Dominion Rising: 23 Brand New Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels

by White, Gwynn

  Now was her chance to get out of the way before someone nobbled her. She slung her Myxilite inside her anorak and did the zipper up as far as it would go. Slipped between the police squads, through a blast of fumes from generators mounted on the backs of a pair of low-loaders. Snow collected on the windscreens of a row of cars. Police sentries stamped their feet. At the far end of the line stood the building they were using as a command center. The other way was the gate of the power station. The sky over the marsh was whitish-brown with snow.

  She took note of the oldest cars, the ones she’d be able to hotwire just by pulling the wires out of the ignition.

  Her heart thudded.

  That’s the Rover the Ravens came in.

  It stood at the end of the line of vehicles nearest the command center. It was the same one, she could tell by the dents.

  The princesses. They’ve caught them.

  Weariness settled on her. She’d failed at everything, then.

  Someone mooched into view around the cars, shoulders hunched against the wind, smoking a fag.

  “Pod,” she hailed him.

  Astonishment brightened his face, but it didn’t last. “What’re you doing here?”

  “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

  “On the job, aren’t I? Here, hop in.”

  He was offering her sanctuary. The two-faced shithead. She got into his car.

  “This is Oliver, he won’t let me smoke in the car. You ought to get on.” A morose-looking operator, sandy fringe of beard around his plump face. Pod settled into the front passenger seat. Leonie sat in the back. It felt good to be out of the cold. They had the engine going to keep the heater running; the steamy warmth smelled of mould.

  She leaned between the front seats. “I trusted you,” she said. “More fool me.”

  “Don’t look at me,” Pod said. “Turns out MI5 knew about this place all along. That’s why we were lifted off the Aching Head address. They were setting their own trap.”

  “MI5? How? How’d they know she was here?” Leonie had the strange feeling that they were talking about Madelaine and Alyx in the same breath.

  Oliver twisted in his seat. “They’re double agents,” he hissed. “That’s what we’re taking orders from now: the English branch of BASI!”

  “MI5? You’re having me on. Those tossers couldn’t organize a round of beers.” But they’d organized HM’s murder, with a little help from their friends in the ROCK.

  “That’s right,” Oliver said. “It’s the Germans in charge of this little show.”

  “No—no, I mean, yes, I believe you. But MI5 hasn’t got the authority to bring in the Belfast police. Who swung that?”

  “Lady Sauvage,” Pod said. “They’re holding her hostage in there, too. Oh, yes, you may weep now.”

  “But why? Why’s everyone so hot for Alyx O’Braonain all of a sudden?”

  “There you’ve got us,” Pod said. “Can’t work it out.”

  “Is it true about Sir Guy? I just heard on the radio.”

  “Yep,” Oliver said morosely. “He murdered CP Michael, the bloody maniac. That’s not on the radio yet, but it will be soon.”

  Oh, no. Oh, poor Madelaine.

  Leonie took a deep breath. Why not chance her arm? They had nothing left to lose. “Listen, blokes, maybe House Wessex isn’t finished yet.”

  “Eh?”

  “I think you know what I’m talking about.” She tried to catch Pod’s eye. “Remember that baby I was looking after?”

  “Yes,” he said, suddenly alert.

  “All right, well, see that hardtop Rover down there?” She reached past his shoulder and wiped the condensation off the window, pointed. “D’you know anything about how that got here?”

  “We brought it in,” Oliver said. “There was a girl and a baby in it. MI5 whisked them off sharpish.”

  “Oh,” Leonie said. “Oh, well. That was only Princess Madelaine and Princess Fiona. You could have looked at them. All you saw was the short hair and crap clobber, I suppose. So much for your observational skills. Shame MI5 isn’t fooled as easily.”

  Pod cursed for some time. Oliver just sat back with one hand over his eyes.

  It felt good to vent her fury and grief, and Leonie revved up to berate them some more. Instead she said, “Here, what’s that noise? Sounds like a chopper.”

  “It’s kicking off,” Oliver said, but he was wrong.

