A Tale of Two Kingdoms (Knights of Black Swan, Book 6)

by Danann, Victoria

  EXCERPT VI Gathering Storm (conversation between Elora and Glen)

  “You remember that thing you were doing for me. What I asked before we left Ireland?”

  “You thought I forgot.”

  “Well…”

  “Of course you would think that. I should have let you know I’m on it. It’s a worthy mystery, tough enough to be fun, cool enough to be interesting. I was at the latest in a series of dead ends, but I’ve got a new lead. So the trail is heating up again. As soon as Sol gets back I’ll request some time off and a pass ride.”

  “Good news.”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Well, I’m hoping. I wish I could tell you why I need the intel so badly, but just to reiterate, it’s important to some people I know. Really, really, really important.”

  Glen cocked his head. “Abandon-my-post important? Or work-on-it-when-I-can important?”

  “Scale of one to ten. One means if we never find out it’s no big deal. Ten is the end of days. I’m putting this between seven and eight.”

  “Okay. You know I don’t have any free time while Sol’s gone and not much when he’s here. And the lead I need to follow requires travel with flex time and a long leash.”

  “When Sol gets back, let me know what you need and I’ll make it happen.”

  A TALE OF TWO KINGDOMS

  We’ve called them by hundreds of different names.

  At times they’ve shown themselves to us as they are.

  At times they’ve shown themselves in disguise.

  We’ve used each other.

  We’ve amused them, entertained them, and provided breaks in their boredom.

  In return, they’ve given us the illusion of reason or inspiration or purpose or excuse.

  CREATION

  In an exercise as old as the stars, the divinity class teacher told his charges to divide into teams of eight so that he might assign group projects. As it happened there were eighty-seven in the class. Eighty of those responded with the excitement that would be expected from an opportunity to work in committee structure with their friends. They chatted animatedly, drawn to each other as if they were made of magnets. Appearing to be in a state of delight nearing euphoria, they began naming their teams and composing team cheers while they awaited further instructions.

  Beneath the commotion, inaudible but nonetheless present, were the groans and anxious stomach rumbles of the remaining seven who would rather take a millennium’s detention than participate in a group project. When the huddles were completely formed, those seven looked around to see who was left and gradually, grudgingly, began to drift toward shared space.

  Dr. Pierce quietly observed, looking down from a raised platform and a condescending attitude. He knew the process of group project assignation was painful for the socially vulnerable, but it wouldn’t do for him to recognize that he enjoyed that. No, indeed. He viewed it with clinical dispassion, thinking it almost resembled a dance. Some were adept and some were not.

  He was one of the first beings ever created and looked it. Though he had managed eternal survival physically, he’d discovered the truth of the Peter Principle rather early in his career and had, thereafter, become known for his bitterness expressed at times in biting wit and, too often, misdirected at powerless students.

  He watched the progress of the formation of the eleventh, odd number group, with some distaste. He resented the fact that his instructions were being delayed by the slowness with which they came together. He resented the fact that they were such ne’er-do-well loser misfits that they had forced him, in his own mind, to have already given them a failing grade on the project before they had even heard the assignment. Because of that he was already formulating a plan to give them the subject with the least likely chance of succeeding - the realms of Earth.

  It wasn’t intended as a punishment. Exactly. It was more an anti-reward.

  The seven sat down at a corner conference table, eyeing each other cautiously, waiting to hear sentence pronounced – that being how long they would be stuck working together on a group project. None of them knew each other well enough to be labeled so much as acquaintances. Of course they’d seen each other around, but had never had either occasion or desire to interact on any level.

  Still young and inexperienced in the grander scheme of things, they were aeons old, a concept unimaginable by lesser minds. They were a motley crew, beautiful for their oddities, pure in their extremes, comical in their eccentricities, but all of that could only be appreciated if viewed through a prism of generosity. And the absence of that was one of the essentials that had held Dr. Pierce back from a more illustrious and transcendent career.

  Pierce restored quiet to the space by holding up his hands in a gesture of authority that was a tad grander than required for the event, but the preferred pupils were wily about their surreptitious jests at his expense. Pierce’s assistant passed out the parameters of the assignment.

  Every team would be given a world with a starter complement of elementals, flora, fauna… the usual. The common Hominin prototype was to be used to populate at least a portion of the dimensions. The more humans, the greater the points. The experiment would be judged as a whole, but each student would be encouraged to pursue an individual “hobby” project, which could result in extra credit.

  As the students looked over the outline of the assignment, Dr. Pierce drifted down from his platform, holding eleven tablets. Each tablet held the name of the team’s destination where they would be spending the next several thousand years together.

  He drifted from one team to the next handing out tablets until there was only one tablet left and one team left, the team of seven, joined together by necessity rather than choice. One of them stood to receive the tablet and the others raised no objection. Pierce put it in his hand, then said to the group, “There are lessons to be learned from those who will people your study. When you have absorbed those lessons, you will return and advance to new challenges.”

  One of the seven said, “Oh, joy,” sarcastically.

