The war is over, but a new world is fighting to be born.
The Allied Lands exist in name only, with powerful kings throwing off the shackles of the alliance, powerful magicians scheming to go their own way and revolutionaries fighting for freedom, democracy, and a chance to stride into a brave new world.
On a peace mission, desperately trying to hammer out a settlement that will keep the radicals and reactionaries from starting yet another civil war, Emily is attacked by Marah, a young woman rescued by her enigmatic master and turned into a living weapon to start the chaos.
Seeing something of herself in the girl, and knowing that she would face a fate worse than death if she were left in the kingdom, Emily takes her as an apprentice, both to give her a better chance at life and to use her to track down her mysterious master, who appears to have plans of his own…
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I’m currently putting together my plans for the rest of the year, deciding which projects to do sooner and which to explore at some later date. I would prefer to do an SF trilogy as I have several other fantasy pieces of work to do too, so … which would you prefer?
Future Shock
(With apologies to John Birmingham, although I did run the idea past him first.)
The year is 2250. Humanity has expanded into space and come into conflict with a hostile alien race, human nations and factions suddenly forced to unite against a common foe, when a fleet from the future arrives, the last survivors of a far greater war against a far greater threat. As the newcomers try to adapt to the past, and the distrusts the human race left behind a long time ago, their arrival sets off utter chaos as their alien allies see their own chance to rewrite history …
The Resistance
Earth has fallen, the once-proud space navies crushed by a vastly-superior alien race. The remnants of the human fleet are forced to serve alien masters (think Vichy France) or remain on the run, lurking in the shadows and working with other aliens in a bid to free humanity before it is too late …
Exiled to Glory
(This one probably needs another name.)
The empire is young, bursting with energy, and trying to unite the rest of humanity under its banner before a second interstellar war can destroy the entire human race. A young officer-candidate has a promising career in front of him until he was caught in bed with the academy commandant’s wife. Unable to discharge him – his scores were too high – the establishment promoted him instead, assigned him to command a rustbucket, and sent him to the far side of incorporated space, a region infested with pirates, rebels and other threats.
They thought it would be the last of him. They were wrong.
Fifty years ago, a human covert operations team – The Firelighters – raided Belosi, a world held in bondage by the alien Tichck, and rescued thousands of Belosi from slavery, taking them into space to form the core of a future liberation force. Since then, a cloud of secrecy has descended over Belos, with no word of the fate of the trapped Belosi allowed to escape the system. Now, with the Tokomak War over and the Galactics in disarray, the Solar Union intends to honour its promises to the exiled Belosi, by supporting their fleet in a bid to reclaim their stolen homeworld.
But the Tichck have plans of their own, and with the former masters of the universe no longer a threat, they can finally make their own play for supreme power.
The first war is over. The second is about to begin.
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The book that started it all, now available through Kindle Unlimited as well as paperback and audio!
Emily is a teenage girl pulled from our world into a world of magic and mystery by a necromancer who intends to sacrifice her to the dark gods. Rescued in the nick of time by an enigmatic sorcerer, she discovers that she possesses magical powers and must go to Whitehall School to learn how to master them. There, she learns the locals believe that she is a “Child of Destiny,” someone whose choices might save or damn their world… a title that earns her both friends and enemies. A stranger in a very strange land, she may never fit into her new world…
…and the necromancer is still hunting her. If Emily can’t stop him, he might bring about the end of days.
The Flight Of Werner Von Braun is a stand-alone alternate history novel. It forms part of the backstory for The Twilight Of The Gods series, otherwise known as the Nazi Civil War, but is intended to be more or less completely stand-alone. All you really need to know is that Hitler did not declare war on the United States in 1941, leading to America staying out of the European War, a German victory over the USSR and now an uneasy Cold War between the Third Reich and a British/American alliance. It is now 1949, and Adolf Hitler is dying. His cronies are now positioning themselves for the inevitable struggle that will follow his death.
The novel is set within Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe, and represents my attempt to depict the horrors of a victorious Third Reich. If this offends you, please don’t read.
(It also needs a better title – any suggestions?)
You can borrow the first book in The Twilight Of The Gods series from the Amazon Kindle Unlimited link below:
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He did not, normally, indulge. He was a celebrity within Nazi Germany, high in the favour of Adolf Hitler, and yet he was all too aware that allowing himself to get drunk, to lose control of himself, raised the risk of saying the wrong thing in front of the wrong set of ears. He liked to think he was apolitical, that the ebb and flow of politics in the Third Reich meant nothing to him as long as the government kept funding the space program, but even he understood the dangers. Good men – loyal men – had vanished from the site, and even the world itself, because their enemies had pounced on the slightest hint of disloyalty and used it to ensure their disappearance. Werner was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and even he couldn’t find out what had happened to the disappeared. He knew better than to ask.
And now Korolev was dead.
Werner ground his teeth in silent frustration, cursing himself for a fool. Korolev and his men had been spared, in the wake of the Reich’s conquest of the Soviet Union, to lend their considerable talents to the growing rocket and missile program. Werner had had to argue hard, back in 1942, to convince the SS to take the Russian scientists alive, even going to the Führer himself to override Himmler’s conviction that Slavic Untermenschen could not possibly have anything of value to contribute. Werner knew better. He was a scientist and engineer above all else and he was almost painfully aware that the Reich’s decision to drive Jewish scientists out of the country had been a dangerous mistake. No one was quite sure if the Americans had managed to produce an atomic bomb, but they certainly had a lead on the Reich’s nuclear program. He supposed that explained the sense of urgency pervading the Reich’s government. They knew what they would do, if they had a superweapon, and they assumed the Americans would do the same. And yet …
He took another sip of his drink, the fancy alcohol tasting sour in his throat. He was an engineer as well as a scientist, he knew things could go wrong. The rockets were put together using labour from the nearest concentration camp, by workers who were underfed and demotivated, following designs that were pushing the limits of human technology to breaking point. The process needed to be extensively tested before being streamlined, but the Reich was desperate. The Americans could not be allowed to develop intercontinental missiles first. They could not. It was bad enough that they had massive airbases in Britain, with heavy bombers that could carry atomic weapons into the heart of the Reich, but missiles would let them strike the industrial complexes in the ruins of Poland or even destroy Berlin itself. And the push for a success – any success – had led to disaster.
Werner felt sick, as helpless as he’d been when the SS led Korolev away to be executed. They’d blamed the disaster on the Russian, as if the Russian’s work hadn’t been checked by a dozen German scientists with impeccable bloodlines, and on a multitude of concentration camp workers. Werner had tried to close his mind to the suffering, only a few short miles from the missile complex, but even he knew what was happening now. Hundreds of workers, most innocent of any real crime, were being executed, pour encourager les autres. And there would be more soon, if the next test launch failed …
He shuddered, cursing himself for a fool. He had dreamed of space for his entire adult life and he had thought the Nazis, the sole party devoted to the renewal of Germany, would be able to put the human race in space. To stay. It had worked, at first – Werner knew his team had made magnificent advances – but the demands of war had slowly pushed space exploration back, time and time again, until it was no longer important. Werner had tried, hard, to argue the military importance of control of space, yet … the government wanted missiles to strike London or Washington, or rocket planes capable of flying across the United States, or …
Himmler needs something he can use to climb into Hitler’s place, when he is gone, Werner thought. It felt wrong to even consider a Reich without Adolf Hitler – and anyone who voiced the suggestion out loud would be on a short trip to the nearest concentration camp – but the Führer was dying. He hadn’t been seen in public for the last year, as far as Werner knew, and if he hadn’t had a private meeting with Hitler only two months ago, before the disaster, Werner would have wondered if the Führer was already dead. He needs proof he can steer the ship of state.
