Empire of Silence (The Sun Eater #1)

by Christopher Ruocchio

I THINK NOW THAT the old rascal wanted me to do it, that even during our little conversation by the strand he was pushing me, needling me so that I’d come round to my convictions on my own. I set myself quite privately to the business of escape, having only the vaguest notions of how to accomplish such a thing. I, who had never once been out-system, dreamed up ways to charter or steal starcraft and pilot them somewhere besides Lorica College on Vesperad. I entertained notions of bribing the sailors aboard whichever ship Father chartered for the voyage or of slipping away at some intermediate stop on our long cruise and lighting out for the territories. I knew it had been done, but the logistics were quite beyond my limited experience. As I understood it, I had two essential problems: figuring out how to get offworld and how to pay for it. Perversely, the second problem proved far easier to solve than the first. I was, after all, the son of a palatine lord, and I had access to certain avenues of wealth that the peasantry couldn’t even imagine. You will imagine, perhaps, chests of precious gems and gold diadems. While gold retains enough value for its scarcity as well as for its myriad practical functions, it is a relatively common thing, and the coined specie of the Imperium—gold hurasams, silver kaspums, and the rest—circulate primarily amongst the lowest strata of our civilization. Gemstones, which are little more than carbon in most cases, have not held value in elite ci...