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

by Gwynn White

  Mihal found he was thirsty, after all. He moved to the drinks cart, scooped some ice into a glass, and poured a splash out of the first bottle that came to hand.

  The director of the conciliation department, Wulf Bohrman, had allowed him to come to Britain precisely because of Guy Sauvage’s counter-coup. It was a chance to get in on the ground floor of the new Sauvage regime, Bohrman had decided.

  So much for that.

  Mihal sat down in one of the buttoned leather armchairs by the fire and sipped his drink. It turned out to be whiskey. He hadn’t eaten all day. His head swam.

  “What’s that?” Sperling said, jerking a thumb at Mihal’s arms belt.

  Mihal drew out the polished ash dowel he’d spent the evening working on. “Not pointy. See?”

  “It’s a magic wand,” Norton said. “Put it away before I shove it up your arse.”

  Mihal managed a fairly convincing laugh. “Wands used to be the standard vehicle for spells,” he explained. “Now, of course, they’re giveaways, so we rarely use them. This one’s specifically designed to counter an existing spell. It can’t hurt you. I’m here to help, not to harm anyone.”

  “We whipped you lot in the War,” Norton said, predictably. “Magic didn’t save you then. Want to give it a go?”

  “You know, I’m kind of hungry.” This was not bravado but simply an attempt to duck the looming confrontation. “Any chance of room service?”

  “I’ll serve you.” Norton started towards him.

  The man in the window seat intervened. “Don’t fuck him about. I want to hear what he’s got to say.” He swung his legs to the floor and strode across the room. A neat little knot graced his head. He stopped at the telephone stand and flipped through the vellum leaflet beside it. “Light meals, desserts, nine-course dinners … would a club sandwich do you? I had one for lunch, they’re rather good.”

  “Sounds great,” Mihal said warily.

  Room service was efficient. Not ten minutes later, the sandwich arrived on a plate so fine that Mihal could see the firelight through its rim. It was indeed good, the bacon perfectly crunchy, the tomato flavorful, the white bread lightly toasted, with a side of potato chips. He polished it off, wiped his mouth on damask, and looked up. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” the fair-haired knight said. He gestured to Norton, who leered and hit Mihal in the head.

  54

  Leonie

  At The Same Time. Dargan Marsh Power Station

  Leonie squatted on the hill of rubble, her Myxilite across her knees, doggedly eating a chocolate bar. She had no feeling left in her arse and not much more in her hands. She could see Alfie and Dave lying in the weeds beyond the nearest cooling tower. She and the other Ravens had all tried to reach them. None of them could break through what Wicke had dubbed the ‘Wall of Fear.’

  I’m sorry, Dave, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Sorry I thought you weren’t up to this soldiering game. When push came to shove, you were braver than me.

  The sleet was turning into snow, settling on the rubble. Out in the weeds, it would be settling on Dave and Alfie. Alive or dead—or worse than dead …

  You were the bravest of us all, and look where it’s got you.

  But that was a load of old cobblers. Who was it, after all, that had got him into this?

  Me, it was me. I’m sorry.

  With two men down, this was no longer a spree. Wicke had been sent back to the Rover to get on the radio and call in backup. The consequences for the rest of the patrol didn’t matter any more. Leonie had to stay here to explain the situation to whoever showed up, although it would likely take at least an hour, even if there happened to be a unit in the area. Thus they were down to three bodies, including her.

  Neal, with his gimpy ankle, was on stag at the digger. Lance-Corporal Boogan had set off to do a circuit of the towers and find out if the Wall of Fear went all the way around.

  If we had a rope, we could try to lasso them and drag them out of it. If, if …

  Popping the last square of chocolate into her mouth, she stiffened. Was that Wicke, back already? But the figure walking through the snow was the wrong size. And now she heard the noise of an engine in low gear.

  She slid off the rubble and took cover.

  A man came walking backwards out of the snow, guiding a lorry with its headlights off. It passed between her and the towers. Heads moved above the sides of the open back. And another lorry, more men walking alongside. And another.

  The procession seemed ghostly, a magical apparition to go with the Wall of Fear. Gooseflesh squeezed Leonie’s scalp.