He shivered, helplessly. He was a brave man – he had put himself in danger time and time again, just by being on site when prototype rockets were tested – and yet Himmler scared him. The Reichsführer-SS was cold and calm, a bureaucrat who was also a fanatic; a man who had no qualms about rounding up workers and putting them to work, forcing them to work until they dropped. Himmler had few emotions, if Werner was any judge, and no sense of human decency. He wasn’t an outright sadist, unlike some of the other Nazis Werner tried to forget existed, but that almost made him worse. It was distressingly easy to convince himself that Himmler would calculate a nuclear war was winnable, as long as the Reich preserved a tiny fraction of its population, and push the button to launch the missiles. And he had thousands upon thousands of loyalists who would set the world ablaze for him.
And if Himmler becomes the Führer, Werner asked himself what happens then?
He took another sip, the alcohol burning through all the evasions and justifications he had used – over the last two decades – to convince himself he was doing the right thing. He had turned a blind eye to so much, in the name of science and simple self-preservation, but it was clear – now – that he had been cheated of the reward he had been promised, when he sold his soul. His rockets would be used for war, not space exploration; atomic science would be used for war, not lighting and heating the Reich … even the half-baked plan one of his subordinates had devised, to use nukes to launch a spacecraft into orbit, would be better than Himmler’s plans for the future. He tried to tell himself that Hermann Göring or Albert Speer would win the coming struggle for power, but he could no longer convince himself of anything. Himmler had the edge, and even if he lost his bid for the title he would still have immense power. And that meant …
It was hard not to laugh, bitterly. Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
You didn’t, his conscience answered. How many are dead, because of you? How many will die, because of you?
Werner stared at his glass, then forced himself to stand and walk to the window, looking over the vast complex. He was proud of the missile and rocketry site he’d designed and built over the years, proud enough to hide from the grim truth that it had been built by slave labour and turned into a vital part of the Reich’s war machine. The younger men didn’t see it – they’d been raised in the Reich, taught only what the government wanted them to know – but Werner could no longer hide from himself. His complex was producing weapons of war, from small antiaircraft rockets to much larger antishipping or even city-busting missiles, and once the latter were mated with atomic bombs … Werner wanted to believe atomic weapons were a dream, or a nightmare, but he knew better. The science was sound. All that was left was engineering, and – given time – there was no engineering problem that couldn’t be cracked. The Reich would have the bomb and throw the world into the fire.
He took a long breath, his mind spinning in circles. Retirement was not an option. He knew too much for Himmler to let him go. Suicide was a possibility, but it would be the coward’s way out. He knew better than to think he could damage or destroy the complex himself … and even if he did, the damage would be repairable. The Reich would rebuild and carry on and … he swallowed, hard. There was only one choice left, one that might let him make up for his foolishness, and for the horror he’d helped unleash on the world.
Werner Von Braun was going to defect.
Chapter One: Berlin, 1949
“And to think,” Sir Cuthbert Dudley said quietly, “this used to be a great city.”
Kathleen O’Brian said nothing as the ambassadorial car carried them through the streets of Berlin, their driver steering neatly between the rows of government and military vehicles that dominated the roads. Her mother had left Germany when she’d been a teenager, well before the Nazis had been anything more than a minor threat, but Kathleen had grown up hearing her stories about how peaceful and tolerant Berlin had been, before Hitler. Now … she could feel a shadow in the air, a fear that was all the more dangerous for never being openly acknowledged. The Reich was feared by all, even the Germans themselves. Kathleen understood, all too well. To say the wrong thing in the wrong place was to sign your death warrant.
She sucked in her breath as the car drove past the towering new buildings, heavy gothic architecture making a statement to the world that the regime was here to stay. The bombing in the later years of the war had done immense damage, but the regime had taken advantage of the devastation to redesign the city to suit itself, giant new buildings overshadowing the remnants of an earlier age. Speer had an unlimited budget and unlimited manpower – guest workers from the east, slaves in all but name – and it showed. The towering grandiosity of the state was all too clear. There was nothing elegant in the design, nothing that showed a sense of historical awareness, just a plain blunt statement that chilled her to the bone. She’d seen the figures. She knew how many guest workers had died to build even one of the monstrous buildings. She wondered, numbly, just how many of the locals on the streets knew who’d done the work and why. Not many, if she was any judge. Far too many Germans preferred to look the other way, rather than risk drawing the gaze of the state. It was almost always lethal.
Her heart twisted, painfully, as she spotted a sign on the walls, ordering the Germans to watch for Jews, Communists, Homosexuals and others the Nazi regime considered undesirable. Kathleen was all too aware that most of the undesirables in Berlin had already been slaughtered, if they hadn’t been smart enough to get out before it was too late, but the regime showed no sign of slowing down. They were still butchering their way across the eastern territories, what had once been the USSR, and poisoning the minds of the young. The only upside was that the propaganda was so bad the undesirables could probably remain unnoticed, as long as they kept their heads down. But even that wouldn’t be enough to save them if they were denounced…
“They’re still there,” Sir Cuthbert said, quietly.
Kathleen followed his gaze. A handful of women stood in front of the gates, bravely protesting the regime. They were about the only ones who dared, these days, and Kathleen suspected their cause was futile. The Nazis had had to make use of feminine labour in the later days of the war, when every able-bodied man was required to go east and fight, but the regime was steadily driving women out of the workforce and back into the home, turning them into second-class citizens at best and property of their menfolk at worst. Kathleen had seen the crude propaganda, ordering women to marry and produce children for the regime, and she knew it masked a far darker reality. The regime might be unwilling to openly crush the female protesters – it might spark a riot – but that didn’t mean it was powerless. Their menfolk would already be under immense pressure to bring the women in line, or else. She couldn’t help feeling the protest was doomed.
She kept her thoughts to herself as they passed a handful of civilian trucks, carrying guest workers to their workplace. The men would be worked to death. The women would be assigned to Germanic households as slaves, handling the chores so their mistress could have as many children as she wished without needing to worry about housework or childcare. It was a horrific system, a nightmare given shape and form … Kathleen thanked her lucky stars, every day, that her grandparents had been smart enough to get out of Germany before it was too late. She would be dead by now … no, she wouldn’t exist at all. Her parents would never have met, let alone married. And she would never have been given her father’s name.
Her blood ran cold. She’d been in Occupied France. She’d been in Vichy France. Berlin was worse.
The driver stopped outside the Reich Hall, a towering monstrosity that was as ugly as the rest of the rebuilt city. A red and black flag flapped in the evening breeze, a grim reminder that the Nazis had left their mark everywhere; a set of SS guards stood outside, snapping to attention as the driver opened the door to allow Sir Cuthbert and Kathleen to leave the vehicle. Kathleen couldn’t help feeling a frisson of fear as the guards looked her up and down, then motioned for them to enter the hall. If they had known about her mother, they wouldn’t have been so welcome. But then, they couldn’t tell a Jew when they saw one.
Sir Cuthbert offered her his arm as they walked through the inner doors and down the steps to the ballroom floor. It was as oversized as everything else in the city, bigger than a football stadium, but the floor was teeming with people. The walls were decorated with red and black banners, a large portrait of Adolf Hitler positioned neatly against the far wall. Kathleen kept her face under tight control as she spotted the uniforms, feeling as though she was walking into a lion’s den. The rival power blocs were taking shape and form – the Luftwaffe, the Wehrmacht, the Kriegsmarine, the SS – all trying to position themselves to take advantage of the chaos that would inevitably follow Hitler’s death. Kathleen had wondered if Hitler was already dead – he hadn’t been seen in public for months – but their sources within the Reich’s government suggested he was still alive. Pity. She didn’t really believe the Reich would fall into civil war, upon his death, but she had hopes. There might be nothing else capable of stopping the Reich from taking the world.
