The Revolution Business

The Execution

Protocol

Governments run on order and process. There was probably a protocol for everything, thought agent Judith Herz—formerly of the FBI, now attached semipermanently to the Family Trade Organization—short of launching a nuclear attack on your own territory. Unfortunately that was exactly what she’d been tasked with doing, and probably nobody since the more psychotic members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff tasked with planning Operation Northwood during the 1960s had even imagined it. And even though a checklist had come down from on high and the colonel and Major Alvarez had confirmed it looked good, just thinking about it gave her a headache.

(1) Secure the package at all times. She glanced up from her clipboard, across the muddy field, at the white armored truck with the rectangular box body. The floodlights they’d hastily rigged that afternoon showed that it was having some difficulty reversing towards the big top; the rear axle would periodically spin, the engine roaring like an angry tiger as the driver grappled with its overweight carcass. Maybe we ought to have just used a minivan, she thought. With a suitable escort, it would have been less conspicuous. . . . On the other hand, the armed guards in the back, watching each other as well as the physics package, would probably disagree.

(2) Do not deploy the package until arrival of ARMBAND. Armband, whatever it was—some kind of magic box that did whatever it was the world-walking freaks from fairyland did in their heads—had landed at MacArthur Airport; she’d sent Rich Hall and Amanda Cruz to pick it up. Check.

(3) PAL codes—call WARBUCKS for release authorization. That was the bit that brought her out in a cold sweat, because along with the half-dozen unsmiling federal agents from the NNSA, call sign WARBUCKS meant that this was the real deal, that the permissive action lock code to activate the nuclear device would be issued by the vice president himself, as explained in the signed Presidential Order she’d been allowed to read—but not to hold—by the corpsefaced bastard from the West Wing who Colonel Smith answered to. Since when does the President give WARBUCKS backpack nukes to play with, anyway? she asked herself; but it looked official enough, and the folder full of top secret code words that had landed on her desk with a palpable thud yesterday suggested that this might be a cowboy operation, but if so, it was being led by the number one rancher himself. At least, that was what the signatures of half the National Command Authority and a couple of Supreme Court justices implied.

(4) FADM/ARMBAND final assembly and PAL programming to be carried out on launch scaffold. The thing in the tent gave her the creeps; Smith called it a transdimensional siege tower, but it looked too close to a field-expedient gallows for her liking. She was going to go up there with Dr. Rand and a posse of inspectors from NNSA and a couple of army officers and when they came down from the platform some person or persons unknown would be dead. Not that she was anti-death-penalty or anything, but she’d started out as an FBI agent: The anonymous military way of killing felt profoundly wrong, like a gap in a row of teeth, or a death in the family.

(5) ARMBAND failure contingency plan. That was the worst bit of all, because if ARMBAND failed to work as advertised, she and Lucius Rand and everyone else would be standing on a scaffold with a ticking bomb on a sixty-second countdown, and they’d get precisely two chances to enter the eight-digit abort code.

It was a good thing that she’d taken the time for holy communion and attended confession that morning, she thought, as she walked towards the tent. It had been a long day, and she had a feeling that the night was going to be even longer.

Her earbud crackled: “Herz, speak to me.” It was the colonel.

“Stage one is in hand, I’m waiting on news of ARMBAND.” Out of one corner of her eye she saw moving headlights, another of the undercover patrol cars circling the block slowly, looking for rubberneckers. “Everything seems to be on track so far.”

“Please hold.” She walked on, briefly looking round to check on the armored car. (It was reversing again, pulling free of the patch of soft ground that had stymied it.) “Okay, that’s good. Update me if there are any developments.”

So the colonel is jittery? Good. A uniform over near the support truck from the NNSA was waving to her; local cops drafted in for crowd control and vehicle marshaling. She changed course towards him. So he should be. “What’s up?” she demanded.

“Uh, agent—” He was nervous; not used to dealing with FBI.

“Herz.” She nodded. “You have something.”

“Yeah, there’s a car at the north quadrant entrance, driver says it’s for you. Name of Hall.”

“Oh.”—what’s Rich doing up there?—“If that’s Rich Hall and Amanda Cruz, we’re expecting them.” She kicked herself mentally: Should have told them which gate to use. “Let them in. They’ve got a package we’re expecting.”

“Sure thing, ma’am.” He leaned over towards the driver’s window of the patrol car, talking to his partner. Herz walked on, jittery with too much poor-quality caffeine and a rising sense of tension. We’re about to fire the opening shot in a war, she thought. I wonder where it’s going to end. . . .

It was dark, and the moon already riding low in the sky outside the kitchen window, when Huw yawned and conceded defeat. He saved the draft of his report, closed the lid of his laptop, picked up two glasses and a bottle of zinfandel, and went upstairs to bed.

As he closed the door and turned on the light, the bedding moved. A tousled head appeared: “What kept you?”

“I have a report to write, in case you’d forgotten.” He put the glasses and the bottle down on the dressing table and began to unbutton his shirt. “I hope you had a better day than I did, my lady.”

