chapter three
Crowned in Debt
Duke Gervin, resplendent in his coronation finery, fresh from plotting his next injurious moves, swept through the throng of drunken excesses he purchased. His attire shimmered like captured sunlight. His black cloak billowed behind him. Otherwise, he was some kind of cascading rainbow river. The fabric was said to be as difficult to acquire as it was to look at for too long.
Gervin cast kaleidoscopic shadows on the marble floors as he walked among strobing torches alight in cycling colors.
Musicians from faraway lands played songs. The songs were alien to Solipsia and most of the nobles, but familiar to the foreign craftsmen and revelers. They swarmed around hastily constructed temporary shrines dedicated to faux greatness and wanton perversion. Gervin pa
