Christopher G. Nuttall's Blog, page 9

Book Review: Disaster At Stalingrad

Disaster at Stalingrad

-Peter G. Tsouras

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.

Snippet – The Alchemist’s Secret (The Zero Enigma)

Prologue

“Louise! Louise! Louise!”

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.”

Oh No More Updates

Hi, everyone

Two pieces of good news first. The Apprentice Mistress has had its first set of edits and is now going under the second, which will hopefully be done in a week or so. There will be a third and final set, then the book will be up for purchase. I hope you’re looking forward to seeing Emily’s further adventures.

Linked to that, I have just completed the first draft of The Burning World and it is with the editor now. My hope is to get it up for purchase in 2-3 weeks, but of course nothing can be guaranteed. The audio edition of The Firelighters is set for release in spring, and I will continue to provide updates when I know more for myself. Please watch this space.

I’m not quite sure what I intend to do in the next couple of months. My current plan is to write The Alchemist’s Secret next, continuing the Zero books, now I have worked out the plot kinky that was stopping me from progressing. After that, I may finish the Mystic Albion books with The Many-Angled World, which will hopefully wrap up the plot threads I laid in the first two books, although I need to write out the plot and then stress test it to see how well it holds up. How does that sound? After that, I may write The Unnatural Order – Schooled in Magic 27 – or something else. I’m still waiting for a response from the agent about Conquistadors, so I may have to displace one book to continue that series if it works. Pray for me .

I have several other ideas in mind, but I don’t know how well they will work out. One idea is to do another serial, or a web novel, and see how that goes, but I’m not convinced the first three serials worked very well – I needed more comments as the story developed and I didn’t really get enough. Did you like the serial? Or should I just stick to novels and novellas?

Linked to this, I need to do a novella for Fantastic School Wars.

This leads to the more awkward part of the email . We are trying to put together the stories for Fantastic School Wars, and we really need more submissions. These stories are supposed to follow a theme of ‘war,’ combined with some degree of magical education. You can write a story about a United States Mage Corps training platoon that runs into very real trouble, if you like, set in a universe very much like ours, or a story set in a much more fantastical universe; you are welcome, if you wish, to set a story in one of your own universes (the original idea behind the collection was to introduce writers to a number of different authors and their works) and if you do so you can also plug your own work.

In general, we want stories between 3000 and 10’000 words, although we can be flexible on such matters. Stories are professionally edited; profits are shared equally amongst the writers; we want exclusive publication rights for one year, following publication, then you will be free to republish however you like.

If you have any interest in submitting a story, please drop me an email.

Real life has had its ups and downs recently, but we are plugging on. And that’s quite enough moaning .

Like I said, feel free to tell me what you think and suggest other stories (and submissions for wars).

Chris

The Gobby Problem (Or Why We Can’t Have Nice Things Any Longer)

(Normal commenting rules apply).

A while back, a friend asked me to explain why Donald Trump was still popular, despite everything that has happened in the last few years, and why society is in such a mess. Why do so many people still support him? This is a somewhat expanded version of my answer.

I’m going to start with a silly analogy, and then work on from there.

Imagine you are part of the Harry Potter fan fiction community, back when it was great. The first four books are out and you are waiting eagerly for book 5. The first movie has come out, but the movies have not yet started to cast a long shadow over the community. It was a crazy time. There were thousands upon thousands of fan-written works set after book four, many suggesting different paths the series could take after Voldemort’s return, or exploring aspects of the universe that would be thoroughly jossed by the remaining three books, or crossing over with other books and universes. There were essays and character studies and literally millions of takes on the universe, veering from excellent pieces of work to ones that should probably remain unmentioned.

And, of course, there was the shipping. Who will Harry marry? Ginny? Hermione? Cho? Professor Snape’s daughter? Draco? Mary Sue? The pairings were endless, ranging from vanilla to the frankly very dubious. Each and every one of these pairings had people arguing that their pairing was the One True Pairing, even the ones that were more than a little dubious. They were so invested in their pairings that there were endless fans wars over which pairing would be the final pairing. Like I said, it was a crazy time.

And you are part of this. You promote your own pairings and argue against others that you don’t believe to be plausible. You see yourself as engaging in intellectual debate, with people who may disagree with you but are not actually bad. Just because someone is in the wrong doesn’t mean they are a bad person. Unfortunately, you are wrong. Some people are very bad people indeed. And they’re just waiting for their next target.

You put forward an argument that goes like this: “Harry/Draco and Hermione/Draco are unlikely to work because Draco is a bigoted prat and, even if he changes his mind, Harry and Hermione are still unlikely to want to date him because he is a bigoted prat.” You think this argument is entirely reasonable. Bigots do not want to date the people they are bigoted against, and those people do not want to date people who are bigoted against them. Your argument causes an interesting debate, with some people arguing that Draco can and will grow out of his bigotry, and others agreeing that Draco is a ‘bad boy’ but that is part of his attraction. The debate goes back-and-forth for quite some time, and you are enjoying yourself enormously …

… And that is when That Guy arrives.

You will come to think of this person as Stupid Lying Gobs**** (Gobby for short). Gobby is a troll … no, he’s a cyber-bully, a harasser, a monster, the kind of person who takes delight in tearing down people who have accomplished more in a month than he will in his entire life. Gobby has no principles, no sacred cause; he has a certain diabolical cunning that allows him to cloak his actions in the guise of respectability, or at least what is respectable at the time. He – or his spiritual ancestors – were bashing people for being gay (regardless of whether they were gay) in the 1970s; now, they’re attacking people for being homophobic (ditto). They don’t care about their cause – it’s just an excuse to bully people and feel righteous while doing it.

Gobby reads your post, and insists you are a homophobe.

At first, you make the mistake of thinking that this is a honest misunderstanding. Surely, you tell yourself, you can explain yourself properly and Gobby will understand that he has made a mistake. So you try, only to have Gobby turn words against you; taking everything you said out of context, insisting that innocuous phases are dog whistles, and going on and on and on about how horrible you are. Eventually, he starts lying outright. It starts to get under your skin, particularly as your (fair-weather) friends start to inch away. You start to feel alone, under constant attack, and it makes it harder to step away.

Why do your friends abandon you? Some believe very firmly in Harry/Draco and they are happy to believe that homophobia is the only reason anyone might oppose their One True Pairing. Others hear the lies and find it impossible to believe that someone could lie so blatantly. The lies are repeated so often, as Goebbels pointed out so many years ago, that they take root and flourish, even though they are outright lies. And still others are secretly on your side, but they are too scared of Gobby to say so openly. Gobby is, at heart, a schoolyard bully … and no one wants to be friends with his victim for fear of being victimised themselves.

Gobby goes on, and on, and on, and it tears you apart. Sometimes, you are goaded into saying something that Gobby can use to insist that he was right all along about you. Sometimes, you leave the community, posting a goodbye screed that makes you look – in hindsight – absolutely ridiculous. Sometimes, you just try to ignore him and carry on, but Gobby will not rest until you have been driven out completely. You discover that part of your life that you loved has been ruined, by this monstrous troll and the pieces of bovine faecal matter he says about you.

Your hatred for Gobby is beyond words. It screws with your mind, destroying all moral clarity. You pray for a chance to meet him in a back alley, with a baseball bat in your hand and no inconvenient witnesses … not that any jury in the world, you feel, would convict you even if there were a dozen eyewitness accounts and a CCTV recording. You pray for him to suffer a terrible accident. You tell yourself that blowing up an entire country of 68 million people is a small price to pay, as long as it means getting rid of Gobby. It goes on and on until you eventually calm down, and try to rebuild your life, only to discover that Gobby is still there and every time you show your face he pops up to remind everyone of the Ron The Death Eater version of you, the version that does not exist outside his fevered mind yet far too many people believe because the lies have been repeated time and time again. No matter how hard you try, you will never rebuild what you have lost. Gobby will make sure of it.

(Image from TV Tropes)

You carry on, sadder and wiser. You never forget, and you never forgive.

And then, a new player arrives.

This person’s username is ‘IHateHomos.’ They write detailed articles with titles like ‘Dumbledore cannot possibly be gay because Dumbledore is the big good and all gay people are evil” or “Dumbledore being gay is proof that he is eviler than Voldemort and Umbridge put together.” Whenever IHateHomos is challenged on his bigotry, he responds by calling his opponents homophobic slurs and generally mocking them.

Just in case there is any doubt, IHateHomos is a 100% homophobe and a complete w***** to boot.

Gobby is over the moon. For the first time in never, he has finally discovered a real homophobe. (Actually, given the number of people he accuses of homophobia, he is bound to be right sooner or later.) He starts his usual spiel: IHateHomos is a homophobe and everyone should unite against him.

And you look at the evidence and you decide that Gobby might be a complete so-and-so, but he’s right and so you work with him to chase IHateHomos out of the community …

Right?

Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.

No.

This is Gobby we are talking about, the person you know – beyond a shadow of a doubt – is a liar, a bully, an abuser, and a lot of other horrible things. If Gobby told you it was going to be sunny tomorrow, you would make sure to carry an umbrella with you. Nothing Gobby says can be trusted, as far as you are concerned, and you have all the evidence you need to convince yourself that this is true. And so, when Gobby starts going on about IHateHomos being a homophobe, you don’t bother to look at the evidence; you just think Gobby is up to his old tricks again. Your whole response boils down to:

Silence impression>

“STUPID LYING GOBS****. THE LYING LIAR WHO LIES AND LIES AGAIN. LIE ONE MORE TIME, AND KNOW THAT NO ONE BELIEVES A WORD YOU SAY.”

