Dominion Rising: 23 Brand New Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels

by White, Gwynn

  “I don’t recall ringing for the emergency services,” Guy drawled.

  “Do you want your wounded to die?”

  “We have our own saints. No one under my protection has died.” In fact three had, one hostage killed by flying glass in the departure lounge and two Overwhelmers caught in the explosion of the Streolla 800. Guy called up his reserves of bravado. “I’ll wager our saints have more virtue in them than any of House Wessex’s.”

  “But can you eat them? Reconsider, Guy. Hear my offer.”

  Guy glimpsed the weariness on the other man’s face. His heart leapt, as if he had just spotted an opponent’s weakness in a tourney bout. Keeping his own face expressionless, he gestured for Oswald to continue.

  “You’re a bastard,” Oswald said. “You have no inheritance, no fealty—I’m talking about the law, not about what is in your heart. Suppose you had prevailed. How would it feel to step aside for a half-brother—a child, easily swayed—on whom you have no claim except personal loyalty? I offer you what House Sauvage cannot: a title, a real one. Lands and assets. The right to found a noble House of your own.”

  Guy found his voice. “What title? What lands and assets?”

  Oswald shrugged. “There are plenty going begging at the moment.”

  As vividly as if he had fallen asleep and was dreaming, Guy saw himself in his own great hall, feasting with his own bondsknights. He saw himself speaking to smoke-filled meetings of businessmen who hung on every word from his lips, the way they had once listened to Piers. He saw his mother treating him with respect for the first time in his life.

  He smiled. “You’re tempting the wrong man, Day. I’m twenty-three. I like girls, tourney, fast cars, thoroughbred dragons. Govern a county? I’ve never even wanted to.”

  Oswald’s face did not twitch. “You sell yourself short. You may be inexperienced but you’re not half bad at leading men.” He sighed. “Think about whether you want to lead them to their deaths.” He turned and started back towards the Spyder.

  Taking an involuntary step after him, Guy noticed for the first time the other knights who had got out of the Spyder, who stood in the shadow it cast before the rising sun. One was Alec Northumberland. The other was Brant Yates-Briggs.

  Yates-Briggs.

  Not one of the famous ROCK knights, like Jem Northumberland or Malcolm Stuart. Not one of Oswald’s inner circle.

  In fact, the only reason Oswald could have brought Yates-Briggs was to taunt Guy. To remind him that he had nearly died before at Yates-Briggs’s hand, and been saved only by Oswald’s own mercy.

  Rage blossomed like an internal explosion. “I challenge you!” he roared. “I challenge you to settle this thing by knightly combat between us!”

  “That worked on Tristan,” Oswald tossed back, without even looking around. “I’m not him.”

  “Draw your fucking sword, or call yourself a knight no longer, knave!”

  Mad with rage, Guy darted after Day, instinctively reaching for his own sword. He had forgotten he was in uniform, and therefore carried no longsword. But his hand closed on a hilt and he did not realize until his draw was half completed that it was the toy sword Dierdre had asked him to carry for luck.

  Apt enough, you tourney knight, he thought lucidly, and he also thought that he had a better chance of getting away with it if he completed his vaunt as if nothing was wrong.

  He flourished the sword. “Stand and fight!” he bellowed, pointing the blade at Oswald’s back, wishing it was a real one so he could run him through—

  —and Oswald seemed to stumble. He went down on one knee on the tarmac and then crumpled onto his face, clutching his belly.

  Guy stood open-mouthed. Then he shouted, “There’s divine justice for you, Yates-Briggs!” He cackled.

  He jammed the toy sword back into his belt—the fingers of his right hand felt oddly numb—and swaggered forward to join Alec Northumberland and Yates-Briggs, who had leapt to Oswald’s aid. They helped him turn onto his back. Blood bubbled over his handsome lips.

  “He needs a miracle,” Guy said. “I’ve got puissant relics in the terminal.”

  “We’ve got relics of our own,” Alec said. He ran back to the helicopter, and that was one less of them. Guy did not intend to let Oswald Day die, but neither did he intend to let him go. Roger Cork had brought the Rover up. He helped Guy lift Oswald into the back seat. Yates-Briggs, helpless to stop them, settled for getting into the vehicle, too. He knelt on the floor in the back, cradling Oswald’s head.

