Death After Death 192-194

Ch. 192 - A Reunion of Sorts

“I told the sailors not to untie you lest you…Oh,” she exclaimed in surprise as she turned around and saw him, but even that was muted as she quickly buried it beneath the expression she used for formal occasions and at court. “What’s all this then? If you could have healed yourself at any moment, why not do so after the battle?”

The way she reacted to his miraculous reappearance was not what he’d hoped for. Even anger would have been better than the weariness she greeted him with. He was disappointed that she wasn’t surprised by his reappearance, but he was a little pleased at the astonishment he saw flicker across her face as she took in his current appearance. That, at least, was something.

“It’s not as simple as all that,” he explained, resisting the urge to move to her. Her body language was very clearly telling him to stay the hell away. “I… a lot has happened since I last saw you. An awful lot.”

“It’s been less than eight hours since you shared my bed,” she remarked, smiling sadly as she approached him, and sat on the corner of the bed farthest from him. “How much could have happened in one night?” 

“Well, you turned my whole world upside down last night,” Simon reminded her. “When you bundled me off on that ship, I was distraught.”

“I’m sorry about that,” she said. “I won’t defend or explain my actions, though. You know exactly why—”

“I do. I’m not asking you to. I’m just explaining things,” he interrupted. “We’ve always been honest with each other, haven't we?”

“We have,” she agreed, “relaxing slightly.”

“What has been 8 hours for you was nearly fifty years for me,” he said, forcing the words out of his mouth, even though part of him suspected that saying them was a terrible mistake. “I’ve lived whole lifetimes, and I’ve spent all that time missing you.”

Simon didn’t explain every last detail. He didn’t tell her how a vampire had killed him or that he’d bitten off his tongue in an insane pact with a crazy cult to unlock more secrets of the universe. Instead, he told her the broad strokes. He told her how he’d died and started over, spent some time studying in some strange places. When he reached his discussion of the Oracle, that piqued her interest. 

“I’ve never been,” she confessed, “But I always wanted to. Please, tell me everything you saw.”

It was a tangent from what he wanted to talk about, but it was also the first time she looked at him with wonder instead of dread, so he decided it was a worthwhile one. 

He told her about his whole trip, starting at the base of the mountain. He told her about his battles with the beastmen and the strange harpy skeleton he found. He even mentioned how he almost gave up because of the endless clouds before he finally found the tiny utopia. That he described in intimate detail, and between his description of his time with the oracle and her prophecies and the queen’s questions, the two of them were still sitting there when one of the queen’s handmaids arrived and asked where she wanted to have her midday meal. 

The woman expressed surprise that Simon was there, as well. “I was told he wouldn’t be—” she started to say, but the queen waved her off. 

“It's fine,” Elthena answered. “You may bring lunch here for both of us.”

The maid nodded and left, but even that small interruption disrupted the rapport that they’d been rebuilding. 

“What you say is fantastical, of course, but I’m still inclined to believe you,” she said, suddenly cold again. “But you have to realize this changes nothing, don’t you?”

“It changes everything!” he insisted, but she only shook her head sadly at that. 

“The prophecy—” she started to answer, but Simon cut her off before she could even get the word out. 

“Damn the prophecy!” he raged, making her pull away a bit. “Your nation has a damn Oracle. Why not simply go to her and ask her what you should do. She’ll tell you there’s no such thing.”

“It’s not as simple as you make it out to be,” Elthena sighed. 

“Look, I know it's a long way, but I told you about the Hidden Way,” Simon countered, “If I went with you, we could be there and back in less than a week. I’m sure of it.”

“That’s not what I mean,” she shook her head. “It would be selfish of me to use the Oracle like this.”

“Why?” Simon asked, exasperated. He wanted to tell her that she was being incredibly selfish already, but he bit his tongue on that and waited for what he hoped was a better answer. 