And this is an entirely reasonable response. Gobby has zero credibility – no, negative credibility – as far as you’re concerned, and you don’t want to waste a single nanosecond of your time on his nonsense. Why should you?

But perhaps you look a little closer. And you see the articles IHateHomos wrote, and it all looks very disconcerting and perhaps Gobby actually has a point …

… And then you remember how he creatively edited your statements, or took things you said out of context, or blatantly lied about things you didn’t say, or beliefs you didn’t hold, or just threw random crap at you to see what would stick. You have excellent reason to believe that Gobby is up to his old tricks again, and that IHateHomos is just another target for his lies. For all you know, his real username is ILoveHomosexuals and Gobby creatively edited his username just to make him look bad.

And again, this is entirely reasonable.

But perhaps you look closer still, and it dawns on you that Gobby is entirely correct and that IHateHomos really is a homophobe. You look closely enough that you cannot deny that you are looking at a real-life homophobe. So you let bygones be bygones, and work with Gobby to toss out the monstrous interloper …?

Of course not. IHateHomos might be a homophobe, but Gobby is a deeply personal enemy (in contrast to someone whose unpleasantness is somewhat abstract). You could not trust him to work with you, and you could not expect him to drop his grudge against you when the campaign against IHateHomos is concluded. You have no interest in exposing your back to him again; you certainly don’t trust him enough to grant him any power over you.

And deep inside, there’s a part of you that enjoys watching Gobby being driven into a frenzy of helpless ranting by this person, no matter how unpleasant, who refuses to allow Gobby to bully him. Gobby’s hysteria is hilarious, his discovery that no one believes him when he points to a real homophobe is just what he deserves. You take spiteful pleasure in watching Gobby get ignored, in watching IHateHomos climb higher and higher even though you don’t like him and you think it is just a matter of time until he falls too. You may even realise that his existence within the community will be used to smear the entire community, but you don’t care.

The truth is, Gobby called so many people homophobes, rather than engaging with them in a legitimate manner, that by the time a real homophobe turned up he had already spent all his cred and everyone just rolled their eyes and ignored him.

Put bluntly:

If you get called a racist because you believe that Picard embodies the ideals of Star Trek better than Sisko, you’ll give the benefit of the doubt to the rectum who thinks black people have no place in the franchise.If you get called a sexist because you believe the Thirteenth Doctor is the worst of the Nu-Who Doctors, you’ll turn a blind eye to the rectum who thinks all female companions should be young, blonde, and have IQs smaller than their bra sizes.If you get called a homophobe because you think the romance in Call Me By Your Name is , you’ll side with the rectum who thinks gay romance should never be depicted in the movies.

You can make a reasonable argument for any of these points, but Gobby won’t let you. He just wants to smear.

And so you hate him, and refuse to listen when he’s actually right.

***

As Scott Alexander put it, we need to have a national conversation about why we can no longer have a national conversation.

Politics is a journey, and two or more people can arrive at the same destination without travelling in tandem. If Jack (who lives in Washington) and Jill (who lives in New England) both wish to visit New York, they will take very different routes to get to their destination and never meet until they actually arrive in the city, if indeed they ever meet at all. Two voters who vote the same way – for or against Trump/BREXIT/The Voice/etc – may have very different reasoning for why. A person who voted for Donald Trump because he thought immigration keeps wages low and expected Trump to stop it, or believes Trump will convince corporations to bring back the factories that were once the heart of flyover country, is a very different case to the person who believes Hilary Clinton is a criminal who got away with it and voted for Trump because the alternative was Hilary.  Both of them are very different, in turn, from the people who cast their vote because they thought no woman could ever be President or that it was time there was a female President, regardless of her other qualifications for office.

Or, to tackle a more thorny subject, the person who wants to ban abortion might be a misogynistic rectum, but they might instead sincerely believe that abortion is murder and allowing abortion under any circumstances will rapidly and inevitably lead to abortion being permitted in all circumstances. In contrast, the person who wants to permit abortion might be a satanic baby-killer, yet they might instead sincerely believe that a woman has the absolute right to control her own body and any infringement on her rights will rapidly and inevitably lead to her losing all rights.

There is a middle ground here, and we could find it if we talked about it, but we don’t. Why not?

Gobby.

It’s all his fault.

His, and everyone who acts like him.

One of the fundamental problems of modern society is that understanding is often taken for approval. To outline why someone might do something, from the harmless to the very dangerous, is to run the risk of Gobby popping up and attacking you:

YOU: The Colonists voted for Baltar because [good reasons].

GOBBY: So, you support a fool who is an accessory to genocide – twice!

It is easier, and safer, to smear anyone on the other side – particularly if you don’t know any of them – than it is to try to understand then. It is no longer possible to emulate Spock and say “I do not approve, I understand.” Instead of engaging with the other side, and trying to put together reasonable compromises, Gobby and his pals make compromise impossible. They also make it impossible to deal with bad actors on both sides – if you’ve watched people get attacked and driven out for spurious reasons, time and time again, you won’t be comfortable doing it again, even when the person in question really does need to be driven out.

Like I said above … if you get called a [horrible thing] and you know very well you are NOT a [horrible thing], you’ll roll your eyes and ignore Gobby when he insists that someone else is a [horrible thing].

The origin of our current problem, therefore, is simple. Instead of acknowledging and addressing legitimate concerns, the political and media establishment has resorted to slander … a tactic that has seriously backfired, because their charges have lost their power long ago … and attacks on free speech, which make it impossible to discuss matters openly and hammer out reasonable compromises. Worse, because smearing and slandering implies an inability to debate openly, it actually gives strength to candidates who are the political counterparts of IHateHomos. Worst of all, because Gobby has weakened or driven out many of the decent candidates, the voters have a flat choice between someone who at least promises to pay attention to them …

… And someone who treats them as Gobby treated you.

History, as Marx pointed out, tends to repeat itself as farce. In 1815, Napoleon returned to France and reclaimed his throne, briefly, despite leading France to defeat the previous year. Why did he succeed? Well, there were a great many reasons, but one of the most important – if you ask me – was that Louis XVIII and his cronies had spent the time between their restoration of the monarchy and Napoleon’s return reminding the French precisely why they’d revolted in 1789. Reconstructing France would have been a difficult task, perhaps impossible, for a man of genius; Louis XVIII was very definitely nothing of the sort. His failure to address the underlying problems of society ensured his regime was riding for a fall. The same can easily be said of Joe Biden.

Why is Trump, despite everything, still a reasonable candidate for a return to the White House?

Because Gobby, and all of the people who emulate him, have made it impossible to address the problems Trump exploited, in his first bid for the White House. And even if Trump drops dead tomorrow, those problems will not go away …

OUT NOW – The Forsaken (The Empire’s Corps XXII)

A new stand-alone novel of The Empire’s Corps!

They were loyal to the Empire, but the Empire was not loyal to them …

Montezuma was an isolated world, of interest to no one, until an interstellar corporation discovered vast resources of rare materials under the surface, just waiting to be extracted and sold. The corprats legally stole the planet, crushed the native dreams of independence and brought in vast numbers of outsiders to mine the rough-hewn world, leaving poverty, pollution and deprivation on an unimaginable scale in their wake.

But now the Empire has fallen and the corporation has betrayed its workers, abandoning them to fight or die on an unforgiving world …

Download a FREE SAMPLE, then purchase from the links here – Amazon US, UK, CAN, AUS, Universal, Draft2Digital Stores.

Snippet – The Burning World (A Learning Experience)

Prologue I

From: Covert Operations of the Solar Union, Baen Historical Press, 101SY.

The founders of the Solar Union faced very real problems balancing the need for operational security against their deeply held beliefs that secrecy was the beginning of tyranny and the creation of any sort of covert intelligence and/or operations service was asking for trouble in the not-too-distant future. The founders were uneasy aware that bodies like the Central Intelligence Agency or the Federal Bureau Of Investigation had expanded rapidly since their foundation, to the point they became a threat to American democracy while simultaneously losing the ability to carry out their original functions, leading to a series of scandals that did nothing to bolster their reputation and eventually played a major role in the collapse of the United States.

And yet, some degree of covert operations shrouded in secrecy was unavoidable.

It is difficult to explain just how puny Earth was a mere seventy years ago. The raw numbers do not convey the gap between human and galactic military power, nor how easy it would have been for even a low-rank galactic power (the equivalent of a third world state) to conquer Earth. The Solar Union needed to remain hidden from the galactic mainstream, while developing the technology needed to challenge the Tokomak – unquestioned masters of the known universe – and ensure humanity’s physical safety. This required a number of covert operations, ranging from the deployment of mercenary troops to earn galactic currency to intelligence gathering operations carried out hundreds of light years from Earth. Many of those operations remain classified to this day, for fear of retribution. Only a handful have been declassified, and many more will remain classified until the current crisis is over.

The basic details of the covert operation on Belos, fifteen years after First Contact, have remained secret until now. The inhabitants of Belos – the Belosi – had the extreme ill luck to inhabit a system with no less than three gravity points, practically ensuring that they would be conquered by someone more powerful well before they developed technology of their own. This bad luck was magnified by the fact their conquerors were the Tichck, a race known for a cutthroat attitude to business and a willingness to do whatever it took to build and keep their power. They crushed the Belosi, then enslaved them on a scale beyond anything ever seen on Earth and exploited their homeworld ruthlessly. This tragedy was far from unique, in those days, but what made it interesting to humanity was the establishment of a top-secret research consortium on Belos. This consortium’s installations played host to a number of GalCores, the keys to hacking and subverting the vast majority of GalTech. If humanity could obtain the GalCores, by foul means as fair means were simply impossible, it would give the human race a chance to catch up before their existence was discovered by the galaxy at large.

