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

by Gwynn White

  She looked out at the dazzling sea. And what about my family? Who’s going to fetch them out of London and send them somewhere safe?

  That Afternoon

  Princess Madelaine rolled up in a crimson limo that might’ve been low-profile in London, but which stuck out like a dog’s bollocks as it crawled up the road from Penzance. The cook dragged Leonie into the hall to line up with the rest of Sir Robert’s household. So much for keeping HRH’s arrival quiet. The steward bowed and scraped, the footmen made legs, the cook and housekeeper and maids curtseyed. Leonie bowed, feeling stupid. The legs of the princess, stick-thin in tight black denim, passed her.

  She straightened up once Madelaine was past.

  Her jaw hit the floor.

  Over HRH’s shoulder peeped the cherubic, sleeping face of a baby in a pink bobble hat.

  She’s brought her bloody sprog!

  Not Crown Prince Michael, no such luck, but the younger of Princess Madelaine and Lord Day’s two children: little Princess Fiona, age eight months.

  Behind the princess hurried a lady-in-waiting with bags of royal baby-kit. The party was completed by a languid young knothead who made Leonie think of HM’s phrase, minor nobles prone to the vapors, and an older knight who fitted the other half of the Wessex livery profile: gin flowers on his bearded cheeks, a paunch like a cannonball.

  “This is a right turn-up,” Leonie said challengingly to HRH’s chauffeur, who had not joined the royal party in the library but was sitting in the kitchen being quizzed by Sir Robert’s staff.

  “What a circus, eh,” the chauffeur said glumly. “Kid was screaming its head off all the way. She finally gets it off and then we arrive. I never asked for none of this. I’m only in the livery, and here’s Admiral B flapping, telling me to bring a car around to Macenought Lane, which turns out to be one of them minging little closes up to the east of the castle, ought to be torn down for the public health; and when I get there, strike me if it’s not HRH in a nosegay mask. And the kid. We came through the secret passage, she says, all smiles. It’ll be my neck if Lord Day catches up with us. I wish I’d never taken the king’s shilling, but the livery is money for old rope. It used to be, anyway!”

  “Were you followed?” Leonie demanded. “Any vehicles that stayed behind you for longer than they should’ve? Did you see a chopper or hear one?”

  “Not as I’m aware,” the chauffeur said stiffly, obviously thinking: Who’re you anyway?

  Leonie pinched a cucumber sandwich off the tray that the cook was preparing and went out of the house again. It had looked as if everyone was in the kitchen, which meant no one was on sentry duty. She walked past the garage and down the drive. Just as she’d expected, the gates were unguarded. The sentry kiosk was a one-room shed inside the stone wall, smelling of fags. As she stood looking down to the valley, she felt herself being entrapped in the rubbery coils of the law of maximum embuggerment. Whatever can go wrong, will.

  Not one but two princesses on site. All HM’s eggs in one basket. What else could go wrong here?

  Think, Grant, think.

  She pressed herself to the side of the inward-facing window.

  The pale-haired young knight who’d come with HRH stood on the lawn in front of the house, smoking.

  With a nervous gesture, he threw his cigarette into a rosebush and strolled into the freestanding garage beside the house.

  He’s fetching something from the limo, she thought, waiting for him to reappear.

  He didn’t.

  Maybe the garage had a back door.

  She went back up the drive, walking on the grass instead of the gravel, and still he hadn’t come back out. The sun rode just past the zenith. She approached the garage from the east so her shadow wouldn’t fall in front of the doors. Peeking in, she didn’t see the knight. She slipped inside, trainers silent on the concrete.

  The garage held five vehicles. Besides the royal limo, there was a Pinnace van with dented, scraped sides; a bright yellow limo with white roses on its bonnet; the blue Morris that she and HM had arrived in; and another Morris, beige, equally clapped out. The vehicles were lined up in that order beneath the high rafters.

  A sharp hiss of escaping air.

  She tiptoed towards the sound.

  The young knight stood up from behind the beige Morris, a knife gleaming in his hand. He jumped a mile at the sight of her.

  The Morris slumped noticeably to one side.

  “What do you want?” he said sharply.

