“And your father is the All-Highest,” Alex says tentatively.
“Yes. But he wasn’t always.” Around the curve of the tunnel, she sees an open door ahead. She stops and Alex wraps an arm around her shoulders. “The, the empress died, and her city and her advisors: all the chain of command. The bindings and power of All-Highest fell on him then, and nearly broke him. He was a general before. Now he is the empire itself: the Crown, as you put it.”
“And you can’t disobey him or betray him or your head catches fire or something. I get it.” His fingers contract around her upper arm and she shifts her balance uneasily in response.
“If he dies, the chain of power that defines All-Highest falls next to my stepmother. It would have been my mother’s, if First Liege of Airborne Strike had not denounced her for treason while my father’s mind was wandering,” she adds with quiet venom.
“Ah.” He moves his hand: fingers begin to stroke her tense shoulders in tiny circles. She breathes deeply as she waits to see if he is canny enough to realize what comes next. “And if your stepmother dies, who becomes All-Highest next?”
Yes! Something inside her exults, but she stills the traitor realization instantly, terrified of exploring the possible consequences. “The chain of command continues,” she says. “First through the bloodline, by marriage, then by descent; then, if not, to his highest-ranked oath-bound officer. That is how he became All-Highest after all.” She opens her mouth and chooses her next words very carefully: “It is very important that my father must outlive my stepmother.”
“Ah,” he says again, then hesitates on the brink of further speech. And nods, wordless, clearly understanding what is better left unsaid.
It’s time for the final step, for Agent First to place her neck willingly on the block if she has misjudged this boy-man. She hopes not: he certainly seems as besotted with her as she is with him. But trust is a strange currency, and her upbringing has taught her that if she expects betrayal she will not be disappointed. So Agent First closes her eyes, and leaves it to Cassie to ask the final question. “My father has summoned me and commanded me to bring you as the, the enemy magus I have bewitched. He believes that you will then obey me and allow him to gain access to the citadel on Quarry Hill, which he believes to be your queen’s castle.” She chokes on her own tongue for a moment. “Will you come with me not under compulsion, but of your own free will, with volition preserved?”
“You want me free to act as I see fit?”
“Don’t tell me what you’re thinking,” she warns. “If I am aware of any threat to my Liege I am compelled to act.”
“Then I’ll make no threats,” he says, deceptively light-heartedly. “And you’ll take me into your father’s court without alerting your stepmother’s servants, and let everyone assume I’m bound by, by your geas?” His hand moves away for a moment as he pats down a pocket.
“Yes. And remember, it would be a very bad idea to show them how fast you can count your way past a circle of salt. Or to show any sign of agency. They’re not stupid: if you aren’t clearly in thrall they’ll strike immediately.” She turns and rests her chin at the base of his neck and licks his ear lobe delicately. “When this is over we will have to spend some time together. My magus.” His intake of breath hisses quietly. She rubs against him: “My special magus.”
“Why special?” he pants.
“Our magi can’t count that fast. They can’t do this either.” She touches the bulge in his trousers: “The men, I mean. They’re cut. The women are controlled differently. To make them placid,” she adds, then growls in the back of her throat. “Else they would drink us dry. You are different, I think.”
“What do you want, after all this is over?” he whispers.
“I want you.” She lets go of him reluctantly—the lust is rising—and stares into his eyes, seeing the green glow of the tunnel walls mirrored there for a moment, green strands of light writhing behind his pupils. “But first I must slay my stepmother, the dragon.”
* * *
Hours later:
The white Transit van turns into the open gates at the top of the driveway and stops. A light rain is falling, visible in the beams of its headlights as they illuminate a scene of organized chaos.
Four police cars are parked around the building like toys discarded by a bored child. They’ve been joined by a scene-of-crime van, and another van full of uniforms who are now swarming around the site like angry bees in hi vis jackets and rain gear. What appears to be a City of London fire service major incident support truck is parked alongside the police cars, and men in what looks at a distance like fire service protective gear are moving between their truck and the door to the building.