“I very much doubt it.” She sat up and plumped up the pillows. As the comforter dropped, he saw that she was naked. Catching his gaze, she smiled. “Lock the door?”

“Sure.” He dropped his shirt on the carpet, let his jeans fall, then went to the door and shot the dead bolt. Then he picked up the wine bottle and twisted the screw cap. “What happened?”

“Head office are going mad.” She screwed up her face. “It’s unreal. The council are running around like half-headed turkey fowl, the whole flock of them.”

“Well, that’s a surprise.” He filled a glass, sniffed it, then held it out to her. She took it. “Any word? . . .”

“Olga’s bringing him out within the next hour. Assuming nobody attacks the ambulance, he’ll be in a hospital bed by dawn. The last word from that quarter is that he’s tried to talk, since the incident.”

Huw filled his own wineglass, then sat down on the edge of the bed. “Can we forget about politics for a few hours? I know you want me to bring you up to date on what I was doing back in New York, and I’m sure you’ve got a lot of stuff to tell me about what’s been going on since the last time we were together, but I would like, for once, to take some time out with you. Just you and me alone, with no unquiet ghosts.”

Her frown faded slightly. “I wish we could.” She sighed. “But there’s so much riding on this. We’ll have time later, if we succeed, but”—she glanced at the door anxiously—“ there’s so much that can still go wrong. If Miriam has any mad ideas about running away . . .”

“Well, that’s an interesting question. While you were away, we had a talk. She seemed to need it.”

“Oh?” Brilliana drank down a mouthful of wine. “How is she doing?”

“Not well, but I don’t think she’s going to run out on us, as long as she feels we’re standing alongside her.”

“It’s that bad? I’ve known her for, ah, nearly a year, and her highness does not strike me as disloyal to her friends.”

Huw did not miss the significance of the honorific. “She hasn’t acceded to that rank yet. Has she?”

“No.” Brill’s expression was bleak. “I don’t think she’s even realized, yet, what it means—she was having a difficult time understanding that vile business of Henryk’s, much less thinking about what is going to happen . . .”

“Er, I think you’re wrong.” Huw emptied his glass in one long swallow. “Needed that. Excuse me. Did you buy her a pregnancy test kit?” He refilled her glass, then topped up his own.

“I—yes, but I haven’t given it to her yet. She asked you about that?”

“She is remarkably open, but her ability to trust—anyone, I think—is badly damaged by the whole business of the succession. I . . . I offered to help her obtain an abortion if she thought she needed one.”

“Huw!” Brill clapped one hand to her mouth. Then: “Why?”

“She raised the subject.” Huw hunched his shoulders. “I don’t think she will, but . . . if she feels pressured, what will she do?”

“React,” Brill said automatically. “Oh. Yes, that was cleverly played, my love. But you should have warned me. That’s too clever by half. What if she’d called your bluff?”

“What if it wasn’t a bluff?” He shrugged. “She’s no use to our cause if she doesn’t trust us. No use to anyone at all. That is true whether or not she has a royal bun in the oven. We’re trying to break the pattern, not reinforce it.”

“Uh-huh. Winning her trust is one thing.” She leaned towards him. “But you’d help her shoot herself in the head?”

“If I was convinced that she wanted to, and knew what she was asking for . . . yes.” He looked at Brilliana with a bleakness that sat badly with his age. “I’d try to save her first, mind you.”

“Would you try to save me from my worst urges?” she asked sharply.

Huw put his glass down. “That’s one of those questions to which there’s no safe answer, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” She drained her own glass and reached across him, to put it down beside his. He shivered as she pushed her breasts against his side; her nipples were stiff. “My worst urge right now says I want you to fuck me like there’s no tomorrow. Because tomorrow”—she ran her hand down his chest—“we might both be dead.”

Erasmus was going over the next morning’s news with John Winstanley and Oliver Smith, the party commissioners for truth and justice, when word of the abdication came in.

Smith was reading down a plate, his lips moving silently as he read the raised bright mirror-text of the lead: “. . . and we call upon all right minded men to, hang on, here’s a dropped—”

“Yes, yes,” Erasmus said acidly. “No need for that, leave it to the subs. What I need to know is, do you think it’s sound?”

“Is it sound?” Winstanley nodded lugubriously. “Well, that’s the—”

The door rattled open. Burgeson looked up sharply. “What is it?” he demanded.

The messenger boy—or youth—looked unabashed: “It’s Mr. Burroughs, sir! He wants you to come, quick like! ‘E says it’s important!”

Erasmus stared at him. “Where is he?” he demanded.

“ ’E’s in the mayor’s mansion, sir! There’s news from out east—a train just came in, and there was folks on it who said the king’s abdicated!”

Erasmus glanced at Smith. “I think you’d better hold the front page,” he said mildly, “I’m going to go see what this is all about.”

