Editor's Choice Volume I - Slow summer Kisses, Kilts & kraken, Negotiating point

by Stacey Shannon, Spencer Pape Cindy, Giordano Adrienne

  “This is sacred land.” Her mother, of course, wasn’t far behind—and the older woman held a deadly looking blunderbuss, pointed right at Connor. “Be gone.”

  “Edda, put down the weapon. These are invited guests.” Magnus eyed Connor and Tom. “Mr. MacKay, could you see your way to moving that airship to the park behind the castle? This circle is indeed considered holy.”

  Connor glanced at Geneva, who nodded. No doubt, he felt the power of the place as she did. He gestured and Tom ran back to the ship, one eye still on Edda and her antiquated gun. At least now she pointed it at the ground instead of at Connor’s chest. As the airship lifted off, Magnus strode forward, his hand extended. “You’ll explain to me why they’re here,” he said to Geneva, who kept pace beside him.

  “I have no idea.” She introduced the two men as soon as the dirigible was far enough away that she could be heard at less than a shout. “Well, little brother, what brings you here?” Other than her father not trusting her to handle the investigation on her own.

  “Besides an airship?”

  Magnus’s chest rumbled, but Geneva couldn’t tell if it was a growl or a chuckle at her brother’s flippancy.

  Connor sobered. “Father thought you might be able to use some help with the kraken problem. We’ve brought along some new weapons that needed testing.”

  “Your father runs an arms factory?” Magnus asked. “Or does he work with the War Office?”

  Geneva squirmed. “No, he…um…works with the Home Office, sometimes. Connor and Tom work with him. Testing new guns wouldn’t be outside the realm of their usual duties.”

  Magnus thought for a moment and then nodded his head. “Welcome to Torkholm, Sir Connor. Do you plan to keep that airship here, or is it leaving?”

  Connor was still young enough to flush. “Staying, my lord. If you don’t mind that is. The two crewmen are good fighters and the pilot…” He trailed off.

  “Oh, bother.” Geneva squeezed her eyes shut. “Tell me Mel isn’t the pilot.”

  “I won’t, but you’ll see soon enough that she is. Wink is here too. The new guns are her inventions and she wants to see them in action.”

  “Lass?” Again, Magnus looked to Geneva for translation.

  She sighed. “Mel is our younger sister, Melody MacKay. I mentioned that she was an engineer, right? Airships are her specialty.”

  “Aye. The other?”

  “Wink. The Honorable Miss Winifred Hadrian. She’s Melody’s closest friend, and an inventor. I’m not surprised that if the…if my father has a new weapon, Wink is the mastermind behind it.” She was also the woman Connor had fancied himself in love with all through university. Since their families were close friends, as well as colleagues in the Order, they were thrown together more often than was probably comfortable for Wink, who didn’t reciprocate Connor’s passion, much to Melody’s dismay.

  “It seems I’m to be surrounded by clever lasses.” He turned to the assembled crowd. “All right, everyone, go on home, or back to your work. There’ll be time later for everyone to look at the airship if they wish. For now, Quentin, I want four men guarding the ship overnight to make sure no one climbs in out of sheer curiosity. Edda, put that damn thing back above your mantel where it belongs before you blow your own fool head off.” With that, he began to march back toward the castle, flanked by Geneva and Connor, with Rannulf and Alice close behind.

  “I haven’t had a chance to explore out-of-doors on Torkholm,” Geneva said. Most of her spare time had been spent in Magnus’s library, looking for references to the kraken. “It’s not as rocky as I’d have imagined. No wonder you’ve such excellent farming.”

  “It’s a good place,” Magnus agreed. “With modern irrigation, rotating crops and soil chemistry, we’ve done all right. We export whisky, wool and grains to the mainland, and import luxuries back, including propane for the gaslights, but we could be self-sufficient if need be.”

  “I say, is that a windmill over there? Does it power the wells?” Connor looked around, almost as fascinated as Geneva.

  “We’ve three. One for the wells and one for the irrigation pumps. The other is experimental. Steam engines are so foul to the atmosphere, and we have to bring in coal from the mainland. I read a paper about using wind to generate electrical power, so we’re testing it out as best we can.”

