Christopher Nuttall

Hi, everyone

This is just a short update – things are likely to get hectic over the next few weeks, so I’m just publishing it now.

I’ve had two releases recently, the long-awaited sequel to Sufficiently Advanced Technology – Sufficiently Analysed Magic – and The Princess Exile, which I hope will be the first in a series of stand-alone novels set in the Schooled In Magic universe. I have several ideas for other stories, from a exiled Prince hiring mercenaries to recover his kingdom (occupied and destroyed by the necromancers), to a story featuring the gentleman thieves (who first appeared in The Princess Exile) and an expansion of The Blademaster’s Tale, which is currently published in Fantastic Schools War. Let me know which one you would Like to see first.

As always, reviews, feedback, and suchlike are very welcome.

I’ve also finished the first draft of The Counterfactual War, which is the direct sequel to Conquistadors. It is being edited now, and I have hopes of getting it out in a month or so. I’ve also written Caleb’s Tale, a short novella set in the Heart’s Eye University between Mirror Image and The Cunning Man, which will be included in Fantastic Schools Universities. We are still looking for more submissions for both Universities and Familiars, so if any of you want to contribute a story please feel free to do so. Guidelines on the page.

My current project is The King’s Secret, which is more or less a direct sequel to The Alchemist’s Secret. Like I said, things have got rather hectic, but I am hopeful of finishing the first draft by the end of April.

This raises an obvious question. What do you want to see next?

There are two options. Tarnished Glory, which is the next Morningstar book, and Wolf in the Fold, which is the next Schooled In Magic book. Which one do you want to see?

As always, I would like to take advantage of this moment to remind you of my mailing list. It is used to let you know when I have a new book and nothing else. (And it also avoids the problem of Facebook et al. hiding posts.) You can also follow me through any of the links here.

Thank you for your time, and I hope you enjoy reading the new books.

Chris

Some Thoughts On Building A Better World

I will never ever be allowed to lead a DEI session.

I am disqualified on several counts. I have common sense. I have a pragmatic understanding of the practical limitations of DEI initiatives (and thus won’t overstep those limits in a manner that destroys the credibility of the whole concept). And finally, I do not stand to benefit from prolonging the problem in any way.

These are fundamental problems with most DEI initiatives. The people offering them rarely have common sense, let alone understanding of just how far they can go and staying firmly on the right side of those limits. And I have a strong suspicion, which is shared by many on both sides of the political aisle, that most of the DEI change agents don’t want to actually solve the problem, if only because it would mean their funding drying up. You may be arguing that this is a very cynical and deeply unfair take, but the sheer pointlessness and counter-productivity of most DEI initiatives suggest that such programs are the province of academic dreamers rather than practical men.

But if I had to lead a DEI session, I would focus on three basic principles:

First, don’t be a jerk.

Second, give some grace.

Third, be a mature adult.

The first principle is a two-edged sword. On one side, it is perfectly fine to disapprove, for example, of homosexuality. It is not fine to harass homosexuals (or people you believe to be homosexual, which is not always the same thing) and doing so makes you a jerk. On the other side, you should not be pushing your beliefs, sexualities, or anything else into someone else’s face. A vegan who not only preaches the benefits of a vegan diet at every opportunity, but actively harasses people for eating meat is being a jerk – and in doing so, that person is poisoning their minds against vegans.

This sword actually has a third edge. When you make a fuss about something which is fundamentally irrelevant to your situation, very few people will take you seriously when you are making a fuss about something which genuinely is relevant. This sometimes leads to some very nasty situations. The person who pushes vegan beliefs on everyone they encounter will not be taken seriously when they complain there are meat products in the food, because they have already convinced their audience that they are a jerk. Worse, perhaps, having annoyed people to the point of total exasperation and/or murderous rage, their audience might be quite delighted at watching the vegan unwittingly eat meat, even though it is pretty cruel.

Being a jerk is not a good thing. Being on the right side of history does not excuse being a jerk.

(Don’t be this guy. Really.)

The second principle is a little more subtle. We live in a society where there are many differences of opinions, and mistakes, from minor misunderstandings like using the wrong names or pronouns to situations that could easily be (or not) sexual harassment/actual threats. If you assume that everyone who makes an error in pronunciation, as George RR Martin did at the 2020 Hugo Awards, did so out of deliberate malice, racism, some kind of phobia or anything else that didn’t involve a simple accident, you will not only come across as a jerk but also make it harder for people to take it seriously when there is a real problem. If you act on the assumption that there may have been a mistake, and don’t treat it as a de facto war crime, the good guys will be grateful for your understanding and the bad guys will realise they have been called out without being pushed into a corner that will force them to either fight to the death or surrender.

When you blast someone who makes a mistake, they get angry. The angrier they get, the harder it is for them to accept you have a point. If you batter them into submission, they will hate your guts – and that hatred will provide cover for people who are genuinely malicious.

Seriously. Give some grace to people who make mistakes. Turning the other cheek sometimes mean getting slapped there too, to mutilate a metaphor, but it does remove all doubt that you are dealing with actual malice.

Third, be mature.

An immature mind seeks to dominate its surroundings. It cannot tolerate different opinions, from the minor (which Star Trek is best) to the major (which presidential candidate of 2024 was a nanometre better than the other). It is not enough to carve out a space for itself; the immature mind must seek to destroy all other minds, to punish anyone who dares to disagree. Or even to argue that the current tactics used by activists are dangerously counter-productive (such as the university professor who was cancelled for daring to suggest the BLM riots and ‘defund the police’ would actually harm the cause). At base, the immature mind is incapable of comprehending not only that it might be wrong, but dissenters have a legitimate right to raise concerns even if those concerns are not in of themselves illegitimate.

The immature mind is also incapable of comprehending the long-term effects of its actions. In the short term, cancel culture – a common tool of the immature mind, which is incapable of comprehending the wisdom of the observation that the master’s tools will never dismantle be master’s house – successfully scattered opposition and terrorised dissenters into pretending to agree (preference falsification). In the long term, cancel culture not only fuelled unreasoning hatred of cancel mobs and convinced many observers that it was about power and control rather than handing out deserve consequences, but it also made it harder for other observers to point to issues that deserve cancellation and even to call out their allies for terrible behaviour because it was important to hang together or be cancelled separately. As Richard Hanania put it:

“As the Overton window in debates within elite institutions narrowed, so that even people who said unquestionably true things were smeared as bigots, the opposition’s Overton window widened, allowing offenses useful to trolls to gain mainstream currency. Those who were canceled—or the millions who observed with disgust as others were—lost all trust in mainstream institutions like academia and the press. The more one side pretended that innocuous things were harmful, the more the other side pretended that harmful things were innocuous.

After Trump’s 2016 victory, left-leaning elites blamed the result on hate and misinformation. It was at that point that Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook began to censor more aggressively. This spurred further entrenchment on the right, which became tolerant of most forms of open bigotry. In their eagerness to form a united front against leftist attempts to police speech, conservatives, particularly those who were online or leaned toward MAGA, made expressions of bigotry a banner the way some on the left had once used pornography as a First Amendment standard.

People who were actually racists loved these developments and helped push them along. After all, if any offensive thing you say can be brushed off as a joke, then ironic trolls and actual Nazis begin to look a lot alike, and a movement inclined to defend only the former will begin to have a knee-jerk positive reaction to the latter.”

The mature mind, by contrast, accepts the limits on what it can and cannot do. It does not penalise people for having different opinions, even when it disagrees strongly with those opinions. It does not overreach, nor does it infringe on freedom of thought and even freedom of speech. A mature mind is content to accept that it may be disliked, that there are people who think that their actions are inherently sinful, as long as they do nothing to interfere with their life. A mature homosexual, for example, may not enjoy knowing that the people who regard homosexuality is inherently wrong, but they accept that as long as the doubters don’t actually try to stop it.

Being mature means saving your energies for what are real problems. It is reasonable to disapprove of a co-worker who has a bumper sticker on his car leading KAMALA KUM-LA or TRUMP THE RUMP, but that does not give you the right to demand he removes his sticker or remove it yourself. A mature mind would understand that the car was his, and that he feels that he is the sole determinant of what sort of bumper stickers he should have, and therefore not waste energy trying to change him when he would regard such attempt as an attack on his freedom to decorate his car as well as his freedom of speech. (This obviously doesn’t apply if the car actually belongs to the company, in which case the company would actually have the final say.)

If you scream like a banshee at the slightest problem, while refusing to discuss the problem in a serious manner, your co-workers will not take you seriously. And why should they?

A mature mind acknowledges that it has to convince, rather than force, people to agree with it. A mature mind therefore puts together a coherent argument, which it can then defend against challengers, and achieves far more than it’s immature counterpart. A mature mind, therefore, outlines the problem, points to very real effects this has on the surrounding population, and proposes solutions. For example, it is easy to point out the harm when a homophobic co-worker abuses his homosexual colleagues. It is also easy to argue that this is not infringing on a person’s right to have whatever opinions they please, but confronting extremely unpleasant behaviour.

A mature mind is also very aware of the effect it has on others. It understands that its behaviour can be seen as threatening, fairly or otherwise, and takes steps to counter it. It also understands that it takes time for real social change, and trying to push faster than society will bear will likely provoke pushback. It may feel that this is unfair, but it recognises the fundamental reality that acceptance takes time.

Put simply, the mature mind recognises that:

1. someone has the right to an opinion and,
2. they do not have to listen to it.

Why did I write all this?

We live in a world plagued by people who feel that they have the right to push others around, that their causes justify their actions, and that any dissent, no matter how minor, cannot be tolerated. Worse, we live in an age of unprecedented intrusion into our lives. We are no longer granted, in many ways, the privacy of our own homes, or even our own heads. It is no longer possible to remain silent, or to maintain a silence. Silence is complicity, we are told, and we are no longer even able to discuss the problems. If you don’t have the right opinions, you get attacked.

