text:
James Edward Oglethorpe
James Edward Oglethorpe (1696-1785), an English soldier, member of Parliament, and humanitarian, was the founder of the colony of Georgia in America.
James Oglethorpe was born in London on Dec. 22, 1696, the third and surviving son of Sir Theophilus and Lady Eleanor Wall Oglethorpe. The family influences which he reflected included sympathy for the claims of the English Stuarts, interest in the military, and a strong personal character inclined to moral causes. He was educated at Eton and attended Oxford before accepting commissions in the British army and on the Continent. Oglethorpe inherited the family estate of Westbrook and settled down in 1719 to the career of a country gentleman.
In keeping with family tradition, Oglethorpe was elected to Parliament in 1722; he served for 32 years, despite continued opposition. He became known as a Tory member, opposed to the administration of Robert Walpole, and advocate of an aggressive British posture in the world. More noteworthy were Oglethorpe's humanitarian interests. His initial activities on behalf of penal reform were spurred on by the death of a friend who had been imprisoned for debt. Oglethorpe's attacks on debtors' prisons led to the establishment of a parliamentary committee under his chairmanship in 1729. Subsequent investigations exposed the brutality of penal conditions and questioned the wisdom of imprisonment for debt. His humanitarian impulses were carried further in an antipathy to black slavery, attacks on the practice of impressment, and campaigns against drinking.
Georgia Colony
A continuing theme of the period of colonization was the idea that the new continents might afford a remedy for the ills of Europe. Oglethorpe and others, demanding reform, proposed to establish a colony which might provide a place for the rehabilitation of people imprisoned for debt. For this purpose Oglethorpe and 19 associates received a royal charter in 1732 to found a colony between Spanish Florida and South Carolina; the trustees were to govern Georgia for 21 years, after which the province would revert to royal control. The King accepted the philanthropic aims of Georgia in granting the charter, but he also made clear that the colony was supposed to increase the commerce of Britain and serve as a buffer state for the protection of the southern frontier. The genesis of Georgia arose from this threefold set of motives—philanthropic, commercial, and military.
The trusteeship eventually collapsed, basically because of the incompatibility of the colony's purposes. The size of grants was severely limited, land could not be sold freely, nor could estates be inherited by women. These policies, meant to enhance military security and ensure success, were self-defeating. For example, though immigration was to be encouraged, restraints on the size of estates and on the right of inheritance repelled new settlers. Of major importance also was the threat of war with Spain. Much of Oglethorpe's life in the colony over a 10-year span was devoted to this problem. In time, the military side of the colonial experiment predominated over everything else.
Given the conflicts that characterized the trusteeship, Oglethorpe's contributions have not always been recognized. Apart from his role in inspiring the colony, his fame in Parliament and military reputation secured the massive public and private funds needed for Georgia's beginnings. Oglethorpe's military leadership was crucial during the periods of war with Spain, although he was unsuccessful in two attempts to conquer St. Augustine in 1740 and 1743.
Road to Oblivion
When Oglethorpe returned to London in 1743, his days of active colonial leadership were coming to an end. Already the trustees were complaining about the cost of defending Georgia, and bitter charges were circulating in England regarding abuses by Oglethorpe and his appointees. Faced with growing discontent among the colonists and insurmountable economic problems, the trustees surrendered their charter to the Crown a year before its expiration in 1752. By this time Oglethorpe had lost much of his authority and had ceased to play a leading part in the life of the colony.
Shortly after his return to London, Oglethorpe married Elizabeth Wright, a wealthy heiress. Called to arms during the uprising led by the Stuart pretender in 1745, Oglethorpe was later charged with misconduct in the campaign. Although he was cleared and promoted to lieutenant general, his active military career was over. Finally, he lost his seat in Parliament in 1754. His last years were spent in relative obscurity, though he maintained a friendship with Samuel Johnson and others of Johnson's literary circle. Oglethorpe died on June 30, 1785.
Further Reading on James Edward Oglethorpe
Biographies of Oglethorpe are not entirely satisfactory in delineating his character or the complex history of Georgia's beginnings. The best accounts are Leslie F. Church, Oglethorpe: A Study in Philanthropy in England and Georgia (1932), and Amos A. Ettinger, James Edward Oglethorpe: Imperial Idealist (1936). A recent brief analysis is Trevor Reese, Colonial Georgia: A Study in British Imperial Policy in the Eighteenth Century (1963). Indispensable for the background to Georgia's settlement is Verner W. Crane, The Southern Frontier, 1670-1732 (1928). Of special value for the general history of the Colonies in the 18th century is Lawrence H. Gipson's five-volume The British Empire before the American Revolution, especially vol. 2: The Southern Plantations (1936; rev. ed. 1960). Useful for the English background is Basil Williams, The Whig Supremacy, 1714-1760 (1939; 2d ed. rev. 1962).
Ettinger, Amos Aschbach, Oglethorpe, a brief biography, Macon, Ga.: Mercer, 1984.
Garrison, Webb B., Oglethorpe's folly: the birth of Georgia, Lakemont, GA.: Copple House Books, 1982.
Oglethorpe in perspective: Georgia's founder after two hundred years, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1989.
Spalding, Phinizy., James Edward Oglethorpe: a new look at Georgia's founder, Athens, Ga.: Carl Vinson Institute of Government, University of Georgia, 1988.
Spalding, Phinizy., Oglethorpe in America, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984, 1977.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Revolut Gets EU Banking License That Accepts Crypto Assets
Crypto Facilities Receives MTF Licensing
Trade.com List This Week's Big Events
Short Selling Restrictions Imposed on French and Italian Stocks
EXMO Acquires Two New Licenses from Estonia Authorities.
eToro Warn of Temporary Restrictions Ahead of UK Election
"We got a banking licence." The United Kingdom-based FinTech Revolut announced in a recent press release published on its website. The startup is finally allowed to operate in the European Union. The news is that Revolut is a crypto friendly solution.
The European Central Bank has approved Revolut's European banking licence. They got the acceptance through the Bank of Lithuania and will be "leveraging passporting rules to operate in other European countries."
As the European Union rules, most companies can be part of the European free market if they are based, or approved to work in one of the countries.
"In the coming months," the press release says, "we'll be doing a lot of building and testing behind the scenes, and working closely with the regulators to have any restrictions on our licence removed, so that we can launch full current accounts, overdrafts and everything else you'd expect from a bank."
Revolut's accounts and clients will be now protected up to €100,000 under the European Deposit Insurance Scheme. Until now, clients funds in Revolut were "safeguarded in accounts with a tier one UK bank, as per our obligations under the e-money regulations."
The company is expecting to offer overdraft, loans, credit and debit cards in the middle terms. According to Revolut, the next 18-month period will be exciting and a "game-changer."
Nearly 10,000 people are opening Revolut accounts per day now. Total users are generating $4 billion in transaction volume each month.
Currently, users in Revolut "can gain exposure" in five of the most popular cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), and Ripple (XRP).
Crypto users have access to their own wallets. Purchases are linked to fiat or traditional currencies.
LinkedIn Dec 17
EU,Licensing,UK
"We got a banking licence." The United Kingdom-based FinTech Revolut announced in a recent press release published on its website. The startup is finally allowed to operate in the European Union. The news is that Revolut is a crypto friendly solution. The European Central Bank has approved Revolut's European banking licence. They got the acceptance […]


The 2011 Census results indicated that there are over five million people staying within the Western Cape. However, less than 1.2% of the population in the Western Cape are blood donors.
This is a worrying statistic for the Western Province Blood Transfusion Service (WPBTS). "As the population in the Western Cape is ever increasing and access to medical care is becoming easier, we need more blood donors to fulfill in the demand for safe blood and blood products", says Marlize van der Merwe, WPBTS Corporate Public Relations Officer and Spokesperson.
The Service needs the help of its regular blood donors to recruit new blood donors. Therefore the "Bring-A-Buddy" Campaign has been launched. This campaign will take place from 31 August to 13 September throughout the Western Cape blood donation clinics. Regular blood donors is encouraged to bring a friend, family member or colleague to donate blood with them.