  Connor broke into a wide grin. “Ah, my lord, Wink is going to love this place.”

  Magnus thought for a moment. “Winifred Hadrian did you say? That’s the woman who wrote the paper I read on harnessing wind power.”

  “It was her thesis project at Oxford.” Connor’s chest puffed out. “She’s brilliant.”

  “She’s here? On Torkholm?” Magnus grinned like a schoolboy. “Magnificent. I have many questions.”

  A twinge of jealousy wiggled through Geneva at Magnus’s near reverence of her friend. Her younger, prettier friend. She pushed it aside. Her friendship with Magnus was only that of doctor and patient, despite the utterly inappropriate kiss on the ramparts.

  “The outsiders have to go.” Catriona had caught up with them and grabbed Magnus’s sleeve. “You must see, my laird, that bringing all these strangers will only anger the gods. They’ll send more abominations, to purge our soil of the taint of steam and iron.”

  Magnus paused. “We’ve been through this before, Cat. There’s no disrespect to the gods in bringing modern science to the island. Not as long as we honor the soil and the beliefs of our ancestors. My pardon, Sir Connor, Dr. MacKay. We’re an isolated place and superstition is rife.”

  “’Tisn’t superstition if ’tis true.” Catriona stomped her foot on the grass. “You’ll see, my laird. I only pray you come to your senses before ’tis too late.” With that dark pronouncement, she stormed off.

  * * *

  When they reached the grassy parkland behind the castle, the airship had already landed, and been tied down with long wires attached to steel pegs, which were steam-hammered deep into the soil. That would not have been good in the stone circle. Magnus had to admit Edda was right in this case. Still, this was his first chance to study an airship up close, and he didn’t want to miss the opportunity.

  The other young man, about the same age as Geneva’s brother, waited beside the ship, flanked by two pretty lasses, both in the trousers and goggles of airship crewmen. One, a tall, green-eyed, flame-haired beauty, must be the sister, while the other was shorter and fragile-boned, with brown eyes and walnut-colored hair. “Miss Hadrian?” Magnus held out his hand to the dark-eyed lass. “’Tis truly an honor to meet you.”

  All three laughed, as did Geneva and her brother. “A common mistake,” Geneva said. “This is my sister…” she indicated the smaller, darker lass, “…Melody MacKay. She gets her daintiness and coloring from our mother, who’s Irish.”

  “This…” the lad, Sir Connor, said with a proprietary air toward the female Magnus had mistaken for Geneva’s sister, “…is our good friend Miss Winifred Hadrian and her foster brother, Sir Thomas Devere.”

  Magnus lifted one eyebrow as he greeted them both. He was a bit shocked to realize how young the wind-power advocate was, but genius often began early. There seemed to be an awful lot of Sirs about. Geneva had said both her father and grandfather also held that honorific. Magnus filed that information in the back of his mind to be puzzled over later. “It’s a pleasure to meet you all. Welcome to Torkholm.”

  “And this is George.” Miss Hadrian patted the head of an enormous brass clockwork mastiff who sat beside her. “He doesn’t eat much or chase cats, I promise.”

  Gravely, Magnus bowed to the mechanical dog. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Master George.”

  The canine automaton tipped its head and gave a soft huff, so much like a real dog that Magnus stepped back in amazement. Genius indeed.

  Rannulf and Alice caught up and were introduced, along with Quentin, the airship crewmen and a few of Magnus’s principal tenants. Magnus’s stomach growled, reminding him
that the arrival had interrupted supper. Likely everyone else was as famished as he was. “Come along,” he said. “Cook will have kept the meal warm. Setting a few more places is never a problem.”

  Of course, every single person on the island who wasn’t urgently required elsewhere followed them into the great hall. While the castle welcomed all islanders for the evening meal, a tradition held over from the Middle Ages, this was a bit bigger crowd than they usually attracted.