This has provoked vicious pushback, from the tolerance of people who genuinely should not be tolerated to the election of Donald Trump and the rise of many other right-wing populists. The concept of DEI now provokes such loathing that there are far too many people who are willing to throw out the baby as well as the bathwater, and far too many others unwilling to admit that the whole concept went too far and needs to be dialled back sharply before it is too late. (As The Atlantic put it, If Liberals Do Not Enforce Borders Fascists Will.) Worse, this has fed a bitter cynicism amongst the Right (expressed in such statements as “oh look, the thing that never happens just happened again” or “the longer they take to show a picture of the suspect, the greater the chance he is from a favoured minority”) and destroyed trust in everything from the government to the media, teachers, and just about everything else.

In short, we suffer from a problem caused by immature minds. I like to think that the three principles I outlined will make things better. But I am probably being too hopeful.

A novel set in the bestselling Schooled in Magic universe!

There was no reason for Crown Princess Anastasia of Rockfall to worry about her future, not when she was the only heir to a small yet surprisingly important kingdom within the Allied Lands. There was no reason, either, for her to learn magic, or the growing arts of science and magitech, or indeed anything else … until she was kidnapped by a sorceress who stole her face, cursed her so she could never reveal her real name and dumped her on the far side of the Allied Lands, all the while intending to impersonate Anastasia long enough to murder her parents, be crowned Queen and instigate a reign of terror.

The sorceress believes Anastasia will never make it home, that she will be murdered or enslaved or simply vanish without trace. But with her parents and her kingdom at stake, Anastasia will do everything in her power to get back home and master the arts that will save them …

Or die trying, a very long way from the only home she’s ever known.

Read a FREE SAMPLE, then purchase from the links here: Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon CAN, Amazon AUS, Books2Read, And read the afterword HERE. And you can read another Schooled in Magic novella in Fantastic Schools War, out now! Reviews Welcome!

Prologue (Five Years Before Now)

Hans tried, desperately, to hide his resentment as he made his way to the schoolhouse.

It was a rule that all children had to have at least two days in school per week, at least until they came of age, and no one made any exceptions for peasants, apprentices and others who had no realistic hope of earning the grades they needed to join the civil service or become one of the king’s warlocks. Hans had tried his hardest, but he’d never managed to cast so much as a simple spell, let alone master the basics of reading, writing, and a hundred other skills one needed to rise in the world. He’d been lucky his uncle had agreed to take him on as an apprentice – there was always room for a new apprentice at a blacksmith’s forge – and going to school now felt like a sick joke, a waste of time when he could be learning the trade. But the law was the law. The last family that refused to send their children to school had been taken away and no one had ever laid eyes on them again, driving the lesson home.

The schoolhouse was a towering building of red brick, a waste of resources that could have built a dozen private houses, something the village desperately needed. It was easily large enough to house the hundreds of schoolchildren, from eight to sixteen, shambling towards the gates, their movements making it clear they wanted to be somewhere – anywhere – else. He frowned as he saw the handful of horses outside, their caparisons marked with the king’s livery, then hastily lowered his eyes when he saw the young woman standing behind them, her gaze flickering over the children as they walked past her and into the school. It was rare to see a young woman in a position of authority, which meant she was almost certainly a powerful sorceress as well as being of noble blood. Hans felt an odd little prickle as her eyes passed over his body, a faint sense of unease running through him. He half expected to find himself turning into a frog. But instead, he walked into the school and directly to the assembly hall. It was disturbingly quiet.

Hans felt cold, despite the warm air. It was normally rowdy, despite the best efforts of the headmaster and his teachers: friends chattering away loudly, bullies harassing their victims, swots trying desperately to finish their homework before the teachers collected their jotters and discovered they hadn’t actually finished their assigned work. The headmaster himself normally stood on the podium, dressed in robes Hans couldn’t have afforded if he worked every hour of every day for five years, prattling away about honour, glory, and the duty each and every citizen, from the highest to the lowest, owed to King Frederick VIII of Garstang, their lord and supreme master. Now, he was standing at the corner of the room, speaking to a handful of newcomers in the king’s livery. Hans had no idea who they were, but they had to be important. The headmaster normally expected everyone to bow and scrape to him. Now … he was the one doing the bowing and scraping.

Serves him right, Hans thought. It was impossible to respect the headmaster, no matter his rank. The man didn’t work for a living, he merely bossed around others while lording it over those who actually did. Now he knows how it feels to be ground under.

The lines of students normally kept shifting, as toughs pushed the weaker kids to the front while inching towards the rear. Hans was a past master at getting to the rear himself, relying on his greater strength to ensure he wasn’t close enough to be singled out by the headmaster and branded a disgrace before the entire school, but now the lines were barely moving and he found himself right at the front. A chill ran down his spine as the remaining students hurried into the chamber, including a handful of known troublemakers. They too were forced to the front. Hans would have found it amusing, if he hadn’t been so exposed himself. The headmaster always singled out one student for punishment and he was in the danger zone. And neither his father nor his uncle would be likely to listen to him if he insisted he’d been picked at random …

A newcomer, dressed in noble robes, walked onto the stage and stood in front of the gathered students. Hans heard the rear doors shutting with a bang, a grim reminder they were trapped … and that anyone who was late would wind up in very hot water indeed. The nobleman’s eyes surveyed the room, his gaze managing to convey the impression he’d seen more impressive specimens staggering out of the local alehouse every night, making their way home to a furious wife. Or perhaps lying on the sawdust, sleeping it off.

“Young men,” he said. His voice was quiet yet firm, echoing around the chamber in a manner that owed much to magic. No one spoke, not even the handful of troublemakers at the back. “You are here to be tested for a very special kind of magic. If you possess it, you will be honoured beyond the dreams of this” – his voice took on a hint of disdain – “quiet provincial town. If not, you will return to your quiet provincial lives.”

Hans felt a hot flash of irritation. He’d been tested on his magic, they’d all been tested, and he had little. If any. The handful of students who showed real aptitude for magic had been taken away a long time ago, their families paid the king’s coin and told their children would return as adult magicians, if they returned at all. He had no idea why the nobleman was wasting their time – probably because he could – but it was a waste of time. He had never managed a single spell.

He wanted to say it out loud, to ask why they were wasting his time, but he didn’t dare.

The nobleman drew a spellcaster from his belt. Hans felt a sudden lassitude fall over his mind, a sense that he should remain still – his brain switched off – until he was released from the spell. He stumbled a moment later, the spell letting him go. Raw anger boiled through him as he stared at the nobleman, trying to keep the sheer resentment off his face. It was bad enough that noblemen galloped through the cornfields, trampling the crop underfoot, or insisted the merchants overlooked their debts, but to steal his free will … his blood boiled. It took all the willpower he had not to clench his fists. Showing any kind of hostility to a nobleman, however well deserved, was a flogging offense. Or worse.

“Interesting,” the nobleman said. “Come forward.”

Hans tried to keep his feelings out of his voice and failed. “Why …?”

The nobleman snorted. “Look behind you.”

Hans turned … and stared. The other students were just standing there, their faces as blank as their minds. A chill ran down his spine as he stared at Rodolfo, a boy who never shut up, and Martina, a girl so pretty nearly every young man in town was trying to court her. They were both just … still, as if someone had somehow turned them off. He turned back and stared at the nobleman, who was studying him with a cold expression.

It was hard to speak, harder still to speak clearly. “What … what just happened?”

“The enchantment I used has little effect on those with a certain talent,” the nobleman said, as if Hans should already have known it. “You shrugged it off, which means you have the talent.”

He stepped off the podium and walked to the door. “Come.”

Hans stared after him, eyes flickering around the room in horror. Everyone was still. Even the headmaster was standing there, his face as blank as his students. The rest of the noblemen were gone already …

“I …” Hans swallowed and started again. “What’ll happen to them?”

“The spell will wear off,” the nobleman said, dismissively. “They’ll be fine.”

He reached the door and motioned for Hans to follow. Hans forced his legs into motion and staggered after him, feeling as if the world had just turned upside down. A carriage was already waiting outside, the door gaping open. He stopped as he realised he was being taken away, just like the rest of the magically-powerful students …

“Get in,” the nobleman ordered.

“My family,” Hans said, desperately. “And my master … ah, my uncle …”

“They will be informed, and rewarded for raising you,” the nobleman said. “Get in.”

Hans briefly considered running, but it would do him no good. There was no cover, nothing he could use to hide, and even if he did manage to get away the aristocrats could track him down easily. He’d have to hide within the forest and that would end badly. He barely knew how to take care of himself, and if the nobles posted a reward the bandits and outlaws would probably help track him down.

He scrambled into the carriage, trying not to marvel at the sheer luxury of the interior. He’d never ridden in anything like it before. The nobleman joined him, shutting the door and sitting down as the carriage rattled into life. Hans stared out the window as the vehicle picked up speed, the streets slowly giving way to croplands and grazing fields. He’d never been more than a couple of miles from his hometown. Now, he had the feeling he was never going to see his family again.

“Tell me about yourself,” the nobleman said.

Hans felt his temper flare. The words slipped out before he could stop himself. “Why should I tell anything to a man who hasn’t even introduced himself?”

The nobleman’s face twisted, like the headmaster’s when he found himself confronted with a student he didn’t dare punish. Hans took heart from it, even though he knew taunting a nobleman was asking for trouble. If his talent was so rare they were resorting to testing students in their quiet provincial town, as the nobleman had referred to his hometown, it was unlikely they were going to kill him on the spot.

“I am Court Graf,” the nobleman said, finally. “Mage Commander of the Royal Magic Corps.”

