Dominion Rising: 23 Brand New Novels from Top Fantasy and Science Fiction Authors

by Gwynn White

  “Dave’s fallen into bad company, Lee-lee!” Una cried. “I’m that worried about him.”

  Maddy, who had a good job at a fashion boutique on Oxford Street, looked up from painting her nails. “Don’t make me laugh, Mum, our Dave is bad company. He’s been getting into trouble ever since he left school.”

  “Wait till I get my hands on him,” Leonie said, her rage compounded by helplessness. The reason Dave had gone wrong was because he’d always been the only one too close to her own age and size for her to boss him. If only she still had her weapon, she’d give him a scare to turn him around, sharpish.

  Tollan lifted the dishcloth, topped up Sam’s basin from the kettle, and waddled around their legs to get back to his place in the corner chair.

  Needing something else to get angry about, Leonie sniffed. “What’s that smell? Is there something funny in her steam, Mum?”

  “It’s just some herbs,” Sam said from underneath the dishcloth.

  “The doctor said they ought to do her good,” Una said.

  “Mum. Not a doctor!”

  Doctors were extremely disreputable. They sold possets and potions to people too poor to afford miracles, but most of them were clandestine magicians. And what’s more, they were rubbish magicians. Leonie could forgive illegal. She couldn’t forgive incompetent.

  “It was a doctor who told us to give her the whacks every night, back when she was a tot, wasn’t it? And that’s done her more good than a dozen saints. And it’s free, so there you are, Leonie.”

  “Shut up, everyone, I’m trying to watch the news,” young Toll yelled from a corner of the sofa, bony knees hugged to his chest.

  “… Piers Sauvage remains in custody at the Tower of London, although he has not yet been charged. What does this delay signify? Let’s hear from the experts.”

  The camera tracked around RBC’s Round Table of commentators to an old man with an iron-gray knight’s knot. “Most probably, ladies and sirs, this indicates that the Crown is considering additional charges. It has been widely suspected for some time that House Sauvage may have concluded a separate peace with the IRA, which may include payments or shipments of materiel to the terrorists. Any such arrangement would, of course, constitute treason.”

  “Thank you, Sir Bravagant, and just to remind the viewers, what is the central charge that the Crown is understood to be considering?”

  “Conspiracy to murder.”

  A still photo of Piers Sauvage filled the screen. Narrow-skulled, long-nosed, platinum-blond hairknot secured by the wolf-headed pins that went with his title of Protector of Ireland, he was just a few years older than Leonie, and commonly thought to be a dreamboat. This photo, though, had captured his face in motion, so it looked as if he were snarling.

  “Traitor! Ugly mug Irish!” shouted Bastian and Harlan. The announcer said in voiceover: “If convicted, Sir Piers will face the death sentence for his role in Prince Harry’s murder.”

  “We ought to’ve put a stop to their games years ago,” Una said. “Bloody Irish, give them an inch and they’ll take your hand off.”

  Leonie laughed. Her heart was pounding. None of them knew that she, she had pressed her palm over the hole in Prince Harry’s lungs as he died. “Sweat of the saints, Mum, the Sauvages aren’t Irish. They’re as English as we are, look how fair they are. And why are you all so keen to think he did it? We used to be fans when Sir Piers fought in tourney. You twins had a signed poster of him, remember?”

  “That was when we were little,” Bastian said dismissively. “He hasn’t fought for ages.”

  “His brother Guy’s a better knight than he ever was.”

  “But we don’t like him anymore, either.”

  “He’s Irish and a bastard, too.”

  Sam rolled onto her side on Leonie’s lap. She croaked, “Well, they wouldn’t have arrested him if he didn’t do it, would they?”

  “There you are,” Una said. “There’s no one like our Sam for getting to the heart of things.”

  Out in the street, a souped-up engine rumbled. The window vibrated to the rhythm of bass beats. Adrenaline pulsed through Leonie’s chest. Again, she remembered Floyd Ayrett’s warning: Don’t say their names or they’ll appear, which was bloody useless advice when you didn’t know their names to start with, and she still didn’t know what he had been on about. Some weird Irish superstition that had no place in London. No business anywhere near her family.

