Chapter 17: A Bit of a Row
“You and Sam seem to get along well,” said Lilian, who was waiting for Ben in the King’s Suite when he returned upstairs. She was standing at the giant window that overlooked the mountains.
“Yeah, he’s a good guy. I’d like him to keep his family here at Steepleguard, but he’s a stubborn, proud bastard. He thinks he’s intruding, which doesn’t make sense. It’s not like you and I get a lot of private time, not with five hundred other ‘guests’ here already, plus the Peth.”
Lilian said, “I hope he changes his mind, for your sake. Fiela seems quite enamored with the young Ardoon girl.”
“Celeste. She’s an orphan, like Fiela. And you, of course.”
“And you,” Lilian reminded him. “Life’s a bitch, Mutu. Even before we were orphaned I was a widower’s daughter and you a widow’s son. None of us have had an easy path.”
“She’s a special case, though. You know how Fiela’s parent’s died, and she was about the same age as Celeste when it happened. I think she sees herself when she looks at Celeste. She wants her to be happy. Or as happy as the young girl can be, under the circumstances.”
“That’s good. Fiela has been terribly bored. Doting over the girl will give her something to do.”
The man crossed his arms. “About that. You said Persy was trained to administer the house of a noble. That’s what a sereti does, right?”
“Just so.”
“I’m thinking that it’s time she sat down with Fiela and taught her a few things. You said yourself that our gal has never been ‘to court,’ and doesn’t know anything about aristocratic life. The day may come that she might has to deal with the nobles on her own. Why not have Persy teach her a few things?”
Lilian looked skeptical. “I need Persy at my side, Mutu. I cannot manage my affairs without her. Besides, Fiela is stubborn. She would never listen to Persipia. The poor woman would have a nervous breakdown trying to teach the girl anything. Fiela would probably put a dagger to her throat.”
Ben shook his head. “Look, Fiela’s twenty-two years old. I know everyone, including me, calls her a ‘girl’ because of her immaturity and vitality, but she’s a woman. You’re the only person she listens to. Convince her. It’s for her own good, Lilian. She’s a terror in combat but here at Steepleguard she’s a lamb among lions.”
“Mutu, please! Fiela does not play well with subordinates.” Deciding to change the subject, she said, “That reminds me. There was a bit of a row while you were away. I didn’t want to bother you with it yesterday, with you tired from your trip.”
“What about?” Ben asked, moving toward the bathroom.
“Nothing spectacular. One of the Ardoon children got into an altercation with one of ours. He bloodied the poor boy’s nose, but the physician said he’d be fine.”
“One of ours?” asked Ben, who was splashing water on his face. “You mean Nisirtu?”
“Of course,” Lilian said, spinning around. “You are Nisirtu, Mutu. Need I keep reminding you of that?”
A moment later, Ben strode into the room, drying his hands on a cloth. “Lilian, we can’t have two classes of people living under one roof. We’ve discussed this before. It won’t work.”
“Ben, we cannot turn the Ardoon into Nisirtu. Not all of them.”
“You did it with me.”
His wife shook her head. “You’re different. Nature blessed you with the physical and mental gifts that the Nisirtu have only achieved through millennia of proper breeding. You were a natural fit. Some of the Ardoon...well, they’re not the brightest tacks and many are unhealthy, or have bad vision, or other defects. They have only their ancestors to blame for such poor breeding processes. They would destroy our gene pool.”
“Lilian, your gene pool is dead already. You don’t really think it’s a good thing to interbreed the small Nisirtu population in this hotel, do you? You certainly can’t send every mature male or female Nisirtu into the wilderness to find one of his or her own kind. Besides, you’re fighting nature. The teens of both sides are already flirting with one another. What do you think is going to happen?”
“I’m not suggesting we prohibit all cross-breeding.”
Ben barked a laugh. “Cross-breeding? We’re not talking about two different species.”
“Are we not? Then why are all Nisirtu immune to Cage’s and why are Nisirtu men immune to our perfumes?”
“That’s by design. Speaking of which,” he added, “did you impose the perfume ban? You, Fiela, Thal, and Persipia can keep yours. Some of the Nisirtu gals are abusing their power. I saw a Nisirtu girl riding on the back of an Ardoon yesterday.”
“That’s just boys being boys and girls being girls, Mutu.”
“She rode him the entire day, Lilian.”
“Maybe he has a crush on her.”
“She was using a riding crop on him.”
“Maybe he’s into that kind of thing.”
“Lilian!”
“Oh, alright,” the woman sighed. “I’ll see the perfumes are collected. Anyway, what I was going to say is that we could carefully select the best from the Ardoon and permit mixed marriages. That is what you want, is it not?”
Ben shook his head. “That’s not enough. We have to integrate everyone. When the world was intact and populated by billions you could get away with the master-servant thing because both sides had choices as to whom they would serve or be served by. To keep the Ardoon separate here is to enslave them.”
“Well,” Lilian huffed, “they are free to leave.”
Ben stared in amazement. “I am not sending anyone into a frozen wilderness. Besides, who would do all the work the Ardoon are doing right now? Cleaning, cooking, heavy labor?”
“It is only fair that they should.” said Lilian. “We saved their lives and are sheltering them. Besides, it gives them something to do.”
“I’m not talking fairness. I’ve never been accused of being politically correct. I’m just trying to be pragmatic. You simply cannot segregate that many people in this small a space and expect them to remain segregated. The Nisirtu and Ardoon boys and girls are already sneaking away to dark corners. The Ardoon children are picking up the Agati language, even though I’ve prohibited Nisirtu from speaking it in their presence. A few weeks ago a daughter of one of the maids greeted me and asked how I was doing in Agati. She didn’t even have an accent.