Hans kept his face under tight control, hiding his relief as best he could. He’d heard of the Royal Magic Corps, everyone had. They served the king and the king alone … he wondered, numbly, why they’d come for him? He didn’t have a single spell to his name. The sorcerers and mages of the Royal Magic Corps were supposed to be able to turn entire armies into toads with a wave of their hands, but he couldn’t even summon a tiny flame to light the forge or a gust of wind to cool a newly-forged blade.

He leaned forward. “Why me? I can’t cast any spells.”

Graf smiled, rather coldly. “Believe it or not, young man, that is precisely the point.”

“I don’t understand,” Hans said. It felt like a dream – or a nightmare. “Why me?”

“Don’t worry,” Graf assured him. “You’ll understand soon enough.”

Chapter One: Adam

Caithness was burning.

I watched, from what I devoutly hoped was a safe distance, as the advancing army ground towards the city. The darkness hid nothing, not from me. It was a force out of the darkest depths of history, a mechanical nightmare that hadn’t been seen since the days of the Thousand Year Empire, a force – I feared – we might not be able to stop. Small tripods – scouting machines – darted forward, moving with a combination of eerie grace and speed that chilled me to the bone, their mounted spellcasters hurling fireballs and lightning bolts at possible threats or whatever else caught their pilot’s eye. Larger tripods and crawling machines followed at a slower pace, their struts tearing up the road from the border to the city; flyers shot overhead, raining down death and destruction on the dour grey stone. Caithness wasn’t a wooden town, thank the Ancients, but it was only a matter of time until she was utterly devastated. The walls and buildings had never been designed to stand up to such a horde.

“Pinch me,” Caroline muttered, from behind me. “It’s a dream.”

I reached out and pinched her arm, hard enough to hurt. Her face twisted in pain, an instant before she pinched me back. The stab of agony failed to wake me from my slumber … I told myself not to be silly, no matter how easy it would have been to pretend it was nothing more than a nightmare. I had wondered, in my school days, how many of the stories of the Thousand Year Empire had been exaggerated over the centuries, how many of the wonders of that age had been made up of whole cloth. I knew, now, that the stories had been – if anything – understatements. The rolling army approaching the city appeared utterly unstoppable. I swallowed, hard, as I saw balls of light arcing into the air, flying over the walls and coming down within the city itself. They vanished out of sight, giant fireballs rising into the air a second later … I felt the ground rumble beneath my feet, the giant thunder crack reaching my ears and racketing onwards. If I felt bad here, I dreaded to think what it must feel like in the city. The population was caught in a nightmare.

“Stay here … no, go to the campsite,” I muttered. The army was nearing the fortress now and we needed to know what happened when the mechanical nightmare encountered fixed defences. “If I don’t come back, get back to Kirkhaven and send a message south.”

Caroline shot me a sharp look. “They’re more likely to underestimate me.”

“The king might listen to you,” I reminded her. “Let me go.”

Caroline scowled, then conceded the point with a nod. Technically, we were in disgrace. We’d failed to seize the flying city and then we’d fumbled our mission to Kirkhaven Hall. I’d done my best to take all the blame, which might just let Caroline convince him of the sheer magnitude of the impending disaster. The fortress would have dispatched a rider south, I was sure, and if the commander was on his toes he’d have ordered a handful of observers to watch from a safe distance, but the early reports might not be believed. Hell, I wasn’t sure if our reports of the incident at Kirkhaven had been believed either.

I turned away, muttering a handful of obscurification spells to hide myself as I slipped through the night. It wasn’t easy to pick my way through the rough landscape surrounding the town, even with the best night vision spells the sorcerous researchers had been able to devise, but I stayed low and kept walking. The night sky was alarmingly clear and I found myself beseeching the Ancients for rain. The enemy had timed their offensive well, I conceded sourly. It never seemed to stop raining at times, along the border, but tonight was as clear as any invader could wish. I hoped that would change, as I hid myself in the shadows and watched a scout machine striding past. It was hard to tell if the pilot missed me or if he simply didn’t care. A lone man, no matter how dangerous, was no threat to his machine.

I took a risk and leaned forward, studying the tripod as it strode into the distance. I’d thought the entire army was composed of Objects of Power, a remarkable and seemingly impossible feat, yet up close I had my doubts. The flying city I’d seen in the Eternal City had been a single machine, and the meksects that tended to its innards were almost animalistic, but the tripod was crude, as if someone had bolted one piece of machinery to another. I sucked in my breath as it moved inwards, recalling just how difficult it was to make such a device without having it decay into rust and ruin almost at once. The plans for forging war machines hadn’t been lost, but the techniques had.

Caitlyn Aguirre managed to figure it out, I reminded myself, but could she churn out so many war machines so quickly?

I didn’t believe it. Forgery wasn’t my strong suit, but even a team of dedicated Zeros would take weeks to forge a single war machine, let alone a whole army of them. There weren’t that many Zeros! The government had tried to test everyone who showed signs of little or no magic, ever since they’d realised what was missing from the ancient documents, but only two had been discovered, at least within the borders of Tintagel. I couldn’t believe Garstang had found so many, not when our neighbours were so backwards. They barely tolerated female mages and their aristocracy made ours look like saints. It was difficult to believe they’d even found one, let alone that they’d been able to convince the poor bastard to work for them. But they’d clearly succeeded …

The thought haunted me as I slipped down to the closest vantage point. Fortress Caithness towered over the North Wall, a giant structure bristling with heavy spellcasters and other weapons of war. It was a strange combination of magical and mundane devices, capable of dominating the roads and blocking any advance from the north; the walls were hardened, protected by wards so powerful they should have been able to shrug off any assault, ensuring the fortress would remain intact even if the city itself fell to force or treachery. The planners had been certain the fortress would survive, deep in the enemy rear, giving the troops inside a chance to harass their supply lines. I’d seen those plans myself and they’d looked solid. But right now, it was clear they’d been based on false assumptions.

I forced myself to watch as the giant tripods opened fire, their spellcasters unleashing wave after wave of raw magic into the fortress. Wards capable of deflecting almost any threat shuddered under the impact, the charmed walls turning black as the enchantments started to waver and break. The fortress returned fire, their spellcasters lashing out at the enemy vehicles; I felt a flicker of relief as one tripod staggered and fell, only to lose even that as the rest started to dance around. They were hard to hit, I realised numbly, and armoured to the point that even a handful of hits weren’t enough to bring them down. The crawling machines stayed to the rear, half-hidden in hollows, and opened fire, their projectiles rising up and falling on top of the fortress. The noise was unbearable. Even from my distance, I could feel the air prickling with raw discordant magic. It was too much.

Aim for their legs, I thought, as more magic tore through the air. Try and take them out …

A low rumbling battered my ears as the fortress started to crumble, its wards shattering one by one. The charmed walls fell quickly, waves of magical balefire seething through the spellcaster ports and wiping out their crews … normally, balefire was easy to counter if you knew the right spells, but the defenders had too many other things to worry about. Something exploded, blowing out a chunk of the wall and opening a gash in the remaining defences. I cursed as I saw the soldiers advancing from behind the war machines, hurling themselves into the remnants of the fortress. Others were heading into the city itself. I kicked myself for not having seen them earlier. They’d been hidden within the shadows, my eyes drawn to the light.

The defending fire died away. I cursed. The kingdom hadn’t lost a major fortress for hundreds of years. Now … I hoped the defenders had the sense to abandon their posts, flee into the city, and change their military tunics into something a little more civilian. Garstang was bound by treaty to deal honourably with prisoners, but the sheer force they’d unleashed against Caithness showed a frightening lack of concern for civilian casualties. Even if they hadn’t been deliberately targeting civilians, I couldn’t imagine they hadn’t killed hundreds … perhaps thousands. The recent events at Kirkhaven had sent thousands of refugees fleeing in all directions and some had gone to Caithness, only to discover they’d jumped from the frying pan into the fire. I hoped they’d have the chance to get out before the city was sealed off for good.

I watched for a few moments longer, then turned and hurried away, circumventing the city as I made my way back to the vantage point. Hundreds of people were fleeing, some heading down the king’s road to Templeton. I shuddered at the thought of the coming nightmare, when the enemy force made it down to the city. Templeton was heavily defended, if only because it was the key to roads leading to Shallot and Tintagel City. If the enemy took control, they’d be able to cut off the entire set of northern provinces from the kingdom … or keep advancing, aiming to crush Shallot before we could produce war machines of our own. I cursed again as I saw the refuges, most dressed in nightclothes with a handful of cloaks thrown over their garb. They didn’t look remotely ready for the rain and the cold. Some might find shelter, in nearby towns and hamlets, but others would walk into the bog and drown before they realised they’d killed themselves. There was nothing I could do to help them, not now. I knew my duty.

Damn you, I thought. Caithness had fallen, but the fires were still burning brightly. How many people have you killed?

Something flickered, in the darkness. A faint sheet of light … a ghostly form, barely humanoid. Ice crawled down my spine. I’d hoped the ghosts that had plagued Kirkhaven were gone, their unquiet voices stilled by the release of the soul trapped within the bog, but they were still there … harmless now, we thought, but some of the ghosts we’d seen earlier had been very dangerous indeed. I gave the ghost a wide berth, keeping my eyes on it. The lack of any eyes looking back at me was oddly disconcerting. I made a mental note to add the ghost’s presence to the report, although I had no idea what my superiors would make of it. They had a full-scale invasion to worry about.

The darkness seemed to fall again as I kept walking, picking my way down the rough stony path. Caithness had fallen behind the hills, but a grim orange-red glow lit up the air. The dour city woke with the dawn and went to sleep with the dusk, unlike many others, and there were no streetlights to assist drinkers making their way home or make life difficult for footpads. Now … the city was burning. I shuddered helplessly.