“Ah, Sir Cuthbert,” a man said. Kathleen silently placed him as a diplomat, probably working directly for Ribbentrop. The man was a fool, but beloved by the Fuhrer. “I must say …”
Sir Cuthbert gave Kathleen a sharp glance, conveying a pre-planned message. Go mingle. Kathleen nodded and allowed herself to be swept away by the crowd, a handful of young officers – and others not so young – inviting her to dance. There weren’t many women in the room, apart from the serving girls, and they were under strict supervision. It said something about the sheer importance of the Reich Hall, she supposed, that the servants were all German girls, rather than guest workers. The young girls should be getting married and having children, according to the regime. But then, who knew who they would meet at the gathering?
And if half the stories about the elite are true, she thought coldly, the lucky girls will be the ones who go home without a mate.
She forced herself to listen as the dancers swept her around the hall, silently picking up information that might be useful later. Men liked to brag, particularly when they thought their dance partner was too ignorant to understand what they were saying. One officer talked about a redeployment to the eastern front, chasing partisans, and another talked about being sent to the Iron Wall in Occupied France. Kathleen filed both pieces of information away in her mind for later, when she could discuss them with the analysts at the embassy. The Nazis might be having problems in the east – it wasn’t as if they’d ever given the partisans any reason to believe they would be allowed to live, let alone any degree of freedom, if they gave up and went under the yoke – or they might be planning to invade England. It would be hellishly risky, and it would mean war with America as well as Britain, but it wasn’t 1940 any longer. The Kriegsmarine might be the junior service, as far as the Reich was concerned, yet it hadn’t wasted the six years of relative peace. They had – theoretically – the ability to land an invasion force on British soil. Would they try?
“My regiment is being rearmed with the latest Panzer X,” another officer said, bragging to his companion. Kathleen listened with interest. The latest tanks were supposed to incorporate all the lessons of the last war, with everything from better armour to heavier guns. “The latest guns are really something and …”
“We came back heroes, and all the girls are married to the boys in black,” a third officer moaned. He wouldn’t have talked so freely if he hadn’t been well on the way to being drunk. “Doing their duty by their men … pah!”
Kathleen memorised his face for later attention, if he survived the night. They’d heard rumours of discontent between the Wehrmacht and the SS before, but the disputes had largely been kept under wraps. After Hitler died … the SS received huge benefits from the regime, from increased living allowances to preferential treatment, and she wasn’t surprised it sparked resentment. She’d even heard rumours that racially pure SS officers had been encouraged to take multiple wives, to increase their chances of siring a small army of blond blue-eyed children. That had never been confirmed, but if it turned out to be true … there would be trouble. The regime had promised its fighting men loving wives. If those promises weren’t kept …
A fat man caught her arm and pulled her away from her current partner. Kathleen had to bit her lip to keep from kicking him in the groin, particularly as her former partner backed away without a fight. The newcomer was almost certainly much higher up the hierarchy. His uniform was laden with medals, half of which were only awarded to officers who had served on the front lines. This man … Kathleen let her eyes roam up and down his body. She’d never seen a combat soldier quite so overweight before.
“It is quite offensive that your government allowed the publication of Anne Frank’s book,” the officer said, instead of the sweet nothings mingled with titbits of useful information she’d heard from other dancers. “The Reich protests in the strongest possible terms.”
Kathleen gave him her most gormless smile. Her cover story suggested she was nothing more than a pretty face, with some typing skills. Sir Cuthbert might enjoy looking at her – they’d played that up, whenever they’d been in public – but the idea he’d actually take her seriously was unbelievable, as far as the regime was concerned. A flicker of paranoia ran through her … if her cover had been blown, she was deep in the heart of Nazi Germany. Escape would be tricky …
“I’m afraid I know nothing about such matters,” she said, lying through her teeth. She knew a great deal about the whole affair. Anne Frank’s diary had exposed the true horror of being a Jew under Nazi occupation, and its publication had kicked off a major diplomatic incident. The Nazis seemed to want to hide what they’d done, and yet – at the same time – they wanted to glory in it. “I can pass your concerns to the ambassador, if you wish.”
“Such lies cannot be allowed to stand,” the officer said. He pressed closer to her, trying to make her uncomfortable. She had been in worse places, and she’d dealt with worse men. “It is nothing more than a conspiracy against the Reich.”
Kathleen gave him another gormless smile as he whirled her around the dance floor, his eyes leaving trails of slime over her body. He wasn’t a good dancer, not even trying to let her enjoy herself as he monopolised her attention. His chatter was crude and rude and largely pointless … she guessed, despite herself, that he was pointless too. It wasn’t uncommon in the modern day. The men who had built the Reich, or had served before the war, were being increasingly sidelined by the new elite. They weren’t taking it very well.
“You must make the ambassador understand that the Reich will not take this lying down,” the officer continued. Kathleen wasn’t sure if he was passing on a message, or merely venting. Either was possible. It wouldn’t be the first time a message was passed onwards in a thoroughly deniable manner, just in case it led to a diplomatic incident. “And there will be consequences …”
“Excuse me,” a polite voice said, as the musicians paused. “Can I have this dance?”
The officer started to object, then went quiet. Kathleen looked up and saw … Werner Von Braun. It couldn’t be anyone else. Ice prickled down her back as the officer let her go, allowing Von Braun to take her hand. He might be one of the most famous people in the Reich, his picture regularly displayed in newspapers and textbooks, but she had been told Von Braun rarely made public appearances. And he was here in front of her … it was one hell of an opportunity, if she could take advantage of it. She could feel eyes lingering on them as they started to dance, her former partner heading off to harass the serving girls instead. Kathleen felt a stab of sympathy for them. The Bund Deutscher Mädel was supposed to protect the girls in its charge, even as it indoctrinated them with Nazi ideology, but she doubted any of the grim-faced matrons would dare stand in the way of a senior officer. The concentration camps took women too.
She found herself unsure what to say as they circled the dance floor. Von Braun was a surprisingly good dancer, but he was incredibly tense … Kathleen was good at reading people and Von Braun felt more like a teenage boy asking a girl to walk out with him than a middle-aged rocket scientist. She wondered why he was here, although … she supposed the rocket forces would want to stake a claim to power in the post-Hitler world too. British Intelligence had worked hard, trying to figure out how the rocket forces were actually funded and organised, but there was a great deal they didn’t know. The man in front of her could answer all those questions, if he wished. Would he? Everything they’d heard about Von Braun suggested he was a loyal German.
Her heart sank as she saw the eyes watching them. One man, so tall and blond and handsome he could have stepped off a recruiting poster; other men, wearing a number of different uniforms, eyeing them with calculating eyes. The first would be a minder, she was sure. The Nazis hadn’t taken power in Germany, and then kept it, through being overly trusting. Kathleen had heard rumours that senior officers, men who had risen before the Nazis and the war, were working against Hitler … she suspected, rather sourly, that those rumours were nothing more than lies. If the officer corps hadn’t moved against their Fuhrer when he had been on the verge of launching a seemingly-suicidal war, in 1939, they weren’t likely to do anything now, after the regime had conquered much of Europe and Russia.
Von Braun leaned close as they whirled around another couple, his hands suddenly too close … and dropping something into her pocket. It happened so quickly Kathleen had to fight to keep her expression under control, even as his hand darted back and they danced back into view of his minder. She leaned into him for a moment, her head spinning. It wasn’t the first time she’d been passed a secret message, but …
The music came to an end. Kathleen stepped back as the dangers started heading for the washrooms, hastily emptying their bladders before the speeches started. Kathleen didn’t blame them. British politicians could be pompous windbags at times, but the Nazis had them beat. The speeches would go on for hours, until the following day. And the locals had to pretend to pay attention to each and every one of them. Kathleen wondered, idly, if she could get away with hiding in the washroom.
