Dominion Rising: 23 Brand New Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels

by White, Gwynn

  Mustering his courage, Ran went into the Strategy Room.

  Guy stood at the big sandbox with a lot of other people. One was Hanna O’Cinneide, Piers’s girlfriend. Most of the others were strangers, apart from Colin Argent, who saw Ran and beckoned to him. Ran wriggled through the crowd so he could see into the sandbox.

  So called because it would once have been an actual box full of sand, the sandbox was a table with raised edges. It usually held a scale model of whichever stadium the Overwhelm would be fighting in next, with blue-painted water features, plastic trees, and tiny knights on horseback. But now an unfamiliar relief map was spread out on the table: a map of all Great Britain.

  Ran found Dublin, a grey splotch on the coast of the Irish Sea, There was Dublin Castle in the middle of the city, a green blob with a weensy castle in it, the size of his littlest fingernail. It gave him a queer, dizzy feeling, as if he were looking down at himself … as if, within the tiny castle, a tinier Ran might be looking down at a map in a sandbox, and so on, and on, and on.

  Guy cut through the talk around the table. “For now, doing nothing gives us the advantage.”

  One of the men Ran didn’t know swept his pointer across Wales. A group of tiny diecast tanks and soldiers had been arranged there. The man knocked them over with his pointer. “So much for the leadership we had looked for from Sauvage,” he sneered. He stared coldly at Ran for a moment, then dropped his pointer on the table and walked off to the other end of the room.

  Guy drove his hands into his loosely bunned hair. Then he turned to Ran. “What do you want?”

  I’m the Lord Protector of Ireland. You’re talking about war—I ought to have been here! But what came out of Ran’s mouth was: “We’re going for a ride. Remember? You promised!”

  “So you did, Guy,” Colin said.

  “Saints,” Guy breathed. There was some laughter from the other men around the table. Guy flushed. Then he said loudly, “Fair enough. Time we took a break, anyway. Feel free to insult me in my absence.”

  They went up to the mews. Ran rushed off to fetch Honor, saddled her, and rushed back out to the yard, afraid Guy and Colin would escape him again. They were wrangling their dragons into cold-weather coats, assisted by a groom apiece who held the beasts while Guy and Colin crawled under their bellies to buckle the huge, padded garments. Colin was going to ride Egad Sir, the big mackerel buck who had belonged to Piers.

  The dragons’ coats were Sauvage green, with swan logos on the flanks. “I think I might change our device when I am the earl,” Ran said loudly. “I might make it a dragon.”

  Guy lay on his back, fastening the buckles between Utterly Hopeless’s legs. “Can’t do that,” he grunted. “The German house of Bismarck has dragon devices locked up. Anyway, the swan goes back to when Sauvages were kings.”

  “At least your badge isn’t as wet as ours,” Colin said. “A seagull? I ask you!”

  When they were in the air, Guy shouted, “Where are we going, anyway?”

  “Wicklow Forest!” Ran screamed back.

  In the last twelve hours, the media encampment outside the Cork Hill Gate had bloated into a village. Colin perilously guided Egad Sir down to buzz them. The downdraft from the dragon’s wings knocked over tripods and a camp stove, cueing a panicky dance of firefighting. Colin swept back up to Guy and Ran, laughing his head off. Of course, many of the reporters were his friends and colleagues.

  They flew over the city. Streetlamps shone out in the twilight. The sky was still light over the sea, the clouds streaked by the lemony glow of the sinking sun.

  “Do you know where you’re going, Ran?” Guy shouted.

  “Yes! Wicklow Forest!”

  The Forest started just a few miles beyond the outskirts of Dublin. Crows startled up from the bare branches of chestnuts and sycamores. Further on, it was solid evergreens.

  Ran wouldn’t have known how to find the clearing again. But Honor did. Before Guy could get too cross, it appeared below them, a round eye with the standing stone for its pupil.

  It was smaller than Ran remembered from this morning. He had left as soon as he hid the Worldcracker, getting home early enough to convince the sleepy stablehands that he’d just taken Honor out for an early ride. His nurse had been furious when he admitted summoning Honor to his window. He wouldn’t be able to get away with that again. But it wouldn’t matter, when Guy had Worldcracker.