Caroline relaxed, slightly, as she saw me. I filled her in as we packed up and headed to Kirkhaven Hall, wondering if we should split up. There was strength in numbers and it was rare for King’s Men to be sent out on missions alone, without at least some back-up, but there was no way we could stand up to even one tripod. Not until we figured out how to beat them … my heart sank as I recalled just how few primitive nations had managed to slow the Empire’s invaders down for more than a few hours. The Empire had talked about a mission to civilise the natives, and to its credit it had brought the benefits of modern magic, but their invasion would have been utterly world-ending for the locals even if it did work out in the long run. It was hard to imagine the local leadership wouldn’t have been rounded up and slaughtered, the local magicians invited to add their blood to the Empire’s great families, the local merchants shoved aside … Garstang wouldn’t be even that civilised. They’d wanted a gateway to the sea for centuries and if they took ours …

“The fortress will have sent messengers south,” Caroline muttered. “Right?”

I nodded, although I had no way to be sure. The enemy could have sneaked horsemen into the empty lands behind Caithness, with orders to kill any messengers and dispel vapour spells. It was hard to keep word from spreading, but it wouldn’t cost the enemy very much and the rewards would be more than worth it. The longer the gap between the invasion and the king hearing about it, the longer it would be before reinforcements started heading north. Worse, perhaps. The reinforcements would have no idea what they’d be facing, when the invaders regrouped and continued their march south. Templeton might fall as easily as Caithness.

The skies darkened. I breathed a sigh of relief as the rain started to fall, hoping and praying it would quench the fires as well as slow enemy movements. The tripods were massive, but I could imagine their pilots steering them into a bog and discovering – too late – that they’d doomed themselves. If there was any bottom to the bogs, it had never been discovered. The thought of a tripod slowly sinking made me smile, although I feared it wouldn’t happen. The enemy had had years to plan the invasion. It was likely they’d had more than enough time to get their hands on local maps.

I cursed as the rain kept falling, the water drenching our clothes and leaving us looking and feeling like drowned rats. Kirkhaven Town was still half-buried in the mud and sinking fast … I was so tired it took me far too long to realise that the landslide had damned the river, leaving the water lapping at the homes and shops that had once made up a small and yet thriving community. We turned west and made our way up to Kirkhaven Hall. The Mistress of Kirkhaven – Isabella Rubén – might be able to help us. If she was there …

“She’s gone to the city to get help and attend her brother’s wedding,” Sandy told us. She looked like a drowned rat herself, running around trying to attend to the hundreds of refugees who’d been crammed into Kirkhaven Hall. “What’s the hurry?”

I told her. Kirkhaven was off the beaten path, the combination of mountains and sound-quenching bogs ensuring no one would hear the invasion as it swept over Caithness and headed south. It took hours to drive from the village to the city normally – now, the ancients alone knew – and most of the villages preferred to pretend the world outside their borders simply didn’t exist. I had seen it before, over the last couple of years, but it was still difficult to believe. It really shouldn’t have surprised me. I’d grown up in Shallot, gateway to the kingdom – and the world. My childhood had been filled with tales of bold explorers who had sailed the seven seas, learning about the world in the wake of the Empire’s fall; I’d known, from birth, that there was something bigger out there, a chance to become someone powerful and significant. The villagers didn’t have that, not in any real sense. There was no point of dreaming of foreign lands when they would never get to travel, let alone see the world.

But now the world has come calling, I thought, numbly. It’s only a matter of time before the invaders find Kirkhaven.

I shoved the thought aside. “Callam went with her?”

“Yes,” Sandy said. A confusing flicker of emotions darted across her face, gone before I could quite pin them down. Sandy had been Isabella’s dorm monitor, a post that would have been difficult even if Isabella hadn’t managed to compromise herself so thoroughly, and then she’d been Callam’s teacher. I felt a stab of sympathy. I’d been a dorm monitor myself and it wasn’t easy to keep some of the aristo brats in line. “They were planning to be back shortly, but …”

“If they do come back, tell them to return to Shallot at once,” I ordered. Isabella was just another sorceress, but Callam was a Zero. He could not be allowed to fall into enemy hands. “And we need to borrow your horses.”

Thunder rumbled, in the distance. I hoped it was thunder.

Sandy scowled. “And what should we do, if Garstang attacks the estate?”

I swallowed. It should have been unlikely. Kirkhaven was just another tiny village, so small that calling it a village was an exaggeration. But Isabella had turned the estate into a productive enterprise and Callam, of course, was worth far more than his weight in gold. We might have lucked out, I reflected sourly, that she’d had to go south for the wedding. The enemy had excellent reason to attack Kirkhaven as soon as possible. They’d find it tricky to send more than a small force, but the estate was practically defenceless.

“Keep your heads down, try to avoid attracting attention,” I ordered, finally. It was unlikely the villagers would be harmed. Garstang would need them to feed and supply its forces. “The king will send his army north soon enough.”

But I hoped, as we prepared to ride south, that I was wrong. The world had changed. The invasion was proof nothing would ever be the same …

And if the army wasn’t ready for what it faced, it would be the end.

The last thing the hyper-advanced Human Confederation expected to encounter on Darius – a far distant and long lost colony world – was actual magic, sorcerers and magicians and other inexplicable feats that the most advanced technology could not duplicate. Determined to discover the source of the mystery, the Confederation dispatched a survey team to Darius and eventually discovered that the human settlers had tapped into the Darius Machine, an inexplicable piece of alien technology that granted supernatural powers to those capable of calling upon its aid. The Darius Machine was accidentally destroyed, seemingly rendering the former godlike humans powerless, but leaving behind a number of children with strange and often frightening powers of their own.

That was seventeen years ago.

Since then, the Darius Children have been raised on Clarke, an isolated world where they can be studied as well as protected from the remainder of the human race. Their powers appear simplistic and yet very dangerous, provoking fear as well as awe in their teachers; their attempts to expand their abilities, and bring others into their mental network, threaten the very fabric of reality itself. As they start to demand the right to leave their homeworld, a sociopath strikes and kidnaps one of the Children, intending to sell her to the highest bidder. Another Child must go in pursuit …

And hidden in the shadows, an unseen manipulator lays the seeds of a galaxy-wide conflagration.

Purchase from the links HERE or BOOKS2READ!

Featuring a whole new Schooled in Magic novella!

Have you ever wanted to go to magic school? To cast spells and brew potions and fly on broomsticks and – perhaps – battle threats both common and supernatural? Come with us into worlds of magic, where students become magicians and teachers do everything in their power to ensure the kids survive long enough to graduate. Welcome to … Fantastic Schools.

Meet the students preparing for magical war, learning how to wield sorcerous weapons or fantastic talents in defence of the world; meet the magicians testing their abilities in worlds touched by the fantastic and the supernatural, or the magicians completing their final exams – or going to war, learning on the job as the darkness moves ever-closer to home. Meet the students who think they have all the time in the world, and the ones who discover that their training has suddenly become all too real.

The glory of war awaits them, in these pages, but so too does the price …

Purchase from: Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon CAN, Amazon AU.

And check out the latest call for submissions here!

The Federation has endured for hundreds of years, but as corruption and decadence wear away the core of human unity, rogue admirals rise in rebellion. As the Federation struggles for survival, two officers, an old Admiral and a newly-minted Lieutenant, may be all that stands between the Federation and destruction.

Book One: Barbarians At The Gates (now on KU)

Book Two: The Shadow of Cincinnatus

Book Three: The Barbarian Bride

Some Thoughts On The Current European/American Situation

“Closing your eyes isn’t going to change anything. Nothing’s going to disappear just because you can’t see what’s going on. In fact, things will even be worse the next time you open your eyes. That’s the kind of world we live in. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won’t make time stand still.”

― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

Well, we can’t say we weren’t warned.

It was easy to believe, after the end of the Cold War, that Russia was a broken state and would remain so for the foreseeable future. This was obviously inaccurate. There was no danger in both expanding NATO and cutting European military forces to the bone, Europeans thought, nor was there any risk in becoming dangerously dependent on Russian gas and oil. The prospect of Russia being able to rejuvenate herself, as Germany had done after 1918, seemed increasingly remote. The chaos and corruption of the Yeltsin years left a lasting impression. Unfortunately, that impression was severely misplaced.

Since assuming power, Vladimir Putin has pursued a cold-blooded strategy of rebuilding military power, reassuming Russian primacy amongst the surrounding states and generally making it clear that Russia is no longer a military pygmy whose opinions can be safely ignored. To his credit, Putin played a weak hand very well. Russia crushed Chechnya, at appalling cost; Russia Georgia (the country, not the state) firmly in her place, Russia took over and annexed a chunk of Ukraine, Russia deployed a major force to Syria to support their allies in the region (a feat only matched by Britain and America in recent years), all the while manipulating the global economy to ensure that international opposition was limited and largely futile. All of this should have been a wake-up call.

Putin does appear to have believed, to some extent, in his own propaganda. The Russians appear to have developed an overinflated idea of their military prowess, and seriously believed that they could launch a blitzkrieg into Ukraine, capture the capital, and declare victory before any sort of international opposition could possibly be mobilised. In this, they were wrong. Far from being a three-day policing operation, or however else the Russians chose to spin it, the Ukraine war has bogged down into a conflict dangerously reminiscent of the First World War. Russian gains, such as they are, have come at appalling cost. Worse, for Russia, the fact that their military has been exposed as far less powerful and capable as everyone believed means that their neighbours and more distant opponents are more willing to risk conflict with Russia by supporting Ukraine. It was possible to believe that Russia would lose, quickly and badly, and the disaster would lead to Putin accidentally brutally shooting himself in the back several times.

I was not comfortable with that prediction. In 1939, for example, Russia invaded Finland. The initial invasion was a disaster, with the Finns brutally humiliating Russians time and time again. Their valour disguised the fact that Russia was far stronger, numerically speaking, and the natural selection of an ongoing war ensure that Russia would learn from her own mistakes, adjust her tactics, and resume the offensive. Finland did manage to convince Stalin that she was too tough a morsel to swallow, a remarkable feat given that Stalin was far more ruthless than even Putin, but she was effectively beaten. It could have been far worse.