“Because no person, not even the queen, can visit the Oracle more than once,” she said in a disappointed tone. “What if someday there is a great calamity, and I need to seek out her wisdom, but I’ve already used that boon up on my own romantic prospects. What a terrible ruler I would be then.”

“Calamity?” he asked. “You’ve already dealt with a war and a plague on your own. What terrible fate do you think could befall you, Ionia, that you couldn’t handle?”

“Well, what if the basilisk—”

“I already killed that monster,” he said, only barely managing not to yell. “Well, it hasn’t happened yet, but it's going to.”

“Simon, you’re not making any sense,” she said, pulling away a little more. 

He sighed and calmed himself, and then he tried again. “In a few years, some nameless hero will kill that beast. That will be me. I’ve already done it in a previous life, but it will take place in our future.”

His second attempt met with more confusion than fear, but before he could try to explain things any more clearly, he was interrupted by servants bringing them lunch. That ended their talk for the next half hour as they ate. Simon wasn’t hungry, but he picked at his food until the servants finally came and took it away. 

“I will see her,” Elthena said finally when they were alone again. “But you are not coming with me, nor will you stay here in my absence.”

“Why?” Simon asked. 

“Why?” she shot back. “Because you are not the same man you were, Simon. Didn’t you see the looks those maids gave you? They can see you’re transformed as well as I. There will be talk of witchcraft throughout the castle before the day is out. My visor will be beside himself!”

“I can fix that,” Simon volunteered. “I could—”

“Please don’t,” she sighed. “Just leave for a time. After I make my trip and return, I will talk about these things further, but for now, I need space to grieve for us.”

Grieving for him while he was standing right in front of her struck him as exceptionally cruel, but he said nothing. He simply hardened his expression, pulled the cloak over his head, and then bowed deeply before he departed. 

“By your leave, my Queen,” he said sarcastically, making her frown at him before he turned to leave. “When you have made your decision, I will be tending my forge in Olven’s Narrows.”

Then, just like that, he was gone again, and the further he got from the palace, the angrier he got. He’d expected this to be difficult, but he hadn’t expected to be completely stonewalled like this, and it infuriated him. “Fuck the prophecy,” he grumbled to himself as he made his way back to his room at the inn to collect his things. 

Once he’d calmed down, Simon considered following her up the mountain to make sure she stayed safe, but eventually, he decided against it. Not only was she likely to be livid if she found out, but she had an entire army with her. 

So, he went back to his little smith, which pleased Niko to no end. “I’m not staying forever,” he assured the boy. “Just until the queen sends for me.”

His former apprentice didn’t believe him, of course, which was exactly why Simon had said it. He didn’t expect anyone to believe him. Here in Olven’s Narrows, he was an outsider but a very familiar one, and there was some comfort in that. 

He spent the next few weeks working on various projects. He helped Niko with a few more complicated jobs but mostly just worked more on his rune blade ideas and his art. 

Simon’s experiments with changing his appearance had been promising, and he decided he could probably change himself into a very convincing stranger or even replace someone who already existed with a little familiarity and careful observation. In fact, he realized I could probably replace one of the men of her court, even her trusted Vizier, and stay as long as I wanted. 

That was something he’d never do, of course. It was creepy as hell, but the idea that such an impossible thing was even an option intrigued him. “I’ve been a scholar and an artisan already,” he mused to himself, “Why not a deep-cover spy.” The truth was that he wasn’t interested in making other plans. He’d put a lot of work into getting back to this moment with Elthena, and he wasn’t leaving until they’d worked things out. 

It was just shy of a month before she returned. When she appeared in the village herself, near the head of a parade of soldiers, Simon was not expecting that. Trumpets and bells were the first sign that anything was amiss, and even before she got close, everyone, including Simon, who was filthy and stained with soot, was kneeling. 

“You really do know the queen!” Niko hissed excitedly. 