She stepped into the washroom, silently relieved there weren’t many other women in the hall. The washroom was empty. The BDM girls would have their own washroom … probably. Kathleen hoped they did, for their sake. Their uniforms were incredibly awkward, designed to be difficult to remove in a hurry, and they wouldn’t have much time before the speeches started. She glanced around, trying not to roll her eyes at the décor as she carefully checked for peepholes and cameras. The Gestapo had a reputation for having eyes and ears everywhere, and at least some of those eyes and ears were mechanical. SOE was all too aware they were in an arms race, trying to circumvent ever-improving surveillance even as the Germans developed newer and better ways to spy on people. There was little freedom in the Reich, even for pureblood Germans, but even that would be curtailed, she was sure, as the regime found new ways to spy on its citizens.
The thought chilled her as she entered a stall, shut the door behind her, and checked her pocket. Von Braun had shoved a piece of folded paper into her pocket, folded time and time again … she kept her mouth firmly closed as she unfolded it and scanned the paper. It was a missile diagram, something she wasn’t qualified to evaluate, and a note.
Kathleen gasped, despite herself, as she read the handful of lines.
For various reasons, I’m currently revamping my mailing list (used only for notifications of new releases and suchlike; any replies go to me and no one else). Assuming I’ve done it properly, you should be able to sign up to the main list through the link below. If this interests you, please do it. <grin>.
Please also let me know if there are any problems.
He went item by item through the editor’s evidence. I disputed all of it. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The basic facts, the details, it was all wrong. I then questioned Marko. Who the hell is this editor? Loathsome toad, I gathered. Everyone who knew her was in full agreement that she was an infected pustule on the arse of humanity, plus a shit excuse for a journalist. But none of that mattered, because she’d managed to wriggle her way into a position of great power and lately she was focusing all that power upon…me. She was hunting the Spare, straight out, and making no apologies for it. She wouldn’t stop until my balls were nailed to her office wall.
My feelings about Harry have always been a mixture of sympathy and irritation, and reading Spare did not change that in any measurable way, but it did remind me of something I had been meaning to write about for some time. Harry grew up in a goldfish bowl, with his every move watched by the media (he minces no words in describing his feelings about the paparazzi, as you can see above), and subjected to a storm of savage, ruthless and often quite sadistic criticism whenever he made a tiny mistake. It was a much better read than I expected, but the very strong impression I got from reading the book is that Harry had been criticised so heavily that he could no longer tell the difference between reasonable criticism and de facto bullying, and consequently he rejected any and all pieces of criticism regardless of the source.
It struck a chord in me, because I made a tiny mistake at a former workplace that led to me being scolded by no less than six different people, and by the time number six rolled around I was ready to kill. And when I made the mistake of saying that I had had enough, I was told I had no right to complain.
When faced with criticism, or scolding or rebukes or whatever, and these are repeated time and time again, I think most people run through this sequence:
1st Scolding – Acceptance – “Thank you for letting me know.”
2nd Scolding – Irritation – “I got the message. Thank you for letting me know.”
3rd Scolding – Exasperation – “I got the message. You can shut up now.”
4th Scolding – Anger – “SHUT THE F*** UP RIGHT F***ING NOW!”
5th Scolding – Rage – “I’M THE VICTIM NOW! F*** YOU AND THE HORSE YOU RODE ON!!!”
This leads to two separate points:
First, there is a limit to how many times you can make the same criticism before people get sick of hearing it.
Second, there is a limit to the number of times you can criticise someone, even if each successive criticism is different from the last, before they get sick of you.
The incident I mentioned above was a minor safety violation. There was no real danger and it would have gone unnoticed if someone hadn’t spotted me. Perhaps I deserved to be told not to do it again. But I could not go back in time and retroactively prevent myself from committing said minor safety violation. No amount of scolding could give me the power to make sure it never happened. And with each successive scolding, I got more and more exasperated. It turned from a reasonable discussion to outright sadism, and I lost all respect for them.
I think this is fairly universal. No matter what you did, from something minor like leaving the toilet seat up or something major like a very serious crime, there are limits to how much criticism you can endure before you just lose the ability to take it. The more you have your nose rubbed in your failings, the angrier you get and the less inclined you become to listen to further criticism. And when that criticism is entirely valid, this causes problems.
For example, a great deal of criticism aimed at Prince Harry in the last few years pointed out the hypocrisy of lecturing commoners such as myself on climate change while at the same time taking private jets everywhere. It is not unreasonable to question the sincerity of anyone who points to a crisis while at the same time doing things that make the crisis worse, or demanding sacrifice from someone while declining to make the sacrifice himself. But judging by his book, Harry is unable to realise that this criticism is entirely valid and not listening to it only undermines his case.
It is also true that no one likes a critic. Well, sort of. A good critic, when it comes to writing, is worth their weight in gold. But a critic who constantly repeats criticisms that cannot be fixed easily, if at all (in the absence of a time machine), is one who is fundamentally incredibly irritating. The more you criticise, the less anyone wants you around, which is … unfortunate … if the criticisms you are trying to offer are entirely valid. Like I said in an earlier post, by the time the critic had an important point to make, he had already spent all of his social cred and everyone generally ignores him. Donald Trump would not be so popular today if his critics hadn’t spent the last thirty years criticising every Republican candidate they didn’t like, to the point that Republican voters got sick of it and just stopped listening.
On a personal level, it is quite reasonable for your wife to complain if – on your wedding night – you forget to put the toilet seat down after using it. If you kept making the same mistake over and over again, your wife would be entirely justified in being annoyed. But if you did it once, and your wife kept banging on about it for the next ten years of marriage, your marriage has problems. And if that was happening, I would recommend divorce.
But we have the same problem on a much greater scale.
There is much to criticise in the world, but there’s a limit to how much people can actually do about it. There is no way to change the past. You can learn from it, and you can use what you have learnt to avoid making the same mistake again, but you cannot go back in time and change it. Nor can you go back in time and change a mistake made by your ancestors, nor can you accept criticism levelled at you because of what your ancestors did. It is fundamentally irrational to blame someone for the crimes of their ancestors, even if they were genuine ancestors, and doing so proves that you cannot be taken seriously. And when you have genuine valid criticism to offer, this is really unfortunate!
A great many problems in the world today stem, I think, from people becoming unwilling to listen to any more criticism. No matter what the criticism is, there are limits to how much people can take. They get angry, and this anger blinds them to valid criticism. Worse, this means that very real problems are not fixed because people shift their mindsets from ‘this problem has to be addressed’ to ‘addressing this problem guarantees more criticism’ and then refuse to do anything to address the problem.
There is a fundamental and yet unspoken quid pro quo in criticism and that is that when you address a piece of criticism, the critic lets the criticism go. This is not always easy. On one hand, if someone points out a spelling mistake that mistake can be easily fixed; on the other, problems that need long-term commitment to be tackled cannot be fixed instantly, no matter how loud or obnoxious the critic. And, like I said, something that has been done cannot be undone. The more you try to make someone feel guilty about something they did, even when it was genuinely their fault, the more they will grow annoyed with you. And when it really isn’t their fault, when it happened before they were born, why should they listen to anything else you happened to say?
It’s really easy to criticise. It is a great deal harder to actually solve the problem. And it is very easy to criticise the problem-solver to the point he just gives up.
“If you look around the world you’ll notice something. The real dead-end basket case countries and regions are usually the ones where old injustices or perceived injustices are most remembered and most important to people. [SNIP] None of this is to say that ignoring history is good, or even that ignoring old injustices is good. The reality though is that both the villains and the victims of history are for the most part dead, or have one foot on the banana peel … [SNIP] … The other reality is that dwelling on those old injustices tends to lead to situations where the guys who would normally be holding up convenience stores end up running around with AK-47s and RPGs in the service of one side or the other in the dispute.