The Winter War gave British, French, and German politicians a seriously understated impression of Russian military power. The British and French, desperate for a way to help Finland, came up with crazy plans to bomb Russian oil fields, convinced the Russians would not be able to retaliate in any substantial way. Hitler, at the same time, became equally convinced that Russia was a paper tiger, that the might of Nazi Germany could defeat the Russians in no more than six weeks (a delusion shared by some in Britain, who held out no hope of Moscow surviving German attack). This was a serious misjudgement. The Russians survived Operation Barbarossa, defeated the Germans soundly, and marched on to conquer Berlin. We all think twice about offending the mighty Russian bear because Russia held half of Europe in a grip of steel for nearly 50 years.

Or we did.

European politicians appear to have pursued a frankly bizarre policy towards the Ukraine War. On one hand, it is greatly to the credit of many politicians that they have offered Ukraine vast amounts of financial, military, and other material support. There is very little sympathy for Russia in Europe, nor should there be. On the other hand, they have refused to grapple with the implications of the Ukraine War, or to consider the very dangerous possibility that Russia will actually win the war, or at least come out ahead. There is both a firm belief that Russia can and must lose in Ukraine and yet, at the same time, there is a dangerous complacency lulling Europe to sleep even as the Russians finally start making some battlefield gains.

The blunt truth is that Europe has cut its military forces to the bone. Europe’s ability to project power outside its own borders is very limited. Europe’s ability to resupply its troops and replace ammunition expended in wartime (usage rates are always higher than predicted) is even more so. European deindustrialisation makes it hard to rebuild, let alone expand what little remains to Europeans. Protected by the United States, European politicians have indulged in fantasies of abolishing nuclear power, moving all those dirty industries to the Third World, and that soft power can make up for a lack of hard power. This did not work out well for Greece, when she was confronted by an expanding Imperial Rome, and it will not work out well for Europe. The key to preventing war is to be ready for it, and Europe is not ready.

How many wake-up calls do we need? Must we wait until the call starts coming from inside the house?

The rot goes deeper. Faith in governments is at an all-time low. Social cohesion is coming apart at the seams, the problem of mass migration and government unwillingness to deal with it firmly and decisively empowering more radical political parties; government censorship and two-tiered justice is undermining confidence in government, the media, and nearly everything else. It is difficult to believe that many Europeans will willingly fight for countries that appear to have turned their backs on the native population, and punish them for daring to complain. I think is fairly safe to say that patriotism is on the decline too, or that it is benefiting the more radical parties rather than centrists. But then, if reasonable voices refuse to acknowledge a problem and deal with it, unreasonable voices will take advantage of the problem to promote themselves.

It is difficult to believe, too, that conscription will ever be reintroduced in Europe. It would be extremely unpopular. Like I said, very few people want to fight for the current order. But even if it is introduced, how will Europe arm those soldiers? It is incredibly difficult to produce modern weapons, from main battle tanks and fighter jets to man-portable antitank and anti-aircraft missiles, without a major industrial base. The problem will not be solved by recruiting vast numbers of soldiers, willing or not. Those soldiers need to be armed, and that means Europe must build up its industrial base too.

But this too is a problem European politicians have chosen to ignore.

This leads neatly to a second problem.

There has always been a strong isolationist streak in the United States of America. It is easy for European politicians to forget this, because every president from FDR onwards has been an internationalist (including Trump, to some extent). America has hugely benefited from being the world’s policeman, but not unlike the European Union the benefits of this policy have not been spread evenly. A sense has been growing in American thought that argues, not unreasonably, that Europe should pay more towards her own defence, and build up her own military forces to the point they can serve as more than a tripwire. During the Cold War, the Europeans could be relied upon to give a good account of themselves. Now, it isn’t so clear they could. It may not be entirely fair to say that the Europeans are wholly dependent on America, but there is a great deal of truth in it.

It is difficult to understate how offended and hurt many Americans were by European reluctance to provide major support after 9/11. It is easy to make fun of people who renamed ‘French Fries’ as ‘Freedom Fries,’ or insist on pronouncing “European” as “Your-A-Peon,” but such humour masks a more serious reality. The political consensus that America could and should bolster European defence was severely weakened, with Americans openly questioning the value of NATO to the United States. Why should the United States send its young men and women to defend nations that were not only unwilling to defend themselves, but spent much of their time criticising the United States and/or take advantage of America to undercut its economy? This is not a new thing – similar concerns were raised about Japan, although those faded away after the Japanese crash – but the world is now a very different place. The American failures in Iraq and Afghanistan have given the isolationists good reason to think twice about foreign entanglements. What does the United States get out of them, except body bags?

You may be reading this and thinking that that is a stupid argument. You might be right. But others disagree.

Every American President since Clinton has tried to nudge Europe to spend more money on its own defence. Bush43 tried. Obama tried. Trump tried. Biden tried, and his arguments were backed up by a full-scale war exploding in Europe’s backyard. The response was always the same, more military cuts. It is a simple fact of life that people grow tired of giving, no matter how good the cause, and America was slowly falling out of love with NATO. To help someone get back on their feet after being knocked down is one thing – in fact, it is the core of right-wing charity – but to keep supporting them the rest of eternity is quite another. American Internationalists are slowly being superseded by American Isolationists, who are deeply suspicious of international involvements and have no particular interest in writing blank cheques.

It is easy to blame the current crisis on Donald Trump and JD Vance. Vance certainly fits into the American Isolationist tradition far more than Donald Trump. In Trump’s case, matters are made worse by the fact he genuinely did point out the dangers of becoming dependent on Russian oil and gas (as well as being one of the first presidents to send large arms shipments to Ukraine), and response he got from Europeans was largely mockery and casual dismissal. A stronger and more mature man than Donald Trump would find this very hard to take, and in Trump’s case he would have the grim awareness that he had been right all along and his detractors were not. (European governments supporting Kamala Harris in the 2024 election are another display of European complacency, a foolish move no matter what you think of Donald Trump and/or his chances of victory in 2024.) The combination of European complacency, refusal to believe that history has restarted (in truth, it never stopped), and head-in-the-sand thinking has produced a very dangerous situation, in which Europe is exposed to enemy attack while at the same time alienating the one hope of a conventional defence.

Let me be very clear on one point. Putin and Russia are in the wrong. The Russian justifications for the war make sense from a geopolitical point of view, but they do not justify a full-scale invasion and conquest of Ukraine. Might does not make right. But as anyone who has dealt with a schoolyard bully knows, the only way to stop him is to give him a bloody nose and the only way to do that is to prepare for conflict. We now have a situation where Ukraine cannot continue the war for much longer, cannot recover her territories through her own efforts (no matter how many weapons we send them), and we are unable as well as unwilling to send our own troops to drive the Russians out. It is possible, true, that Russia’s economy will collapse, or that some kindly soul will assassinate Putin, take power, and order a withdrawal. The former is unpredictable. The latter, as pleasant as it sounds, will mean that Putin’s successor (assuming he manages to take power without a fight, which isn’t guaranteed) will face the same dilemma currently challenging Vladimir Putin. If Russia gains nothing for her efforts, it will be fatal for her leader. Any successor will look at the example of 1918, where the German civilian government found itself forced to accept an extremely unpopular peace, and think twice about making any agreement that will look like a defeat, let alone a surrender.

In Europe, politics are genteel. In Russia, they can be lethal.

The blunt truth is that European politicians are no longer serious men. They have grown so used to the American umbrella that they have surrendered the tools they need to shape the world, even in their own backyard. Faced with a slowly shifting situation, a growing split between America and Europe, they have chosen to ignore the problem rather than take steps to address it. Faced with an outright war, they have made grandiose statements without taking measures to prepare for an expansion of the conflict. They have been long on words, and short on action. And in doing so, they have made the world a much more dangerous place.

In recent days, many commenters have raised the spectre of Munich. That is unfair. Neville Chamberlain was a fool who believed the Nazis were overwhelmingly powerful (they weren’t), that any war in 1938 would be long and bloody (probably incorrectly), and the cost of the war would doom the already fragile British Empire (probably true). If Chamberlain had stood up to Hitler at Munich, the world would be a very different place and much of the slaughter of the next six years would have been averted. But Chamberlain believed he was buying time to rearm, to catch up with the Germans and prepare for a war. He may have severely misjudged German military power, but he was laying the groundwork to defeat it. The same cannot be said for modern-day European politicians. They have created a situation in which they are playing poker with neither cards nor stake against an opponent who understands the realities of power in a way they cannot match.

Stalin famously asked how many divisions the Pope had. Putin could easily ask the same about European politicians who have no conception of how weak they have become, or that the wake up calls they have heard over the last two decades have become the howl of the approaching wolf.

We need a change. And fast.

Prologue I

From: The United States and the Protectorate War. Baen Historical Press. 2070.

It cannot be denied that the United States of the early thirties was a deeply divided society, in a world that was increasingly fragmented, hostile and/or fundamentally opposed to American values. The recent election had brought many of the tensions threatening American stability into the open and the victory of President Hamlin, a well-meaning and decent but ultimately ineffectual politician unwilling or unable to confront the problems facing the United States, did nothing to calm the roiling fury under the surface. Prone to dithering, lacking any real power base, it seemed likely his first term would be his last. Indeed, even his own party was preparing to primary him rather than take the risk of letting him seek re-election.

Political deadlock in Washington owed much, it should be acknowledged, to the simple fact the United States was not in any physical danger. Chaos along the Mexican border and turmoil in the Caribbean did not post any significant threat, certainly not one that threatened the political or bureaucratic elite in Washington. Simmering tensions in both the Ukraine and the South China Sea – and, of course, the Middle East – might draw attention briefly, only to be dismissed as the United States returned to contemplating its internal problems. Talk of civil war, never far from the surface, seemed to ebb and flow with the tides. The paralysis in Washington seemed to ebb and flow with the tides.

