When Selos Xenosios was eight years old, the Serbian army sacked and burned his hometown. He escaped with his family to Athens, where they settled at Villa Estelli. When this story begins, he is not quite eleven, and approaching adulthood by the customs of the Commonwealth. Will he follow in his father’s footsteps and seek to become a Master Swordsman? Will he become an Apprentice Smith, as old Mercuros desires? Or will he accept an invitation to the Thinker’s Guild, and study Philosophy and Logic full-time? Tough choices for any young person, at any time... But then the bodies of young women, tortured and raped before their deaths, begin to turn up around the City and Selos finds himself drawn into the Investigation of those crimes. In his dreams and nightmares, on the streets of Athens, and eventually on the Acropolis itself, he comes face to face with inhumanity, and with the enemies of the Hellenic Commonwealth and Polity.
When Selos Xenosios was eight years old, the Serbian army sacked and burned his hometown. He escaped with his family to Athens, where they settled at Villa Estelli. When this story begins, he is not quite eleven, and approaching adulthood by the customs of the Commonwealth. Will he follow in his father’s footsteps and seek to become a Master Swordsman? Will he become an Apprentice Smith, as old Mercuros desires? Or will he accept an invitation to the Thinker’s Guild, and study Philosophy and Logic full-time? Tough choices for any young person, at any time... But then the bodies of young women, tortured and raped before their deaths, begin to turn up around the City and Selos finds himself drawn into the Investigation of those crimes. In his dreams and nightmares, on the streets of Athens, and eventually on the Acropolis itself, he comes face to face with inhumanity, and with the enemies of the Hellenic Commonwealth and Polity.