  Ran just knew that his brother would be able to wield the legendary sword. He couldn’t. As Piers had said, he was a nine-year-old incurable with two left feet. But Guy—Guy was the greatest knight in Britain! Who cared that he was a bastard? In the Chronicles of the Worldcracker, it was not always the obvious heir who ended up being the true king.

  At the very least, with Worldcracker in his hands, Guy could avenge Piers properly.

  Ran could hardly wait.

  The two fullgrown dragons had to land one at a time, gliding down at angles as steep as they could manage, then crash-braking, snapping their wings into high Vs as soon as their feet touched the ground. Leaves stormed around them, torn from the trees. Honor landed behind them.

  Egad Sir stretched out his neck and yowled, a deafening sound in the sudden silence.

  “Now what?” Guy said. He took a flask out of the zippered pocket of his flying suit, swigged, and passed it to Colin.

  “This is rather a special place. Good find, Ran!” Colin slapped the standing stone. Ran waited for it to yawn open and swallow him, but nothing happened. “Think of all the history this stone must’ve seen—it’s probably a thousand years old; two thousand ...”

  “Two thousand years of pagan nastiness,” Guy said.

  “Guyyy.” Colin made sad eyes. “We Irish are descended from those pagans ourselves.”

  “I’m not Irish.”

  “It’s the thought that counts.”

  “I haven’t any such thoughts, either.”

  “Not even with Llywelyn, York, and Lancashire practically begging you to lead Ireland against the regicide?”

  “Mother won’t hear of it. You may have noticed she couldn’t even be troubled to put in an appearance today. Off spinning her own web, and leaving me to make her no look like pragmatism.”

  Guy dumped out a bag of offal for their steeds. Ran got in front of him and caught his eye. “What’s Mother saying no to?”

  Guy exhaled heavily. “The proposal that we transport a detachment of motorized infantry to Wales, to show the regicide that he’d better not overplay his hand.”

  “Who’s the regicide?”

  “Day, of course.”

  “But I thought it was Lord Stuart who …”

  Guy laughed loudly. It sounded forced. “Day can take comfort that at least his lies are believed by children. Don’t be silly, Ran. Day slew the king himself, and probably poor old Duncan Stuart, too.”

  Ran’s face burned. He tried to pretend he’d known that all along. “Phyllicia said her father, the new Lord Stuart, was under house arrest.”

  “Yes. So are my lords Llywelyn, York, and Lancashire. Those fellows who were at Dublin Castle today were their sons and brothers. Day miscalculated,” Colin said with relish. “He thought we’d be overjoyed by the prospect of Michael as king and himself as regent. Fat chance! This realm is fed up to the back teeth with the Wessexes.”

  Guy shook his head. “Wishful thinking. They’ll accept Michael. Even Mother says there’s no alternative. It’s Day who sticks in their craws. He’s too common for them, you see, Ran. We’re so very chivalrous: we’re quite willing to let men rise on their merits—but only so far, and no further! Oswald should have known the regency was a step too far.”

  “Well, what does Mother want? Does she have a different idea of who should be regent?”

  “Of course she does.” Guy used a stick to stir the gory pile of offal. The dragons sniffed at it, not liking their food cold. “Herself.”

  “Ohhh.”

  “It won’t happen. Entrust the country to a w
oman? They’d accept a commoner sooner. Notice that you didn’t see Lord Hampshire there today, or anyone from Suffolk, or Somerset … anyone from the south at all. They’ve come up with their own proposal, some rubbish about a rotating regency with terms to be determined by the IMF.”

  “And so the standoff continues,” Colin murmured. “And the king was buried yesterday in a ceremony attended by more reporters than mourners. Not counting the crowds outside. All London was there, raving, keening, tearing their clothes. It was marvelous television.”

  “Oh, the people,” Guy said. “As long as the shops stay open, they wouldn’t care if it were—if it were Ran on the throne.”

  Ran flushed again, not knowing if he’d just been insulted or praised.

  The dragons finally gave up hoping for fresh food to appear and tucked into the offal. Their breath steamed in the cold air, making the raw organs and intestines look as if they’d just been ripped from a living beast.

