by Gwynn White
That’s the word they were using. ‘Ousted,’ or for variety, ‘supplanted.’ Those glib verbs might be covering up thousands of deaths. But in Leonie’s opinion, and the opinion of everyone she’d talked to, it was an out-and-out lie. How would a tourney knight at the head of a shabby provincial regiment oust Live-Long Day, with the might of the ROCK behind him?
Pull the other one, chum. Leonie believed the ‘news’ was a ploy to draw Madelaine out of hiding.
If so, sad to say, it was well-calculated.
“I would like to start for London immediately, thank you.”
Leonie hid a smile. At least Madelaine no longer couched her requests as orders. The student had surpassed the teacher: now it was Leonie giving the orders and Madelaine doing as she said. “Say please, and I might think about it.”
“Please,” Madelaine muttered.
“Thinking, thinking … no. Not yet, anyway.”
“Guy came for me. He came! And I wasn’t there! I must go. I can’t bear to think of him searching high and low for me, and—he’ll think I am dead! I shall go to him!”
“Then you’d better learn to drive, ‘cos until you do, you’re not going anywhere, are you? Look, I haven’t said we’re never going back to London. But we have to wait and see if it’s true about the ousting and supplanting bit. And in the meantime, you may have forgotten your father’s last wishes, but I haven’t. Put on your seatbelt.”
Leonie shoved the key into the ignition. The radio came on with the engine. “—interrupt this programme to bring you a newsflash,” purred an IBC announcer.
Leonie pulled out of the parking lot.
“Sir Guy Sauvage, who yesterday ousted Oswald, Lord Day, from the regency, has ceded authority to the Cabinet, according to unconfirmed reports. Headed by Gordon, Lord Stuart, the Cabinet will expedite the process of selecting and formally appointing a new regent, said an anonymous source. This has been an IBC newsflash.”
“Well, it’s starting to sound like it might be at least half true,” Leonie said. She sneaked a look at Madelaine. The princess clutched her throat in horror.
“Meanwhile, clashes spread from Notting Hill to the Paddington area …”
“Bloody Londoners,” Leonie murmured, smiling to herself. “Any excuse for a punch-up.”
“What—what can it mean? Ceded authority. Well, perhaps that’s wise of him. But …”
It means they’ve killed him, Leonie thought. She’d known it was too good to be true. The gallant young conquering hero … Poor Sir Guy. He should’ve stuck to tourney. “It said it was just an anonymous source. I wouldn’t take it too seriously.” She hesitated. “Sounds like your little Michael’s safe, anyway.”
“My baby boy! I must go home!”
“All in good time.” Leonie thought: you aren’t a bit worried about your baby boy really. You know as well as I do that no one’s going to interfere with the heir apparent of House Wessex.
She reached down and turned the radio off.
They drove along the coast road in silence. Occasionally the inside of the Mini filled with lurching high beams from the Ravens’ hardtop Rover. When they reached the bridge over the canal, Leonie parked on the shoulder. She ran back to the Rover, which had also stopped.
“Who’s staying with the vehicles?” she asked.
Boogan pointed to Russ, a private with the pointy face and big pink hands of a mole. Hopefully he could also see in the dark.
“All right, listen, Russ. I’ve got a passenger. She’s a protected source, d’you get me?” Russ nodded, understanding the code for tout. “She’s got her baby with her. I’m sending her over to you and you’re going to look after both of them.”
Leonie dragged Madelaine through the sleet, bundled her into the Rover, and chucked Fiona’s nappy bag in after her. Doors shut, dark inside, the Rover slumped on the verge at the foot of the bridge like a silent sentry.
Leonie slung her Myxilite on her shoulder and led the patrol down to the towpath. Huddled in the shelter of the bridge, feet sinking into the icy ooze, she passed out tins of green shoe polish, the dullest color she’d been able to find in the shops. “You lads ever used cam cream?”
“In training,” Wicke said.
“Then you know how it goes on. No need for wild patterns. It’s just to hide the shine and break up the lines of your face.” She smeared the gooey stuff over her own cheeks and the back of her neck.
