Jack of Harts

Charles had plans the day I met him. To be fair, he’d been trying to make those plans work for a century, but people like me weren’t the only people who didn’t like him on sight. He wanted to work with the Peloran, you see, and the Peloran did not trust his Family at all. They were very smart not to. So for a century, he had been hitting a roadblock. But The War gave him an opportunity and he took it. He volunteered to fight because he knew it would get him closer to the Peloran. And the cybernetic intelligence that chose him did so because she did what nobody else ever did. Even me. She studied him enough to figure out that he was not his Family. He was better than them. He was worth a lifetime. It took me a lot longer than I should have to realize she was right about him. And his plans? They were pretty good too.