text:
The Summer King
By Megan Arkenberg
Issue #59, December 30, 2010
Subscribe Weightless Books Kindle Store Epub Mobi prc Pdf
"Guess," Boss Gaude said, dripping her sticky smile all over my parlor. "You'll never—"
"Shit, Gaude," I said, "just cough it up. I know Camden sent you."
"You ain't got cause to get fresh with me."
"You're wasting my time."
That's how it had been all summer—all Prairial, I should say, since that's as far into the season as we'd gotten, though the air was already hot enough to singe. Gaude had taken to hanging around my place because her district, Acacey, was right on the river and it smelled like a corpse. So here I was, trying to collect rent and settle fresh-off-the-boat immigrants and keep influenza from reigning hell in the tenements, and here was Gaude letting Acacey fall to pieces and tangling herself up under my feet—when she wasn't running errands for Boss Camden up in Eustache. It made me mad enough to spit.
Gaude may be stupid, but even she knows not to keep kicking me when I'm in that kind of mood. She sat straight and prissy on the center arm of the chaperone sofa and swung her feet like a kid.
"Alright, I'll guess," I said, massaging my forehead. I'd pinned my hair too tight that morning, but there wasn't time to fix it. "It's not your news, Camden wants to tell me in person, and you're jealous as a bridesmaid."
"Of Camden?"
"Of me." I took a deep breath and pressed my eyes closed with my fingertips. Nice going, Livy, now you've got the bitch confused. But this conversation was shot in the gutter anyway. "I suppose rent can wait. Did he say where to meet him?"
Gaude mumbled unintelligibly, which meant two things: one, that Camden was meeting me somewhere nice. And two, that he was meeting me alone.
Now, Gaude's crush on Camden had been old news since they hung King Bastian, back before they changed the calendar. I couldn't see the attraction myself—I mean, he was cool and smart and pretty as a peach tree, but he had this slow sprawly way of moving and talking that frustrated the shit out of me. How he'd kept Gaude in his bag for twelve and a half years, I'll never know.
"Cough it up, Gaude," I sighed, "and I promise I'll let you come."
She did, and I did, and that's how I wound up with Gaude in the ballroom of the old Hôtel Vienne, sheeting sweat in the ugliest armchair imaginable while Boss Camden of Eustache told me we were completely, irredeemably, and uncompromisingly fucked.
"The Assembly," Camden said, spinning the word out like a spider, "has appointed a king."
My jaw just dropped. I wouldn't've been more surprised if he said they'd appointed an imperial flower arranger.
"Shit," I said, and was surprised it came out clear. "Why?"
Camden shrugged. He'd managed to get himself silhouetted by a full-story window, and the sunlight made his curly hair into a mesh of shadows. Pretty as a peach tree, and knew it.
"Scapegoat," he said. "The Assembly knows we've got the people trained to spit at their coat-tails and now they want to pass the blame."
"They want to take over from us, you mean."
Gaude made a confused little grunt, which didn't surprise me. Camden raised his eyebrows, which did.
"No offense, Livy darling, but I can't quite see Speaker Jaque bringing bottles of camphor to the tenements in Olimpia."
"I didn't say they'd do it well. But they've wanted to drown out the ward bosses for years. They know they can't make the plebes hate us, but if they can hand over a king on a bed of rose petals—"
"Then they can take over for the bosses and we become superfluous."
"Shit," I said again. And stood up, and sat back down. "Shit."
"That's not the worst of it." Camden slid over to the couch, where Gaude was busy arranging her skirt like a lady's fan. He sat down right over the hem, which must've cut off the breeze on her fat shapely legs and oh, that just about made me queasy imaging it. I don't know how Gaude, with her tight corset and massive crush on Camden—whose warm golden skin was just a squirm away from hers—well, I don't know how she could breathe at all.
I picked a dusty fan off the dressing table behind me and waved it in a way I hoped could be described as languid. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Shit, Livy," Gaude giggled. "Show some respect."
"Shut up, Gaude." I turned physically to Camden. "What do you mean, that's not the worst of it?"
"Look at it from the Assembly's point of view. They want to make the people hate the new king instead of hating them, yes?"
"Yes." I didn't need to say it, but Boss Camden's bright brown eyes were like a magnet drawing it out of me.
"And they want to get rid of us, the bosses, who the people love."
"Yes. But how does that fit—" And then I saw it, clear and hot as summer. "Oh, shit. Shit."
"What?" Gaude asked, stupid as a peacock.
"The King's going to kill us," Camden said. He rose and went around behind the couch, where a splintered crate was hidden in the black shadow of a piano-forte. The bottle he dredged up was green and dusty and probably hotter than tea, but I was shaken enough that when he handed me a glass I gulped it like iced lemonade. "To make the people hate him, the Assembly's got to make him kill us."
"The people will protect us," Gaude said. She took a glass from Camden but didn't drink; the wine shuddered in her moist white palms.
"Gaude, darling, even you ain't that stupid." Camden rolled his eyes to me. "You see why I'm distressed."
"I'll kill him," I said. Despite the wine, my throat felt like glue. "I'll kill the King."
"You're no assassin," Camden said, but not like it bothered him. He'd been hoping I'd have a bright idea to take the load off his shoulders, and it was beginning to look like I did.
Except for the part where my idea was fucking horrible.
"We have until Thermidor," I said. Thermidor was the riot month; nobody would start anything until then, not even the Assembly. "Everyone can go to ground by the end of Prairial, and I'll have the King's head in a basket before you can say apple harvest."
"How?" Gaude pouted.
Camden grinned wryly and raised a toast, which I drank without liking it. For the first time in history, I knew Gaude was thinking smarter.
"Going to ground" for Gaude apparently meant "moving into Boss Livy's parlor." Worse, her shitheaded worship of Camden meant she'd adopted his taste in decorating, which ran to stuffed birds and dried flowers under glass. So there was my parlor, looking like Queen Gloria's Garden for all the Olimpia district to goggle at, and there was me still fighting influenza and employers and taxes on property I wouldn't choose to keep a dog on, and—how could I forget—I had a King to off by Thermidor. Oh, yeah, and it was still fucking hot.
I'd seen the King once, from a distance. I didn't know if they'd made the title official yet, but that was what Camden was calling him, and what Camden said the other bosses all repeated. The plebes had picked it up somewhere—not from me, since I watched my mouth, but I knew plenty of ward bosses who didn't—and now it was stuck like a wine stain.
So anyway, I saw the King one day towards the end of Prairial, a little after the meeting in Hôtel Vienne and a little before Gaude dumped her plants in my parlor. Shit, the boy was gorgeous—not like Camden, all blond and brown and soft golden lace—but like something out of a fairy tale. His hair was this rich coffee-black, and his eyes were huge and piercing, and I swear you could smell apple blossoms just from looking at him. He was summer dipped in chocolate with a glass of rich red wine, and when he spoke his voice just melted in your bones.
I had it on passable authority that His Majesty was eighteen or nineteen years old; that he'd showed up in Bonifaz's orchard some nine years ago and moved between hostels in the bad wards ever since; and that he was clever as a goat about words but couldn't follow politics for a penny or a princedom.
It was like that old tradition they'd had back when I was a girl, of making some kid the King or Queen of May—May was like Floréal or Prairial back then, I can't remember which—but anyway, we'd make this kid a crown of flowers and he or she would read speeches and poems and all that kind of shit, and like as not they'd get beaten up by the older kids on the way home from Acacey.
That was exactly what they were doing to this boy—only this time the Assembly had gotten involved. And where the Assembly gets involved, somebody has to die.
I was sorry it was him, but I sure as hell wasn't sorry that it wasn't going to be me.
I was fourteen or so when they hung King Bastian, so I remembered it but not the way people like Camden and Gaude did. I remembered the singing and the banners and these big heavy flowers I bought for my sweetheart, and the hot sticky pastries he bought for me. They were wrapped in blue paper, and my sweetheart's eyes were blue, and the sky that day was so blue that it hurt. So that's what a king meant to me, in its own strange way—songs and sunflowers and the color blue.
And I knew the new king couldn't have remembered it that way, but that didn't stop him from making blue his color. Not like livery—I mean, he never wore it, never wore color at all, just plain black vests and a shirt so white it could blind you. But, well, here's the best way I can explain it. Mama Stanislaw in the rooms below mine has this Crotian phrase that she says means "blue-talk," like whoever's doing it is trying to talk down the sky. And that's how it was with the King. He talked blue, all hope and plenty and sacrifice and yes, war too, because the plebes wanted something to be flamed about and the Assembly wouldn't give them one. The King couldn't give it to them either, but he didn't know that yet. The Assembly was writing his speeches.
He lived in the old Hôtel Camus, which was just up the street from Hôtel Vienne and thus Eustache territory. The Eustachites tend towards quiet, though, and they didn't take much exception to Boss Livy of Olimpia loitering under their windows. Well, the King's window was actually a door, but it opened onto a blue-slate roof and I didn't think his majesty was going to take a trip out any time soon—unfortunately, since that would make my job a lot easier.
For the first few days, I made like I was admiring the curtains. Stand beneath the nearest lamppost, lips quivering in excitement or peachy unalleviated boredom, shit, even fake a faint when His Prairial Excellency threw a glance at me. People like to see that kind of thing, and besides, it set me up as a silly love-struck bitch with more guts than sense. Scary but, well, harmless.
Sometime in the last stretch of the month, I made a bid to meet him. I mean "made a bid"—it was like the Winter Market on auction day. The Hôtel's waiting room was just packed, with everybody shouting and offering up gold and silver for the privilege of kissing His Majesty's hand. Or sticking a dagger down his throat. I'm sure I wasn't the only one thinking to do it.
The guards must have thought so too, because they wouldn't let any of us in. No, not one of us, not even the lady who looked fit to sell half the family jewels for the privilege. I pitched a tantrum, of course—not enough to be remembered, just enough that nobody'd get suspicious. Then I tramped down to Camden's rooms in the Vienne.
"He's not taking visitors," I said as soon as he opened the door.
"Shit, Livy," Camden said—drawled, actually, so I knew he was mocking me. "You're no kind of assassin at all. Crawl through his window or something."
Which I guess I should have expected. "That kind of thing doesn't end well," I said. He took a step back—not because of me, I'm sure, but I took advantage of it anyway, sweeping into the ballroom and taking a seat on the couch.
Camden's lips twitched, but he only closed the door and stood leaning against the wall. The wallpaper was striped green and red and yellow, and it did absolutely nothing for his color. "You're not going to marry the boy, Livy. Why does it matter if you meet him before?"
"Shit, Camden, that's not what I'm thinking. Can you picture me scaling a wall and half a slate roof and then having enough red blood left to knife the bastard?"
"Then wait." He made a face that probably mirrored mine. "You've got a while yet. Keep listening to those half-assed speeches and waving your handkerchief. You'll get your chance."
It wasn't very helpful, but it was all I was going to get. I took it and left.
The Assembly and the bosses didn't like each other much, and we did our best to keep our distance. We had the people, the tenements, the carnivals; they had the law, the Hôtels, and the feast days. They hung kings, we cheered. We collected rent for our services and they taxed us, imprisoned us, shot us like sick dogs.
We trained the plebes to bite, and the Assembly lost fingers.
So a scapegoat made sense from their point of view. The problem was getting the people to accept their new whipping boy. No, not accept—they took to him like flies to honey. The problem was making them hate him.
Some people—Camden again, and the older bosses like Hucky and Mirabel up in Greensleeve—just hated the idea of a King, and it didn't matter to them if he tossed golden coins out his windows, which he did, or kissed babies and grandmas, which he also did, or got down on his knees and asked them to marry him—which he hadn't done yet, but I wasn't far from holding my breath—they weren't going to like him. But most everybody else—including Gaude, who was thinking away from Camden for a change—well, most everybody else loved him for the coins and kisses and his pretty blue speeches. And they loved the Assembly for giving him to them, which must have been all sorts of awkward over in the Hôtel de Ville.
I'm not the gambling sort, but my fingers were just itching to bet on when the Assembly was going to say no, little children, you've got it wrong—this is how you play with your new toy. And the plebes would get caught up in the game, and next thing you know, the gorgeous Summer King is hanging and the old ladies are selling hot buns. Which would be fine and dandy, if it weren't for the fact that the Assembly was sure as hell going to kill the ward bosses to show the people how it's done.
Which was why I had to kill the King first.
Complicated, and maybe a little ironic. I don't know. There's a lot of things you learn as a ward boss, but irony isn't one of them.
I actually got to speak to him on 1 Messidor, at the horse festival. Not that anyone except the Assembly could afford a horse but, well, it's a nice gesture. His Majesty was sitting on a huge white stallion—picked out by the Assembly, you can bet, to whet the crowd's jealousy—and I was slouched over by the water bucket, waving at myself with one of those silly commemorative fans. He steered his horse over to get a drink, and when I looked up to see those big, pretty eyes looking down on me I just about fainted. Or, well, faked it pretty good. The King slid out of his saddle and caught me around the waist at the last possible moment, before I drenched myself in the trough or broke my act by stepping out of fall. So far, so good.
"Thanks, Your Majesty." I said.
He smiled—dazzlingly, his white teeth like a slice of apple flesh against the red skin—and straightened me. I think I was blushing a little. He really did smell like apple blossoms. "What's your name?" he asked, like the kid he was.
He may have been silly as a bird, but there was no way he was going to hear "Boss Livy" without thinking of some pretty nasty shit. So I batted my eyelashes, channeling Gaude like a hot wire, and said, "Livia, Your Majesty. What's yours?"
Part of that was honest-to-goodness curiosity, because of all the things the Assembly had let leak, no one had mentioned His Majesty's name.
The King looked a little flushed, like I'd propositioned him or something, but the smile didn't melt all the way. "I can't tell you," he said. "They haven't picked one yet."
His arm was still on my waist, hot like an iron rail.
"Why don't you think of something to call me, Livia? Something other than Your Majesty."
"Shit," I said, and that sat there ugly and twitching for a few seconds before the stallion decided he'd had enough and wanted to go check out the mares. The King just had enough time to swoop up into his saddle before the horse made a beeline through the crowd.
"Come and see me sometime, Livia!" he called, and then he was gone, swallowed up in the blue.
"Shit," I said again, and grabbed a palmful of water before I fainted for real.
"Good girl," Camden said—but absently, like his mind was swirling along with the wine in his glass. Gaude gave me a poison-steeped look over his shoulder.
"So you want me to take him at his word?" I asked.
"Shit, Livy." The drawl was in his voice, and hard. "Why not?"
For once, Gaude got it quick. "Kings lie," she said, nasty as a gutter.
"Not about wanting to see a pretty girl. Alone." He gave me a short, inscrutable look before turning back to his wine. "And not about seeing us hang."
"He's starting that already?"
Gaude giggled until I looked at her. "You ain't seen the handbills, Livy? Or you ain't able to read?"
"I can read just fine, unlike present company. What handbills?"
Camden brushed the insult away like a fly. He'd tried being a poet some years back, and enough people remembered it that he was used to being called illiterate. "It's posted on the lamppost out front," he said. "'All persons seeking unfair financial and political advantages through the exploitation of the people are hereby declared outside of the law,' etc. etc. Thermidor's coming fast." He lay down on the couch, just brushing Gaude's knees with the golden strands of his hair. "Take the King at his word, Livy, and soon."
And Gaude, the silly stupid bitch, giggled like he'd lipped the world's funniest joke.
The Varlows were fresh off the boat, fresh enough that you half expected them to trail salt water. They wanted me to find them rooms, which wasn't so bad, even though tramping up and down the stairs of every hot and rotting tenement between Greensleeve and Finn Street isn't something I look forward to doing again. The problem was that young master Varlow had been playing politics back home in Kazaria, and now he wanted me to get him into the Assembly. Yes, that Assembly.
So there I was, trying to explain—in Kazarian, because there was no way they could understand me otherwise—that the Assembly was an elected position, and a bunch of assholes besides—and there they were trying to convince me that I must have gotten my own politics wrong because Speaker So-and-So at the Ashersen's house was so sweet and wonderful, and there I was again trying to remember which of the white-wigged featherbrains Speaker So-and-So was, when wham! opens the door and Gaude comes in.
