Chương 157: Interlude II: Prepare for Trouble

Steven My sister was the fucking Holy Empress. I had repeated that fact at least a dozen times since mom and I saw her in the parade of orphans. Mom hadn't recognized her but I did. It all fit too well. Her disappearance along with the name of the Empress and that stupid Taylor Swift curtsy she did. It was her. There was no reason for me and mom to remain in our current slump. Chelsea surely had like… palaces and servants and shit. All we had to do was get word to her that we were here in this world with her.

"Adjust your cloak," mom said as we approached the cathedral.

"Why?"

"Because people keep staring at your arm." I looked down at the bandages covering the end of the stump. I scoff at it.

"You stole food."

"I was trying to survive!" She made an annoyed sound, "You had already eaten that day."

"Well… I was still hungry and… thinking ahead. Maybe that's what would unlock a class. Like a thief class or something." Mom gave me a frustrated look. Once Chelsea learned they had cut off my hand, I expected that magistrate guy who was responsible to be severely punished. The cathedral occupied an enormous section of the Holy City. A wall surrounded several white buildings, and armed knights stood at every entrance. These were government buildings.

People waited along the road to watch carriages pass through the gates. Mom walked directly toward the nearest knight.

"We need to speak with the Empress," she explained. The knight's attention moved between us.

"Do you have a scheduled audience?"

"We don't need one. I'm her mother." He leveled her with a judgey stare.

"And I'm her brother," I added.

"Steven Drake. She knows us. Just let her know we are out here." The knight glanced at the bandages, then back at my face.

"You'll need to take your claim to the Imperial Petitions Office."

"This isn't a claim," I said.

"Chelsea is my sister. Just… Can you just go get her? Like…"

"The Petitions Office is two streets east of the palace entrance." He interrupted. Mom touched my back and urged me away before I could exploded on the guy. The Imperial Petitions Office turned out to be a long building in the same style as every other building in this stupid city, except it was filled with benches. Every single bench was occupied. More people stood along the walls holding folded papers or small wooden tablets. Mom stared into the room.

"We might be here a while." We ended up waiting for four hours. By the time we reached the front, my stump was throbbing and I was hungry. The clerk behind the counter looked ready to leave for the day. He pulled a blank form from a stack and dipped his pen without looking at us.

"Names?"

"Debbie-Lynn Drake," Mom replied.

"This is my son, Steven… eh… Drake." She added. The clerk began writing.

"Nature of the petition?"

"We're the Holy Empress's family." His pen continued moving.

"Current or prior familial relationship?" Mom hesitated.

"What does that mean?"

"Are you claiming a relationship to the Wixx family? Or to the Empress before she became a Wixx?"

"Before," mom said.

"I gave birth to her." The clerk finally looked up.

"Gave birth to her? You gave birth to a demon?" He reached beneath the counter and removed a different form.

"You have a form specifically for her family? Has other people said they were her family too?" I asked.

"I'm not permitted to discuss other petitions."

"That's… our answer," mom said quietly.

"The Holy Empress is greatly loved." Is all he said.

"We're from Earth," I explained, starting to feel desperate, "Ask her about Earth." The clerk wrote that down. Mom leaned closer.

"Her name was Chelsea Drake. I'm Debbie-Lynn Drake, her mom. Steven is her brother. Chelsea will know both of us."

"Do you possess documentation recognized by the Holy Empire?"

"Sorry, we didn't think to grab our birth certificates," I snapped. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. Mom ignored me.

"We don't."

"Do you possess an item bearing an authenticated mark from the Empress?" He asked robotically.

"If we already had something from her, we wouldn't…" Mom rested her hand on my shoulder. He asked where we were staying, then gave mom a small square of wood with a number carved into it. Our petition would be reviewed in the order it was received. Any response would be delivered to the address we provided.

"How long will that take?" mom asked.

"Familial claims are normally reviewed within sixty days."

"Sixty days!?" I stared at him.

"We have three nights left at the government housing."

"You can update your address at any time. Just come back to this office." Mom thanked him and pulled me away from the counter before I could lose it on him. I let her get me outside before saying what needed to be said.

"Chelsea's going to be furious when she learns they made us wait." I laughed.

"She's going to go on an execution spree. She'll probably put us inside one of her palaces or something." I turned toward her. She was looking back at the cathedral. Mom had been trying to hide how scared she was since we arrived, but she wasn't particularly good at hiding things. I understood how she felt. We had almost no money and no permanent place to stay. She had me, but I was still recovering and needed time before I could start providing for us properly.

Once Chelsea read the petition, those problems would go away. I looked at the palace again.

"She'll come herself," I said.

"As soon as she sees our names." Mom nodded.

"Of course she will." Debbie-Lynn Chelsea didn't come. The first ten days passed without a response. The government housing gave us another week because of Steven's injury, but the woman who ran it made it clear that we couldn't remain indefinitely. There were always more people needing the beds. I couldn't blame her. She had rules to follow. The both of us did the sensible thing and took the merchant examination as it seemed like the fastest solution. Steven and I both understood numbers from earth.

