Ruthless: Path of Conquest

On the morning after the martial arts demonstration, Mina accompanied James to a big meeting on a subject close to his heart.

He seems more serious than usual, she thought as they walked in silence to the community center, where the meeting was to take place.

She knew that as far as James was concerned, this would be the first major new initiative that he had set in motion since he established the basic necessities within the Fisher Kingdom: food, water, shelter, and security.

The next step was to get an education system going. This would hopefully prepare the children of the Fisher Kingdom to be of use to the state, give them a similar foundation in basic subjects to what they would have received prior to the System’s appearance, and free more of the adults’ time for work and training.

James had already ordered the construction of a schoolhouse, to be attached to the community center, though this project was down in the priorities list behind constructing additional housing in anticipation of more new arrivals over the next few weeks.

The meeting convened on time, seated at the same table where James had council meetings. The dozen invitees had identified themselves as former school employees: teachers, school administrators, a principal, and a school board member.

This was the Education Commission. They represented themselves and two dozen additional people who were not present. Their constituents were current or former teachers, as well as those who had volunteered to become teachers, including Yulia.

As Mina sat down to James’s right hand, she observed that eight out of the twelve commission members were women, and the head they had chosen was a serious-looking older woman named Griselda Diaz. It was a very different group than the Construction Commission or the Sewer Commission with whom she had attended meetings over the preceding weeks.

“Your Majesty,” said Griselda, inclining her head in a slight bow.

“Thank you all for coming this morning,” James said. He made eye contact first with Griselda and then with each of the commission members in turn. He turned back to Griselda. “Let’s begin?”

Obviously slightly nervous, she cleared her throat, then drew a sheaf of papers out of her Small Bag of Deceptive Dimensions.

“The curriculum we have prepared over the last week is based on the existing Florida education system’s materials, as you ordered, sir…”

Griselda began going through the areas where the new curriculum deviated from the old. As suggested by James, there was physical education for all age levels, to be supplemented by fighting instruction and weapons training for the older teens, including training in magic for those with relevant Skills. They had added a course of study for all age groups on comparative religions, since the world they lived in now was full of gods from many different cultures. Instruction in foreign languages was eliminated, because the System had eliminated language barriers for all of humanity.

It really feels as if we’re a governing authority, Mina thought, slightly stunned.

James seemed less impressed.

“That’s all good,” he said as the commission chair finished explaining the modifications. “Sounds like good work from all of you. But there was another thing I wanted you to work in, if you remember?”

Griselda winced and nodded. “I understand, sir. There were some objections from a few members. I have included my proposals in the document—” She held up the sheaf of papers again—“but some points were raised in our commission meeting about academic freedom.” Griselda looked as if she did not agree with whatever academic freedom based objections had been made, but she felt bound to present them nonetheless.

“What was the nature of the objections?” James asked, frowning.

Griselda opened her mouth to speak again, but Mina beat her to it.

“Is there someone else who agrees with the objections who might be willing to explain them?” she asked.

Another commission member, a school administrator, raised her hand.

“You can go ahead, Danielle,” James said quietly.

Oh, she was the other one who wanted to be the chair of the commission, wasn’t she? Mina remembered that James had dealt with education on one of the days when he was almost incapacitated from blessing people, and he had mentioned a commission member with an inflated sense of self-importance.

“We just had some questions about your request for patriotic instruction, I think it was,” Danielle Kaine said. She gave a slightly nervous smile. “We thought, surely—”

“We who?” James asked. “If you don’t mind telling me. Or at least, how many ‘we’s’ is this? Are we going to need another meeting to address more people?”

“Um, just a few people, honestly. I’m sure if we had asked teachers about it, some of them would have agreed with us.”

Oh, so this is an objection that Danielle and some other administrators had? Mina was aware that James had asked the commission to inculcate a sense of patriotism in the children. Patriotism as citizens of the Fisher Kingdom meant that they would be raised to get along with the nonhuman citizens of the country and would understand the importance of fighting for the security of their homes. She did not understand why anyone would object.

Maybe if Yulia was one of the commission members, we would have had a heads up about this disagreement.

“Go on, then,” James said.

“We wondered if this might not be an imposition on academic freedom. Telling the teachers what to say, in terms of a point of view. If a teacher doesn’t agree with, um, ‘patriotic instruction’—”

“Then that teacher shouldn’t be teaching,” James interrupted. “We live in a post-apocalyptic landscape. That’s a lack of common sense.”

“You remember that we were attacked in the last week, don’t you?” Mina asked.

“That’s right,” James agreed, warming to this subject. “We got attacked by two different Races, controlling their own territories, in the last two weeks. The threat of invasion is going to be a constant sword hanging over our heads here. If there are any teachers who don’t understand the importance of national defense—and therefore of measures to increase a sense of patriotism and national unity—they clearly don’t have their priorities straight.”

Danielle’s expression looked as if she had bitten into a lemon. “Of course, sir,” she said after a moment, looking at him and glancing for just a fraction of a second at Mina. “And if someone brings up the First Amendment or something, I’ll just say what?”

