Death After Death

Simon had no shortage of other offers after that, but what he was really frustrated by were his material. The nobles that wanted him to paint murals to their greatness offered him significant sums, but even with money, he wasn’t really sure where he could get better materials to work with.

On Earth he could have just ordered paint in any color online, or gone down to the local hardware store, but here, things were harder. So, while he took a couple of straightforward jobs to finance his research in that regard, the next few months were spent mostly on trying to expand beyond those limitations in Thebian. It was there that he discovered from another local artist of significant repute that some colors like deep, vibrant blue could only be created by crushing literal precious gems, which seemed insane to Simon.

“I do not have time to invent chemistry from scratch,” he told himself. Sometimes, though, it felt like he should. It was a special sort of torment to know that a tool like bright blue paint or broad spectrum antibiotics existed, but to have absolutely no way to use it himself.

“It took millions of humans thousands of years to invent all of that stuff,” he lectured himself while he painted his current patron at the height of two stories tall on a watchtower overlooking the grand market. “So don’t beat yourself up too much. You’re doing pretty good, for one guy.”

While Simon couldn’t deny that, he was hardly thrilled by it. Good enough had once been his mantra, but now it was like a stone in his shoe. Even projects that he personally didn’t care about at all, like a mural of the man who was hoping to win a seat on the city council in the coming election, had to be just right.

Of course, he wasn’t all work. He had his distractions. In a city as large as Thebian there were a dozen ways to party on any given night. Even beyond drinking, drugs, and whores, which he stayed away from, there had been a couple noblewomen interested in some private portraiture that threatened to become something more after only a few minutes of being alone with them.

Simon drew them, of course, often in much less than he’d originally intended to, but he didn’t sleep with them. As beautiful as one or two of the women had been, and as single as he very much was, he simply wasn’t interested in random flings with women he didn’t know. If I do that, I might spend the rest of my lives just wandering around the world and spending the night with anyone that catches my eye, he thought sullenly. What a waste that would be.

The cynical part of his brain pointed out that he’d actually already done precisely that with Freya, but he batted that thought away immediately. “That’s different,” he told himself. “We were in a life or death situation, then. Things got weird.”

Beating himself up about getting together with her too easily was a lot better than the things he used to think about when she came to mind, so he let that go easy enough. Still, thoughts of Freya made him wonder if he might be holding himself too far away from the wider world. He was still considering whether he should take the chance to get to know more women, when the news suddenly spread through town.

“The Queen has given birth to an heir!” the town crier read out the following morning. “She, and her boy Seyom, are doing well, gods be praised!”

Everyone cheered at that news, but Simon was just pleased that she’d named the boy after him in her own way, with a local name that was slightly similar to his. That softened his feelings toward her more than he would have thought possible.

Despite the fact that the city immediately declared three days of public feasts at the news, it immediately banished any thoughts of debauchery that he might have had. Now, suddenly, he was inspired, and he went to the richest of his prospective patrons with a proposal. Lord Hepholon was the owner of several large vineyards, a winery, and he dabbled in shipping up and down the coast. He had more wealth than Simon would have in a dozen lives.

He was supposed to be a hard man to reach, with many petitioners, but thanks to his growing reputation, Simon had no problems with that. He had even less of a problem getting the man to approve the large mural that he wanted to do to celebrate the queen and her son. He merely looked at Simon’s sketch and asked, “When can you start?”

“It’s… you know that much blue will be very expensive, right?” Simon asked. This project would cost as much as all of his previous endeavours combined thanks to the price of lapis lazuli, but the man was utterly unperturbed, and instead of dismissing Simon, he dismissed his servants so he could speak more frankly to him.

“You are an artist. A skilled artist, but an artist nonetheless, so I will forgive your naivety,” the older man smiled grimly, “But you must understand that for a man like me, a work like this is meant to be expensive. Indeed, you should lie to everyone who asks. You should tell them it cost ten times what it did, and that your blue paint is worth its weight in gold. Such displays are lovely for the common man, but for those in the rarefied air near the top of the city, they are nothing but a contest for status, and in such contests, cost matters almost as much as beauty.”

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Simon understood all of that on some level, but to have it spelled out so clearly was refreshing. It was a nice reminder that at least in this life he wasn’t important. In any of his others, where he wielded a sword instead of a brush, he might have crushed such an egotistical merchant beneath his sandals. However, here and now he was nothing but a status symbol, and one that was slowly increasing in value at that.

