If you haven't experienced those sights and sounds in those days, you could never quite understand. During that glorious day alone, the Capital streets were uproarious in their celebrations. The streets smelled, of course, even back then. But the city was alive and sweating. Real. Honest, not the silent, deathly stillness that the Capital as it probably exists right at this moment.

I led the Duke through the capital, introducing him to the great monuments and sights of that city, hoping it would take his mind off the memory of the new queen. I believed that I had succeeded, occasionally I would discover a look of joy on his face. I couldn't be certain, but I seem to recall that I caught him once or twice admiring the ladies as they strolled by.

The people of a hundred towns, colonies, villages and divisions jostled about us in all the colors of a rainbow. Harlots. Soldiers. Thieves. Noble men. Noble women. Fortune-tellers. Officials of every aspect. Pickpockets. Courtesans. Artists.

The Duke saw them all, and loved each and every one of them. He smiled at the jugglers. He wanted to toss coins to beggars. He laughed at the clowns. A flower was given to him by a barefooted child in an alley. We watched a strongman crush a iron igot into a perfect disk.

It was though he was cleansing himself from that dusty cell where he had lived all his years, experiencing the world anew. It was his kingdom after all…

And once again, I directed him to a place I perhaps should not have: the Capital's slave quarter.

A scarecrow-like figure approached us, sweeping the sidewalk with a long brush, a straw-hat covered the figure's face. There was a strange way in which the figure walked. The Duke stared at him as he passed. It took him a moment to notice that the figure's legs were bent, the feet were hooves, and the arm that held the brush was a tentacle the color of flesh.

"What was that?" he asked me as we passed it, the Duke turned and was still staring at him.

"Mutant," I said. It was obvious. It would be like someone asking me what a tree was.

"What?" he was puzzled. "Such things could not be."

Just as I was about to explain further, we heard a crackling sound. The distinct sound of a whip, and a yelp that had something of the human and the inhuman.

We turned a corner and there a bloated, human-like creature that possessed the face and jaws of an arachnid. It was hunched over, and polished a man's shoes with its six arms. On its bareback were the raised welts where its owner had struck it.

In a long chain, a gang of them were lead to a new building that was being constructed down the street. The one at the head of the line had the head of a goat, and his limbs were long and gangly, but knotted with muscle built from hard labor.

We were witness to many abuses that hour. No matter what was done to them as they labored, we never once saw a mutant flinch or strike back or show any disrespect.

The Duke wanted to stay, to observe as many as he could. He appeared to be fascinated by them, and also concerned for them. Every time he heard the sound of the lash, he himself recoiled as though he were the one who had struck.

When he returned to his cell, he was gripping the table and he stared straight ahead as though he had witnessed something that had shaken him to the core.

"What were they?" he stuttered."Those wretches. They were like men, but also like animals."

"The mutants have always been here, even in the earliest days of Orianian history" I told him. "They labor in our mines, they clean our streets, they lay the bricks for our buildings. If you traveled with me to the coastline, you would see the pinnipedoid mutants diving for the pearls that adorned the dresses of the noblewomen at the ceremony."

"But where did they come from?" he asked me. "Why do they look so much like human beings?"

"If you believe the old creed, then they were fashioned by the Creator from pond-scum and slime to serve us - the pure-blooded."

"Do you believe that, Grumper?" he asked.

"No," I said. "I have taken courses in natural philosophy and I leave the theology classes to the theology students. But even many of my contemporaries at the university would tell me that the mutants serving people like us is simply the natural order of things."

"Natural!" he exclaimed. "What could be more unnatural than the supposition that one race of sentients be inferior to another race of sentients? I have escaped that lesson."

"If we let them all go, they would all starve, unable to care for themselves," I told him. "They are dim creatures."

"Or perhaps they are simply pretending to be stupid to avoid a thrashing," he said. "You are implying that so long as the kingdom requires labor, then the mutants will forced to perform it?"

"Yes."

"If the kingdom needs a workforce, then I shall construct one. I can do it with the proper supplies and the right knowledge. And then those wretches will be relieved of their burden through the labor of my own hands. They will rise up with the humans that I suspect they share their heritage with. This must happen. There must be a new order to things, and I will be the fulcrum for this change."

He paused. "I have an idea, Grumper," he said, gesturing as though grasping something that only he could see. "A fantastic, utterly impossible idea. But to carry it out I will need your help, and the help of other educated men, and for that I will first need from you sharpened writing quills and fresh paper. Can you do that?"

I nodded. I would stand with him through anything. I would never abandon him, I silently vowed.

"Good," he said. "Because that is only the easiest part, the least of it. The reason I called my idea impossible is because it will require something more than either of us have."

"And what is that?" I asked.

"The help of my brother."