She was still semi-officially settled in my parlor—which still looked like a garden only now it was dusty and wilted and cracked—and that made her think she had a part in my business. I don't know how Acacey was holding up, honest, between the heat and their boss being a shithead.
"When are you going to meet the King?" she asked.
Which of course launched the Varlows, who only caught the last word. They had some pretty twisted ideas about royalty in Kazaria. Fortunately—praise and honor to you, Saint Lalage patron of ward bosses—ma'am Varlow broke out in a coughing fit and I was able to bustle the whole family down into the kitchen where Mama Stanislaw could take care of them. Only when that fiasco was finally settled did I get a chance to start chewing Gaude to ribbons.
"Silly Livy," she cooed when I was finished. "Come on and let's get you dressed for royalty."
"Dressed for royalty" to me meant a black vest and powder blue cravat; to Gaude, it meant a sea of ruffles and a string of pearls long enough to strangle a horse. Guess who won.
By the time the carriage stopped at the Hôtel Camus the bleeding had mostly stopped. I dabbed at my lip with my cravat—burgundy instead of blue, my one fortunate concession to Gaude—and stepped out on the sidewalk with my head held high. Winning a fight always puts me in a good mood.
I won another fight in the waiting room of the Hôtel, where the little bespectacled secretary though he was going to make me wait, until my landlord-glare proved otherwise. I found the King in his dining room, which was way up on the third story overlooking the street. I didn't know if he was happy to see me or not—I was beginning to think that apple-bite smile was permanent.
"Livia," he said, bright and a little breathy. I think he wanted to shake my hand, but I remembered my manners at the last moment and bowed to kiss his. It made him blush like a bride.
He was beautiful, really and truly. It was the kind of beauty that would make some people desire him, and others envy him, and still others—the ones like me—hopelessly, horrendously lost. I didn't know what to say to him, didn't know if the mind behind those gorgeous eyes would comprehend anything I did say. I didn't want him, not his looks and not his attention. I wanted to burst into Camden's rooms, hand him the dagger from my boot, and tell him to do his own dirty work.
But I was a ward boss, and I was used to doing things I didn't want to do.
We ate. I don't know what anything tasted like, but it smelled like summer, grass and sky and blossoms. The dagger itched against my ankle, but I didn't dare reach down to adjust it. The King told me stories—not personal stories, which he claimed not to remember and I wouldn't have enjoyed anyway. He told me kid's stories about the Assembly of Flowers and about the Lily Boss and the Weed Boss and what happened when they met on the battlefield, and a hundred other stories I had heard as a girl—only then it was the Court of Flowers, and the Weed Boss was calling herself a Queen.
In return, I told him about my childhood in Olimpia, about catching grasshoppers in jars in the abandoned lots on Gyre Street, about stealing apples from the trees in the back of Saint Banbury's cemetery and selling them to mourners at the gate, about the blue-eyed boy who had bought me pastries wrapped in blue paper on the day they hung the king. He smiled and laughed, as I had at his stories. He treated Bastian's death like it was nothing but a quaint dating convention, 1 Thermidor of Year I.
Then dinner was over, and the King came around to stand behind my chair, and I felt his soft warm hands on my shoulders and the back of my neck. I didn't like it but I'd expected it, so I managed to grit out a smile and let his hands do what they wanted to.
His lips were at my ear, but instead of kissing me, he whispered, "You wanted to know my name. Well, the Assembly hasn't decided anything official, but I'll tell you the one I've always wanted."
The conversation at the festival came back to me in a rush, and I just managed to save myself from answering the same way I had at the water bucket. I fluttered my eyelashes, the way Gaude would've, and made my breathing hard and kind of panting.
But I must have been doing it wrong, because instead of falling over me in passion or whatever the fuck he should've done, he straightened and walked back to his chair.
I cut the act fast. "What is it? Your name, I mean."
It was a blue name, deep green-blue like a forest. I looked at him and shrugged. "It fits, but we've already had a King Sylvain. Four of them, actually."
"Then I'll be Sylvain the Fifth."
"No." I reached for a grape from the bowl in the center of the table, just realizing at the last moment that it was wax. I let my hand drop roughly. "Too pompous. You need an epithet."
"You know, an epithet. The Good, the Beautiful, the Flesh-Eater. Something descriptive. Something unique."
We spent the rest of the night talking about kings and epithets and the more colorful stories I could remember to go with them. By the time I got home it was morning, and I didn't remember what I had been doing out in the first place.
No, that's a lie. I did remember.
I was supposed to be killing a king.
The next time we met, it was by the Rivermill, where I had just gotten a job for young master Varlow. I don't know how Sylvain shook his keepers, but he had, and now he was standing in front of me with the river-spray in his hair and the smell of apple blossoms just everywhere.
"I've been thinking," he said. "About kings."
"Probably a good idea, you being one and all."
He blushed at that. Beautiful little fool. "No, I mean…what you were telling me before. About Sylvain the First and Bastian and all them."
"Well, how did they do it? How did they get to be kings?"
"Shit, Sylvain, they were born into it."
"I mean, their mommies and daddies—and on back for as long as anybody can remember—were royalty. That made them King. Or Queen," I added, to be fair. Didn't want to neglect Queen Parsifal the Flesh-Eater.
"Oh," the King said in a teeny-tiny voice. "That's not—I mean, my parents weren't even—"
"Yeah, well, you're different." And I deserve a medal or something for keeping my mouth from saying scapegoat. "The Assembly picked you."
"I know that. But why, Livia? Why me?"
I shrugged. "Why did God pick the old kings the way he did? Trying to understand that stuff is like trying to stick your finger through a needle's eye."
He was quiet for a few moments—thinking. Shit, I felt like it was the first time anyone but me or Camden had done it, and for a moment I considered sharing that medal.
"Did God really pick the old kings?"
"That's what they used to say. Only it'll probably get you hung now, so I wouldn't go shouting it or anything."
He was bewildered, just fucking lost, like a kitten at the bottom of a well. You could see it in the way he was standing. None of it made sense to him. Most likely he'd learned all the Assembly's catch-phrases about the crime of power, and everybody's equal, equal or die—and now here he was, king because he was pretty and had a pretty voice and the people needed someone to hate, only he couldn't rule and probably wouldn't've wanted to if he could, and now I was telling him that God had gone and hand-picked his predecessors—it was just fucked up. Almost as fucked up as the fact that we were probably going to kill each other.
"Thanks," he said at last, not like he meant it but like he'd trained himself to say it when he heard something he didn't like. "You've given me a lot to think about."
He went—not the way he'd come, but over the bridge by the water wheel. The blossom-scent went with him, leaving me with the heat and the fishy-green river. All I could think was stupid, like one of the sayings of the philosophes, and it went something like this:
Kings used to be made by God. This one was made by men. And I don't know who I trust more.
Jaque was the only Assemblyman I knew in a personal way. He'd got himself voted up from Eustache about two years after Bastian died, so it wasn't like he was a regicide or anything, but he was still a nasty piece of shit. He liked to quote the philosophes and the Encyclopaedia, even though he didn't understand a word of them, and he dressed like nobody'd told him matching colors had been invented. Oh, and he hired a dumb kid to jump me in an alley once. That's how we'd gotten to know each other.
After his kid failed the job—and really failed it, I mean, took maybe a nick out of my ear and that's about it—Jaque had taken to dropping by my rooms and telling me how much of a stain I was on the robe of Liberty. Etc, etc, as Camden would say. Jaque was going to get himself lynched one of these days, but it wasn't worth my effort to pay a plebe to do it. Anyway, his delightful little visits dropped out about the time they dusted off the crown for Sylvain.
So just imagine how pleased I was to come home and find him in my parlor with the flowers and the glass and the fucking stuffed birds.
"Where were you?" he prissed.
"I don't owe you explanations," I said. The Rivermill contract for young Varlow was itching me beneath my bodice, but I didn't feel like showing it off to Jaque. "What are you doing here?"
Looking for a new job as the world's ugliest gargoyle, judging from his face. "The Assembly requests that you keep your grubby warders away from the King."
"And what does His Majesty say about this?"
"Nothing. He hasn't been told."
"Well." I folded my arms across my chest. "The Assembly's got a record of forgetting to do little things like that."
"You're not stupid, Livy. You know why we need him."
"Oh, I know." Damn this, but I wasn't going to keep standing like a hire-girl in the middle of my own parlor. I sat down on the chaperone sofa and rested my elbows on my knees. "When are you going to kill us, anyway?"
"I don't know what—" But he saw my face and quit that line in a hurry. "You're already outside the law."
And a stain on the robe of Liberty. Yeah, I remembered. "Come and talk to me when you have something to say. Now go teach the plebes how to play with their toys."
He spat on the glass of the nearest display. "They like him, you know."
"And they like you."
"Yeah. Your point?"
Two points, actually—his sharp little canine teeth, bared by the tug of his thin gray lips. "Which of you do you think they like more?"
That got me, but not the way he'd meant it. I let him get all the way to the door before I threw my dart.
"They shouldn't have to choose, you know."
Some philosophe had said that, that children shouldn't have to choose between the nourishing parent and the loving one. I don't know if Jaque understood me, but he slammed the door loud enough to shake the flowers in their glass.
If I wasn't careful, it was going to become a routine.
I got up at dawn—typically to the sound of Gaude snoring on my sofa—and went down to Walischa's Bakery, where they gave me a batch of day-old rolls for a quarter-penny each. I gave the rolls to the kids down by Philomel's Park—some would eat them, some would sell them to the shop-girls for a halfpenny. Sometimes I saved one for myself, but the heat did nasty things to my appetite. Halfway through Messidor I wasn't eating much more than fruit.
Then I checked in on my warders, making sure the pipes were working and the shops were paying and the kids had enough to eat. Sometimes I collected rent; other times I gave loans.
And I kept running into Sylvain.
I don't know who tipped him off, or else how he guessed, that he could find me down in Olimpia. I don't even know if it was me he was looking for. But he showed up like a wine stain, in all the weirdest places. Philomel's Park, where I was handing out rolls. Saint Banbury's Cemetery, where I was checking up on a warder who'd taken a job as a gravedigger. Even the jewelry shop where I'd stopped to buy a hairpin that didn't have anything at all to do with being Boss Livy.
Like I said, I don't know if it was because of me. He talked to everybody—bought rolls from the kids, flirted with the shop-girls, even left hyacinths and delphinium on the graves at Saint Banbury's. He wasn't acting like the Assembly's toy. He was acting like a ward boss.
But not a boss like Gaude, who did what she had to and kept Acacey in her clumsy hands but wouldn't go an inch farther, and not like Camden, who once had a woman shot because she couldn't pay rent—and not even a boss like me, who argued with Gaude and got frustrated with the Varlows' accent and sometimes bought ruby hairpins with rent money. He managed the people perfectly and didn't even seem aware that he was doing it.
"What did you want to be?" I asked one day as we walked through the hedge maze in the park. I didn't like mazes but he did, and besides, it was the only path that wasn't hot enough to melt my shoes. "Before you became king, I mean."
"I don't know," he said. "I never really thought about it. It wasn't as if—" He broke off with a soft laugh, like pebbles rolling against each other. "It wasn't as if I had options. I'm an orphan, you know—no kind of family at all. The ward boss found jobs for me, but nothing…pleasant. And it wasn't like I had any kind of skills. I liked to think." He smiled so brilliantly it hurt. "But I was never any good at it."
"Philosophe."
"No." He said it gently, but there was an edge to it. "Poor boys don't become philosophers."
"No, they just become kings."
He laughed at that. We turned a corner and found ourselves in the center of the maze, where a gazebo covered in blue moss looked like a pillar holding up the sky. We sat on the bench inside and tossed pebbles into the green lily-ponds. It was real easy, times like that, to forget that we were going to kill each other.
Camden sent me a letter on 28 Messidor.
Darling Livy, it said in pretty sprawly letters, it has not escaped my attention that His Majesty is still a fucking pain in our collective neck. How much longer are you going to wait to remedy this situation?
Yeah, you can bet on the answer.
Too fucking long.
So I opened the door, and there was Gaude looking like a hot and sticky pastry, and I was just thinking now where have I heard this one before when I saw that she was crying.
"Shit, Gaude, what is it?" I stepped back to let her in—she'd claimed the parlor, after all—but she didn't move. "Camden wanting to see me again? Without you trying to jump him at every available opportunity?"
I swear I didn't see her fist move. All of a sudden there was this wet crunch, and my face was stabbing pain and a sheet of blood was sticky across my lips. I caught myself against the door frame and shook there as Gaude pulled out a yellow handkerchief and wiped the blood from her knuckles.
"Camden is in jail," she said, in the flattest voice I'd ever heard from her. "And your precious fucking little king is going to hang him."
"No," I said. Not because I didn't believe it, but because I had to say something.
Gaude's fist came up again, but half-heartedly, and this time I dodged it. "Yes," she said, again and again. "Yes, yes, yes. And it's your fucking fault, Livy. You're a fucking coward and it's all your fault!"
"I'll talk to the King," I said quickly. "It's the Assembly that's pulling this, not him. He's not going to hang Camden. He knows Eustache needs a boss."
"He doesn't know nothing about bosses, you fucking bitch. Why the fuck didn't you kill him? Why the fuck—"
I slapped her, because she was asking for it. It sobered her up some. "I'm going now," I said, and wiped my lips with my sleeve. "Keep your fat ass in this room and don't open the door for anybody until I get home. Do you hear me?"
"Yeah, I hear you," Gaude said.
"Good," I said. Not that it was but, well, let's just say I ain't stupid. I know when a house is on fire, and just then the flames were about to make a leap up to the roof.
Bribing your way into prison is a bad idea. I mean, really bad, like hand-feeding a rabid dog. It's just too easy to close the door once it's open, and with you on the wrong side of it. And there's a reason the Assembly pays its guards like sin.
And it is the Assembly that pays them, so it would be an even worse idea to drop by with a personal note from the King. Which left me two options; either I shoot the guards—problematic in the extreme—or Camden experiences a religious conversion and calls for a Confessor.
Bless me, Saint Lalage patron of ward bosses, for I have fucked up awfully.
I'd got a friend—well, more like an acquaintance, but I needed her help and that made her a friend—who spent two or three years in a seminary before they caught her selling cherry flowers, as they say in Acacey. She got thrown out, but they let her keep the robe and hat and collar, and she let me borrow those no problem. I mean, she was curious as hell, but I couldn't help that.
So there I was, sweating the starch out of the collar and hoping my hair didn't flop out of the hat, because Confessors are supposed to cut back on worldly indulgences and apparently hair counts double, and here was this guard who was just about the biggest prick since the secretary in Hôtel Camus, and I was quite certain nothing worse could happen without getting a cannon involved somehow, when in popped Speaker Jaque.
"Shit," I said, real prayerfully.
"I have been ordered to prepare a report on the prisoner," he said. I noticed he was careful not to say who'd ordered him, which I guess was smart, because the guard was definitely in the Assembly's bag but Confessors used to hang on to the kings, and for all Jaque knew they'd taken up the old habit. And I guess the pricky guard felt like his game was up, because he said real grudgingly how the Confessor might as well accompany the Speaker to deal with the Boss—you could tell it rankled, having all those people in one sentence be a lot more powerful than him.
So Jaque and I went down the prison corridor, and I kept my head down and didn't say much more than a word, and it looked like everything was going to be just peachy wonderful when Jaque blurted out, "Are ear injuries like that common among Confessors, Boss Livy?"
I said something very un-Confessor-like and punched him in the nose.
My hits aren't as strong as Gaude's, but it was more than enough to take down ugly little Jaque. He crumpled like a handkerchief and I bailed for Camden's cell, which I at least had a key to now. Behind me Jaque was cursing like a sailor's granny and howling for the guard, but quiet enough that I didn't think anyone heard.
The lock was rusty, which would've made it great to pick but really was shit for the poor key, and by the time I got the door open Camden looked about ready to rush me. His clothes were torn and a little bloody, and I didn't like to think what it'd taken to make his arm hang like that, but his face said he was more than ready to kill somebody if that's what it took to get out of there.