  All the same, she shifted Sam onto Una’s lap and stood up.

  The front door of the flat started to shake, as if someone was trying to force their way in.

  Leonie went into the kitchen and watched the knob turn in both directions. Then the person outside started hammering on the door and shouting: “Mum! Mum, the door’s locked!”

  Leonie snatched the chain off and flipped the deadbolt. Her brother Dave was an eyesore in a tight shirt patterned with orange and pink circles, no coat despite the cold weather, a paler pink scarf hanging down to his knees. His hair curled over his collar, long enough that he’d get fined if the police spotted him.

  “Was it you that locked the door?” he said. “We never lock up.”

  “We do now.”

  “Oh yeah? What gives you the right to waltz back in here and start queening it over everyone?” He deliberately bumped her with his shoulder as he headed for the room he shared with the twins.

  Leonie grabbed him by the collar and pushed him back across the threshold and out of the flat. “You’ve been messing this family about too long.” She slammed his shoulders against the wall of the hall. He stank of cigarettes and beer. “You’re going to shape up, starting now.”

  He tried to twist away. They were about the same height, Dave being short for a man. He still outweighed her, but Leonie was no longer scrawny. She’d trained with the ROCK, survived days in exposed OPs on not much more than biscuits and water, and trekked through rural Ireland on exercises. The Company had also taught her the basics of spairjack, the old English art of unarmed combat. She was wiry and knew her strength to the ounce. She hooked Dave’s ankle with her foot and overbalanced him. He landed on Bethie’s tricycle. “Aaargh! You fucking cow, Lee-lee!”

  Leonie shut the door of the flat in the little ones’ faces. “You’ve got a proper nerve taking Sam’s money. What did you spend it on? This gear?” She grabbed the ends of his scarf, jerking it to throttle him, then let the tassels fall back on his chest. “That’s the stupidest thing you could wear anywhere there’s going to be fighting.”

  “Can I get up now?”

  “The vaunt scene’s full of knackers and freelance relic hunters. Freemen and all sorts. You’re better than that, Dave Grant.”

  “It’s not like what you think. There’s rules. You have to keep the peace.” He scrambled up, red-faced. “No one gets hurt unless they’ve entered for the vaunts.”

  “As long as they pay their gambling debts. Right? Saints, Dave! Don’t you want to get a real job? Don’t you want to swear on with the Wessex Corporation and make real money?”

  “I do.” He rubbed his cheeks. The tears in his eyes surprised her. She hadn’t expected him to cave in. “But what’s the fucking point? They’ll never have me. There’s a million unemployed.”

  “They will,” she insisted. “They will. We’re not the unemployed. We Grants have served House Wessex for five generations. That gives you an advantage. And besides, you’ll have a qualification soon.”

  “Yeah, well. That. I’m just not that keen on it, Lee-lee. The electrical engineering. The blokes on the course, it’s like they’re all savants or something. I can’t keep up with the sums.”

  “Maybe you’re not trying hard enough.” Wearily, she looked him up and down, his bloodshot eyes and hair standing on end, the ugly shirt … “What’s this anti-color shit you’ve got on? You could get picked up for sumptuary violations.” Commoners were only permitted to wear black, denim, and the colors of their liege lord. Leonie’s own black sweatshirt had crims
on ribbing, for House Wessex, at the wrists and hem.

  “I just like it, right.” Dave sniffled, picked his nose, and wiped the snot on the underside of the stairs. “I don’t want to let you down, Lee-lee.”

  “It’s not me you’re letting down. It’s yourself. Listen, if you swear you’ll try harder, I’ll go with you tomorrow and pay your next semester’s fees myself.” A hundred quid she could just about manage. But what about the semester after that? And what about Sam? Dave wasn’t stupid; he could make it through his course if he tried. But even so, it would be a year before he was earning real money. And if I’m going to lose my deployment bonus and hazard pay …

  “Swear on—on Dad’s memory.” Their father’s relics had been sold a long time ago. “Swear you won’t let us down anymore.”

  “I swear,” he muttered.

  She opened the door of the flat, marched Dave in among the wide-eyed little ones. Something fell from his back pocket and clattered to the kitchen floor. Leonie snatched it up. A goblin-hide-handled, four-inch butterfly knife.

