Chapter 32

I dearly miss my all too recent days of running around in the tunnels. Scribbling notes by lantern light, breathing the dank, stale air that tastes like dirt and rocks, playing with my measuring tape and clinometer – I even miss dodging spiders. Why? Because working on this stupid cipher is the most boring task I’ve ever undertaken in my entire life.

I’ve limited my time working on it to only during lunch hours between eleven and one and occasionally for a couple hours in the evening. Any more than that, and my brain starts to cannibalize itself. I feel like I’m beating my head against a brick wall trying to figure this out. I thought it might be a tad more doable since the list of cities and towns in Veilsung are finite. However, last names are not, in fact, just cities and towns, but also sometimes as specific as the neighborhood or region in a city or town. And since they refer to the ancestral home of a person, they are frequently cities and towns that no longer fucking exist, or have changed names. The census book is more helpful than the atlas by a mile, but there are so many names in it that it’s taking ages to go through them.

In order to vent my frustration, I make an extremely questionable decision and take Khysmet up on his offer to teach me how to wield a sword. I regret it almost immediately. Suddenly, the variety that my afternoons once held – some days spent relaxing in the library, some strolling through the garden, and some getting up to whatever struck my fancy – has now vanished, because his royal fucking majesty is so eager to teach me what he knows that it’s all he ever wants to do.

At first most of what he has me do is related to just getting me used to holding a sword. It’s going to take time to build up the arm and wrist strength necessary to swing it around for any significant length of time. The dull practice sword he has me using is relatively light, but it’s a hell of a lot heavier than my knives. He also wants me to get a good feel for the length of the blade. As all my combat has up to this point been very up close and personal, I’m probably going to have a tendency to step further forward than necessary.

“Always make the most of your range,” he says. “You should know just how far to stand from an opponent to keep them at the tip of your blade.”

After a week or so of just swinging at training dummies, he wants me to take some swings at him, just to see what my instincts are like.

“Shouldn’t we be wearing some kind of protective equipment?” I ask. “What if I hit you?”

Khysmet laughs and shoots me the most smug look I’ve ever seen on him, which is saying something.

“If you’re able to hit me, Cat, I’ll be insanely impressed. I’d wear that bruise proudly.”

I purse my lips. “Well what if you hit me, then?”

“Don’t worry, sunshine, I have more than enough self-control to keep your delicate skin from being so much as grazed.”

When I’m standing opposite him, I hesitate before just swinging away, and I size him up, taking note of his stance, the angle at which he’s holding his sword, and the sharp look in his watchful eyes. I shift my feet until their placement mirrors his, then take a few experimental swings. He meets them effortlessly and knocks them away with precise force. I pause and try to process as much of what I just saw as I can, making a mental note of the way he intercepted my blade each time. I take a few more swipes at him, then pause again to cogitate. Slowly, I walk circles around him, attacking briefly and then processing what I can over and over. He provides a couple simple suggestions during this time, but mostly just watches, presumably making his own mental notes to help him figure out where best to start with me.

"Watch your distance, sunshine," Khysmet reminds me again. "I know how badly you want to get up close and personal with me, but you'll have to wait to do that later."

I curse and step back. Every damn time he tells me to watch my distance, he makes some sort of comment like that. I'm already sick of hearing them, so hopefully that will work as an incentive for me to remember more easily.

"You know, I have to say," he says, "out of all the beginners I've trained, you have quite possibly the best instinct for footwork that I've ever seen."

I grin. "Footwork is my strong suit when it comes to back alley knife fights, too."

"I have a feeling you'll progress very quickly, then, since learning proper footwork is typically a very time-intensive process. We'll be able to focus more on blade control and tactics early on."

I had my doubts about what Khysmet would be like as a teacher, but in all honesty, he’s quite good. His instructions and explanations are clear, he’s endlessly patient, he pushes me, but never too hard, his tips and suggestions are always helpful, and he really knows his stuff. I certainly feel like I’m learning a lot in a short amount of time as I practice with him every day. He’s also very encouraging, constantly complimenting me when I’m doing well. On one hand, I appreciate that he’s so free with his praise, since I respond better to positive reinforcement than to negative. On the other, I wish he wouldn’t call me a “good girl” in the same tone he uses in the bedroom. It gets distracting.

As good a teacher as Khysmet is, I haven’t been training with him long before a sort of odd tendency of his comes to light. It’s most prominent when he has me just spar with him freely rather than practice anything specific, and especially when I come at him more aggressively.

“You should know how hard this is making me,” he says while batting away my attacking strikes.

I immediately back off, startled by his comment, and shift to a more guarded stance. I furrow my brow and glare at him.

“You should know that it takes more than that to distract me,” I inform him.

He goes on the offensive, taking a couple easy swings at me to test my blocking ability, which is already coming to light as my weakest area.

“I’d like to do much more than distract you, sunshine,” he purrs suggestively.

I guard against his attacks just like how he’s shown me, backing up to maintain my distance.

“It’s a little weird how much you’re into this,” I say.