It was an overcast, gray summer’s day outside, with a thin fog from the bay pumped up to a malignant brown haze by the smoke from a hundred thousand stoves and steam cars on this side of the bay. Fishing boats were maneuvering around the wharves, working their way in and out of the harbor as if the crisis of the past weeks was just a distant rumor. From the front steps, waiting as his men brought the car round to him, Erasmus could just make out the dots of the picket fleet in the distance, military yachts and korfes riding at anchor to defend the coast against the approach of French bombardiers or submarines. He eyed them warily every morning, half afraid they would finally make their move, choosing sides in the coming struggle. Word from the cadres aboard the ships was that the sailors were restive, unpaid for months now, but that the officers remained crown loyalists for the most part. Should putsch come to shove, it would be an ugly affair—and one that the realm’s foreign enemies would be keen to exploit. Which was probably why John Frederick had not tried his luck by ordering the picket into the bay to put down the provisional government forces. It was a card he could only play once, and if it failed, he might as well dust off Cromwell’s block. Although if the messenger lad was right . . .

By the time he arrived at the mayoral mansion, a light rain was falling and the onshore breeze was stiffening, blowing the smog apart. Erasmus paused for a deep breath as he stepped out of the back of the car, relishing the feel of air in lungs he’d almost despaired of a year ago. Where are you now, Miriam? he wondered briefly. It was her medication that had cured him, of that he was certain, even though the weird pills had turned his urine blue and disrupted his digestion. What other magic tricks do you have up your sleeve? It was something he’d have to explain to the chairman, sooner or later—if he could work out how to broach the subject without sounding as if he’d taken leave of his senses. “Follow,” he said over his shoulder. The two bodyguards and the woman from the stenography pool moved hastily into position.

The committee offices on the first floor were seething—nobody was at their posts except for the militia guards, their rifles clenched in nervous hands. “Where’s the chairman?” Erasmus demanded when they came to the first checkpoint.

“He’s in the committee room, sir,” said the senior man—Erasmus, being a regular enough visitor (and a member of the committee to boot), ranked above the regular interrogation such a question might have drawn from a stranger. “Can you tell us what’s going on?”

“That’s why I’m here.” Erasmus grimaced. “There’ll be a statement later.” He glanced at his stenographer. “Minute that for me.” He swept through the corridors towards the former dining room that Sir Adam had requisitioned as a meeting place for the committee, only pausing at the door where two heavies in the red, white, and blue armbands of internal security waited with shotguns. “Erasmus Burgeson, commissioner for information, here to see the chairman,” announced one of his guards.

“Aye, right.” These guards were going by the book. Erasmus waited patiently as the senior one uncapped a speaking tube and announced him, then listened for instructions. “You’re to go in, sir. Your party”—a thumb gesture—“can wait in the guardroom.”

Burgeson nodded at them. “You heard him.” And then he opened the door.

The Committee for Democratic Accountability was neither accountable, nor democratic, nor even much of a committee—these words were all statements of aspiration, as much as anything else, for in the early days of building a better nation these words held power, and it was Sir Adam’s hope that his institutions would grow into their names. Personally, Erasmus thought this was dangerously naïve—he’d read a number of books that Miriam had loaned him, strange books describing the historical processes of her even stranger world—but it was at least worth a try. Not all revolutions ended up eating their young, and heaven knew it was an opportunity to break with the dead hand of the oppressive past, but the thought that this revolution might go the way of some of those in Miriam’s books had kept him awake into the small hours on more nights than he cared to think about.

Inside the committee room, there was an atmosphere of euphoria. Sir Adam was standing behind the lectern, and about half the delegates from the district councils seemed to have packed themselves in. Someone had opened a crate of cava and orange farmers from down south were toasting shipyard workers from the east bay with foam sparkling from their chipped tea mugs. Erasmus grabbed the first shoulder he could catch inside the doorway. “What’s going on?” he demanded.

“It’s the king!” The man grinned broadly. “He’s gone! Packed up his bags in New London and ran. The garrison in Montreal picked him up!”

A sharp stab of anxiety gnawed at Erasmus. “Are they ours?”

“They mutinied three weeks ago and elected a workers’ and soldiers’ council! They’re with the white guards!”

Erasmus blinked. “Excuse me.” He began to elbow his way through the crush towards the lectern where Sir Adam was earnestly holding forth to a gaggle of inner party graybeards who remained obdurately sober in the face of the collective derangement.

“Ah, Erasmus.” Sir Adam smiled. “I gather the good news has reached you.”

“I need to know where it came from”—Erasmus pointed a thumb over his shoulder—“if we’re to get the word out where it’s needed. I’ve got a stenographer waiting in the guardroom, and a front page to fill by three.”

“That’s easy enough.” Burroughs gestured. “You know Edward MacDonald, I take it.”

Erasmus nodded. “We’ve met.” Ed, Lady Bishop’s right hand man, nodded back, cautiously.