  The Next Morning. September 27th, 1979. London

  After a flying visit to see her sister Mystie’s new baby, Leonie reported to National Chivalry, which meant an el ride to Monument and then a fifteen-minute walk along tree-lined Fenchurch Street. Leaden clouds drizzled rain. Cars hydroplaned around potholes, splashing the brand-new tights she’d put on with her uniform. Distantly came the tan-tara for the changing of the guard at the Tower of London. The townhouses of the nobility hid behind fortress walls, shielded by trees. Amidst all this discreet wealth, NatChiv headquarters was a modern concrete building with lots of net-curtained windows and twirly faux ironwork, Crown men-at-arms in cobalt and black livery guarding the gates, antennae everywhere.

  Leonie gave her name to a pair of receptionists in a bulletproof cubicle. A man-at-arms patted her down and Instaroided her face and shoulder brand. “Someone’ll be down for you.”

  “Lance-Corporal Grant?” A kid too young to shave, dress sword belted over tunic and hose. A nobly born squire. “Follow me, please.”

  National Chivalry—the umbrella agency that ran the ROCK, MI5, MI6, and the Intelligence Company—had been created just five years ago to impose order on the alphabet soup of Crown security forces. Glancing into open doors, Leonie saw men and women, but mostly men, working at long desks shoved together, every surface cluttered with paper. The squire ushered her into a conference room that was all ciggy stink and chairs held together with duct tape, and left her alone.

  Shoulders back, head up. In the Intelligence Company, she’d had to relearn how to slouch like a normal person, for undercover work. Now she had to look military again. Her six-month-old niece Bryanna had sicked up on the shoulder of her uniform tunic. She spat on her fingers and scrubbed at the spot.

  “Lance-Corporal, sorry to keep you waiting.”

  Astonishment took over; muscle memory carried her into a salute. Oswald, Lord Day, shook his head and reached out with a smile to shake her hand. At the thought that he was getting traces of baby vomit on his fingers, Leonie had no trouble giving him a smile right back.

  “Thanks for coming. Take a pew. Coffee?”

  “Oh… right. Yes, please.”

  The squire brought it, together with a plate of biscuits.

  Leonie felt like she was on television: Surprise Of Your Life. She’d expected to get a rocketing from someone pretty senior. Not in a million years had she expected to be having coffee with Oswald Day, Knight Commander of National Chivalry, the king’s son-in-law.

  Lord Day’s azure eyes and 1,000-watt smile flashed even brighter in the flesh, and his long straight limbs would’ve looked fit in armor, despite the fact that he’d never been a tourney knight, and the only weapon he wore was the Knight Commander’s rod of office. He sat with one haunch on the corner of the conference table, cup and saucer balanced on the palm of his hand, asking how her journey had been, was everyone well at home—the usual small talk from a knothead who wanted to look as if he cared.

  While giving stoic responses, Leonie reflected to herself that Lord Day was thigh-deep in this clusterfuck. He must’ve pulled strings to get Piers Sauvage arrested, or at least stood by and let it happen, so he and his blue-eyed boys in the ROCK could wriggle off the hook.

  So too bad, yes, too bad for Leonie Grant that she was one of about three living witnesses to the truth of what had happened on the night of Prince Harry’s death.

  We were shooting them and shooting them but they wouldn’t go down …

  “Royal policy is that tragic events shall not be allowed to disrupt the Irish peace process,” he said at last.

  “No, sir.”

  “The Irish Knights’ Conference will continue to meet, pending an investigation into which of House Sauvage’s northern bondsknights may have been involved in the Lord Protector’s plot.”

  “Yes, sir.” What about the Countess? Wouldn’t she have known what her son was up to, if he was up to it? But that would be going too far, wouldn’t it. No one could arrest Vivienne Sauvage, Countess of Dublin. Not even the king himself would dare.

  “There is a suggestion that foreign elements may also have been involved, but you’ll keep that to yourself, Lance-Corporal.”

