Cid Arthur
Empire of Silence
Chapter 24: Those Mindless Days
They say that when he was a boy, the prince Cid Arthur was kept in a pleasure palace by his father’s faithful archon, isolated from death, disease, and poverty, for a vate had prophesied that if he should see the ugliness of the world, Cid Arthur would renounce his father’s throne and become a preacher himself. I had always wondered at this, for I had grown up in a palace myself, and I knew of poverty and sickness and had had my own brushes with death—first with my grandmother, then later when Uncle Lucian had died in his shuttle crash. I could not understand how Arthur had been so blind.
I understood it now.
Just as there is a difference between the news of a distant planet’s destruction and the bloody death of a coliseum slave, it is one thing to know there is poverty and illness and another to walk among the poor and suffering.
...
Like Cid Arthur on his quest for the Merlin Tree, I did what I had to do to survive. I ate fish raw from the canals, raided compost bins. I depended upon the kindness of street vendors—a class of men not much noted for their charity—and I learned to beg. I will not say I was good at it, but desperation eventually broke down the dregs of my palatine dignity.
Chapter 31: Mere Humanity
Cid Arthur found more than poverty when he escaped his father’s palace. He found sickness, too. As did I. The Gray Rot...
Spoilers ahead, proceed with caution
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Queen Amid Ashes - ENTER TEXT HERE The Dregs of Empire - ENTER TEXT HERETales of the Sun Eater & Other Stories
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