“Oi! You can’t park here—”
Pinky winds his window down and shoves his warrant card in the cop’s face. “Yes we can, we’re from the Ministry,” he snaps. “This is one of our sites.”
“Tough.” The constable isn’t backing off, and this is a very bad sign indeed when there’s a Laundry warrant card in play. Pete, unbuckling his seat belt on the passenger side, looks through the rain-streaked windscreen and sees two more bodies erecting a white dome tent in front of the door to the bunker, while another cop—holding a G36 assault rifle—keeps a wary eye on the new arrivals. “Go through channels, piss off and don’t bother us until we’ve secured the site, this is an armed incident—”
“Excuse me,” Pete says mildly, “we’re here for our half-track.”
“What?”
Pete rests his hands on the dash, sweating. Where there’s one armed officer there will be more and if they’ve brought out the long arms he’s willing to bet there’ll be one aimed at the Transit right now. “Excuse me,” he calls past Pinky, “can we talk to the OCCULUS crew?”
“Stop right—” The cop stops, finally recognizing what’s going on. “You’re with the spooks?”
Pete slowly opens his door and steps down beside the Transit. He shuts the door and raises his hands as Pinky begins to back up. A couple of the fake firemen are approaching him warily, holding what look like infrared imaging cameras. Pete’s skin crawls. “Head office!” he calls, allowing his warrant card to unfold from his right hand. “Ministry of Defense, Officer. This is one of our sites, we’re here to help. Take me to your incident commander and I’ll explain everything . . .”
“Oh, it’s you.” The cop looks round as one of the ersatz firemen approaches. Up close, he doesn’t look much like a fireman: it must be a combination of the army boots, the holstered pistol, or the thaum field radiating from his protective gear that makes Pete’s skin itch. “Let them through, Officer, they’re ours.”
“Mac?” Pete asks quietly as the fireman raises his helmet visor. He’s Warrant Officer Gavin McAndrews, part of the SRR team cross-trained in occult operations to work under Laundry guidance in the field.
“Yep.” Mac beckons. “Skipper’s been expecting you.”
It takes a couple of minutes to smooth over Pinky’s lack of tact, but sooner rather than later Pete is sitting in the back of the OCCULUS truck with the officer in charge of the unit and a tired and edgy detective sergeant, while the others work out how to get the Transit and its tow trailer turned round without reversing into a police car. “We’re looking for the member of staff who phoned in the alert,” Pete explains. “This is his last known location, as of two hours ago, and he was driving the Kettenkrad, along with one known associate.”
“Associate.” Captain Hastings fixes him with a skeptical look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Pete shrugs. “Girlfriend, if you can call it that: it was their second date. Head office asked him to check up on something at this site and at this point you know as much as I do.”
The detective clears her throat. “Excuse me, Mr. Wil—”
Pete smiles politely. “That’s Reverend Doctor Wilson,” he corrects.
>
“Reverend?” The sergeant gives him a who-do-you-think-you’re-kidding look.
“Church of England, on secondment to the Ministry of Defense.” Pete shrugs. “Long story. Listen, we’re out here to reclaim the half-track and ensure the site is locked down. Captain Hastings has the second part of that in hand. I understand you’re investigating the site of a suspicious double-homicide, but if you’ve looked inside the building—”
“Level six containment ward,” says Captain Hastings. He looks as if he’s bitten an orange and found himself sucking a lemon. “The bodies aren’t human, either.”
“Now wait a minute!” the detective says.
“Sergeant.” Pete smiles again, even more politely. “What did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t.” She glares. “Emma Gracie, criminal investigations. Vicar. Captain. There are two bodies here. You say you were called in by one of your men, but there’s no sign of him. And there’s some sort of radiation hazard—”
“Yes, that’s why we’re here,” Captain Hastings says with ill-concealed impatience. “But if you’d just pay attention to what I’m saying, those bodies are not human. Listen to your own SOCO people. Those pointy ears are not made of latex, their dentition is wrong, and they’ve got slit pupils. Also,” he adds for Pete’s ears, “the tinplate they’re wearing is carrying a thaum flux fit to burn out a standard-issue ward, and they’re armed with some kind of baton that you really don’t want to mess with outside a warded firing range. They came out of the bunker, your boy is missing inside the bunker, and we really need to take over from the police before we can go see what’s down there.”
