I once believed my brother was the most honourable man in Alabach, continued the knight. A man who would put the needs of the many before his own, and never expect anything in return. This was what I believed, until this very moment. If I still had knees, they would bend for you, Firemaster Fionn.
The knight’s words made Fionn stop in his tracks. A lump formed in his throat, and his mouth went dry. It was fortunate that he didn’t need to use his tongue to say you’re welcome to the knight. Although it was just a thought, he still stuttered over the words.
Before he could make his way back to his bedchambers on the first floor of the House of the Triad, a sharp cry rang out from somewhere down the hallway. It seemed to belong to a Simian, a female Simian perhaps, but the difference between the two was often hard to discern.
His feet began taking him towards the voice’s source. The portraits of stern-looking men and gruff Simians rushed past either side. At the end of the hallway there were two doors, facing one another.
“Is everything alright?” called out Fionn, not sure where to direct his voice.
“Please, fetch the guards!” cried the hysterical voice. “Skies above, what have they done?”
For a moment Fionn considered leaving immediately to get help, but curiosity guided his hand to the door. When he pushed it open, Fionn cursed himself under his breath. But the dead knight in his head swore louder than the screaming Simian woman inside. A bloodied Simian corpse lay at her feet.
***
It took Farris more than a moment to gather his thoughts and figure out where he was. The summer sun had risen earlier that morning than it had all year, shining light into his weary eyes.
Nicole’s cabin was tiny and sparse, furnished with as much as a hovel of the Dustworks would hold. The door was immediately adjacent to the bed, close enough to prevent it from opening all the way. Beside this was a dusty window, looking out into the hangar floor, and a squat iron-bound chest, large enough to contain everything one needed to live in such a squalid abode, but still quite smaller than what Farris would have considered sufficient. The air was thick and musty, and carried a strange humming sound that seemed somewhat familiar to him.
The engineer herself stirred beside Farris. Although there had been little intimacy the previous night, the two Simians lay next to each other, partially naked, with arms and legs wrapped around one another so tightly that Farris had trouble discerning her limbs from his own.
Nicole grunted as she woke, turning to face Farris. Her eyes stared back into his and shone to through the dim light. In silence, the two looked at one another, as if neither wanted to ruin the moment with speech.
Don’t let it end. By the Shadow of Sin, don’t let it end.
Without any warning, Nicole leaned towards Farris and placed a gentle kiss upon his lips. She did it so deliberately, so naturally, that Farris had no idea how to respond. It was a kiss unlike anything he had felt before. It didn’t seem rooted in passion or formality. He certainly didn’t instigate it, nor did he expect it. Nicole just did it, completely unprovoked, without meaning to imply anything further. It just… was.
“Good morning,” she said, shuffling as she lay. She rested her head between Farris’s shoulder and bicep; the rest of his arm stretched outwards and disappeared somewhere beneath Nicole’s torso.
“Are you alright?” Farris asked, choosing his words carefully, daring not to ruin the moment by mentioning the mechanical abomination from the previous night.
“Yes,” she muttered. “I was just in shock, that’s all.”
“Sure,” replied Farris. He didn’t quite believe it was as simple as that.
“But I’m pretty shocked at you, too,” she said, looking up at him with a smile. “You’re not nearly as bad as they made you out to be.”
“Is that so?” laughed Farris. “What was it they said about me?”
“That you were the king’s boot-kisser,” she said, turning to snuggle her back into his chest. “That you were a follower of the Church now and grown far too comfortable living amongst the Humans of Cruachan.”
“And you no longer believe this?”
Nicole hesitated. The strange sound of humming somewhere in the room seemed to grow louder than before. “Most of it,” she said. “Your heart is in the right place, even if your brain isn’t.”
“Ha! And what’s that supposed to mean?”
She considered him for a moment. When she spoke, she did so slowly, as if to a child. “What you said when we met, about Divine Penetrance and all that. Do you actually believe it?”
“It’s not a matter of belief,” he said, perhaps a little more harshly than he intended. “Humans believe King Diarmuid to be invincible just because they are told to. It’s faith alone that brings them to this conclusion. But I’ve reached the same using rationality and evidence. There is no room for faith there.”
“Tell me of this ‘evidence,’” she said, turning to grin up at him.
Farris paused. “They call him King Diarmuid, Third of His Name, Nineteenth Incarnate. The ‘third’ is because there have been two King Diarmuids before him. And the ‘nineteenth’ represents the number of kings that have ruled Alabach since the Final Conquest.”
“This is common knowledge,” said Nicole.
“Yes,” said Farris. “It is. Also common knowledge is the fact that not a single king of Alabach has died before first birthing a son.”
“Coincidence does not constitute evidence,” said Nicole. “If every coincidence in the world was considered magic, the Academy would be out of business.”
“True. Yet nineteen is a number large enough to rule out coincidence. That, along with the minor Simian rebellions of the past and the secession and re-annexing of Dromán from the kingdom, gives plenty of opportunities for a king to be assassinated. Yet it has never happened.”
“Because the Church’s magic has never let it come to that. If the buds of past Simian uprisings had not been nipped before they began, or if there had been any kind of bloodshed during the Dromán incident, then yes, there would be an environment where one would expect a king to be murdered. The reason why none of Diarmuid’s predecessors have been assassinated is because the Crown has never seen war before. Real war.”
“Consider this then,” said Farris, realising this line of argument was futile. “King Lionál the Fourth and Seventeenth—Diarmuid’s grandfather—fathered a son at the age of eighty-four.”
“Of course!” laughed Nicole. “That’s because he had a sixteen-year-old wife to do the hard part for him!”
“But Lionál died moments after his son was born. The old king spent half his life in the sick bay, slowly dying of consumption. The healers had only given him weeks to live—thirty years before he died. Yet the moment a son was born to him, the ailment finally took him.”
“An interesting interpretation,” said Nicole. “But what is more likely—that this is just another coincidence, or that the Trinity exists and Seletoth channels his power through the current living king?”
“And what makes the latter so unlikely?” asked Farris. “In a world where a mage can bend the elements to his will, does the existence of a god seem all that far-fetched in comparison?”
“Maybe I’m wrong,” said Nicole, gently patting Farris’s cheek. “Perhaps they really were right about you. Farris Silvertongue: lover of many women but married to one God.”
Relax. She’s only teasing you. He smiled at the thought. If some jeering was all it took to share the company of a Simian as wonderful as her, then so be it.