He eases off and waits for me to come at him again, grinning sinisterly.

“Combat,” he says, “especially when conducted one-on-one, is inherently erotic. Anyone who claims otherwise is fooling themselves.”

I snort and come at him swinging just for that comment.

“I didn’t realize,” I say between strikes, “that you had such a hard on for violence.”

He smirks and starts talking while effortlessly intercepting my every attack.

“All sex is violent,” he says, “and all violence is sexual. They are more than two sides of the same coin – they are the same action carried out to different ends. The only difference between them is whether they elicit pleasure or pain, and even then there is significant crossover that bleeds into either side.”

I pause my assault after his little speech just to better give him a dubious look.

“So does that mean I should be jealous of all the time you spend training the guards?” I ask.

He flashes me what could only by a significant stretch of the imagination be considered a reassuring smile.

“Don’t worry, sunshine. I’ll stick my sword in just about anything, but I’m only sticking my dick in you.”

I sigh deeply and fix him with a withering glare. “Thanks, Khysmet, that’s very reassuring.”

While he’s explaining new techniques and critiquing my form, Khysmet doesn’t say anything or act in any way out of the ordinary for an instructor, but if we’re free sparring for too long, he starts getting excessively horny. Given the fact that we practice in the afternoons, often at the same time the guards are out doing the same, I sincerely hope that his overtly sexual comments can’t be overheard by anyone. We generally pick a spot as far from everyone else as possible, but still, Khysmet does not make any attempt to be quiet about it. Far worse than just being overheard, though, is on one occasion when I'm taking the offensive and getting really in the zone with the flow of my strikes, then the second I make a misstep and get in too close, he knocks my attack away and deftly maneuvers himself right on top of me, wrapping his free arm tight around my waist and running his tongue lasciviously up and down the column of my neck.

"Khysmet, what the fuck–!" I splutter uselessly.

He groans low in his chest. "You smell so good, Cat."

I hear his sword clang when it hits the ground and then his other hand is on me, pulling me flush against him and then running up and down my body. I can't stop myself from moaning between the greedy fervor of his touch and the sensation of his tongue running across every inch of skin it can find, but the second I can think straight enough to react, I drop my own sword and push him away as hard as I can, with only partial success.

"Public!" I say forcefully. "Very public!"

"I don't care," he says, pushing back hard against my hands. "I want you."

I struggle to keep him at arm's length, a battle I'm quickly losing. I'm not only uncomfortable with letting him lick me where anyone and everyone can see; I also get the sense, based on the raw, animalistic desire radiating from his body, that there's a chance he wouldn't stop anywhere short of straight up mounting me here in the grass and really giving the guards a show, and I cannot give him the opportunity to do so. Eventually I just snap.

"For fuck's sake, Khysmet, at least take me to bed first!"

Suddenly, I am being lifted off the ground. Without a word, he unceremoniously throws me over his shoulder and starts walking back to the castle, leaving our swords behind in the grass. I slam my fists against whatever parts of him I can reach.

"I can walk just fine, damn it! Put me down!"

When that doesn't have any effect, and we're getting closer to the castle doors, I change tack.

"At least carry me some other way, Khysmet," I say desperately. "Please. I'm begging you."

This, miraculously, gets through to him, and he sets me down for half a second before picking me back up in his arms instead. He's very forceful and very quick about it, hardly giving me the opportunity to run even if I wanted to. I sigh in relief. This doesn't look good either, but it's at least slightly more dignified. I wrap my arms around his shoulders and bury my face in his neck, preferring not to meet anyone’s eye along the way, not at all interested in knowing who sees me like this on the way to his bedroom. I pray that perhaps some people will assume I'm injured in some way.

That afternoon, he rails me hard. At least as viciously as the first time we had sex after I teased him for two weeks, and also for longer, since after the first time he comes, he takes about ten minutes to recover and then wants to go again. When we take a bath afterwards to wash off the sweat and cum, he fucks me a third time over the side of the tub. I warn him that if he tries to stick it in me again, I'll snap it off. After dinner that evening, he still swings by my room that night. I slam the door in his face.

It's bad enough that this sequence of events happens once. The second time it happens, I fear I am witnessing the beginning of a pattern. After slamming the door in his face again that evening, I walk back to my desk, rubbing my temples, and sit back down to work on my decoding. After only staring at the page for a minute or so, I glance over at the box that Akharos gifted me. I take a peek inside in the hopes that there is a letter from him. I've already written him twice. Unfortunately, my latest missive has not yet received a reply.

Unwilling to give up hope, I use my knuckles to firmly rap against the bottom of the box, two times spaced out, then three times rapidly. His last letter confirmed that he can, in fact, hear the sound through his own box when I knock on mine, so I suggested a specific pattern so that he might distinguish when I'm checking to see if he's nearby as opposed to the other boxes I'm sure he has. He also mentioned in his last letter that he keeps his boxes in his office, so I'm hoping he's in there working on something or other. He seems like the kind of guy who works late into the night.