  One of the lorries angled away from the others. She ran after it and met it at the digger.

  Lance-Corporal Boogan jumped out. His eyes burned hot in his greened-up face, blaming her. “It goes all the way around.”

  “Where’d this lot spring from?”

  The men getting out of the lorry, aiming rifles into the snow, wore white peaked caps. Sauvage-green smocks, white belts, white vinyl hobnailed boots, and white scarves, helpful for any terrorist seeking a target. Pointyheads, Ireland version. Governor Griffin’s liveried police. Armed with rubber bullets. Their rig had metal sides, buttressed with sandbags, open to the snow. That’s what the pointyheads drove around in up here—a mobile platform, they called it. One step up from a cattle lorry.

  A plainclothes swung out of the cab, paunch belted in, drunkard’s nose a blob between hat and muffler.

  “Around the other side,” Boogan said. “Front gate. The pointyheads are setting up a siege.”

  “Any of you lot got a rope?”

  “Maybe in the staging area—” a young pointyhead offered.

  Leonie urged them towards the cooling towers. The plainclothes tagged along at the back of the party. They clumped up behind the nearest tower.

  Snow had collected in the folds of Dave and Alfie’s uniforms.

  “There’s my men,” Boogan said grimly. “Any ideas?”

  “We could form a human chain,” Leonie said. The pointyheads were going to be no help. They were just local boyos who’d ended up wearing the Griffin’s colors instead of balaclavas and camouflage. The only difference up here was which street you happened to be born in. They were terrified, and they hadn’t even touched the Wall of Fear yet. “Have a go,” she needled them. “If you’re not craven, prove it!”

  “I know this is above your pay grade, lads,” Boogan said. “It’s above mine. It’s magic, what done for those boys. But I’m not going nowhere until I recover their bodies, and neither are you!”

  “You shouldn’t have been here in the first place. You’ve compromised the element of surprise,” the plainclothes said.

  “What element of surprise?” Leonie said. “They knew we were coming! They knew! What else did they put this shit up for?”

  The plainclothes raised a bushy eyebrow, which was more or less all she could see of his face above his muffler. But all he said was, “Back, lads, back. Establish your positions. Snow’s getting heavier.”

  The pointyheads retreated. Leonie was the last to follow. She tacked around another group of policemen unspooling a roll of barbed wire in loose loops.

  “You lot are as useful as chocolate teacups,” Boogan told the pointyheads, giving voice to her own feelings. But she could not understand why he looked at her again in that blaming way, until he said, “Bloody MI5! Couldn’t organize a piss-up in a pub! Left hand doesn’t know what the right hand’s doing, not half!”

  The plainclothes frowned at him, then turned to Leonie. “Hal Brakespear.” He nodded curtly, highborn manners dictating that he treat her as a woman, not a soldier. “MI5.”

  Leonie felt her mouth trying to drop open. She fought for control of her expression. Thanks to the muffler wrapped around the bottom half of his face, she had not recognized him. Now she did.

  “She’s MI5, too,” Boogan chipped in.

  Brakespear’s eyes narrowed. “Really,” he said neutrally. “Mis
s?”

  “Spline,” she said, giving her father’s surname, the same name she’d given the Ravens so they wouldn’t know she was Dave’s sister. “MI5.”

  She waited for him to recognize her. She recognized him all right. He was one of the traitors who’d betrayed the king to the ROCK. So he’d been in MI5 all along …

  Apparently he didn’t recognize her. But he didn’t believe her, either. “Better come back with me and report,” he said.

  “I’m not leaving …” my brother.

  Alone, Leonie ran back towards the cooling towers. She pushed down the barbed wire and plunged over it, ripping her jeans. She was going to have another go at the Wall of Fear. The only thing between her and Dave was fear. It was mad that that alone could keep her from saving him.

  She halted in the gap between the towers. The whirling snow limited visibility. But she could see the weeds where Dave and Alfie had lain.

  An acute sense of vulnerability pulled her into a crouch. Tears stung her eyelids.

