The Emperor's Agent -- In Vino Veritas

[jo_graham]

A reader asks me how much Elza remembers of her past selves, of the events of Black Ships, Hand of Isis and Stealing Fire. Generally speaking, not much consciously. However, it's all there, and when something brings it to the fore it's at her fingertips. In this case, from wine comes truth. When Elza gets drunk with Corbineau and tells him her

Comments

[jo_graham]

They certainly both need a cuddle! Both of her, as it were.... Jean-Baptiste is a good friend.

He was Adam Trcka in Ravens of Falkenau. He didn't appear in the first three books. So he really has no idea what she's talking about!

In The Emperor's Agent Elza finds out who a lot of people were and actually believes it. Which changes everything.

[jo_graham]

That's the step she needs to take, and the scary one to her as it would be to us -- what if it were real? What if it weren't a vision or a dream or a delusion or a creative conceit? What if she had to live as if it were 100% really real?

That's as big a jump for Elza, child of the Enlightenment as she is, as it is for us. What if it were real?

I've been playing with a flashback scene that may go somewhere in the Order of the Air books about the Lodge in World War I, about how Mitch got into the Lodge and that very question -- what does an ordinary guy, a high school football player who was supposed to go to law school and then joined the army, do when he has the choice to believe the impossible or not?

Jerry: (wonderingly) It's all real.
Mitch: (happily) I always wanted it to be.

[jo_graham]

Lydias still has some feelings! :)

But on the other hand, so does Hephaistion. And Lydias never stopped to wonder if perhaps this wouldn't have been more if he hadn't said so quickly that it was nothing. After all, Hephaistion couldn't push. Lydias was under his command, and it would have been dishonorable.

He has always wondered what happened to Lydias in the chaos after his death. He has always wondered if terrible things happened.

[jo_graham]

Oh yes! Because Lydias didn't die young in some horrible way. He lived forty years, and he carried Ptolemy's banner on many fields until he was old. He lived in Alexandria, and he had a peerless lover and a wife he cared for, and children and grandchildren and a white city by the sea. Lydias won. And that has shaped Elza ever since.