A covert operations team, The Firelighters, was dispatched to Belos, with orders to secure the GalCores without revealing humanity’s involvement in the affair. Their first attempt to steal the enemy technology failed, forcing them to flee into the countryside. There, they made contact with rebel Belosi and discovered, to their horror, that the planet was on the verge of becoming uninhabitable. The Belosi were likely to become extinct. Using a combination of galactic technology and human ingenuity, the Firelighters set out to give the Belosi a fighting chance.

The operation, aided and abetted by a persistent Tichck refusal to admit the Belosi could be dangerous, was a major success. The uprising secured control of one of the three big megacities, giving the team a chance to obtain the GalCores and cover their tracks so completely human involvement was never even suspected. (The Tichck blamed the incident on one of their rivals, and war threatened until the Tokomak poured water on the blaze.) More importantly for the Belosi, the team captured a number of starships capable of carrying vast numbers of refugees and evacuated as many Belosi as possible into interstellar space before the Tichck, now aware of the seriousness of the threat, could launch a counter-attack. By the time the Tichck regained control of the high orbitals, nearly two hundred thousand Belosi had been evacuated.

The team returned to their home base, where it was decided that the Solar Union would continue to provide a degree of support to the Belosi, who had lost their homeworld, but that support would remain firmly at arm’s length. Many people who were in the know about the operation regarded the decision as dishonourable, even if they realised the importance of maintaining Earth’s security. Had the Tichck proven humanity’s involvement, or even suspected it to their own satisfaction, the results would have been disastrous. The Solar Navy of 15-40SY was simply incapable of defending Sol against a major galactic power, and there was no reason to believe the Tichck would show mercy. Quite the opposite. The truth remained concealed until after the Tokomak War, which ended forever the belief that the Tokomak were the masters of the universe. Humanity had beaten them, and nothing would be the same again.

And then, with the galaxy in flux, everything changed.

Prologue II

The servants were Tokomak. Of course.

Chairperson Harpeth watched them bustle about, bringing the directors of the Tichck Consortium food and drink, and allowed himself a sharp-edged cold smile. Hiring servants from the galaxy’s hyperpower – former hyperpower – was a display of wealth and power on a scale few could match, conspicuous consumption taken to an extreme even most Galactics found distasteful. The Tichck did not. It wasn’t enough to have enough wealth to purchase hundreds of star systems, or corrupt the most virtuous minds of the galaxy; they wanted – they needed – to show the universe they’d made it. The servants were expensive, but that was the point. They needed to show off their power in a manner none could deny.

His smile sharpened briefly, revealing sharp predator teeth, as the holographic display flickered to life. Other races might look at stars and planets, gauging the balance of military power, but the Tichck looked at economics, silently assessing their possessions, clients, debtors and the many – many – galactic influencers who owed them favours. Harpeth knew – he had no illusions – that his race was hated throughout the known galaxy, yet it hardly mattered. The Tichck had never heard of Machiavelli, but they would have agreed wholeheartedly that the entire galaxy could hate, as long as it feared. And they were feared.

He leaned back in his chair and studied the display. The consortium was so rich, even in the galactic downturn that had followed the war, that it couldn’t be described in a manner that didn’t involve incredible superlatives. There were entire accounting corporations devoted to keeping track of their possessions, from planets and interstellar trade alliances they owned outright to stocks and shares held in companies that didn’t know – or cared – who had an interest in them; there were hundreds of thousands of powerful figures who had taken out loans, then discovered – too late – that they were expected to repay their benefactors in something other than money. And there were alien institutions that would have been very surprised, if they’d discovered who was patronising them. It wasn’t so easy to push them in the right direction, but Harpeth had always enjoyed a challenge. In his experience, academics were the easiest to corrupt of all.

The servants finished their tasks and retired, bowing as they left the compartment. Harpeth wondered, idly, if their immense salaries made up for the indignity of serving a lesser race, then asked himself if their salaries could be cut in the wake of the war. It would make the point that the Tokomak were no longer what they were, that their people could be abused with impunity. They had lost most of their power in a single catastrophic war and now they were vulnerable. Perhaps it was time to for the other powers to take their long-awaited revenge. Or just teach the galaxy’s former masters what it felt like to have your fate decided on a world hundreds of light-years away, by people who knew nothing about you and cared less.

There was no small talk. Each and every one of the directors had clawed his way to his post, each and every one of them knew their peers were plotting against them, planning to bring them down by any means necessary. They were not friends and never would be, nor did they even admire each other’s skill at decade-long political manoeuvres that ended with one party dead or disgraced, a fate most of the directors would agree was worse than death. Harpeth had wondered, sometimes, if the endless competition was bad for the race, forcing them to dominate each other as much as the surrounding galaxy, but there was no point in trying to calm the competition. The Tichck had evolved on a very harsh world, their ultimate survival in doubt until they’d managed to climb into orbit, and their instincts hadn’t changed at all. How could they? The galaxy was a very dangerous place. And competition meant the strongest would always rise to the top.

“The galactic situation has changed beyond imagination,” he said, calmly. The shift had shocked him, even though he and his ancestors had been working patiently for the day the Tichck could displace the Tokomak and take control of the known galaxy. The idea of a relatively new and primitive race from thousands of light-years away being able to fight its way to Tokomak Prime, destroying hundreds of thousands of starships in the process, was just absurd. And yet it had happened. “We have a window of opportunity to take control.”

There was a long pause. The Tichck were not a particularly cautious race – their evolution had taught them that some opportunities only came once – but they were aware of the risks. The balance of power had been slipping in their favour for centuries, leaving them positioned to take over … and now, everything they wanted was right in front of them, inviting them to reach out and take it. The prize was absolute domination of the known galaxy, the destruction of their foes and profit on a scale beyond even their dreams. But the risk was incredibly high.

“We will never be a popular race,” Harpeth said. They didn’t care about the opinion of most other races, save perhaps the Tokomak, and yet they were wise enough to know they were hated. “If we do not take power, someone else will. And that will be bad for us.”

“We have power and influence even over our enemies,” Chairman Tomah said. “We could continue to build our power from afar.”

Harpeth dismissed the caution with a wave of his hand. The interstellar economy was in ruins. Their control over the interstellar banking system had never been complete and now it was worse than useless. It was just a matter of time until their enemies started repudiating their debts, or simply refusing to pay. The Tichck had a powerful fleet, true, but they couldn’t fight a war with the entire galaxy. Once the chain of debt repudiations began, they would be unstoppable. It could not be tolerated. They had to act fast.

“Our enemies are already moving to secure the gravity point nexuses,” Harpeth said. “They will splinter our lines of control, intentionally or not, and make it difficult to retain what we already hold, let alone expand it. It is just a matter of time before they unite against us, or even merely form coalitions that will lock us out of hundreds of interstellar marketplaces. And that will be the end.”

He let his words hang in the air. The Tichck really were unpopular. He could understand it, intellectually, even though the idea there was something morally wrong by expanding their control in any way they could was beyond him. The galaxy was red in tooth and claw, an uncivilised nightmare where the strong did as they pleased and the weak suffered what they must. He knew what his people had inflicted on others, in their quest to dominate the known universe, and knew it would be inflicted on them if the worm ever turned. They were powerful, true, but if the other Galactics united against them the war could have only one ending. The Tokomak had thought themselves untouchable. The humans had proved them wrong.

“We must act now,” he said. “This is our chance.”

There was no debate. The directors knew the situation as well as he did. The lure of absolute power was irresistible. The Tokomak had been fools, not to exploit their hegemony mercilessly, but the Tichck would not make the same mistake. They would take control of the core worlds before anyone could unite against them, then secure the rest of the galaxy and beyond. Their ships would carry their goods from world to world, their military would blast open doors protectionists tried to slam in their face, their economic might would turn every other race into their servants, their slaves. It would be an empire that would last forever, led by a race that competed amongst itself to ensure only the strongest took the helm.

“This is our day,” Harpeth said. “And we will seize the opportunity without delay.”

Chapter One

There was little overt difference between the darkness of interplanetary space and the darkness of interstellar space, but spacers often felt the latter was far more dark and dangerous than the former. The sheer vastness of the vacuum between the stars was just too big for them to grasp, the sense of being utterly alone – even on a crewed starship – was almost impossible to overcome. Intelligent life pretended to believe there was nothing outside, starships battening down their hatches and remaining in FTL from the moment they left one star system until they reached another. There were rumours of things in the darkness, strange voices whispering from the shadows, none of which had ever been even remotely substantiated. And yet, nearly all intelligent spacefaring races had similar stories.

Colonel Riley Richardson felt alone as the handful of gunboats hung in interstellar space, even though he was surrounded by a dozen Belosi. They were good friends and allies, allies who deserved better than to be kept at a distance from the Solar Union, but … he still felt alone. The Belosi seemed unique, in that the vastness of the interstellar wasteland didn’t disturb them … and yet, he admitted, the monsters they’d left behind were far worse than anything they might find between the stars. It was hard for their elders to recall, sometimes, the homeworld they’d been forced to flee, and their children – of course – didn’t remember it at all. Riley wondered, at times, if the Belosi would eventually evolve into a migrating race; he was fairly sure their elders feared they would, if they didn’t fall further down the galactic scale. There was no shortage of scavengers roaming the rim, somehow keeping themselves going by picking over the leavings of more advanced and dangerous races. The Belosi could easily go the same way, if they weren’t careful. They weren’t the only race that had been effectively kicked off their own homeworld.