It was the worst possible time for the United States to face an Outside Context problem, an invasion from another world. But there was no choice.

The Protectorate knew nothing of America’s problems when they transposed their assault force into our dimension. Through sheer luck, the Protectorate Expeditionary Force arrived right on top of a small town in Texas – Flint – and rapidly secured the area, while probing the surrounding region and hacking the internet to download as much data as possible. They had assumed theirs was the only timeline that had enjoyed an industrial revolution and it was a surprise to discover that our world was a technological civilisation, if one nearly a century behind their own. Their commander – Captain-General James Montrose – had no intention of retreating, let alone opening peaceful contact and developing diplomatic relationships. He had come to make his name through conquest and determined to do so. His brief attempts at diplomatic outreach were nothing more than a bid to buy time.

President Hamlin dithered, as was his wont. Flint was surrounded and sealed off by the United States Army, but there was no attempt to demand access to the occupied town or seek confirmation of the tale the diplomats had been told. Unsure of what he was dealing with, Hamlin ignored the advice of his Vice President – Felix Hernandez – and his military officials, refusing to countenance either a more aggressive approach or a pre-emptive strike. It was not until a refugee fleeing the town accidentally started a brief engagement that rapidly spiralled out of control that the military was permitted to take a harder line, too late. The PEF attacked with a fury and technological edge the defenders couldn’t match, rapidly overrunning the army positions and expanding into Texas. A combination of computer hacks and cruise missiles strikes further weakened the United States, making it difficult to coordinate any response.

On paper, the PEF was greatly outnumbered. In practice, their advanced technology and cold-blooded ruthlessness allowed them to crush resistance, eventually seizing Austin and threatening nearby states before America learnt how to fight them. The sheer force of their attack weakened both the United States and its global allies, while their diplomatic contacts with hostile states – and covert operations within America – raised the promise of reinforcements and even American surrender. Their ability to land almost anywhere – showing off their power by attacking New York – cowed Hamlin. Believing the war to be lost, with the arrival of a second invasion force in the Middle East, he made overtures to Montrose.

This was too much for Felix Hernandez and his growing cabal. They started making urgent preparations to remove President Hamlin from power, preparations that were ironically detected by the PEF and used to justify a strike into Washington itself. With only limited understanding of how the American government worked, the PEF moved to seize the White House and the President, intending to use him as a puppet. The plan misfired. The assault force found itself trapped in Washington, and the relief force was forced to fight its way through the city in a desperate and ultimately futile bid to save it. Casualties were heavy on both sides, including Hamlin himself, but the PAF suffered its first real defeat.

As Felix Hernandez took the Oath of Office, and James Montrose secured his position by scapegoating another officer, they both knew the war was far from over.

Prologue II: Timeline A (Protectorate Homeworld)

It was deeply frustrating, Protector Julianne Rigby reflected, that they couldn’t know what was happening on the far side of the dimensional wall.

The Triumvirs of the Protectorate had been reluctant to concede that they had to trust the men commanding the crosstime expeditionary forces. It put a great deal of power in the hands of men who were incredibly ambitious, who had been chosen for their ambition and determination, and there was always a risk of one or more commanders going rogue. There was no way around it – the researchers had yet to develop any sort of crosstime communications device that didn’t require a gate – and yet it was deeply frustrating. London had been able to direct operations around the globe and beyond, from the moment radio had been invented, and to find themselves out of touch with their commanders was galling. There was just no way to know what was going on.

Her lips thinned as she studied the image on her display. Captain-General James Montrose was tall, dark and handsome, handsome enough to make any woman feel a draw even if she was old enough to know better. He was a brilliant commanding officer, driven by a compulsive thirst for victory – and the rewards that came with it. Granting him command of a crosstime invasion force had always been a gamble, although there were limits on just how much power he could claim for himself before reinforcements arrived. The Protectorate was the only timeline that had mastered steam, let alone coal and oil and nuclear power. There was little he could do to build a power base for himself in a world where the most advanced device known to exist was a waterwheel …

Or so they had thought. Castle Treathwick had been rotated into Timeline F and a sizable chunk of the timeline had been rotated back into the Prime Timeline, including pieces of a town and a large number of inhabitants. They had been rounded up very quickly and interrogated – of course – and the town remnants had been hastily searched for anything useful, from books to maps and charts. They’d expected little, but they’d hit the motherlode. The town didn’t just have a public library, a rarity outside the Prime Timeline; it had computer databases and records and a great many other things that proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Timeline F was a technological society. Their advancement appeared to have come in fits and starts – the sociologists were already producing theories to explain how the widespread degeneracy had retarded technological development – but there was no denying the Protectorate Expeditionary Force faced a foe far more capable than any before. Montrose’s orders for such a contingency had been vague, if only because no one had really thought it would ever happen, and he’d clearly taken full advantage of the latitude he’d been granted to launch a war. Julianne wasn’t surprised. A man as ambitious as Montrose wouldn’t back down unless he was confronted by an equal or greater force, and that was clearly lacking. Indeed, the second set of kidnapped locals – rotated into the Prime Timeline as the second invasion force was dispatched – had confirmed it. The war appeared to be going well.

Julianne felt her mood darken as she studied the political map. It looked absurd, putting the lie to the theory that technological advance would bring about planetary unity, but there was no denying it was real. Hundreds of nations, some with nuclear weapons; their world divided so completely it would be laughably easy to turn them against one another. The combination of superior military force and advanced technology would be quite enough, turning local nations into allies that would be discarded or subjected the moment they were no longer useful. And yet …

Her intercom bleeped. It was time.

Julianne keyed her console, then sat back in her chair as the other two Triumvirs flickered into existence in front of her. The holograms looked faintly wrong, as always, something that had always made her smile even though she understood the reasoning behind it. The Protectorate had more than enough computing power to fake almost any communication, with minibrains playing the role to near-perfection, and a transmission  that looked too good to be true would be regarded with extreme suspicion until it was checked and cleared. The council had the finest experts in the known multiverse working for them, yet as technology advanced the technology to fool it advanced too. Julianne would have preferred to hold the meeting in person, but that wasn’t an option. The degenerates of Timeline F were a technological civilisation. The gap between them and their masters was wide, but not wide enough. Given time, they would develop their own crosstime capabilities. They already knew it was possible.

“Parliament is pleased,” Protector Horace Jarvis said, curtly. “That doesn’t bode well.”

“No,” Protector John Hotham said. “But is that a bad thing?”

Julianne shrugged. Jarvis had openly admitted he didn’t trust Montrose, while Hotham argued Montrose could be trusted to serve the Protectorate as well as himself. Julianne had been the deciding vote and it had been impossible to avoid acknowledging that Montrose was very much a two-edged sword. He could cut their enemies, but he could also turn on his masters. It had been a calculated risk, one that – in hindsight – might have been a mistake. Given control of a civilisation that could actually support his forces, Montrose could go rogue. He was certainly charismatic enough to convince many of his subordinates to follow him.

“The prize is worth some risks,” she mused. “If we gain control and open permanent gates …”

The vision unfolded in front of them. The Protectorate ruled four timelines, three populated by primitives and one apparently untouched by intelligent life. It was difficult to uplift the locals of the first three timelines, leaving them fit only for brute labour that could be carried out far more efficiently by machines. A population that actually understood science, and didn’t think aircraft were the chariots of the gods, was a population that could actually achieve something. All they needed was proper guidance, something the Protectorate was happy to provide. An influx of labour from Timeline F could turn the earlier timelines into genuinely productive parts of the empire. It would happen without them, of course, but not in her time.

“If,” Jarvis pointed out.

Hotham snorted. “They’re a hundred years behind us, at least! They pose no threat.”

“Montrose does not have unlimited manpower. Or industry.” Julianne knew why. “They could trade a hundred of their tanks for every one of his and still come out ahead.”

“And if Montrose wins, will he turn on us?” Jarvis leaned forward. “He’s already popular. He could declare himself a warlord, declare independence, if he secures the timeline before we can open permanent gates.”

Julianne kept her face expressionless as Hotham started to splutter. The hell of it was that Jarvis had a point. Montrose’s exploits had been widely reported and even though the reports were incomplete – they could hardly be otherwise – they had made him a hero. The media was already telling the world about his glorious victories, no matter that there was no independent verification of anything they’d learnt from the second set of prisoners. Parliament had passed a vote of thanks, while ambitious politicians were lining up to praise Montrose and demand the government work faster to save Timeline F from itself. The reports of widespread degeneracy had shocked Parliament, not without reason. The analysts had recovered enough pornographic material from the captured computers to shock even hardened spooks. She shuddered to think what such exposure was going to their children.

“He’s not going to be happy working his way up the ladder, not after conquering a world,” Jarvis said. “Why would he step down?”

“He’s too loyal to go rogue,” Hotham insisted. “Julianne?”

“There are two problems,” Julianne said. “The first is that the war is not yet won. It is unlikely in the extreme that the United States of America” – an absurd concept, to one born in the Prime Timeline – “has surrendered. Montrose cannot have won. Not yet. We owe it to him to provide as much support as possible, even if we don’t entirely trust him.”

Hotham glowered. “And the second?”

Julianne braced herself. “Montrose could lose.”

“What?”

Julianne honestly couldn’t tell which of the men had spoken. Perhaps it had been both. The Protectorate hadn’t lost a battle in nearly a hundred years. There were few primal states capable of putting up even the slightest resistance, if the Protectorate decided to squash them, and none of the timelines they’d discovered earlier had enjoyed even the slightest concept of modern technology. The Protectorate had grown too used to its tradition of victory, to regarding war as a game and expansion as their natural right. The war games were as realistic as possible, pitting different units against their peers, but there were limits. It was difficult to imagine what it might be like to face a society that not only understood technology, yet could also mass-produce their own weapons and work to duplicate the Protectorate’s. It had never happened before.