“He brought certain other news of your activities out east, news that I personally consider would stretch the bounds of credibility—if anyone less than Lady Bishop vouched for their truth.” Burroughs contemplated Erasmus, an expression of perplexity on his face that reminded Burgeson of a school-teacher examining a pupil who had just done something that, while not actually deserving of punishment, was inexplicably wrong. “We’ll need to talk about it in due course.”

“Yes, we will.” Erasmus surprised himself with the assurance of his answer. “But this isn’t the time for addressing long-term problems. We’ve got to get the word of these momentous events out first. Once the loyalists realize they have been abandoned by their false monarch, that will change the entire situation!” He nodded at Edward. “What’s happened out east? What can you tell me that I can print? I need pictures, damn it! Who witnessed the events?”

The attack began an hour before dawn. Otto ven Neuhalle watched from a discreet distance as his men walked their precious M60s onto the front of the gatehouse from long range, firing parsimonious bursts—wary of his threats to damage any man who damaged his precious guns. The defenders declined to fire randomly into the dark, although a ghastly white glare opened its unblinking eye above the barred front gate, casting long shadows across the beaten ground before it—shadows that promised pain and death to anyone who ventured into view of the firing slits in the walls.

“Keep their heads down!” he shouted at Shutz and his men. “But watch for our own!”

They didn’t have many minutes to wait. Creaking and squealing with an ominous rumble, two large wagons rolled round the shoulder of the hill, following the road that led to the gate. The bullocks that pulled them didn’t sound too happy, roaring and lowing beneath their heavy burden. Otto bared his teeth as he heard the voice of their driver and the crack of his whip.

“This should be fun,” a familiar voice commented from behind him.

Otto shivered as a chilly sweat broke out across the nape of his neck. “Your Majesty has the better of me.” He turned around slowly—it was a faux pas to turn one’s back on the monarch, and he had no desire to draw attention to it—and bowed deeply.

“Rise.” The king gestured impatiently. The lance of royal bodyguards around him faced outward; the armor and colors he wore were indistinguishable from their uniform, but for the lack of an armband of rank. “Two minutes, no more. They should be shooting by now.”

Otto found his tongue. “May I ask if the carts are for men or explosives, my liege? I need to prepare my men. . . .”

“Explosives.” Egon nodded towards them. “The driver will take them up to the gate then set them off.”

“The—oh.” Otto nodded. The driver would do what he was told, or his family would be done by as the king had decreed: probably something creatively horrible, to reinforce his reputation as a strong and ruthless monarch. “By your leave, I shall order my men to take cover just before the blast.”

“We wish them to advance and provide covering fire for the cavalry immediately afterwards,” Egon added offhand.

“Cavalry?” Otto bit his tongue, but even so the word slipped out first. Beyond the gatehouse was a wet moat, and then a steep descent into a dry moat before the gate into the castle’s outer battlements. Nobody in their right mind would use cavalry against the layered defenses of a castle!

“Cavalry.” The royal grin was almost impish. “I hope you find it educational.”

“My lord—” One of the guards cleared his throat.

“Momentarily.” Egon stared at Otto. “I intend to surprise everyone, Baron. This is just the start.”

Otto bowed his neck jerkily. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Go.” Dismissed, Otto turned to warn Shutz and his gunners about the wagons—and to leave the king’s disturbing presence. Behind him, Egon was mounting the saddle of a stallion from the royal stable. A pair of irreplaceable witch-clan night vision glasses hung from his pommel.

The defenders were asleep, dead, or incompetent, Otto decided as he watched the wagons roll along the road towards the gatehouse. Or they’d been struck blind by Sky Father. The glaring hell-light cast a lurid glow across the ground before the gatehouse, but there was no shouted challenge, no crack of gunfire. What are they doing? He wondered. A horrid surmise began to gnaw at his imagination. They’re dead, or gone, and we’re advancing into their ground while they sneak through the land of the dead, to ambush us from behind-–

Rapid fire crackled from the gatehouse, followed by a squealing roar of bovine distress: Otto breathed again. Not dead or gone, just incompetent. They’d shown little sign of movement earlier in the campaign, and despite their lightning-fast assault on the castle when he’d taken it, they’d failed to follow through. The witch-clan were traders, after all, lowborn tinkers, not knights and soldiers. He grinned as the wagon ground forward faster, the uninjured oxen panicked halfway to a stampede by the gunfire and the smell of blood. It had fifty yards to go, then forty—why aren’t they firing? Are they low on ammunition?—then twenty, then—

Otto knelt close to the ground, bracing himself, mouth open to keep his ears from hurting. The moments stretched on, as he counted up to twenty heartbeats.

“Is he dead?” called one of his gunners.

“I think—” someone began to reply, but the rest of his comment was forestalled by a searing flash. A second later the sound reached Otto, a door the size of a mountainside slamming shut beside his head. The ground shook. A couple of seconds later still, the gravel and fragments rained down around the smoke-filled hole. “What was that?” Otto shouted, barely able to hear himself. It wasn’t like any powder explosion he’d ever heard, and he’d heard enough in his time. What’s the Pervert got his hands on now? he added silently, straightening up.

