Free Foul Tide's Turning by Stephen Hunt

druids clinging to the trees to have anything to teach me?’
    ‘Teaching is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel,’ said Sheplar. ‘I fear that in you, they are kindling with very damp wood.’
    Cassandra ignored him. They crossed the walkway on foot, a giddying prospect to someone born to finer things in the empire; where celestial-caste citizens kept air-conditioned helos with trained pilots to ferry them across the vast, towering cities. Not that one of the rotor-topped aircraft could have hovered between the trees. After a few minutes, they arrived at one of the larger communal pods used as a classroom for the younger gasks. Inside, she found twenty or so gask pupils sitting cross-legged in the floor, short bodies covered by identical brown robes resembling togas, each creature’s chest crossed by the belt of a satchel that contained their almost-holy calculator machines. In the teacher’s position at the front was a gask she recognized. Cassandra bridled. This gask had once been one of the slaves labouring in her mines. Did they really expect her to accept tuition from a lowly miner?
    ‘Do you expect me to accept lessons from this, this slave?’
    ‘An ex-slave, technically,’ said Kerge. ‘Given that I am no longer being exploited as a source of labour in Vandia’s sky mines. And in broader moral terms, gask-kind neither recognizes the concept of slavery nor practises it.’
    Sheplar leant in behind Cassandra, a hint of menace infecting his usually jovial tone. ‘And as Kerge’s father gave his life to free him from your cursed empire, I suggest you count yourself lucky that the gasks are not a revengeful people and accept his tuition.’
    Kerge indicated the floor. ‘Please, womanling …’
    Womanling. Hardly any better than bumo . Cassandra snorted, but occupied one of the vacant wicker mats on the floor regardless. That this gask Kerge’s heart had not filled with revenge was only a symptom of his nation’s weakness. Only the weak practised pity. Those born to rule defended their position without mercy. Of course the gasks wouldn’t dare to hurt her. For if the empire ever heard that one of the emperor’s own blood had been abused by barbarians, the imperium’s forces would arrive here and burn the forest to ashes in punishment.
    Kerge shuffled in front of a blackboard while Sheplar Lesh stood guard by the doorway. ‘Today,’ announced the gask, ‘we shall examine measure-theoretic probability theory, looking in detail at sample spaces as applied to Borel algebra and the Dirac delta function.’
    ‘If you expect me to work at your ridiculous mathematical recreations, then you shall issue me with one of your calculation machines,’ demanded Cassandra.
    ‘None of those studying here will be using their computation engines during the lesson,’ said Kerge. ‘Before you pick up the chisel, you must develop enough understanding of form to carve.’
    ‘And what use are your stupid tortuous mind games? Are they rhetoric to allow me to sway minds and lead? Military theory to allow me to conquer battlefields? Economics to help my commercial interests flourish and prosper?’
    ‘Their mastery allows us to navigate the true paths of the great fractal tree.’
    Cassandra snorted. The savages’ faith that they could scry the future and adjust their behaviour accordingly was no better than shamans swaying on the ground in a drug-induced haze, before emerging from their trance to announce that they had seen the future, and the gods wanted everyone to pay the witch-doctors a lot more tithes. ‘And do you also expect me also to commune with the heathen spirits of your holy tree?’
    ‘That would be too much to ask. But no learning is ever wasted,’ said Kerge. ‘As long as you live, keep learning how to live.’
    ‘And what did you learn as the imperium worked you in my sky mine, slave?’
    Kerge indicated the oval pod-like room they sat in; the vast, deep forest beyond the sap