  The terrorists had, of course, known they were there all along. They must have been watching and waiting in silence, and the moment Leonie turned her back, they must have stolen out and dragged their prey off into the darkness.

  Dave and Alfie were gone.

  55

  Mihal

  At The Same Time

  Mihal’s head hurt. His whole body hurt. The floor lurched. He was in a moving vehicle. He inhaled the smell of wet wool coats; rubber floor mats; the tang of gun oil. He opened his eyes.

  He was lying in the far back of an estate car. Streetlights slid past. The upper storeys of decaying brick buildings. A gable end abloom with graffiti.

  His hands were cuffed together in front of him.

  The young blond knight leaned over the back seat. “Sorry about that,” he said. “One feels it’s sensible to take precautions with magicians. I’m glad Norton didn’t hit you too hard. Did I introduce myself? I don’t think so. Andrew Lackland.”

  “Mihal Zalyotin. I’d like to sit up.”

  Lackland reached over the seat and helped him into a sitting position. “The cuffs will come off when we get there. If you’re telling the truth about what this does.” He displayed Mihal’s wand.

  “Why would I lie?” Mihal said.

  “People do,” Lackland said. “You must have noticed. For profit, for pride, for love, out of sheer bloody-mindedness. Or because there’s something they believe in that matters more to them than the truth.”

  Mihal licked his lips, tasted flakes of dried blood. “You’ve got the advantage of me. You know that I’m sworn to the IMF, but I don’t know who you’re sworn to.”

  “They say magicians are never loyal to anyone but themselves,” Lackland said. “True, in my experience. That’s why our late king had to go. But we were talking about me?” He shrugged. “I’ve spent my whole life lying. Pretending to believe in this system. Assenting to our great national lie that we’ve still got power and influence, when the Wessexes have spent the last forty years pissing the once-great British Empire down the toilet.” Pause. “I was in the Navy for a while. I only ever set foot on shipboard once, but that was for a cruise in the Indian Sea. Around Cape Horn and ho! for the East. Those waters used to be ours. So did India. Not any more.”

  It had been fifty years since the Pharaoh kicked the English out and established his abominable dictatorship over the subcontinent. Mihal marvelled at the way people could hold onto grudges older than they were.

  “The Egyptians have factory ships the size of floating cities. Five thousand low-caste workers to each ship, catching and processing fish. We boarded one once. Have you ever seen the low-caste Egyptians? Not the chaps with necklace tattoos. The lower castes have the heads of animals. Literally. Men’s bodies, dogs’ heads. Or jackals, or cows, or leopards. They’re bred. The Egyptians call it forging.”

  “Yes,” Mihal said. “It’s not magic, actually. It’s a type of fancying. We don’t know how they do it. Fancying should not work on human beings. It doesn’t, in this part of the world.”

  “They are bred without free will, without any desires other than to serve the Pharaoh.” Lackland shuddered.

  The car swung into a turn. Leaving the streetlights of the city behind, they sped into the dark.

  “Our tolerance of the Pharaoh and his empire is an abomination,” Lackland concluded. “‘Oh,’ we say, ‘live and let live, as long as they don’t bother us.’ No wonder our so-called Great Houses have lost their sanctity. Oswald Day would have made a fresh start—a new era of chivalry …”

  “The IMF also regrets Lord Day’s death.”

  “Shut up, you glib piece of shit, or I’ll shoot you.”

  56

  Val

  At The Same Time

  Val waded through snow-frosted nettles and almost blundered into barbed wire. Mere yards away, another mobile platform drove past with its lights off.

  He unlidded his second sight. His spell traced a wobbly line inside the barbed wire, a rope of knotted Latin: trepidatio, fear, repeated over and over. He’d used this one all the time when he was working for Flambeault in the East.

  “Boo,” someone whispered behind him.

  “Alyx!”

  She was smiling, but her face was as pale as the snow above an old coat mended with duct tape.

  “How did you get in?”

  “The same way I left.”

  “Have you seen what’s out there?”

  “I have. Your friend Connelly stitched us up.”

