by White, Gwynn
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.
Leonie sucked her teeth, realizing that she’d finally stung Dave into doing something decisive. He’d never before shown the slightest interest in the army. But now he believed she was out on her ear, he could join up without looking like he was copying her. He would be properly narked off when he heard her news.
And … He’d joined up because there was going to be fighting, she realized. Or, at least he thought there was. And Una did, too.
She could tell them differently. Royal policy is to preserve the Irish peace process. She had that from the lips of Lord Day himself.
But she wasn’t going to say anything that might put Dave off. This was the best news she’d had in ages. And the very best thing about it was that now he’d done it, he couldn’t take it back.
“Which regiment?” she said.
“The Ravens,” he said warily.
“Oh, the Chicken-Littles.” The Ravens were a Crown regiment. “That’s the next best thing, if you couldn’t get into the Lions, I suppose.”
“Someone’s nose is out of joint,” cried Una.
Sam came dancing in, cloth in one hand and bottle in the other. “Take that smock off for a sec, our Dave. I promise this won’t hurt.”
“Saints be damned, they’ll have a job to put that in fettle,” Mrs Lyle bellowed as Dave reluctantly stripped to his vest.
Leonie pushed closer. The fresh brand on Dave’s shoulder was scabbed over and weeping clear fluid. As Sam tenderly dabbed witch-hazel on it, crusts of dried gunk flaked off, revealing the crown and scepter. Leonie felt unhappy. The Crown was the same as House Wessex, they went together like bread and butter … but if some day, unthinkably, House Wessex lost the throne, that would not be true anymore. Then she and Dave might be on opposing sides.
In her pocket, pain stabbed her finger. Unconsciously clenching her fist, she’d pricked herself on the Medal of Honor First Class. She’d planned to throw it into the Thames, for Gav, and then forgotten about it.
Sucking the blood away, she remembered how she used to get blood blisters on her fingers, cuts and all sorts, from getting them trapped in the moving parts, back when she had just been accepted into the Intelligence Company and they were teaching her to use firearms.
“Army’s not much like the vaunt scene,” she told Dave. “You won’t be poncing around with a weapon until you’ve learned to shine your boots and make hospital corners. If ever.”
He gave her a look of contempt. “I’m going to get into a combat unit, you just watch! I’m not a girl.”
7
Val
Three Weeks Later. October 16th, 1979. London
Up Eire,” Val said, and drained his pint.
Alyx leant against Black Donnchla Morgan’s shoulder, smiling, “Up Eire,” she echoed.
He still couldn’t believe she was here in London.
Not only that, she’d brought the whole gang. Jed Ragherty, Liam Orghela, Ferdy Muckledew, Jim Adeare, Conn O’Carrull, and a jowly, stunned-looking youth who might’ve been called Gerry; Val hadn’t met him before. And Black Donnchla, of course.
Showing off, Val thought. Proving she can traipse in strength through the heart of London, under the Crown’s very nose.
At least she’d picked a relatively safe place to meet. The hubeen was a converted flat on the fourteenth floor of one of the old quickstone estates in Southwark. The walls bulged like folds of black belly fat. Kerosene lamps hung at an angle that visibly diverged from the perpendicular, if you were judging by the floor. You could feel drunk in here without taking a drop. The regulars in the other corners were all Irish, m
ostly dock laborers. They wore flat caps and rag puttees wrapped around the flares of their trousers. Their hands were swollen to red balloons from work in all weathers. A layer of smoke floated above their heads, rocking in the wind that found its way around the rags stuffed in the window-frames.
Ferdy, who fancied himself a ladies’ man, flirted with the barmaid. Ragherty stared out the window as if he were watching telly. Fourteen floors below, boats and waterbuses sailed on a grey tide under a cement-colored sky. You might think there was a storm coming every day here, but it was just the London pollution. Val had woken this morning in his hotel room with a film of bitter-tasting grit on his face.
“Ironic,” Ragherty said.
“What is?”
“Million-quid view. Best views in the city, reserved for the poorest of the poor.”
They gazed across the Thames at what looked at first glance like unspoilt forest. Here and there, roofs peeked through the trees. The entire north bank of the river was owned by about six families.
