by Quil Carter
“And Elish.” My eyes shot to Silas and I froze where I was. Silas was giving me a proud look. I’d never seen him in such a good mood. “You’ll be accompanying me to all of my duties as king. I’m going to be expecting a lot from you. Can I rely on you to make me proud?”
“Yes, Master Silas,” I said to him, my face a solemn totem to the seriousness in my heart. Never in my life, or his, would I let my king regret his trust in me. “I won’t let you down.”
“I know you won’t, Elish. It’s not in your make-up to let your king down.”
That night, when I was tucked into my bed in our new bedroom, I lay awake. My brothers were both sleeping, and even Squish had come in to our room to sleep on Garrett’s bed. I had a lot on my mind, and as I stared out the window, the twinkling lights of Skyfall in front of me, I made a solemn promise to myself.
I promised that I would never let King Silas down, and I promised, with so much conviction and solidarity, that I would be the best king that the world had ever seen.
I wish I knew, as a five-year-old boy, just how that promise would shape my immortal life.
A week later found me in front of our bathroom mirror, Cristo behind me doing my hair and Caleb in my bedroom ironing my very first suit.
“You look like such a little man,” Cristo said. He had a beaming smile on his face and he was bursting with pride. I didn’t think I looked quite like a man yet since I was standing only in my underwear. I did insist on Cristo purchasing me some plain underwear instead of the cartoon ones that my brothers and I would wear usually. I was too big for cartoon underwear.
Secretly, I’d asked Cristo if he could buy me boxer briefs like King Silas and the sengils wore, real adult underwear, but he said I was too little. I accepted that however, without a single pout. Babies pouted and cried, adults accepted that those who were in-charge of them made the decisions. Perhaps when I was ten Cristo had said, that seemed so long away though.
“Here’s his suit.” Caleb appeared behind us and put the bundle of freshly-ironed clothes on the bathroom counter. “I love that haircut.” Caleb motioned to touch my hair but Cristo grunted at him and shook the hairbrush. King Silas had taken all of us to the hairdresser to get our hair done. Silas had always kept my hair longer and now it was a couple inches past my ears and Cristo had used hairspray to…
“Add volume,” Cristo replied when I asked him what word he’d used. “Your hair is incredibly straight whereas Garrett’s is wavy and Nero’s curls when it gets too long. You and Ellis have the same types of hair, except for the colour of course. Arms out.” Cristo picked up my shirt and began putting it on me. It was a purple dress shirt with buttons going down, the purple to match my eyes.
“I’m taking Nero to the rooftop, Zhou is waiting with a Falconer,” Silas called to us. “Have Elish in the car in ten minutes.” The door slammed and Cristo swore quietly.
“He just loves making me rush,” Cristo mumbled. He buttoned up my shirt and next was my new blazer suit. This one had been custom made for me and it was my very first suit! I had this suit made, Ellis had a new gi made for her, Garrett got a lab coat, and Nero got fatigues. Silas had made us do a fashion show for him and the sengils when Dylan had come back with the clothes. I felt like a jackass but I didn’t say that out loud.
“There,” Cristo said when he was done dressing me. On top of having my blazer and purple shirt, I had black trousers with a real button and a zipper and pockets, black socks and shining black Doc Martin shoes.
Cristo called Dylan and Caleb over and I stood there like an idiot as they cooed and aww’d over me. Then Cristo grabbed my bag and we headed out the door. Only Garrett and Ellis were here right now and they were in the dining room getting their schoolwork done. They said goodbye to me and good luck, and then we were off!
I waited by the black car and the entire time I tried to hide my smile. Today was such an important day, I wish everyone knew it. I was truly becoming an adult today, or at least my first step into becoming an adult. I was accompanying the King of Skyfall to his work duties! Not just Skyfall, Silas was the king of the entire world!