"Shit, Camden, it's me," I said. He didn't really relax, but at least he looked less ready to kill somebody. "I'm going to bust you out, but I had a bit of a run-in with Speaker Jaque and—"
And I never got to finish that sentence because all of a sudden I had a pistol between my shoulder blades. The pricky guard seemed to have dug up about fifty pricky friends and they were all aiming at me. Like I said, I'm not a gambler, but those aren't exactly what you'd call close odds.
"Congratulations, Boss," somebody said. It might've been the first prick, but once you get into it they all really sound the same. "Looks like you've got yourself a cellmate."
"Next time I want a king dead," Camden said, "I'm going to hire a plebe lynch mob and leave you down in Olimpia where you belong."
Nice going, Camden. Pretend like there'll be a next time. Everything's easier if you don't admit you know the truth.
"The sheer brilliance of it all," he continued, "is that they don't even need to hold a trial. The King can just snap his fingers and have us dead."
"He won't," I said, just for the sake of arguing. "He knows me."
"Not as Boss Livy, I'll bet. And besides, do you really think they're going to give him a choice?"
"But it's murder." I slammed my fists into the wall of the cell. It hurt, but not as bad as I wanted it to. "The Assembly's going to kill us, and then they're going to kill the King. And they'll hand-pick another scapegoat and the whole damn cycle will keep repeating—"
"Shut up, Livy. They're not going to kill the King because you're going to do that."
Well, he couldn't tell me to shut up and then pull out the carpet like that. "Shit, Camden, how?"
His face told me I was a shithead to have to ask, but we were both crammed in that hot little cell and bleeding nastily and, well, once you get into it like that it takes more than an ugly face to hurt your feelings. Camden tossed his hair like a barmaid and leaned back against the wall. "You'll demand to see the King. Say the guards are forcing themselves on you or something and you need to get out."
I raised my eyebrows. I mean, I'm no expert on how guards think, but if I was going to force myself on one of us, Camden was real easy the prettier one. "Alright, supposing that ridiculous plan works, do you really think the Assembly's going to say shucky darn, looks like the King's dead and now we can't kill the bosses? They aren't that stupid."
"No, they're that smart. Do you know how good a pardon looks to the plebes?"
He probably wanted to say more, but he made a too vigorous gesture and had to swallow this creepy little scream as it opened one of the gashes on his shoulders. I stopped being mad at him long enough to clean up the blood, and then long enough to think about what he'd said.
And in the end, when one of the pricks opened the door to see what all the fuss was about, I said I wanted to see the King.
Turns out Camden was smarter than I gave him credit for. There's this law on the books that basically everybody'd forgotten about, and it says that any condemned prisoner "of adequate rank" can get an audience with the King if they holler for it. So I hollered good and hard, and everybody got to concluding that a ward boss counted towards adequate rank, and they whisked me on up to the Assembly rooms so fast I didn't have a chance to kiss Camden goodbye. Not that I would've, but if things got knotty enough I'd probably never see him again, and it would've been nice to at least work in a handshake.
The Assembly rooms were flashy, but it was still the opening blow of Thermidor and they weren't any cooler than the prison. The walls were sage green, pretty but kind of stuffy, and the pictures were all these real dark portraits of fat men and women in heavy dark clothes. And I got to memorize just about every inch of them; just because the Assembly's going to follow some dusty old book law doesn't mean they're going to be fast about it.
I was sitting in an undersized armchair—leather, too, which does some pretty twisted stuff in Thermidor—when the King finally showed up, and I nearly flew into his arms before I remembered that he didn't know Boss Livy and it would be a bad time to let on to who I was. And no, I don't know why I thought that, why I thought it mattered what the King thought of Livia. I'm just a shithead, I guess.
Sylvain stared at me for a good few seconds before getting out of the doorway so a small tribe of Assemblymen could come in. You could tell what they were thinking, and it was somewhere along the line of oh shit, please don't let him know and like this bitch because a royal pardon's going to throw one nasty wrench into the machine.
It was funny in its own way, how everthing'd be fine if only Sylvain stopped making the people happy. But that was like hoping we'd all wake up one day and find the sky a pretty shade of green. Sylvain was the kind of king everybody wanted back when they'd hung Bastian; now we had Sylvain, and I'd've given anything to be dealing with Parsifal the Flesh-Eater.
Sylvain turned to the Assemblymen and said, his voice like hot coals, "Why has this woman been arrested?"
"Impersonating a Confessor," I offered, just to see what the Speakers would do. Jaque wasn't among them, and that suited me just fine.
One of them—I think she was Gaude's age, but the wig made it hard to tell—spat on the rug at my feet. "Damn Confessors," she said—a real Assembly-like statement. "She's a ward boss, Livy of Olimpia."
Sylvain didn't look at me, just tilted his head like what the Speaker'd said was in the right language but didn't make any sense. Ma'am Varlow made that motion a lot. "I wasn't aware that either was a capital crime."
"Ward bosses exploit the people for money and political power," someone else said. "They hold every official and unofficial position in the city."
"We don't have the Assembly yet," I said, because we didn't. They all twitched a little.
"I don't care if they're making a bid for the crown," Sylvain said. He looked at me over his shoulder, just for a second, and turned back to the speakers. "I told you at my coronation that I refused to order executions."
Well, there was an unexpected twist. I breathed a little easier for all of a second before the woman who'd spat at me dropped out the trapdoor.
"Yes, well, the people don't know that, do they?"
"You can hang her," Sylvain said, his voice a little quieter than before. "Just don't put my name on it."
"Yes, you cowards, let's see you kill me on your own." I sat back in my armchair, smooth as a queen. "Let's see how the plebes like it when you hang the only people who care about them. Think they'll feel bad when they find out your little toy king didn't wind up to your orders?"
"Oh," somebody said. You could tell it was involuntary, like they hadn't thought I could put all those pieces together for myself.
"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that," a man by the window said. He reminded me of Camden but red where Camden was gold. Little wisps of red hair stuck out from under his wig, and his cuffs were trimmed with red lace, like he'd slit his wrists and was slowly bleeding to death. "His Majesty is perfectly capable of following orders."
I jumped up and took a step forward. Sylvain took a step back, and we were right on a level, and he looked at me out of the corner of his eye and froze. My heart just sank. There was a paper knife on the desk behind me, and I knew I could reach it in time, wondered if the Assembly would let me go if I just threatened to kill their scapegoat—
"I'm not afraid of you," Sylvain said, and his voice stopped my thinking like a brick wall, it was that hard. "You can lock me away in that dungeon for as long as you like, I'm not going to sign a death warrant."
"Yes, but no one's going to look twice at the warrant for a ward boss. They'll never know whose signature it really is."
They had us trapped. I did the only thing I could.
I pointed out the window behind them and screamed bloody-murder.
Damn cheap trick, but it works surprisingly good. They were all distracted for about three seconds, just long enough for me to grab the knife from the table and shove it down my bodice.
"Sylvain," I hissed. "Take me to your rooms."
He looked from the window to me, and smiled in a sort of vague congratulations. Nice job, Livy, you tricked the shitheads. Now came the hard part.
A bead of sweat dripped down my neck, followed the blade of the knife in my bodice all the way down to my stomach. And sat there, blue-cold in the heat.
The Assemblymen were pissed. Pissed that they'd fallen for my stupid trick, and pissed that Sylvain was acting like a king when they'd just told him not to. But they'd made the rules, and the rules said that if the King wanted to have a girl in his rooms alone it was his prerogative to do so. They'd probably hoped that particular rule would set him hell-bent on rape and wickedness but, well, you take what you can get. And right now the best they could hope for was that we'd smother each other with the pillows.
So they escorted us up to his bedchamber in the Hôtel Camus and stationed a fucking pack of guards at the door, and Sylvain and I stood on the other side and tried to act like it wasn't the most fucking awkward thing in the world. I mean, they didn't actually think the King had just been overcome with lust for a woman several years his senior, but they didn't know why he'd brought me here and that made them the kind of uncomfortable that just seems to seep into everything around it.
So there we were, standing in the doorway of his gorgeous bedroom with its purple wallpaper and eggshell-blue couches and deep cobalt curtains, and there was the paper knife against my skin like a slab of ice, and I think I'd finally reached the point where I knew Camden was right. I was going to hang, along with Camden and half the ward bosses in the city, unless Sylvain wasn't there for the Assembly to pin its death warrants to. Of course, they might also arrest me for killing the King, but at least then I could claim revolutionary fervor or something in my defense.
Oh, yes, there were a lot of reasons to kill a King.
I put a finger across his lips. "Sylvain, we don't have much time. I just want to ask you one thing."
"Anything. Livia, Livy, I'm so sorry—"
"Why did you invite me to visit you?"
He looked at me blankly, took my hand away from his lips and stared at it as if the answer was hidden there, like the palm readers in Acacey used to say. I moved my other hand to the opening at my collar, so my fingers were just inches from the knife.
"At the horse festival on 1 Messidor," I said. "I asked you your name and you wouldn't tell me, just invited me to visit you. It must have been the first time you saw me, so why—"
"It wasn't the first time I saw you," he said.
I raised my eyebrows like Camden. "It wasn't?"
"No. I saw you from this window, standing beneath the lamppost. A lot of people came those first few days, but you—you were always there. You acted so strangely when you knew I was watching, but when you didn't…" He shrugged. "I followed you to Olimpia one time. It was late and everyone else had already gone. You stopped at an apothecary on the way home and bought a package of licorice, then brought it to one of the tenements and told the landlord to give it to all the children. Then you were gone, and I asked the landlord what your name was. He said Boss Livy."
"Shit," I said. He'd known who I was all along.
"I was surprised that you kept up the act," he said. "Swooning whenever I looked at you and all that. But then, when I found you at the Rivermill, you were acting like yourself. And I admired you, really admired you, for the way you bought food for the children and checked in on your warders' employers and all those other things. I knew you were a ward boss. But you were acting the way I imagined a king should act."
"Sylvain," I whispered. There were fucking tears in my eyes but he was still holding my hand, and I didn't want to break that grip to wipe them away.
"I'm sorry, Livy," he said. "I didn't want to embarrass you. I just wanted you to know—"
But I couldn't take anymore. I pulled my hand away and kissed him, not a lover's kiss but a hard, cruel, angry kiss that drew blood. I hated so much. I hated Camden for what he'd asked me to do, and I hated the Assembly for making it necessary, and I hated Sylvain for not deserving it. I hated myself, too, more than the rest of them combined.
But I took the knife out of my bodice, and I drove it up into his chest.
He made a little noise against my lips and shoved me away, so hard that I struck my head on the wall and fell crumpled up on the floor. Blood dripped down his pure white shirt, and there was so much of it, so much that I couldn't see the blue room anymore, just all that red blood.
Sylvain pulled the knife out of him—so much blood, but it hadn't really gone that deep, just the tip was dripping and dark—and he threw it at the floor in front of me.
"I'm sorry," I said, and it actually got out, even though my throat felt like it was choking full of blood. "I'm so fucking sorry, but it was the only way. They're going to make you kill us so that the people hate you, and that's stupid and fucked up because the people know how good you are, they know how much you care for them, and I'm just so fucking sorry I could choke."
He said nothing, just went over to the windows and ripped off a strip of curtain. He pressed it over the wound and stood there, looking out onto the street, while the blood soaked into the fabric. But it was dark blue fabric, and the blood hardly showed against it.
"Those people need us," I said. "If it was just me I would've knotted the noose myself, honest, but half my warders are immigrants and all of them are poor, and they do what they can but the Assembly won't listen to them unless they have the ward bosses to back them. And I know that doesn't change anything and I'm still a fucking monster—"
"No," he said. His voice was strong, not even burbling, and when he lifted the curtain from his chest I saw that the blood was drying and brown, and the wound on his chest had already started to clot. "You missed, Livy."
He came across the room and knelt in front of me and ran his fingers through my hair, brushing the ear that Jaque's kid had nicked those years ago. "You've never killed a man with a knife, have you? It's not like pulling a trigger. That's something you learn when your ward boss is weak and you don't have any skills. They teach you to kill people." He kicked the knife away from us, and it was like the motion just ripped a sob from his chest. "And if you're good enough at that, the Assembly figures you might be enough of a monster to be king."
I held him and let him sob into my shoulder. Now that the curtain was torn, a cool breeze wafted in through the window—the window that was also a door. And there I was holding him, holding him like he was the only precious thing in the world, and he was clinging to me like the orphan he was, and both of us knew all too well how soon we had to let go.
The Assembly pardoned Camden and me, of course. Said the King had flipped his head, tried to condemn these two beloved leaders, and some of the plebes believed them and hated Sylvain, but most of them called it a pack of lies and kept right on hating the Assembly. Which was good insofar as it was right, but it didn't change the fact that the Assembly was spewing shit about Sylvain and he wasn't there to stop them.
And that was something else I didn't like, how nobody seemed to wonder where the King had gone. I mean, the Assembly had asked—it's kind of a no-brainer when you come into a room full of blood and one less person than you'd locked in there—but even they didn't seem like they cared. Next thing you know, they're spinning stories to explain the whole mess and that's that.
So I was angry, but I got around it enough to look after my warders and kick Gaude and her flowers out of my parlor and even visit Camden once or twice. I didn't tell him what Sylvain had told me about what his ward boss made him do—though I knew Camden would just die from it, that here he was trying to make a ward boss into an assassin when her hit had actually been in the trade. Yeah, real funny. I think I was starting to understand irony.
Autumn kind of peaked its head into the middle of Thermidor, like now that the King was gone there was no reason for summer to stick around. I was fine with that. For a while, it suited my mood.
And no, I really don't know where Sylvain went when he stepped through his window-door and out into the blue. But sometimes I order a batch of day-old rolls from Walischa's Bakery and old Papa Walischa says take 'em, they've already been paid for. Sometimes I check in on a tenement and find that someone's already been there with medicine and new clothes and books for the kids. And sometimes when I walk through Saint Banbury's Cemetery I see bundles of hyacinth on the graves, and they are gorgeous and blue as the big summer sky.
© Copyright 2010 Megan Arkenberg
Read Comments on this Story (3 Comments)
Megan Arkenberg's work has appeared in Lightspeed, Asimov's, Shimmer, multiple times previously in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and in Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year. She has edited the fantasy e-zine Mirror Dance since 2008. She currently lives in Northern California, where she's pursuing a Ph.D. in English literature. Visit her online at www.meganarkenberg.com.
If you liked this story, you may also like:
"Kreisler's Automata" by Matthew David Surridge
"The Territorialist" by Yoon Ha Lee
Return to Issue #59
Leave a comment on "The Summer King"
| January 10, 2011 at 3:43 pm
01-10-2011, 03:43 PM DgB A very fun story! I especially enjoyed the sardonic edge to the overall feel. Happy to share an issue with you, Megan! - David
Adam Henry Sears
01-12-2011, 02:45 PM Adam Henry Sears Congrats. Hi, Megan. Congrats on a well-written piece. I truly enjoyed it. I have always found the first person narrative a little less favourable, but that's just my opinion. Besides, you handled it bravely and made it Livy's own. I must also hand you a job well done on the creation of the backdrop for the story. It seems to tie in so completely with the mood and the circumstance. I am particularly satisfied with the ending. It's great to see a student becoming successful with her work. Again, congrats on the job well done, and have a great day. Good luck with the next semester.
01-12-2011, 03:57 PM Adam Henry Sears Thoroughly yes, thoroughly enjoyed. I know I already posted here, but, my bad, I did it before I registered. :P Oops.
Background & Cover Art © Wolfgang Wachelhofer