  “You’re slashing the tyres,” Leonie said just as sharply. “What’re you doing that for?”

  He raised his knife as if to throw it at her, and she ducked, but he turned and fled towards the back of the garage. She chased him. He dodged between the cars and made it to the doors ahead of her. He sprinted down the drive to the gates, his hairknot coming loose.

  Leonie hurtled back to the house. Blinded by the shadows in the hall, she barged past the housekeeper and into the library.

  Sunlight filled the room. Walls full of books, a globe on a stand, plants everywhere. She took it all in like a snapshot. HM pacing in the middle of the carpet. Sir Robert, who wasn’t eighty after all, but HM’s own age and enormously fat, swaddled in a houppelande and fur mantle like something out of a historical drama. Admiral Brakespear nursing a drink. Princess Madelaine balled up in an armchair, all white face and black clothes. The baby let out a wail, on the lap of the lady-in-waiting who’d been banished to a corner.

  “Uh,” Leonie said.

  “Where’s Lackland?” HM said mildly.

  “If—if that was the other knight, I caught him slashing the tyres of the vehicles in the garage, Sire. He’s run away.”

  “What?” Admiral Brakespear crashed down his glass.

  “Treachery,” HM said. “Brakespear, what do you know of this?”

  “Nothing! Loyal as a dog—trust him with my life—can’t be—woman’s lying!”

  “This woman saved my life yesterday. It sounds as if she may have saved it again.”

  “Sire, we need to go after him! I think …”

  But the king ignored Leonie. He turned to face his daughter. “Well, Maddie?” he said quietly. “What d’you think?”

  The princess put her hands over her face and started crying. “I’m sorry, Daddy! Forgive me, I’m so sorry!”

  “You have betrayed me,” HM said in the stillest voice Leonie had ever heard, like stones falling into a well with no bottom.

  “No, no, it w-wasn’t me! I wanted to come to you in secret like you said, but I couldn’t leave Michael and Fifi, so I went up to the nursery to fetch Fifi, and that’s where Oswald caught us. Sir Lackland was with me. He—he went to pieces and practically started to lick Oswald’s boots. It was revolting. And Oswald said, ‘Go then, go, I won’t hold you back.’ So I thought it was all right. And so we came.” She scrambled out of her armchair and plucked at HM’s arms. “Are you cross, Daddy? Don’t be cross!”

  Sir Robert said, “Did you tell your husband where you were going?”

  “No, of course not!” Princess Madelaine said indignantly.

  “But I’ll bet Lackland did,” Admiral Brakespear growled. His face had gone purple. Leonie thought: Don’t trust him, Sire, he’s probably in on it, too!

  HM shook his head slightly. He seemed indecisive, and Leonie thought in horror, He’s sinking again.

  Sir Robert heaved himself to his feet. “Tristan, you must leave immediately. If they didn’t follow too closely behind Her Highness, you can still reach the yacht.” Leonie looked gratefully at the obese magician in his silly costume. “To make speed, they’ll have to come overland, not by sea—and I’ll back the Lady of Cornwall against anything in Penzance harbor, if they get any clever ideas about commandeering a vessel to give chase. But you must escape as soon as possible.”

  “I’ve had enough of escaping,” HM said.

  Leonie dared to speak up. “We’ve got no time to stand around here with our thumbs up our—twiddling
our thumbs! Sir Robert’s right, Sire! Please!”

  Again the king appeared to hesitate. He strolled over to the globe and spun it, trailing a finger over Europe.

  “With all due respect, Sire,” Admiral Brakespear burbled. “Haste makes waste—bound to be some time before they arrive—”

  “Oh, shut up,” HM said. “Robert, will you come with me, after all?”

  “If you wish it, but I’d slow you down, unfit as I am. If I stay here, I may be able to hold them for a while.”

  Little Princess Fiona started shrieking.

  “Oh, God, can’t you shut her up, Elspeth?” Princess Madelaine shrieked, almost as loudly. She hung on her father’s arm. “Me and Fifi can come, can’t we? I can’t go back to Oswald. I won’t. Daddy, don’t make me!”