And we don’t know how long it will take them to devise their own plasma cannons or antigravity systems, she thought. The researchers hadn’t been able to offer any sort of reassurance. There were too many unanswered questions for them to be sure of anything. How long will it take them to duplicate the Crosstime Transpositioner and reach our world?

“There is no way they can defeat us,” Hotham snapped. “Montrose can hold his position indefinitely.”

“We dare not assume so,” Julianne said, tartly. “The enemy has nukes. And ballistic missiles.”

“The Castles are capable of withstanding a nuke,” Hotham said.

“The degenerates only need to get lucky once,” Julianne said, keeping her voice calm. “We are committed to war now. We have no choice. We must support Montrose.”

“We’re already preparing the third invasion force,” Jarvis said. “The commander can be given orders to relieve Montrose.”

“For what?” Hotham’s face darkened. “What crime has he committed?”

“He arguably exceeded his orders,” Jarvis snapped.

“Arguably,” Hotham repeated. “Parliament will not agree.”

Julianne suspected he was right. Montrose had orders to be diplomatic – or to blow up Castle Treathwick – if he encountered an equal or superior civilisation. A primitive civilisation would pose no challenge, beyond a minor logistics headache. But one advanced enough to be useful without being advanced enough to be dangerous … Montrose had either been very brave or very stupid and no one would know for sure, not until the war was over. He might have done the right thing.

“We can convince Parliament,” Jarvis said.

“We cannot convince his supporters,” Hotham countered. “They’ll revolt.”

“And the last thing we need is a struggle for command authority in the middle of a war,” Julianne agreed. It wasn’t just Montrose. By long custom, a Captain-General had the right to nominate his subordinates, promising them a share in the new timeline in exchange for their service and support. Montrose hadn’t secured all of his choices, but he’d managed to get enough in place to ensure relieving him would be very tricky indeed. “If the enemy takes advantage of it …”

She let her voice trail off, suggestively. No previous opponent had been able to take advantage of command disunity. They’d lacked the insight to know when it was happening, or the ability to influence their betters. This group of degenerates might be … well, degenerates, yet that didn’t make them stupid. They might be as cunning as any primal, with the technology to make themselves really dangerous. The hell of it, she reflected, was that they’d probably been committed to war from the moment Castle Treathwick was rotated into the new timeline. The Protectorate needed neither competition nor subversion. And it would get both, if they failed to bring the new timeline under control.

The argument went on for hours, but the outcome was inevitable. The war would go on.

But in truth, Julianne reflected as the meeting finally came to an end, the matter was out of their hands. And had been so for months now.

Chapter One: Jubal, Texas, Timeline F (OTL)

This isn’t right, Sergeant Callam Boone thought, as he surveyed the deserted ruins of a once-proud town. This isn’t America.

He kept himself low, eyes sweeping the street as the small team lurked in the shadows. Jubal had been a prosperous town once, with a factory and a thriving population and everything they needed to support themselves, from a school to simple and affordable housing. It would have made an ideal retirement town, if the factory hadn’t shut down and plunged the town into a nightmare from which it had never recovered. The majority of the inhabitants had moved out, leaving a few stragglers mired in hopelessness and despair. It had been galling to watch the collapse of so many communities, to see people struggling with alcohol and drugs because they had little hope of ever bettering themselves; harder still to hear the lectures from snooty university lecturers, reporters, politicians and other rich and privileged men north of Richmond who had no idea what it was like to grow up in such a community and cared less. It was easy to see why so many of the remaining inhabitants had joined the enemy work gangs, even though it was technically treason. What had the United States done for them?

Callam spat as he leaned forward, bracing himself. It was dawn, the air light enough to see clearly without NVGs. The street was a wreck, a handful of burned-out cars and houses a grim reminder that the United States was in the grip of a military invasion from another world. The Protectorate – the Puritans, as they had come to be known – had swept through Jubal, blasting aside anyone who got in their way, and then abandoned the town after rounding up the population and moving them south. They had made all sorts of promises about cleaning up the local environment, but they’d done nothing to collect the garbage on the streets or repair the homes for human occupation. Callam felt a hint of shame as the wind picked up briefly, stirring the garbage on the streets. He’d seen such sights in Iraq during the war, but it felt wrong to see them in America. But it was just another sign of hopelessness. It ate people alive.

He glanced back at the rest of the team, then motioned them forward. The four men behind him looked like raiders rather than soldiers, carrying weapons that were surprisingly primitive compared to the high-tech array they’d deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they had no choice. The Protectorate was good at tracking radio signals and any other sort of betraying emission, their visual sensors were better than anything America could deploy. He glanced up into the lightening sky, wondering if there was a drone up there watching them. It was difficult to spot an American UAV with the naked eye, even one large enough to pass for a manned aircraft, and the Protectorate drones were smaller and stealthier. He’d been told the techs were working on ways to detect them, but he’d believe it when he saw it. There was no guarantee they’d crack the puzzle in time to matter.

They advanced forward, skirting the houses and crossing a wrecked schoolhouse that could have passed for Springfield Elementary. A body lay on the ground in front of the gates, so badly decayed it was impossible to tell what had killed it. Callam gave the corpse a quick glance and moved on, wishing there was time to give the dead man a proper burial. Someone had painted a note on a faded sign – SCHOOL’S OUT FOREVER – and left it there, exposed to the elements. Callam felt a twinge of something he didn’t want to look at too closely. If the Protectorate won the war, school really would be out forever. Defeat meant the end of the world.

They reached their planned ambush point and slowed, sweeping the surrounding area for possible threats. There were none, the rotting homes seemingly abandoned. He glanced into one and scowled as he saw the handful of faded pictures on the walls, left behind years before the invasion had begun. A young boy growing from a toddler to a child to a teenager to a young adult … he wondered, suddenly, what had happened to the kid and his parents. They’d left their home and then … what? Why had they left in such a hurry?

He checked his watch, then unslung his rucksack and removed the electromagnetic trap. The device looked crude and cumbersome, as if it had been assembled by someone who didn’t quite know what he was doing, but he’d been assured it should work. Corporal Bulgier took the other half of the device out of his bag and emplaced it on the far side of the street, half-hidden by a garbage can. Callam tensed as he triggered the lasers, linking the two halves of the device together. He’d been told the system was undetectable, but it was hard to be sure. The Protectorate had surprised the defenders before and no doubt it would do so again.

“Get into place,” he hissed, just loudly enough to be heard. The ambush site wasn’t perfect, but what was in this day and age? He disliked having to rely on a plan with too many moving parts and he was painfully aware of just how much could go wrong, yet … he’d just have to hope for the best. “Keep your heads down as much as possible.”

“Yes, Granddad,” Corporal Bulgier hissed back.

Callam gave him a sharp look as he found a place to hide. He’d thought himself retired from war, when he’d left the Marine Corps to become the Sheriff of Flint, and if the Protectorate hadn’t invaded he knew it was unlikely he would ever see war again. He certainly hadn’t thought there would be a civil war, even though he’d seen the spreading hopelessness and despair and outright hatred of the federal government. The population was too beaten down to consider revolt, or working on building its own self-supporting networks and having as little to do with the government as possible. And then …

Guilt gnawed at his heart. It had been sheer luck he’d been far enough from Flint to escape, when the Protectorate arrived. Cold logic told him he’d done the right thing in running, in taking everything he’d seen to higher authority, but he didn’t believe it. He felt like a coward, running from danger even as darkness swept over the town that had elected him Sheriff. The folk back home were under the yoke now, a yoke that was oddly light in some ways and very harsh in others. Or so he’d been told. Reports from the occupied zone were vague and often contradictory. He suspected some were little more than enemy propaganda. The Protectorate had had no trouble finding allies, people willing to sell out their country for money, power, or even something as simple as medical care and enough food to fill their bellies. If they had come into the world blind, they knew what they were dealing with now.

And no matter how many times I fight now, he thought, it will never be enough.

His watch vibrated, once. Callam tensed. It was time. He peered forward, half-expecting to see a handful of enemy hovertanks rocketing towards him. The Protectorate could move with terrifying speed and it was certainly possible they’d want to nip any trouble in the bud, although it was unlikely they’d pegged his team as a major threat. Or indeed any kind of threat. Seventy miles to the east, a USMC formation was risking their lives to mount a diversionary attack, to draw the enemy’s attention away from him. The guilt grew stronger, a mocking reminder of his failure. He wouldn’t fail again.

A faint whining noise echoed on the air, sending unpleasant feelings through his body. He wasn’t entirely unaware of sonic weapons, but it was one thing to read about them and another to experience the effect in person. It was disconcerting, even worrying. The sound grew louder as he gritted his teeth, reminding himself he’d been through worse. And yet it made him want to be afraid.

It isn’t real, he told himself, sharply. It isn’t real!

The sound grew more unpleasant as the drone came into view, a tiny flying saucer about twice the size of a garbage can lid. It reminded him of a drone he’d seen during his last deployment, except it was smaller and radiated strobe lights that made it hard to see clearly. He’d thought the drone would be an easy target – he was a very good shot and his team included shooters who were even better – but the combination of lights and vibration made it hard to pick out the actual drone from the blurry haze. His head twanged painfully as a strobe light pulsed against his eyeballs, a grim reminder of just what longer exposure could do to him. If half the tales were true, a protest march in Austin had ended with the protestors comatose, vomiting, or otherwise incapable of offering resistance – or even running – before it was too late.

