Chapter Text
The boy was cold, and hungry, and tired.
The boy was hurt, and sick, and scared.
A Dark Future loomed uncertain.
A Bright Past Lay behind a Wall of Loss.
The boy fell into a fitful sleep as the craft flew across the stars to his new home.
*****
In a Nest of Thoughts
Hopes, Fears, and Desire
A Small Creature Huddled
Made of Dreams and Fire
With Eyes of Blue Flame
He Stared Into Space
And Tried to Remember
His Mother’s Face
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In an unassuming building on Chancery Lane, in a Solicitor’s office remarkable only for its very unremarkableness—at least on the surface—sat a man with a problem.
Not an issue in and of itself. Problems were the Solicitor’s bread and butter. Solving problems was his profession; making sure that the will of his superiors was executed in a manner just so. It had been so during the Imperium, serving at the whims of this Clan or that as the Trion Queen’s favor shifted, and it was his profession now, under the strictures of the Revolutionary Regime. The people in charge might change, but the machinery of the Trion Empire never did.
Generally, though, he was given a LOT more to work with.
On a screen that could be cleverly concealed within his desk, using technology that wouldn’t be found on Earth for decades, was displayed a series of muddled reports and blurry pictures. The dossier for an Exiled Imperial Clansman, from one of the more highly placed noble houses…
‘Vislor Turlough’
…and it contained a mere fraction of the information and instructions he would have normally received for even a minor disgraced functionary. It was slipshod. A rush job. And was forcing HIM to do a rush job. Because he had received said dossier as an emergency communique at open of business that very morning, and the Imperial Clansman in question was due to be dropped on his doorstep within the hour.
The lights in his office flickered briefly, and he grimaced. When he’d set up in this building, extensive modifications had been made, due to the…unusual…requirements of his equipment. But due to some quirk of the wiring, occasionally it played merry hell with the lights.
In the midst of perusing the dossier for scraps of something to work with, the Solicitor’s morning had been spent calling in favors, scrambling to direct funds, berating couriers, and cobbling together the necessary paperwork to set up the slimmest of cover stories. No time for anything elaborate, he would have to use the boy’s actual name. One small stroke of luck, ‘Turlough’ actually transliterated quite well from the original Trion, to an uncommon, but not unknown, Earth name. ‘Vislor’ less so, but it couldn’t be helped. And since he planned to place the boy in a Public School, where it was common to be addressed by family name…a second stroke of luck, since he’d recently made connections with an eminently suitable public school. Direct enrollment would delay the need for housing or minders, one less thing to worry about right now, though something would eventually have to done about holidays and half-terms. The term had already started, but the administration of Brendon School had proved quite amenable in the case of his last charge…
The Solicitor smiled sourly. It was unfortunate that Vislor Turlough was being sent to him now and not six months ago. The last identity he’d created would have been perfect. ‘Charlie Gibbs.’ Water-tight documentation, a foster family of embedded Trion Agents, weeks of language immersion and cultural orientation. All wasted on a relative nobody. The son of someone who had angered someone, even though the family had supported ‘the right side’.
That was definitely not the case for his new charge:
The Father had been exiled to an abandoned colony world, accompanied by a younger son. Which was to be expected. The oddity was that the family hadn’t either been kept together, or more likely, that the elder son hadn’t been held as a ‘guest’ of the Revolutionary Regime, a hostage for good behavior. Especially since the Mother, who had been killed during the early stages of the fighting, was a grandniece of the disposed Queen.
The Solicitor frowned. It didn’t make sense. This inconvenient boy was not only aligned with the Old Regime as a matter of politics or policy, but under the right circumstances, might be heir to the throne! Reason enough for the Regime to put him out of the way, if not have him killed outright, but then the same could be said for the younger son as well. So why was Vislor Turlough specifically being tucked away on a backwards planet like Earth?
The soft click of the intercom brought him out of his musings. “Sir, your appointment is here.”
The Solicitor deactivated the screen, and collected the results of the morning’s efforts into a cardboard folder. It wasn’t everything, but it would have to do. “Thank you, Miss Carillon. Send him in. And I think that tea will be in order in…30 minutes?”
“Of course, Sir.”
The Solicitor pulled out a legal pad and made a show of jotting down notes. An elementary power play, but one that worked. Make the other party feel as though they were interrupting something. Put them on the back foot.
The door swung open, and the boy stepped inside.
“Close the door behind you and sit down, please.” He pointedly did not look up, continuing to scribble. The sound of the latch would be his cue to look up.
Silence.
The Solicitor waited, for what seemed like an agonizingly long time, but was probably less than a minute. Playing games. He didn’t want to give the boy the satisfaction, but he didn’t want to waste time either. Stern was the way to play it.
“Young man,” he raised his head and started to stand. “I asked—”
The lights flickered, and the Solicitor froze, mouth agape.
<Why are you looking at me like that?> **Overtone-Confusion. Undertone-what is wrong with me**
…and then the lights steadied and the spell was broken. But that brief moment was enough for the Solicitor to understand what the boy was, and why he had been so neatly tucked away.
<Why do you all keep staring at me?> **Overtone-Fear. Undertone-something about the light isn't right**
And that the boy had no idea.
Someone was playing a high-stakes game, and he was staring at the Ace in the hole.