“Doesn’t it bother you?” asked Rinka. Idris had started eating a sandwich that had been cut into a neat triangle, and he looked frankly unbothered by anything at all. “Don’t you feel any guilt for living this way while others struggle?”
“I don’t live this way,” said Idris. “There are staff at the University who take care of things there, but not nearly as many, and I only have a handful of rooms there.”
Rinka frowned and sat her teacup down.
“Rinka, this is the way the world is. It’s unfortunate, but there isn’t anything I can do to change it.”
“That’s not true at all,” she said. “You will be king. You could change all of it if you wanted to.”
“First off, as I explained to you, I have no intention of being king. And second, do you know what happens to kings that take away the rights and privileges of their subjects? They don’t tend to keep their heads attached to their bodies very long.”
She leaned away from him, looking out at the workers below. “I’m not talking about taking something away, but rather giving people the opportunity to rise above their birth.”
“Oh, I’m all for that,” said Idris. “It’s one of the reasons I work at the University. Education is power.”
“I suppose it’s one path,” said Rinka, although she had further questions about how people were given access to education in the first place. Her parents were unable to send her to university, after all. “I just don’t know how you could be born as one of the few people in the world who could actually change it and then turn away from that possibility so easily.”
He sighed. “I’m not opposed to changing the world, and I’m not opposed to using my station to do it. Come on now, you haven’t even been part of society for a day. I’ve spent a lifetime with these people. I’m not trying to be callous, but I know the rules. I know what can be done.”
“Didn’t you say something about the fun of breaking the rules?”
Idris smiled wryly. “Well, if you’re just going to use all my words against me, I suppose I’ll have to be more careful what I say. You know, you’re rather charming when you’re indignant. The line that forms beside your nose—just there,” he said, touching the spot. “It’s rather becoming.”
Rinka was dubious. “You find a line on my face attractive? Are you trying to distract me, your highness?”
“Don’t you ‘your highness’ me,” said Idris, and he reached to her sides and tickled her.
Rinka shrieked and rose to her feet. “What are you doing?”
“I’m breaking a rule,” he said. “Isn’t that what you wanted, my lady?”
Rinka giggled and ran for it.
Idris chased her across the lawn. The warm summer breeze lifted her hair, and the sun warmed her grey skin as she ran from him, laughing all the while.
She flew past the formal gardens and a large fountain, past an orchard and the stables, and kept going until she reached an outbuilding of some kind near the woods, running around the back of it as he finally caught up to her.
He grabbed her hand and shot an arm out in front of her, trapping her. “Got you,” he said.
She wiggled and tried to escape from the other side, but he held his other arm out and walked her back to the wall, pinning her there with no way out.
She squeezed her arms tightly to her sides, trying to conceal the ticklish bits from him. “Mercy!” she cried.
“Mercy?” he asked. “Are you sure?”
He darted one hand into the space between her arm and her side, tickling his fingers against the sensitive spot there.
She squealed. “Mercy!” She was panting from both the laughter and the run, barely able to breathe the word out.
“Mercy?” he said again. His chest was heaving too from the exertion, and Rinka thought for a moment that he might go for her other side, but instead he lifted his fingers to her cheek.
He stroked her jaw, and then her chin, and then her lips, brushing them exactly the same way he had in the tent.
She trembled. He was so close to her she could feel the pull of his gasping breath on their shared air, could smell the sunlight on his skin.
“Mercy,” he whispered. “Gods know I’ll need it.”
Then he kissed her, grabbing her hands and pinning them up over her head against the wall, their bodies rising and falling in time with each other as they regained their breath and then lost it once more.