“Besides, it’s time we provided the Ardoon residents answers. They’ve figured out this isn’t just a hotel and that the other residents are not just stranded wedding reception guests. All the Nisirtu men are handsome, all the Nisirtu women are gorgeous, and all the Nisirtu children are charming. All of them are crazy-smart and seem to never get sick. They are perfect human specimens, which just isn’t normal, given the size of the population. Oh, and, by the way, we have an army. How many hotels have armies, Lilian?”
“All hotels have security, darling.”
“With crew-served weapons?”
“I don’t know. What does that mean?”
Ben sighed. “Look, the Ardoon know we aren’t just a gaggle of random guests fortuitously stranded in a mysteriously self-sustaining hotel hidden in the mountains when the apocalypse occurred. They’re not stupid, Lilian.”
“They’re not terribly bright, either.”
“Lilian,” Ben said, grabbing her by the shoulders and trying to control his voice. “Enough. I am trying to have an adult conversation with you.”
“Well, you make some interesting points but it just can’t be done, Mutu. The Nisirtu would never stand for it. If you bring the Ardoon up to their standards you are effectively lowering the standards of Nisirtu.”
“To hell with standards!” Ben yelled, and the woman winced. “You’re not being rational. This building and these grounds do not constitute an actual kingdom. This is a high-tech hotel jammed with people who have just seen their world end. We are all refugees, even you and me, and we’ve got to work together to su
rvive as a single unit.”
Lilian pulled away and turned her back to him, crossing her arms. “It is a kingdom,” she said quietly. “It was my father’s and now it is mine – and yours.”
“Fine,” said Ben, exasperated. “Then as king I’m going to tap my invisible sword on every Ardoon head and make them Nisirtu.”
“No!” yelled Lilian, spinning back around, her own anger now manifest. “You would be killing my people! Everything we are and worked for. Don’t you see that? You are trying to end the Nisirtu!”
“That doesn’t even mean anything!” he yelled back. “It’s just a name now!”
The woman’s face went red. “Just a name?” she screamed. “It is five thousand years of history! It is the mentoring of savages to raise them up to what you called ‘civilization.’ And this is a kingdom! We have almost five hundred Peth under arms now and outposts for a fifty miles in every direction. We have electricity and resources and the best and brightest minds on the planet. This is the only hope the survivors have. You would not understand because you are-”
She stopped speaking and closed her eyes.
Ben stared at. “Because I’m a slave. Go ahead and say it, Lilian. I’m not like you, right?”
The woman said nothing. She kept her eyes closed.
The man threw his hands up. “You know what? You’ve got what you want, right? You’ve got this thing you call a kingdom-”
“Please stop saying that,” the woman said under her breath. “It hurts me to hear you mock it so.” She sniffled once and raised a hand to cover her face. “I cannot bear it, Ben.”
“It hurts you?” he challenged. “You’re worried about your pride while millions of people – if there are that many left – are scrambling for survival everywhere else in the world. You want to keep a hundred of our guests as slaves and you just made it clear that you view me as a lesser being, a man who was forced on you so that you could get what you wanted - a crown - and who is now proving a little too burdensome!”
She opened her eyes. “I never said that!”
“Because you caught yourself.” He put his hands on his hips and said, “Is that how you speak about me when you are with your kind, Lilian? Do you talk about the annoyances of your naive slave husband?”
Lilian shook her head, aghast. “No, never! I swear, Ben. I would never do that.”
Breathing hard, the Ardoon king walked toward the bedroom window and tried to collect his thoughts. He said, “Sometimes, Lilian...There are times that I really feel like we have something going. Something good. Then you show this side of yourself and I wonder what the hell I was thinking.”
“Do you really-” she began, taking a step toward him.
“Never mind,” Ben said, holding up a hand. “Did you start rationing the food while I was gone?”
“No. I began to, then thought it bad for morale while you were gone.”
“Then we start tomorrow.”
Lilian cast her eyes to the floor and slowly walked to her immense oak vanity. As she sat, she said, “Mutu, that does not apply to the nobles, surely? There are very few of them, compared to the rest of the population.”
“The food they eat is just as gone as the food anyone else eats. We’ll be lucky to make it through spring as things stand. A lot more rogue Peth arrived than we expected and they’ve pledged allegiance to us. It takes a lot of food to feed an army.”
“But, well, the nobility? We need their support.”
“Why?”
Lilian looked amazed. “Mutu, you cannot rule without the support of the nobility.”
Shaking his head, Ben said, “Lilian, our noble-to-citizen ratio is like one to five. It’s not like any of them really matter anymore.”
“They supported us in our darkest hour!”
“Our darkest hour will be when we resort to cannibalism. I’m betting the nobles will get eaten first, since they have tender flesh.”
The queen did not laugh. “I’m sorry, Ben. I cannot support extending the rationing to nobles, and we simply cannot integrate the Ardoon. I must ask that you trust me on these matters as I have more experience in dealing with Nisirtu sensibilities.”
Ben stepped toward her. “Lilian, these are not small things. You asked me to be a king. No, you tricked me into being king. Well, here I am. It’s a tiny kingdom, if that’s what you want to call it, but it’s all we’ve got. I’m trying to make sure it doesn’t fall apart!”
“You’re tearing it apart!” Lilian erupted, her face suddenly scarlet. “Don’t you see that? You will destroy us!” The woman began crying. Between sobs, she said, “You are destroying me. You are tearing apart my world one piece at a time. My father’s world. My dreams!”