  Leonie blurted, “There’s only the one access road. Right? So if we want to make them think HM is still here …”

  The Pinnace van flew helter-skelter down the road, a rotten little bubble of rust that drifted towards the drop at every hairpin bend. Leonie reflexively trod on phantom brakes. Sir Robert’s steward, Yarrow, gripped the wheel in arthritic knuckles. Lady Elspeth—the lady-in-waiting—and little Princess Fiona were bouncing around in the back.

  “Slow down, mate,” Leonie begged. “You’ll have us off the road.”

  The sea was a floor strewn with tin tacks. She could have spat down the chimneys of the rustic cottages bedded in the folds of the headland. The wind moaned in the loose top of her window.

  The squared-off snout of a LongHOG heaved around the approaching bend.

  “Saints help us,” Yarrow groaned. “It’s them.”

  “Keep your head on! You’re driving into town with a load of cabbages and that! Just do what you’d normally do!”

  And if they stop us we’re fucked.

  But they won’t stop us. That’s why we took this van. We’re just an old feller and his daughter driving into town, and all we’ve got in the back is cabbages, cabbages …

  She held the revolver she’d borrowed from Sir Robert down the side of her seat. As old and neglected as the defenses of Acton Castle, its action was so stiff she’d need both hands to cock it, and she had no great hopes of its accuracy.

  The road was too narrow for the vehicles to pass. The LongHOG’s horn blared, ordering the van to reverse.

  Yarrow crunched the gears, backed up. The LongHOG followed, practically scooping the van up on its grill. They reached a passing place and tucked in, brambles scraping the van’s sides. The LongHOG roared past, followed by two Rovers. Four or five ROCK knights lounged in each jeep, faces hard behind their sun-gigs.

  “Why have we stopped? Are we there?” Lady Elspeth’s high-pitched voice came from the back of the van.

  “Not yet, m’lady, don’t move!”

  “Villains! Villains!” Yarrow’s voice shook as he swung the van back onto the road.

  “Look on the bright side,” Leonie said. “Your master won’t put up any vain resistance when he sees that lot. That’s something.”

  The road descended through a few more hairpin bends, then they came to a T junction and turned right, away from Penzance. Dipping down further, the road met the bay and followed the shore back out along the headland. Neat houses and gardens lined the road on their right, then it was just the barren hillside again. They came to a disused-looking pier. A wall of rock beetled ahead, in shadow. The end of the road. The steward did an unhandy three-point turn and parked with the nose of the van facing back in the direction of Penzance.

  Now they just had to wait.

  Leonie looked at her watch. Twenty minutes since they’d left Acton Castle. She’d hoped to see the yacht waiting for them here, but of course it would take the crew a while to fuel the engine and raise the anchor, or whatever you did to get a boat underway.

  As for HM and Princess Madelaine, it would probably take them even longer to hike down from Acton Castle on foot.

  The silence in the van drained her confidence.

  Maybe we all should’ve come together.

  She now knew that they could have got past Lord Day’s snatch squad safely, but she hadn’t known that before. She’d thought that if they did run slap bang into the enemy, as they had, there was a quite substantial chance they’d be pulled over and bubbled. In that case it would have been better to lose just the baby than all three royals.

  Of course she hadn’t said anything like that to Lady Elspeth, who now sounded calm enough as she crooned to little Fiona.

  Listening to the lady-in-waiting’s nonsense-talk, Leonie felt sad. It reminded her of her sister Mystie and her little niece Bryanna.

  When she got back to London, if she ever did, would her family still be there?

  She wound down the window and craned up at the headland. The barren skyline told her nothing.

  “Young Barkin knows this area like the back of his hand,” Yarrow said. Barkin was the Cornwall man-at-arms who’d volunteered to guide the royals. “He’ll bring them down safe.”

  “He’d better bring them down fast,” Leonie snapped. She suddenly felt frantic. Something was wrong. Her internal danger alarm was yammering at her. She stuffed the revolver into her pocket and threw open the van’s door. “I’m going to look for them. If they come, and I’m not back yet, don’t wait for me. Just get HM on the boat, if it ever bloody shows up.”