The sensor operator looked up. “I have two ships inbound,” she said. “Five minutes to contact.”

Riley nodded, feeling a twinge of disquiet. The Belosi were alien – no one could mistake them for human – but they had picked up a lot of human culture, something that bothered their elders even though they knew little of their own culture and distrusted what few records they had been able to salvage. The Tichck had not just invaded Belos, hundreds of years ago; they’d destroyed the indigenous culture so completely no one had any idea what it had been like, before the invasion. Riley had friends who were Native American, friends who had tried to rebuild their pre-Columbus societies on the Outer Cantons, and they’d had problems recreating authentic tribal societies. But they’d known nearly everything, compared to the Belosi. There was no way to be sure what their world had been like, and it was unlikely that would ever change.

And so they act like us, he thought. Poor bastards.

He studied the sensor display as the seconds ticked down. The Galactics had developed FTL sensors capable of providing warning, if an enemy fleet was nearing one’s system, but it hadn’t occurred to them – until too late – that someone might improve on the concept, to the point of being able to yank a starship out of FTL without warning. The human race had made it work, and the Belosi had taken the original concept and run with it. Riley felt a hot flash of almost parental pride as the gravity net deployed ahead of him, silently cursing the fates that had crushed the Belosi before they could take flight. The Exiles – as they called themselves – had had only fifty years of access to modern technology, but they’d mastered it with terrifying speed. The Solar Union could not ask for a better ally.

“One minute,” the sensor operator said. “Fifty seconds …”

“Prepare to engage,” Riley ordered. “Or to run.”

He felt, more than heard, the rustle of discontent running through the cockpit. The thought of breaking off was unthinkable, even to spacers who knew it was just a matter of time until they ran into a genuine warship. The FTL sensors insisting their quarries were freighters, but there was no way to be sure. The Tokomak had fooled humanity’s sensors by having freighters tow warships through FTL, and there was no reason the Tichck couldn’t steal the idea for themselves. They certainly didn’t suffer from the not-invented-here syndrome.

Something flashed, in the darkness of interstellar space. Riley glanced at the display and breathed a sigh of relief as he spotted the two freighters, skidding through space in a manner that defied logic and reason. Their FTL fields had collapsed, but not quickly enough to keep from giving the ships a shove in the wrong direction … a shove that, if the ship was unlucky, could easily snap the vessel in half. He hoped their FTL drive systems had been fused by the sudden disaster, trapping the ships in realspace. The gravity nets were very effective, but they only worked once. A crew with a working FTL drive and time to react would be able to overcome the gravity net and drop back into FTL, outrunning their tormentors in seconds …

The gunboat shivered, slightly, as the helmsman brought the drives online, driving right towards the freighters. Riley grimaced, inwardly, as the demand for surrender was broadcast, in a manner that would make surrender very unlikely. The Belosi had good reason to hate the Tichck, and refuse to take prisoners, but he’d told them time and time again that that was dangerously counterproductive. There was nothing to be gained by forcing the enemy to fight to the death. He gritted his teeth as the range closed sharply, the enemy crews fighting desperately to bring their shields up before it was too late. They really hadn’t been expecting to be ambushed. His lips twisted in grim amusement. Statistically, they’d be right.

“Enemy teleport denial nets active,” the sensor operator said. The gunboat shuddered as it crashed through the enemy shields, such as they were. “I’m bringing the matter stream projector online now …”

Riley braced himself as the gunboat crashed into the freighter with an audible thud. The enemy crew would know they’d landed, would be scrambling their defenders – if they had defenders – to seal off the outer compartments, expecting the pirates to burn through their hulls and storm into the ship itself. The Belosi had a different idea. It was incredibly risky, even by humanity’s standards, but it had caught the enemy by surprise time and time again. No one had survived to report home.

He snapped his helmet into place, an instant before the teleport field caught him and the rest of the assault team and dematerialised them. There was a hint of a ghostly presence – the techs swore blind he was imagining it – a suggestion that he was trapped in a submolecular realm, and then the real world rematerialised around him. A Tichck stared at him in horror, and astonishment, then reached for a sidearm with surprising speed. Riley shot him with his stunner, feeling a flicker of relief as the alien collapsed. The Belosi would have killed him without hesitation, if he’d tried to fight. And yet, they needed prisoners …

The rest of the bridge crew were Subdo, but they grabbed for weapons anyway. The assault party blasted them with capture goo, leaving them helpless until they could be freed and taken prisoner. It was riskier than stun weapons, but a charge that could stun a Tichck might easily kill a Subdo … they were lucky, Riley told himself, that they were Subdo. They were, in their own way, just as much victims of the Tichck as the Belosi themselves. They were more favoured slaves, true, but slaves nonetheless.

He turned and plugged his hacker datachip into the captain’s access port. It should have granted the boarding party complete control of the datacores instantly, but – not entirely to his surprise – access was denied. The Tichck seemed to have rejected galactic standards on the freighter, something that struck him as odd. Most races tended to modify their military datacores to make it impossible for the Tokomak to hack them easily, but they rarely bothered to do the same for freighters. The hacking crew went to work, trying to crack the protections anyway. Riley turned and surveyed the bridge. It felt unpleasantly small.

Charming, he reflected. The Tichck would have no trouble, but they were amongst the shorter races. The Belosi and their human allies felt uncomfortable, and he was fairly sure the Subdo felt worse. Did they make the interior deliberately smaller to cut costs?

“We’ve sealed the airlocks,” the hacker reported. “But the cargo holds are completely isolated.”

“Get the tow cables attached,” Riley ordered. In theory, they had enough time to search the ship from top to bottom; in practice, there was no point in taking risks. Better to tow the freighters through FTL, then loot the cargo holds once they were completely safe. “I’ll see to the holds.”

He passed command to the lead Belosi, then made his way through the hatch and down a long corridor. The freighter was mostly cargo space, with a handful of living quarters … he glanced into one chamber and winced, remembering the very first night he’d spent in barracks. The Navy hadn’t wanted SEAL candidates to grow soft, and they certainly hadn’t put them in five-star hotels, but compared to the chamber in front of him the navy had treated him like a king. The Tichck hadn’t bothered to do more than install life support gear and a handful of blankets, yet another cost-cutting measure that would come back to bite them sooner or later. He hoped the Subdo were discontented enough to switch sides, when given the chance. If not, they’d be dropped on a stage-one world and given enough resources to survive until the end of the war.

His eyes narrowed as he passed through a pair of sealed hatches, both strong enough to give an enhanced human a very hard time. The Tichck hated spending money and yet they’d gone to great lengths to secure the cargo holds, something that really was odd. He triggered his implants, bringing up his enhanced sensors, as he stepped through the final hatch. The cargo bay reminded him of a colonist-carrier ship, lined with row upon row of stasis tubes, all opaque to prevent him from seeing the contents. He frowned as he keyed the computer screen, trying to bring up the biological life readings, but access was denied. Again. The entire system was completely isolated from the rest of the ship, he noted; it had been designed to remain functional even if the freighter lost power completely. Whatever was inside the tubes, and his imagination provided a number of very disturbing answers, the Tichck were intent on it not getting out.

He raised his head and allowed his eyes to wander the giant hold. There were hundreds of stasis tubes within eyeshot, and if the other holds carried the same cargo there could be over five thousand or more. It depended on how tightly they’d been packed into the hull …

His communicator buzzed. “Sir, we have an incoming warship.”

Riley cursed under his breath. It could be a coincidence, and it might well be, but they couldn’t count on it. A skilled naval crew could shadow a freighter from a safe distance, remaining outside detection range, while dropping in and out of hyperspace long enough to take sensor readings and then resume the chase. They weren’t that far off the shipping lanes, and there was only one least-time course between the two nearest settlements, but …

“Get the freighters into FTL as quickly as possible,” he ordered. The warship might not realise, at least at first, that the gunboats were towing the freighters. Even if it did, it would be leery about following them into the unknown. They’d have to assume they were flying straight into another ambush. “We’ll deal with the cargo later.”

Something moved, behind him. Riley ducked on instinct, barely enough to save himself as an enhanced arm swept through the air above his head and smashed into the nearest tube hard enough to shatter the protective sleeve and disable the stasis field. Riley swung around and cursed as he saw the two cyborgs, one advancing towards him and the other staggering out of the tube. They were human, pale skin warped and twisted with implants that had been put together by sadists and inserted in a manner that would make Mengele blanch. Riley had known the Tichck made use of human cyborgs, descendents of humans kidnapped from Earth centuries ago, but this … he ducked another swing, trying to put enough distance between him and his opponents to draw his pistol or unsling his rifle. It wouldn’t be easy. The cyborgs might not be as advanced as their Solar Union counterparts, unless the Tichck had made advancements in the last few decades, but they were incredibly dangerous and cared nothing for their own lives. It wasn’t clear if the cyborgs were being guided by a central processor, or if they were being allowed to operate on their own, yet it didn’t matter. Up close and personal, they were almost unstoppable.

And there could be five thousand of them on this ship, Riley thought. The first cyborg kept coming; the second looked dazed, his body lurching as if he was being dragged to his feet by an invisible force. Snapping out of a stasis field shouldn’t produce that much confusion, but who knew? That’s an invasion force …

He darted backwards again, then ducked as the first cyborg boosted and threw himself at Riley with incredible speed. The force of the impact sent him tumbling backwards, the cyborg landing on top of him and drawing back a fist for the final blow. Riley measured the cyborg’s strength – the Tichck had definitely improved their implants – and then yanked his knife from his belt and stabbed upwards with his enhanced strength. The cyborg shuddered violently as the knife went into his chest, then tried to strike Riley anyway. He barely managed to shift his head before the blow hit the deck. Hard.