A couple minutes later, I hear an answering knock coming from the box. I eagerly open it to find a folded scrap of paper, which I take out and open quickly.

Good evening, Miss Catarina, it reads. I hope this finds you well.

I grin when I read his message, then immediately start to scribble down my response.

Good evening, Prince Akharos. I'm doing well enough, and I hope that you are, too. I just wanted to ask a quick question…

I made the ill-advised decision to accept Khysmet's offer to teach me how to wield a sword, but now that we're a few weeks in, he's acting sort of… odd. Has he always been this…

I pause and try to think of the best word to use that implies "horny beyond belief" without saying that.

…"enthusiastic" about swordplay? It's a bit concerning, not to mention inconvenient. Please advise.

I slip my message in the box and knock again. A few minutes later, I get his reply. My heart sinks at the first line.

I regret to inform you that you may have made a worse decision than you know.

He has indeed always been "enthusiastic" about sparring. I take it he gave you his "sex and violence" speech? He came up with that theory as a teenager, and I'm fairly certain it remains virtually unchanged today.

I wish that you had asked me before accepting his offer, because I would have advised strongly against it. By agreeing to engage in any form of combat with him, you have unwittingly cemented your status as his ideal woman. My condolences.

I sigh and put my head in my hands. I should have asked Akharos first – that much is crystal clear to me now. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, but foresight really should have caught this one. I wonder if there’s anything I can do to make the situation more bearable as it is. I write him back.

Do you have any advice for how to get out of this? He’s wanted to practice every single day since I first asked to start. It’s only been three weeks, but I fear for my lack of free time going forward.

When I get his reply, it is sadly not encouraging.

My advice is to get used to saying “no”, because he’s never going to stop asking. Trust me on that – the fact that he only spars with me once every time I visit is not by his choice. If you ever want a day off, you’re going to have to demand it.

I sigh again and set my head on the desk. That’s more or less what I expected, but I still don’t like to hear it. Pouting, I turn my head toward the side and push my pencil around across the partially decoded paper. Stupid, pushy Khysmet, always doing whatever he wants just to dare me to say no. Tomorrow when he says we’re going to practice, I’m going to tell him to fuck right off. That will probably just encourage him, of course. Asshole.

When I flick the pencil across the note again, I suddenly notice something odd where it was just resting. From my current vantage point, it looks like a faint, tiny, blurry shadow in the space between two names. I’ve never noticed anything there before. I lift my head from the desk and pick up the paper, squinting to get a better look. It’s pencil markings – very light ones. Difficult to read. I open my desk drawers and search through them – I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a magnifying glass in here somewhere. When I find it, I hover it over the page, and the writing becomes more easily readable. I’m impressed that someone wrote this small by hand. It says n = pseudomythical.

My pulse races. This is what I’ve been desperately longing for. A key. But what does it mean? I grab one of the books that Akharos lent to me and turn to the section on common types of simple substitution ciphers. Before I get too far into my research, I scribble a note describing the turn of events and put it in the box for Akharos, knocking enthusiastically.

Given that it’s only one word, I’m guessing it’s a common strategy for making a mixed alphabet cipher. You write the alphabet out in order, then underneath it write the keyword, making sure not to repeat any letters, followed by the rest of whatever’s left of the alphabet. So, for pseudomythical, that would be:

p s e u d o m y t h i c a l b f g j k n q r v w x z

But just writing that underneath the alphabet doesn’t work, since I know with almost absolute certainty that M, L, and X are T, A, and L. I tap my chin with my pencil and think about what that “n =” before the word pseudomythical means. I take a guess and try writing out the alphabet starting with N, going to Z, wrapping back to A, and ending with M. It lines up perfectly.

I frantically start using my key to translate the list. Line after line, it returns with first names and places that I recognize as being real from my many hours staring at the census book and atlas.

I jump when I hear the knock in my box, having gotten so engrossed in transcribing that I forgot Akharos would be writing back. I read his note and grin when I find that he seems to have come to the same conclusion I did. I scribble down the words “it’s working” onto the corner of my page, rip it off, and send that right back.

Within minutes, I have the whole list translated. I squeal and wiggle happily in my chair. Finally! I’m a little disappointed that all my work was essentially unnecessary, and could have been avoided if I had just taken a magnifying glass to the page earlier, but honestly, I’m just glad to have the end result achieved. I look back over some of my notes to see if I was even getting close. Some of my guesses were right… but I don’t think I was getting close to figuring out which ones those were. Oh well. I pray that the members of Civil Twilight don’t get better at encoding things in the future, because deciphering is just not my strong suit.

I jump out of my chair with my transcribed list and start to run for the door, eager to share this development with Khysmet. Then I remember the events of the day, and that he’ll probably be in an “enthusiastic” mood if I go to see him right now, in his bedroom at nine at night. My steps slow. I stop with my hand on the door. I pause to seriously consider whether or not I want to deal with that right now.

I go back to my desk to discuss it with Akharos instead. I think I’ll tell Khysmet about it tomorrow.