Dominion Rising: 23 Brand New Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels

by White, Gwynn

  “So you are set on this,” she said to Guy, her voice cold, colder than anything she had been feeling on the way here.

  “It’s only a meeting.”

  “Do be careful.”

  “I will,” he said, matching her lack of expression. “Aren’t you ladies freezing?”

  “Not me,” Dierdre said, adjusting her fur vest to draw attention to her cleavage.

  “You appear to have taken sufficient precautions against the weather yourself,” Vivienne noted. Guy was dashingly clad in fatigue bottoms tucked into dragonhide boots, a Sauvage-green parka with fur trim, and a short sword and a revolver hanging from an exceedingly warlike belt.

  “I’ll bring him home,” he said quietly. “If I have to cut my way through the entire ROCK, I’ll bring him home.”

  “If I had my way, you would not move a step from this castle,” she hissed.

  By coming to see him off, she was facing the bitter reality that had sneaked up on her in the last few days.

  Threaten and command him as she might, she could not control him.

  He was a grown man, and a bastard.

  He grinned briefly. “Well, I’d better get going,” he said, and for a moment she hated him.

  But as the helicopter lifted, she waved madly. “Come back safely!” Sophia shouted, and Vivienne took it up: “Safely … safely!”

  She had not yet allowed herself to dwell on Tristan’s death, to think about all that had been left unfinished between them, but she understood one thing with perfect clarity: she had inherited his self-appointed burden. She must keep the peace.

  33

  Guy

  Three Hours Later. Sanda Island, Scotland

  Guy’s helicopter landed near the lighthouse on Sanda Island, an uninhabited island off the southeast coast of Scotland, owned by House Lancashire. With Alan O'Scolaidhe, Hanna O’Cinneide, and a couple of bodyguards, he ran under the rotors and walked away from the lighthouse. An anti-aircraft battery had been built here during the Second World War, but never used. The Worldcracker had ended the war in time to prevent the feared invasion of Britain.

  Kim Lancashire, heir of his House, waited with his own retinue on the abandoned gun platform.

  “Well met,” Kim said formally to Guy. He was always formal. “The grace of God be upon thee and thy House.”

  “I’d rather have another three or four regiments,” Guy joked.

  “Never fear,” Hanna said. “We have something better than either God or guns. Justice is on our side.”

  They walked down the hill, along a path marked by rusted poles stuck in the bracken. The island was treeless. The only sounds were their boots crunching through the bracken and the distant crash of surf. They reached a stretch of turfy sand dunes. A dinghy was drawn up on the beach, and a speedboat bobbed on the swells. Kim explained needlessly, “We came by boat.”

  “Let’s walk,” Guy said.

  He and Kim walked along the beach, their friends and bodyguards following at a discreet distance. Kim made small talk. Guy wondered how to open the real subject of this meeting.

  He felt Alan O'Scolaidhe watching him. Alan knew him as a fighter, the Bastard of Sauvage, the animal who could biff a dozen knights unconscious, drink a keg of beer, have sex in his car, smoke a bomber, and then do it all over again without going to sleep. But Guy was no longer that man. After his brush with death at Piers’s trial, he had woken up changed.

  Piers was dead because of him. Because he was mediocre.

  Yates-Briggs had not even thought him good enough to kill.

  Now came his chance to mend that humiliation.

  But he knew the dangers of the death-or-glory mentality. He must not die, or even think about dying. He must not think about glory, either.

  All that mattered now was Ran.

  He gave up on the idea of fancy gambits. “One of my brothers is dead,” he said bluntly. “The other may be dead. I can stomach Oswald Day’s treachery no longer.”

  Kim raised his eyebrows. “I had wondered what made you change your mind about moving against him.”

  “He has Ran.” With these words, Guy directly disobeyed his mother, who had made them all swear to keep Ran’s kidnapping a secret. “They grabbed him right out of Dublin Castle . Snatched him in the middle of the night, amidst a false-flag diversion—no one knew until hours had passed. He was in the mews, the little idiot. He loved—loves dragons ...”

