Your Hand In Mine - Chapter 4

Chapter Four

"You've embarrassed me for the last time," bellowed Sestrin as Koschei looked down at the floor. "You could have been expelled for this! How am I supposed to look my fellow councilmen in the eye when they know what my boy's been up to?! It's your fault I wasn't elected Castellan!"

"I'm sorry, father."

"It's that Theta Sigma. He put you up to it. He must have."

"No, sir. I-"

"Yes he did!" he screamed. "You know, I've heard things about that boy. I heard his father was banished. Like father, like son, I assume. He'll get himself banished for something eventually, and if you're not careful, he'll take you with him! You're not to see him anymore do you understand?"

The thought appalled Koschei. He couldn't imagine life without Theta. A life of loneliness and subservience to his father. A life with only the sound of the drums to keep him company. He could feel the drums growing louder in his head at the thought of it, as if they were sounding out a victory. Louder and louder and louder. "No!" he shouted.

His father stared at him. "What did you just say to me?"

It was now. This was where he had to draw the line and finally make a stand to his father. "I said no."

"What?!"

"I won't stop seeing Theta! He's my best friend. He's my only friend!"

His father stared hard at him as if he could not believe what had just happened. "How dare you. How dare you oppose me! You are not in charge in this house! I am! I am your father, and you will obey me."

He crouched down so he was at Koschei's level. "Now, you listen to me. That boy is not your friend. You don't need friends. You have ambition. You could be president someday if you focus. Friends breed loyalties and love. Those are weaknesses."

"You have friends," Koschei argued. "They come over all the time."

"I have colleagues and people with connections who I'm friendly to, to help further my goals. Not friends. Never friends. If you get into that territory, it becomes harder to drop them when they're no longer useful. We don't have friends, understand? We have pawns, because life is a chessboard and you have to be the king."

"In chess, the king would be helpless without the queen," whispered Koschei.

"Then be both!" Sestrin shouted. "Why do you think I got rid of your mother?"

"You… You what?"

"I mean, when she died. It was a relief when she passed was all."

"Did… Did you kill her?"

"Oh, my son… My dear, dear son," he patted Koschei's face. "You're a clever boy. You know the answer to that."

Koschei was horrified. Could his father have possibly killed his mother? He was clever and powerful. He could get away with it if he did. He knew his mother passed quite suddenly, of a strange illness. She had died within a few days of contracting it, before the doctors could identify it. There hadn't been a murder on Gallifrey for over a millennia, or so the government said.

"Now go to your room," said his father. "You're to be confined there for the rest of the school break for what you've done. No food for two weeks. I'll have the help send up some water in a couple days."

Koschei was so consumed by his ponderings that he simply complied. That night he lay in his bed, trying to hold back tears and wishing Theta was there to talk to.

The next day Koschei paced his room thinking about what he knew of his mother's last days. She was a botanist. She had been working on studying the flora of a small planet known as Sol 3 (Earth, to the more sentimental). From his studies he knew that over time the descendants of that planet grew to infest the Milky Way and its three nearest galaxies like a plague. What other plagues did that planet carry and had his mother simply caught one or had his father harnessed it to kill her? Whatever it was, it was powerful. If a Time Lord got sick enough, they would regenerate, but she did not. How would he solve this? He didn't know much about his mother's habits. She died while he was still at the rearing center.

When his father left for a council meeting three days later, he picked the lock on his door and snuck down to the basement to look at his mother's old things. They were in no way organized, which surprised Koschei, since his father was almost tyrannical about the cleanliness and organization of the house. Unfortunately there was no way to tell what his mother had been working on last, so he just read through all the books and looked at all the notes he could find. He was down there for hours. He didn't know how long it had been when he heard footsteps behind him.

"Do you know how long we have been looking for you?" It was one of the servants.

"Please don't tell my father where you found me!" he begged.

"I can't promise anything," he said.

When the servant brought him upstairs he looked up at his father's furious red face. "Where did you find him," he asked the servant.

"Sir, he was only-"

"Tell me or I'll lock you in the catacombs!"

"He was in the basement, sir."

"What was he doing?"

"Looking through his mother's old things, sir."

"Take him to his room. I want someone watching his door at all times."


Koschei watched from his window as his father had the servants throw his mother's things into a bonfire in the yard. He swore that someday he would find out what happened to his mother and he would make his father pay.