“Lovely.” Pete turns to the detective. “Which just leaves the half-track. Do you need to dust it for fingerprints or something? Because if not, we can get out of your hair right now. Unless you need a liaison with headquarters ops?” he adds for Captain Hastings.
“No, that won’t be necessary.” Hastings runs a hand through sandy, thinning hair. Like the officer in charge of the OCCULUS unit Pete worked with the previous year in Watford, he’s wiry and intense, more like a head teacher with a triathlon habit than anyone’s idea of an officer in the Territorial SAS. “My men will establish a perimeter around the surface structure, contain any excursions, and stay the hell out of Sergeant Gracie’s patch while she does the scene-of-crime tap dance around the bodies.” He glances at her and she nods, minutely. “We’re setting up camera nodes in the building so that if anything tries to come out, Control can observe it. And—”
“By anything, what exactly do you anticipate?” The sergeant gives him a cold-eyed stare. “Is there a public safety issue I should be aware of? What aren’t you telling me?”
Captain Hastings thinks for a moment, then speaks. “Sergeant. Right now you’re looking at this as a crime problem. Unlawful killing, yes?”
“Yes, which is why—”
“What if it isn’t? Suppose it’s a national security problem. Suppose those bodies, for the sake of argument, were Russian Spetsnaz special forces soldiers who were here as pathfinders for an invasion. Here to kill civil authorities, fuck stuff up, and raise hell right before a paratroop assault. Suppose also that they’ve had the supreme bad luck to try and break into a camouflaged Ministry of Defense installation with lethal countermeasures and got themselves killed. So it’s actually not a normal crime, but an act of war. What would your priorities be then?”
Sergeant Gracie stares at him in horror. “You’re kidding me.”
Pete spots where Hastings is going and pitches in. “We’re from the Ministry of Defense: our sense of humor is surgically excised at birth. What Captain Hastings is trying to tell you is that business as usual will be resumed once we know this isn’t an act of war. In the meantime, it’d be a very good idea if you and your officers would secure the crime scene, do only whatever needs to be done right this minute to record the evidence, then clear the hell out and be prepared to handle civil defense in event of an attack. If it doesn’t materialize, if it’s safe to come back afterwards, you can come back and it’s business as usual. If not—well, you’ll be one less instance of civilian collateral damage for the captain to worry about.”
“Thank you, Vicar.” Hastings nods, unsmiling. “It’s probably best if you and your associates leave now—as part of the public whose safety Sergeant Gracie is so keen to ensure, after all.”
“Absolutely.” A thought strikes Pete. “Do you plan to enter the bunker?” he asks. “Because I got the guided tour about two weeks ago, and if you need a guide—I mean, assuming it’s not full of eldritch Spetsnaz types—I may be able to save you some time.”
Hastings’s smile vanishes. “Maybe if we’re still here tomorrow, Vicar.” He glances at the rack of radios and other instruments occupying one wall of the truck, and the technician leaning over them. “But not now: it isn’t safe. If the forecast from London is accurate and something’s coming through, I want everything done and dusted and everyone off this site within half an hour.”
* * *
Across the Yorkshire Dales, nightmares stir in the predawn light. Gradually at first, then with gathering momentum, the invading forces begin to move.