Riley yanked the knife out – the wound was already closing, another improvement on the early cyborgs – and threw it up, straight under the jaw and right into the brain, The cyborg let out a rattling sound, then fell to one side. Riley shoved him away, watching in horror as the implants fought to keep the body alive long enough to continue the fight. It was hard not to feel sorry for the cyborg. He had been grown in a tube, conditioned to obey from birth, implanted with tech that made disobedience pretty much impossible … Riley had no idea if the Tichck had worked out there’d been a cyborg with the mission on Belos, but they were clearly not taking any more chances. He bent down, recovered his knife, and made certain the poor bastard was dead. It was difficult to be sure. The implants really had been improved.

The second cyborg fell out of the tube and stood up, moving in a jerky manner that suggested he was drunk.  Riley drew his pistol, making sure to conceal the movement, and put a plasma pulse through the cyborg’s head. He couldn’t help feeling guilty as he keyed his communicator to report in, then checked the rest of the tubes to make sure the stasis fields remained firmly in place. The cyborg hadn’t deserved the death penalty – if he’d ever had an original thought in his entire life, it had been against the will of his creators – but there’d been no choice. He’d been too dangerous to leave alive and, without the control codes, there had been no way to put him back in stasis. Riley had no idea why they’d let one of the cyborgs out of his tube …

They knew we were going to board them, he thought, numbly. And the cyborgs might have been their only hope.

He tapped his communicator. “Leave the rest of the holds sealed,” he ordered. “We won’t try to open them until we get the ships somewhere safe, then see what they really conceal.”

His mode darkened as he turned away. The Tichck were incredibly wealthy. Cloning five thousand humans and turning them into brain-dead cyborgs would cost nothing more than pocket change, as far as they were concerned; Riley would be surprised, very surprised, if there were only five thousand. They could easily churn out millions of cyborgs, crafting an unstoppable army that would not, that could not, turn on its masters. The Tokomak had forbidden it, but the Tokomak were gone.

“I checked the navcomp,” the sensor operator said, when he returned to the bridge. “The ship passed through Belos.”

“Interesting,” Riley said. He felt uneasy. He wouldn’t feel any better until they got the ship somewhere safe and made sure the cyborgs were firmly in stasis. “What was it doing there?”

“I don’t know,” the operator said. “But the crew will.”

“We’ll find out,” Riley said. It wasn’t unusual. Belos had been an interstellar nexus for centuries. The events on the planet’s surface hadn’t made the gravity points vanish, ensuring that interstellar shipping would keep passing through the system for centuries to come. “And then we can decide what to do next.”

He sighed, inwardly. The Belosi had advanced in leaps and bounds, since the refugees had been evacuated from their homeworld, but they had a long way to go before they could challenge the Tichck openly. The Solar Union had been reluctant to make any open commitment to them, even after the Tokomak had been given a bloody nose. Riley understood the logic, but he couldn’t help finding it dishonourable. The Solar Union wouldn’t have survived without the Belosi. They owed them. And yet the risk of helping them openly was too high.

But he knew, as he forced himself to sit and wait, that times were changing …

… And that which had once been considered unthinkable was now very thinkable indeed.

Some Reflections On The Current Populist Situation

Normal commenting rules apply.

Some Reflections On The Current Populist Situation

[Humphrey’s] gambit in “Man Overboard” to get rid of the Employment Secretary in order to foil his plan to move half of the armed forces Oop North backfires spectacularly in the very last minute of the episode when Hacker decides that now that the Employment Secretary is gone, he can implement the plan anyway and take the credit for it himself. It’s only then that Humphrey realises that he spent so much time engineering the Employment Secretary’s downfall that he never bothered to discredit the actual plan, leaving him with no counter argument— and as Hacker unwittingly points out, he’s actually strengthened several of the arguments for it without realizing.

–TV Tropes, Yes Minister.

You may have noticed that I have not written much about politics recently.

It is true that I have not had much time to do it. My life is going through one of its more complicated periods, leaving less time to write for fun or even keep up with the news, and it is unlikely that will change any time soon. But is also true that I have grown deeply frustrated with modern politics. In London and Edinburgh, Washington and Berlin and Dublin and Amsterdam, it has grown increasingly clear that modern politicians and the media have learnt nothing from the last two decades, nor are they willing or able to take steps to address the source of our current woes. In response, populism is on the rise, fuelled by desperation and a complete lack of trust in institutions, increasingly unwilling to compromise and increasingly driven by the frustration of a bullied teenager who has been taunted so much he can no longer think, but merely wishes to hurt his tormentors as much as possible even at great cost to himself.

This would be bad in any case, but it is particularly bad now when the shortcomings of liberalisation, globalisation, and progressivism have become increasingly apparent. The world has become a far more dangerous place in the last decade, and our governments – far from taking reasonable measures to address very clear dangers – have preferred to concentrate on virtue signalling. In doing so, they have undermined public trust to the point that far too many people refuse to believe a word they say, and instead of realising they need to display a willingness to fix this issue they remain in deep denial, preferring to smear or silence the person who points out that the emperor has no clothes than acknowledging the undeniable truth. They have become so divorced from the needs of ordinary people that they are unable to understand how they appear to their subjects, displaying all the maddening arrogance of rich kids who have never been held accountable for anything in their entire lives.

I’m going to go on a small tangent here, but bear with me a little.

What do Donald Trump and Andrew Tate have in common?

I first heard about Andrew Tate in the context of him being deplatformed, and when I read up on the matter I was not impressed with either Tate or his enemies. I thought, and still do, that deplatforming Tate was a mistake for two separate reasons.

First, deplatforming Tate would (and did) give his words a credence they do not deserve, while simultaneously undermining his critics by demonstrating their inability to debate Tate openly.

Second, left to his own devices, a man like Andrew Tate will inevitably find a way to make an utter fool of himself. By providing absolute proof that ‘they’ were out to get Tate by any means necessary, they gave Tate an ironclad excuse for his own mistakes and retain supporters even after he did embarrass himself in public.

The secret of Tate’s success is two-fold. First, young men are having an increasingly hard time of it. The lives of their fathers and/or grandfathers are increasingly out of their reach: it is harder to find a permanent job, or enough income to afford a wife and children, while they are systematically being deprived of safe spaces and natural outlets for their energy, lectured on their flaws, and whenever they try to argue that this isn’t right they are shamed or silenced, creating resentment that a man like Tate can exploit. And he did.

Second, even worse, there is no one else. Decent male role models are increasingly lacking. Politicians rarely talk openly about male issues; male teachers are quite rare in primary schools; male characters are bashed and/or degraded (Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, for example; see also the contrast between Book!Ron Weasley and his movie counterpart) … the establishment, with the best of intentions, created a vacuum and into this vacuum demons poured. I suspect that most of Tate’s followers would never have followed him in the first place, if they’d had a better alternative. But they saw none. As Scott Alexander put it:

“But when you deny [that there is a problem] and abuse anyone who brings it up, you cede this issue to people who sometimes do think [racist/sexist/etc BS]. And then you have no right to be surprised when all the most frequently offered answers are super toxic.”

(Go read the whole article. It’s food for thought even if you don’t agree with it.)

Why did Donald Trump become Candidate Trump, and then President Trump, and now de facto Candidate Trump again and quite possibly the next President of the United States of America?

The secret of Trump’s success is very similar to Tate’s. First, the GOP betrayed its voters, leaving them angry and resentful and very willing to listen to a candidate like Donald Trump, who actually listened to them, instead of berating them. Second, the Democrats betrayed their voters, leaving them angry and resentful and willing to stay home in 2016 or even vote for Trump out of spite. Third, instead of learning the right lessons from defeat, both parties acting like spoilt children who had been told ‘no’ for the first time in their lives. The GOP elite edged away from Donald Trump as much as possible, while the Democrats did everything they could to sabotage his presidency, by fair means or foul.

This worked in Trump’s favour. First, it provided him with an ironclad excuse for failure, one that would be rooted in truth. Second, it undermined the legitimacy of his enemies, make it harder for them to convince Trump’s supporters that they were making a dreadful mistake. Third, having proven they were prepared to throw all restraint aside to defeat Trump, it became easy for Trump and his supporters to claim that the election of 2020 had been stolen, and all the post-election charges levelled at Trump were nothing more than political malice.

But, again like Tate, President Trump would have remained a Simpsons joke if there had been any reasonable alternative.

Trump’s supporters are not, by and large, horrible people. But they are desperate. They have seen their communities hollowed out and destroyed, watched helplessly as the jobs go away and hopelessness spreads like a plague, they have watched government become more and more inefficient (in a manner they consider to be indistinguishable from malice), they have watched the rich grow richer and then offer advice that is at best incredibly condescending and at worst actively counter-productive. They see government as being dominated by distant bureaucrats more interested in their own power bases than in helping people; they increasingly hear government advice which is foolish and openly rooted in ignorance, leading them to dismiss such advice as much as possible. They see the rise in double standards, which has led to bitter cynicism as well as distrust; they watch the rich-kid arrogance dominate discourse and shake their heads in dismay. They feel powerless, which leads to nasty moments when they try to seize a little power. They are angry, and they have good reason to be.

And when they try to raise these issues, they are smeared.

