by Andy Graham
A MOTHER’S UNREASON
The Misrule: Book Two
Andy Graham
Contents
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About This Edition
A Map (of sorts)
1. Bait
2. Just Doing My Job
3. The Weeping Wood
4. Plans & Problems
5. Under the Donian Mountains
6. Smack Time (One)
7. Lesau & Melesau
8. Leadership
9. The Solution
10. The Hunt
11. The Church Above the Ward
12. More than Ugly
13. Trucks & Cages
14. Alcazar
15. A Little Girl’s Mother
16. The Morgen Towers
17. Jann Rainehoff
18. Maudlin. Definitely Maudlin
19. Return to Tear
20. The Map Room & the Husband
21. A Plastic Tube
22. The Other Twin
23. Bricks, Puppies & a Fisher Gull
24. AWT in EBT
25. Flinty-eyed Fury
26. An Opening Gambit
27. Loaded Dice
28. The Musical Graveyard
29. Smack Time (Two)
30. It’s for You
31. Frames
32. It’s All About Stories
33. Outside the Bridged Quarter
34. An Old Promise
35. Inside the Bridged Quarter
36. A Twist
37. The Hanging Urn Gardens
38. The Old Cells
39. Smack Time (Three)
40. They Shoot Dogs Here
41. The First Deceiver
42. Matricide
43. Captain Brennan’s Sister
44. An Old Man’s Eyes
45. More Than Pregnancy
46. Purple Eyes
47. Payback
48. Nervous & Suspicious
49. Three Reasons
50. The Stone Bridge
A Lover’s Redemption
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Reviews
Also by the Author
Contact
The Cast of This Book
Acknowledgements
Copyright & Disclaimer
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About This Edition
This book was first published as Rose: A Mother’s Unreason. (The Lords of Misrule: Book Three)
This 2018 edition has been re-edited and re-covered. Some of the places within the series have been renamed.
The story remains the same: a mother’s fight to save her sons from themselves.
A Map (of sorts)
In place of a real map, which rarely show up well in eBooks, this ‘written map’ should help you imagine where and when this story takes place.
Fifty years from now, a second moon is ripped into the orbit of planet Earth. The tidal upheaval drowns much of the world. Once the waters retreat, the survivors emerge to find that most of what they knew has been lost. Humanity is reset to a technological year zero.
Post-Flood, as humanity scrabbles to re-establish itself, the still partly-submerged country of England (UK) is renamed Brettia. At an unspecified time before The Misrule starts, Brettia becomes Ailan.
Approximately two thousand years after the Great Flood, and a few months after A Brother’s Secret (The Misrule: Book One) ends, we find ourselves in this story. A large part of the action is based in the triangle formed by London, Oxford and Cambridge – now known as Effrea, Axeford and Camp X517.
Ailan’s territory has spread west, taking a chunk out of its neighbour Mennai (Wales). After centuries of shifting fortunes, Ailan is dominant and Mennai exists as a form of protectorate.
The Donian Mountains (the Snowdonian National Park with a few extra crags and folds and mines thrown in for the sake of the story) straddle the border between the two countries. A race of people from the Middle East fled there for safety just before the Flood hit. A combination of the harsh conditions and being caught between the Ailan-Mennai feuding, have led to the Donian people developing a proud, warlike tradition in order to survive.
This is a familiar future: the infrastructure and vehicles are similar to what we have now, as are the weapons and medicine. Fragments of pre-Flood history survive, along with some traditions and technology. There are also differences. Religion has been banned, at least officially. Science is in the ascendant. Government control is ubiquitous.
Most human traits remain, however, both those we aspire to and those we succumb to. This story is built around two of those timeless needs: love and power.
1
Bait
Ray Franklin collapsed against a tree trunk, narrowly missing the small bodies huddled under his camouflage cloak. His breath came in steaming gasps. He closed his eyes and forced his aching muscles to relax. One of the shapes whimpered. Ray stroked the boy’s hair. The other child was still snoring. They would rest here, just a minute. Just one.
Part of the darkness detached itself from a rock. Nose twitching ever higher, it lumbered towards an ancient wolfbark tree. The tree had bullied its way towards the sky long ago and was sucking the light out of the clearing. Jagged, yellow fingernails twisted through the creeping ivy on the branches. The shadow snapped a leaf off, sniffed it and headed deeper into the forest.
The bark was biting into the back of Ray’s head.
“Wake up, don’t sleep! Not now, please, not now.”
He dragged himself out of the warm embrace of the sleep he craved, ignored the childlike whispers in his ears that it would all be OK, and forced his eyes open.
