The years slipped by in the service to the Alexins faster than he would have thought as Simon lost himself in the pursuits of art, teag art, and just pin teag. It was a mixture of experiences, and all of it happened in the beautiful city of in in what felt like the blink of an eye.

  At the start, Simon had spent most of his time with Bertrand, but ohe older boy found his rhythm in his practice assigs, Simo more and more time teag the younger children to write. Though that started out more tedious than he would have thought, in time, he found it even more enjoyable than art. Over the few years, he watched them transition from precocious brats to thoughtful adolests who asked iing questions about the world around them.

  Unfortunately, Simon didn’t know enough about physics to expin why the sky was blue and things like that. He could expin simple things like the evaporation cycle of the o and why the rain fell, but for other things and more plex questions, he eventually fell on the idea of answering their questions with questions. This didn’t necessarily produswers in most cases. It was better thahough, and what few books and scrolls he had to teach them with were full of those.

  Almost everything was expined away by the gods, and while there were at least little grains of truth sprinkled in some of those myths, by and rge, it was just nonsense. Well, at least he thought it was nonsense. He still wasly a master of magic yet, and he had no expnation whatsoever for the oracle he’d met so retly, but on the whole, he still teo think that things worked because of cause and effed the causes of most things were almost certainly not diviervention.

  If there were Gods floating around this world, wouldn’t I have seen them by now? He wondered one day, after a particurly heated debate about whiade the voloes erupt with young Theo and his sister Sophia. That was a stupid question, of course, since he’d literally met a Goddess on more than one occasion. In fact, if he got to level forty, he’d be able to meet her again.

  That’s different, though, he argued in his head. Hedes is not a Goddess that anyone in this world worships, and I’ve never seen any evidehat the Gods they do worship really exist.

  It was a drum, but not a particurly important one. People oh could make microchips and unch rockets, but they still worshiped gods who did. Things didn’t have to make seo be passed through the ages. Hell, art didn’t make sense, but he’d spent almost a decade now slowly improving at it step by step.

  Holy, until a ret breakthrough, Simon had been starting to sour on it. Not painting and drawing, of course. He still loved that, but havirand tagging along had really been dragging him down. As the years had gone on, Simon had beore and more sure that the young mahe talent to really pursue this field.

  No, talent is the wrong word, he corrected himself. Drive is more like it.

  Bertrand was a child of wealth. He wanted for nothing, yet each day, he only pleted the bare minimum of the assigs that Simon gave him. It hadn’t been like that at first, of course. In those first few months, Simon would e down from his scaffolds to find the boy had sketched a dozen strangers. None of those sketches had been any good, but they had shown small, sistent improvements, and that was all that mattered.

  Somewhere between here and there, though, Bertrand had grown disillusioned. “I’ll never be as good as you!” he pined bitterly in private when Simon talked to him about it. Bertrand’s younger siblings were still too young for this sort of angst. Instead, they were lost expl all the new doors that their newfound literacy had opened for him in their father’s libraries. Bertrand, though, already nearly twenty, was starting to grow jaded.

  “You’re much better than I was at ye,” Simon answered truthfully. “Skill, real skill takes a lifetime, and even then—”

  “Oh, enough of that!” Bertrand cried out in frustration. “I’ll never be ready to showcase my talents in public at this rate. My hands just won’t cooperate with what I see in my mind. That’s the real problem. How do I fix that?”

  Simon nodded sagely. He was gettier aer at that little gesture, thanks to both practid the small ges he was slowly making to his appearance as time went on. He’d given himself a deeper tan, like the Ionians, and his hair was almost entirely gray now. He even had a few unnaturally added wrio go with it. The result made him look much wiser than he was, so he tried to act that way whenever possible around his students.

  “Perhaps the problem is not iist but in the medium,” Simon said cryptically. He refused to eborate further, but that night, he went to Bertrand’s father and expihe issue briefly.

  “I do not think your son will be a painter,” Simon said simply.

  “If that is the case, then the fault certainly lies with his teacher, does it not?” the man asked. Simon had known that Lord Alexin would go there immediately. He was a cutthroat man to the very core.

  “I did not say that he would not be an artist,” Simon tered. “In that regard, he’s ing along well. I just think a slight ge of pn might be in order.”

  “What do you propose?” the older man asked.

  “A field trip,” Simon said with a nod. “A very expensive field trip. If all goes acc to pn, yourand will not be ing home for a while.” The Lord didn’t so much as blink at that word, but then Simohat he wouldn’t. However, when Simon proposed his pn in more detail, the man fshed him a fierce smile befranting his approval.

  The following m, Simon said goodbye to his young pupils and promised them he’d be ba a few weeks, packed a few tools and supplies in his trusty mule cart, and the off with Bertrand.