“Who’s on point?” Dave said.
Leonie said, “Alfie. Don’t get too far ahead. You see anything or anyone, come straight back, right?”
He started to salute, checked himself and nodded, then slipped away into the dark..
Faces and hands greened up, cracking jokes about swamp monsters, the rest of the patrol tramped along the path. Leonie chewed her lip and tasted shoe polish. Their rifle barrels gleamed in the light that shone down from the bedroom windows of the settlement onto the canal. Had they had more time to prepare, she would’ve liked to spray the metal black. That’s how they did it in the Company. But in weather this crap, the IRA were not likely to have sentries out. And at least the Ravens had taped over the D-rings on their webbing and belts, so nothing jingled.
The jokes petered out. The only sounds were the sigh of the sleet falling into the canal and their footsteps crunching through iced-over puddles.
Alfie came back. “There’s nothing. Only trees.”
Leonie visualized the map. The cooling towers of the defunct power plant were known locally as the Old Cows. They were visible for miles by day, but nothing could be seen at all in the darkness and the driving sleet. Had she overshot? Fear leapt into her mind like a dog snarling at the end of its leash. She tried to project confidence. “We keep going.”
Suddenly they came to a pier projecting out over the canal bank. “Loading deck,” Boogan muttered. “Where they used to unload the coal from the barges.”
They had overshot. But it didn’t matter, Leonie realized. If this was the loading deck for the power station, they had to be close. This might be a better way to get there. “Let’s go up. Everyone stay alert. No lights.”
They scrambled up the bank. The ground was lumpy with rubble. Behind the loading deck, they found a structure like a verandah with no house behind it. The Ravens secured the place in professional style, darting forward in pairs while their mates covered them. Belfast might have taught these boys to help themselves from bombed department stores and break every rule they were given, but it had also taught them how to soldier.
A shout of alarm snapped her into a run.
A set of narrow-gauge tracks ran alongside the ‘verandah.’ It was a station, this was a miniature railway for transporting coal to the power station, and Neal, the youngest private, had fallen into the deep gutter between the tracks. He scrambled out drenched to the knees. “Ah fuck, I think I’ve broke me ankle!”
“Keep your voice down,” Leonie hissed. “We don’t know how close they are.”
“We’ll follow the tracks,” Boogan said. “That’ll take us to the power station.”
“If Neal’s hurt, he stays here,” Leonie said. “Don’t vaunt! If it’s going to slow you down, say.”
Neal claimed he was fine, after all. It looked to Leonie as if he were limping, but there was nothing more she could do to stop him.
They moved cautiously forward, rifles unslung. The undergrowth along the tracks smelt fresh and wild. It had now been long enough since they left the road that Leonie’s night vision had reached full strength. Lifting her face into the sleet, she made out the enormous black shapes of the cooling towers, so near that she was taken aback. She had not seen them before because they blocked out half the sky. She’d thought she was just looking at darkness.
Another shape loomed, dead ahead: an abandoned digger, its scoop resting on the ground like the jaw of a dead dragon. She gestured for the lads to stop.
Ahead, the scrubby bushes opened out. Twenty yards past the digger, the railway ended in a hill of
rubble and twisted metal. The sleet whipped across an expanse of flat ground dotted with broken concrete and rubbish. Off to one side stood a skeletal, roofless building. No one in there.
Beyond the open ground rose the nearest of the Old Cows. A maintenance ladder zigzagged up its waisted height. And from beyond it, somewhere in the middle of the towers, a faint light glowed through the sleet.
She gathered the Ravens in the shelter of the digger. “This is it. Now we go in and do a CTR—a close target reconnaissance.”
“I know what that is,” Alfie said.
“Good. We’ll split up and circle the whole place to start with, looking for the route they use to go in and out, and of course, any sentries. You want to be asking yourself, what can I hear, what can I see? Where’s a good vantage point? Where could I position a fire support group? Where could I put in an OP? We’ll need to give as much information as possible to the pointyheads.”