The hell-light had gone out, along with the front of the gatehouse. The wagon hadn’t been small—there could have been half a ton, or even a ton, of explosives in it; whatever kind of explosives the king’s alchemists had cooked up, using lore stolen from the witches.

Otto cleared his dry throat, spat experimentally. “Break them down, get ready to move out,” he shouted at Shutz. “The cavalry will be through here next.”

Shutz looked baffled, then pointed to his ears. Otto nodded. “Scheisse.” He gestured at the now-silent machine guns, miming packing them and moving forward. Shutz nodded, then opened his mouth and began shouting orders. Or at least he appeared to be telling troopers what to do: Otto found to his bemusement that he couldn’t hear them.

The ground was still shaking. Peering back up the road, it wasn’t hard for Otto to see why. Two more wagons were plodding grimly towards the pile of dust and smoke that had been the gatehouse—and behind them, what looked like a battalion of royal dragoons. In the predawn twilight they rode at no more than a slow walking pace. Otto shook his head; the ringing in his ears went on, but he was beginning to hear other sounds now. He raised his glasses, fumbled with the power button, and peered at the wagon. This one carried soldiers in helmets and half-armor, and a complicated mess of stuff, not the barrels of explosives he’d half-expected to see. “Interesting,” he murmured, looking round for a messenger. “You!”

“My lord!” The man shouted.

“Tell Anders to get his guns ready to move. We’re to cover this force.” He pointed at the approaching dragoons. “They’re going to break in. Go!” How they were going to break into the castle he had no idea, but Egon clearly expected them to do so, and Otto had more than a slight suspicion that the new explosives in the oxcart weren’t Egon’s only surprise.

Strung out on caffeine and fatigue, Judith Herz suppressed a yawn as she watched the technicians with the handcart maneuver the device into position on the scaffold. There was a big cross spray-painted in the middle of the top level, and they were taking pains to move it so that it was centered perfectly. The size of a beer keg, with a briefcase-sized detonation controller strapped to it with duct tape, the FADM didn’t look particularly menacing. She glanced over at Rich Hall, who was sitting patiently in a director’s chair, the Pelikan case containing ARMBAND between his feet. Cruz was about, somewhere, of course: They were taking pains to keep it within arm’s reach at all times. Good, Judith thought tiredly. Everything’s ready, except for the PAL codes. And head office, of course, but they’d be on-site shortly. The sooner they could get everything hooked up, the sooner they could all go and get some well-earned sleep.

A flicker of motion near the entrance to the tent caught her eye and she looked round. The new arrivals seemed tired: the colonel, talking animatedly to the man-in-black from the West Wing, a couple of aides following in their wake. Oh great, she thought: rubberneckers. “Wait here,” she hold the technicians, then walked down the ramp to meet the newcomers.

“Colonel.” She smiled. “And, uh, Dr. James.”

Smith glanced sidelong at him. “He’s our vertical liaison. With WARBUCKS.”

“Dead straight.” Dr. James looked tired, too: The bags under his eyes suggested the lights had been burning late in the Naval Observatory grounds. “Let’s take a look at the package.”

“We haven’t attached ARMBAND yet,” Judith began to say as Dr. James marched straight towards the scaffold.

“Then do it, right now. We need to get this thing done.”

What’s the sudden hurry? she wondered. “Yes. Sir.” She waved at Rich, who sat up sharply and mimed a query until she beckoned. “What’s up?”

“Change of situation.” James was terse. “I have the PAL codes.” He tapped his breast pocket. “Colonel?”

“Dr. James is here as an official observer for the White House,” Smith reassured her. “Also, we have Donald Reckitt from NNSA, Mary Kay Kare from, from the people who made ARMBAND, Richard Tracy from the Office of Special Plans—”

The introductions went on until the scaffolding began to creak under their weight. Finally they worked their way down through the layers of observers and their credentials to the technical staff. “And Dr. Rand, who will confirm that the munition is release ready, check the connections to the detonation controller, and hand over to Major Alvarez and Captain Hu for deployment.”

“Certainly. If you folks wouldn’t mind giving me some elbow room? . . .” Rand, fiftyish and somewhat bohemian in appearance, looked as irritated by the institutional rubbernecking as Herz felt. As FTO’s tame expert on these gadgets—indeed, as one of the nation’s leading experts—he’d studied under Teddy Taylor, although the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty meant that his expertise was somewhat abstract—he understood the FADMs as well as anyone else. And he ran through his checklist surprisingly rapidly. “All looking good,” he announced, finally. “Considering where it’s been.”

“That’s enough about that.” Dr. James spoke sharply: “Not everyone here is briefed.”

“Oh? Really.” Rand smiled lopsidedly as he straightened up. “Well that makes it alright then.” He patted the bomb, almost affectionately. “For what it’s worth, this one’s ready to go. Excuse me, ladies, gentlemen . . .”

As Rand left the platform, the colonel glanced at Herz. “If you want to call the items? . . .”