  “What did you fucking do to him?”

  “Nothing,” Guy said—which was the honest truth, as far as he knew. “Looked as if God struck him down for want of chivalry, from where I was standing.”

  The Rover bounced at high speed towards the terminal. Several of the knights from the gunships jogged after the vehicle, mingling unwillingly with Alan’s riflemen who had had to get out and walk.

  Standing behind the driver, Guy glimpsed his mortar crews crouched behind the long tubes of their weapons. He heard a sharp intake of breath from Yates-Briggs. He twisted around, seized Yates-Briggs’s coat collar, and jammed his pistol to his head. “Move and you’re dead.” He looked back and looked straight into the weapons of the pursuing knights.

  The air crackled with bullets. The Rover slewed and stopped with a jerk so violent that it threw Roger Cork out. Yates-Briggs head-butted Guy in the chest and went for his pistol. Guy got to his own weapon first and shot him in the face. Winded, struggling for air, Guy seized Oswald under the arms, dragged him out of the vehicle, and took cover behind it.

  Yates-Briggs, half his jaw gone, blood streaming down his front, tried to drag himself out of the Rover. Guy shot him again. He windmilled his other arm, screaming, “Fire! Fire!”

  Whether his gunners heard him he did not know, but a few seconds later the machine-guns opened up. The knights who’d been closing in on the Rover dropped.

  Guy lay on top of Oswald Day, pistol clamped in both hands. He could feel Oswald breathing under him, trying to move. He scooted back so he could see Oswald’s face. Oswald was ghastly pale except for the blood at his lips. He was trying to say something.

  “What?”

  “Bastard,” Day croaked. “Backstabber. Call yourself … a knight.”

  “Is that all? No edifying last words?”

  “You have … destroyed Great Britain today.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  Guy spotted an enemy knight crawling through the wreckage and shot at him. He could no longer see very far down the runway because of the dust and debris thrown up by the shells exploding on the tarmac. His mouth was completely dry.

  “Let me see … that sword,” Oswald groaned.

  “This? I never touched you with it.”

  Oswald smiled, blood on his teeth. “Huh. I expected the Worldcracker … would look sharper, somehow.”

  Eventually Guy’s mortar gunners found their range. One of the gunships took a direct hit and ceased to exist. The other one rose in a halo of wavering flames. It loosed its rockets at the terminal building in an uncontrolled frenzy, then fell back to earth with an impact that shook the tarmac. Guy looked down and saw that Oswald Day had died.

  50

  Vivienne

  That Afternoon. Dublin Castle

  Vivienne’s deputies followed her into the elevator, vying for her attention. Purchasing orders, hiring decisions, joint development agreements … She pulled her right glove off with her teeth and signed whatever needed signing.

  The doors of the elevator opened on the great hall. Around the fire stood twenty-odd people, with enough luggage to suggest they all meant to come.

  “M’lady, m’lady!” Housekeeping decisions this time, and a man-at-arms— “M’lady, there’s a chopper just in!”

  “Yes, yes,” she said, brushing the man off. “Cyril! Clive!”

  Her two elder nephews wore black mantles and formally tied neckerchiefs, and had sleeked their hair back into nobl
e knots. A far cry from their usual getup of fisherman’s jumpers and wellies. They had garbed themselves for court but they were going to be disappointed.

  Well, they can tag along if they like, and be humiliated to their faces instead of by fax. It’s all one to me.

  “You are both welcome to come, but we cannot take all these people. A varlet apiece. The rest must stay here.”

  Clive looked enraged. Cyril regarded his shoes. Vivienne gave them a brilliant smile and swept past. Clive had the effrontery to seize her elbow. “Aunt, I mean to say—I’m not sure it’s as safe in London as you think. There have been reports of mobs …”

  Under her gaze, his hand dropped off her arm like a salted slug.