But as she spoke, she realized that her plan to call Governor Bob Griffin’s police had never been anything more than a cover story. She saw in the Ravens’ eyes that they knew it, too. They were here for one reason only: to kill. To be real soldiers. To shoot at living targets and see them die.
And no one’s eyes shone as brightly at the prospect as her little brother’s.
She carried on speaking but her words trailed off. It dawned on her what a terrible thing she’d done.
The Ravens thought they were out here on a spree. They thought they were up against a handful of boyos with ancient bolt-actions. They didn’t know that Alyx O’Braonain’s gang didn’t fucking die when you shot them.
Should she tell them the truth? Was there a chance in hell they’d believe her?
Since she had stopped talking, they were muttering to each other, passing a cigarette under cupped palms. “Our battalion is shit!” Wicke whispered. “Now One Ravens, they had the right idea! Remember Bloody Sunday? They said there was only five dead. There was only five found! The rest went off the docks with bricks tied to their ankles!”
Dave laughed explosively through his nose, agreeing their battalion was shit. But they were different. Like the heroes of Bloody Sunday, they’d shoot to kill and make sure the bodies were never found.
Leonie said, “Put that fucking fag out! Listen, change of plan. I’m going forward. Alfie can come with me. The rest of you stay here.” She shoved Dave back against the digger. “Here,” she repeated. It was all she could do to keep them alive, and it was not enough. “Make sure you can get at your spare mags.”
She confirmed that her Myxilite fire selector was on automatic, pulled the bolt back slightly to check the chamber, then smacked it forward. She walked toward the hill of rubble and around it. Alfie angled away from her, going around the other side.
There was no one up on the maintenance ladder of the nearest tower.
Alfie reappeared around the rubble and gave a thumbs-up. She beckoned him on.
They circled the side of the tower, Alfie taking the lead. The tinge of light grew brighter. Leonie’s stomach did jumping-jacks. There was a building in the dark wasteland in the middle of the towers. That’s where Alyx and her boyos had to be.
She caught up with Alfie: stop. He frowned, not getting it.
She breathed out, letting the night settle on her, letting her senses stretch out. Mouth hanging open, listening with every square inch of her skin, she heard the rustle of sleet hitting the weeds, the faint far-off sound of the sea.
Alfie, impatient, started forward again.
Half a dozen paces ahead of her, he stopped with a jerk as if he’d been shot.
Leonie brought the Myxilite up to her shoulder and dropped onto one knee. Nothing moved. Nothing made a sound. If Alfie was shot, why hadn’t she heard it?
He stuttered forward like a clockwork toy winding down. Then he fell, bonelessly.
Leonie pushed off from the ground and lunged towards him. She realized that he had fallen just inside the ring of towers, if you were to draw a circle touching their inward sides, and at the same moment she hit that invisible circle herself.
Dread leapt up in her mind, off the leash, savaging her will.
I left Fiona with Madelaine. I left her with her even after I found out that she hits her. Why’d HRH come tonight? Not because she thought she could persuade me to drop everything and set off for London. Because she doesn’t trust herself with Fiona. She’s been crying out for help and all I’ve done is go off on her. I have to go back I have to go back. I have to go back and
Mum
Sam
The little ‘uns
Terror mounted into absolute certainty that Live-Long Day had got to her family before the Bastard of Sauvage got to him. Because of her, they might all be dead. And she was faffing about in Ireland, chasing a meaningless grudge.
I have to go back—
She stumbled backwards, the Myxilite swinging uselessly on its sling. Briars clutched at her legs. She fell against the wet concrete wall of the tower, knees weak.
After a few moments, she found the strength to move. She crept back towards the place Alfie had fallen, weapon in her shoulder, monitoring her mental state at each step. The terror did not return. It—
Are you mad, Grant? Got a death wish, have you? Go back!
—hit her like an electric shock. Her heart pounded as she retreated again from the edge of the circle.
She could see Alfie lying in the weeds, less than five yards away. He was on his back. It looked as if his eyes were open. As a matter of fact, he looked dead, but after a moment she saw him twitch and shiver.