“Uh, yes, sir . . .” She stared at her clipboard and blinked a few times, wishing the tension between her brows would go away. Focusing was hard. “PAL Codes. I need to contact WAR—the designated release authority,” she corrected. She looked at Dr. James.

He nodded. “This is what you want,” he said, handing her a manilla envelope from his jacket pocket.

Judith slit it open with a fingernail. There was a single sheet of paper, on White House stationery, with a brief note, a pair of eight-digit numbers, and a famous signature. “Well.” She breathed out. “This looks to be in order, so”—she clipped it behind her checklist—“we move on to ARMBAND. Rich, this is your curtain call. Major? We’re ready to attach ARMBAND.”

Alvarez waved Rich Hall through to the front of the platform. “Okay, here it is,” he said. He cleared his throat. “I’ve only done this a couple of times before.”

He opened the shockproof case and pulled out four black rubber feet. “Shoes.” Rocking the bomb carefully side to side, he wedged the feet underneath it. “The payload needs to be electrostatically isolated from ground, or this won’t work.” Next, he picked up a drab plastic box, its upper face broken only by a winking red LED, a button, and a key slot. “Okay, now for the duct tape.” With that, he pulled out a reel of duct tape and a box cutter, and taped the box to the top of the bomb. Finally, he held up a key: “arming key.” He inserted it in the slot and gave it a half turn, and addressed Alvarez: “ARMBAND is not yet armed. To activate it, it’s necessary to give the key another half turn, then push the button. Five seconds later, it does its stuff. You do not want to be touching it when that happens.” He picked up his case and stepped back. “You have control now.”

“I have control,” Alvarez echoed. He nodded at Wall: “You’d better leave the platform now, sir.”

Is that all? Judith blinked again, feeling obscurely cheated. It was like black magic—a device that could transport a payload into another universe?—and yet it seemed so mundane.

“Agent Herz?” Colonel Smith prodded her.

“Oh? I’m sorry.” She nodded. “Major Alvarez?” she called.

“Ma’am.” Alvarez and Hu were out of uniform—nobody wanted inconvenient questions about what army officers were doing in a field outside Concord—but nobody would mistake them for civilians, not with that crew cut and attitude. “I have the checklist.”

He knelt down beside the package and unclipped a panel on the detonation controller strapped to the side of the bomb. Pulling open a laminated ring-bound checklist, he began to flip through pages, periodically double-checking a switch position. “Check, please,” he told Hu.

“Check.”

“I need the PAL code now.”

“Here are your numbers.” Herz read out the eight-digit sequence from the letter. The audience fell silent, like witnesses at an execution. As, in a manner of speaking, they were: Alvarez and Hu the hangmen, adjusting the noose; Herz the prison governor, handing over the death warrant; and parties unknown standing on the trapdoor . . . well, at least they won’t feel a thing, she told herself. More than you can say for their victims, over the years. “Remember, we want a sixty-second delay. If the package doesn’t disappear in front of your eyes within ten seconds, then turn the key to safe ARMBAND and enter the abort code. Are you ready?”

“We’re ready,” Alvarez called.

“Ready!” Hu echoed.

Alvarez carefully closed the cover on the detonation controller, but—Herz noted—neglected to latch it shut. That wasn’t in the checklist, at a guess.

The silence was oppressive. Finally, Dr. James cleared his throat. “Major Alvarez, with the authority vested in me by the executive order you have received, I order you to proceed.”

Three days ago, the bulk of the Clan’s mobile security force had concentrated in a field near Concord, arriving in buses disguised as costumed medievalists. Now, in the predawn light, they’d made it three miles down the road—riding in the backs of steam-powered livestock trucks, disguised as filthy, fight-worn anachronists. Their leader, the duke, and his paramedic and bodyguards, led by the lady Olga, had split off ten minutes ago, heading for an uncertain rendezvous and a waiting ambulance. That left Carl, captain of Security, with a reduced command and a monstrous headache; but at least it was better than being bottled up in that stone death trap.

“You’re sure this is the spot.” He fixed Morgan with a well-practiced stare.

“Yuh-ess.” Morgan yawned hugely. “My apologies, sir Captain. We are two miles southwest of the gates of the Hjalmar Palace, fifty yards north of the milestone, and the cross yonder”—he gestured—“marks the center of the road.” The road was little more than a dirt track, but had the singular advantage of being a known quantity. “Last night the pretender’s forces were encamped a mile down the road from the gatehouse, dispersed in tents through the woods to either side. Watchers on the hill slope, of course. I cannot be sure—we have no recent intelligence—but I don’t believe the camp extended more than two miles down the road to Wergatsfurt. So we should be a few hundred yards beyond their rear perimeter, as of last night.”

“Right.” Carl turned to Helmut. “Are the men ready?”

“As ready as we can be.” Helmut’s normally taciturn demeanor was positively stony. Which wasn’t good.

“How much ammunition did we end up leaving behind?”