“There’s no First Amendment here,” James said bluntly. “Not that I didn’t love it while it was operative. But the United States no longer exists. It’s not ‘God Bless America,’ it’s ‘gods-that-we-know-definitely-exist, please bless the Fisher Kingdom,’ now. And even when the State of Florida was in charge of education here, there were always state educational requirements. Teachers never had the privilege to just teach whatever they felt like. I wonder if any teacher in this state would have dared to say they didn’t have to teach evolution just because their religion didn’t agree with it. I’ll bet that they would’ve been assigned to a different subject, or maybe out of a job, unless they were in some religious school.

“Well, now, I am the state. You must abide by all my requirements if you wish to work in my schools. Otherwise, we still need plenty more hunters and farmers. I don’t ask for these things out of ego. I have a larger purpose in mind, which should be one of your purposes also: the preservation of our country. Our security has to come first, before half-baked conceptions of academic freedom. It’s not like we have a university here. When we have a college set up here, with professors trying to do controversial research or something, then we can talk about academic freedom. This is way too early to worry about that.” He glanced at Griselda and offered a small smile. “Respectfully, I hope this is the last I’ll hear of this. I’m sure we’ll have plenty of rebellion from the students themselves, but I need all of us to be on the same program. Okay?”

You sound like King Louis the Fourteenth, skapi, Mina thought. They won’t dare to disagree with you, even if they feel differently.

On the one hand, the way he was taking charge was attractive. Authority looked good on James. On the other hand, she doubted he was changing any minds today.

She didn’t mind the look on Danielle’s face, though. The school administrator and Griselda both bowed their heads, Danielle with an extremely nervous expression.

“Of course, Your Majesty,” they said almost simultaneously.

“Very good,” James said. He turned to each of the other commission members, made eye contact with them one by one, and told them, “Keep up the good work.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” they said in a chorus.

“I’ll take a look at your proposal on patriotic instruction,” he said, looking at Griselda.

The older woman gave a smile that Mina thought was genuine, as if she was proud of her work, and she handed over a few of the papers she had been holding onto. Mina saw that they were written out by hand in a small, neat cursive script.

James put the documents in his Small Bag of Deceptive Dimensions.

Then James rose and pulled out Mina’s chair for her, and they left.

“That was something else,” Mina said once they were out of earshot. She couldn’t keep from grinning. “My big, scary monarch. What got into you with those poor teachers?”

James snorted and shook his head. “It wasn’t the teachers, that was the thing. It was the school administrators. They think they should be running the schools themselves. It’s only Danielle and two or three of her closest friends. Complete dead weight. I’d sooner put the children in charge. A hundred years ago, that woman’s job did not exist. It’s completely unnecessary to have someone like her looking over the shoulders of the teachers, let alone second-guessing me.”

I knew you weren’t a fan of the public education system, but it’s interesting to see how it affects you in this situation, where you’re in charge of everything, Mina thought.

“I thought you made good points in there, but you know you didn’t change her mind at all, right?”

“I don’t need her to agree with me,” James said. “I only need compliance. If the teachers refuse to teach the material I need them to, I’ll just replace them. The patriotic instruction is the most important element of the whole thing. The fact that she didn’t intuitively grasp that tells me that Danielle will never be very useful to me. Historically, education has always been about preparing people to be good citizens. She obviously has no idea about that. If I told her that, it would probably shock her as much as anything else I said. And once a generation has passed, we’ll have teachers who believe in protecting their country intuitively, without me needing to threaten them with termination. Until then, I just need to keep the educators in line.” He shook his head. “You know, I never need to pull rank on the other committees. They understand what we’re here to do.”

“You sounded like an old-fashioned king,” Mina said, her tone playful. “‘I am the state.’ Very absolute. Very Louis the Fourteenth. More Sun King rather than Fisher King.”

“Yeah,” James said, chuckling. “Well, I’m afraid I’m going to manage education a little more like I’m in the old Soviet Union, honestly. I’m pretty sure at least one of the leaders of the French Revolution was a teacher. People who talk for a living can wind up getting some pretty dangerous ideas—and an inflated sense of their own importance. Can’t afford to have any of these teachers thinking they can undermine the state in their classrooms. The classroom is not their personal fiefdom.”

Mina thought the teachers she had grown up with had all thought their classrooms were their personal fiefdoms, and she said so.

“Like I said, we’re going to a different place and time with this,” James said, his expression turning more somber. “I need to create a group identity that unifies us all, including a sense of loyalty to this country and to me personally.” He stared her in the eyes. “If we want to make this kingdom into a dynasty, rather than a one-off, we need to educate the people on just how much they need us. If we fail at that, the likelihood isn’t that they miraculously recreate a republican form of government after they topple the tyrant. It’s that anarchy breaks out, and they get eaten by a pack of monsters. People think democratic governance is much easier than it actually is.”

“You don’t have to sell me on any of this,” Mina replied evenly, her lips curling slightly at the edges. “I like empire-building James. I don’t want to go back to democracy, as long as you’re the King. I just want things to go as smoothly for us as they can.”

“I know,” he said, smiling back at her. “I’m just letting you know why education is the one area besides national defense where I will absolutely be as authoritarian as I need to be. It’s the most important for shaping the will of the people.”

“I think they’ll do what you say,” Mina said. “But I would watch them, early on, if you can afford to spare a few monsters to sit in classrooms.”

“That’s a good idea,” James said. “Intimidation is one thing, but it’s better to have surveillance too.”

Mina nodded. “Sounds like a plan. Did we have any other meetings planned for today?”

“We’re going to kill two birds with one stone,” James said. “Let’s go see my Mom.”