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He’d always just been King Silas to me. Silas was our ruler, our guardian, my brothers and I loved him with all of our hearts, but up until this point who Silas was outside of our childhood home was shrouded in mystery. What knowledge we had of what kings did came from television, and I knew what he did was much different than that. The rulers in movies and TV shows ruled a world that was alive, whereas King Silas ruled one that had died, one that he’d been trying to save. The man who I’d been designed to help rule was the saviour of the human race, he was, in all respects, like a god. This ruler was an entity that far surpassed the normal men and women around him, and the fact that I was going to be beside him while he continued to save this world, was monumental.
I was looking forward to getting to know my king on a different level, a level that went beyond the man who took care of us, who raised us. At this point in time, I didn’t know just what that would entail. I only knew that the time had come for me to step up and fulfill the role that had been given to me before I was born.
Once I was older, I would see that this was the first of many separations between my siblings and I. Before this, we’d been more or less raised together, getting the same teachings and following the same rules. Silas let us all have our own special interests, but as a whole, the first generation were treated as siblings were treated. It was at five that Silas had decided it was time for us to start stepping into our roles: Nero, designed to rule the Legion; Garrett, designed to take over Skytech, and me, who would stand beside King Silas as ruler. Ellis, being the surprise twin of Nero, had never had a job set out for her, she was lucky in the fact that she got to choose what she wanted to be once she was grown. However, that being said, I’m not sure if lucky is the correct word for it. In a lot of ways, my sister is quite fortunate, she doesn’t have to deal with Silas on the level that we do, but that did come at a cost. Ellis, once an adult, was always on the fringes of the family. Even though the men within the family fought, we were also extremely close, not just in the obvious sexual sense, but we shared an intimate bond that Ellis could never have.
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I stood up straight when I saw Silas walk out of Alegria, the two guards by the door bowing as he walked by. Silas looked down the marble stairs and smiled at me, and I heard the black car I was standing beside rumble to life.
Just to show how seriously I took this, I bowed to King Silas. When I looked up, he nodded his approval at me and we both got into the car.
“Where are we going?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper. A lot of Silas’s king duties were done in his office, an entire floor in Alegria, this must be something important he was going to do!
“Well, love,” Silas said. He pressed a button and the divider that divided the front seats and the back seats came up. I was excited at this since that meant he didn’t want anyone else to hear but us! That made me want to smile but I hid it to look professional. “We’re going to be reviewing this week’s convicts who’ll be sent to Stadium. They have already been tried and found guilty, and I get to sign off on their deaths.” My mouth opened at this. That was so cool! I’d been going to Stadium since I could remember. Nero loved seeing the convicts die. I liked it too but not nearly as much as he did.
“Then after that, we’re going to be seeing the new sengils,” Silas said.
My heart dropped. Silas noticed my expression and gave me a curious look.
“We’re replacing the ones we have now?” I asked anxiously. And before I could stop them, nervous butterflies fluttered around my stomach making me claw at the leather of the seats. “What about Cristo? Please don’t replace Cristo!”
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Looking back on it, I would like to say that I knew how much Silas hated Cristo, and that this was merely a slip of the tongue, but I fear I am looking at this point of my life with different-coloured glasses.
I was a naïve child who knew nothing of King Silas’s jealousy, or his possessiveness when it came to my affection. Adults were godly figures to me who always knew what they were doing, and would never act in unfair ways. I didn’t feel like I had to mask my love for Cristo. I loved Silas whole-heartedly and I assumed he knew this. My love for Cristo took nothing away from my devotion and love for Silas. But as I got older, I realized that Silas didn’t share the same view. I would find out later from my siblings, and even Silas, that my unemotional, serious nature had Silas coveting any affection I gave. I wasn’t full of hugs and kisses like my other siblings, it had never been my way, so Silas prized those moments where I did act as such, and prized even more when I outwardly showed attachment to him.
So, as you can guess, expressing fear over Cristo’s fate didn’t sit well with my master. But at this time I was too young to see the warning signs flashing so brightly above King Silas’s head.
