The Paragon

Chapter Two

I may not have ever been out of Foster, but that only meant that I knew this city like the back of my hand. I knew every secret alleyway and hiding place, and every path to get everywhere. It was easy for me to sneak around unseen by most people. If I ever ran into trouble, I usually had an easy backup plan out of the situation.

One thing that I'd learned after living here for my whole life was that the monitors—at least the ones in this city—were creatures of habit. I'd memorized their shift schedule and patrol lines by the time I was fourteen, and they had scarcely changed since. Sometimes there were more on duty, depending on the time of year, but I usually had a pretty good idea of when and where they'd be at all times.

Another thing was that they talked. Whether they were patrolling or posted in one location, if there was another monitor nearby, they talked to each other. It's like sometimes they thought we couldn't hear them, or if we did, we didn't care what they had to say. And, truthfully, most often their conversation wasn't that interesting. But as a messenger, it was usually most of my job to listen to those conversations and weed out good information from amidst the boring talk of families and hobbies.

I had foregone the rooftops today in order to get right to the point. I didn't like traveling at street level; while Eli claimed it was easy to disappear in a crowd, I simply felt trapped when I was in with the people. It wasn't as easy to run for it if things went south. There was a lot more freedom up above. But it was hard to hear from up there, and I was on a specific mission today.

So, when I traveled down here, I stuck to shadows. In all black, I blended in against most of the darker paneled buildings, and if people actually noticed me, they didn't take much stock—probably assuming I was a pickpocket searching for a mark, or a beggar staying out of the sun. People had a tendency to ignore both of those things and worry only about themselves. Still, it made a nice cover as I casually hugged the wall on the city roads.

There was a pair of monitors due to arrive around the corner. I stopped, hearing metallic footsteps clanging down the road, then stopping right at the corner. A glance at my watch—if they kept their schedule, they would stay at that corner for a few minutes before continuing on down this street that I was on.

"Those troops that came through yesterday was a whole battalion full of snobs," I heard one monitor grumbling to the other by his side. "They stopped off at the hall, the officers, and while they were waiting Garrick and I tried to make conversation; they pretty much looked down their noses and ignored us."

This sounded like a promising start. I leaned up against the wall around the corner from where those monitors were stationed and fiddled with my jacket zipper, attempting to look innocuous as I eavesdropped.

"What are they even doing, marching through to the capital?" the second asked. "Why don't they just fly them in if they want the troops back there?"

"A show of force, obviously," the first snorted. "Gotta be a reminder to the citizens of what power exactly is had by the Empire. Old Emperor Tristain has nothing if not a hand for the dramatic."

The second monitor hummed in agreement. "You'd think it'd be just as impressive to see a giant ship fly overhead blaring the national anthem."

A burst of laughter came from the first. "Oh, he does that too! When I was stationed in Gepette, we constantly had the airships flying overhead. You could always tell when one was an official Imperial cruiser by the music playing out of the thing. Must get annoying onboard that." The two of them chuckled together as they no doubt imagined how crazy that would drive anyone after a while—I could imagine it as well. "Well, from what I heard anyway, we don't have to deal with clearing those streets again. That was the last of the marchers until next week."