“When that starts happening on a major scale, anyone with brains and/or money heads for the nearest exit. You end up with a downward spiral as jobs evaporate and people fight ever more bitterly over the remaining scraps of value. And of course a whole new generation of injustices are created, which will undoubtedly be used to justify the next round of victimizations. ‘Get over it’ isn’t the perfect answer. It does have some downsides, but it does work.”
I’ve just finished the first draft of The Alchemist’s Secret, which is the next book in the Zero sequence. I meant to write it a great deal sooner, and I was surprised to discover it had actually been two years since the last book came out, but … well, it’s off to the editor’s now. There will be a great deal of smoothing out, as the book is designed to interlink with The Zero Secret and The Family Secret, but I think that will be doable without any major rewrites. (Touch wood).
I’m just waiting on the third set of edits for The Apprentice Mistress and the first for The Burning World, but I’m hoping to get those fairly soon.
I drew up the plan for The Many-Angled World – which will be the third and final book in the Mystic Albion trilogy, following The Stranded and The Land of Always Summer, but I have decided it needs some more time to germinate. Accordingly, the next book I intend to write will be The Flight Of Werner Von Braun, a stand-alone alternate history novel. It forms part of the backstory for The Twilight Of The Godsseries, otherwise known as the Nazi Civil War, but is intended to be more or less completely stand-alone. All you really need to know is that Hitler did not declare war on the United States in 1941, leading to America staying out of the European War, a German victory over the USSR and now an uneasy Cold War between the Third Reich and a British/American alliance. It is now 1949, and Adolf Hitler is dying. His cronies are now positioning themselves for the inevitable struggle that will follow his death.
Matthew Quinn has been expanding his SubStack, where he discusses his writing progress and offers commentary on various movies and television franchises; I wrote him a guest post focused on Galactica 1980. His Battle for the Wastelandsseries (military steampunk) is well underway, and he’s currently working on the third novel in The Long War(urban sci-fi/horror).
Emily Sorensen has dropped the price of her Black Magic Academyshort novel and it is well worth a look, as it combines magic school themes with a fairy tale ethos.
I have often found the alternate campaign histories of various wars to be deeply fascinating, as the best of them draw on real-world details such as accurate orders of battle, and historical notes written by the commanders involved, in putting together a historical outline that could easily pass for real history, if it were true. To make it convincing, the author must avoid hand-waving as much as possible and outline events that could have happened, even if they didn’t. It is a very challenging task to make a convincing campaign history, and Tsouras – a well-known figure in the alternate campaign field – is a master.
The Battle of Stalingrad was one of the major turning points of the Second World War. It was a disaster made inevitable by a combination of factors, including Adolf Hitler’s poor understanding of logistics, contempt for his Slavic foes, American and British support for the soviet union, inherent weaknesses within the German war machine, and finally simple bad luck. It was decisive, in the sense it wrecked a German army and put the Germans on the back foot for the rest of the war. The Germans won tactical victories between 1943 and 45, but they no longer had the ability to turn those successes into strategic victories.
Could it have been otherwise? Tsouras argues so, pointed to a number of minor changes that could have evened the odds between the Nazis and the Communists and ensured the Soviets were unable to pull off a statistic victory at Stalingrad. He outlines a series of small dangers, which lead to much greater changes, and eventually produce a very different war. The German discovery of the Ultra secret in mid 1942 allows the Germans to pull off a far more successful ambush of the convoys supplying the Soviet Union, isolating the USSR – as merchant sailors refused to sail to the Soviet Union – and convince the Turks to join the war on the German side, allowing the Germans to take Egypt as well as thrust north into Baku and into Stalingrad itself from the rear. The German tactical victory becomes a strategic success when the Red Army starts to grind to a halt, because the shortage of supplies, and Russia is forced to leave the war.
It is difficult to evaluate how convincing this section is. Russia was always very dependent on British and American aid, no matter how much Stalin sought to downplay it. It is possible the Russians would have been unable to pull off a counteroffensive in late 1942, if they were cut off from the Western Allies, giving the Germans a chance to beat them. The early successes in the Mediterranean would have short-circuited Operation Torch, allowing the Germans – as Dale Cozort argues – to concentrate the airpower in Russia, rather than be forced to dispatch irreplaceable aircraft to the North African Battleground. On the other hand, the Germans really were reaching the end of their tether and it is unlikely that captured American supplies would have made up for their many weaknesses.
Furthermore, the Russians were in no doubt that losing to Hitler would mean the end of the world. The Germans had a brief opportunity to win friends and allies amongst the Russians who hated – with reason – the communist regime, but they chose to throw that opportunity away and convince the Russians that Stalin might bad, yet Hitler was the devil incarnate. Their industrial production would undoubtedly slow down in this scenario, and they would have real trouble mounting the 1934 offences in this timeline, but is unlikely they’d leave the war. Hitler would not let them, unless they conceded more than the book suggested.
It is also uncertain if Turkey would have entered the war, and – if she did – if her involvement would prove as decisive as Tsouras suggested. The Turks had a reputation for being tough fighters, and they had excellent reasons to wage war on Britain and Russia, but their government was reluctant to risk committing itself before there was a clear winner. If they had joined the war, their ability to advance north into Russia would be in some doubt. Their armoured forces and aircraft were not modern, by any reasonable standards, and the Red Army would have given them a very hard time. That said, a Turkish invasion would have galvanised Islamic populations groaning under the Soviet yoke and almost certainly led to uprisings.
More controversially, Tsouras argues that the German army – including a number of senior officers – would have plotted against Hitler in 1942, and successfully assassinated him and a number of high-ranking Nazis during the victory celebrations in Nazi-ruled Stalingrad itself. I find that section unconvincingly. The concept of the German army fighting a clean war, while the SS carried out all the atrocities, has been thoroughly debunked since the end of the Cold War (when it was no longer necessary to pretend otherwise). Historically, very few senior officers made any attempt to move against Hitler even when it was clear the Third Reich was going to lose the war. It is possible, in this timeline, that Hitler’s bodyguards would not fear internal enemies because it looked like the Reich was winning, but any assassination plan would need the generals to take that final fatal step. Why would they do it in a world where it seems the inevitable winner?
Tsouras digs deep into the poisonous crowd surrounding Adolf Hitler, pointing out the many flaws in his command style and noting that the Führer seems to have regarded Reinhard Heydrich as a son, of sorts. (I do not know if this is actually true; historically, Heydrich was assassinated in 1942.) Heydrich’s rise in this timeline, after using the chance discovery of the Ultra secret to boost his status, might have triggered off the assassination plot that ended the book. It is a reminder that, in many ways, Hitler and his crowd were their own worst enemies. Hitler’s belief he had saved the German army in 1941 led directly to the historical disaster in 1942. He also explores politics in Britain, Russia, and America, pointing out that even Churchill and FDR had to answer to their constituents, and that there were limits on just how much they could do for the Soviet Union.
In the long-term, this would lead to a very different world. A military-run German government would still be at war with the British and Americans, even if the Russians had backed out of the war. The Anglo-American counteroffensive of 1943 would almost certainly drive the Germans and Italians out of North Africa, bringing immense pressure to bear on Turkey or stationing forces in Britain for an offensive into France in 1944. The Germans would have to prepare for an invasion, despite having burnt through much of their mobile firepower in the final desperate battle for Stalingrad, and expended most of their airpower. The Germans would probably be able to bring more stolen resources online, as it would have more time to reopen lines and industrial facilities in Russia, but is unlikely they would have any counter to the atomic bomb, when it was finally ready in 1945. In this world, Berlin might have been the first city to feel atomic fire.
Overall, despite my quibbles with the setting and some of the details shown in this book, I enjoyed reading it. It is a fun mixture of real life detail and alternate history, with excerpts and quotes that belong to an alternate world and remind us, once again, why professional study logistics over tactics. And it also reminds us just how small details, seemingly almost insignificant, can snowball into a universe of change.