“For the Dragons? Most of it. Stefan’s got just eight rounds. The SAWs are better—we divided up the belts. I’d say, three thousand rounds per gun. And of course the light arms, we’re fully equipped from the castle’s armory. But food and water—it’s not good.”

“Well, we’ll just have to do the job before that becomes an issue.” Carl paused in thought. “Have the men dose up with prophylactics before we cross over. We need a marker for the crossover point on the other side”—he pointed at the rough wooden crucifix that marked Morgan’s survey point—“and make sure everyone knows that if we move to retreat, that’s the rendezvous point. Have Olaf’s section position their M47 fifty yards forward of that marker, with one of the SAWs for covering fire”—Carl paced towards the perimeter of the fenced-in field to which the Lee’s trucks had brought them—“and get Erik’s people to cross over here. Hmm. If there’s any sign of the Pervert’s bodyguard, Little Dimmir’s lance can concentrate on nailing them with support from Erik’s people, and Arthur’s SAW section if they’re dug in there.” He continued laying out the deployment as Helmut and two sergeants followed him around the perimeter, making notes. It was all ad hoc, dangerously underplanned and hasty, but if there was one thing they didn’t have, it was time for a careful setup. Finally, he finished: “That’s it. Brief your men and get them into position. We go in, hmm, zero-six-hundred, that’s just under half an hour. Get moving!”

Otto’s itchy sense of unease grew stronger with every step he took towards the moat. Ahead of him, the roar of the royal cannon provided a drumbeat punctuation to the sounds of advance: men shouting, chanting the king’s name; boots tramping out the rhythm of the march in time to the beat of their drummers; horses clattering on the cobbled roadbed, neighing, jingling of kit; and periodically a spastic belch of machine-gun fire arcing overhead, crackling and whining off the stony roofline of the walls.

They’re not shooting back, he realized, a hundred yards past the gatehouse, as he paused in a dip in the ground. Sometime in the past couple of hours the witches had cleared out. Which means—

“Forward for the Gruinmarkt!” The voice behind the cry was half-hoarse, but instantly recognizable as the royal life guards took up the call. “The witches have fled before us!” The life guards flooded forward like a pack of hounds following an injured deer.

“Well, fuck it,” Otto grunted. “Jorg!”

“Sir.”

“Tell Heidlor to set his guns up here and range in on the keep’s door. Indirect fire.”

“Sir!” Jorg paused. “But aren’t we—”

“Do it!”

Otto raised his glasses and studied the near horizon, shockingly close. In the predawn gloom the castle was a brooding presence up ahead, its upper ramparts topping the huge dry moat beyond the rise. They’ve had two days to prepare for this, and they like blowing things up. What would I do in their shoes? “Jorg!”

Jorg, panting, hurried back towards him. “Sir?”

“Tell Heidlor to range in on the keep’s door and to keep a watch out behind us, ranged in on the road past the gatehouse.”

“The gatehouse, sir? But we came that way—”

“Exactly.” Otto bared his teeth at the man; Jorg ducked his head hastily and ran back towards the gunners and their overloaded mules.

Otto settled down, kneeling, to watch the lines of advance. The lack of fire from the castle worried him, but he had scarcely raised his glasses again when a loud and hearty hail demanded his attention. “Ahem, my lord Neuhalle!” The interruption leaned over the pommel of his horse to look down at Otto. It was Geraunt, Earl Marlburg, one of the king’s younger and more enthusiastic vassals.

“Yes, Sir Geraunt?” Otto stared up at him, annoyed.

“His majesty sends word!” Geraunt was obviously excited. He drew a message tube out of his sleeve and extended it towards Otto. “A change to your disposition. You are to turn around and withdraw to the gatehouse, there to cover the approaches to the castle, he says.”

“Right.” Otto took the tube. A wave of palpable relief washed through him. Not that he was a coward—certainly the past month of campaigning had given the lie to that—but the idea of advancing into a booby-trapped castle did not fill him with joy. If the king wanted him to stake out the approaches to the castle, against the stab in the back with a witch’s knife that Otto himself half-expected, then that was a reassuringly known quantity. More importantly it suggested that his majesty was, if not exactly sane, then no crazier than any other fox. “Can you tell me what his majesty intends?”

Sir Geraunt hunkered down, putting his horse between Otto and the keep. Otto looked up at him: “His majesty is most exercised; he says the witches have fled before him, and probably laid mines to bring down the keep, so he intends to secure the inner walls, then bring in sappers to find the—”

The world flashed white, twice, in a tenth of the beat of a heart. Everything was white as the face of the noonday sun, except for the knife-edge shadow of Sir Geraunt, freakishly cast across Otto’s upper body and head.

Otto blinked as a wave of heat washed across his skin. A giant the size of a mountain had opened the door of a kiln full of molten iron big enough to forge the hammer of the gods, and the glare surged overhead, stifling and oppressive. The sensation of heat faded over the duration of two heartbeats and he opened his eyes, but everything was blotchy and purple-white with afterimages. Was that an explosion? he thought numbly, as reflex or shock made him collapse back into the ground cover. What was left of Sir Geraunt’s mount, with what was left of Sir Geraunt still astride it, began to fall sideways into his depression. Neither of them lived, which was perhaps a mercy, because while Sir Geraunt and his horse were intact and unblemished on the side that fell towards Otto, their opposite side—that had faced the castle—was scorched to charcoal around a delicate intaglio of bone.

