The Choosing (The Arcadia Trilogy Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

and people who felt they were free to believe them and those who felt that only their own beliefs and religions and gods and rulers were true. There'd been a time when anyone could hold weapons and life was both precious and cheap, when bands of citizens disrupted the government and rulers reigned by country and land, not under one unified rule.
    She dreamed of the rise of the Great City from the ashes of the Great War and the ruler who had come to bring absolute, everlasting peace, the one ruler, the Plutarch. Some said he had been a soldier in the Great War; others said he had been the cause, the assassin of kings and presidents and dictators alike. Whatever the truth, absolute peace comes with an absolute price, Grandfather Bane said. If everyone was to share in peace, then everyone was to suffer under limitations of freedom never before imagined.
    Freedom. Her father had said the bullets were freedom.
    In her sleep, Livy tossed and turned, confused. And frightened.
    The Plutarch divided the world into the provinces – Pastoreum, the agricultural land; Tundrus, the icy mountainous region where her father traded for metal and abandoned technology from Before; Oceanus, the oceans and ocean communities.
    In her dream, she shivered at the thought of the Void, the Forbidden Zone, vast and arid and lifeless, a scorching sun overhead by day and killing frosts at night. The place of punishment, banishment, the source of childhood nightmares.
    And Arcadia. The center of law and peace and sanity.
    But she woke then, the fear of the Void somehow combining with the dream of Arcadia, her heart pounding and sweat standing out on her forehead and a confused thought about taxes and collectors and why the two had sounded separate in her mother's words.
    It was a long time before Livy slept again that night.

    " D on't you think David is gorgeous?" Tarah asked.
    They were working side by side, tending the rows of potato plants, making certain the only things coming up were plants and not weeds.
    The spring sun shone down not quite so bright this afternoon, but after her restless night Livy was tired, irritable and still worried. Whatever had her parents worried and her grandfather spouting warnings without telling her the story that went with the warnings had her jumping at shadows.
    When Tarah caught up, working on the row directly next to Livy's, she'd been contemplating what she could do to worm the information out of one of her parents or even her grandfather, though he was a lot cagier than her parents. Probably because Liv's was the second generation of sneaky teens he'd put up with.
    Now Tarah was asking her –
    "Who's David?" Livy asked.
    Lowering her voice so it was nearly inaudible, Tarah said, "No one."
    Livy raised her brows and pretended to consider. "In that case, I think he's the handsomest boy I've ever seen."
    Tarah rolled her eyes.
    "No, seriously. That, or you've gone crazy."
    Tarah gestured. "Keep weeding and listen. Something's happening."
    Just that fast, the humor faded for Livy. Her skin prickled at Tarah's words. Ever since she'd found the book, life had seemed off. It wasn't the first time she'd found something and taken it home. She'd never been discovered before, and the penalty for such infractions as not turning over a relatively uninteresting find like a Before Times book was usually mild. She'd never heard of anyone being branded a traitor for it but Centurion rules could change in a heartbeat. There was a first time for everything, and the book wasn't the only thing that was weird.
    Her parents, talking about tax collectors.
    Livy frowned to herself. No. They'd been talking about taxes, and collectors.
    "What's happening?" she asked Tarah, her voice casual as if it were nothing more than a greeting.
    Tarah said, "David smiled at me this morning. He was wearing a red t-shirt under his hard wovens, and that really got my attention."
    Livy moved forward the distance of two potato plants without even pretending