  “My son has nailed Oswald Day’s head to the gate of the Tower of London,” Vivienne said coolly. “I am quite sure there have been mobs on the streets. That is how London celebrates. I, for one, intend to celebrate by opening a bottle of champagne tonight in the Tower, with our peers who have at last been freed from their captivity.”

  “But it’s our peers who may pose the greatest danger …” Clive trailed off again.

  “Correct. But not the sort of danger you are concerned about.” Guy had succeeded brilliantly in the field, but he had neither the cunning nor the patience to deal with the lords. He could foul it all up yet, if she was not there to talk him through the tricky bits.

  She could be at the Tower of London by evening, and then … With her own hands she had packed a box of presents and sweets for little Michael Day. With his father dead and his mother missing, the poor little heir apparent would need cheering up.

  She strode out to the bailey. The rain had stopped. At the beginning of December, it was dark enough for the parapet lights to have come on, although the clock had not yet struck three. The waiting convoy included an armored limousine with an extra-large Sauvage bannerole, as well as the Argents’ clunkier limo. Motorcycle outriders waited by their machines. All this was merely to transport her to the airport, so that her people would properly adulate her along the way. A cavalcade of equal or greater grandeur would meet her at Gatwick. It should have been Heathrow, but Guy had made rather a mess of that airport, he’d apologetically told her.

  Cyril shuffled beside her. “Like to see things done properly,” he said. “But … all rather … mmmph. Futile. Feels futile. Without Dierdre.”

  “I don’t think she’s left you, Cyril. She probably just wanted a bit of excitement.” God damn Guy. Not that Vivienne minded his taking Cyril’s wife off him, but couldn’t he have picked a less awkward time to do it?

  “She’s been trying to make me divorce her for years,” Cyril blurted.

  “Why haven’t you?”

  “Love her. Idiot that I am.”

  Vivienne tightened her lips. Love, what is love? It is only the ghost at the door, the specter that poisons every triumph if you let it in. Love is loss, as inevitable as winter following summer.

  “M’lady …” That damned man-at-arms again. “M’lady, it’s Sir Colin, he’s just got here, he …”

  “Colin?” Cyril roared. “Where? Been looking for the little ...” The rest was mercifully unintelligible.

  Vivienne gathered that Colin was trying to stay out of his brothers’ way. “Come to think of it, I haven’t seen him for a while. I really haven’t a minute to spare … very well, just one minute.”

  Colin waited for them in the gatehouse, wearing his reporter’s garb of scuffed bomber jacket and jeans. The gatehouse was big enough for the population of a small village; it had a television, benches, and a refrigerator full of complimentary beer and soft drinks for petitioners who theoretically could get access to Vivienne at any time, but in practice always had to wait. Just now it was empty except for Colin and another man, who rose and bowed.

  Tall as a champion, but not built like one, the man was stoop-shouldered, swarthy, black-haired, thin as a palette knife standing on end—a Russian, in fact, and a wretched specimen of one. His mantle and breeches were of German cut.

  “Vivienne, may I introduce Mihal Zalyotin,” Colin said nervously. “He’s from the IMF.”

  Vivienne turned. “Cyril, Clive, out.”

  When they had gone, Zalyotin handed over written credentials.

  Vivienne tapped the papers with a fingernail. “The conciliation department?” she guessed.

  If it were possible, Zalyotin went even paler.

  “Oh, I object in principle, of course, but not in practice. It would be a different story if you were any good at it. Are you here to …” she raised her eyebrows with dramatic skepticism— “help?”

  “No, my lady. I’m not a field agent. I’m only here because I—well, I know someone.”

  “Isn’t that always the way.” Vivienne considered sending for Francis, and decided against it. “Is this to do with Tristan?”

  Zalyotin looked blank.

  Colin said, “It’s about Ran. Oh, Vivienne, I’m so afraid you’ll judge me. But I had to—I have to try to put things right.”

  He was visibly frightened. His lips looked like limp gobbets of offal. The eyes may be the windows of the soul but the mouth is the gateway to the places inside us that should never see the light of day. “Perhaps you might explain,” Vivienne said.

