Both the Duke and I realized that we had to proceed very, very cautiously. After all, one does not simply approach a ruler and propose replacing an entire sector of the economy, especially with something that didn't exist yet, something you claimed you could build if only said ruler would just open the royal treasury. For added complication, we would be dealing with an estranged sibling that also possessed power and authority seemingly without measure.

Deep into the night and for many nights after, Duke dictated letters to me.

Those missives were to be sent to all the great educated men of Oriana, requesting aid and outlining his own discoveries and insights. The ideas that passed beneath my quill were dizzying. While I believed to be extensively educated myself, I felt I would have needed a week in the very least to completely understand each idea. Instead I was given only minutes to dictate them before the Duke moved on to another subject.

There were questions about the inner workings of the smallest particles of matter, proposed parallel plains of existence and the beings that might live there, under what conditions could two different species of plant and animal mingle and produce viable offspring

All of these correspondences were merely signed with a stylized Z. The existence of the king's brother was still largely unknown outside the palace, and the Duke was still reluctant to change that conception.

Within only a few months the replies came back. The mysterious "Z" was called a fool, a mountebank, and a vain babbler. Others called him a charlatan. But one or two did send him the desired calculations or bits of knowledge that the Duke required for his design. The Duke sent no more letters after that, at least not to the scholars. He turned his attention instead to blacksmiths, architects, bricklayers, construction foremen; those with practical knowledge in the fields of metallurgy and structural engineering. He requested such things like the proper voltage required to maintain electrical current within copper wiring, the threshold tolerances to substances I had never heard of before. There were more replies to these. Many seemed happy to supply the Duke with what the information he had requested, and inquired on what project the sender was embarking on.

He asked specific questions on the current state of the Oriana economy; facts that I dealt with daily as the assistant to the Chancellor. I answered him as best that I could, and each answer seemed to spark something within the Duke – whether anger, frustration or inspiration I will never know.

A change seemed to have come over him. He seemed far more confident than before, more energetic. He was eating better, and his hygiene was enormously improved but there was something more. Sometimes I imagined I could see a literal spark of electricity briefly flare in his eyes.

He did not sleep anymore. At least I never saw him. Though oft times I would catch him taking small naps while sitting in his chair. The slightest noise awoke him, and he would request new study materials, more letters to be dictated, more tomes from the palace library be brought to him.

Though I did not notice at first, it became obvious.

The Duke was no longer my student. He was becoming the teacher, and I the pupil. Within weeks, he had already surpassed me in knowledge; closing the gap using his own determination and brilliance.

He had also stopped asking me. His requests now had the subtle tone of command.

At the time I did not know what to think of it. But now it makes me smile.

He was a king. A philosophizer-king like the ones you read about in the mythology tomes.

A revived greatness, exactly what Oriana had been waiting for for countless centuries. A fire that would cleanse the accumulated filth and decadance under which it have been straining under for all its recorded history.

Knowledge had freed him when walls and siblings sought to keep him.

And having found the key, no one and nothing could keep him locked up any longer.

Now he merely required the opportunity to prove himself.

And for that I went to the Chancellor, and then to the king.