text:
Springfield to Mazonia
Former SP (SPCSL) from (WR Tower and) Springfield to Mazonia (and Plaines)
The line runs along a street through the center of town, with speed limit 15-10 mph, past the Springfield passenger station on the east side of the line (MP 185.1), just south of a former flat crossing with an erstwhile Big Four line (now an alley), and turns northeast, with speed limit rising to 25 mph at MP 184.7, past a grade crossing just north of the depot, a grade crossing, a grade crossing at Carpath Street, a grade crossing, a through girder bridge over a street, a grade crossing at 5th Street as the line angles north-northeast, a closed grade crossing (N-S Street), a grade crossing (E-W Street), 8th Street alongside to the east, a location where there was once a connector east to the IC line, a grade crossing over an East-West street and one over a North-South street whose intersection is immediately east of the line, a bridge over a north-south street, a grade crossing at Ridgely Street, with 11th Street just to the east of the line, and a 10,175 ft. east side siding at Ridgely ( CP X183, MP 182.9), where the former tower is now gone in 2012, the speed limit is 35-25, that IC line trails in from the south and a single track Chicago & Illinois Midland line heads north (on the west side), running alongside to the west before separating, with a yard on the northwest side of the main line and housing to the east, running into a wooded area to the west, north of the yard and the north end of the siding.
The line turns north, with speed limit now 79-60-50, except for 70-50 on curves at MP 182.1 and 181.8, past a bridge over a road, a grade crossing, a bridge over a river, a wooded area, a dirt track grade crossing, a bridge over a road, Intermediate Signals at MP 179.3, a grade crossing, and old divided road to the west, an angled road bridge overhead, and a grade crossing, and then north-northeast at Sherman (MP 177.6), where an Alton line once headed north, past a detector at MP 176.6, still with the old divided road alongside to the west, an Interstate highway coming alongside to the west, Intermediate Signals at MP 175.9, a dirt road to the west, a divided road grade crossing in a town, a dirt road to the west, the Interstate highway coming alongside to the west again, the 9,625 ft. west side siding at Elkhart (MP 167.3), with an angled dirt road grade crossing within the siding, extra track (an unnamed siding?) alongside to the west, with extra track and silos (with a critter, in 2012) to the west of that, a dirt road grade crossing, the Interstate highway beyond an old road, curving away and leaving the old road alongside to the west, a detector at Broadwell (MP 163.4), the Interstate returning, a dirt road grade crossing, the Interstate again beyond a road to the west, a grade crossing, a divided highway (not the Interstate) alongside to the west, and a bridge over a stream.
There are four grade crossings in Lincoln (the most northerly of which is Broadway Street), a former flat crossing with an IC line at MP 156.8, where the speed limit falls to 70-50, a spur (former northwest quadrant connector) trailing in from the west, the passenger station at Lincoln (MP 156.4), a small brick depot on the east side of the line, a grade crossing north of the station, two grade crossings, a flat crossing with an IC line at Athol (MP 155.7), after which the speed limit rises to 79-60-50 again, a bridge over a divided road, a divided road alongside to the east, a grade crossing, dual highway bridges overhead (I-55), a grade crossing, I-55 alongside to the east, Intermediate Signals at Kruger, a grade crossing, a road bridge overhead, a grade crossing, a detector at MP 147.6, Lawndale, Atlanta (MP 145.8), where there was once a flat crossing with the IT, a grade crossing in town, a bridge over drainage, a grade crossing, Intermediate Signals and a detector at MP 141.9, the 12,430 ft. east side siding at McLean (MP 140.9), with two grade crossings in town, a street alongside to the east, and a grade crossing within the siding, the highway alongside to the east again, a dirt track grade crossing, a bridge over a stream, two dirt track grade crossings, Funks Grove, a detector at MP 133.8, the highway moves away, a road alongside to the east, a road bridge overhead, Brackens Siding, the highway returns, Intermediate Signals at Shirley, an embankment, a bridge over a road, a cutting, a road bridge overhead, dual road bridges overhead (I-55/74), two grade crossings, an embankment, a cutting, a road bridge overhead, and a bridge over a street.
At Bloomington (MP 126.6), there is a spur west to a Cargill Elevator (once another Alton line to the west), another NS crossing, this time of the ex-Wabash Kansas City line that also hosted the former Peoria & Eastern line, with a connector in the north quadrant, by the closed passenger depot on the west side (demolished by 2012?), and a grade crossing. The speed limit falls to 20 mph between the old station and MP 126.3, past grain silos on the west side, an ex-SP (former Alton) yard, rising to 40-25 thereafter, past a street alongside to the east, a road bridge overhead, a bridge over a street, a bridge over a canal, two bridges over streets, a grade crossing, a bridge over a divided street, a bridge over a street, a closed grade crossing, and a grade crossing.
At Normal (MP 125.6), where there was once a flat crossing with the original IC main line due north (i.e., not to Chicago), of which just a spur to the north remains, Amtrak's modern "Bloomington" depot on the east side of the line is adjacent to the Illinois State University campus, mostly on the west side of the line, where a new two-storey Transportation Center and a new platform is being built on the west side in January 2012. The campus continues past a grade crossing just north of the station area, a grade crossing with a divided street, a grade crossing, north-facing signals, two road bridges overhead, and a grade crossing..
From Bloomington to Joliet, the line runs parallel to historic Route 66 (as well as I-55, which is now separate from old US 66), initially heading northeast, with speed limit reverting to 79-60-50 at MP 123.8, past Towanda, which has grain silos east of the track, a grade crossing, more grain silos, and a grade crossing in town, a bridge over a stream, a grade crossing, a detector at MP 115.1, a road bridge overhead, Lexington, where it turns north-northeast, a grade crossing, a bridge over a stream, a grade crossing, rail-served grain silos on the east side, a grade crossing, the 11,440 ft. siding at Ballard (MP 105.6), with a grade crossing, a bridge over a stream, and a road bridge overhead, within the siding, a grade crossing, a closed grade crossing, a dirt track grade crossing, a dirt road grade crossing, Chenoa (MP 102.3), a grade crossing, grain silos on the east side, a grade crossing, and a flat crossing with the TP&W.
There is a grade crossing, a road alongside to the east, two grade crossings, a bridge over drainage, a dirt track grade crossing, a grade crossing, a dirt track grade crossing, a grade crossing, rail-served grain silos on the east side, a bridge over a river, Intermediate Signals and a detector at Ocoya (MP 96.6), a grade crossing, the 11,770 ft. west side siding at Pontiac (MP 91.9), where the speed limit is briefly 60-40 on a curve, with a grade crossing, a bridge over drainage, and a grade crossing within the siding, a grade crossing in town, a bridge over a river, a grade crossing, Pontiac passenger station with depot on the east side, there were once flat crossings with IC and Wabash branches, a grade crossing north of the depot, two grade crossings, a spur heading northeast, a grade crossing, and a large RR Donnelley printing plant on the east side that receives paper and ship printed product by rail over this line.
The line continues past a bridge over drainage, a grade crossing, Intermediate Signals, a grade crossing, a spur on the east side at Cayuga, with a wye to large grain silos, a grade crossing, more grain silos on the east side, Intermediate Signals, the 12,760 ft. east side siding at Odell (MP 81.7), with a road bridge overhead, a dirt road grade crossing, and extra track on the east side within the siding, grain silos on the east side and three grade crossings in Odell, a detector at MP 80.2, two grade crossings, a bridge over a stream, Intermediate Signals, a grade crossing, a road bridge overhead, three grade crossings, and the 12,375 ft. west side siding at Dwight (MP 73.6), where there are grain silos on the east side, two grade crossings, an Alton branch once trailed in from the west, a restored depot on the west side of the line at the passenger station, a grade crossing, extra track on the east side, and a flat crossing with the ex-NYC Streator line. Dwight also has a large RR Donnelley printing plant that receive paper and ship printed product by rail over this line.
From Dwight, it is just a short step past a grade crossing, extra track on the east side, a dirt road grade crossing, a grade crossing, Intermediate Signals, two grade crossings, two dirt track grade crossings, a road bridge overhead, a grade crossing, Intermediate Signals at Gardner, where the Kankakee & Seneca railway once crossed on the flat, a dirt road grade crossing, two grade crossings in Gardner, old grain silos on the east side, a grade crossing, more grain silos on the east side, a grade crossing in town, a grade crossing, a road alongside to the east, a detector at MP 62.8, and a bridge over a river, to Mazonia (CP X063, MP 62.6), where an EJ&E line once headed north, and the former Alton Route splits into two portions, once run as paired track, one heading north to Pequot and one heading northeast.