“Alfie? Alfie!”
He shuddered like a child having a nightmare. His mind was gone somewhere he could not hear her.
Dave brushed past her. He had not stayed where he was told. “Dave! Stop! Don’t—” She grabbed his smock, lost her grip.
He hit the circle, rebounded, bulled through. He almost reached Alfie. But he was slowing, like a man who’s been shot and only realizes it when his body gives out under him. He looked back at her, as if in reproach, then sat down, curling his arms around his knees and putting his head down sideways on them. When he was little, he’d sit just like that on the hall stairs all night, waiting for their father to come home. She’d get up in the small hours to drag him to bed and find him lying on his side, still curled up in a ball.
“Dave!”
He didn’t move.
53
Mihal
At The Same Time. Belfast
Mihal crawled out of the closet and dragged himself across the carpet. He switched on the bedside light. Sat on the edge of the bed. It was a canopied ocean of fluffy quilts. He had asked for somewhere quiet to prepare, and the Countess of Dublin, Lady Sauvage, had provided him with a room at the Griffin’s Eyrie, the best hotel in Belfast.
His hands stank of magic. He could still hear the last thing Greta had said to him after Val’s rambling, drunken phone call. Bring him back, she’d said. Not Come back safely. Bring him back.
He buckled his arms belt on. It had been a present from Greta a few years back, a broad hint that he should be more of a ‘real man,’ childishly fascinated with pointy sticks and things that went bang. Why had she married an incurable and then tried to turn him into a knight? Why had she married a Russian and then started an affair with a Irishman? Why, why … No use wondering.
Voices came through the connecting door. He hesitated, then went through to the Countess’s suite.
The Countess was not there. Instead, two strangers were bullying Colin Argent. They’d backed him up against the mantelpiece, too close for comfort to the roaring fire.
Mihal coughed. “Where’s Lady Sauvage?”
The older bully had a face that had seen it all and not thought it worth writing home about. He produced an expression that was probably meant to be a smile. “You must be the IMF chap. I’m sorry to say there have been some new developments.”
Mihal looked at Colin Argent, who shook his head angri
ly. “I’m having a drink, if you’ve no objection to that.”
“Mine’s a G and T,” the older bully said. His colleague, louche in jeans and black leather jacket, watched Argent crashing bottles around on the drinks cart. “Good of you to come all this way,” the older man said to Mihal. “Only I’m afraid you’re now superfluous to requirements. Don’t take it personally, will you?”
“Would you mind telling me what authority you’ve got to make that statement? I’m currently employed by the Sauvage Corporation as a consultant, in keeping with British temporary employment law, section five for foreign nationals sworn to other corporations or entities. So I believe you need to take your concerns up with Lady Sauvage.”
The man laughed. “Smooth. No go, though. Lady Sauvage’s been unavoidably detained at Belfast Castle.”
Mihal remembered spying a hilltop castle from the window of the corporate jet that had brought them to Belfast. A spiny fortress, quickstone ravelins grown wild. Hard enough getting in there, let alone out.
“MI5. Counter-espionage section. Sperling,” the man said. “This is Norton.”
“Honored,” Norton grunted. He was young but fleshy, head shaved to disguise a premature bald patch.
Colin Argent raised his glass in an ironic toast. Turning to Mihal, he said, “I didn’t want to disturb you while you were working. Maybe I should have. They say Guy has been arrested—I don’t believe it, of course—arrested for murdering Michael. They framed Piers, and now Guy. They’re determined to destroy us.”
Mihal said nothing. As far as he knew, MI5 was the nearest English equivalent of BASI’s loyalty police. Which meant they were capable of saying dogshit was ice cream, and beating you up if you didn’t want any.
“It’s quite true,” said a new voice. For the first time Mihal saw a fair-haired young man sitting in the window seat, his boots crossed at the ankles. “There’s to be an official announcement at ten o’clock. Until then, the news of Sir Guy’s arrest is strictly embargoed. Which is why we’re asking you both to remain here and refrain from using the telephone. Sorry.”
