Death After Death

Simon’s trip south gave him only one chance to experiment with his blade, and that was against a group of drunken mercenaries that took him for a helpless old man. Though he didn’t kill all of them because they weren’t bandits or worse, he did take the fingers on one man’s right hand, and he cut the pectoralis major and latissimus dorsi muscles on the other man’s dominant arm when he took him under the armpit, ensuring he’d never be able to fight again either.

He left both men bleeding and crippled but alive. He also learned that a single dose of life force, even from a human, wasn’t enough to make him fiend for more. That was good but also troubling.

“So let’s say I can stab someone twice without feeling like I need another hit tomorrow,” he told himself. “That’s just enough for one word of power or enough to counteract a month of natural aging. That means I’d need to fight all the time to keep from getting old.”

Or I’ll need to build up a tolerance so I can drain more energy on the occasions where an opportunity presents itself, he added belatedly.

Realistically, the only way he’d be able to keep up with the way he used magic, even sparingly, would be to lead a very bloody existence. While he’d certainly done that in the past, in lives where he’d participated in Brin’s civil war or fought against the centaurs at Crowvar, he didn’t expect that he’d suddenly be plunged into anything similar in this life. One thing he knew for sure was that he didn’t want all of his lives from now on to be bloodbaths, even if he eventually died of old age now and then as a result.

Still, he had a long time to think about all of these issues and more on his long walk south. Along the way, he visited with Niko and met his old apprentice’s young family and admired some of the other works of art he’d painted years before, but mostly, he mulled things over. He thought about what he should do with his next life, he thought about where his evil twin had ended up, and most of all, he thought about how he was going to handle reunification with Elthena and so much time with a son.

My son, he repeated, almost disbelievingly. He’d painted several large murals of the boy, but he’d never seen him. Truthfully, Simon had never even imagined he’d become a father. Not even after he and Freya had almost had a family of their own. Such an idea was too painful to be allowed to be anything but a distant dream.

It wasn’t painful now, though. Despite his initial trepidation, his heart grew lighter and lighter as he approached Ionar, and by the time he reached the city itself, the day of his son’s eighth birthday was drawing near.

Simon had himself a fine new toga sewed for the occasion and spent those last few weeks hobnobbing with the city's elites as he put his reputation to use. Though he never presented himself to court, by the day of the audience, his name was on the lips of everyone who mattered. It felt strange for him to seek out attention like this, but it was what needed to be done. The Queen said she would choose him, but he knew better than anyone the Queen did not always have the final say in these things, not when she had to think about the opinions of her advisors.