  No. I did. “I’m holding them off for now,” he said, to distract her from guessing that he was responsible for this. Colin Argent had come through like a champion. That had to be half of the Belfast police out there. Val had been hoping for something a bit more discreet. He should have known the daughter of Niall Sauvage did nothing by halves. Now he had to work out how to surrender to them without getting anyone killed. “I laid a defensive spell around the towers, just for safety’s sake. But it won’t last forever. The snow’s coming down. It’ll cover it up.”

  She laughed in surprised delight. “How did you know I’d need a circle?”

  “It’s not a circle.”

  “Oh yes, it is! See how the Old Cows stand. And now you’ve linked them together. Is that not a circle?”

  “Alyx … Did the others come back with you?”

  She moved towards the nearest cooling tower. He floundered to keep up. “We failed,” she said briefly.

  “Ah, Alyx …”

  “We went to get the Worldcracker back from my mother. I knew she wouldn’t give it up, but Donnchla was set on giving it a try.”

  “… And the other lads?”

  “Gerry, Liam, and Jim are caught. Donnchla got away with me. Mum got away, too, I’m fairly sure. She still has the Worldcracker. I don’t know where she went. I don’t care.” Alyx leaned against the inner side of the cooling tower, her face tilted up to the snow. “Well, House Sauvage’s finished, anyway. I heard it on the radio.”

  Val gazed across the wasteland, uneasy. That was definitely Bob Griffin’s constables out there. He’d heard their Belfast accents. If House Sauvage wasn’t in charge anymore, who was?

  “So my mother’s schemes have come to nothing,” Alyx said, “and serve her bloody well right.”

  “What did she want?” Val said inattentively.

  “Oh, only what every woman wants! To have her own private jet and armored limousine, and sponsor tourney champions and make them wait on her hand and foot, and wear designer gowns with gold and jewels dripping from her hair, and give parties where all the men would come onto her!”

  “Sssh!” Val pointed.

  Silhouettes in the snow, several men strung out in single file, approached the gap between the next tower and the one Val and Alyx were hiding behind. Out to the sides of the column, two more men covered them with rifles. The point man stumbled into the barbed wire. Now they were over the wire … The leader had a rope tied around his waist.
Two more steps, one—and the leader went down. Val exhaled in relief. Still holding.

  Alyx pushed past him. He held her back. While they struggled in silence, the men on the rope dragged their companion back to the wire.

  “Ah, you fucker!” He let go. She trembled with fury. “Too late! They’ve taken him away.”

  “The spell’s still working.”

  “Too right it is. You’ve made it miles too strong. They know now they can’t get through. They won’t be trying again.” She stomped off through the weeds, flinging back at him: “I needed that man. We’ve only got one spare! We need at least one more!”

  “One what man? For what?” Val followed her towards the spinney of bog alders this side of the generator building. His shadow leapt out before him, wobbling on the snowy ground. He wheeled, and was blinded by light.

  Alyx dragged on his arm. They started to run towards the generator building. Val tripped on rubble hidden under the snow-covered weeds.

  Crack! A bush ahead of him shook off its snow.

  Alyx shoved him to the ground. She knelt in the snow and shot back at the lights.

  Val crawled through a storm of noise. A couple of lifetimes later he fell across the threshold of the generator building. Ragherty was hugging the doorway, wasting ammo at a fantastic rate.

  Alyx tumbled in. “There’s thousands of them out there!” She caught hold of Black Donnchla Morgan and danced him around. “Rook Niorlain will fucking die of envy. He can’t even get a proper crowd to show up to his speeches anymore.”

  Val lay on the concrete floor, wet and shivering. A long shadow wobbled across the wall like a pendulum. Next to him lay a dead man. No. Not dead. The man’s chest rose and fell. Man? A mere boy. Green paint smeared his face, clashing with his khaki uniform.

  An English soldier.

  Val sat up. “Mother of God,” he whispered.

  The generator building was a dingy brick shell. A fire burned in the middle of the concrete floor. It had formerly been a smoky, uncooperative fire, good for making tea in a can and not much else. Now it blazed high, spitting and crackling. Above the fire, they’d built a sort of tripod of old pipes and metal rods. And from the apex of the tripod hung the body of a second English soldier, head down. Dripping into the flames.