  “Where are we going?” the young noble asked.

  “Shopping,” Simon answered cryptically, ails, as the two of them made their way to in’s upper market.

  The city itself was built to emute Ionar in the south. That in to him. The only problem was that its cliffs weren’t nearly so grand, and its beach was much too inviting. So, instead of there being hundreds of feet between the upper and lower markets, there were only a couple dozen. Still, Simon appreciated the attempt. He came here often to paint the sea, but today, that was not the mission. In fact, he’d left the voluminous bundle of papers he usually traveled with at home because they wouldn’t hem.

  Instead, he set about sand and lime, and then, when all the basic supplies were purchased, he took his student to the most expeter iy. “Tell me, Bertrand,” Simon said, beginning one of his lessons in a style that his student had long since growo. “What is Beauty?”

  “It is that which is pleasing to the eye,” his student said, a familiar answer.

  “Then which of these is the most pleasing to the eye?” Simon asked, gesturing widely around the yard filled with decorated vases in a huyles.

  “Its… That would be impossible to say,” Bertrand said after a moment. “The ao that question is different for every man who has eyes to see.”

  “Then show me which is most beautiful to you through your eyes,” Simon insisted. “Help me uand that.”

  The boy was obviously unfortable, even though the request was simple enough. Simon didn’t bme him. Who was the student to lecture the master about beauty?

  Still, after a few mihey fell into a steady rhythm. Bertrand would walk slowly down a row, admiring several, before he would stop to expin why one in particur stood out to him. “It’s just the way the leaves on these flowers curl so precisely,” he would expin, or “The deep blue on this one is remarkable. You almost never see a blue this deep in ceramics.”

  Each time he selected one, Simon had one of the mert’s helpers set it aside, and by the end they had nearly a cartload of pottery waiting for them. Despite the fact that they took half the day doing so, no one rushed them. He was a renowned artist, and his pupil was the son of one of the richest men iy. Men were eager to bow and scrape for the master artist Ennis now, no matter how distasteful he found it.

  ”You’re not really going to buy all of those, are you?” the boy asked when they were nearly done.

  “Why shouldn’t I?” Simon asked. “You said that they were the most beautiful, did you not? Surely, all of them are worth purchasing.”

  “But that would cost a fortune,” Bertrand protested.

  “That it would,” Simon agreed, “Fortunately, your father has several to spare.”

  Despite Simon’s words, he iated a hefty bulk dist. Haggling was one of the most valuable skills he’d learned during his time in in. So, the lesson was only going to cost half of what he’d told Lord Alexin it would.

  The servants packed the myriad of vases that they’d purchased in the back of Simon’s cart with wood and straw so they would not be harmed during transit, and then Simon started going north out of town.

  “Aren’t we taking these home?” Bertrand asked, suddenly fused.

  “Why would we do that?” Simon asked. “They were chosen by you, and so they will not be the most beautiful vases to your father or your mother.”

  “Well then, what about my townhouse?” the boy asked.

  “No, not there either, I’m afraid,” Simon said. “With all those hangers-on you have, the distras are infinite. Art is a solitary endeavor, not a social one.”

  “But people always watch you work, and you paint in public, Master Ennis,” his student insisted.

  “I paint where the vas is,” Simon corrected him, “But when I paint, I am alone, and even if the whole world watched me, I would not notice.” That wasn’t true, of course. He actually took no small amount of delight in the audiences he drew, but it was beside the point in this lesson.

  Their versation tinued like that for some time as Simon led his mule out of town and into the foothills to a particur yon he had in mind. The boy periodically asked where they were going but got no answers. Instead, they just trekked further and further away until they were pletely alone in some fairly rugged foothills.

  When Simon finally reached the promontory overlooking his destination, he looked down at the ft basalt flow and said, “Behold our campsite.”

  “Campsite?” the young man asked, suddenly nervous. “But why would we—”

  “The answers will e tomorrow,” Simon expined, cutting him off. “For now, all we do is prepare.”

  They left the mule there to graze on the scrubby grass and took the things that Simon had packed earlier down one load at a time. It was nearly dark by the time they had the tarp up, the bed rolls id out, and the cooing, but Simon didn’t mind. He had a few years left to wait and was in no hurry.

  Wherand tried to ask what they were doing again, Simon’s only expnation was, “I have a … loerm proje mind for you. We’ll start it in the m. There’s no rush.”

  “But you didn’t bring enough supplies for anything long-term,” the boy pined. “Just a little bread and endless pottery. What are we to eat?”

  “It is enough,” Simoed. “You will create, I will hunt, and together, we will focus on what is truly important.”