If you have Kindle Unlimited, you can download the book for free here.
Louise Herdsman could hear the noise, the air vibrating with the sound of men shouting her name, as she stood in the antechamber and centred herself. It was the night – the night – when she would learn, beyond a shadow of a doubt, if her quest for reform had found footing, or if the forces of reaction and the aristocracy had managed to undermine her candidacy to the point she sank like a stone in water and never recovered. She had chosen her battleground carefully, and called on all her allies and ingenuity to wage a political campaign that appealed to the voters, yet she was all too aware her enemies were both powerful and numerous. She had calculated that she’d have so many enemies that they would get in each other’s way, that they’d dissipate the hostile vote amongst their chosen candidates, but she could easily be wrong. The Great Houses hadn’t taken her seriously, when she’d first started to make a name for herself. If they’d changed their mind, if they’d united against her, she could still lose.
The game is rigged, she reminded herself, again. But that doesn’t mean I can’t win.
She took a long breath, looking down at herself. Her blonde hair was loosely tied back, symbolising her commitment to the cause, and her merchant’s dress hung neatly around her, conveying the impression of femininity without doing more than hinting at her curves. She’d chosen her outfit carefully, picking a green dress with a splash of colour rather than the drabness worn by dockside woman or peacock outfits favoured by aristocratic girls. The pendant hanging around her neck was cheap and yet it was a reminder her father was a success in his field, and that his success might easily be passed down to his daughter. Her lips quirked in dark amusement. The dockyard workers were a rough and ready crowd, decent enough – in their own way – and yet crude and rude, even by the standards of the rest of the city. Their nose for bullshit rivalled her father’s. If she pretended to be something she wasn’t, they’d sniff it out and turn their backs on her. And that would be the end.
Her magic sparkled around her, a hint of defensive charms intended to ward off subtle threats. Her opponents were unlikely to risk assassinating her, she thought, but there were plenty of other ways they could discredit her, without turning her into a martyr. Louise had done well at Jude’s – she’d been near the top of the class, and would have been right at the top if the grades were calculated fairly – but she was painfully aware the Great Houses kept some secrets to themselves. A babbling charm, to make her sound like an idiot; a delirium charm, to make her look like a drunken idiot … or worse, far worse. Louise had tested her defences repeatedly, over the last few weeks, but there was still a quiet nagging doubt. Her enemies might be luring her into overconfidence, while they waited to drop the hammer.
She took a breath, feeling butterflies in her stomach. She had never liked public speaking, even though she had turned out to be good at it. She knew better than to think she was a genius – half of her success had come because she put the people’s grievances into words – and that the slightest mistake could lead to a fall, a fall so far she would never recover. Reform would go on, she promised herself, as she took a second breath. The noise outside was growing louder, but it would start to fade soon. She had to cast the spell while the spellwork was primed, ready to go. There would be no second chance.
Reform will go on, she told herself, again. With or without me, it will go on.
Louise stepped forward and through the curtain, into a blinding world of light and sound. The Dockyard Guildhall was immense, packed to bursting with dockyard workers and a handful of their families, so many people that the guildhall staff had had to turn away a number of obvious outsiders. Some had been curious, but others had clearly been bent on causing trouble … her lips twitched, just for a second, as she forced herself to walk towards the podium. She had chosen the guild for several reasons, including the simple fact that – normally – very few voters could be bothered to turn out for the vote. If her enemies had realised how many workers would attend now, they would have found another way to slip ringers and trouble-causers into the building. But they hadn’t and they were paying for it now.
Her eyes swept across the crowd, drinking in their adoration. They really were rough and ready men – and a handful of women – quaffing down alcohol as if it were going out of fashion and banging their tankards on the table. She spotted her main rival, the guild representative to Magus Court, and kept her face blank though a lifetime of experience hiding her thoughts from her betters, or at least those who had the advantage of being born into the aristocracy. The man hadn’t learnt his lesson, she thought gleefully. He was a lowborn aristo, a client of a far higher patron, and yet he was dressed as a parody of a dockyard worker, complete with a little cloth cap he clearly didn’t know how to wear. He’d definitely not been spending any time in the drinking halls, she reflected, unable to keep a faint smile from crossing her lips. The songwriters had written a whole ditty about clients trying to impress the voters by pretending to be one of them, aping their styles and wearing their caps … if he’d been drinking with the voters, he would have heard the song and realised they were singing about him. Him, and everyone like him …
But if self-awareness was part of his nature, she told herself, he’d know better.
She kept walking, the crowd pressing in around her. A hand touched her rear … she channelled a kinetic spell into her fist, then punched the groper out without even looking at him. A drunken fool, or a ringer … it didn’t matter. The crowd roared with laughter, cheering loudly. They respected strength and the willingness to fight, not anything that could be taken as weakness. Perhaps it had been a test. If she’d ignored the touch, or screamed for someone to save her, it would have come across poorly. Her reputation would never recover.
Her legs seemed to move of their own accord, as if she were in a dream, as she climbed up the steps and onto the podium. The singer, who had been making up in enthusiasm what he lacked in talent, nodded politely to her and stood back. The guildmaster stepped forward, nodded curtly to her – no soppy aristocratic bows at the guildhall – and turned to face the crowd. Louise could see the sheen on his face, the grim awareness his career was in deep trouble no matter what he did. If he made no attempt to ruin her speech, or come up with an excuse to cancel the election, his patrons would discard him, but if he tried so openly he’d lose his postion within a day. Louise’s supporters had already made it clear they wanted a fair election, without any dirty tricks … at least from him. If the guildmaster put the interests of his patrons ahead of his guild, in front of an entire crowd, he’d be voted out of office so fast his head would spin.
“Good men and women,” the guildmaster said. There were some chuckles, and snide cat-calling from the shadows. The guildmaster, having more self-awareness than the representative, flushed angrily. He knew he was being mocked, even though he somehow managed to keep his tone level. “I present to you the candidate for office, the honourable Louise Herdsman.”
Louise stepped forward, keeping her face under control. If calling her the honourable anything was the best he could do, when it came to sabotaging her campaign, the election was already in the bag. Perhaps it was … she told herself not to get overconfident as she spoke to the crowd, reminding them of their hand lives, and how little provision there was for women and children when the husband and father died, and all the other little indignities they had to swallow. She told them there was hope, that she could be elected to change their lives, and then told them her plan. They were too ruthlessly practical to believe vague promises, no matter how tantalising. They had been burned too many times before, by get-rich-quick schemes that only left then poorer, or promises of reform that had been ruthlessly squashed before they got off the ground. Louise could understand why, because she had studied all of the political movements and why they’d failed. The system could only be beaten by turning its own laws against it.
A thrill ran through her as she finished her speech and clasped her hands behind her back, waiting to see if there would be a rebuttal. Her rival was entitled to make a countervailing speech, if he wished, and perversely he might actually win a few votes if he stepped up in front of a hostile crowd and faced them down. Did he have the nerve? He knew he was unpopular now, he knew he’d only held his seat because so few bothered to vote, but … the crowd jeered and booed as her rival shrugged and put on an ‘I don’t care’ expression. Louise wondered what he was thinking, if he still thought the fix was in or if he was planning a hasty departure before his patrons caught up with him, then shrugged herself. It didn’t matter. The rival – she couldn’t even remember his name – was nothing more than a pawn of the system, a glove puppet moved by a distant hand. It was the system she had to beat, and to beat it she had to join it …
The crowd jostled as lines formed outside the voting booths. Louise risked a glance at the guildmaster and saw the sweat on his face … the fix wasn’t in then, or not enough to make the results certain. There were hundreds of spells around the booths to make it difficult for anyone to cheat, or so she had been assured, but there was no way to be sure, no matter how many times she and the other reform-minded magicians tested the charms. She had wondered, despite herself, if the whole guild was nothing more than a sham. It was the only guild in all of Shallot that practiced secret voting, ensuring anyone who voted the wrong way would never be called to account for it, a concession that puzzled her even as she took full advantage of it. Perhaps it was a decoy, a trick to convince the voters the election was actually fair. Or … she felt sweat pricking down her own back as the lines moved through the booth. Either she won, and walked into Magus Court, or she fell back into the shadows.