  They got out of the car. The police were still waiting, huddled on their mobile platforms. Waiting for what? The noise got louder. Heads twisted. All at once the chopper was upon them, pouncing down out of the blizzard. Its rotor wash slung horizontal gusts of snow into their faces.

  “Off his bloody head, flying in this,” Pod said reverently.

  “It’s a Basilisk gunship,” Oliver said. “Super-advanced instrumentation.”

  Leonie was shivering so hard her teeth knocked together. The brief respite from the cold seemed to have scuppered her resistance to it.

  Two men jumped out of the helicopter and jogged towards the FOB. They wore knight’s civvies, greatcoats flapping over high boots.

  “That’s the ROCK,” Oliver murmured. “Got to be.”

  “Hail, hail, the NatChiv gang’s all here,” Pod said.

  “Don’t let him see me,” Leonie begged. “The one with a missing arm, that’s Alec Northumberland. He killed the king.”

  “Oh? You’re just full of information, aren’t you, Grant?”

  She stared after Alec Northumberland, her jaw set so hard that her teeth no longer chattered. “He’s here for the princesses. If I get a chance to slot him, I’m going to.”

  59

  Vivienne

  A Few Minutes Earlier

  You will permit me to take charge of my nieces.”

  Vivienne got into the estate car. The older MI5 man got into the driver’s seat and the younger climbed into the far back, folding himself up with a grunt. Their attention was smothering, but Vivienne had years of practise at ignoring commoners, and Madelaine did, too.

  “Isn’t this odd, Aunt Vivienne,” the princess said with an artificial smile. “I don’t think we’ve met face to face since I was a little girl!”

  She still looked like a little girl to Vivienne. She’d disguised herself by cutting off her hair. Little Fiona was an even more shocking sight, wrapped in a mass-manufactured velour blanket, her face chapped red and smeared with snot.

  “Poor darling,” Vivienne said. “Just look at the pair of you. You poor darlings.”

  “I think the kid’s hungry,” said the younger MI5 man.

  Vivienne ignored him, but there was a nappy bag on the floor of the car. She picked through the shop-bought jars of baby food and disposable nappies and found a bottle of formula already made up. “Shall I give this to her?”

  She lifted the baby onto her lap. The tiny mouth fastened on the teat. The howling stopped.

  “Is Oswald really dead?” Madelaine beseeched her.

  “Yes. Guy slew him.” And Michael? She did not believe it was true. She would not repeat a malicious rumor.

  “And—and Guy himself? Is he all right?”

  “Yes.” God forgive me. Locked in the dungeons of the Tower of London, Guy was only all right in the sense that he was not dead.

  “It’s funny. I should be glad Oswald is dead. But … I don’t know what I feel. He was my husband.”

  “I always wondered why you married him.”

  “You thought he swept me off my feet as an impressionable teenager. That’s what everyone thought. But I’m not quite that gullible! He was one of Daddy’s confidants, so I’d known him forever. And he—he promised he would keep me safe …”

  “He certainly would have if he could. With you at his side, he could have succeeded in talking the lords around.”

  “But he stopped loving me after Michael was born. It was as though he transferred all his love to him. Poor Michael! He so worshipped his papa. I do hope they’re taking care of
him properly. Most of my ladies-in-waiting were spies.”

  Vivienne felt worse and worse for concealing the news—no, the rumor—that Michael was slain. She lowered her gaze to the baby. Fiona was guzzling the milk with a will. Had Vivienne ever actually fed a baby before? Her own sons had, of course, had wet nurses. “She has a good appetite.”

  As long as these two survive, so does House Wessex. Tristan, Wills, I will save your House if I can. House Wessex’s survival would be crucial to any new balance of power in Great Britain. If Great Britain itself survives this night.

  The MI5 man in the driver’s seat offered them cigarettes. Madelaine accepted. “How’d you get here, anyway, Your Highness?” he asked her convivially. “End of the bloody world, this place, isn’t it?”

  “Do not tell them anything,” Vivienne said.

