Chapter IXThe man I was following was a tourist. He obviously wasn't a local, otherwise, he'd know to avoid certain back alleys, like this. The guy turned around and glared at me. "Why the devil are you following me, boy?"Huh. He spoke English very well, but I could hear the slight touches of a French accent. Not the tone of the Lyorenaise accent, but the Aquroyan one. This man was from the Republic. I almost felt bad for what I was about to do, but who cared if he was a fellow countryman. I had a hard knot of hunger tying in me and I needed coin, not national relationships.I pointed to the back of the butcher's shop, where rancid fat was rotting on the ground. "I work there," I told him.The man frowned. He was well dressed like a gentleman, but his lighter skin marked him for what he was: not an Ashford. He didn't have the mannerisms of the Logresi gentry. Sure, he wore fine close, but he looked out of place in them. He adjusted his shirt with a frown and I could tell his waistco

Chapter XI "Shipwreck?" Charles asked. He sounded horrified. Truly horrified, not the false sympathy I had come to expect from the priests of Olympus. "I'm sorry to hear that boy. I don't suppose you've been able to contact your family?" I shook my head. According to my old Republic, they were dead. "No. Our village was very small. We did not have much money..." There was a strange look in Charles's eyes. "Henry!" "Yes, apprentice priest?" "Take over for me." The older man sighed. "Apprentice priest, I am not here to coddle you. I was under the impression that I am the master priest." "Yet it was me, Jupiter chose to bless." There was a moment of awkward silence. Jupiter blessed him? Had he met the god before? How could this man know if Jupiter blessed him? "Make it quick," the older priest sighed. He took the spot Charles was in, and began to demand a prayer from the next street rat in line. Charles grabbed a long loaf of bread and told me to follow him. If he tried to make m

Chapter IWhen the end came for me, I died how I lived: in the hospital. I've always been sick, even as a child. When I was born, I suffered from complications. I don't know the scientific word for it, but, my immune system was compromised in laymen's terms. Some kind of autoimmune system disease. I couldn't tell you what it was called if you asked me, the word was long and probably had a Latin root.I spent most of my free time in the hospital. As a child, I was in and out of the hospital all the time. The only place I spent more time than the hospital was school and what a miracle that was. It was the only part of my life that felt somewhat normal and even then, I had missed so much school because of this cursed hospital.More than once, my mother cried for me, blaming herself. She had given me this weak body and she apologized so much. Of course, it wasn't her fault. How could it be? My younger brother and sister didn't have this problem. It couldn't be my mother. I was just born u

Euphemia ArcFrom her files, the parts that weren't redacted, it had stated that she had been under observation for years. It didn't help that Rachel Edgecombe had come from a foreign nation and applied to join the OSI. As an imperial subject, it was her right to apply to the Office of Secret Intelligence, but she should have known she would have never been given any job of significant importance. She wouldn't have any hope for anything beyond a desk job, pushing papers of the most low-level officers.Yet she applied anyway. The recruit that made contact informed her as much. From his first reports, he recommended that she seek employment elsewhere. She was being observed by the OSI itself at that point and working for them would have made that surveillance even easier. Judging from the files and the changing perception, I think that was her plan. Most of her files from that period of surveillance were redacted. As could have pushed for access, not as a viceroy but as a princess, but

Interlude: Princess KayaShe watched as her new prince flew away. The plane he boarded slowly took off from the airport and disappeared over the horizon. Kaya already missed Prince Calixte, he was such a strange and wonderful distraction from her boring, scheduled life. She didn't even know when she was going to see him next. She was sure it was on some schedule that his Office of Secret Intelligence and her Kenpeitai. Her meetings with him would be regulated, just like everything else in her life.For now. One day and one day soon, she would escape the regulation of Oyashima. She would no longer be under the thumb of her people's damnable need to make sure everything was predictable."There goes a very nice young man," her uncle said. Princess Kaya turned to look at him and sure enough, there her uncle was. The room was surrounded by her guards, no one should have been able to enter. She had given them specific orders to allow no one inside.As this colony's governor, her uncle was t