  She jogged across the road and jumped over the stone wall on the other side. Up the hill through the pasture. She wrapped her sleeve around her hand to push down barbed wire, climbed over that, too. Tufts of sodden wool were caught in the fence. Sheep droppings littered the outcropping rocks. The headland beetled over her.

  She threw herself up the straightest route she could manage without a rope and pitons. Scree shot out from under her trainers. She moulded her fingers around granite and hauled herself over the topmost crag, breath rasping like sandpaper.

  Fifty yards away, the ground ended in a bright line.

  She stood on springy turf dotted with daisies.

  Waves crashed hollowly at the bottom of the cliff.

  She had climbed merely the first bit of the headland. Ahead of her, the ground rose in steep wrinkles, broken by the odd crag with stunted bushes clinging to its shelter. She could just see Acton Castle, perched near the hilltop. This was the route HM and HRH would have had to take. A scramble, but by no means impossible. Where were they?

  Movement caught her eye. Someone climbing down from Acton Castle. Someone all in black. For an instant she thought: That’s HRH—and then she saw another of them, and remembered the black smocks of the ROCK knights in the Rovers.

  Black for black ops, even though we don’t call it black ops anymore, do we?

  Had Sir Robert broken already? Was he dead? Someone had obviously told the ROCK which way the royals had gone.

  They were moving down the hillside tactically, making the most of what cover there was so she couldn’t tell if she was seeing more of them or the same ones over again. Gunfire crackled, faint on the wind. She stiffened, trying to see what they were shooting at, trying not to hit the floor because it wasn’t her, and a flash of movement whipped her around.

  A couple of hundred yards away, the sea had chewed an inlet out of the cliff. HM, HRH, and the man-at-arms, Barkin, stood on the far side of the inlet.

  They’d come down from the headland in the wrong place and now they were stuck. To get around to Leonie’s side, they’d have to boulder it across the cliff at the head of the inlet, or else go over the top, back towards the enemy.

  “Sire! Over here!” Leonie screamed. She ran towards them, but what could she do to help? She tried to remember if there’d been any rope in the van. Even if there was, the ROCK would be on top of them before she could go back and fetch it.

  She reached the edge of the inlet. Fifty feet below, waves dragged glistening pebbles down a tiny beach and threw them back in floods of foam.

  HM waved to Leonie. He put his arm around his daughter and spoke into h
er hair, which had come down and was blowing like a horse’s tail. HRH shook her head helplessly, but then she started to move, supported by Barkin. They were going to attempt the cliff. It was not a sheer face but a pile of huge squarish rocks, with crevices you might just be able to use as footholds.

  Barkin, a wiry youth, stepped onto a ledge that slanted about half the way across. He reached back and pulled HRH up. They crabbed along to the end of the ledge and then Barkin crouched and hooked his fingers around a projection Leonie couldn’t even see, and he lowered himself down until his whole body weight was hanging by that hand. He swung his legs to build up momentum and then he let go and jumped onto a nice broad outcropping two yards below where Leonie stood, and if he thought Princess Madelaine could do that, he was out of his mind.

  Leonie sprawled on her stomach and helped Barkin up onto the clifftop. His hand slipped in hers, torn bloody by the rocks.

  “We’ve got company coming,” she said.

  Princess Madelaine clung to the end of the ledge, immobile.

  “She’s twisted her ankle,” Barkin said.

  “Why’d you bring them down on that side? I thought you were supposed to know the area like the back of your hand!”

  “The other way’s harder.”

  Right on cue, the ROCK started stitching up the clifftop. Bits of turf sprayed up beyond where HM was standing. He crouched under the overhang and drew his pistol. Leonie aimed her ancient revolver, waiting for the ROCK to break cover at the top of the cliff.

  HM shouted, “Jump, Maddie! Jump!”

  The princess did not move.

  “Jump!” HM laid down suppressing fire on top of the overhang.

  Barkin knelt on the clifftop, stretching out his hands. Leonie anchored him from behind. “Jump! We’ll catch you, Your Highness!”

  The princess wormed around on the ledge until she was facing their side of the inlet. Her face was a white mask of terror. She jumped.

  Barkin caught one flailing wrist and threw himself backwards. “Light as thistledown! Ooof.”