He picked up a quill, twirling it between his fingers.
"I do not teach you so that you may memorize dates of battles you will never fight, or names of kings who are long rot," Caius said, his eyes locking onto hers with a sudden, fierce intensity. "I am here because a disciple who knows only what they are told is a puppet. True power, Domina, is not the sword wielded by warriors. It is the ability to teach yourself, to learn"
He tapped the side of his own head.
"I ran from my lessons because I did not understand that," he confessed. "I thought knowledge was a cage. I was wrong. It is the key. My purpose is not to force you to drink, but to make you thirsty. Now... tell me. If you were to march an elephant from Ghiscar to Sarnor, how would you feed it?"
The girl fell silent, her brow furrowing as she stared at the map on the wall. Her legs stopped swinging. She traced the imaginary line from Ghiscar in the south, across the Red Waste, through the Painted Mountains, and into the fertile basin of Sarnor.
"Elephants are big," she started, speaking slowly. "They eat... a lot. More than horses." She looked at the brown expanse of the Waste on the map. "The desert has no grass. If they walk, they will starve before they reach the mountains."
She turned back to Caius, her eyes brightening.
"Ships," she declared. "You cannot march them. You must put them on the great barges at Slaver's Bay and sail them up the Sarne Delta. They can eat dry hay on the boats, and then eat the fresh grass when they land in the North."
Caius leaned back, a genuine smile crinkling the corners of his eyes. He nodded slowly.
"Precisely. Logistics, Domina, wins more wars than courage. Even still the Elephants will have to be marched up from the desert to the Sarne delta before they are boarded on the ships. Regardless that attempt was worthy of one such as you." He dipped his quill in the inkwell. "Your brother and sister possessed this same clarity of thought at your age. It is a gift of your bloodline, I suspect. To see the solution where others see only the obstacle."
The girl beamed, sitting up straighter on her stool. To be compared to them was the highest praise Caius could offer.
The lesson flowed easier after that. They moved from logistics to the geography of the Free Cities, tracing the trade routes that fed the Empire's coffers. Caius challenged her on the exports of Norvos (nylons and bells) and the timber yields of the Forest of Qohor. She answered with a quickness that bordered on arrogance, her mind absorbing the facts like a sponge in water.
But as the sunlight shifted across the floorboards, creeping closer to the hour of noon, the Domina's focus began to fray. She glanced at the window once, then twice.
"Praeceptor," she interrupted, just as Caius was explaining the tax codes of the Silver Lakes. "The shadows are getting long."
"The sun has not yet reached its zenith," Caius replied calmly, not looking up from his scroll.
"But the elephants!" she insisted, her voice rising with childish petulance. "And the soldiers! You said we could go. We are wasting the daylight in this dusty room!"
Caius set down his quill. He folded his hands on the desk and gave her a look of infinite patience.
"We shall leave when the lesson is concluded, Domina. And the lesson concludes with the Catechism." He gestured to the iron symbol hanging above the door—a circle intersected by a vertical line, the sign of the Imperial Cult. "Tell me. What does the One Faith profess?"
The girl sighed, blowing a stray lock of hair out of her face. She recited the words by rote, a monotone drone.
"It proclaims that there is but one true Creator, who looks upon the suffering of men. And that He sent His Son, into the world of flesh to break the wheel, to guide the lost, and to lead the world into the Eternal Peace."
"Correct," Caius said. "And the Commandments? Recite them."
The girl fidgeted. She picked at a splinter on the wooden stool. The religious texts were dense, and she found them far less interesting than maps or elephants.
"I... I forget the order," she mumbled.
"The first," Caius pressed gently. "Start with the first."
She bit her lip, her mind grasping for the words. "Thou shalt... thou shalt honor the State?"
"No."
"Thou shalt not... keep slaves?"
"That is the Law, Domina, not the Commandment. Think."
Silence stretched in the room. The girl looked down at her sandals, defeated.
"I am the Lord your God," a voice cut through the air, soothing yet filled with an absolute, crushing authority, "thou shalt have no other Gods before me."
Caius stood so abruptly his chair scraped loudly against the stone floor. He bowed low, his forehead nearly touching the wood of his desk.
"Deus," the old man breathed.
The girl spun around on her stool.
"Pater!" she squealed, launching herself from the seat.