Shango POV: Day 80

  Current Wealth: 279 gold 31 silver 16 copper

  “What in the world is a proto-Fascist?”

  It was the first sentence I heard, entering the library, and I heard it in Phelia’s voice. Her aristocratic accent practically colonised every syllable as it left her lips, marching them towards Solitaire’s ears like poor people into German machine guns. Solitaire looked about as pleased as I might have expected.

  “Sorry.” He replied, sounding about as sorry as he ever did. “I forgot you were a mud person. A proto-Fascist is what we civilised humans call you, aristocrats, nobles, authoritarians. The people who, in a few centuries, will lay out the framework necessary for a generation of mindless egotists to become rich by torturing children and polluting the air.”

  Her eyes narrowed, but Solitaire was far from finished.

  “You know, the funny thing is, you and I are actually quite alike. Or your ancestors and I, at least.”

  Phelia scoffed.

  “I highly doubt that.”

  “No, no,” Solitaire grinned, “It’s true, really. I’m a violent, selfish megalomaniac, just like all the idiot warlords who made themselves the first aristocrats by killing everyone that argued. If I’d arrived here a few centuries ago, it’d probably be my descendent sitting on the throne right now.”

  “What’s this about?” I asked, before Phelia could say something Pheliaish, and run the risk of causing my brother to do something Solitaireish. “The two of you are arguing, what about?”

  “Your brother wants to turn my house into a death trap.” My wife- fuck, I had a wife- replied instantly, glaring at Solitaire as she said it. Solitaire for his part just shrugged, seeming entirely unbothered.

  “A death trap for anyone who tries to sneak in and kill us, yeah, there’s a lot of ground to cover but I reckon we can set up plenty of traps.”

  I took a second to process that, and then I replied. Very, very delicately. Solitaire was not exactly a patient man, but somehow, remarkably, when the topic moved on to curtailing his paranoia…He became even less so. It had taken me almost a week of reasoning, screaming, begging and threatening to finally make him agree not to boobytrap our shared house back on earth. Now that people who existed outside of his neurotic fucking head were trying to kill us, I wasn’t sure even I’d be capable of persuading him otherwise.

  “Solitaire, I understand-” I began.

  “Don’t tell me you understand what it’s like to constantly think everyone wants to murder you.” He cut in, sharply, glaring. “Don’t.”

  I paused, swallowed my irritation, nodded. He had a point.

  “I can appreciate what you’re thinking, and that our current situation is somewhat different from the ones we’ve had these conversations in before-”

  “-He’s tried to do this before knowing a huge gang was after him?” Phelia asked, aghast. I sensed there would be no positive outcome of discussing that with her, so I tactically ignored it.

  “-But you really need to try and reign in your…Instincts.”

  Solitaire took an uncharacteristic moment before replying to me, then did so. In the same way artillery batteries tended to reply to things.

  “It is not fucking instinct, Shango, to take precautions for when people attempt to kill you. Pre. Cautions. Acting to stop something before it begins, utilising knowledge and intellectual reasoning. That’s about as instinctive as physics.”

  Stolen story; please report.

  A migraine was starting to prick at my brain. It really was fascinating, sometimes, how Solitaire’s mind worked. Or, in this case, how it didn’t work. If he’d been anyone else, not racked by his ridiculous suspicion and borderline schizophrenic delusion, he might’ve changed the world.

  He would change this world, regardless. In this world an average earthling was an adult among children. A genius? That was something else entirely. Something barely even human. And now I was watching one’s own mind threaten to tear him apart. I steeled myself, and thought back to all those times I’d been panicking here, and had Solitaire there to help talk me through my worries. He was a rational man, a brilliant man, he understood, eventually, when his mind was mangling his thoughts. I just needed to make him understand sooner rather than later.

  “What could you be doing instead of this to keep us safe?” I asked, “How could you be advancing our influence, our technology, if you dedicated your time to that rather than bombing the house?”

