4 months earlier

Patroling was okay, but it didn't give me the rush or sense of self-importance I'd often noticed in my fellow Watchers. They were just extra hours I had to spend with Aurora, keeping up the appearance that we were in love with each other. At least, it seemed people liked me there --- as they always did. 

I might not have wanted this life, but the golden wings came in handy. Not to mention my Skill. It made me make awful progress with Aurora, and, especially, Roman. 

When I said I didn't want to be a Watcher, I mostly lied. Being able to use Charm made it all worthwhile.

I was busy obversing other people, pretending I was keeping to myself. I had noticed a new recruit fresh from Càd Irr, a young man who I had already guessed was more than what met the eye.

Every night, in a crumbling pub in Old Solima, where only the worst kind of people went, the man spoke about his plans to change the world.

He was called Dominic Morris, but he liked it better when people called him Minx. I couldn't understand why, so I never did.

At the pub, night after night, I slowly changed my role. I was no more the heavy drinker in the corner where my old man had used to drink himself sick before me. Nor I was the promising youth who, despite his low social standing, had it all --- depending on the viewer.

No. I played the scholar. I slipped into the mask I wore more often --- the nice, unassuming, guy-next-door. I praised the man far more than it was worth it, and asked him all the questions, even those I already knew the answers to.

He didn't hide from me that he thought I was slow. It had already happened to me, while playing my part with people previously. It didn't hurt me --- almost nothing did.

At first, he would make fun of the innocence I displayed, but he was pretty quick, and a good liar, too. He understood the game I was playing, and, when he did, he started talking to me in the lamp-lit alley, outside the backdoor.

The things he told me there were much more interesting.

During patrol, we exchanged pleasantries. Nobody could tell we were thick as thieves, but, when the opportunity arose for us to work together, nobody could tell we weren't friendly either.

"Aurora needs to come with," I told him. "I don't really care if she does, but I have to keep up pretences. Besides, people take a liking to you faster when they see you've settled down. It makes you appear more mature and collected --- like your life is already planned out."

I thought those kind of things through with the kind of obsession Roman reserved to the supernatural. 

It baffled me that other people didn't --- how are you going to live an unplanned life?

"Fine," Minx Morris agreed. "I also have to take Mira, or else she'll suspect something. We've always worked together before."

Mira was his girlfriend. His feelings seemed real enough to me. I shrugged. It didn't really matter, one way or the other.

"You're coming," Minx made it clear for the hundreth time, "mostly because you told me you can convince the Prophet to come along."

I thought about my secret, and I felt the corners of my mouth turning up viciously. I would have to tell him, to make him trust me, to see my worth, I knew it.

"It's imperative that I get Jonathan Loreta," Dominic said.

It wasn't the first time he'd mumbled about him, but I didn't know anyone by that name. It bothered me, sometimes, that I would show him all my cards, while he still kept so many secrets.

But, after all, I'd always decided I would part with mine. I'd only have to sell it to the highest bidder, and right now, Dominic Morris struck me as that kind of man.

"What if you could have someone that could give us leverage?" I asked him. "That could bend a whole country to our feet?"

"What do you mean?"

I showed him a drawing of King Ze'ev. Even as a foreigner, Minx was familiar with the royal family, and the tragedy that had struck them.

I offered him another drawing. If you didn't know, if you didn't look too closely, you would never be able to guess. But I'd been smart enough to ask the street seller to paint them in the same pose, under the same light.

The men weren't identical, of course. But they had the same thick, unruly dark hair, upturned eyes, and obtuse angle jawline. They even had the same defiant look in their eyes.

"The Prophet," I told him. "Is Prince Cypress."