Death After Death

Chapter 156: Telling the Truth

Simon expected that his little liaison with Elthena would have been a one-time thing, even though he hoped it might become at least a sometimes thing, but the Queen made no effort to hide their relationship. Soon, he became known as Her Highness’s consort on an official level.

That felt strange to Simon. It was a fact that was both widely known and also rarely mentioned by anyone to him directly, though some of his friends would tell him about the rumors sometimes.

“Have you heard the latest,” Aikolas asked him one day when they were strolling through the city together. “They say that the queen was forced to offer her hand to a monster to save the city?”

Simon laughed at that. “So I’m a monster now?”

“In the eyes of some, all foreigners are,” Aikolas answered, making Simon laugh all the harder.

He’d been expecting to be told how his scars made him unacceptable to royalty, but the truth was, he could be the prettiest guy in the world, but since he wasn’t Ionian, some of the locals would still turn their noses up at him past a certain point. Not all of them were like that, but the residents could be very clannish.

They weren’t rude about it, mostly. They were happy to sell him things or buy his medicines when he’d been a doctor and herbalist. Some of the poorer families would have even let him marry their daughters on the account of his success before all this happened, but even if he’d been proclaimed a hero in public, he doubted the nobility of the city would have ever come to see him as one of their own. In truth, he’d probably never entirely understand the customs of Ionar as a foreigner.

That was fine; Simon could stay here for a dozen more lifetimes, and he doubted he’d ever think of it as home either. Right now his only true home was the road, and the only reason he stayed here was because of what a delightful woman Elthena was, with or without clothes.

He often sat in on her court sessions now, not in any official capacity, of course. He just watched as she handed out justice and took petitions from clients, aristocrats, and sometimes the governors of other cities. It was deadly dull most days, but sometimes it could get interesting. Once, after she’d turned down the request of a powerful trader prince for more favorable tariffs and a monopoly related to certain imported goods, he’d been forced to stop an assassination attempt.

In the moment, it had been terrifying, but he reacted on instinct and sprang into action even before he was quite sure what was happening. Honestly, in the aftermath, he had to admit to himself that it was the most fun he’d had all year.

One moment, he’d been naked in bed with the Queen, and the next, he’d been fighting off two armed men who crept in through the window. They both wore black armor that marked them as some kind of professional assassins in his eyes, and they both wielded long curved knives.

He fought the first one off with a particularly heavy candle stick while Elthena screamed for help. He mostly parried that strike, turning it from a death blow into something more glancing before he brained the bastard.

However, the second one was too far away and moving too quickly for him to repeat that performance. So, instead, he took the man’s head off with a whispered word of force, sending him tumbling to the floor before the assassin could reach his target.

He had a knife now, and it was dark. He planned to tell her he’d done it with the first assassin's weapon. After all, in the chaos of the moment, everything happened at once. No one could say who did what exactly. By the time the guards arrived, it was already over.

Simon was bleeding, and apparently, based on the slow numbing sensation spreading across his chest. So, while the Queen ordered the guards to wake the palace and put everyone on alert, he took care of that with a word of lesser cure.

“I’ve lived many lives and fought many battles,” he answered, “but only a few of them were warlocks. They’re pretty rare.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” she said after a moment of silence.

“I am,” he agreed.

Telling anyone everything he’d been through was a bad idea, but Simon had lived dozens of lives now without really telling anything. It was all bottled up inside him now and at this point. He had to tell someone. So, it might as well be her.

They spent hours on the balcony that morning as he let it all pour out of him. He didn’t tell her everything, but only because it would complicate things even more. He didn’t tell her about the time loop or the fact that her city had been buried beneath lava more times than he could count. He didn’t tell her about the basilisk or the fact that it had turned him to stone for decades.

But he did tell her about all the endless killing and about how when he died, the gods brought him back to keep doing it. He told her about his time as a zombie, along with the wars and revolutions and everything else he participated in. When it was all over, the most surprising thing of all happened. She hugged him.

When he’d even hinted at this stuff with Freya, she’d been cold and distant for days while she processed it, but the Queen of Ionar was a much more confident woman, and she simply accepted it and him for who he was. Simon was reasonably certain she would have done the same thing if he hadn’t just saved her life, but it certainly helped.

“So, were you sent here to save the city, then?” she asked. “Did you know about the assassination? Is that why you stuck around?”

“I knew about the volcano,” Simon answered with a shake of his head. “Everything else... well, even if I was in better shape, I would have stuck around for you anyway.”

Emotions overwhelmed Elthena then, and she teared up even as she kissed him. It was only after they’d finished that discussion, that they finally got to questions of war and all the rest. Simon argued she should find a more peaceful solution and that many would die if they took this route, but she wouldn’t relent.

“My hands are tied here,” she sighed. “If Alfonsic wants a fight, then I shall give them one. They are nothing but a tiny island, and I can’t see why they think they could best our Triremes at sea, but—”

“But don’t you see, that’s exactly what they want, or at least someone does,” Simon answered. “This was provoked for this outcome.”

“Maybe,” she agreed doubtfully. “But there isn’t much I can do.”

They didn’t talk about the subject anymore after that. Instead, the Queen called for a war council and left Simon to rest. Some part of him couldn’t shake the feeling that all of this was a very bad idea. “There’s more at work here than I’m seeing,” he told himself as he finally cast heal lesser wounds on his gash. He didn’t think he was in any danger if he didn’t; of course, they just hadn’t invented painkillers in Ionia yet, and the way that the freshly stitched wound throbbed painfully, he couldn’t think straight.