Okay, as suggested, I reread chapter 2 and immediately went into 2b as if they were together.
Thorrylacious?
The king spends his time in the future? Is he physically there, or just a clairvoyant thing? The latter would be far more interesting, unless the former means that he just sends his mind forward while his body remains behind. Basically, as long as time travel isn't involved, it's cool.
Is Dalrymple's brain a character of it's own? Wow... that is really cool. Are they distinctly separate personalities, or is it just an overactive part of his imagination? I like how self-centered and selfish Dalrymple is; such traits sometimes lead to the best character arcs. Plus it leads to some great dialogue between him and His Brain.
I'm wondering what Trinium is. My guess right now is some kind of drug that gives the user visions of the future.
At this point, as it's revealed he's been conscripted into the king's guard, I have to wonder why. Does it have something to do with what happened in the short story I haven't read? If so, those events should be summarized or brought into the story to better explain things, and give a good reason for why Dalrymple is special enough to warrant both the attention of the king and whatnot.
Chapter 3...
Ah, so Trinnium is a drink. A vision-inducing beverage. Must be hard to come by, and rather expensive, else everyone would be using it for stupid things, like whether or not to wear the red shirt or whether to get the blueberry or cherry pie for dessert.
Trinnium visions always came to pass. ++Always++. Every last thing he had ever seen had happened exactly as he’d seen it. Changing the foreseen future was simply impossible; he’d tried, and never succeeded. He had thought a great deal about how this might be; as near as he could tell, the visions were recursive. They didn’t show you the future so you could change it—they showed you the future that had been altered by your having seen it.
Really, I'd think the best solution then would be to not use the stuff. There isn't much point in seeing the future if you can't try to change it, and if everything your seeing will happen because you saw it, you may as well not see it. Can taking another shot of Trinnium change the previous future you saw? Could the king just keep drinking the stuff until he got a more satisfactory future?
I'm going to agree with LTU on most of the rest. The writing is good, the prose sufficiently translucent to the point that I have no trouble seeing the story playing out in my head. However, trinnium really destroys tension, especially since the visions of the future cannot be avoided. If they could work to prevent them somehow, it gives a nice timebomb to the story, but since they can't... I'm wondering where exactly the conflict is in this.
And... that's really all I have. Good writing, not sure what's happening with the plot yet.