The castle was no longer there. Where the keep had crouched within its courtyard, shielded by the outer walls and their rammed-earth revetments, a skull-shape of dust and fire was rising, its cap looming over the ramparts like a curious salamander crawling from its volcanic home to survey its surroundings.

As Otto fell, a blast of fiery wind pulsed across the burning grass that covered the approaches to the castle, casting aloft the calcined bodies of the men and animals who had been caught in the open at the moment of the heat flash. Burning sticks and a shotgun blast of fractured gravel caromed off the ground. A scant second later the shock front reversed, sucking back towards the roiling bubble of flames as it rose from the center of the fortification on a stem of dirt and debris.

Otto inhaled a mouth-watering stench of cooking meat and hot air and tried to collect his scattered wits. Something was holding his legs down. He couldn’t see anything—just violet afterimages stubbornly refusing to fade when he screwed his eyes shut. Panicking, he tried to kick, but without vision he couldn’t see the dead horse lying atop him. His back was a dull mass of pain where he’d fallen, and the smell—have they taken me down to Hel, the choosers of the slain? he wondered dizzily as he turned his damaged eyes towards the furious underside of the mushroom cloud.

Carl stared at the turbulent caul of smoke rising above the ridgeline and swallowed, forcing back the sharp taste of stomach acid at the back of his tongue. His head pounded, but his eyes were clear. Around him, soldiers stared slack-jawed at the ominous thunderhead. The predawn sky was just turning dark blue, but the fires ignited by the bomb brought their own light to the scene, so for the moment their faces were stained ruddy with a mixture of awe and fear.

“Is that what I think it is?” asked Helmut.

Baron Hjorth cleared his throat. “It can’t be,” he said confidently. “They’re all supposed to be under lock . . . and key. . . .” He trailed off into an uncertain silence.

Carl took him by the elbow. More soldiers were spilling in out of the air, staggering or bending over in some cases—two world-walks in three hours was a brutal pace, even for the young and fit—and Carl had to step around them as he steered Oliver a hundred meters up the road in the direction of the castle. “That.” He gestured. “Is. A mushroom cloud. Yes?”

Oliver blinked rapidly. “I think so.” He swallowed. “I’ve never seen one before.”

“Well. Where the fuck did it come from?”

“Don’t ask me!” Oliver snarled. “I didn’t do it! God-on-a-stick, what do you take me for? All our bombs are accounted for as of last Tuesday except for the one Matthias”—he stopped dead for a moment—“Oh dear.”

“If that bastard Matthias—”

Oliver cut him off with a slashing gesture. “Trust me, Matthias is dead.” He closed his eyes, composing himself. “This is someone else. Sending us a message.” He opened his eyes. “How old is that . . . thing?”

Carl glanced up, uneasily sniffing the air: The tang of wood smoke spoke of pine trees on the reverse slope ignited by the heat flash. “I don’t know. Not old—see the stem? It hasn’t drifted.” His guts loosened as he realized, if I’d timed this just a little later we’d still have been there. He licked his thumb and held it up. There was a faint breeze from the south, blowing towards the castle. “Um. What, if anything, do you know about fallout?”

“The poison rain these things shed? I think we should forget the Pervert and get your men out of here. Forced march. If you want to set up guns south of Wergatsfurt and catch any stragglers you’re welcome to them, but if they were camped a mile yonder”—he gestured towards the cloud—“I don’t know. They might have survived, if they dug in for the night. Although I don’t give much for their chances if that fire starts to spread.”

Carl grinned humorlessly. “Have you ever known the Pervert to refuse a chance to stab us in the back, my lord? Dawn attacks a speciality, remember?”

Oliver shook his head.

“Come.” Carl turned his back on the cloud. “I’ll leave two men to scout the area in an hour’s time. The rest—let’s hit the road. I’ll have time to worry about whoever’s sending us messages when I’ve hunted down and killed the last of the pretender’s men.”

Behind them a dark rain began to fall on the battlefield, fat drops turbid with radioactive dust scorched from the stones of the castle and the bones of the men who had followed their usurper-king into the radius of the fireball. The survivors, burned and broken—those that could move—cupped their hands to catch the rain and drank greedily.

Otto Neuhalle, and the ten survivors of his company, were among them. They did not know—nor could they—that the man-portable nuclear weapon responsible for the fireball had a maximum yield of only one kiloton, and that such bombs are inherently dirty, and that this blast had been, by nuclear standards, absolutely filthy; that it had failed to consume even a tenth of its plutonium core, and had scooped up huge masses of debris and irradiated it before scattering it tightly around ground zero.

Dead men, drinking bitter rain.