  Kim cleared his throat, tactfully covering up Guy’s moment of emotion. “So now the regicide holds at least one hostage from each Great House. Except Northumberland, of course, and they’re in it with him. Have you been allowed to talk to your brother at all?”

  “No.” Oswald hadn’t even bothered to get in touch to gloat.

  “Nor have I been allowed any contact with my father. But his loyal varlets have smuggled messages to us. His orders are specific. He will have revenge for my brother Philip’s death, regardless of what cost the traitor may exact from himself.” Kim spoke in a monotone, disguising whatever he himself felt about the death of his brother, which had made him the heir of House Lancashire. “The fact is, Father has a particular grudge against the traitor. He used to belong to us, you see.”

  “Yes, he was born on one of your farms, wasn’t he?”

  “That’s right. A shoeless boy with no last name. Our people noticed his intelligence and tested him for savantry. He isn’t quite up to savant level, but he was still considered worth schooling. We’d have found him a job as a computer; plenty of demand for those. But he spurned our generosity. Ran away, got an asset-stripper to remove his brand, and found a sympathetic Crown Army recruiter.”

  Kim trod on a delicate seashell, crushing it.

  “Under the law he still belongs to us. And my father would have him back. At his pleasure.”

  Kim’s manner was enigmatic. A few years older than Guy, he had never been much of a tourney knight, rather one who preferred to sit on the sidelines and bet. Guy wished he could read him better.

  But he did feel sure of one thing: Kim would do whatever his father—currently imprisoned in London—told him to.

  “What are Lord Lancashire’s wishes?”

  “He has instructed me to place our regiment, the Harvesters, under your command. He has great faith in your abilities.”

  Guy did not. But he blustered, “I’ll wipe House Wessex from the face of the earth if that is what it takes to get my brother back.”

  “Two regiments. It isn’t much, to wipe a Great House from the face of the earth.”

  Was Kim laughing at him? “It’s enough, as long as the Crown Army remains in its barracks.”

  The Crown Army—numerically equal to all the provincial regiments put together, if militarily inferior—had not come out for Oswald Day. It had not done anything. With the Ministry of Defense in disarray, the troops remained in their barracks around the country. The regional commanders would be watching and waiting for some indication of which way to jump. If and when they did jump, it would be over: that side would have won.

  “We’ll have to move fast,” Guy muttered.

  “My father concurs with that sentiment. Two of our infantry battalions, with three companies of armored cavalry, will advance south from Lancashire. You would attack through Wales. Between us we would trap Day in the capital. Surprise, of course, would be the key to victory.”

  “How do you move two regiments in secret?” Guy pondered aloud.

  “Regarding that, my father had some tactical suggestions…”

  34

  Val

  Earlier That Day. Lough Inagh, County Galway

  The radio crackled, foul weather sweeping over Lough Inagh. Val adjusted the aerial. He and Connelly were huddling over the little battery-powered set in the hayloft of Marigh Healy’s byre, the only place on the farm you could get a signal.

  Having heard the news, he wished he hadn’t.

  The king was dead. The new regent was urging everyone to keep calm and carry
on. The peers of the realm were competing to deliver statements as bland as water.

  “I know one thing,” Val said. “They’re covering something up.”

  “You think?” Connelly drank from a mug of cold tea and belched. “Well, I know one thing, too.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We’re fucked.” Connelly cackled. He ripped the cellophane off a new pack of Gold Cut. “Fag?”

  “Where’d you get those? I thought you were out.”

  “I went into Oughterard this morning, before any of the nutters were awake. I had to make a phone call. D’you want to know what it was about?”

  Val wanted to get drunk and pretend that none of this was happening. “Later. I’d better go talk to them.” He swung his legs over the side of the loft to the ladder. At the bottom, he tripped and swore.

  “Step on a goat?”

  “A gas canister.”

  “Are they suicidal, making explosives in here?”

  “They used to do it in the old church.”

  “Why move the operation down here?”

  “The church blew up.”