  Solitaire shot back instantly. Most times I found his cognitive nimbleness refreshing, today it was just exhausting. Arguments were far easier when I had an ice age between each of my opponent’s thoughts.

  “Not a lot.” He replied, confidently. “This is something I can do in my spare time, we’ve not been selling as much black powder recently, either, so I’d just be using spare materials for a lot of the traps. It’d also give me the chance to map the house out and get a good list of rooms and their potential uses, as well as study it for anything else we might turn to our advantage.”

  Phelia piped up before I could. Rare, that. Finding a person who could beat me to a sentence. Rare, and a bit exciting.

  “You are not salvaging my fucking house.” She growled. Solitaire looked like he was on the verge of growling back, so I cut in.

  “Alright.” I said. “Tell you what, Solitaire, you head to the stadium and begin the tournament preparations. Sign us up, as many as you can manage, I’ll discuss this with Phelia and see if we can…Come to an arrangement.”

  Both of them glared at me, clearly not happy, and Solitaire stormed out angrily enough to make me wonder why I even bothered with the fucking compromise in the first place. Phelia spoke when he was gone.

  “A lot of families have people like your brother.” She noted, eying me sidelong. “Mad dogs. Best to get rid of them early, before-”

  “Talk to me about getting rid of my brother again and you’ll fucking regret it.” I said, coldly. So coldly I almost surprised myself. She froze at the response, paused, then nodded slowly. Deferently.

  “Of course, Husband, I apologise.” Phelia said. Her voice was a little quieter, but her words were sincere, as far as I could tell. There wasn’t a hint of resentment, and that made me feel worse.

  “I shouldn’t speak to you like that, I’m sorry.” I sighed, turning around so I didn’t have to see the expression she was wearing. Phelia’s voice made it vivid enough in my head, regardless.

  “I am your wife, I shouldn’t have spoken to you so…Defiantly, I apologise.”

  It was surreal to hear. Most modern women would be dripping with sarcasm as they said such a thing, but Phelia wasn’t modern. Her tone was entirely sincere, and it actually sent a chill down my spine to realise it. I cleared my throat, suddenly awkward and…Sobered.

  “Was there anything else?” I asked, more to move the conversation along than anything, but as I turned, I saw Phelia with a considering look across her features.

  “There is one thing.” She replied, delicately. “I…Haven’t brought it up yet, as I assumed you would be the first to, but…There is the matter of children.”

  I forced my mix of surprise, horror and reluctance not to show all at once. Keeping myself calm, leaving my face paralysed into stoicism through a careful measured application of will. It helped that Phelia’s request wasn’t exactly unexpected, I’d gone into our marriage fully aware what Redaclen women were like, and more particularly what society expected of them. Particularly the nobles. Raised to essentially be a breeding machine, it was no surprise she was asking what she was.

  “I’d rather not have any just yet,” I said, deciding to buy time rather than deny her outright. Now of all points, it wouldn’t be ideal to give her any cause to turn against us. But Phelia was, of course, fucking smart, and I didn’t see her buying the deflection.

  “I’ve waited days.” She replied. “I’ve been patient, but we’ve yet to even consummate our marriage, and we have duties, you understand. I’m not certain what you know of the proper way of things given your station but we’ve already delayed more than is normal, and far more than is necessary. It’s a compromise on my part already that we’re only talking about this now.”

  Fuck, I needed more time. I needed time to think, to misdirect, to reroute her. Was it a coincidence she’d broached the topic while I was so distracted? I found it hard to believe so. But that could work against her, too.

  “There’s so much going on at the moment.” I replied, “Can we not talk about this some time more convenient? After we’ve dealt with the Dead Edge?”

  “That could be weeks.” She replied, testily. “Months.”

  I eyed her, and Phelia sighed.

  “I’ll wait another week, after that we’re discussing this.”

  Just fucking perfect.