Simon smiled to himself but said nothing. He could tell, as soon as he looked at her, that this wasn’t the good news he’d been hoping for. It wasn’t just that she looked a little frailer and a little more pregnant after the trip, either. It was that whatever she’d been told had obviously increased the distance between them, not reduced it. 

At first, the queen did not speak to him. Instead, she spoke with the Town Father and the Wisewoman. It was only when she’d complimented everyone for their hard work and prayed publicly to the gods on their behalf that she summoned Simon. 

He’d cleaned up a little in that time, so he was somewhat presentable when he met her on the beach beneath an awning where she was holding court. When he arrived, she dismissed her guards and spoke with him alone, though she did so from her chair as an obvious reminder of who was in charge. 

“The Oracle’s mountain was every bit as beautiful as you said it was,” she said. “Thank you for convincing me to go.”

“And what did she say?” Simon asked. 

“That all prophecies were, in their way, self-fulfilling,” she sighed. 

“I’m not sure what that means,” Simon answered. 

“I’m not sure I do either,” she agreed. “But what matters is this. We are done. A romance is not like a hearthfire, to be relit whenever you feel cold. Flames are not interchangeable, and neither are Simons.”

He nodded. Unwilling to trust his voice at the answer he knew was coming. 

“But,” she said just as he started to look down at his feet. “It would be wrong to deny you access to your own child. I learned that from the Oracle, too.”

“I see,” Simon answered cautiously. “What does that mean?”

“It means that you are not to return to the palace until the son I will bear you is eight years old,” she said. “Somewhere around that time, I will choose a tutor to help my child grow into the King that Ionia needs. If you wish to be a father to him, that will be your chance, even if he will never know it.”

Simon’s mind flashed to his experiences with Niko as she said that, and he nodded. 

“You will need a new face and a new name to go with it,” she continued. “My visions seemed to imply that this wouldn’t be a problem for you.”

“I’ve been going by Ennis here, actually. Long story,” Simon answered without hesitation, as he chose to put a slightly more Ionian spin on his previous nom de guerre. 

“Very well, then,” she nodded, “I will expect you then. Do not disappoint me.”

Ch. 193 - A Little Longer

“Eight years,” he sighed as he lay in his old bed, which Niko had so graciously lent to him after he’d come back. “I waited for five years only to be told to wait for another eight. Who does that?”

Part of him wanted to say fuck it and just leave, but he knew he couldn’t abandon his own child like that. Son, he corrected himself; Elthena seemed to be pretty certain she was going to have a son. She must have seen that in her vision. 

It was a sleepless night for him and a heartbreaking one, too. He considered getting drunk again but decided that was an unhealthy coping mechanism. So, instead, he tried to figure out what it was he was supposed to do with another decade. 

He didn’t figure it out, though, not that night or in the day that followed. It wasn’t for almost a week, when he was helping one of the older fishermen recaulk the seams in his boat, that he decided what the right answer was. If he was going to end up being a teacher, then he was going to teach people. It wasn’t like he had a skill for that, but Simon was sure that he was in no way naturally talented at it, either. 

He spent a few weeks trying to teach a couple of the other boys and girls of the narrows how to write their names and learn the most basic letters, but they showed no more interest in the subject than Niko had. “I told you,” his former apprentice laughed. “That stuff’s a waste of time!”

“You learned, eventually,” Simon countered.

“Yeah, but only because you made me,” Ennis laughed. “And what do I do with it? The math tricks you taught me can be helpful, but the letters? What is it I'm supposed to read?”

That was a good point. Other than Simon’s own journal, he didn’t really have anything for these kids to read. He didn’t have any adventure books or horror stories to share with them. So, it was like teaching them to use a computer without offering them the video games that would keep them playing and learning.  

Simon thought about it for days but had no good answer. The proper thing to do would be to kick off an industrial revolution and create movable type and printing presses, but that would take forever and require a lot more money than he had at his disposal. 