Val rubbed the end of his old checked scarf between his fingers, testing the Latin words he had worked into the fabric. He did not possess a Latin Bible—they were as rare and expensive as unicorns—but the Latin Scriptures were passed from hand to hand in certain circles. That was felony number one. Felony number two was memorizing the words. Felony number three was acquiring enough craft to use them. (Most incurables were already dead or in prison before they ever got that far.) Felony number four, and by far the trickiest, was rearranging the words of Scripture to say what you wanted, in effect inventing your own spells. Val figured he was one of only a few dozen magicians in the world who had reached this advanced level of criminality. (Black Donnchla certainly hadn’t).
And yet his powers were so very limited. Designed to make him inconspicuous, his scarf wouldn’t even save him from being followed by the security forces, if they should latch onto him.
It hadn’t even stopped Heinrich Ende from recognizing him on St. Cuilla’s Day.
Fruitless regret washed up in his throat. Of all the shitty luck … Poor fecking Ende.
Alyx held out a hand to Conn, who took a package from his pocket. “Present for you, Val. Consider it a token of my esteem.”
Val ignored the package. “Tell me it was clean,” he said.
“Of course it was,” Alyx said, her brown eyes wide and sincere. She twitched a cigarette out of her pack. Ragherty lit it for her. “One bullet to the head.” She pointed her gun hand at Val and pulled an invisible trigger. “Bang.” She smiled.
“I’m jetlagged,” Val said, coughing into his hand. He wrote with phlegm and spittle on the crack-crazed formica of the table: Mendax. He had the petty satisfaction of seeing Alyx try to read the word upside down and give up. Liar. The word glowed faintly to his second sight (felony number three, subclause one). You could still find antique tables, desks, and the like with Mendax worked into their ornamentation. Handy for business negotiations. Not really that much use here, where Val already assumed everyone was lying, including him.
On the other hand, it was interesting to see that when Alyx started droning on about the suffering of the Irish people, the word went inert and stayed that way. Alyx did believe in the cause, of course. It was necessary to her pursuit of power.
Val believed in the cause, too. How could he not? He’d grown up with it. It was in his bones, the yearning for freedom. He’d denied it for more than a decade, tried to find a narrower, personal freedom in other places. But he’d always come back.
No more. I’m not coming back to her any more.
Not after Ende.
I have to end it.
“So that fat gobshite Big Ted O’Leary takes the family to Kenya for the weekend,” Alyx said. “You can get three-day packages for two hundred quid. They’re eating at a beach restaurant, palm trees rustling in the breeze, lobsters swimming in butter, just like in the brochures. And who does he see on the other side of the restaurant but Bob Griffin with his own wife and weans?” Bob Griffin was the Governor of Belfast, sworn to House Sauvage. Big Ted O’Leary was the chief of the IRA’s Army Command. “And what does O’Leary do? He sends the bastard over a bottle, and they end up closing the place down, drinking to the saints of the north.”
Val had recently heard rumors about a split in Army Command. He said, fishing, “It’s a shame the Crown closed down the Irish Knights Conference.”
“It’s a shame for those who had their hand in the strongbox,” Alyx said shortly. She pointed at the package she’d given Val. “Why don’t you open that?”
Val unwrapped the plastic bag. A leather wallet, handmade, like the shite they sold to tourists in the south of Ireland. Stuffed inside it was a brandy miniature bottle that held clear liquid. “What’s this?”
“It’s proof.”
Val took a closer look at the wallet. It had a pattern on it, done in dull purple and black ink. He slapped it down on the table.
“I’ll have it back if you don’t want it. But keep the vial. It’s holy water.”
A likely story. At a guess, Alyx hadn’t been inside a church since she left school.
“Put it on your knuckles. I remember you were saying they ache in the cold.”
Val tossed the vial of ‘holy water’ among the empty glasses. He leaned across Ragherty and held the wallet to the window. The brand depicted a narwhal leaping over a stylized flower of some kind. He’d never seen or heard of the emblem before. The skin had a little mole on it. A couple of freckles …
“That’s the one he had under the fake brand that was on his shoulder,” Alyx said. “It was a brilliant fake, rubber but it looked just like skin. Stuck on with glue ...”