  While the newcomers washed, the castle staff hurriedly rearranged the head table. The ladies didn’t bother to change, but came to the table in their trousers, which didn’t bother Magnus at all, but raised a few eyebrows among the villagers, particularly Edda and her daughter, who glared at them from a place farther down the table, beside Quentin. As healers, they carried a high status on the island, and Edda looked none too pleased about being supplanted by guests.

  Magnus kept Geneva in her place beside him, but she spent most of the meal in animated conversation with her sister and brother, on her left. That left Magnus to chat with Sir Tom, and Miss Hadrian, who were friendly, but wary. These two had the look of people who’d seen far more than their years and exalted status could account for. Another puzzle to whittle away at.

  “How often have the attacks occurred?” Tom was tall and fair, though not as blond as Magnus, and with a much more fashionable style. “Are they striking only at the docks, or at other locations around the island?”

  “I was thinking we could set up some kind of detection net,” Miss Hadrian said. “If there’s only one point of attack, it might help. I don’t think ringing the entire island with netting would work.”

  Magnus had considered that solution days earlier. “’Tis a grand idea, but no. The attacks are mostly at the docks, but not always. Anywhere along the shoreline is at risk.” He looked at Tom. “They’re often at night, but sometimes in the day. Some days there will be one, others two or three, others none at all. I’ve not been able to discern a pattern.”

  “The main question is why.” Geneva leaned toward Magnus, ignoring her siblings. Her bosom pressed against his shoulder, an intimate gesture he suspected she didn’t even realize she was making. “What’s causing a deep-water animal to surface, only here on Torkholm, to behave this aggressively, and in such great numbers? If we can determine why, we’ll likely come up with a way to stop it.”

  The others nodded as if this was indeed the logical solution. Unfortunately, Magnus had no idea how to go about discovering why his island was under attack. “All I know is the last time it happened was a hundred years ago, and after my great-grandsire’s death, the monsters didn’t come back.”

  “The reason why is all the blasted coal and gas polluting the isle.” Quentin, from his spot on the other side of the younger Miss MacKay, glowered and thumped his glass. “The magick will abandon us if we give up the old ways.”

  Geneva shook her head. “That’s possible, of course, but it seems unlikely, unless there was a major change just before the attacks began.”

  Magnus shook his head. “The windmills went up last year. The next new thing would have been the teletext cable, unless you count the toast rack. I’ve already scoured my library. I’ve books telling about the giant squid, but none that give a hint as to why it’s attacking here and now.”

  “Of course you’ve scoured the library.” She patted his hand, another unconscious movement, he was sure. “It’s a fabulous collection, by the way. Melody and Wink, you’ll love it. Magnus is enormously interested in technology, especially if it’s not damaging to the land and air.”

  “Magnus, is it?” Her brother frowned, but was elbowed by Melody. Finally he shrugged. “True enough, if we’re to work together on this, there’s no need for formality. I’m Connor.” The others all nodded and offered their given names, including Rannulf and Alice, and finally, grudgingly, Quentin.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Magnus watched as Cat and Edda pushed aside their plates and left the hall. He envied Quentin his luck at finding a bride, but pitied his cousin having Edda as a mother-in-law.

  “Did you know Alice here was once engaged to Papa?” Geneva’s eyes danced as she dropped that onto her siblings’ ears. “She foresaw him meeting Mum and cut him loose. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here today.”

  The kraken problem was forgotten as Alice, blushing furiously, explained, while Rannulf looked on fondly. There was a serious romance brewing there, or Magnus would eat his kilt. He hoped his uncle asked Alice to stay, but if Rannulf followed her to Mull, Magnus would understand. At least it would be near enough for them to visit often.

  “I didn’t know airships came as small as yours,” Magnus said to Melody, to take the spotlight off Alice, who didn’t look comfortable. “I wonder what it takes to maintain one. That way, we could fly over the monsters when we need to visit Mull or Tiree, or even the mainland.” Quick as an airship was, Magnus would even be able to make short visits to nearby islands and be home before his strength began to wane. What a gift that would be.