“Life is never OK unless you make it OK.” He pushed himself upright, gritting his teeth. The muscles around the back injury that had never fully healed refused to relax. The little finger on his left hand was numb. Something burned in the back of his shoulder, too. That was new. Whatever the ache was, it hadn’t been there before he’d dozed off.
“Stop whinging. Get a move on. Focus.”
There was still a chance to outrun this thing.
The two small shapes lay curled up together at his feet, sleeping peacefully in the decaying leaves. The kids had burrowed into each other, a bundle of arms and legs. One had tousled blonde hair, the other’s was a messy brown that would have had the military barbers’ fingers twitching. They had the look of absolute peace children have when sleeping. It was a total contrast to the relentless energy that poured out of them in torrents when they were awake.
Was this how my brother and I looked before we were separated? The thought slipped into his brain from nowhere.
“Stop it.” The words felt odd, alone in this forest with no one else to hear them. “Get the kids to the drop-off point. Clear up the mess you’ve made. Then you can deal with your own past.”
Shaking the fatigue out of his head, and the feeling into his hand, Ray gathered the children into his arms.
It stooped to pick up a broken stick, touched the wood to its tongue and loped into the darkness. As it moved away, the forest animals crept out into the open, chattering in high-pitched noises.
Branches slapped at Ray’s face. Roots, greasy with dew, threatened to trip him. One child was slung over his shoulder, the older one, the boy, clung to his back. He didn’t know how long he’d been stumbling through the trees. His legs seemed like they belonged to someone else, someone old and drunk. He shifted the children around, carrying both on his shoulders, then one on each hip. The boy even woke long enough to walk a little, but they were getting slower.
The figure collapsed to its knees, branches cracking. It tore at hair that was no longer on its scalp. Fingernails left fresh gouges amongst the old scars. Swollen red flesh peeled off its scalp and dropped onto the mossy floor. A raised disc embedded into the flesh of its wrist beeped. The figure traced a fingertip over the flashing green light that gleamed pinkly under the skin. A voice was begging for forgiveness. A human voice it no longer recognised. “I’m not an animal. I’m not an it. I’m a he. A man. I’m a man. I don’t want to end up like the monster that lives under the Donian Mountains, an abomination used to scare the children into behaving. Let me go. Let me free.”
The light stayed green. He sat back on his haunches and scrubbed the tears off his grimy face. “I won’t do it.” He pulled at the metal implant bolted to his skull behind his ear. “Damn you to the seven hells, I won’t do it.”
The light changed to amber.
“No, no, no! Please no.”
Started flashing.
“It. Not he. It.” The words broke off into moans.
It stood and crashed through a line of bushes.
Ray stopped to get his bearings and lay the children down. He rolled onto his back, rested his legs up against a tree trunk and shook them. He was hoping it would flush the life back into them. It had never worked in the past, but right now, he’d try anything. Hope meant survival. The dense canopy of leaves above him blocked out most of the sky. The leaves rustled, exposing tantalising glimpses of inky blue. A single star flashed out of a skull-shaped hole in the clouds. “Maybe this is the constellation I need,” he whispered. “Maybe—”
“—this is the constellation you need,” said Lieutenant Cole, their Natural Navigation instructor from Sci-Corps. She tapped the screen with a finger that was more joint than bone.
“She’s got the physique of a stand lamp,” Nascimento whispered. “Do you think her uniform is holding her together?”
The instructor, seemingly mistaking Nascimento’s bass rumble of a voice for Ray’s, shot him a look. “This is the constellation you need,” she repeated. “The Jester always points north.” She circled it with her laser pointer. “It must be important because it’s underlined in red.”
The class of legionnaires laughed politely, all except Nascimento. He carried on carving Skovsky’s name into the plastic desk.
“Line the Jester up with the Little Cleaver, and you’re good to go,” said the lieutenant.
“Better that than lining myself up with her little cleavage. She’s so uptight, it’s a wonder she doesn’t crack a rib every time she farts,” Nascimento mumbled to Ray, who let out an involuntary snigger.
The chitter of an animal off to one side broke through the memories. Ray was in the Weeping Woods with two young children, not giggling like school kids with Jamerson Nascimento in the training room. He rolled onto his haunches and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.
Lieutenant Cole had finally lost her temper that day. She’d hauled Ray to the front of the class for disobedience and inattentive behaviour unbecoming a government peace diplomat (the term that had been briefly trialled as an alternative for a legionnaire). With a sly curve to her lips and the threat of a group punishment hanging over them all, she’d ordered him to demonstrate how he would find his way when lost in the wilderness with no compass or sat nav. Three minutes later, the red-faced woman had sent him back to his seat, with a warning that he was treading a fine line between cocky and clever.
