My own country celebrated its Independence Day this week, so I thought I’d publish a couple of excerpts (one today, one tomorrow, one Saturday) from the opening chapter of my novel Scapegoating a Hero, which deals in part with the fictional country of Jaiya gaining its independence.

In the year 9921, six weeks after Solstice Festival, the country of Jaiya gained its independence from the Empire of the Self-Crafted. The Imperial Viceroy signed the agreement in Goodbay, a large city which had been the Citadel’s chief trading post in Jaiya before they handed it over to the Jaiyans when their political power declined. But the Viceroy might not have signed the pact at all, if it had not been for a young woman….

She heard her father say: “Your Excellency, may I present my daughter, Anora? Anora, this is Viceroy Worlington.”
“Eh? I thought you were in charge of security, Hakin,” Worlington said.
“That is correct,” her father said. “I resigned my position with Imperial Naval Intelligence last week, so that I could assist with security.”
Worlington grumbled to himself. “I suppose I should trust your instincts, since you were the one who brokered the initial pact between the Jaiyan rebels and the Empire, back at the start of the Great War…but a teenaged girl isn’t going to be much help at protecting me.”
Anora felt her spine stiffen but she continued to play the demure young thing in a homespun sari that the pasty-skinned Viceroy expected to see.
“I am eighteen, your Excellency,” she said in a quiet voice. “I assist my father by arranging…matters.”
“I see,” Worlington drawled. “I hope you have arranged some suitable guards for me, from the martial races of this benighted place?”
Classic Imperial thinking for you, Anora thought. She gave Worlington a stiff smile.
“There are four retired master sergeants who will meet us outside this building and escort us to the peace summit,” She said. “The automobile is large enough to carry us all, but unfortunately it is steam-powered.”
Worlington waved away her comments about the steam-car as if he were swatting flies.
“Yes, yes, your father mentioned that this stupid city didn’t have enough petrol pumps to support modern cars reliably. No wonder the Citadel agreed to hand it over to you Jaiyans. I’m more interested in the men. Are they any good?” He asked.
“They served with distinction in the Imperial Army, during the Great War against the Kingdom of Doomsday. They belong to one of the North Jaiyan warrior castes, although I believe two of them became cattlemen after the war,” Anora told him.
Why I am trying to educate him about how our people live and how fluid caste can be? She asked herself. This oaf was only appointed to his post a month ago, and with luck his job will be done in a few hours.
“Very well,” Worlington produced a smile of his own, showing off crooked teeth stained by alcohol. “In that case, Miss Anora, I am very pleased to make your acquaintance.”
He held out his hand towards her. This was the moment she had been waiting for. Anora would only get one chance at this.
She took his hand. Worlington’s recent memories flashed across her mind like lightning. She found the one her father had told her about…
It had happened last night at a formal dinner, held at the house of an old aristocrat, himself thoroughly Imperial in manners and sympathies, but with a son on the side of the Independence movement. Worlington had been waiting for the other guest of honor to arrive and dinner to begin. His stomach was empty, and he needed a smoke.
“I say, Hakin, how much longer is this Abai chap going to hold things up?”
“Abai has many responsibilities. I know he had an afternoon meeting with the other leaders of the Independence movement, presenting your proposal to them.”
“Doesn’t he want this to happen?” Worlington had asked.
Just then, Abai had stalked into the room. He was a slender, gray-haired man, and not very tall, but he carried himself with a stern precision that made him seem much bigger than he was. It might have been a side-effect of his training as a lawyer.
“And where have you been?” Worlington had demanded.
“Trying to convince my allies that the Empire isn’t trying to cheat us this time.”
“The agreement you people made with my predecessor was that you would support the Empire in our war against the Kingdom of Doomsday, without any attempt at sedition or a revolution. And in exchange, we agreed that, after the war, we would recognize Jaiya as a sovereign, independent state.”
Abai had stalked over towards the ambassador, and glared up at him, while Worlington had glared down at him, not breaking eye-contact. The two men would have been standing nose to nose if they had been closer in height.
“We kept our side of the bargain, Worlington,” Abai said. “Thousands of our men died in battle, keeping our side of the bargain. Will your government keep yours?”
“You are becoming offensive, Abai.”
“You have been that all along, Worlington. Your government had a Viceroy in place, who was willing to work with us. They removed him, and replaced him with you, a known hardliner, so in love with the idea of a mighty Emperor ruling and enlightening the globe that your lips are practically attached to his shoes. What are we supposed to think?”
“It’s true that I would not have agreed to the pact Hakin had proposed if I had been in charge,” Worlington had said stiffly, “But the last Viceroy made a promise to your people, and I am here to fulfill that promise with honor.”
Abai had snapped his fingers contemptuously under Worlington’s nose. “That is all your honor is worth…the honor of people who’ve grown rich off my country’s cotton and spices for decades!”
And there’s the part I have to remove, Anora thought. She snatched at Worlington’s memory of the argument with Abai, and absorbed it into her own mind. It had been only a moment since she took Worlington’s hand, but it felt like half an hour at least to her.
Worlington blinked in slight confusion and let go of her hand. He started talking to her father about the upcoming meeting. He would remember almost nothing of the quarrel last night with Abai. Just a vague impression of some unpleasantness at dinner, not especially Abai’s fault.
With luck, Worlington would actually agree to sign this draft of the agreement, instead of arguing about tiny details to get even with Abai, the way he had at the last two meetings.
Anora let the men walk away from her, as she fought back the wave of nausea washing over her. She hated her powers, hated using them.
Being inside Worlington’s narrow, arrogant mind made her feel trapped, and taking the memory into her own mind was like chewing and swallowing a piece of rotten mango. It was a nasty memory. Not only because Worlington was a nasty man, but because it showed Mr. Abai, whom she respected, at his grandstanding worst.
Even more than the nausea that came when she used her powers, she hated the warm thrill that always followed it. Stealing pieces of people’s minds shouldn’t feel the same way a mouthful of Citadel wine did when it hit her stomach.
But this time, it had to be done. Her father had told her so.
“There’s trouble brewing in the Imperial military, especially the Navy,” her father had said. “Captain Ferrule is one of the loudest voices against Jaiya’s independence, and he commands that heavy cruiser out there in the harbor. The longer the Viceroy delays, the greater the risk that Ferrule will try to start something.”
And so Anora stole a piece of the Viceroy’s mind, and he signed the agreement. But Ferrule was already trying to start something. The Viceroy almost died; and the treaty and most of the city of Goodbay would have died with him, if it had not been for a young Jaiyan man, a few days away from leaving the Imperial Navy….