So, eventually, he started to teach the children swordplay with wooden weapons because it was easier to draw students. That, at least, they flocked to. Soon, that was what almost every young man in the village did in the afternoon after their chores were done. He couldn’t get them to muster up any energy to draw symbols in the sand with sticks, but somehow, more than a dozen boys and girls could find the energy to swing wooden swords around with all their might. 

That was fun, and a couple of them showed some promise, too, but eventually, he decided that this was probably a dead end. Much to Niko’s disappointment, he started taking longer and longer trips abroad once more. 

His journey started out simple and almost aimless. He went north along the coast, stopping in villages along the way every night, where he would trade stories and a little labor for a place to sleep and a simple seafood meal. Sometimes, he would help the local blacksmith or herbalist, and other times, we would just contribute menial labor, hanging fish on drying racks or scrubbing barnacles off the bottom of beached boats. 

None of it was particularly hard work, and along the way, he would gather certain minerals and broken shells for the next part of his plan, which was slowly taking shape in his mind. He’d been given another eight years, which felt like a prison sentence inside the large prison sentence that the Pit already was. During that time, he probably shouldn’t fight monsters if he could avoid it because dying would complicate things. 

That part might have been easy enough, but in that time, he also had to become an excellent teacher for his son and attract enough notice and renown that it would make sense for the queen to hire him without her court raising any eyebrows and being the highly admired blacksmith of Olven’s Narrows was hardly going to cut it. 

“That’s more her problem than mine,” he told himself, but really, his pride wouldn’t allow that answer to stick. 

He’d gotten famous several times as a monster hunter and more than once as a healer, but beyond that, well, he felt like there was more he could do. So, this time, he tried art. 

For the last few years, he’d been drawing and painting, but he’d preserved very little of his work. It had all been scribbled on his walls or scratched into the sand, and the next day they were gone. Now, though, he'd decided to think bigger. 

Simon didn’t have much experience painting, no matter what Niko said, but he did have a lot of experience drawing on walls, so he decided to try his hand at making a fresco. The first one he did was in a moderately sized town just south of the larger city of Thebian. He didn’t even have all of the colors for that project. Because of the geology of that area, Black, red, brown, and yellow were pretty common in the form of various clays. Blue, green, and purple, though, were basically nonexistent. There were blue dyes for clothing, and he’d seen some green pottery glazes in some cities that probably had something to do with copper, but that was pretty much it. 

His first project was simple enough, anyway. After spending a morning slicing and dicing some of the large fish that a man had caught the night before, Simon casually mentioned how much better the Fishmarket would look with a little decoration. The red-tiled plaza and the colorful awnings were picturesque, but the plain white stuccoed building that the fish were sold from, along with the plain wooden stalls in front of it, looked almost out of place. 

Mercuto was taken with the idea almost immediately, but then Simon suspected he would be. He was a proud man with a large enough operation that several men worked for him, but it was well below where he saw himself in life. As far as he was concerned, he should be running his town, or maybe Thebian or Ionaia itself, and proud men were generally pretty easy to lead around by the nose. 

That night, Simon used some of his precious paper to sketch an image of the big man proudly holding an impossibly large grouper, and just like that, Mercuto was sold on the idea. The man was only willing to pay a pittance, of course, but Simon didn’t need more than that. His ingredients involved grinding bones and shells, along with trips to the mountains for coal and clay. Still, all that took was time, and that was the one currency that Simon was rich in. 

He spent weeks in preparation, gathering everything and laying out the images, but once he got started, it was done in less than forty-eight hours. Well, not everything was done. He’d still have to mix paint to redo the stands in red to make them more eye-catching, but the wall art was completed in record time. Once he started, he just couldn’t stop. In fact, pausing to mix another batch of black or ocher so he could keep going was the most annoying part. Though he’d never really needed an apprentice while he was a blacksmith, he would have loved one just now. 

Sadly, he was a nobody without a lucrative career to offer to a young man. He was just a homeless guy who liked to draw and had some time to kill. So, he’d have to do it himself. 

