The Prince's Wedding (The Erik Midgard Case Files Volume 3)

Chapter 1

The Prince's Wedding

(The Erik Midgard Case Files Volume 03)

By Kit Downes

Copyright © 2019 by Kit Downes

All right reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the expressed written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Published in Great Britain 2019.

Cover art by R.L. Sather.

Also in this series:

Volume 01: The Time Traveller's Ball

Volume 02: The Lost libraries Archive

The Physicist's Party (Short story)

Chapter 1

Even though we had efficient and reliable teleportation for nearly a full millennium, some things still arrived at their final destinations the old-fashioned way.

"All right, mail call! Come and get it," called Chaz Lofn, as he brought the hover trolley stacked with packages to a halt in the middle of the corridor, close to my door. "Don't all rush at once."

"That's never once been funny," said Deborah Shiva, from two rooms down. "Don't embarrass yourself any further."

"If you want to do this, Shiva, be my guest," said Lofn. "If I am, I'm making the best of it."

"Just get on with it, Chaz," said Lofn's own partner, Christiana Kamuy, from her room on my right. "We all know how you feel. We don't need reminding."

It was a normal Tuesday morning on floor 6 of Gamma block in the accommodation wing of ChronOps HQ. The temporal tourism season had finished for the year and the Chronological Operations Agency was enjoying one of its rare quiet months. Everyone who had the morning shift off on our corridor - but who wasn't sleeping in to prepare for the night one - had their room doors open so they could hear and join in the conversation and so their friends could wander in and out.

"Fine. Let's get this over with," said Lofn. "Hermes. Eir. Enlil. Kumbari...

Our colleagues strolled out of their rooms as Lofn went through the pile. Tuesday was physical mail delivery day for ChronOps and, by a tradition started so long ago that no one could remember the reason - which was somewhat ironic in the living quarters of several hundred time travelling cops - it was the resident of the first room on each corridor who was responsible for fetching it from the mail office, whose staff insisted they had better things to do with their robots than save us from walking from the living quarters to the admin block. Lofn – who enjoyed sleeping in whether he had the night shift or not – had always resented that the job fell to him.

"Hadad. Mazda."

"Is my stuff from Haus Clotho here yet?" said Deborah.

"I'm doing these in the order they come in, Shiva. I'm not looking for you," said Lofn. "Tianzun. Magdalena..."

I settled back on my bed and turned my attention back to my boardcom. I didn't bother to listen to the rest of the names as I never got any physical mail. The only person who would was Megan, and we saw each other too often for either of us to bother mailing stuff that we could give to the other in person. I did get cards from Mirabi's family for Diwali and Baisakhi, but they sent them to her to pass on to me.

"That's probably for the best. Purple isn't your colour," said Mirabi Arjuna, my own partner, strolling in through my door, holding a data crystal which she tossed onto my bed. "Corinth report, Erik."