good cheer together – better cheer, I think, than ever we had as children.
‘What has Gabriel told him?’ Ghause asked the air. But she could see it in her mind’s eye – Gabriel, alive, had faced a power of the Wild and defeated him.
A wild joy roared in her breast like a fire just catching hold in twigs and birch bark and carefully split kindling. Gabriel – her Gabriel, her living revenge on the world of men – was alive. No matter that he no doubt hated her. She smiled.
Men quailed to see it.
Later, in the privacy of her own tower, she worked a small phantasm. She had known Richard Plangere well. She found him easily, cast a working to trace him if he moved, and noted that he was less than three hundred leagues away – and that he was orders of magnitude more powerful than he’d been when she had last deceived him.
She flexed her fingers. ‘Oh, so am I, lover,’ she said, delighted. Everything delighted her, because Gabriel was alive.
She wanted a look at this Lady Mary. She hadn’t seen the girl since she was eleven or twelve – when she’d been gawky, hipless, and no kind of a wife for Gavin, who was moody and difficult and given to rages. Not her favourite son, although the easiest to manipulate.
This working was complex, because rumour said that the King’s new whore of a wife was a sorceress, and Ghause had no intention of being caught snooping; she spent the day laying her snares, reading from grimoires with her tongue clenched between her teeth, and writing in silver on her floor.
She heard the Earl’s cavalcade return, but she was almost done and she wasn’t going to stop for him. She lit a faery light, and then another, and heard their little voices scream in the aether . She hated faeries and their soulless leeching on the world of men, and it pleased her to use their little bodies for light.
By the light of their agony, she finished her structure. She reached into her maze – an aethereal palace of brambles and apple trees and roses turned a little bad – and summoned the rich green power that smelled of loam and rain and semen, and pushed that power through her structures, and saw.
She was really very pretty – beautiful hair, fine teeth, and a good figure. Best of all, she had developed good hips for child bearing, and she was reading. A woman who could read was a find indeed.
Ghause watched her in the aethereal for as long as a priest might say mass, studying her movements and her composure. She even watched Lady Mary take a breviary cross from her girdle and say a prayer. Her lips shaped the sounds of ‘Gavin’ and Ghause heard them and smiled.
The Earl shouted for her in the hall and someone banged on her door, and she felt another presence, and suddenly she saw the King’s trull.
Lady Mary rose and put her breviary on a side table. ‘Lady?’ she asked.
The Queen passed into the room, and into Ghause’s ops -powered sight. Her beauty cut Ghause like a sharp knife to the soul. And she—
—was—
—pregnant.
Ghause slammed out of her spell and screamed.
Sixty Leagues West of Lissen Carrak – Bill Redmede
The wilderness west of Lissen Carrak was a nightmare.
Every day that the Jack of Jacks, Bill Redmede, led his exhausted and demoralised men further west, they looked at him with that mixture of trust and bewilderment that he knew would inexorably lead to the collapse of belief, and then of discipline. And he was sure – as sure as he was that the aristocrats were an evil burden on the shoulders of men – that no sanctuary lay to the east.
Every night he lay and replayed the ambush; what should have been the Day. The Day when the King and his cronies fell, when the yeomen of Alba reclaimed their freedom, and the lords fell choking on their own blood. He thought of every error he had made, every deal he had brokered. And how they’d all gone wrong.
Mostly, he lay freezing in his cloak and thought of Thorn. He’d given up his blanket to Nat Tyler, who had
‘What has Gabriel told him?’ Ghause asked the air. But she could see it in her mind’s eye – Gabriel, alive, had faced a power of the Wild and defeated him.
A wild joy roared in her breast like a fire just catching hold in twigs and birch bark and carefully split kindling. Gabriel – her Gabriel, her living revenge on the world of men – was alive. No matter that he no doubt hated her. She smiled.
Men quailed to see it.
Later, in the privacy of her own tower, she worked a small phantasm. She had known Richard Plangere well. She found him easily, cast a working to trace him if he moved, and noted that he was less than three hundred leagues away – and that he was orders of magnitude more powerful than he’d been when she had last deceived him.
She flexed her fingers. ‘Oh, so am I, lover,’ she said, delighted. Everything delighted her, because Gabriel was alive.
She wanted a look at this Lady Mary. She hadn’t seen the girl since she was eleven or twelve – when she’d been gawky, hipless, and no kind of a wife for Gavin, who was moody and difficult and given to rages. Not her favourite son, although the easiest to manipulate.
This working was complex, because rumour said that the King’s new whore of a wife was a sorceress, and Ghause had no intention of being caught snooping; she spent the day laying her snares, reading from grimoires with her tongue clenched between her teeth, and writing in silver on her floor.
She heard the Earl’s cavalcade return, but she was almost done and she wasn’t going to stop for him. She lit a faery light, and then another, and heard their little voices scream in the aether . She hated faeries and their soulless leeching on the world of men, and it pleased her to use their little bodies for light.
By the light of their agony, she finished her structure. She reached into her maze – an aethereal palace of brambles and apple trees and roses turned a little bad – and summoned the rich green power that smelled of loam and rain and semen, and pushed that power through her structures, and saw.
She was really very pretty – beautiful hair, fine teeth, and a good figure. Best of all, she had developed good hips for child bearing, and she was reading. A woman who could read was a find indeed.
Ghause watched her in the aethereal for as long as a priest might say mass, studying her movements and her composure. She even watched Lady Mary take a breviary cross from her girdle and say a prayer. Her lips shaped the sounds of ‘Gavin’ and Ghause heard them and smiled.
The Earl shouted for her in the hall and someone banged on her door, and she felt another presence, and suddenly she saw the King’s trull.
Lady Mary rose and put her breviary on a side table. ‘Lady?’ she asked.
The Queen passed into the room, and into Ghause’s ops -powered sight. Her beauty cut Ghause like a sharp knife to the soul. And she—
—was—
—pregnant.
Ghause slammed out of her spell and screamed.
Sixty Leagues West of Lissen Carrak – Bill Redmede
The wilderness west of Lissen Carrak was a nightmare.
Every day that the Jack of Jacks, Bill Redmede, led his exhausted and demoralised men further west, they looked at him with that mixture of trust and bewilderment that he knew would inexorably lead to the collapse of belief, and then of discipline. And he was sure – as sure as he was that the aristocrats were an evil burden on the shoulders of men – that no sanctuary lay to the east.
Every night he lay and replayed the ambush; what should have been the Day. The Day when the King and his cronies fell, when the yeomen of Alba reclaimed their freedom, and the lords fell choking on their own blood. He thought of every error he had made, every deal he had brokered. And how they’d all gone wrong.
Mostly, he lay freezing in his cloak and thought of Thorn. He’d given up his blanket to Nat Tyler, who had
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