Though Simon was not completely happy with the final result, his employer was thrilled and paid him more than the agreed-upon amount. He offered to let Simon paint his boat next, but Simon knew just enough about paints to know that nothing he created would last long in the sea. He was trying to create art that people would notice, and in that, at least, he succeeded. Before the week was out, Simon had offers from three other merchants seeking similar treatment. Two just wanted the extra vivid reds and yellows he’d worked out how to create, but in the end, it was the third one he went with. 

The local cooper had heard the news that the queen’s virtue and chastity had stopped Mount Karkosia from erupting, and though he’d long since established a meager shrine on the side of his shop, he wanted to make it grander and more noticeable. Though the cooper was much less well off than Simon’s previous client, he paid nearly as much, but truthfully, that was one project that Simon probably would have done for free. 

His first job had been a test of techniques and materials more than anything, but this one, he vowed, would be a work of art worthy of Elthena, even though he doubted that she would ever see it. Simon planned all of it carefully. He built scaffolding, fetched more materials than he thought he would use, and patched the building's stucco before he began to ensure that what he made would last for a long time. This time, it took nearly a month to get everything ready, but it was worth the wait. 

Simon’s painting had attracted attention last time, even though it had been done after market hours so as not to harm the fishmonger’s business. This time, though, he painted throughout the day, and often many of the passerbyers would stop to watch. He’d never thought of painting as entertainment, but at least while he did this project, it brought new meaning to watching paint dry. 

He did the background of the work in deep reds, oranges, and browns, which were among the best colors he had access to. In the foreground, though, he painted Elthena only in black and white, creating as stark a contrast as possible. For her pose, he chose a beatific expression of prayer, and though he didn’t know for a fact that he was probably ripping off some classic post involving the Virgin Mary, he suspected that was the case. On earth, he hadn’t been remotely religious, but he recalled that his mother had, and there were more than a few of those sorts of icons scattered throughout the house. 

The background was vivid, though because of how inspired he was by the firey mountain, it took only two days, which was nothing, given its size. It did a good job of depicting Ionar as only he had seen it that night. The queen, though, he agonized on for over a week, and he still wasn’t completely happy about it. 

Everyone thought he’d done an amazing job, but then, they’d never seen the queen before. He had, though, more than most, so there was no excuse for his imperfection. 

In the end, there wasn’t a single feature he could point to that was the problem, though. Her eyes were just as kind as the real woman’s, and even though her mouth was almost eight feet wide in his fresco, it was every bit as full and kissable as Elthena’s actually was. There was nothing wrong with it, but to him, it just lacked that spark. 

No one agreed with him. Not the cooper who was ecstatic about the whole thing, nor the townspeople who began to pray there much more often as a result, nor even the rich nobility who traveled from Thebian and even further away to see what rumors were calling a masterpiece. 

Ch. 194 - An Eye for Art

Simon had no shortage of other offers after that, but what he was really frustrated by were his material. The nobles that wanted him to paint murals to their greatness offered him significant sums, but even with money, he wasn’t really sure where he could get better materials to work with. 

On Earth he could have just ordered paint in any color online, or gone down to the local hardware store, but here, things were harder. So, while he took a couple of straightforward jobs to finance his research in that regard, the next few months were spent mostly on trying to expand beyond those limitations in Thebian. It was there that he discovered from another local artist of significant repute that some colors like deep, vibrant blue could only be created by crushing literal precious gems, which seemed insane to Simon. 

“I do not have time to invent chemistry from scratch,” he told himself. Sometimes, though, it felt like he should. It was a special sort of torment to know that a tool like bright blue paint or broad spectrum antibiotics existed, but to have absolutely no way to use it himself. 

“It took millions of humans thousands of years to invent all of that stuff,” he lectured himself while he painted his current patron at the height of two stories tall on a watchtower overlooking the grand market. “So don’t beat yourself up too much. You’re doing pretty good, for one guy.”