We came from a world where standardized tests were the norm in school. Compared to people conducting business with handwritten ledgers, we should have possessed an enormous advantage. The best either of us managed was a B rank. The examiner assured us that a B was excellent. Most working merchants needed several attempts to earn one, and even more never did. Steven still demanded that his examination be checked for errors. Our knowledge from Earth had helped with the mathematics and word problems.

But under the pressure and trying to do a lot of the conversions in with their weird currency breakdown it led to lots of mistakes for both of us. A B-rank examination result didn't give us a Merchant class. To get the most out of being a merchant we needed a wagon and something to sell. It only proved we might be capable of working with those things if we ever acquired them. No one wanted to invest in two strangers without classes or collateral. Steven's missing hand had even made people way more reluctant.

I found work in the office of a grain merchant. The owner needed someone to compare warehouse records against purchase orders, and my examination result convinced him to try me for a week. The pay covered a small room and enough food for both of us. There wasn't much left afterward. Steven found occasional work checking sums for shopkeepers. He rarely remained with one for more than a few days. We sat on the floor of our room with a low table between us.

The room contained one narrow bed, so Steven slept on a padded mat the owner provided. Our window faced the wall of the next building.

"They hired you just to check their math. How did you get fired again?"

"Well… I explained why they had so many unnecessary expenses." I closed my eyes. Steven leaned over the table and took another piece of bread. I slapped his wrist.

"That's for breakfast."

"I'm still hungry." He argued.

"Yeah? Well so am I." I sighed in annoyance. We spent almost everything I earned on the room and food. The hand treatment had been offered without charge by one of the temples, but Steven refused to return after the healer told him the wound was healing well. He wanted his hand restored. The healer explained that regrowing an entire limb required magic well beyond what their temple could provide. Steven had asked whether the Empress could do it but the healer said he didn't know.

That was all Steven had talked about for two days. The reply to our petition arrived during the sixth week after submitting it. I saw the imperial seal and nearly dropped the grain totals I was copying. I opened it immediately. The letter thanked us for our devotion to the Holy Empress. It explained that no House Drake appeared among the imperial genealogical records. Our claim couldn't be confirmed, but the palace welcomed any further evidence we wished to submit.

It concluded with information about a temple that provided care for people suffering from confused memories. Calmly, I folded it and placed it in my pocket. I kept working, trying not to think about my disappointment. Steven was waiting in our room when I returned. I put the letter on the table. His attention, like mine, went to the seal.

"What did she say!?"

"She didn't see it."

"How do you know?" He asked, sounding desperate. I nudged the letter closer to him. By the time he finished, his face had turned red.

"Confused memories?"

"They don't believe us." I explained with a sigh.

"They checked genealogy records from this world. Of course we aren't in them. These people are idiots."

"I know, Steven." I reply, looking up at the ceiling trying to loosen the tension from the day. He threw the letter onto the table. It slid off the other side and landed on the floor. I picked it up, without much thought.

"Write another one," he said.

"We know things about her. Most people know things about the Empress but we know things about Chelsea." I sat down and turned the imperial response over. The back was completely blank.

"We'll tell her something only she would know," I said. Steven lowered himself across from me.

"Remind her about the microwave incident." Chelsea Somewhere out there, two people were desperately trying to claw their way back into her life. Chelsea looked down at the petition in her hands. Debbie-Lynn Drake and Steven Drake. She stared out the window of what was slowly becoming her office. She stared down at the uniformity of the buildings. With a sigh she turned back to her desk and threw the page on it.

"Any suggestions on what I should do?" She asked Liam.

"This is a matter that requires a delicate touch. What do you want to do about them?" He asked from his usual spot near the door.

"What do I want to do? I want to ignore them just like they ignored me. Even when my father was around she never paid much attention to me. I was desperate for it from her. I grew up too fast to try to impress her and get her to notice me but…" She sighs again.

"I know that's the petty thing to do. I should just greet them and… I don't know… help them out or something. It sounds like they don't even have classes yet." Liam furrowed his brows.

"How? I thought all champions had The Eyes. They could just assign a class." Chelsea let out a quick laugh.

"If that assessor lady in Nordrak hadn't shown me how to do The Eyes I never would have learned."

"I… See. Well, you can definitely ignore them but they may end up causing trouble, trying to get your attention." Chelsea nodded along with his words. She pointed to a side not the clerk wrote down, which she read aloud, "Steven Drake has the mark of a thief and so I suggest that this petition goes no further than the localized office as this seems like a desperation move by a small time crime organization." Liam smiled at that and let out a breath of laughter.

"So are you going to ignore them?"

"I think so. I think I'm going to let them make something of themselves before finally acknowledging them. Let them earn their place in this world. If I just throw money at them, they will rot." She snickered.

"I'm going to give them code names. I can't wait to hear about what hijinks they get up to just to get their name in front of me. Going to codename them Jesse and James. Any idea if talking cats are a thing?"