Simon spent a season on his mural to his son. It was painted across the second story of a wide municipal building that looked out over the harbor and the lower market. It was placed so blatantly that everyone in the city could see it, but really, he’d lobbied to have it put there so that the queen herself would have no choice but to see it the next time she came through the city.

Most of that time was spent waiting for the rare blue stones, so that he could grind them to powder and mix them with a binder and water, but other that building the scaffolding and sketching out the outline for the painting to come.

Once he had everything he needed, along with a handful of assistants eager to learn his craft, he was done in less than a week. This time he started with his queen, and the infant that she carried. She was done in nearly pure white again, as was befitting of purity and power. Then, once he was done with all of the chiaroscuro details needed to make her look like the woman rather than the ideal of one, he drew his son.

There Simon could only do his best. He’d never seen the boy, nor would he for years. What really mattered was the bright blue swaddling he was displayed in, and the darker blue background that he painted behind both of them.

Simon had drawn the whole thing in such a way that it was the infant who was the source of light in the painting. It was he that was illuminating his mother, and pushing away the darkness of the night. He even painted faint stars at the edges of the giant forty-foot mural that very subtly spelled out “Glory to Queen Elthena and Prince Seyom!”

The effect was muted, and very effective, and received nothing but acclaim. Simon’s patron held a lavish party in his honor when it was done, where Simon was expected to thank the man for bearing the crippling expense of the thing. Lord Hepholon of course reciprocated and praised him for making something truly priceless in it beauty at the cost of mere coins. Afterwards he even tried to marry off Simon to the daughter of an important client, but Simon left town after that, traveling further north.

While his destination was Coramin, he left little works of art up and down the coast, all the way there. Sometimes he beautified the shrines of a God or a Goddess, and other times he decorated the shop of a merchant much too poor to afford his services, but he always left the place he stayed prettier than he found it.

Even with such an indolent and haphazard journey, only a year had passed by the time he’d reached the northernmost city in Ionia. He thought that he might tour the islands next. Some of them were supposed to be quite beautiful. However, even after he discussed the prospect with a ship captain, that never happened. Instead, he fell in with the Alexin’s.

They were a noble family of some importance not just in the city, but in the country as a whole. According to rumors they were perhaps the third or fourth most prominent noble family in the entire country. Simon wasn’t surprised to receive an invitation to their estate, but he was surprised by their request.

He’d planned on doing more art, and taking some time to investigate the strange art of ceramics, but they made him a different offer. “Our middle son is absolutely fascinated by your work,” she explained, “When he saw your mural in Thebian he absolutely insisted we hire you as a tutor. So, we’ve been looking for you ever since.”

Simon explained his long winding trail up the coast and the woman merely laughed politely. Her husband was more direct. “What is the point of making art that will never be seen?”

Simon thought about pointing out that it would be seen every day by the people that lived there, but the context was quite clear, and he didn’t need to argue the point. Instead, he simply said, “One cannot improve without practice, so I practice where I can.”

Lord Alexin nodded at that. “I would prefer that the boy take up architecture, or sculpting. They are much more reputable than painting, but if it is to be painting, then let it be with a master.”

Simon smiled at that, but said nothing, instead he talked about some of his next projects he had planned, and the three of them worked out an arrangement. The Alexins would finance those endeavors, if he would allow their son to be his sole assistant, and receive extensive instruction throughout.

Simon was perfectly happy to agree to those terms, though they didn’t last nearly as long as he expected. Their agreement was for art tutoring, but when it became apparent to Simon that young Bertand as well as his younger siblings were woefully behind where they should be in reading and writing, Simon took that on as well, much to the children’s disappointment.

Simon still worked on his art, of course, and he let Bertrand assist him with that, but it was the carrot to make him work on the other more necessary skills, since he clearly had no talent when it came to drawing, and other important skills.

Simon didn’t see that as a dealbreaker, necessarily. He’d been terrible at art once upon a time too, and he would have long since given up had a vivid imagination not proved so vital for the casting of magic spells. Still, Bertrand didn’t have half a dozen lifetimes to improve. So, Simon kept him busy from morning to night sketching commoners that admired his murals while Simon worked on the larger works of art. “Just be glad that your parents can afford so much paper,” Simon laughed when the boy complained about so much practice. “I did most of my practice on a whitewashed wall with sticks of charcoal. You’ll learn much faster than me.”