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King Silas frowned, his bottom lip becoming taut. “This isn’t to replace the three sengils we have now,” he said coolly. I stopped my squirming once I heard the tone of his voice, and sat properly in my seat. “We have five sengils at the end of their training, they are set to become our cooks in a matter of months. I want to meet them first. The sengils we’ll be bringing into the family are still young and they’re living with their caretakers. The three we have now are doing just fine, the others won’t be fifteen until you’re fifteen.”
I slunk down, trying to ignore the prickles and barbs I could practically see covering Silas. Just one word from me and the good mood had been sucked out of the room, I felt awful for this and tried to think of ways I could cheer him up. This was my first day as his shadow and the fact that I’d already upset him was devastating to me.
“They become sengils at fifteen?” I asked Silas. Perhaps since conversation had gotten me into this mess, it can get me out as well. I could attempt to say something flattering to him, or perhaps attempt to give him affection. It was difficult for me to do the latter; it didn’t come naturally to me at all.
“That’s right,” Silas replied. He was looking out the window at Skyland passing us by, I looked too and saw people stopped in the streets pointing at us. The windows were tinted so they couldn’t see inside, but they knew a black car meant it was either Silas, or some important person in the royal family.
“Why fifteen?” I asked.
Silas was quiet for a moment. “They require a lot of training,” he replied simply. “And under my law, a boy becomes an adult once he reaches fifteen.”
That was ten years away, forever away. I wanted to be an adult now, I didn’t want to wait for fifteen.
I shared this with Silas, and was happy inside when I saw a distant smile on his face. It wasn’t much but it was better than nothing. “You’ll have an eternity to be an adult, little love,” he said, and then he put a hand on my cheek and rubbed it. “You’ll regret wanting to be an adult when you are one, enjoy just being a kid. I rarely see you play; I have to force you to have fun.” He tsked and shook his head back and forth. “How can a five-year-old be so serious and grown?”
Then Silas paused and a frown replaced this faint smile.
“Perhaps… perhaps Cristo is right.” he sighed.
“No!” I said. “Cristo’s wrong. I don’t want to play; I want to learn how to rule Skyfall. I want to be with you and I want you to teach me how to be a good king.”
I saw pride in Silas’s eyes, and it was just quiet enough for me to hear his heartbeat give a few quick pulses. I’d made him happy with this remark. I’d succeeded in getting rid of the prickles all over him. “Yes, love,” he said, his words brightened his smile like they were made of liquid sunshine. “But I do fear you’ll regret aging so quickly. You’ll only have a small window to be a child and a teenager, and an eternity to be an adult.”
I shook my head. “Not an eternity. An eternity is forever; the word is…” I thought back to my lessons. Cristo taught me a new word every day. “… finite. I have a finite time as an adult, and then I die.”
Silas’s smile faded again. I was surprised at this. Why did the smile go away? Everyone died eventually.
“No… no, Elish,” Silas whispered. “You’ll never die… you’ll live forever, just like your master. You all will.”
I looked at him confused, just as the black car stopped. “But…” My lessons had taught me about the end of the world, and that King Silas had ended it a hundred and forty-six years ago. The king couldn’t die, a fact that was easily accepted to my juvenile mind, a mind that, as any child’s, had difficulty separating what was purely fantasy, and what was reality. “I’m not a born immortal,” I said to him. “We can die still. Can’t we?”
Silas, his face barren since his smile had been carried away from my careless words, only gazed at me sadly. His mouth was turned into a frown, as if what I’d said had physically weighed it down.
“You’ll never die,” he whispered. His tone was twisted, words made of fragile ice that cracked and split with each fluctuating octave. “My babies will never die… you’ll never leave me. I will find a way to make you four immortal, and we will rule until the universe consumes the last vestiges of light.” He laid a hand back to my cheek, his touch was burning hot. “You and I will rule the world one day, Elish.”
