In the Service of the Queen : In the Service... Volume One

By Johnson, Kevin, Wade

Book Id: WPLBN0100750008
Format Type: PDF (eBook)
File Size: 2.31 MB
Reproduction Date: 11/20/2023

Title:	In the Service of the Queen : In the Service... Volume One
Author:	Johnson, Kevin, Wade
Volume:	In the Service... Volume One
Language:	English
Subject:	Fiction, Drama and Literature
Collections:	Authors Community, Fantasy
Historic Publication Date:	2023
Publisher:	Self-Published

Member Page:	Kevin Johnson
Citation APA MLA Chicago Johnson, K. W. (2023). In the Service of the Queen : In the Service... Volume One. Retrieved from http://gutenberg.cc/

Description
A fantasy novel in a unique world of seven magical Talents, a world of commoners and freeholders and barons and duchesses and more, of Savants and the Charming, the Iron, and more. A young man has one of those Talents, and discovers himself as he discovers how to help his realm. (Updated May 2024 for a missing word)

Summary
A world of seven magical Talents, and a young man in a family of forester-beekeepers discovers he has one of them. Not only that, he is a Savant, who can pick up the thoughts of others if he is looking at their faces. There is tension within the realm that he knows little of. What will he do with his Talent? Who can he help? Who will he serve? Someone he never would have dreamed of. In the Service of the Queen

Excerpt
My fifteenth summer brought anxiety, and the possibility of change. What kind of change, and whether there would be any, I couldn't be sure. My parents were smallholders near one of Oriania's thousand villages, keeping bees, with a sideline in timbering. Helping with the beekeeping had made me patient; helping with the timbering, well-muscled; helping with my five younger brothers and sisters, commanding. That last might have been a problem if not for the patience. Patient or not, that summer was more nerve-racking than any I'd known before. It wasn't that my mother was admitting that I'd already learned what she could teach of swordplay, since she'd never been more than serviceable, by her own account. After all, if I were going to take over the holding someday, I wouldn't need great weapon skill. No, it was that my voice was finally starting to change. I was finally starting to get some facial and body hair, finally beginning physically to become a man. I thought about it, as I so often did, as I stood outside in the late spring sunshine and took off the facial net and other beekeeping gear, leaving me in my freeholder green linens. Becoming an adult. That meant, if I had one of the Seven Talents, now is when it would begin to show. Now. Anytime now. Could I be Talented? Could I be one of the Charming? That would certainly help with minding the younger ones. *No, no chance. They're so rare, especially outside the royal family.* Or might I be Iron? I didn't know that I wanted a lifetime of being a guard, but it would fit with how I had some brawn. *And they're by far the most common.* I could be one of the Savants, I supposed. I wasn't sure I wanted to know what others were thinking. *Not likely, they're almost as rare.* Better that, though, than being a Toxin or Displacer. Having to always mind what I touched? I couldn't like the idea. Likewise a Duplicate. I wouldn't want to resemble whoever had most recently impressed me. No, if I had a Talent, I had to hope I was a Deflector. Being able to protect others or even myself, by turning aside whatever might come at us, that would be both amazing and gratifying. I looked at the woodpile then, and figured to put in half an hour with the axe, splitting some log chunks. *Winter might be gone, but we still need to cook, and heat water for baths and washing.* I set the first one on the old stump and lifted the axe up. Swung it down, and chopped the wood in two. Got a second, and did likewise. Cleared the stump every time if the axe blow didn't knock the pieces off, and got into a rhythm. *Just don't get your hopes up. Only one in every ten or twelve people—* "Roland?" My mother stepped out the door, and I stopped, turning to see what she wanted. She stood there, a concerned look on her face, a tall, curly-haired woman with wide-set gray eyes. My eyes met those eyes of hers— *He's such a good son, I know he would like to have a Talent, one of the good ones, but I'd so much rather he stayed here, he's so good with the other—What? Why is he looking at me like that?* "Roland?" The spell was broken, and I looked away. And knew right then what Talent I must have, and that my life would never be the same.

Table of Contents
Map Cast of Characters Prologue One: In My Memory, Always Green Two: —A Boy, Still, Just Fifteen— Three: Left I My Home All Unseen Four: Tutored by a Noted Dean Five: Not to Be a Libertine Celestine Castle Map Six: But Lurk Behind a Painted Screen Seven: A Position In-Between Eight: My Arrival Unforeseen Nine: Assimilate the House Routine— Ten: Adjusting to a New Cuisine Eleven: Water's Entry Must Be Clean Twelve: Reputation All Pristine Thirteen: Brass Polished to the Highest Sheen Fourteen: Swords in Service Sharp and Keen Fifteen: Those Appeared to Set the Scene Sixteen: Till Understanding I Did Glean Seventeen: Then Events Did Intervene Eighteen: Fending Off an Act Obscene Nineteen: Then I Saw What It Did Mean— Twenty: In the Service of the Queen Appendices Thinking Through the Premise About the Author