  Val picked his way through the clutter. Two huge, malevolent orange eyes watched from the gloom behind a pair of barrels standing on concrete blocks. The barrels would’ve been filled with nitrate fertilizer and water and heated, a laborious process resulting in quantities of the low explosive known as ‘giant.’ But the smell of ammonia was faint. It had been a while since anyone manufactured giant here. Alyx’s gang hadn’t really done anything in years. They just died and came back to life, again and again and again. He believed it now.

  Rain was pouring down, the farmyard one big puddle. In the farmhouse there was a fire going, but Marigh Healy’s gigantic, bad-tempered black dog lay on the hearth, hogging the warmth. Ragherty sat nearby, working on some bit of DIY. Val left Connelly searching for food and went upstairs.

  The rest of them were all up here. The upper room was more like an attic than an upper storey, with tiny windows flush to the floor. The steeply pitched ceiling forced them to bend their heads as if in prayer. They looked like nervous family members in a hospital ward. In Marigh Healy’s bed lay a small boy of eight or nine, his blond braid trailing across the pillow.

  “Hsh!” Alyx whispered. “He’s not awake yet.”

  “That’s probably a good thing,” Val said.

  “Do you think he’s all right? Not sick or anything?”

  Val gazed down at the boy. “I think he’s had the fright of his life, followed by a three-hundred-mile flight in the cold. And if he wakes up to see all of your ugly faces gurning at him, he’ll probably die of terror.”

  Stifled chuckles, but no one moved.

  “Ah well,” Val said tiredly. “If he is sick, there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  “How d’you mean?” Marigh snapped. “I’ve William’s right hand here, have I not? He’s a great saint!”

  Val shook his head. “The child’s got bruises and scrapes on him. Old ones. A highborn child doesn’t bear any sign of injury longer than it takes to whisk him into the chapel. He’s an incurable.”

  “Ah, fuck,” Conn said.

  That just about summed it up, but Val could not help adding, “So you’d better be careful with him, had you not?”

  “I’ll treat him like my own son,” smirked Black Donnchla Morgan, who had kidnapped the boy. “It’s our fortune that’s lying here, after all.”

  “Yes, you’d sell your own son for cash if you had one, I’ve no doubt.”

  Donnchla scowled and his fists twitched, but he made no move towards Val. Val was the better magician, and both of them knew it. “We don’t need BASI’s millions now,” Donnchla spat.

  “You’ll never be able to ransom him,” Val said flatly.

  “He’s a puny wee thing for a lordling,” Conn said.

  “Away. He’s sweet,” Alyx said. “Look at his lovely long blond hair. He looks like he could be my little brother. You find some clothes for him for when he wakes up. He’s only got his pyjamas.”

  She had taken for herself the sheepskin smock the boy had been wearing, which was of a quality better than you ever saw in the shops, handstitched and soft as kid.

  “If he doesn’t wake up soon, call me,” Val said to Marigh, who sat on a box by the bed, stroking the end of the little boy’s braid.

  They trooped down to the kitchen.

  Ragherty held up the object he’d been working on. A toy sword, one of those flimsy things with LEDs in the hilt. “I’ve mended it for him. It was only the wiring in the battery compartment.”

  “Have we any batteries?” Alyx said.

  “In the radio,” Ragherty said. “I’m not sure they’ll fit, though. This battery compartment’s a funny size.”

  Donnchla stared daggers at Val, daring him to say something. Val was in a shite enough mood at this point that he did. “That’s not the Worldcracker.”

  “It is,” Morgan said, the flat assertion disconcerting somehow.

  “It’s a toy.” Val turned to Alyx. “I know the man that put Donnchla up to this, and he’s not to be trusted. Colin Argent. I’ve had enough drinks off him in Belfast. He’s a journo, one of your intellectual sympathizers. He doesn’t know shite.”

  “Get the batteries out of the radio, Jed,” Alyx said to Ragherty, her lower lip jutting.

  Val had breakfast: white bread blackened over the fire and smeared with margarine. They would run out of food today unless someone went into Oughterard. Of course Connelly hadn’t thought to pick up any groceries on his phone run. Not even a newspaper …

  Val was staring out at the rain, thinking that Connelly probably had bought some booze, because the BASI agent was as keen on the drink as Val himself, but he’d be hiding it; wonder where … when Connelly himself fastened his fingers into Val’s arm. “Come outside.”