The average Trump supporter does not just think the media lies to him; he thinks the media lies about him. And to a very great extent, he’s right. And he’s not the only one who thinks this way …

This has an obvious effect. Once you are convinced the media (or someone) lies about you, it’s a very short jump to concluding the media is lying about someone else. If you voted for Trump over Hillary because you thought Trump would bring back the jobs, and you get called a misogynist because you voted against the female candidate, there is no reason why you should accept the charge that someone else is a misogynist and several good reasons why you shouldn’t. Charges of bigotry, however defined, been thrown around so carelessly they no longer have any power and, worse, they provide cover for real bigots.

The key to defeating Donald Trump is not to take him down by measures that look unfair, illegal, blatantly anti-democratic or anything else along those lines, certainly in the eyes of his supporters. Trump himself, as I have said before, is not the cause of America’s problems, any more than Geert Wilders is the cause of the Netherlands’ problems or the AfD is the cause of Germany’s problems. They are symptoms, symptoms of a far deeper problem running through Western society. This problem is a lack of faith in government, and it’s caused by governments proving they don’t deserve such faith. This problem will not go away if Trump et al does.

The key is to address legitimate concerns raised by voters, and quickly. Politicians, to paraphrase Sir Terry, have sold the sizzle for so long that they have forgotten they have eventually to produce the sausage. It will be very easy to separate Trump from his supporters by addressing their legitimate concerns, and working hard to reform government to ensure it meets the needs of people. But this will require the politicians to actually listen to those concerns, and stop listening to special interests who have agendas of their own or activists who are unwilling to accept that disagreement can possibly be legitimate. It will require the politicians to acknowledge their own role in creating this crisis of democracy, and take steps to make reforms before reforms are made for them.

But I am not hopeful. I wish I was, but I’m not.

The Year In Review (2023)

First, a reminder that my free book offer starts tomorrow.

I published The Revolutionary War (The Royal Sorceress V),  The Lone World (Ark Royal XIX), The Demon’s Design (Schooled in Magic XXV, The Firelighters (A Learning Experience VII),  A Hope in Hell (The Heirs of Cataclysm Book III),  The Land of Always Summer (Mystic Albion II), (Schooled in Magic  novellas), Judgement Day (Ark Royal XX), and Queenmaker (Stuck in Magic III). I also submitted novellas to  Fantastic Schools 6  and Fantastic Schools Staff (Fantastic Schools).

It’s been an interesting year, full of ups and downs. Some good things – we visited Morocco, Turkey and Malaysia – and some bad, mainly that I got less done than I wanted. I took the time to experiment with a few different ideas, two in particular, and I’m still waiting to see how well they work out. I’ll keep you updated.

(If you want to pick up any (or all) of those, please feel free to click the links.)

It was a busy time, but I got less done than I wanted. My health was, unfortunately, a major issue. I had the sinus operation early in the year and results have been decidedly mixed. I don’t have days when I cannot work any longer, thankfully, but the pain in my sinuses has not gone away completely. On the plus side, there’s no sign of the cancer reappearing.

I’ve been experimenting with Dragon dictation software, as recommended by several other writers. I found it both good and bad – there are times when it does very well, but other times when it prints out something that has absolutely no resemblance to anything I actually intended to write. Nor is it very good at picking up directions, such as which pieces of text need to be put in quotes. It also produces a number of errors, mainly missing connecting words, that are very difficult to spot because I know what it is intended to say. I wrote two full novels with the software and both of them bad more mistakes that I considered acceptable. One in particular managed to score more error reports from Amazon than any other I wrote. And then, midway through writing The First Witch’s Tale (a SIM novella you will see early next year), I just hit a point where I couldn’t do it anymore. It is still good for essays, and short pieces of work I can proofread effectively, but I’m not thrilled with it for writing actual fiction. I don’t know how David Weber does it.

But I will keep practising.

I have several plans for the coming year. I intend to write a sequel to The Firelighters, provisionally entitled The Burning World, and pick up the Zero universe with the Alchemists Secret. I hit a spot of writers block, which I hope I have overcome (let me know which one you want to see first). I also have plans for more Ark Royal and The Empire’s Core novels – I also intend to finish the next Schooled In Magic story arc (I am currently halfway through the first draft of The Apprentice Mistress, which features a character introduced in ) and possibly experiment with a few more ideas. I also need to finish the Mystic Albion trilogy.

Again, if there is anything you want to see in particular, please let me know.

Anyway, watch this space for future plans. I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year (and if you want to give me a gift, I like reviews).

Chris

Free Books (And Now I’ve Got Your Attention, Merry Christmas!)

As a Christmas gift to my readers, I am giving away a number of books for free! Please feel free to download, and share this post far and wide.

Meet the brave rebels standing up against fascism in a world where Nazi Germany survived the war, join a hopeless war against alien invaders, fight beside marines stranded on a distant world when their empire abandons them, fly into battle beside an outdated carrier which is all that stands between humanity and total destruction and meet a girl without magic, who must somehow survive in a school for magicians … and uncover a very old secret.

These books will be free, between 25th and 29th December.

Merry Christmas!

Storm Front – Amazon

Outside Context Problem – Amazon

The Empire’s Corps – Amazon

Ark Royal – Amazon

The Zero Blessing – Amazon

Snippet – The Apprentice Mistress (SIM 26)

Prologue (Marah)

The trick to remaining unnoticed, through an obscurification spell, was to do nothing that might draw attention to you.

Marah wrapped her magic around her and walked through the crowd of angry citizens, watched warily by armed soldiers and mercenaries who were clearly unnerved, their foreheads shiny with sweat as they eyed the crowd and wondered, no doubt, if it was time to turn and flee before the crowd grew violent. The citizens weren’t permitted to bear arms, not legally, but there were dozens of men carrying muskets, pistols and swords in plain view, daring the Royal Guard to do something about it. Marah was mildly surprised King Frederick III of Valadon hadn’t already ordered them to try, although his orders might have gone missing somewhere in transit. Half the royal messengers had vanished and half of the remainder were working for the dissidents, the factions that wanted change in the kingdom and were no longer prepared to wait for it. Or perhaps the king was just biding his time. If the rumours were accurate, the mercenaries on the streets already were just the first of many.

The crowd looked ready for them. The armed men were covering others, carrying placards with demands and threats written in blocky writing. Others were carrying portraits of famous rebels – Althorn and Jair of Alluvia, Lady Emily of Herself Alone – and marching up and down, chanting their names in a manner normally reserved for the monarch alone. Still others were openly threatening, listing names of aristos renowned for greed and cruelty and reminding them, coldly, that their days were numbered. The smart ones would already have fled. The remainder would die, when the revolution came.

She grimaced, schooling her face into a calm mask as she walked past the guards. She’d donned a male outfit, hiding her red hair under a workman’s cap and adjusting her shirt to hide the curve of her breasts, but the guise wouldn’t last long – if at all – if they saw through the spell. The air was heavy with protection wards, preventing scrying and teleporting and many other spells. Virgil Quintus Fabius – her master – had assured her the obscurification charm should be fine, that it was too minor to be disrupted by the wards, yet she knew better than to take it for granted. She had no fear of the guards – she’d outrun guardsmen before, or used her magic to take them down – but using her magic openly would blow her cover beyond repair. She would have to run, leaving her mission undone. And that would disappoint her master.

And she couldn’t bear the thought of disappointing him.

A pair of guards swaggered past, their pretence undermined by the way they kept their hands close to their swords. The Royal Guard was supposed to keep the city calm, but they’d lost control of many districts and a number of others were teetering on the brink of anarchy. Even the safe districts were nothing of the sort, not for guardsmen. Quite a few had gone out on patrol and simply never come home, their bodies left to the rats. Marah’s hand twitched, the urge to draw her wand and turn them both into frogs threatening to overwhelm her. It would be a vast improvement, but … she shook her head curtly. The spell might be noticed. And that would draw attention, enough attention to tear away her protective charm and leave her exposed to the world.

The Royal Road lay in front of her, disturbingly – almost eerily – empty. The fancy homes and shops lining the road were closed and shuttered, their occupants hiding inside if they hadn’t already fled to the countryside. Marah felt a twinge of dark amusement as her eyes alighted on a particular building, a weird cross between a mansion and an apartment block, that belonged to a merchant-turned-aristo she knew by reputation. The man had build his fortune on the bodies of her family and countless others, then married into the aristocracy; she wondered, idly, if he cared one whit about the men and women left choking in the mines, their health irreversibly destroyed by the dust and flumes. She doubted it. She eyed the building for a long moment, noting the sheer volume of protective wards woven into the stone, and smiled coldly. The man knew he was hated, and had taken precautions. They wouldn’t be enough to save him, when the revolution came. Marah silently promised herself she’d be there, when the time came, to watch the newborn aristo swing.

A shame I can’t use his home for a firing point, she thought. But trying to get across the road now would be dangerous.

Her lips twitched coldly as she inched through the alleyway, then scrambled up the nearest wall. The apartment block was carefully designed to make the walls difficult to climb, but the architect clearly hadn’t been a climber himself. Marah had spent the last few months in the city practicing, joining the rooftop crews and learning their ways. She wasn’t as skilled as some of the street kids – she’d seen a young boy go up a wall she’d thought too smooth to climb – but she was good enough to get to the roof. The secret, she’d been told, was to be careful not to look down. If you froze halfway up, the Royal Guard was more likely to use you for target practice than try to help you.

She scowled as she reached the rooftop, looking around warily. The architect hadn’t realised he’d put his luxury apartments and shops too close together either, allowing the rooftop gangs to move from building to building without ever touching the ground. It was quite possible she wasn’t alone on the roof, although it would be a brave kid who stayed permanently. The guardsmen might also have set up observation posts on the rooftops, if the residents let them. Marah couldn’t help smiling at the thought. The aristos and wealthy merchants would sooner have their throats cut, than be protected by their social inferiors. She could imagine a wealthy matron telling the guardsmen they had to stay out of her home, or wipe their feet – at least – before they entered, and getting away with it. It was astonishing what you could do if you had the money and connections to get away with it.