Developing workplace communication skills is often a challenging undertaking for many newcomers. It takes time, effort and dedication to master English communication and language skills. By attending ACCES's Talk English Café® and Language for Workplace Connections program, newcomers improve their English language skills, learn the art of making small talk and how to build relationships with their colleagues and managers. ACCES's programs provide the opportunity for many newcomers to practice their communication and language skills in a relaxed setting under the direction of a qualified English as a Second Language (ESL) instructor.
Language for Workplace Connections™ helps participants to develop their workplace communication skills in multiple areas.
ACCES offers drop-in sessions in person and online led by an instructor where you can engage in guided discussion and conversation with other participants.
This is a sector-specific language program tailored to internationally-trained engineering professionals. The program supports you to enhance your knowledge of technical terminology and writing skills with a focus on the engineering sector. Participants also learn job search skills that support their entry into the engineering field, commensurate with their skills and education.


text:
Q: Getting an error trying to json.load Python I am trying to make some program to tell me which lesson I have at a certain time and day.
To make it work, I put my schedule in a json file (the numbers correspond to the day number).
{
    "1": [
        "french",
        "french",
        "yearit",
        "geography",
        "hebrew",
        "shelah",
        "science",
        ""
    ],
    "2": [
        "sports",
        "literature",
        "math rotem",
        "geography",
        "hebrew",
        "hebrew",
        "science",
        "yearit"
    ],
    "3": [
        "yearit",
        "english",
        "math gila",
        "english",
        "yizhak",
        "yizhak",
        "",
        ""
    ],
    "4": [
        "english",
        "math gila",
        "science",
        "math rotem",
        "sports",
        "literature",
        "science",
        "science"
    ],
    "5": [
        "life skills",
        "yizhak",
        "french",
        "yizhak",
        "math gila",
        "italian",
        "italian",
        "math gila"
    ],
    "6": [
        "yizhak",
        "english",
        "english",
        "math gila",
        "science",
        "",
        "",
        ""
    ],
    "7": [
        "",
        "",
        "",
        "",
        "",
        "",
        "",
        "",
    ],
}