  “It’s pissing down.”

  “It’s stopping. Come on.”

  Outside, it was still raining, but a patch of blue sky had appeared over Ben Corr.

  Connelly was in a pet, eyes rolling, red-rimmed. “I’m getting out of here today. Are you with me?”

  “You bought some booze in the town. I can smell it on you. Did your mother never teach you to share?”

  “You can come or not, as you like. That phone call I made this morning, it was to BASI. They’re coming to pick us up. We’ve to be in Belfast on the thirtieth. There’s a canal, d’you know the place? Near the old power station?”

  “Alyx hasn’t made her decision yet. We can’t go anywhere.”

  “Fuck her. We’ll take the kid. He’s the Lord Protector of Ireland, the Countess of Dublin’s son and heir.” Connelly’s small eyes burned with hope. Val realized that Connelly saw his salvation in the little boy. He hoped that turning him over to BASI would compensate for the failure of their mission. He might be right at that. A noble hostage (they wouldn’t use that word, of course) would give BASI leverage over the unstable political situation in Great Britain. It would do nothing to endear Val to Stephane Flambeault, of course.

  “We can’t leave the poor wee bastard here with this gang of nutters,” Connelly said.

  “And how will we get away from here without being caught?”

  “They’ve only that old van. Our car’s faster. I filled her up this morning.”

  “They’ve got that.” Val nodded at the byre, meaning the thing inside, Black Donnchla’s pet.

  “It’ll be for the best,” Connelly said, as if Val had already agreed to his plan. “It’s unnatural. It’s not right.” He was talking about Alyx’s secret. “I’ll tell you what’s needed: a bomb dropped on top of this place. That’d do it. I’d like to see her get up with a smile on her face when she’s been bloody well vaporized.”

  Morally speaking, Connelly was right, Val reflected. Practically speaking? Would a bomb do the trick where bullets had not? He had no idea.

  Donnchla’s wyvern waddled out of the byre. Val could not imagine where the black m
agician had found it. Wyverns were fey. They were supposed to have been extinct for half a millennium. This one was the length of a small dragon but much more heavyset, with two sets of folded wings making it look even more rotund. A ruff of loose skin hung around its neck like a bulldog’s jowls. Its hide was dark green, mottled. Its orange eyes glowed with an unpleasant intelligence. Val and Connelly held themselves very still.

  The wyvern yawned at them, giving a distinct impression of laughing at their timorousness. It spread its strange doubled wings and leapt into the air. Aloft, it suddenly became graceful, a silhouette out of a medieval tapestry. It skimmed the roof of the farmhouse and flapped over the crest of the hill, staying low.

  Alyx came out of the farmhouse with Randolph Sauvage trailing behind her, rubbing his eyes. He wore a man’s pullover and a pair of jeans that must have belonged to Ferdy, the smallest of the lads, but still had to be rolled up at the ankles. “It’s mine,” he whinged, his aristocratic accent clear as glass even in those two syllables.

  “But it’s really mine, you see,” Alyx said. “I’m the true heir to the throne of Great Britain. That means it’s mine to wield.” She held the toy sword. It still looked like plastic. “Is it working? I can’t see if the wee lights are on.”

  “That battery’s not the right size,” Ragherty said, coming out behind them. “It wants a non-standard make. Maybe foreign.”

  Marigh came out. She singsonged, “The Worldcracker doesn’t need a battery to work, if it’s the true king wielding it. Or true queen, of course.”

  “Try it out,” Black Donnchla urged Alyx, his voice thick with anticipation.

  “Do you want to be my pell? No, then Gerry, come here. Stand still.”

  Alyx hit Gerry with the toy sword. It bounced off his chest. He grinned dopily.

  “It doesn’t work!”

  She hit Gerry again. This time, trying to please, he staggered back dramatically, slipped in the mud, and fell on his arse.

  “You’re wrong,” Alyx said, turning on Donnchla. “It’s not the Worldcracker, is it?”