by Gwynn White
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 noble 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.”
&nb
sp; “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 minutes. 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.”
Their response was a brief, icy silence. Then Rhys Llywelyn said patronizingly, “We can’t assure you of anything. It’s a free assembly, after all. Every man must vote his conscience. Wouldn’t do for us to try influencing anyone.”
Llywelyn’s hypocrisy infuriated Guy. He snatched up a poker and jabbed crossly at the fire. Who were they, anyway? Who were they, to treat him like this? Only the sons and grandsons of clever businessmen, the heirs of sharp operators and rich inventors, half of them with magic in their tainted bloodlines. There was no man in this room whose House was as old as Sauvage, and yet they presumed to lecture him …
“National Chivalry will have to be dissolved, anyway,” said Gordon, the new Lord Stuart, a podgy middle-aged man who wore an admiral’s uniform in emulation of his late father. All right, House Stuart was as old as House Sauvage. And when Gordon spoke, everyone else stopped talking to listen. Why didn’t they do that for Guy? Gordon had done precisely nothing to help Guy take the capital. All he’d done was step into his father’s shoes amid the confusion, short-circuiting the British Army’s sacred right to appoint their own chief based on merit. Yet somehow he’d turned into the man of the hour, lauded by a grateful populace for his temperance.
“Yesss,” Norfolk said. “One sees now what Day was up to. A parallel power structure. Virtually a shadow regime with its own intelligence and military capabilities.”
“Anyone with eyes in their head saw that years ago,” Guy said loudly. “I agree: National Chivalry must be broken up. MI5 will be returned to direct Crown oversight. As for the ROCK, it will be banned and dissolved immediately.”
Gordon Stuart’s head-shake genuinely shocked him. He had thought banning the ROCK was one thing they would agree on.
“Can’t do that.”
“It’s what they stand for, you know.”
“Chivalry. Tradition.”
“Can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.”
“A few bad apples.”
“They’re bad through and through,” Guy exclaimed.
“And now you’ve whanged their Knight Commander’s head up on the Traitor’s Gate, they’ll want revenge. That what you’re afraid of, eh? I would be, too,” said old Lord Northumberland, both of whose sons were in the ROCK. “Heh, heh.”
“About those mobs, now.”
“It’s not only bread that’s running short. There’ve been walkouts at a dozen Wessex manufacturing plants.”
“Sack the lot.”
“Speaking of sacking,” said Lady Hampshire, the only female in the Cabinet, whose bright red lipstick made Guy think of an open wound. “Whose idea was it to make the entire Wessex livery redundant?”
“His, of cour
se.” Rude nods indicated Guy.
“Those willing to swear allegiance to House Sauvage shall be rehired,” Guy said.
Gordon Stuart stared at him, smooth-shaven cheeks quite still. He did not raise his voice. “Getting a little ahead of yourself, aren’t you? You haven’t been acclaimed yet.”
He tensed for Gordon to bring up his bastard birth. When Gordon did so, Guy would bring up the Worldcracker. They might laugh at the sword’s silly appearance, but they wouldn’t laugh when he ran Gordon Stuart through without touching him …
Gordon declined the bait. He lit a cigarette without offering Guy one, and gazed into the fire.
“By the way,” Norfolk said. “Anyone heard anything at all about the whereabouts of the princesses?”
“I have a clever little savant on my staff,” Lady Hampshire said. “He believes their bodies are buried in the cellars of this very tower.”
Guy sensed that they were all deliberately not looking at him. Did they think he had killed Madelaine and Fiona? Surely not!
But Gordon Stuart said, “I have taken the precaution of supplying additional guards, from mine own household livery, for Michael Wessex’s protection.”
Guy poked the fire again. He prayed his face was as unreadable as the embers. He must not let his anger show. It wasn’t kingly.
There had been little direct resistance when they took the Tower of London. The ROCK had tried to force the Household troop of the Lions to hold the gates against Guy’s battalion, but Guy had persuaded them to stand down. He had flown Blooming Monday right over the curtain wall into their midst, alone. Standing on the dragon’s back, he had given a speech so persuasive it startled even him. He had promised an end to violence.
Once they were inside, there’d been a great deal of confusion, but Guy’s men had kept discipline. Most of the Wessex livery had just run away. There’d been no shooting, except when individual ROCK knights made a stand. At one point, fighter planes had been spotted in the sky, but they’d turned back without approaching the Tower of London. Guy’s men had surrounded the Ivory Towers unopposed. Trembling government staffers had emerged from their offices to find guns pointing at them and Irish voices yelling at them to surrender. In retrospect, that had been badly staged.