I used this code to turn it into a python dictionary:
import json
with open('schedule.json', 'r') as f:
    schedule = json.load(f)

print(schedule)

But it gave me this error message:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\user\Desktop\everything\coding lol\Python\CheckZoom\test.py", line 3, in <module>
    schedule = json.load(f)
  File "C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\json\__init__.py", line 293, in load
    return loads(fp.read(),
  File "C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\json\__init__.py", line 346, in loads
    return _default_decoder.decode(s)
  File "C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\json\decoder.py", line 337, in decode
    obj, end = self.raw_decode(s, idx=_w(s, 0).end())
  File "C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\json\decoder.py", line 355, in raw_decode
    raise JSONDecodeError("Expecting value", s, err.value) from None
json.decoder.JSONDecodeError: Expecting value: line 71 column 2 (char 721)

How can I solve this error? Any help appreciated.

A: As @buran pointed out, you have extra commas at the end of the file, specifically here:
    "7": [
        "",
        "",
        "",
        "",
        "",
        "",
        "",
        "", # this is an extra comma
    ], # this is an extra comma
}

But the file can still be processed by using the ast.literal_eval method:
import ast

with open('schedule.json', 'r') as f:
    text = f.read()
schedule = ast.literal_eval(text)
print(schedule)

Prints:
{'1': ['french', 'french', 'yearit', 'geography', 'hebrew', 'shelah', 'science', ''], '2': ['sports', 'literature', 'math rotem', 'geography', 'hebrew', 'hebrew', 'science', 'yearit'], '3': ['yearit', 'english', 'math gila', 'english', 'yizhak', 'yizhak', '', ''], '4': ['english', 'math gila', 'science', 'math rotem', 'sports', 'literature', 'science', 'science'], '5': ['life skills', 'yizhak', 'french', 'yizhak', 'math gila', 'italian', 'italian', 'math gila'], '6': ['yizhak', 'english', 'english', 'math gila', 'science', '', '', ''], '7': ['', '', '', '', '', '', '', '']}

A: Share an example of oneline style
import json
from pathlib import Path

schedule = json.loads(Path('schedule.json').read_text())

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Friday 22 Feb is the last day of History Week…meet some of the troops and learn about life in both the First and Second World Wars. Look at a vast collection of weapons and hear about life on the Home Front and climb in "Poppy" the American Willy's Jeep.
Step back in time and enjoy a full day of historical activities!
Read and reflect at the Peace Project Exhibition produced by local Home Educated students that will be on display in the museum's learning space.
This is a FREE event suitable for the whole family. All children must be accompanied by an adult.
Enjoy lunch at Clara's Café with lunch box specials for children!
Fancy a different start to your Friday night out?
Then join us at Weston Museum's bar for a Lego and Beer Night.
The rules are simple: grab a drink. Build a Lego catapult. See who can fire it the furthest.
Tickets are £6 and can be obtained from the Museum.
Weston Museums latest Community Gallery exhibition relates to the Spanish Civil War.
In celebration of it's launch we shall be hosting an evening of Spanish music and dancing.
For tickets either call: 01934 621028 or pop into the museum.
Try your luck at our monthly quiz night; learn a little about your local history and have a laugh at the same time.
The quiz includes a mystery object round, so whilst you're enjoying your drink from our bar of locally sourced drinks and nibbles, you can also have a guess at a selection of historical objects and replicas.
Only £5 to enter a team (of up to five people) and there is a prize for the winning team. Numbers are limited so you can book in advance to guarantee your team a slot, but if there is space then we won't turn you away on the night.
Doors open at 6:30pm for a 7:30pm start.
Any questions? Just give the team a call or send us an email.
Join UCW for a host of completely free events and exhibitions across Weston from Friday 15th March until Friday 12th April.
The UCW Arts Festival is celebrating the best in design, art, photography, film making, performance and music at UCW for a whole month! The programme includes the first chance to see the Alt UCW graphic design collective's touring show and buy their great prints, exhibitions by our Photography in Practice and Contemporary Art and Professional Studies students, screenings of our Film and Media Arts Production students' work, and fantastic performances by our Dance for Commercial Performance, Musical Theatre, Performing Arts and Professional Music students.
Weston Museum, Burlington Street – Friday 15th March to Friday 22nd March.
Opening night event on Friday 15th March from 6pm to 8pm.
LT Gallery, Orchard Street – Friday 15th March to Tuesday 9th April (staff show from 15th March to 26th March / student show from 26th March to 9th April).
UCW Visual Arts event on Friday 29th March from 6pm to 8pm.
Loves Café, West Street – Tuesday 19th March to Friday 12th April.
Opening night event on Thursday 21st March from 6pm to 10pm.
Closing night event on Friday 12th April from 6pm to 10pm.
Old Town Quarry Gallery, South Road – Wednesday 20th March to Wednesday 27th March.
Opening night event on Friday 22nd March from 5pm to 7.30pm.
This month's subject is The Spanish Civil War by Margaret Stewart-Fisher.
Join Lizzie at Weston Museum for a fun filled, interactive workshop using the most natural, luxurious and sustainable make up range in Europe – Zao.
You will be handed a make – up consultation sheet and there will a small introdcution slot for TKLS and the range – then straight in to practical using Lizzie's kit and tools.
You will be encouraged to bring along any of your own make up too, as well as any brushes and a small towel.
Pick up some new techniques, get some questions answered about 100% natural make up and the differences between it and mainstream brands, try out the products and learn some new skills.
Team up with other people to discover a braver more adventurous side to your make up journey, whether that is adding some new colour to your pallette or wearing eyeliner for the first time ever – there is something for everyone at TKLS Zao Make – Up Workshops.
The tickets are only £12.50 each and you can bring a friend, make an evening of it and enjoy the time to yourself, being kind to you and your skin too!
You will each take home a 10% off products voucher and a few samples.
Among Asian philosophies, Zen Buddhism and Taoism both have a philosophy of respecting nature. Thus ZAO is a combination of Zen and Tao.
ZAO has developed 100% natural formulas enriched with active organic ingredients to enhance your skin's natural beauty. Certified organic by Ecocert, this brand is free from all toxic chemicals including parabens, instead using micronised silver as a preservative. Let yourself be seduced by luminous colours and textures combining comfort and long lasting hold. An innovative product presented in a modern and botanical material: bamboo. ZAO products get a negative carbon footprint as a carbon storage material.
Thanks to an easy and inventive system, most of our products are refillable. You can free your creativity by trying our numerous colours in a playful and economical way. For more sustainability, bamboo items are encased in a classy pouch to protect the product packaging. Besides reducing of costs and packaging induced by our system, it also enables you to rotate shades very easily to match your seasonal desires. Nothing is easier! All you need is several refills to give free rein to your creativity!
– cruelty free makeup brand with no testing on animals (neither for ingredients nor finished products), as certified by Cruelty Free International.
– some products are gluten free, as labelled in the Range and Shop section of the website.
Looking for the perfect gift for Mother's Day? Look no further than the Weston Museum Craft Fair!
With local businesses and traders, Clara's Café, an Easter Trail and more – there's something for everyone!
If anyone is interested in having a stall at the Craft Fair, please email sophie.sanford@wsm-tc.gov.uk for more information.


