A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

The waters of his drink that ought to have been brown were instead a bright golden hue. Oliver almost felt the urge to shout a warning as Skullic brought it to his lips. It didn't look the sort of thing that should be edible… But then Mary had been the one to make it. She wasn't likely to serve up anything to her dear husband that she would not drink herself.

She too was draped in golden sunlight as she stood behind him. She wore the most peaceful expression, as she grasped the now empty serving tray in front of her, betraying the years of habit that had been ground into her as a result of her previous occupation.

"Mm. That's good," Skullic said mildly. His thoughts were quite clearly elsewhere, and he did not even look in the direction of his wife, but he still caused that smile of hers to widen. She seemed quite ready to melt into the sunlight, having achieved the same bliss that it had. It was the look of a woman content enough to disappear when the sun set, having achieved her fill.

The trouble with conversations with Skullic – and Generals, as a whole, given how eccentric many of them were – was his tendency to forget who he had an audience with. Once what he thought to be the conversation had concluded, or reached a point worth thinking about, he was liable to do that thinking, without concern for his guest.

He would sit and puzzle through it, leaving whoever might be there waiting for five, ten, or sometimes even fifteen minutes. Once, it had been a whole hour that Skullic seemed to have forgotten Oliver. He'd closed his eyes to think… and then promptly gone asleep.

"The unrest, currently, will be concentrated westwards," Skullic said, to no one in particular. He tossed a life raft, to whoever might still be listening in on his quiet thinking. "With troops heading eastwards, the void is in the west."

"Is that so?" Mary answered for him, well aware of her husband's tendencies by now, but still feeling the need to offer him a gentle response, as if leading his thinking by the hand.

"Fewer soldiers are there. One force would have to travel, solving the various problems… I wonder if we could get clearance to occupy ourselves down there," Skullic murmured. "But then there are other discussions to be had about the north."

"Aren't we as far north as one is likely to get?" Oliver asked, in a brave attempt to break through the glassy eyed look that Skullic wore, but Skullic barely stirred at Oliver's speaking. The sunlight seemed to have become a curtain for him, separating him from outside thoughts, and twinkling burning gold upon the light armour and the jewels that he wore.

"Do you suppose there to be trouble to the north?" Mary asked Skullic, refilling his teacup when she noticed that it was empty. He stared into the new liquid, as if shocked that it had suddenly replaced itself, and like a lazy cat, he parted his mouth as if to yawn, before giving her the slowest sentence that Oliver had ever heard uttered.

"There… already has been… as far as the realm is concerned," Skullic said. "Solgrim… by Yarmdon attack. A thousand men… Only we know the truth of it… but it will require a response."

It would have been petty to be jealous of Mary's ability to break through Skullic's barrier of thought, given that she was his wife, and she'd had far more time to sharpen a sword capable of slicing through those defences. However, Oliver found himself wishing that he had a way to speed on the conversation sooner. Impatiently, he tossed the question to Mary.

"Has there been talk of such things yet?" He said, looking to her, despite the difficulty of it, with her standing so firmly in the path of the sunlight. Unlike Skullic, who was half-bound in it, she had sunken into it entirely.

She smiled at Oliver, and then put a finger to her lips, nodding at the General who ought to have replied in her place. With Skullic on his chair, his eyes were closed, and his long blonde eyelashes twitched in a thought filled sleep. He looked like an orange cat, sitting in the sun like that.

"Do be patient with him, Oliver," Mary said. "He did not rest on the journey over here as he should have. I am sure that your questions will be answered in time. You are the Lord of this manor. Might I bid you your leave, so that he might take the sleep that he sorely needs?"

Oliver rose with a sigh. Such was the way with Skullic. A man of high highs, and sudden lows. "Very well," he said, making for the door. "Thank you for the tea, Mary, it was as delicious as always."

…

…

"How long do you reckon he'll stay?" Greeves asked of Oliver, hours later, when the merchant had finally recovered himself. It had taken a bath, and a full change of clothes – a change extreme enough that Oliver could feel the scent of perfumed oils burning his nostrils – before Greeves felt ready to call himself calm.

"I don't know," Oliver said. "I would have thought he would be eager to return home as soon as he can, with the realm being in the state it is in… But Skullic has always been a strange man, so it's hard to say that he'd follow a thread of conventional thinking for any length of time in particular."

"What about you? You seem less mopey after speaking with him. Did he manage to say something to you?" Greeves asked.

Oliver shrugged in response to that. "I suppose. But they are answers that I ought to have arrived at myself. It's not as if anything has really changed… I still have to struggle with the same problem as before. But maybe I might be grateful for that problem now… given the alternatives, it doesn't seem too bad a problem to have."

"Yer not wrong there," Greeves said, lowering his voice to a degree. "You and I, we know worse problems. Like that of trying to free the chains from your wrists and ankles. When you have that as a baseline, shouldn't be that anything else affects you again… But still it does, don't it?"