Death After Death

Chapter 199: A New Beginning

Later that evening, Simon was finally allowed to meet his son. Before that, though, he was given a tour of the palace he already knew reasonably well and shown the apartments he’d be living in until such time as Seyom was grown or the Queen grew dissatisfied with his performance. While he certainly didn’t expect the latter to apply, he did note that she’d given him a room at the top of the tower, furthest from her own bedchambers, which was very clearly a message all of its own.

Don’t get any ideas indeed, he thought to himself.

He didn't mind, though. The space was private, out of the way, and unlikely to be spied upon. It was even fairly defensible should he ever require that, and there was ample room for him to work on several of his art and magic-related experiments.

It was only later that evening when Simon had unpacked his possessions and sent servants to the library and the bazaar to retrieve the things he thought he’d need for the upcoming lessons Simon was actually introduced to Seyom, he was stunned for a moment.

He could see plenty of the Queen in his dark-eyed features, but he could see something of himself, too, and it had more of an effect than he’d expected. Simon had tutored Gregor, Niko, and the Alexin children, but something about Seyom being his own flesh and blood, even if the child didn’t know it, changed that dynamic immediately.

He’d had a short speech prepared about discovering the wonders of the world together, but he only got a few words out before it was clear the boy wasn’t listening, which ruined the moment. At first, Simon thought that his son had just grown up into a precocious brat, but as it turned out, he’d simply been coddled within an inch of his life.

The boy clung to his mother’s skirts whenever possible, which wasn’t so unusual for a boy of eight, but even when he was apart from her, he was surrounded constantly by half a dozen servants to tend to his every need. He could not sneeze without being offered three handkerchiefs.

When it came to eating, he wasn’t even seated by Seyom; the boy was seated at a small table with three other servants, and he was put at the Queen’s left hand at the high table. “Well, what do you think?” she asked.

“I think that you do not want that answer,” Simon mused, drinking some of his wine.

She didn’t challenge him directly on it, and the polite conversation continued, interrupted only occasionally by their verbal fencing. It was only after the dinner was winding down after Simon was stuffed within an inch of his life by fine dishes of rice and lamb, that she asked to speak with him about his planned curriculum in private that he finally told her the truth.

“I think that boy is being smothered within an inch of his life,” Simon exclaimed as soon as the door was closed.

Elthena, for her part, only made a few excuses about how precious Ionia’s heir was before she grudgingly agreed. “What do you propose, then?” she asked.

“Besides that, you cut the apron strings? Give the boy some friends!” Simon said, exasperated. “Why is he sitting with servants three and four times his age. Why is he not with other children.”

“Well, as you well know, I have no other children, Simon,” she answered playfully.

“Your choice, not mine,” Simon shot back before adding, “I have no doubt your court is overflowing with other children whose parents would love to get into your good graces. Surely they will do.”

“We’d planned that, of course, but…” she hesitated. “When he’s older, you know?”

“Older? Impressionable?” Simon sighed. “Elthena, I love you, but you are going to ruin our… You will ruin Seyom. When he is still young and impressionable is exactly the moment you want him to be exposed to other children. That's where he will learn virtues like curiosity, independence, and masculinity.”

“That’s too harsh,” she insisted. “My son is very curious and intelligent. He often asks questions that men twice his age have not yet considered.”

“Oh?” Simon asked, “And when he asks these fine questions, what answers is he given?”

“I have the finest scholars of my court. They tell him whatever he wants to know,” she answered softly. This made Simon pound the windowsill he was standing beside in frustration.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“Then all you have taught him is that he can rely on men smarter than him to explain things to him,” Simon sighed. “Is that what you want? To be led around by his advisors?” ???????

“Well, of course not,” she insisted. “But I was raised much the same way, and I turned out alright.”

“And so will he, eventually,” Simon sighed, “But I want more than, alright. I want exceptional. I don’t think that’s asking too much. Not for my… pupil.”

When he was in public, he had no problem referring to Seyom as a near stranger, but in private, with the Queen, it was much harder. There, the secret was evidence of the life that he might have led.

“How would you change things then?” Elthena asked.