besides a strong support for ruling party AKP, The Economist introduced a new concept by calling AKP "mildly islamist" as well as "moderate islamists".
i follow dr.pipes terminology ie. moderates vs islamists. from this perspective Economist ended up with oxymorons.
can we have dr.pipes take on this.
Yes, "moderate Islamist" is akin to "moderate Nazi" - not a very reassuring concept.


EnC Is Back—but in All Versions?
Check out the likely differences and similarities in editions of Microsoft's upcoming Whidbey development environment for Visual Basic, C++, C#, and J# with tech journalist Jacqueline Emigh.
Like its predecessors, the next edition of Visual Studio, codenamed Whidbey, will not be a monolithic entity. Microsoft's overriding vision for Whidbey calls for many commonalities, including greater simplicity, increased communications among developers, support for an enhanced .NET Framework, and integration with the next edition of Microsoft SQL Server, codenamed Yukon, to cite a few examples.
However, feature sets could vary substantially among the Visual Basic (VB), C#, C++, and J# editions of Whidbey, officials said during the recent VSLive! developers' conference in New York City. Moreover, final decisions on some features may not come until much closer to Whidbey's slated release date of 2004.
Microsoft hopes to use Whidbey to help build .NET market share on both the SMB and enterprise sides of the fence. One goal is to provide "appropriate simplification," to give "small and medium businesses increased developer and IT satisfaction," maintained Eric Rudder, senior vice president of Microsoft's Developer Platform & Evangelism Division, in a keynote at the event.
Microsoft's enterprise pitch touches largely on .NET Framework improvements such as support for the latest Web services, smoother ASP.NET Web app development, and new functionality for device-based development.
"Web services is not a 'rip and replace' strategy. It complements what you already have," Rudder told developers during VSLive!.
According to Rudder, Microsoft has used feedback from its Customer Councils to try to build a Whidbey environment that meets the needs of many different breeds of .NET developers.
"VB developers tend to be very RAD (rapid application development)–focused," elaborated Ari Bixhorn, Microsoft's product manager for VS.NET, during an interview at VSLive!. "C++ developers, on the other hand, are often building components that can be reused by other developers."
Microsoft has posted its full product roadmap for Whidbey on the Web. Here, though, is a snapshot of some of the most important new features in various versions of the new product, accompanied by some of Microsoft's commentary during the developers' show.
Microsoft is looking at a number of simplification tools for the VB edition. In demos at VSLive!, for example, Bixhorn showed "snap lines" for making sure controls are aligned, as well as point-and-click templates for automatically inserting code for common programming routines. Right now, Microsoft expects to include snap lines in both the VB and C# editions of Whidbey, Bixhorn said.
Another new tool for Basic is "a debugger that works like a spell checker," according to Bixhorn. Let's say you misspell Boolean, for example. You'll be prompted by a "smart tag" that there's an error in the code. If you click on the smart tag, you can find out how to fix the error.


Watch our THE ROOM ON RUE AMELIE Book Trailer!
If you're a fan of historical fiction then hold on to your beret because we've got your next favorite read right here! From the bestselling author of The Sweetness of Forgetting comes The Room on Rue Amelié. This heartfelt and hopeful story tells the tale of an American woman, a British RAF pilot, and a young Jewish teenager whose lives intersect in occupied Paris during the tumultuous days of World War II. We hope you don't have plans when you sit down with this book on March 27th, because you won't be able to stop until you turn the last page! Check out this gorgeous book trailer to learn more.


It's that time of year when we make resolutions. This tip is to help your new goals stick.
Think about something you wanted to do, but didn't: go to the gym, clean the garage, write a thank-you note. Why didn't it happen? Chances are, your powers of rationalization were so strong, you talked yourself out of doing it. "I'm too tired, the garage isn't really that bad, or it can get done tomorrow".
The way around this is to make your goal specific. "I will go to the gym at 6 am and I'll put my shoes by the door." Or, "I will clean the left wall of the garage on Saturday at 2 pm." Having the specifics makes it more concrete and harder for your brain to argue.
What goals have you agreed on with your team? This tip can help at work, too. Give your team specific outcomes so they can argue with their brains better. Ask them how they will accomplish the goal, so they can map out the path to their success.


Yesterday I mentioned a purchase while visiting The End in Yucca Valley. This is a vintage purchase and, in fact, a one of a kind piece. As I was rummaging through the various racks of clothing in the shop, I came cross this oversized number. At first, I thought it was just a great khaki work dress. When I pulled it from its partners, I noticed it was oh so much more. This was a hand crafted lace embellished number like nothing I had ever come across, and the plot thickened as I approached the register to pay. Apparently this dress was discovered in an estate sale of a model/designer couple. The model and socialite had a closet that was second to none in LA, with more designer names hanging from racks than even Bergdorf Goodman could lay claim to. Yet, the model loved original pieces more than anything else and her designer boyfriend handcrafted this one off piece for her, which was apparently one of her favourites.
Now, unfortunately no names were shared - just this epic story. I'm dying to know who donned the dress before me. So not only am I sharing a style update from LA, I'm also reaching out to ask if anyone has ever seen this garment before. Do share if you have! I'd love to know more.


The list, for three children ages nearly 6, 4 1/2, and 2 1/2.
Whining– I think it's getting better, but maybe that's just because I'm on it more. Or maybe in another week, I'll have a low point and be completely overwhelmed with the whining. My biggest challenge right now is responding to the whining calmly but firmly. I'm dealing with it, but missing the calm part, to some degree. I hear my tone reproduced in my children, and I don't like it.
I've just noticed this, and it seems terrible among all children. I know part of the problem is that I have a habit of interrupting. I've been consciously working on it. It's a good thing to work on.
We're still working on obedience, and I suspect we will be in some form or another for a very long time. Right now with my youngest (2 1/2 years), it seems she's testing how alert mom is going to be when she doesn't obey. This is a hard one, because it means that I have to be AWARE that my children haven't obeyed, and sadly, I'm not always aware.
With the older children, I've bee trying to help them understand that they don't have to agree or understand to obey. My almost six year old tends to have good reasons for not obeying. Overall, though, he does obey well.
Fairness– We've had some major discussion and teaching here. Basically, I'm trying to get them to understand that they have to obey first, whether it seems fair or not. If they're concerned about fairness, they may appeal after they have obeyed. Related– working on Laurel and Bethel to APPEAL with a question before obeying "May I finish…?" instead of "I'm going to finish…" I was excited because Bethel made a request without my prompting. This was exciting because it seems like I'm walking them through every good thing right now, and it gets wearisome. I'm thankful for the glimmers of hope.
Work– I'm still dealing with a reluctance to work. I'm quite satisfied with requiring work before mealtimes, although frankly, I often forget and let them eat before chores or done or toys picked up. Eating is good motivation for work. I have an epiphany about work that I'll share tomorrow. I promise.
Being Nice– I've seen some progress. This evening I pointed out to David that his soft answer [unprompted] to Laurel stopped her anger and whining. Laurel and Bethel by virtue of growing older are playing better together. They seem to understand that teasing should stop when the other person isn't having fun (although that doesn't mean we don't have teasing and tears).
I can relate to some but not all of these things, since Sloane is only a year and a half (I'm sure I'll be seeing all of these soon, though). One that I certainly know is how Sloane will test how alert I am when she doesn't obey. I know this can get tiresome, but I want to encourage you to keep at it; it will produce a great fruit in her. Something that keeps me focused is thinking about how God is consistent in pruning us, and it is really an act of love. While I may find it easy to love Sloane in other ways, like hugging her or reading to her, helping her obey is truly another form of love to her, but it isn't always fun.
Thanks, Monica, for these thoughts. Not becoming weary in the obedience lessons is one way I can deliberately love my children. The world doesn't see it this way, and doesn't value the effort it takes. You are right that God promises fruit of well doing if we do not faint! Hurray!
I know what you mean. It's encouraging to remember that much of our challenges are in part bumpy developmental stages that we navigate. This gives me hope to not be weary in well doing. Thanks for the feedback!