Excerpt from To Bury Their Parents: Studies

Studies
"In the third century of the fourteenth dynasty, King Arionus was, we think, a woman. As does your mother, she wore a golden beard and a man's headdress. It is difficult to verify the assertion after so much time and following the loss of her tomb sometime in the middle fifteenth dynasty. Are you paying attention, Jul?"
Jul was a child of ten, with dark skin and hair, golden palms and soles. He wore a gold kilt as fitted his station. "Why should I?" he asked.
His teacher was a woman of indeterminate age, gray of skin, gray of hair, gray of eyes. Even her voice was gray. "Because the past predicts the future. That which has happened can show us what will happen, if we have eyes to see."
"When I am King I'll have the eyes torn out of all historians, then they can never see, and I will not have to hear it."
"Charming boy. And when might you be King?"
"When I am a man I will be King," he retorted.
"You have not been listening. I need fear no threat of your Kingship. I will be long dead if such a thing comes to pass. Your mother is King, not Queen. You know what that means?"
"It means there is no King to hold the throne."
The teacher smiled. "Good, Jul. It means she rules in her own right. And when does a ruler of Hitai give up the throne to his children?"
"When they die," he said.
"So unless you plan on killing your own mother - would you think such a thing? - she will rule until she dies. Is your family rich?"
"Richer than any person in the kingdom." He might have said in the world, only the kingdom was all the world he knew. Well, except for the village at Starfall, and they had little wealth.
"Tell me, who lives longer: the virtuous poor or the sinful rich?" asked the teacher in her droning, dull, detestable voice.
"There is no sin, only wealth. I am rich so I will live long and long."
"As will your mother, Jul, as will the King. Think on it."
"I choose not to. I hate this lesson, all these lessons. What good are they?"
"If there is no sin, there is no good. These lessons then are neither good nor ill and should curry no hate. Perhaps if I told you a story..."
Jul stood up then. He was tall for his age as the diet of a royal boy would predict. Handsome in a soft-featured, boyish sort of way. "If you wish to keep your tongue, tell me no stories. I am going to visit my puppies."
"Your mother..."
"My mother will have you beaten when she finds out that you threatened me."
The teacher's eyes widened. "What threat have I offered?"
"I have forgotten, but I am sure it will come to me if I am not distracted. Puppies will be just the thing."
All she could do really was watch him go, and sigh. Children did grow up so very fast. It was good for a boy his age to be sly, manipulative, crafty, and cruel. At least if he was going to survive long as a boy in the royal household, and gods forefend as King one day. Never mind being a good ruler, living long enough to be good required deeds worthy of demons from the myths of Old Hitai. An historian should know. So as she watched him go, it was more with wistfulness than with apprehension or disappointment.