Not today, she told herself.

She perched on the edge of the roof and peered down at the road. The street was still empty. Good. There would be no confusion about which coach was her target. She couldn’t help feeling a thrill as she unslung her knapsack and removed the special wand, battery and valve, then plugged the latter two into the wand. Her master had promised her a proper mission, when she’d recovered from her visit to Lord Allenstown’s mansion, yet all he’d had her doing was distributing leaflets and practicing her magic skills. Some distribution had been challenging – she’d had to find ways to put the leaflets in home and businesses, without being caught – but the remainder had been boring. Very boring. She had begged and pleaded for something to do. If he’d told her to sneak into the castle and assassinate the king himself, she would have done it.

The wand hummed in her hand, ready to go. Marah leaned back and forced herself to wait. It was important, very important, that she made sure of her target before she fired. The Allied Lands – or what was left of them – had dispatched a diplomat to patch the kingdom back together before it exploded into civil war … or, as she preferred to think of it, to give the moderates a chance to sell out the revolution before it had even taken place. They would, she knew, if they thought they could get away with it. They didn’t want to upend the system and destroy it. They wanted to carve out a better place for themselves. Marah had no illusions about what it would mean for the poor, like her family. They would be slaves still, just to different masters. It could not be borne.

It felt like hours before she spotted the first sign of movement. A lone gilded carriage, pulled by a pair of black horses and escorted by a handful of cavalry troopers, heading towards the gate. She glanced at the sun, noting to her surprise that the carriage was actually early; she’d been cautioned it might be hours, perhaps near sunset, before the diplomat left the castle and headed home. By tradition, he couldn’t actually stay in the city itself – or so she’d been told – but that wouldn’t stop the king doing everything in his power to turn him into an ally. He’d be flattered and feasted and given whatever he wanted – wine, women, song – in a desperate bid to convince him to side with the king. Marah’s lips twitched in disgust. The moderates were fools, if they thought the neutral diplomat was anything of the sort. They were merchants, weren’t they? They should know the danger of letting the king flatter and feast anyone. But then, if they wanted to come to terms that didn’t include outright revolution …

Her hand dropped to her wand, raising it to point at the carriage. Her master had been very clear, when he’d given her the instructions. She would only get one chance, once she triggered the spell. The protections around the royal carriage – another sign of kingly favour – were tough. Her magic, no matter how hard she tried, wouldn’t be enough to break them. But the magic stored in the battery would crack the wards like an eggshell … probably. The magic would flood into the carriage and snuff out all life inside, so quickly the occupant would have no time to react before it was far too late.

She took a breath, bracing herself, and prepped the spell. The guards would be shocked when they saw the blast, giving her enough time to escape. She hoped …

The wand twitched in her hand, the sudden surge of magic making her flinch even as she fought to keep the wand pointed at the carriage. The world seemed to explode with blindingly bright light, rapidly streaming into a ray of raw power that burned through the carriage’s wards and into the wood itself. The horses caught fire, breaking free of their harnesses as they panicked; the coachman threw himself off the vehicle, barely getting clear before it was too late. Marah was almost relieved. The man had worked for the king, and was probably as corrupt as the rest of his court, but he didn’t deserve to die. She hoped he’d have the sense to vanish, rather than face the blame for the disaster. The king would be looking for a scapegoat.

She gritted her teeth as the wand grew warm in her hand, almost burning her … an instant before the carriage exploded. Marah whooped, throwing caution to the winds even as she covered her eyes to protect them from the light. The carriage had become a towering pillar of smoke, a grim reminder of the fate of those who served tyrants …

Something moved, within the smoke. Marah stumbled to her feet, one hand grabbing for the wand at her belt, as she saw a figure flying up. Impossible. She’d unleashed enough power to shatter the wards and vaporise the carriage … for a moment, she thought she was seeing things. The figure came into view … she stared in disbelief as she drew her wand. She’d expected an elderly aristocrat, or a courtier completely dependent on his master, but the diplomat was a young woman only a few years older than Marah herself. She flew under her own power, brown hair fanning out around her … Marah felt a moment of absolute horror as she recognised her. Emily. Lady Emily. Who else could it be?

Emily pointed a finger at her. Marah raised her wand … slowly. Too slowly. Emily’s hand moved …

… And Marah plunged into darkness.

Chapter One

Emily was done.

She stared at the aristocratic family – minor nobility, of little interest to anyone if they hadn’t held lands along the Zangarian border – and felt a headache starting to pound behind her eyes. A father, who had failed to raise his sons; an elder son, who had been nearly murdered by his younger brother and retaliated by framing the younger man for an entire string of crimes; a younger son, so lost in his own grievance that he refused to own his share of the blame; a fiancée, engaged to the younger, who had cuckolded him with the elder and was now carrying his child … a mishmash of hatreds and resentments and sheer bloody foolishness that would give the Lannisters a run for their money. She would almost have preferred to deal with the latter, as short-sighted and obnoxious as they were. At least the three hadn’t been trying to smear and then kill each other.

And Alassa sent you out here to find out what really happened and deal with it, Emily reminded herself, tiredly. She understood her friend’s logic – Emily was the second or third-ranked noble in the kingdom, as well as a powerful magician; there were very few, even amongst the entitled aristocracy who would gainsay her – but it was hard not to think the queen should have handed the matter herself. No one would have blamed her for stripping the entire family of their titles and sending them all into exile.

She sighed inwardly, allowing the silence to grow until the air was uncomfortably tense. That wasn’t true. The aristocracy might not like Earl Wilfred and his family, but they would resist any attempt to strip them of their lands and titles. It would set a terrible precedent, one Alassa could turn against any other nobleman who displeased her. She might get away with disinheriting a lone nobleman, if he committed treason, but an entire family? It would cause too many problems, further down the line. Alassa had sent Emily because there weren’t many others who could make a ruling and then make it stick.

I never wanted to be an aristocrat, she thought, crossly. She almost wished she’d refused King Randor’s offer of lands and titles, even though she knew she’d done a lot of good … ironically, by doing as little direct ruling as possible. And these … people … don’t even have the decency to try to be good rulers.

She allowed her eyes to linger on the four. Heir Primus Harry and his brother Edmund, looking like cheap knockoffs of Thor and Loki respectively, their faces shifting between sullen defiance, self-righteousness and, hidden beneath the self-righteousness, soul-destroying fear. Emily couldn’t help thinking of them as children, young boys who hadn’t quite realised their games had very real consequences.  Lady Lindsay stood beside them, her eyes downcast and her hands clasped behind her back, doing her best to portray the very image of an innocent young woman caught up in a terrible plot. She was dressed for the part, Emily reflected; she’d donned a demure dress, then allowed her hair to hang freely down her back. Earl Wilfred and his wife, Lady Livia, stood on the other side, the earl looking like a broken man and his wife fearful of losing both of her sons in a single day. Emily wondered, sourly, if the older woman had realised something was wrong before it exploded in her husband’s face. She had the eyes of someone regretting her life choices.

“Let me see if I understand everything correctly,” Emily said, keeping her voice under tight control. It hadn’t taken long with liberal use of truth spells and charms, to uncover the entire story. They’d tried to claim the aristocracy was exempt from truth spells, when she’d told them she was going to ensure they were telling the truth, and only the threat of summary judgement against them had quelled their objections. “You” – she pointed to Edmund – “attempted to kill your brother. Twice. He, instead of taking the case to the queen, retaliated by sleeping with your fiancée, framing you for a set of serious crimes and siring a child on her. You discovered this adultery and tried to kill them, which led to your arrest and me being sent out here. Have I missed anything?”

Her lips twitched. Trying to murder your older sibling was flatly illegal – obviously – and, if Harry had gone straight to Alassa, she would have beheaded Edmund or expelled him from the kingdom. Harry could have saved himself a great deal of trouble if he had; he certainly hadn’t needed to frame his brother if his brother was already guilty of attempted murder. But he’d wanted to deal with it himself.

“Harry slept with my wife,” Edmund protested. “He framed me …”

“I’m not your wife,” Lindsey insisted. “You …”

Emily cut her off. “And why didn’t you go to the queen?”

Lindsey looked down. “My father would have disowned me.”

“Really?” Emily cocked her head. “I think the queen would have had something to say about it.”

She sighed, inwardly. On paper, it was legal to arrange a match for your children but illegal to actually force them into marriage. The arrangement had been made when both Edmund and Lindsey were preteens, and they could have said no when they reached marriageable age, yet … Emily understood, better than she cared to admit. Lindsey’s father would have pulled out all the stops to make her consent, from reasoned arguments to threats, beatings and other punishments. Too much rested on the marriage arrangement for him to do anything else; it was possible, all too possible, that he’d sent her to the earl’s castle in hopes she’d be caught in bed with her fiancé. Or that he’d make her …

And Alassa might have helped her, or she might not, Emily thought, coldly. The union would strengthen the border defences, always important in an age of change. Alassa wasn’t a bad person, but it would be easy for her to sacrifice Lindsey’s happiness on the altar of protecting her country. There was no way Lindsey could have counted on her for anything.

Her thoughts hardened. But that doesn’t justify what they did.

“Tell me something,” she said. “How were you planning to fool the paternity test?”

Harry smirked, just for a second. “Edmund was bragging about his stamina in bed.”