  “Oh, it’s a tale soon told,” Madelaine said brittly, exhaling smoke. “The scene is set with the murder of the king. Our courageous heroine escapes the villains’ clutches, baby and all. Common sense tells her to seek succor abroad, but her duty lies elsewhere … in Ireland. You see, as he lay dying, our heroine’s father charged her with a quest. His last wish: that she make contact with a mysterious Irishwoman named Millie O’Braonain.”

  Vivienne’s heart skipped a beat. For an instant she was blind, feeling her way in the dark down the steps of the cellar at the old Cumberland place, lugging a jerrycan of petrol.

  “She’s supposed to be extraordinarily powerful. I suppose perhaps she might be a witch? Daddy—was rather interested in that kind of thing … I don’t really know what he meant to do when he found her.”

  But Vivienne had an inkling. In the end, the burden of keeping the peace became too much for you, didn’t it, Tristan? And so you succumbed—to the taint in your blood—to the lust for power. She shuddered.

  “Anyway, I had to try to find her. I let Daddy down so often when he was alive.” Madelaine’s voice faltered. She dragged on her cigarette. “So o’er hill and dale I rode in a clapped-out Mini. But it turned out to be a wild goose chase.” She threw up her hands. “And here we are.”

  “Amazing,” the MI5 man said. “All by your little self! With the baby! Well, they do say royalty is tough at the core.”

  Madelaine preened. “When you’re a mother, you simply have to carry on for the sake of your children,” she said modestly.

  Vivienne sat up. “I hear a helicopter.”

  Hope blazed on Madelaine’s face. Whatever trials she had suffered, she had not yet suffered the ultimate trial of despair.

  The helicopter landed. Moments later, both rear doors of the car flew open. Two men jumped in and planted themselves on either side of Vivienne and Madelaine, crushing them together. Vivienne bit back imprudent words. She recognized the Northumberland brothers, Alec and Alejem.

  “Privacy, if you don’t mind,” Alec rasped to the MI5 men, who hesitated, then scrambled out of the car.

  Alejem, called Jem, was the offspring of Lord Northumberland’s second marriage to an Spanish lady. He had a particularly bad case of what Vivienne thought of as ROCK disease: chivalrous delusions. He apologized to Madelaine for jostling her, then lit an expensive cigarette and spread his arm along the back of the seat, cupping Madelaine’s shoulders.

  Alec was looking ragged. Well, he was almost Vivienne’s age, and he’d been tearing around the counry like a teenager. “You shouldn’t have run, Maddie.”

  Vivienne worked her elbow into Alec’s side, trying to secure more space. It was the side with the stump. His other hand had a pistol in it. “Madelaine chose her father and her House over the traitor Day. She did the right thing. You two, on the other hand, no longer have the right to call yourselves knights of Great Britain.”

  “I think she’s calling us traitors,” Alec said to his brother, mock-indignant.

  “Get out of this car. You’re frightening the baby.”

  “Diddums,” Jem said, tickling Fiona under the chin with a leather-gloved finger. The baby flinched. “Ah, don’t you remember me, Fifi-foo-foo?”

  “Speaking of traitors, my lady,” Alec said, shifting his smile to Vivienne.

  His face was so close she could see frost crystals melting in the grey-flecked stubble around his lips. She returned his gaze unflinchingly. “Was it your intention, Day’s intention, all along to hand the country over to BASI?”

  He laughed, a bark of astonishment. “BASI! No, they gave us their blessing but refused to get involved.”

  “There is a BASI agent here at this very moment, pulling MI5’s strings.”

  Alec did not flinch at this news. “The Germans don’t want Great Britain. They don’t want the expense. If you’re not making this BASI agent up, he’s here for something else.”

  Could that be the truth? If so, what did Flambeault want? “Perhaps you had better go find out what’s going on,” she said.

  “We will,” Jem said. “As soon as we’ve taken care of the job we came here to do.”

  His dark eyes were very cold. Vivienne held Fiona tighter.

  “This isn’t about revenge,” Jem clarified. “It’s about our oath as knights of the ROCK. We are sworn to defend the Crown.”

  “You have already broken that oath.”

  “No, we haven’t,” Alec said. “We’re sworn to defend the true king of Great Britain—that’s how the oath goes, as a matter of fact. And who is that? Ever since the War, we’ve just been guessing.”