Then he turned and opened the door of the car and stepped out. I sat there, confused at his words, but obediently I followed behind my king. I wasn’t sure where he was going, the building in front of us was large and one level, made of grey brick with the only windows being in the front. I’d never been to this place before, and the letters on the sign made up a word I didn’t recognize.
If my mind wasn’t so full of other questions I would’ve tried to figure it out, but inside I was reeling from King Silas’s words. He said he wanted to make us immortal. That meant I could never die.
“I want to rule the world with you,” I said to Silas. I took his hand, something I rarely did without prompting, and walked closely with him. “I’m going to be a great king when I grow up, just like you King Silas.”
The residual sadness that had been lingering on Silas’s face disappeared from my words and the smile that had gotten lost, returned. “I know, my little golden king.” He squeezed my hand. “And you’ve made me so proud already.”
I was floating on air after that, but when we entered the building and I saw men in uniform, all standing around with serious stony faces, I pushed down my happiness over Silas’s words and made my face stoic and even. Like King Silas said, there was a time for play and a time for being serious, and I had to prove to everyone that I was serious and an adult.
One of the men, wearing a high-ranking thien uniform, came over to me and Silas as soon as we walked into the main entrance, and bowed to us. The others looked to him and when they saw that we were here, they also came over and bowed as well. Silas nodded at them, and I did too.
Silas, my hand still in his, walked with the man down a large hallway. While we walked, the man briefed King Silas on who the prisoners were. One of them was a word that I didn’t understand, he said he was a rapist who had been caught red-handed, another one was a man who’d used up all three of his strikes, and the third one had been caught stealing money from King Silas’s company, Dek’ko.
During the man’s talking, Silas nodded, his eyes distant because he was listening to the man’s every word. Finally, when he was done, the man in the uniform handed him a blue folder and bowed to King Silas, then was given permission to leave.
We were a long way away from the front of the building now, which I realized was called a ‘precinct’, that was the word I didn’t recognize. King Silas and I were in front of a metal door painted white, a thien standing guard with a huge gun.
“The three convicts we’ll be seeing personally,” Silas said to me. “Their cases are cut and dry and I’ve signed off on their Stadium matches and they’ll be facing them this Saturday.” Then he
nodded to the thien who opened the door for us, the metal door made a low yawning noise as it opened and it looked heavy. I don’t think I could open it if I tried.
“It’s important to see the men you’ve signed off on executing,” Silas continued. “You’re handing down their sentence, and it’s your duty when you’re ruling to look into their eyes. We don’t give that responsibility to any other. It only takes a half an hour out of your day once a week at most. Remember that, Elish.” The room we walked into gave me the creeps, the air about it seemed heavy and stressed. It was a narrow room, painted white with a grey stripe cutting across the middle. On the right and left side were metal doors, four of them, each one with a single window that was scratched up and scuffed.
And when I was in the room, I picked up the sound of voices.
“Please, something to drink?” I heard a rough male voice call out from the nearest metal door. This was followed by a fist coming up to bang on the scuffed window, then a bearded face appeared.
The man looked right at me and King Silas and his eyes became wide and his mouth opened and closed from surprise. “K-king Silas?” he sputtered. “King Silas is here, and the little prince.”
Two more faces appeared in the scuffed windows. A well-groomed man with dark brown hair and a round face; he didn’t look that old at all, and a man with dirty blond hair and glasses.
I was confused by this. In my cartoons the convicts were always ugly, rough-looking people in striped jumpsuits. It was easy to tell who the bad guys were on television, but none of these men looked like criminals. They looked like ordinary people that no one would look twice at while going for an afternoon walk.
I squeezed Silas’s hand but before I could talk, one of the convicts beat me to it. “King Silas… King Silas, please, I was framed,” the blond-haired man with the glasses pleaded. “I’d never steal from Dek’ko. I’ve been a vital part of your company since I was hired to–” The man stopped when Silas raised a hand.