  The two engineers and their crewmen dove into a discussion on how a private dirigible could be maintained on Torkholm. Magnus would need to import a pilot and crew, or send some of his men off to be trained, but that was easy enough to do. They’d sent a man to learn about windmills, and now Callum Findlay was one of the best windmill mechanics in the Highlands. The conversation—mostly revolving around what features Magnus would need and how much he should be prepared to spend continued as the group from the head table retired to the library after the meal, the men forgoing the ritual of port in order to continue talking with the ladies.

  Magnus felt Geneva’s gaze assessing his motions as he lowered himself into an easy chair. He was mostly healed, thanks to his homeland’s magick, but there were still residual aches that an active evening had aggravated. He smiled, hoping to reassure her that he was—or would be, at least—fine, and settled into a game of chess with Tom Devere, while several of the others split into groups over the card table or backgammon board. One exception was Geneva, who searched the bookshelves before settling onto a settee with a thick scientific tome. The lass was serious about researching the kraken. For some reason, that pleased him.

  Perhaps half an hour into the game, the chapel bells began to toll, and the cry, “Kraken!” echoed through the castle.

  Everyone in the room dropped what they were doing and leapt to their feet.

  “Blast it,” Wink said. “We haven’t set up the electric harpoons yet.”

  “No, but we can fetch the shredders,” said one of the crew, a middle-aged Londoner named Stephen.

  “Let’s.” Wink gestured to Stephen and Jock, the other crewman. “Magnus, where’s the best vantage point to shoot a long-range explosive?” Melody leapt up to go with them, likely one of the experts on the weapons. If they could shoot from a distance, the young women should be safe. Good.

  “Depends on where the attack is, and how long your range. Rannulf, go with them. Alice, could you and the doctor set up your infirmary, please? The night attacks have been the worst for casualties.” Magnus gave Geneva a beseeching look, and expelled a breath of relief when she nodded. They all ran from the room in various directions, Quentin and the two young Knights at Magnus’s side.

  When he reached the armory off the great hall, Magnus learned the whereabouts of the attack. Not at the docks this time, the kraken had attacked a shepherd and his flock grazing close to the water’s edge. Then it had moved on to a small cluster of cottages, which it was still ransacking.

  Magnus armed himself and ran alongside his men. Thus far, his sword had been the best weapon against the monsters, but he was getting a bit tired of being battered. Still, better him than his men, as at least he’d heal as long as he wasn’t killed instantly—or washed away, again.

  His eyes adapted readily to the faint glow of the moonlit night. The beach cottages had been almost completely destroyed in the few minutes it took the men to get there. Rannulf and the airship
crew had found or brought a ladder and were scurrying to the roof of the tallest building—a barn, set farther in from the shore than the houses. Meanwhile, Magnus led the charge and started slicing at tentacles as they crashed to the ground, smashing whatever got in their way to flinders. As usual, their rifles and swords did little but enrage the beast further.

  “We’re ready,” Wink called from the roof of the barn. “Magnus, get your men out of the way.”

  “Everyone fall back,” Tom shouted. “Connor, a repulsion spell.”

  “Aye.” Connor and Tom stood together and chanted while Magnus pulled his people back. A soft glow surrounded the two men and the squid began to coil its tentacles in toward itself, as if reaching out toward the men on the shore had become uncomfortable.

  “Fire one.” Wink’s voice was immediately drowned out by the sound of a cannon—or something like it—from overhead.

  “Fire two.” That voice was Melody’s. Another shot thundered through the night.

  The first ball hit the squid with a soft, wet sound. On impact, the shot flashed light and boomed as an explosion occurred inside the squid’s enormous head, like fireworks lighting the sky. A second explosion followed rapidly on the heels of the first as the second shot struck. Shards of metal and gouts of blood erupted from the slimy skin.

  The squid screamed.

  Magnus hadn’t known they could do that—perhaps it was his ears ringing from the explosions.

  The kraken thrashed and flailed in its death throes, doing more damage to an already ruined cottage. Magnus leapt forward and pierced the eye with his sword, speeding along the end.

  “Everyone get out of these cottages in time?”

  As expected, Quentin stood right beside him. “All but one. I’ve already sent them up to the castle for the night. In the morning, we’ll send men to see what can be saved and look into building new homes, farther inland.”