There will be another chance, she told herself. It might not be her who rose to challenge the establishment, but someone would. If the Ancients willed it wasn’t her, she would strive to ensure the successful challenger won and reformed the system and … Time is on our side.
The guildmaster looked pale as the staff brought him the results, swallowing hard. Louise knew she’d won, even before the guildmaster forced himself to step up to the podium and announce the results. She wondered if he had the nerve to try to lie, to try to insist the other guy would keep his seat, but … she glanced back and realised her rival had vanished, darting out of the hall when no one was looking. Had he fled to his patrons, to assure them of his total loyalty and usefulness, or had he headed straight to the coachhouse and taken the first available coach out of town? It hardly mattered, she reminded herself. All that mattered was that she’d won.
“The winner is Louise Herdsman,” the guildmaster said. He dropped Louise a deep sardonic bow. She was almost certainly the only other person in the hall who knew the deep bow was a subtle insult, one that could not be called out. Akin’s etiquette lessons had been surprisingly useful, for all she’d thought them a waste of time a few short months ago. “Congratulations, Speaker for the Docks.”
Louise allowed herself a smile as the party broke out, more alcohol and food being passed out as the band started to play. She moved through the crowd, shaking hands and accepting congratulations while trying to duck as many promises as possible. The election had been easy, but the real fight had yet to begin. The guilds might be on her side – she knew many guildsmen agreed with her stance, and her first plan for outright reform – yet the system itself was very definitely not. They might not have taken her seriously – Akin was probably the only senior aristo who knew her, or at least was prepared to admit he did, and understand her commitment to reform – but now they’d have no choice. She had become a threat to the system and that meant it would try to discredit, or remove, or kill her …
She smiled. Let it try.
Chapter One: Akin
The day after Cat and Isabella left, I found myself trapped in my office, buried in paperwork.
It felt wrong, really it did, to think of it as my office. It had been my father’s domain, the centre of his family’s power, and my sister and I had never been allowed to enter, unless we were in real trouble. I’d been granted access when I reached the age of majority, as my father’s heir, and yet I had felt like an intruder every time I stepped through the door. The office had been renovated, after the attempted coup, and yet I still felt as if I didn’t belong. But then, I was almost painfully young. My father should have lived longer and I should have inherited, if at all, in my forties. Instead, I was barely nineteen.
I glowered at the paperwork, wondering how my father had coped. There were so many things that couldn’t be trusted to anyone else, certainly not with my father dead, my mother in mourning, and my sister in de facto exile. A sizable number of my relatives had tried to overthrow my father, out of horror at my impending marriage to Cat, and while most of them were dead or gone I had no way to know how many others had been biding their time, waiting to see who won before declaring myself. It was one thing to accept pledges of allegiance from men old enough to be my father, men who had every reason to resent a teenager being elevated above them, but quite another to accept pledges from people who smiled even as they sharpened the knife for my back. House Rubén was a big family and not everyone had been in the city, when all hell broke loose. How many were plotting against me, even now? I didn’t know.
Father knew everything, I reflected. My father had been shown the ropes by his grandfather, who had lived long enough to make sure he was ready to take the helm, and he’d been granted access to the secret files … I was making it up as I went along, bluffing with bluffs that might – or might not – have been nothing more than absurd flights of fancy. The vast collection of secrets father had used to keep people in line had been destroyed, or lost somewhere in the family archives, and the mere act of looking for it would tip people off that I didn’t have it. Father knew everything and I know nothing.
I raised my head and peered out the window. It was a beautiful summer day, the bright blue sky seeming to merge into the slightly darker blue waters to the south, but I was trapped inside. It was hard not to feel a twinge of resentment for my cousins – they were out there having their seasons, or simply enjoying themselves on the beach, or even slumming in Water Shallot – while I was trapped inside, reading paperwork that was so densely written I wasn’t sure if the writers were trying to prove themselves to me or hide important details in mountains of nonsense. Father had taught me to read everything, before I signed it, but there was just so much. I was tempted to recall Isabella, no matter what the family would say, and ask for her help. There weren’t many others I could trust to have the best interests of the family at heart.
But everyone has the family interests at heart, I told myself. They just think those interests are better served by having someone a little more mature in charge.
I gritted my teeth as I finished reading the document, signed my name, and then looked at the portrait hanging on the far wall. My father had been a cold and hard man, not given to displaying his feelings on his sleeve, but he had loved us. All of us. The portrait was seven years out of date, painted when Isabella and I had been twelve, before we’d gone to Jude’s and … and she’d betrayed us, and been sent into exile. Father should have commissioned an new portrait, a more resent one, but custom would have decreed Isabella had to be excluded. Instead, he’d kept the one that showed all four of us … my heart twisted, painfully. Perhaps it would be wise to call Isabella back, to share the postion with her. People would talk, but who cared? Isabella had grown up a lot, during her years in exile, and I was proud to call her my sister.
There was a sharp knock on the door. I leaned back in my chair and took a long breath, then cast the opening spell. Penny stepped into the room, showing none of the nervousness I would have expected from someone whose first visit to the office had been after she’d been caught bullying the firsties and severally punished by me. I had no idea what father had said to her – his cold anger was more terrifying than my mother’s shouting – but it would have been harsh and cold. Any hope she’d had of her family head reversing the punishment had died before it could be expressed, not least because it had been his heir who’d issued it. She had grown up a lot, at least, in the last year. And she had nowhere else to go.
I sighed, inwardly. I was already thinking like my father. And it was killing me.
Penny smiled at me, her angelic face hiding what I knew to be a calculating – and sometimes cruel – mind. I pitied her future husband, if she ever married. She might have been disgraced, but she was still a Rubén, still quite close to the family head. It was astonishing what someone would overlook, when the potential gains were so high. Isabella had committed de facto treason and people were still asking for her hand in marriage …
“A courier arrived, from House Lamplighter,” Penny said, cheerfully. “She requests the pleasure of your company, as soon as possible.”
I raised my eyebrows. House Lamplighter was the weakest of the Great Houses, so weak it was politically insignificant … which made it, to all intents and purposes, neutral ground. Lady Lamplighter, a young woman a year older than myself, had taken full advantage of her house’s neutrality, turning her family manor into a salon where deadly enemies could meet and talk like friends, or balls could be held – and everyone invited – without putting a family manor at risk. She even had ties to the various political parties the Great Houses pretended not to care about, including the organisations that shunned the patron-client relationships that underpinned much of the city. And she was a good friend, insofar as I was allowed to have friends. It helped she had made it clear she wanted nothing from me,
“That’s odd,” I said. A regular invite would not have come with a courier. “I take it the message is urgent?”
“Yeah.” Penny winked at me. “Do you want me to come with you? You know … just in case.”
I scowled to hide my flush. Cat and I had been betrothed in the aftermath of the House War … we were lucky, in all honesty, that we actually knew each other. And liked each other. Our relationship had grown closer over the years, through supervised outings and less-supervised forging sessions, and there was no doubt in my mind that I would marry her. But others in my family disagreed. A Rubén, marrying an Aguirre? Unthinkable. I had no doubt, either, that some of them would stop at nothing to stir up trouble, or throw a honey trap my way. My father’s advice on the subject had been cold and hard, and practical. But even he hadn’t been betrothed until he’d been much older than myself.