Hours before dawn, the heavy cavalry of the Host’s armored brigade finally arrive en masse. They thunder through the portal below Malham Cove in file, three abreast. The drumming of their claw-flanked hooves shatters the still night air as they trot downhill, first south, then wheeling to the east across the wooded hillsides of the national park. They continue to track southeast, across the rolling farmland and dry stone walls of North Yorkshire. It takes nearly an hour for the steel-clad riders on their horned steeds to ride out in good order, for there are more than two thousand troopers under arms, led by officers and accompanied by well-fed battle magi in carriages with drawn blinds to protect them from the light of daybreak. Pennants flutter in the predawn air, unit insignia for the riders to form up around; but the Host is eerily mute, only the jingle and rattle of metal and the thud of hooves on stone heralding their arrival. Such orders as are issued are delivered by their officers’ will-to-power, directly into the minds of the troopers. They’re as inexorable and impossible to disobey as cold iron hooks buried in tender flesh. Visors are lowered, reflective and occlusive, protecting against any glimpse of their wearers’ skin: this army rides in purdah.
As the last of the armored brigade rumbles away from the shadow road, trailed by a handful of stragglers (lamed mounts, brain-struck riders), the supply train follows. Long-haired steppe pachyderms haul cargo wagons piled high with fodder for the cavalry mounts. An equoid can devour thirty kilograms of red meat in a day, while a battle magus may consume the souls of a handful of slaves in an hour-long firefight. Keeping the Host engaged with an enemy burns through rations with monstrous speed, consuming the lives of two hundred oxen and a hundred slaves in every twenty-hour day.
All-Highest watches from the top of the cliff as the last of the redoubt’s time-stoppered supplies roll after the cavalry. There is enough meat to keep the Host fed for just three days, then they will have to forage for supplies, raiding whatever passes for slaughterhouses and slave farms in this alien land. The Morningstar Empire’s armies take as many prisoners as they can seize—but they don’t build camps to warehouse and feed them.
All-Highest looks downslope towards Highest Liege of Airborne Strike Command, who is inspecting her squadron. Eight dragons are lined up below, ground crews scurrying busily to load their chariots with munitions and to pump high-energy nutrients into their bizarre five-chambered stomachs. Pipes run downhill, draining their waste into a nearby stream that bubbles and fizzles, emitting toxic fumes. Again, there is no slack in the supply chain. There is precisely enough food for a single day of high-tempo sorties, enough weapons for a day of operations against a competent enemy. Then it will be necessary to rest the dragons and—with desperate haste—seek local stockpiles of the fluorinated
minerals they consume in enormous quantities, lest the mounts turn feral through starvation. They did not evolve in a world like this one or the People’s, but in another place, dark and corrosive and toxic. Their tentacles twitch listlessly, narcotized for now, but hinting at the barely constrained power leashed within their barrel-shaped bodies.
The heavy armored brigade will travel cross-country, following an ancient and powerful ley line until it intersects with one of the urük’s larger stone highways. Then the ley line diverts south towards the edges of the gigantic enemy hive-city, until it terminates at an anchor point established by the pathfinder magi. (This is linked by a tighter route to the endpoint under the battlements of the enemy palace—but it runs underground, useless for cavalry mobility.)
The cavalry steeds do not run much faster than a horse, but unlike a horse they can keep up a canter or a gallop for hours, their monstrous meat-fueled stamina and alien heat-dissipating metabolism combining to achieve a level of mobility no premodern force could hope to match. When they follow a ley line they can tap into its huge stored power to boost both their offensive weapons and defensive wards. Back home, no defender would be so negligent as to allow an unguarded ley line to exist next to the heart of one of their walled strongholds—but the urük are apparently ignorant of the arts of war.
The sun will be nearing the zenith by the time the cavalry brigade reaches the sprawling stone canyons around the center of the urük-hive, but a force mounted on horseback would be barely a third of the way there. The task of the air group is to first deny the urük access to the skies, then engage whatever enemy mobile forces are drawn out by the cavalry spearhead. With its superior maneuverability and close air support, the Host of the Morningstar Empire is one of the most lethal armored formations ever fielded, in this or any other world. But it is a huge gamble to aim it straight at the heart of an enemy capital without deeper insight into the defender’s arrangements. Although All-Highest is desperate, he isn’t stupid: he has no intention of betting everything on a single crude spear-thrust.
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