“What was the fake?”
“Von der Barringer, of course.”
Well, of course. Haus Bismarck was the B in BASI, the corporate cartel that ran Germany. If you were going to walk around with a fake German brand on your shoulder, you might as well pick the best. But whose was the narwhal-and-flower device? Who had Ende really been working for?
“Do you know what House that is then, Val?”
Val pocketed the wallet. “I’ll find out.”
“Good.” Alyx stubbed out her cigarette. “Now, I think you’ve got something for us as well, have you not?”
Of course he had. That’s why he was here. Or rather, that’s why she was here. But he placed his elbow protectively over the satchel on his lap. “Maybe I’ll have another wee drink, after all,” he said, smiling weakly.
Alyx beckoned the barmaid. “A round of Kilbeggan.” It came in dirty glasses. Val’s had a chip out of the rim. “To dead heroes.” Alyx raised her glass in the direction of the three volunteers at the end of the table: Gerry, Conn O’Carrull, and Jim Adeare. “They died on Slieve Gullion when the helicopter went down,” she told Val.
“Congratulations,” Val said, assuming this was some hyperbolic figure of speech. “What were you doing on Slieve Gullion?”
“I smelled myself burning,” the stunned-looking kid, Gerry, burst out. “Like roasting pork, it was. We never had a roast at home. It was an extra slice of bread on Sunday and count yourself lucky. I used to stand behind the Imperial and just smell the vents from the kitchens when they were preparing a feast. But now I couldn’t fancy a roast at all.” He spread his hands and stared at them. “I saw my skin turning black!”
“Do you mind,” Ragherty complained around a mouthful of chips. “I’m trying to eat.”
“It was his first time,” Alyx said.
Val drained his shot of whiskey. Of course no one had come back from the dead. Alyx did have a knack for miraculous escapes: she had the cunning of the cuds. That was amazing in itself, because she’d grown up on the dirty streets of Belfast, like him. They had met in St. Patrick’s Cathedral School. He was incurable and she was an orphanage brat, and they’d been inseparable until Val emigrated with his family to Khmeria. And when he came back, plain little Alyx O’Braonain had turned herself into the pretender Alyx Ma
cConn.
“What were you doing on Slieve Gullion?” he repeated.
“You’re joking,” Conn said. “You’ve not heard? It was the fourteenth of September, does that give you a clue?”
Slieve Gullion. The fourteenth of September. The night Crown Prince Harry had been slain—allegedly by Piers Sauvage, the eldest son of the Countess.
“You’re shitting me,” Val said. He looked in disbelief from one to the other of their self-satisfied faces. He shook his head. “I knew it had to be the movement that got him. But I never thought you could be that stupid, Alyx …”
“Who’re you calling stupid? We nutted the usurper’s son and heir, and got away with it!”
Val lit a cigarette and watched the smoke rise. He understood now what Alyx had been trying to tell him since they sat down. She was in trouble with Army Command. Murdering Harry Wessex had angered the political leaders of the movement who had been doing very nicely out of the peace process.
And now he knew why Alyx was in London. She was hiding.
“The worst of it is they got the arsenal,” Donnchla grunted, soaking his black moustache in a fresh pint.
“It was only guns,” Alyx said. Huddled around herself, she looked weazened, smaller somehow.
“Only guns,” Ragherty snorted. He could talk like that to Alyx; he was the oldest of her crew.
But now she turned on him. “All the guns in the world won’t help me to my throne!”
“Rook Niorlain promised us something better,” Black Donnchla said to Val.
“The guns on Slieve Gullion came from Rook Niorlain?” Val said.
“Aye,” Alyx said. “But he made out it was something better. He said it might be the Worldcracker he’d found. It was a lie to lure me into their ambush. I shouldn’t have believed him for a second, but I thought maybe, you know, maybe …”
It hurt to see her like this. Val knew how she craved some edge over her opponents, to the point of spreading lies that she was a witch … and of course, the ultimate edge would be the Worldcracker, the lost sword that could only be wielded by the true king—or queen—of Britain.