  “Didn’t you have something to show us, Ran?” Colin said.

  The clearing had grown dim. Ran felt as if he were being watched from the shadows beneath the trees. But whenever he looked fixedly at one spot, he saw only absence.

  Still. He was perfectly safe as long as Guy and Colin were here. The thing he was most afraid of was their scorn.

  “I’ll show you now. But you have to close your eyes.”

  He urged them over to the standing stone. Guy protested, but Colin said, “Oh, why not?” They sat down on the grass. Ran closed his eyes; peeked to make sure they had closed theirs, too; then waited, hoping. Open, standing stone, open! Make them believe …

  He smelled cigarette smoke. He opened his eyes to see Guy leaning against the stone with his knees drawn up and spread, a cigarette in his fingers.

  “You can’t smoke!”

  “I thought you’d have run off and hidden by now,” Guy said. “Aren’t we playing ogres-and-outlaws?”

  “No! It’s not a game!”

  “Well, is there any more to it?” Colin said. “We can’t play if we don’t know the—”

  “It’s not a game!” Ran heard himself sounding as whiny as Phyllicia. Tears heated his eyes. “Please just sit and be quiet—and think about Piers. Think about how much you’d like to see him again.”

  “I think about that every moment of every day,” Guy said tiredly. “All right, whatever you want.” He put his cigarette out.

  Moments passed. The trees whispered and the dragons whuffled. At last Ran had to admit to himself that it wasn’t working.

  Utterly Hopeless’s pale belly was now the brightest thing in the clearing. Guy had gone to sleep, his chin resting on his chest.

  Maybe you had to go to sleep for it to work. For that reason, Ran was loath to wake Guy. But they would probably all have to go to sleep for the standing stone to open. And he was awake, and so was Colin, gazing bright-eyed into the trees.

  “This feels like a haunted place, Ran. Doesn’t it seem as though the fey might come and dance here under the full moon?”

  “That’s a silly baby idea,” Ran whispered back.

  “Are you sure you haven’t seen them here before? Are you sure that’s not why you brought us here? You can tell me. Guy might not believe you, but I will.”

  “There aren’t any fey. They’re extinct.” Colin’s intent gaze alarmed Ran. He could not tell if his cousin was making fun of him, or …

  “Are you sure?”

  Ran moved his head from side to side. Maybe Colin believed in mystical stuff. He might help convince Guy. “Stay there,” he said.

  He circled around the dragons, who were lying down with their sides pressed together, crouching rather than resting, their necks elongated and their nostrils flared. They sensed something. As soon as Ran was out of sight of the others, he sensed it, too: that feeling of being watched came back, powerfully. It took considerable courage for him to duck into the undergrowth.

  He had not put the Worldcracker back in the hole in the turf, since you could easily see where it had been torn up. Instead, he had hidden it under some dead leaves at the foot of an evergreen oak.

  Briars clutched at his flying suit, trying to stop him from getting to the oak. He pushed through, head down, and fell to his knees. He scrabbled in the mulch between the oak’s roots. A branch snapped overhead. He cringed, rolled. The Worldcracker was in his hands. He thrust it straight up into the dark.

  “Where’s Ran gone?” Guy’s voice sounded from the clearing. “Ran! Ran!”

  He struggled back to the clearing. His breath sobbed. The dragons were on their feet, tails lashing, knocking leaves off the trees.

  “There must be game nearby,” Guy said. “You sounded like a boar, crashing around back there, Ran! What’s that?”

  When he drew it from the ground it had felt like the sword Piers gave him. But he held only the lightweight electric sword with its broken LEDs.

  “It’s the Worldcracker,” he muttered. “I know it doesn’t look like much.”

  “The what?” Colin yelped.

  “You know. The sword King Harold supposedly lost in Russia.” Ran felt like flinging it away into the trees. He was so disappointed that it still looked like a toy. Only the memory of Piers stopped him.

  “William’s obsession,” Guy said tonelessly. “Like father, like son.”

  Colin said, “Why do you think this is the Worldcracker, Ran?”

  “Because … because Piers said it was. He gave it to me.”

