It is nothing short of strange to see Sinbad here, in a world where he is neither king nor conqueror, when it is all that Kouen has ever known of him.
He is a man who can make the world move--a man who can tear the earth in two if he so wished, and a king who can make it tremble and bow with but a pretty, gilded word. But he did not. Instead he’d insisted on consolidating power in a way reminiscent of coagulating blood, as if warm smiles and saccharine offers would be at all effective in hiding how he sewed each thread through the flesh of the world, a puppet in the making.
I don’t like you, Kouen had said to him once, and even now, in a city and world so far removed from the one they viciously vied for, he holds his sentiment to be true. Sinbad, as Kouen knows him, is not the kind of man who is changed by the world; he is the kind of man who shapes it.
It is all Kouen can do, then, to wonder how much of Hive City has been affected by this man who is still king in all but title.
“...I thought you might be here, after seeing your adviser walking about.”