While Simon couldn’t deny that, he was hardly thrilled by it. Good enough had once been his mantra, but now it was like a stone in his shoe, and even in projects that he personally didn’t care about at all, like mural of the man who was hoping to win a seat on the city council in the coming election has to be just right. 

Of course, he wasn’t all work. He had his distractions. In a city as large as Thebian there were a dozen ways to party on any given night. Even beyond drinking, drugs, and whores, that he stayed away from, there had been a couple noblewomen interested in some private portraiture that threatened to become something more after only a few minutes of being alone with them. 

Simon drew them, of course, often in much less than he’d originally intended to, but he didn’t sleep with them. As beautiful as one or two of the women had been, and as single as he very much was, he simply wasn’t interested in random flings with women he didn’t know. If I do that, I might spend the rest of my lives just wandering around the world and spending the night with anyone that catches my eye, he thought sullenly. What a waste that would be. 

The cynical part of his brain pointed out, that he’d actually already done precisely that with Freya, but he batted that thought away immediately. “That’s different,” he told himself. “We were in a life or death situation, then. Things got weird.”

Beating himself up about getting together with her too easily was a lot better than the things he used to think about when she came to mind, so he let that go easy enough. Still, thoughts of Freya made him wonder if he might be holding himself too far away from the wider world, so he was considering whether he should take the chance to get to know more women, when the new suddenly spread through town.

“The Queen has given birth to an heir!” the town crier read out the following morning. “She and her boy Seyom, are doing well, gods be praised!” 

Everyone cheered at that news, but Simon was just pleased that she’d named the boy after him in her own way, with a local name that was slightly similar to his. That softened his feelings toward her more than he would have thought possible. 

Despite the fact that the city immediately declared three days of public feasts at the news, it immediately banished any thoughts of debauchery that he might have had. Now, suddenly, he was inspired, and he went to the richest of his prospective patrons with a proposal. Lord Hepholon was the owner of several large vineyards, a winery, and he dabbled in shipping up and down the coast. He had more wealth than Simon would have in a dozen lives. 

He was supposed to be a hard man to reach, with many petitioners, but thanks to his growing reputation, Simon had no problems with that. He had even less of a problem getting the man to approve the large mural that he wanted to do to celebrate the queen and her son. He merely looked at Simon’s sketch and asked, “When can you start?”

“It’s… you know that much blue will be very expensive, right?” Simon asked. This project would cost as much as all of his previous endeavours combined thanks the price of lapis lazuli, but the man was utterly unperturbed, and instead of dismissing Simon, he dismissed his servants so he could speak more frankly to him. 

“You are an artist. A skilled artist, but an artist nonetheless, so I will forgive your naivety,” the older man smiled grimly, “But you must understand that for a man like me, a work like this is meant to be expensive. Indeed, you should lie to everyone who asks. You should tell them it cost ten times what it did, and that your blue paint is worth its weight in gold. Such displays are lovely for the common man, but for those in the rarefied air near the top of the city, they are nothing but a contest for status, and in such contest, cost matters almost as much as beauty.”

Simon understood all of that on some level, but to have it spelled out so clearly was refreshing. It was a nice reminder that at least in this life he wasn’t important. In any of his others, where he wielded a sword instead of a brush, he might have crushed such an egotistical merchant beneath his sandals. However, here and now he was nothing but a status symbol, and one that was slowly increasing in value at that. 

Simon spent a season on his mural to his son. It was painted across the second story of a wide municipal building that looked out over the harbor and the lower market. It was placed so blatantly that everyone in the city could see, it, but really, he’d lobbied to have it put there so that the queen herself would have no choice by to see it the next time she came through the city. 

Most of that time was spent waiting for the rare blue stones, so that he could grind them to power and mix them with a binder and water, but other that building the scaffolding and sketching out the outline for the painting to come. 