  Guy took the Worldcracker and swished it one-handed through the air. The eyes of the dragons flicked, following the movement with cat-like intensity. But Guy didn’t notice, or didn’t care, because he said, “Nice balance! Just like in the legend!” He laughed.

  “It’s just one of Ran’s old toys,” Colin sighed.

  “Try hitting something with it,” Ran pleaded.

  Guy whirled the toy sword against a branch. A few leaves fell off.

  “Well, we did what you wanted, anyway, Ran,” he said.

  Ran harnessed himself onto Honor’s back, barely able to see the buckles for the tears in his eyes. It was only a toy. It wasn’t even sharp.

  “Do you want this?” Guy held it up to him.

  He thrust the toy sword through the belt of his flying suit, feeling like a little kid playing a stupid game. When they got back to Dublin Castle , he would find a better hiding-place for it, and never look at it or think about it again. What did it matter? Based on what Guy had said, their mother wouldn’t let them go to war, anyway.

  30

  Leonie

  At The Same Time. Plymouth

  Leonie closed the curtains, leaving just a crack through which she could see out.

  It was raining. Along the road outside, a dozen other B&Bs hoisted their flags over privet hedges and lawn shrines. Leonie had chosen this one—St. Jeremy’s—not because she liked the looks of St. Jeremy himself, as represented by a scabby plaster statue in the front garden, but because it had free parking round the back, so their car wouldn’t be visible to casual passers-by.

  But now Leonie was worried she hadn’t chosen well. They seemed to be the only guests at St. Jeremy’s, and the proprietress—a tense, middle-aged blonde—had looked too hard at Madelaine when they checked in.

  On the other hand, that might’ve just been because Madelaine was wearing a nosegay mask. Anyone’d take offense if they kept a clean house.

  Leonie turned from the window to check on the other women. Elspeth was changing Fiona’s nappy. Madelaine, in her trendy black rags (those’ll have to go), squatted in front of the muted telly, flicking through the channels and coming face to face over and over again with her father’s funeral. The networks were still repeating the footage of the event. Little did any of them know that King Tristan had not breathed his last until this afternoon, on a lonely clifftop in Cornwall.

  Now the women were in Plymouth. Madelaine and Elspeth seemed to trust Leonie implicitly. They had not questioned her choice of route, as long
as they were going the way Madelaine wanted. They had not argued when she announced they were going to stop the night in Plymouth. She’d been so tired, she’d been afraid she would drive off the road if she didn’t get some kip. But now they were out of the car, she felt wired again, fidgety. Couldn’t sit down, much less sleep.

  “Your Highness.” She couldn’t quite bring herself to say Madelaine, especially since it was also her own sister Maddy’s name.

  Madelaine stabbed at the television’s buttons with a black-varnished nail.

  “Your Highness?”

  “Do you mind? I’m trying to make this bloody machine work.”

  “D’you want to turn the sound up?” Leonie said quietly. She crossed the room and pressed the mute button.

  “IT’S SIMPLY A QUESTION OF CARRYING ON, REALLY,” said Oswald Day, whose handsome face now filled the screen.

  “BUT WHAT—”

  “EXCUSE ME.”

  Leonie turned the volume down.

  “Oh, switch the bloody thing off!” Madelaine wailed.

  Leonie hesitated, watching the screen. Oswald Day hurried away from the camera, muffler tight to his chin, sword belted outside his coat, accompanied by several knights, one of whom had an empty left sleeve.

  “Knaves,” Leonie whispered. “Villains. Traitors.”

  They were walking down the Rede, the famous tunnel of oaks within the outer ward of the Tower of London, where select journos were allowed to wait in ambush for the great and the good. Oswald Day strode straight past the rest of the reporters, obviously fed up with answering questions. As you would be, if you’d just had your sovereign lord secretly killed.

  She switched the set off.

  Madelaine threw herself flat on the other bed. “A calm head in a crisis!” she exclaimed. “No nonsense about him. The sort of fellow who rolls his sleeves up and gets the job done. People underestimate him because he’s lowborn—or if they’re lowborn themselves, they admire him, and it comes to the same thing. Oh, if only they knew the truth!”