  He was saying that because he knew she’d seen the arms dump on Slieve Gullion, and all the German weapons in it. What he didn’t know was that she’d seen similar caches a dozen times before. So it was no news to her that there were foreign elements involved. She wondered if they were going to spin it as a fiendish conspiracy between the Sauvages and the Germans. That might be enough to take the Countess down …

  She suddenly remembered the prisoner they’d taken on Slieve Gullion. He’d looked sort of German, in her five-minute glimpse of him. And extremely beat-up. She wondered what had happened to him, whether MI5 had wrung any useful intelligence from him.

  “Lance-Corporal Grant?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “You want more, don’t you, Lance-Corporal Grant? You want vengeance for your mates.”

  She felt stung, because it was true. “No, sir, I don’t want vengeance. Or not only vengeance. Sir, my partner died that night, too. His name was Gavin Brockhart. He died obeying orders. I’m not going to be less of a soldier than he was. I’ll obey any orders you give me. But please, sir, don’t take my job away.” I need the fucking money. “I won’t go blabbing to the media. Let me stay with the Intelligence Company!”

  She hated herself for groveling, but it seemed to work: he was looking at her as if he’d really noticed for the first time that she was there.

  “Those are noble sentiments, Lance-Corporal.” He swung his dangling leg to the floor. “I see you may not have understood why I sent for you today. I apologize.” He paused, the blue eyes like floodlights. “I’m satisfied that you’re not a security risk. Your commanding officer’s report testifies to that. You risked your life in Prince Harry’s defense. House Wessex asks no more of any man—or woman.” He felt in his pocket. “Stand up, Lance-Corporal.”

  Confused, she obeyed. Something in his hand glinted.

  “I hereby invest you, Leonie Grant, with the Medal of Honor First Class.” He pinned it on her, his long fingers slightly mottled with cold. He took care not to brush her breast. “You’re a hero.”

  A bare instant of delight and relief gave way to rage so intense she could hardly force out her “Thank you, sir.” The Medal of Honor? The bleeding Medal of Saints-be-damned Honor? You could get a Medal of Honor for parallel parking correctly. Was that what Prince Harry’s life was worth to House Wessex? Not even an Order of the Crimson Shield, say? Let alone a knighthood? Oh, this is all complete bollocks.

  “I don’t have as much power as you lot seem to think,” Lord Day said. “But one thing I can do is give you a break from the cuds. I’ve arranged for you to be deployed to the Intelligence Company’s London branch. I’m afraid we’re going to have to take away your stripe, but you should have no trouble winning
it back again. I think you’ll find the work here exciting. Much of our intelligence output originates in London, as you know. Also, Company London plays an important role in guaranteeing royal security. The king needs you …”

  Bollocks. The king doesn’t even know I exist.

  She walked home to save on the train fare. She was still shaky from her interview with Lord Day. She’d been calm at the time, but now her body was quivering like a leaf, as if she’d just survived an enemy contact.

  She walked down Fenchurch Street, took King Harold Street back to the Thames, and crossed London Bridge. Cormorants bobbed on the petrol slicks around the pilings. Flotsam was washing upstream, the tide coming in. A sightseeing barge wallowed along, its rear deck crowded with peasants holding plastic bags over their heads to keep the rain off, gawping up at the quickstone-shielded curtain wall of the Tower of London.

  It took me two years to make lance-jack.

  South of the river, she threaded through the snarls of traffic at the gates and underpasses beneath the old ward walls. South-Enders treasured their walls, what was left of them. With every security chicane she trudged through, the city settled into tighter configurations of mews and alleys, and she felt a little better.

  Look on the bright side. At least I’ve still got a job.

  “What’s going on, Mum?”

  No. 6 Lion’s Claw Lane was in an uproar. Half the little kids on the street seemed to be crowded into the Grants’ kitchen. Una was leaning on her cronies Mrs. Daggort and Mrs. Lyle, held upright between two sturdy piles of bosom and bottom, dabbing her eyes and gulping tea. “Now see what you’ve done, Lee-lee! Did you have to be so hard on him?”

  “It’s our Dave, isn’t it? What’s he done now?”

  “He’s only gone and joined up!”

  To the delight of the little ones, Dave slid out of the scullery in a combat pose, brandishing Maddy’s hair dryer for a gun. He wore a cobalt-flashed khaki smock, and his formerly trailing locks were shaved to within an inch of his skull.