Once he had everything he needed, along with a handful of assistants eager to learn his craft, he was done in less than a week. This time he started with his queen, and the infant that she carried. She was done in nearly pure white again, as was befitting of purity and power. Then, once he was done with all of the chiaroscuro details needed to make her look like the woman rather than the ideal of one, he drew his son. 

There Simon could only do his best. He’d never seen the boy, nor would he for years. What really mattered was the bright blue swaddling he was displayed in, and the darker blue background that he painted behind both of them. 

Simon had drawn the whole thing in such a way that it was the infant who was the source of light in the painting. It was he that was illuminating his mother, and pushing away the darkness of the night. He even painted faint stars at the edges of the giant forty-foot mural that very subtly spelled out “Glory to Queen Elthena and Prince Seyom!”

The effect was muted, and very effective, and received nothing but acclaim. Simon’s patron held a lavish party in his honor when it was done, where Simon was expected to thank the man for bearing the crippling expense of the thing. Lord Hepholon of course reciprocated and praised him for making something truly priceless in is beauty at for the cost of mere coins. Afterwards he even tried to marry off Simon to the daughter of an important client, but Simon left town after that, traveling further north. 

While his destination was Coramin, he left little works of art up and down the coast, all the way there. Sometimes he beautified the shrines of a God or a Goddess, and other times he decorated the shop of a merchant much too poor to afford his services, but he always left the place he stayed prettier than he found it. 

Even with such an indolent and haphazard journey, only a year had passed by the time he’d reached the northern most city in Ionia. He thought that he might tour the islands next. Some of them were supposed to be quite beautiful. However, even after he discussed the prospect with a ship captain, that never happened. Instead, he fell in with the Alexin’s. 

They were a noble family of some importance not just in the city, but in the country as a whole.  According to rumors they were perhaps the third or fourth most prominent noble family in the entire country. Simon wasn’t surprised to receive an invitation to their estate, but he was surprised by their request. 

He’d planned on doing more art, and taking some time to investigate the strange art of ceramics, but they made him a different offer. “Our middle son is absolutely fascinated by your work,” she explained, “When he saw your mural in Thebian he absolutely insisted we hire you as a tutor. So, we’ve been looking for you ever sense.”

Simon explained his long winding trail up the coast and the woman merely laughed politely. Her husband was more direct. “What is the point of making art that will never been seen?”

Simon thought about pointing out that it would be seen every day by the people that lived there, but the context was quite clear, and he didn’t need to argue the point. Instead, he simply said, “One cannot improve without practice, so I practice where I can.”

Lord Alexin nodded at that. “I would prefer that the boy take up architecture, or sculpting. They are much more reputable than painting, but if it is to be painting, then let it be with a master.”

Simon smiled at that, but said nothing, instead he talked about some of his next projects he had planned, and the three of them worked out an arrangement. The Alexins would finance those endeavors, if he would allow their son to be his sole assistant, and receive extensive instruction throughout.  

Simon was perfectly happy to agree to those terms, though they didn’t last nearly as long as he expected. Their agreement was for art tutoring, but when it became apparent to Simon that young Bertand as well as his younger siblings were woefully behind where they should be in reading and writing, Simon took that on as well, much ot the children’s disappointment. 

Simon still worked on his art, of course, and he let Bertrand assist him with that, but it was the carrot to make him work on the other more necessary skills, since he clearly had no talent when it came to drawing, and other important skills. 

Simon didn’t see that as a dealbreaker, necessarily. He’d been terrible at art once upon a time too, and he would have long since given up had a vivid imagination not proved so vital for the casting of magic spells. Still, Bertrand didn’t have half a dozen lifetimes to improve. So, Simon kept him busy from morning to night sketching commoners that admired his murals while Simon worked on the larger works of art. “Just be glad that your parents can afford so much paper,” Simon laughed when the boy complained about so much practice. “I did most of my practice on a whitewashed wall with sticks of charcoal. You’ll learn much faster than me.”