  Pierce’s gaze jerked toward him in reprimand. “Clearly that won’t be soon. All the better for me.”

  When Pierce was gone, the one holding the tablet raised it and read it out loud. “Earth.”

  The seven looked at each other quizzically and responded with shaking heads and shrugging shoulders.

  And so The Council was formed. The seven were…

  Culain

  Etana

  Rager

  Heralda the Dark

  Ming Xia

  Theasophie

  Huber Quizno

  CHAPTER 1

  “Have you no’ had a niggle of a tap then?”

  Duff looked up at his friend. He’d been staring into a pool of dark ale like he was a soothsayer and it was a diviner’s tool. They sat in a corner of a pub like a sad pair of leftover bachelors.

  “Ah, Brean, no’ you, too.”

  “Me, too? ’Tis only I here, Duffy. How many are you seein’, man? And ‘tis only your third pint.”

  “Was referrin’ to me mum. Earlier this very e’en, was mindin’ my own affairs when the grand dame comes sashayin’ ‘round and orders my own secretary away so that she can discreetly inquire as to my ability to mate.”

  Brean waited for two entire breaths before he began to beat the table and laugh hard enough to squeeze moisture from his eyes.

  From a certain point of view, Duff supposed he could admit it might be comical.

  Duff’s mum had wandered into his suite that afternoon and nodded at Grieve in that way that said, “Did you no’ just remember somethin’ needs doin’ down the hall there?”

  As the door was open to his assistant’s office, he was able to observe the entire exchange. Grieve, who had not survived fifteen years in palace employ without skills, knew how to take a subtle hint. He rose, gave a slight bow, and asked for leave by excuse of errand for the prince. She graciously gave him leave.

  Once the
secretary had vacated the rooms, the queen began to slowly walk about Grieve’s office looking at this, studying that, as if she was visiting a museum and expecting to be tested later on what she saw. She was exactly twenty-five years older than her son and still lovely enough to drive sales of magazines when she appeared on the cover.

  He had gotten his big-boned frame and height from his father, but his dark hair and violet eyes were the unmistakable stamp of maternal genes.

  “Social call, Mum?”

  “What else, love?”

  “Well, that’s nice.” Duff looked up. “Tea?”

  “Thank you, no. Had my fill already.”

  There was nothing to do but wait until she said what she had to say. “Would you care to sit then?”

  “Um? Aye, perhaps.” She strutted herself to the smart red leather armchair in front of Duff’s desk and sat down as gracefully as a woman half her age. “I was thinkin’…” Duff groaned. “What was that?”

  “Did no’ say a thin’, Mum.”

  Lorna Torquil was Queen of Scotia fae, but for the moment, she was simply a woman looking at the male child she had raised to adulthood, who was also her own heart walking outside her body. He was her only son, but he was also her only child, which probably intensified her feelings. All that maternal impulse was trained on one fae who normally saw that as a blessing.

  “I was thinkin’,” she began again, “that ‘tis past time for the matin’ to come callin’?”

  The way she cocked her head he felt like he’d been placed on a glass rectangle and slid underneath a giant microscope for closer scrutiny.

  “The matin’?”

  “Aye. I look at the social pages, you know. I see how many of your friends have had you standin’ up for them at their handfastin’s. Droppin’ all ‘round you, are they no’?”

  Her gaze was boring down. She was doing that mother thing. The one where she examined him closely, looking for some sign that he might be clipping the truth. It was some mystical means of lie detection that was practically foolproof.

  He knew the color was spreading up his neck and he knew she could see it. So he decided the best cover was to laugh.

  “Mum. You’re embarrassin’ me. Aye. I’m practically the last one standin’. Thanks very much for stoppin’ by to point that out. Now I really ought to get ‘round a couple details before…”

  She stood abruptly. “Very well. I shall no’ detain you from your very important work. Let me just leave you with the thought that you’re no’ likely to come face to face with your intended while you’re shut up in here with Grieve. Because one thin’ I’m certain of, she ain’t him.”

  He laughed. “I can no’ believe you said ‘ain’t’.”

  “Got your attention, did it?”

  “You always have my attention.”

  “What a lovely liar you are, my love.” She turned to go.

  “Like your hair that way, Mum.”

  “Shut it,” she said without turning back.

  “And that would be ‘she ain’t he’, no’ ‘she ain’t him.” he yelled after her and heard the muted tones of the bawdy laugh she reserved for when she was at home with family. She was already at the end of the long polished hallway, moving quickly with the resumed purpose of a woman who has a royal schedule to keep.

  It had been over a year since Duff had first seen Aelsong Hawking sitting with her back to him in a pub in the shadow of the Balmoral Hotel. Since then he’d only seen her twice and, of those three encounters, had only been alone with her once.

  He’d given Elora Laiken a chance to talk to her hothead husband and get him to lay some groundwork, or whatever her plan had been. He’d given the times a chance to change and, while some of the younger fae were definitely making noises that they didn’t really see the point of the hostilities, there was no catalyst. No motivation sufficient enough for either side to move off dead center. There wasn’t even a reason to talk about it.