Ray realised now that, like many students, the legionnaires had always listened to their teacher but not paid much attention. Never having had to use the knowledge for real, and bored by endless assessments that led nowhere and taught not much more than how to pass exams, they’d become numb to exhortations that this was important and that could save your life. The men and women of the legions had viewed the Natural Navigation exams in the same way as most exams: an end to a means. In a world that was drowning in technology, when even toilet soap dispensers in the Gates were hooked up to the internet so you never ran out, no one saw the point of stellar navigation, compasses or sextants.
Connectability was a given.
Search engines ubiquitous.
Wi-fi and battery life ranked almost as high as food and water.
A damp root was digging into his thigh. Ray stretched out his leg. Wherever he moved, the root seemed to be following him.
His mother, Rose, had taught him how to find north using the stars. He’d been young, hadn’t even hit double figures. She’d just come back from one of her long absences (six months that time) and announced it was essential he learnt stellar navigation: “Just in case inevitability catches up with us before we’re ready.”
After Lieutenant Cole had dismissed the class, the navigation skills his mother had taught him had earned him the predictable taunts and odd looks from his colleagues. The puzzled glances from the few Gate-born legionnaires hadn’t bothered him, but he had been a little put out to discover that even his colleagues from the Bucket Towns had never learnt how to navigate by the stars.
As the clouds fought in the sky and the children slept at his feet, Ray finally admitted he shouldn’t have been surprised. His childhood had been more unconventional than he could ever have imagined. His neighbour, Lenka, had provided for him better than most. But his mother’s infrequent visits had become not much more than tutorials in rebellion and post-apocalyptic survival. He hadn’t understood Rose’s reasoning. He’d just been happy to have his mother at home, never realising those skills may actually save his life and someone else’s kids’ lives, too. “That’s assuming I can catch a break and see the sky.”
His feet sank into the soft moss as he stood. Being slightly closer to the clouds wouldn’t hurry them away from the stars, but as Captain Aalok had said, “Fear had ever made the irrational rational.”
Had Rose thought that ‘inevitability catching up with them’ would include her son finding out the truth about who he was? If he met her again, he needed to ask.
There’s something else I wanted to ask. Something Professor Lind said in that secret camp, just before I broke the guy’s ribs. Something about another brother or half-brother.
Precisely what that question was had been lost in the adrenaline-fuelled rush of that night. Something he now knew he should have remembered. After the turmoil of the last few months, he wasn’t sure he was ready to remember.
The nervous peace of the night was broken by a violent crack in the distance.
This way. Over the stream.
A bushtail poked its rusty coloured snout out of a burrow. The figure lashed out with a branch and the wood cracked. The sound snapped violently through the air. The bushtail yelped. Disappeared. The man-shape ignored the scuttling sounds coming from under the ground. He stepped into the stream. He could feel the cold water lapping at his shins but not the stones under his bare feet.
“Shoes, why aren’t I wearing shoes?” He raised a callused sole out of the water. “Why doesn’t it hurt?”
His breath caught in his throat. The tendons were straining against the skin of his wrist. The amber light flashed back to green. He breathed a sigh of relief. Green meant no pain. As temporary as he had learnt this colour was, he’d take it. Before the light changed again, he thundered into the undergrowth.
The wind picked up. Branches moved around him. The forest groaned.
“C’mon, c’mon,” Ray said.
All he needed was a second. A tree bent in the breeze. The skull-shaped hole in the clouds inched open and soft light from the two moons, Lesau and Melesau, spilled onto the forest floor. The fan of lines streaked into green shadows. A series of red flashing lights sunk under the cloud cover, scouring the forest. The distant thud of a helicopter got louder. Ray shrank back against a tree trunk. The leaves around him hissed in the wind and the hole in the canopy closed.
He grimaced. Not so much as a twinkle. At this point, he was travelling more on instinct than anything else. He’d explored a lot of the Weeping Woods as a chi
ld and, over the last few months, the vast expanse of forest had become his home; a place where he could plan how to track down his own mother, and now find the kids’ mother: Dr Stella Swann.
He’d been safe up until now. The clumsy attempts by the government troops to find him had been both laughable and desperate. Their attempts had, however, taught him the violent streak the military had fostered in him was harder to bottle once it had been let free. The many wounded soldiers he’d left in his wake were testament to that. Then he’d got the message he should have ignored: a pristine piece of paper nailed to the preacher tree where he’d met President Laudanum.
It was as obvious a trap as water was wet.
Someone had known roughly where he was in the forest. That same person had realised they were unlikely to catch Ray unawares in the Weeping Woods. So they’d led him to the preacher tree with low-flying helicopters, bullhorns and an elaborate firework display that had scared the forest quiet.