  “Daddy was the true king!” Madelaine yelped.

  “Lineage isn’t everything,” Jem said dourly.

  “Damn you!” Madelaine seemed to find new strength. “My son Michael is the heir apparent, by virtue of his lineage, and I’ll not forget that you slighted his claim, sir!”

  “Oh,” Jem said. He looked at his brother. “She hasn’t heard.”

  Vivienne wanted to reach out and stop time at that moment, before Madelaine knew the anguish she herself had felt.

  “Your son is dead,” Alec said. “He was slain by the Stuarts. A helpless child. Those stone-hearted Scottish cunts.”

  Vivienne heard Madelaine saying Michael? Michael? Michael? like a bird’s cry. For herself, she felt a wash of relief. It had not been Guy who killed the boy. Thank God for that.

  Alec shrugged, showing no pity for the bereaved Madelaine. “For the last twenty years Great Britain has been ruled by a magician. The country’s gone to hell. Think that’s a coincidence? I don’t. Let’s go, Jem, let’s get this over with.”

  “It’s nothing personal, you understand,” Jem said to Vivienne. He pulled off one of his gloves and tossed it into her lap. Then they were gone, the car doors slamming.

  And Vivienne understood at last what they had come for.

  To kill the last heir of the Wessex dynasty. Another incurable.

  Her son Ran.

  60

  Ran

  Ran watched the dead soldier turning slowly, his arms dangling, his fingertips smoking like sausages. He’d mostly managed to convince himself that the soldier wasn’t a real person, and nor was the one on the floor. He had to think that, or his mind would crack with horror and he would never be able to get away.

  Donnchla was still scrawling on the floor with his fingers. The others had gone up to the roof. Ran edged towards the door.

  Conn came down the ladder. “Not thinking of leaving us?”

  Ran shook his head, heart beating hard.

  “They’d shoot you before you got ten yards.”

  “I can’t be killed.”

  “You can be tortured.”

  “I don’t care. They’d never break me.”

  “You are a wee eejit, aren’t you?” Conn squatted with his back to the wall. His right sleeve was rolled up. He prodded the crook of his elbow. Sweat glistened on his shovel-like face.

  “Why did Donnchla shoot Val?” The magician was lying near the fire. His leg had bled all over the floor. The two not-real people (English soldiers) lay on either side of him. None of them were mov
ing.

  “Because we needed another one. There had to be three.”

  “What for?” Ran’s stomach felt heavy with dread.

  “Ah, fuck, fuck …” Conn hissed. He worked the bloody flesh of his elbow with his fingers. A metal lump nosed out of the wound. “Fuck, that’s fucking sore. The problem with the gift of the River of Sticks, young fella, as you will sooner or later learn for yourself, is it doesn’t stop shite from hurting.”

  Overhead, someone fired a burst. The answering volley pierced new holes in the walls of the building. Thin beams of light jutted through. The smoke from the fire changed direction to flow out of the holes. The building seemed to be filling with mist.

  “Conn? If I can’t die, will I just get older and older?”

  “Who knows? It’s only been a few years for any of us. But Alyx first bathed in the River of Sticks when she was just a kid. She’s grown since then. So yeah, I’d say you do get older.”

  “I don’t want to get old.”

  “Kids these days, never satisfied.”

  Ragherty clattered down the ladder. “Out of ammo.”

  “Keep the head,” Conn said. “Looks like Donnchla’s almost done.”

  “I’ll fetch Alyx.”

  “I can see trees,” Ran yelped. They seemed to be growing out of the fire, ghostly trunks made of smoke. It now looked as if the dead soldier were hanging from a branch, not a tripod made of junk.

  “This is a thin place,” Conn said. “That’s why they had so many accidents in the old days. Fey escaping from the Otherworld, mucking up the equipment. But it’s not fey he’s summoning now.”

  Alyx tumbled down the ladder. “I don’t think Val’s spell is going to hold much longer,” she said breathlessly. “Donnchla! Can you—”

  Donnchla raised his head. The cords in his neck stood out like ropes. He bared his teeth.