even makes a lick of sense. I wanted to get past it, though, because it was slowing me down and I was running out of time. Doolies came in for today and tomorrow because of her interview, and work was very busy (it’s still very busy, I have to finish some mails after I pound out the rest of the words). Let me get back to the words.