“I’ll be fine,” I said, curtly. Penny’s company was better than it had been, last year, but I could only handle her in small doses. “I’ll walk over there. I need the exercise.”
Penny looked suitably shocked as we left the office, sealing the wards behind us, and walked down to the entrance hall. The damage from the coup was still being repaired, the staff putting the finishing touches on repair work that was half-hidden under the mourning banners … I hated myself for thinking it, but my father’s death meant we couldn’t hold any more balls or calibrations until the next season, ten months away. It was something of a relief. I had never liked formal balls, or dinners, and it would be worse, now I was the family patriarch. Hopefully, Cat and I would be married before I had to start holding them again and we could share the burden. Or moan to each other about how tedious they were.
I pulled my cloak over my suit, made a show of checking my appearance in the mirror, then walked out and down the path to the gates. They opened at my approach, a reminder the family wards had accepted me as their new master … a reminder, too, that my father was dead. The armsman outside the gate hastily jumped to attention, hiding a broadsheet he’d been reading with practiced speed, and saluted. I returned the salute, pretending not to notice the newspaper. We were the most powerful family in the city and we didn’t need to keep a man on guard, not when we had more subtle defences on the inner side of the wall. But we had to keep up appearances. If our rivals saw us looking weak, they’d start plotting against us.
The air was warm and welcoming, the blue sky relaxing me as I walked past manor after manor, each surrounded by deeply-rooted family wards. A handful of aristocrats passed me on the streets, men bowing politely and women dropping curtseys … I pretended not to see the children running past, or the servants trying to stay out of sight. The latter was an important part of aristocratic etiquette, I’d been told; the polite thing to do was to pretend the servants simply didn’t exist, even though everyone knew they did. But then, it was surprisingly easy to pretend otherwise. The servants were rarely seen in the manor unless they were called.
I felt myself calm down, just a little, as I neared the edge of High Shallot. The manors here were smaller, although smaller was a relative term when dealing with aristocratic mansions, and a handful even belonged to wealthy merchants, who had worked their way up the social ladder through a combination of profit-seeking and careful patronage. They were still shunned by the Grande Dames, who resented anyone who entered their territory without being able to trace their bloodline back hundreds of years, but their children would be low-ranking aristocrats and their grandchildren would be equals … sort of. I smiled as a trio of teenage girls walked past me, wearing trousers … six months ago, any young woman who wore trousers would be subject to the most astringent criticism, but now everyone who wanted to make a statement wore them. Isabella had done that, wearing trousers when attending a ball and daring the old ladies to make a fuss. I wasn’t sure if she’d been thinking of sheer practicality, or if it was a subtle revenge scheme, but it hardly mattered. The Grande Dames had spent so much time preparing for Isabella’s return to High Society that they could hardly turn on a wheel and dismiss her contributions to fashion, or penalise anyone else who followed in her footsteps. The looks on their faces had made it all worthwhile. They had looked ready to faint …
The thought made me smile as I reached House Lamplighter and stepped through the permanently open gates. The garden had looked unkempt for a long time – Lady Lamplighter’s father had fritted away the family fortune, rather than keeping his property in good condition – but she’d made a virtue out of a vice, by crafting her garden into a strange combination of plants and trees that provided all sorts of quiet meeting places for couples who preferred not to be watched as they courted. A handful of youngsters swanned about outside the ballroom windows, pretending to be languid in a manner a little too intense to be convincing. I doubted they had anything else to do with their time. They were too highly-born to work in trade, at least not unless they were allowed to enter at a very senior level, and too low-ranking on the family tree to be entrusted with any real responsibilities. My father had called them lazy morons – when he’d been in a good mood – and yet, I couldn’t help feeling a twinge of envy. They could sit around all day, making a show of doing nothing. I could not.
I walked into the ballroom and up the stairs to the first floor, the wards crawling oddly around me. The ground floor was open to all, a strange combination of ballroom and dining room and private shop, and the first floor was for the guests – men and women of distinction who could be relied upon to liven up parties, in exchange for bread and board – but the upper levels were private, carefully warded to give Lady Lamplighter and her remaining family a little privacy. The lower levels were neatly decorated with artworks from all over the city – all put on display for free, to showcase various artists to aristos who might patronise them in both senses of the word – but the higher levels were surprisingly bare. House Lamplighter might be crawling its way back up, yet it was still dangerously poor. I didn’t envy Lady Lamplighter. In her place, I might have thought about leaving the family behind instead of accepting an inheritance that would be more of a burden than a blessing.
Lucy Lamplighter herself greeted me as I reached the second floor, dropping a polite curtsy. I bowed in return, offering her more honour than she – technically – deserved. The Grande Dames would have had a fit, if they’d seen me. I didn’t care. I’d spent the last few weeks wrestling with my family’s affairs and I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Lucy’s job had been a great deal harder. I didn’t know how she’d done it, but she had. I almost wished I could hire her to take my place. That would really shock the Grande Dames.
“Akin,” Lucy said. Her voice was slightly accented, a reminder she’d been to Grayling’s Academy for Young Ladies rather than Jude’s. There were all sorts of rumours about that school, and the young girls who went there to be turned into ladies, but none seemed anything more than the sort of absurd nonsense languid young men made up to pass the time. Lucy was surprisingly normal, compared to some of the characters I’d met at Jude’s. “Thank you for coming.”
I studied her, thoughtfully. Lucy’s skin was tanned, her dark hair fanning out around darker eyes and spilling over a red dress that was a strange mixture of aristocratic and commoner influences. It made her look strikingly exotic and my eyes lingered a little longer than they should, before I forced myself to look away. Her dress was a deliberate message, I suspected. Her betrothed was a commoner, something that would have shocked High Society if it hadn’t long since given up being shocked by her. I was mildly surprised she’d kept the betrothal – her father had apparently arranged it without asking her, let alone securing her consent – but I could hardly blame her for accepting it. My betrothal had turned into a love match too.
“I thought it was urgent,” I said, as she turned to lead me into her office. Or one of them. My father had had three offices; one for meetings, one for meetings with important people, and one where he actually worked. There were times when I wondered if he had a fourth office, one hidden from everyone else … it wasn’t impossible. The mansion was so large, with so many wings, that an entire floor could be concealed, if one controlled the wards. “And I needed a break.”
Lucy shot me a sympathetic look, full of understanding. I knew she understood. It was unlikely she’d had as much paperwork to handle as me, but her family finances had been in ruins and the slightest mistake could have ruined her. Would have, probably. I almost envied her. My family was just biding its time, waiting for me to mess up, while hers had let her get on with it. But then, they’d known they were in deep trouble …
“Akin,” a quiet voice said. I blinked as I saw Alana sitting in the office. “Nice to see you again.”
I kept my surprise concealed. Alana – Cat’s sister – and I were hardly friends, but we had worked together as Head Boy and Girl and would have to at least tolerate each other in the future, when we became in-laws. She was tall, her skin barely a shade lighter than the night, with long dark hair hanging down to the small of her back. She was the most competitive person I knew, which put her up against some very tough competition. Even Cousin Francis hadn’t been as ambitious as her …
“I suppose you’re wondering why I called you here,” Lucy said, after Alana and I exchanged respects. “I have been asked to set up a meeting, at very short notice, with an old friend of yours.”
My eyes narrowed. I didn’t have many friends, and those I had could contact me directly. It wasn’t as if I would turn them away, even now. My armsmen had standing orders to let any of my friends in whenever they arrived, and allow them to wait in the sitting room for me. Why would they go to the trouble of asking Lucy to arrange a meeting …
… And then I knew.
“Louise,” I said. “Right?”
“Yes,” Lucy said. “She’s on her way now.”
Alana snorted. “And you think we should listen to her?”
“Yes,” Lucy told her. “I really think you should.”
The Chrishanger 