  “A few days ago I had a phone call from a—an acquaintance—”

  “Who is also an acquaintance of mine,” Zalyotin said. “He got in touch with us on the same day. After due consideration and discussion, the department put me on a plane this morning. Sir Argent kindly picked me up from the airport, since there don’t seem to be any trains at the moment.”

  Colin looked as if he were near tears. “The IRA’s got Ran, Vivienne. I’m so, so sorry—”

  “Where?” It did not sound like her own voice.

  “I, ah, don’t—”

  “You failed to obtain that crucial piece of information.”

  “I know where they are,” Zalyotin said. “But I’m unable to reveal that information unless your House, my lady, signs a non-disclosure agreement with the IMF, and furthermore agrees to mutually satisfactory terms regarding the future disposition and exploitation of any intelligence that may be gained from the proposed operation.” His diffidence had given way to a wooden bureaucratic tone.

  Emotion knotted Vivienne’s vocal cords. Over the last couple of hectic days she had come close to resigning herself to the idea that Ran was dead.

  “Whatever your conditions are,” she said thickly, “I’ll sign.”

  Guy would simply have to wait.

  51

  Guy

  That Night. The Tower Of London

  Shocking weather.”

  “Wouldn’t care to stand on a picket line in this.”

  “Do you know, they’re queuing up for bread in Notting Hill.”

  “Not queues. Mobs. Someone had better get up there and sort ’em out.”

  “These lads? Seem to be enough of them.”

  The lords of the Cabinet clustered at the windows of the council room on the top floor of the Old Keep. The windows were wider than they were high, framed by Wessex-crimson drapes. Rain sluiced down the glass, falling so heavily that the drops ran together. The storm had come on suddenly after dark. The lords peered out at the cause of their interest, which was the arrival of Guy’s reinforcements. Beyond the bailey, a line of headlights, more or less static, was attempting to progress into the erstwhile Household barracks.

  The new arrivals gave Guy two full battalions here. His mother—his most important reinforcement of all—should also have arrived by now, but there was no sign of her. Where is she? She said she’d be here by evening …

  Nearly all of the lords present had spent the last week under house arrest. But they were none the worse for wear, as far as Guy could tell. He both envied and resented their unflappability, and wondered if he would ever acquire it.

  They drifted back to their seats. The council room had no conference table or noticeboard, no secretaries taking m
inutes. It was a small parlor, pleasantly lit by silk-shaded floor lamps, with couches and armchairs scattered around a fire that scented the air with cedar resin.

  The pecking order of Tristan’s regime remained intact: the lords of the Great Houses hogged the seats closest to the fire, while lesser peers shivered on more distant couches. Guy circumvented the petty competition by standing on the hearth with his back to the fire, a trick he had often seen Piers use at home.

  “Where’s Lancashire?” demanded Lord Norfolk, the Secretary for Foreign Affairs.

  “Dead, dead.”

  “No, no, I mean his heir.”

  “Dead, too.”

  “No, the new heir. Kim. Odd young fellow, dry sense of humor.”

  “Dead. His head’s on the Gate.”

  “I had him executed for treason,” Guy said.

  “Well, I say.” Norfolk, a small man with thinning white hair, gazed at him speculatively. “That was rather precipitate.”

  “I agree,” said Rhys Llywelyn, who should have been cowering in fear of Guy’s wrath, but wasn’t. “You ought to have given him a trial.”

  “Can’t play silly buggers with the law.”

  “Indeed not.”

  Guy touched the pommel of the Worldcracker, which hung on his left hip in place of a dagger. Having forgotten to bring any civilian clothes, he was wearing someone else’s suit dug out from somewhere in the keep. It smelled of mothballs and fitted badly, compounding his sense of being at a disadvantage. If only Mother were here! She’d have them eating out of her hand in five minutes flat. If only Piers …

  Justice would not bind these wicked old rich men. You had to make them afraid of you.

  “If I had respected the particulars of the law, all of you would still be under arrest, my lords.” Guy took a deep breath. “I plan to call Parliament in the first week of the new year. I shall offer myself to the realm as the new king. I am certain of your acclaim, but I would like you to assure me that your bondsknights will vote with you.”