“Completely,” Simon said. “From top to bottom.” He spent the next few minutes laying out what he meant by that. To start with, he wanted the number of minders around Seyom to be slowly reduced.

“He should never be outnumbered by his own servants,” Simon explained. “He may have one servant, but not when I am teaching.” She balked at all of that, but he continued, explaining that henceforth, instead of being Seyom’s private tutor, their class was about to get larger.

“I would like five to eight students around his age,” he insisted. “And some of them should be girls. An even mix will make him feel less special.”

“But he is special,” Elthena insisted.

“He is,” Simon agreed, “But he should feel the need to prove that, not have it handed to him. He will go nowhere in life until we build that drive.”

They argued about it for some time, and Simon wasn’t sure he’d made any headway on the matter. He was certain that his insistence that his son have more men in his life hurt the Queen, but still, somehow, at breakfast the following morning, which he had with the Queen and her son in private, he was only waited on by a single servant.

There, in front of a few of her advisors, she proceeded to explain to him that his duties would be expanded to include a few other boys and girls who were the children of court luminaries. Simon nodded along, agreeing to everything.

In the end, only her Vizer protested the new arrangement in any serious way. He was a different one than Simon had known when he’d last been here, but the Queen dismissed his concerns about the increased risks of injury that came with roughhousing. “Our dear Mister Ennis is too talented to keep all to ourselves. Surely, the future of the Kingdom will be much enhanced if he helps to mold as many young minds as possible.”

After that, Simon hoped to get to work, but instead, he was tasked with going out to find more students for his class. A few of the Queen’s courtiers provided him with a list of names, which included all of the best families with children who were between six and ten, and then left him to his own devices.

Simon spent the next week of his life having lunches and dinners with the crème de la crème of the city, discussing art and some of his travels, along with court gossip. It wasn’t wasted time, truthfully, he just did not care for it. At his age, he could eat only so much rich food before he started to pay for it at night with heartburn and sleeplessness, and truthfully, all he wanted to do was spend time with Seyom.

Eventually, he settled on five likely children to join his son and had the palace carpenter fashion six desks in a small out-of-the-way room near the gardens. “Do you really mean for the prince to learn in such a drab place?” the Vizer asked one day when the Queen was visiting to inspect his new classroom.

“Not at all,” Simon said. “We will only be in here to learn letters and when the weather is poor. The rest of the time, I plan to teach them outside.”

“Outside?” the man asked. “What can they learn in the gardens that—”

“We’ll only be in the gardens for a few years,” Simon corrected the man. “When Seyom and the rest are a bit older, the city, the mountains, and the sea will be our laboratory just as much as everywhere else.”

“Wha-what?!” the man exploded. “Queen, surely this tutor has gone quite mad. He would risk the lives of the prince and—”

“Yes, explain yourself,” the Queen responded, only slightly annoyed.

“What can you learn of the world without being in it?” Simon asked. “How can you learn to swim without stepping foot in the water? I assure you, all of them will be fine. There is no safer place in the world than there is with me.”

The conversation was dropped when workmen arrived to install the large piece of slate that he planned to use as a chalkboard, but it was far from resolved. In private, the Queen expressed her disapproval very clearly, despite further explanations. “You will have the chance to see the results for yourself from the garden sessions alone,” Simon promised her.

Those started shortly after that. At first, they were little more than play time, with Simon functioning as a doting grandparent or elderly babysitter. He noticed the Queen would often watch from one of the windows on the upper story, but she didn’t interfere, which was for the best.

Simon did very little teaching in those first few weeks. Instead, he did significant untraining that their servants and parents had unwittingly inflicted on them and taught them how to be kids again. At first, he dictated the games they would play and taught them tag and hide and seek, along with tug of war and a few others, but after a few days, they mostly handled that themselves and he could see friendships starting to form, which pleased Simon to no end.

It was only after they were comfortable with each other and with him that the real learning could begin. It started in small ways, with discussions about where the rain came from and why the grass grew, just as it had with the Alexin children. He made finger paints for the children, which led to the briefest of discussions about alchemy, but it was a start, and once the children saw learning as a form of play rather than torture that involved words on a page, his job was halfway done.