Emily rolled her eyes, feeling the last glimmer of sympathy she might have felt for the young man flicker and die. She wouldn’t have blamed him for going to the queen and demanding justice, or drawing his sword and trying to settle the matter in a honourable duel, but framing his own brother for rape, convincing him he was the father of his brother’s child, was going too far. Far too far. The paternity spell might have been fooled – Harry and Edmund were brothers – but Emily wouldn’t have cared to count on it. And an innocent babe would be caught in the storm if – when – the truth came out. It was insane to assume Edmund would be so proud of himself, for sleeping with his fiancée, that he’d refuse the test. They were carried out as a matter of course.

“My Lady,” Earl Wilfred said. “My boys have been very foolish, but …”

Harry and Edmund started arguing, loudly. Emily was silently relieved she was, as far as she knew, an only child. She’d wanted siblings, at least at first, but if a sibling relationship could turn so sour … she’d interrogated Edmund thoroughly, time and time again, to determine just how the things had gone so badly wrong. She could understand him being jealous of his elder brother, who stood to inherit everything, but … that didn’t justify murder. Or anything else. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t have gone south to build a new life for himself, far from his elder brother. He was just a petty and spiteful kid who had never had to worry about retaliation, until it was far too late.

And Alassa sent me to sort out the mess, Emily thought. She wasn’t blind to the political realities underlying the crisis, as minor as it seemed. For trying to murder his brother, Edmund should die; for sleeping with his brother’s fiancée and impregnating her, thus messing up the bloodlines, Harry should die; for willingly cheating on her husband-to-be, Lindsay should die too. She needs a solution that won’t be questioned.

She sighed, inwardly. That was going to be a tall order. Legally, she should kill all three of them. Practically, she knew she needed a better solution. Each brother’s supporters would insist he was the victim and the other the victimiser, particularly given just how far matters that gone before it came into the light. She wondered, idly, just what they’d planned to do about paternity spells. If the unborn child looked suspiciously like Harry, Edmund would have to be a total dimwit not to be suspicious. And his rage was entirely understandable. He had been made to wear horns in front of the entire earldom. The rest of the kingdom would know, and start laughing at him, soon enough.

But he did try to kill his brother, she thought. He deserves it and worse.

She shook her head as the argument grew louder, both brothers reaching for their swords … thankfully, Emily had insisted they both be disarmed before entering the hall. She doubted they were completely unharmed – their fancy outfits provided plenty of space to hide a blade – but she should have time to intervene before they could draw a concealed weapon. Lady Lindsey, too, might have a blade hidden up her sleeve. It was traditional for young women of a certain background.

“Enough.” Emily spoke quietly, but she infused the word with enough magic to make it echo around the hall. “It is time for judgement.”

Her lips quirked. Alassa had told her, more than once, that there was no such thing as too much drama when passing judgement. Emily was starting to see the wisdom of it.

She looked at Harry first. “You are the victim, but you are also the victimiser. Your revenge scheme could have had horrific consequences, for your family and the entire earldom as well as yourself. You could have been brought up to account for cuckolding your brother, if the deception was discovered, and if you married yourself beforehand it would have thrown your marriage arrangement into disarray. Your unborn child” – she nodded at Lindsey – “would have become a legal bastard, stripped even of the protection of being Edmund’s child. It might even have led to war.

“And you didn’t have to do any of this.”

Her eyes moved to Edmund. “You are the victim, but you are also the victimiser. You attempted to murder your brother, which is unforgiveable. You also were framed for rape, and punished accordingly, and to add insult to injury you were tricked into believing your fiancée’s child was yours. Your reaction was extreme. You could have gone to the queen and demanded justice.”

Although any investigation would probably reveal the murder attempts, her thoughts added, silently. There had been other options. Edmund could have gone to his father instead. It would have been messy, a political nightmare, but it could have been resolved relatively quietly. The earl would have bought you off just to keep you quiet.

She looked at Lindsey. “I understand that you did not want to marry Edmund. I also understand that you were under terrible pressure to get married as quickly as possible – and that such pressure can be difficult to resist. That does not excuse sleeping with your future brother-in-law, conceiving his child, framing your fiancé for rape in a bid to explain your pregnancy and effectively cuckolding him. The consequences for your actions would have been disastrous, when the truth finally came out. They would not just have fallen on you, but on an innocent child.”

Emily shook her head. “Did any of you even bother to think past the next few months?”

She didn’t wait for an answer. “Edmund, for your crimes, you will go into exile on the far side of the Craggy Mountains. Your martial contract is dissolved and the dowry and virginity compensation you were forced to pay will be repaid, with interest. In addition, the earldom will pay you a reasonably stipend for the rest of your life, regardless of who eventually inherits. You may take with you whichever of your retainers and servants wish to go, but they must make that choice themselves. Once you go into exile, you may not return without the queen’s permission.”

Edmund opened his mouth to argue. His father snapped at him to close it before he could get out a single word. Emily smiled, inwardly. Earl Wilfred had a working brain, which was more than could be said of either of his sons. They could be executed for their crimes, no matter the justification, and the family’s reputation dragged through the mud. Exile was the best Edmund could hope for, and his father knew it.

“Harry, for your crimes, you are banished from the kingdom until the queen sees fit to permit your return,” Emily continued. “Again, you will be paid a reasonable stipend from the earldom, and may take retainers and servants if they choose to accompany you.”

Earl Wilfred visibly gulped. “My Lady, one of my boys must inherit.”

“Alassa does not want or need aristocrats who step so far over the line,” Emily said. A gasp ran through the room at her casual use of the queen’s first name – a mistake, but not one that could be taken back. “They deserve each other.”

“Then let us fight a duel of honour,” Harry said.

“Honourable duels are for honourable men,” Emily said. Harry was an renowned swords master.  She had no doubt he would kill his brother and use his victory to claim he was cleared of all charges. “There are no honourable men here.”

She looked from face to face. “None of you have acted well,” she said. “And fortunately, there is a way to deal with the issue without fatally undermining the earldom.”

Emily moved her gaze to Lindsay. She could have felt sorry for the girl – she had been engaged to a man she didn’t know, threatened with marriage without her consent – but there was no way Emily could condone Lindsay’s actions. They had been short-sighted and dangerously foolish, and she and Harry would have been left high and dry if Edmund had had the wit to demand the court magician cast truth spells on everyone involved. He had been so drunk, he had to have been, that it was unlikely he could have had sex with anyone. If he had questioned the narrative, it would have come apart in short order. And then Lindsay would have been in very deep shit indeed.

“Lindsay,” Emily said. “I understand your motivations. I cannot condone your actions. Regardless of whether or not Edmund deserved his treatment, you have made life much harder for other young women in your position, all of whom will be put under much tighter supervision and none of whom will be believed if they report mistreatment. Your actions had consequences that will fall on people who have nothing to do with you or your decisions.

“You will go to court, where you will be under supervision, until you give birth. The child will be raised by Earl Wilfred and his wife and, as the child will be a blood heir, designated Heir Primus and the inheritor of the earldom when Earl Wilfred passes away. Afterwards, you will be sent into exile yourself. You may not return to the kingdom without permission from Her Majesty. As harsh it seems, this is a mercy.”

Lindsey’s face was expressionless. But Emily thought she saw a glimmer of relief. It was a mercy. Despite Alassa’s best efforts, there was still a nasty streak of misogyny running through the aristocracy. Lindsay was lucky she wouldn’t be blamed for everything – given how public the scandal had become, it was impossible for the young men to escape at least some of the blame – but she would get more than her fair share. She was lucky, too, that Edmund had attacked his brother rather than going straight to their father. Lindsay would have been sent home in disgrace and her prospects, such they were, ruined beyond repair.

She ignored the grumbling from the young men and the broken look on their father’s face.

“I hope the three of you will make something of yourselves, in exile,” she said. If nothing else, they would be out of Alassa’s hair … which was what her friend had wanted all along. “I have given you each a second chance. I suggest you take advantage of the opportunity before it is too late.”

She turned and left the hall, trying to keep her face under tight control. God, what a tawdry mess! And so unnecessary too. It would have been easy for Harry to go to the queen, instead of embarking on a demented scheme that had ruined his prospects as well as his murderous brother. Or Lindsey … she could have tried, at least, to go to the queen. Even Edmund could have headed south, with his father’s blessing, and tried to carve out a kingdom for himself in the Blighted Lands. It would have been so much better. Who knew, perhaps the two brothers would have repaired their relationship, once there were hundreds of miles between them.

They made their choices, she told herself, sharply. It was … irritating. For every aristocrat she’d met who were noble in behaviour as well as blood, there were a dozen entitled brats who thought their birth entitled them to do whatever the hell they liked. And the world is changing, like it or not.

She kept walking, ignoring the handful of petitioners outside the hall. The aristocratic world was shifting, like it or not, and those who didn’t evolve would die. The revolutions in Alluvia and Tarsier, the ongoing civil war in Kerajaan, the unrest everywhere else, with peasants fleeing repressive lords for more congenial masters or taking up arms when their lords tried to keep them from leaving. The railways were expanding rapidly, the broadsheets were bringing the truth to the people, the airships were taking to the skies … the world was going to change, no matter what the aristocracy tried. There was no putting the demon back in the bottle now …

A shiver ran down her spine, a grim reminder the demonic books were still out there. And the enigmatic Hierarchy, biding its time. She had no idea what it wanted – most people thought it simply didn’t exist – but she doubted she’d be pleased when she found out.

And there are many other problems we’ll have to deal with, in time, Emily thought. But right now I have to report back to Alassa.