  The following day Duff had a mid-morning appointment with the Director of Communications. On the way back into his office he stopped to spin the giant globe that sat between the window and fireplace in the outer office occupied by Grieve. It was one of those objects that regularly failed to capture notice because of the combination of its familiarity and lack of use. On that particular day, however, something about the blues, greens, and yellows was captivating.

  As the sphere rotated deosil, his eye was naturally drawn to Scotia, sitting atop the islands of Britannia to the north. Looking down at the top of the world, from his vantage point, he watched as the tundra of the cossacklands seemed to go on forever before coming to a small break where the Bering Sea separated continents. As rotation continued, he was reminded again of how drastically a flat map distorted the representation of size and space relationships on the Earth’s surface and that Canada’s land mass was immense.

  As he was thinking just that, he reached out and stopped the globe with his large fingers under the word ‘Canada’. His eyes moved to the right. He knew that people often talked about the severe Canadian cold, but Edinburgh, the city in which he was standing, was further north than every major Canadian city. Cold was not a Scotia fae’s biggest problem.

  He spoke to Grieve without turning around, allowing his eyes to continue to move over the uppermost band of North America: Newfoundland, Quebec, Ontario.

  “Grieve.”

  “Sir.”

  “What do I have for the rest of the day?”

  “Lunch at the Ministry of Finance. The king said to mark that one mandatory. The Royal Mile Tourist Commission will be here at three to petition you for permissions to use various national monuments for the stagin’ of events.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Photographs with royal scholarship recipients at four.”

  “How long will that take?” Grieve blinked as if he didn’t fully grasp the question. “Without the usual dawdlin’.”

  “Without dawdlin’, perhaps fifteen minutes.”

  “So done at four-fifteen then?”

  “Aye.”

  “Call Pey and tell him I need to see him today. In a professional capacity. My office. His office. Dinner. I do no’ care. Tell him I’m buyin’ and tell him I’ll no’ be takin’ no for an answer.”

  “May I ask how long an appointment you’ll be requirin’, your Highness?”

  “I need a half hour for business, but would linger over dinner with port and cigars after if he has time. If ‘tis to be dinner, reserve my table in the wine cellar at the club where we could talk without bein’ overheard. Oh, and, Grieve…”

  “Aye, your Highness?”

  “Ah, never mind.”

  A couple of minutes later Grieve knocked lightly on Duff’s office door and poked his head in.

  “Mr. Innes says he can get a mutton quickie past his mate if ‘tis early enough, but ‘twill be safer to forego port for a better excuse. Yule perhaps.”

  Duff chuckled. “Tell him six then. Call the kitchen at Highlander and have them to do up a mutton saddle with roasted potatoes for the pair of us and have it ready to serve at six fifteen.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Glen closed the phone as Rosie opened the door of his office and strolled in smiling. She was wearing a backpack over her shoulder that was girlie-looking, made out of something like bronze satin, kind of vintage, kind of cute. Everything about Rosie was kind of cute except her nymphomania. And that was definitely hot.

  “You ready?”

  He looked at his watch. Three o’clock. Right on time. “Aye, my darlin’,” Glen said with his very best attempt at an Irish lilt. Rosie laughed and nodded toward the door in a gesture of, “Let’s go.”

  Glen had promised Elora he’d get to the bottom of the cause of the Elf Fae War four months before. He didn’t like making excuses about the delay, but a few things had come up: Animal House, filling in for Sol, a major search and rescue operation for the real Storm with simultaneous makeove
r for a Storm pretender, Rosie… well, Rosie, aliens trying to demolish Jefferson Unit on his watch, and Sol dying having left him in charge and without naming a real replacement. Criminently!

  A lesser person might have succumbed to a nervous breakdown, but he, the Great Glen, had managed to manage. More importantly, he emerged with the best lead so far. He’d promised Elora that he would pursue it as soon as he could get away for a week or so. Now the week was at hand. Jefferson was put back together. The people who had converged on J.U. from every corner of the globe to pay their respects to Sol had all returned to their respective stations of duty and things were quiet.

  He was going to get away for a few days with his girl and do the Lady Laiken the favor of a secret mission at the same time. Of course it didn’t hurt that his girl was first class transportation personified. Just the sort of companion needed for an impossible journey such as the one on which they were about to embark.

  He had a very fine evening planned beginning with a ride through the passes, courtesy of his very lovely date, to Doolin, Ireland, where they would eat pub food at Gussie O’Connor’s until they were ready to burst at the seams, see how many pipes and fiddles could cram into one pub on a fine Irish night, then snuggle together in a warm bed at Mrs. McGann’s, thousands of miles away from where either of them was expected to be. Perfect.

  Everything about Glen’s first night in Ireland with Rosie was as wonderful as each of them had hoped it would be.

  When they woke on their first morning after having slept together, Glen found out that there were a lot of unusual aspects to having a girlfriend like Rosie. He snuggled close to give her a morning kiss.