He looked down, watching as the drone came closer. It was hard to tell if it was being controlled remotely by a distant pilot or operating on some kind of AI, although he supposed it hardly mattered. The Protectorate used the drones to patrol the edge of its sphere of influence, making it clear that anyone who tried to cross no-man’s land did so at severe risk of their lives. Callam ground his teeth in silent frustration, bracing himself as the last few seconds ticked away …

A deafening shriek, almost human, split the air as the trap was sprung. The drone stopped dead, vibrating so violently Callam half-expected it to tear itself apart as it threw sparks in all directions, then crashed to the ground. He ducked down quickly, fearing the drone would carry a self-destruct charge, although he was already too close to be safe. The Protectorate didn’t have lawyers impeding military operations and while they didn’t set out to cause civilian casualties they didn’t let the fear of killing innocents get in their way either. They certainly wouldn’t let it stop them from fitting a self-destruct into their drones.

It hit the ground. Callam let out a breath as the whining sound and crazy lighting died away. He hadn’t felt so disconcerted since his first combat patrol, despite the best training the USMC could provide, but the effect was fading rapidly now. He forced himself to stand and hurry towards the drone, feeling an odd sense of unreality nagging at his mind. It felt like gazing upon a scorpion or a spider, an uneasy sense there was something fundamentally wrong about the thing in front of him. Up close, the drone was smaller than he’d thought, the disc studded with sensor arrays and devices that had no obvious function. They didn’t look like weapons. The damage was difficult to assess. A number of tiny arrays looked broken, but he didn’t know enough to tell if there was any internal damage.

Score one for the techs, he thought. They didn’t know how the drone flew – up close, there were no propellers or tiny jet intakes – but they had been sure they could bring the flying saucer crashing down. Whatever they did, it worked.

“Get the body bag,” he snapped. “Hurry!”

“Here,” Corporal Hastings said. The lone woman in the group, she moved with practiced ease to open the black bag and hold it ready. “Hurry!”

Callam nodded. It was oddly hard to touch the drone – it felt like reaching out to pick up a spider, the sensation refusing to abate even as his fingers touched cooling metal – but he forced himself to lift the drone and shove it into the bag. The techs had assured him that the material was designed to block everything from radio to a handful of electromagnetic radiations he’d never even heard of, ensuring the Protectorate couldn’t track their missing drone and throw a missile at it from a safe distance, yet it was impossible to be sure. Six months ago, alternate timelines had been nothing more than bad science-fiction, with evil goatee-wearing counterparts tormenting the main characters before being booted back to their own dimension. Now …

His lips twitched. Do I have a counterpart in their world? One with a goatee?

Callam shoved his empty rucksack to Corporal Hastings, then slung the body bag over his shoulders and stood. He’d expected the drone to be heavier, but it was only lightly more weighty than the dustbin lid it so resembled. He supposed it wasn’t really a surprise. The Marine Corps had been working hard to lighten everything for easier deployment, in hopes of ensuring a major force could get halfway around the world before some local tyrant decided to cause too much trouble, and the Protectorate clearly felt the same way. The rest of the team was already bugging out, as planned. It felt wrong – the Corps did not leave men behind – but there was no choice. The enemy might already be on the way.

He unhooked a grenade from his belt and held it at the ready as he walked away, then removed the pin and tossed it at the crash site. It was unlikely any investigators would believe the drone destroyed beyond all hope of recognition, not if they sifted through the crash site, but it was just possible any distant observers would think the drone had exploded. It might buy a few seconds more as they picked up speed, hurrying towards the extraction point. They didn’t dare risk bringing vehicles too close to the region, not when they’d make easy targets for enemy air power. They had to put some distance between themselves and the enemy before it was too late.

This is America, he thought, with a hot flash of anger. It isn’t right!

Corporal Hastings slowed as the sound of distant gunfire echoed through the air. Callam motioned for her to pick up the pace, even though the air was growing warmer by the second. They were too far from the diversionary attack to hear anything – he thought – but it was impossible to be sure of that too. The shooting could be anything from a local offensive to resistance insurgents or drug or people smugglers taking advantage of the chaos to ply their deadly trade. Or men who thought they were the last free Americans in the world. The army had stumbled across a half-hidden ranch of people who thought the Protectorate had overrun the entire country, if not the entire world. It had been surprisingly hard to convince them that the world had not ended. Not yet.

He cursed under his breath as he heard a distant whine, his ears twitching unpleasantly as he picked up speed.  The enemy might have been diverted or they might not … it didn’t matter. He forced himself to keep going, heading towards the extraction point as the rest of the team hurried elsewhere. They would probably be ignored, he told himself, as he felt sweat prickling down his back. Better they got clear before it was too late.

“Crap,” Corporal Hastings muttered.

Callam glanced back. Two more drones were gliding towards them, moving with terrifying speed. They could have blasted both Americans if they’d wanted … that meant the drones, or their controllers, wanted to take prisoners. Callam wasn’t reassured. The Protectorate was more civilised than many of America’s other foes, but no one had any doubt that any captives would be interrogated and they would be forced to talk. There was certainly no reason to think the Protectorate was be any different. They probably had some super-advanced lie detectors and truth drugs to ensure that whatever they were told was actually true.

He gritted his teeth. “Run!”

The whining grew louder as they ran, the drones getting alarmingly close. He had no idea what they had to capture prisoners – his imagination suggested everything from netting to phasers on stun – but they were running out of time. The noise was making his ears ache, reaching into his brain and making it hard to think … he nearly stumbled, his sense of balance suddenly twisting to the point he almost fell. His muscles jittered painfully, threatening to cramp … it was hard to keep going. He hadn’t felt so sore since his first weeks at Camp Pendleton. He’d thought himself in good shape and yet …

He heard a shout and threw himself to the ground as the RPG team fired, nearly at point-blank range. The RPGs were primitive compared to Javelins and other modern antitank missiles, but that wasn’t a disadvantage against an enemy capable of countering and neutralising most modern weapons. The warheads were touchy too, detonating near the drones even if they didn’t score direct hits. He turned his head just in time to see the drones crashing to the ground.

“Got them, Sarge,” Private Singh snapped.

“Set the charges, then get moving,” Callam ordered. He’d hoped the RPG team would be able to avoid contact and withdraw without being noticed, let alone engaged. They had taken a calculated risk in leading the drones to the team … he told himself, sharply, that they’d done what they had to in order to secure their prize. The drone they’d captured might prove the key to defeating the Protectorate. Might. “We don’t have much time.”

He glanced south, feeling cold despite the heat. Everything looked normal and yet, only a few miles away, American territory was in the iron grip of a crosstime invasion. Six months ago, it would have been unthinkable. The idea was absurd. He snorted as they set the charges and hurried off, leaving them to detonate. The idea of a military invasion of the United States had been inconceivable, after the Civil War.

But a great deal had changed since then.

For generations, the Magicians of Celeste have chafed under at the limitations of the Compact, the treaties between the Magical and Mundane communities of the Allied Lands, and worked towards their abolition, envisaging a world in which magical supremacy would be established, allowing them to explore newer and greater fields of magic while keeping the powerless mundanes firmly under control. Their dreams were not taken seriously, until now.

With the end of the Necromantic Wars and the Allied Lands in disarray, they have finally stepped into the light and taken control of their city, declaring independence from the Allied Lands and creating a nightmare for both mundanes and any magicians who refuse to toe the line. And they don’t intend to stop. It is only a matter of time before they export their new regime to the rest of the continent, crushing anyone who stands in their way.

For Emily, who has traced the enigmatic Hierarchy to Celeste, there is no doubt that the new regime is an ally to a far older and darker threat. Millions of lives are at stake, thousands killed and tens of thousands more forced into slavery. The regime must be stopped, no matter the cost, before it imposes its own order on the entire world. But how can she prevail against an entire city of magicians, and a threat that has been decades in the making?

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Prologue

From: A History of Northern Continent Education. Markus Adams (Certified Wizard).

There is no agreement, in the annuals of magical education, of just which magical school was the first to be founded. Academics argue constantly over whether or not Whitehall, Mountaintop, Golden (lost in the blighted lands) or even Heart’s Eye came first, setting an example that inspired the remaining first generation of schools. Even for the schools for which we have detailed and accurate historical records, such as Laughter or Stronghold, there are a great many questions that remain unanswered. It is difficult to trace the development of magical education, or to trace the thinking that led to communal schools. Far too many historical records have simply been lost or deliberately destroyed.

One thing that is clear, however, is that the development of magical schools led to clashes with wizards who followed the apprenticeship system. A wizard who had a number of apprentices, who in turn raised apprentices of their own, stood at the top of a hierarchy that was tilted in their favour, giving them power and prestige they were loathe to lose. The clear flaws of the system – senior wizards had considerable power over their juniors, some magicians never receive proper training at all – did not disabuse them of their determination to keep the system in place. Indeed, many junior apprentices preferred to keep it because eventually they would rise to become seniors themselves. The idea of a generalist magical education, which would give all comers the same basic knowledge, was understandably terrifying. It would not only limit the number of apprentices willing to devote their lives to a singular subject, but also ensure the apprentices knew their rights when they were accepted by a master. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the masters and many of their apprentices waged war on the concept of universal magical education. Historical records are vague, but it appears that several schools were in fact destroyed over the first century of magical education and Whitehall itself came very close to being destroyed too.

The events that led to the compromise that ended the dispute remain unclear, but eventually a compromise was reached. The schools would give everyone the same basic grounding, yet also serve as a recruiting ground for masters in search of apprentices. Students who did well would be offered a chance of further education, focused on a particular subject. In many ways, the compromise appeared perfect. The new students would know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, which subject they intended to specialise in, ensuring they could reach out to the masters best suited to educate them.

However, the compromise was also deeply flawed. There were far more apprentices than there were masters. Many students could not get the focused education they wanted, let alone the qualifications they needed to practice themselves. There was also no way to study multiple subjects after they left school, let alone conduct the studies on their own timetable. Indeed, after several decades development, it became clear that the master-apprentice relationship/hierarchy remained unchanged. The discontent this sparked, by contrast, remained unfocused. No one with the power to do so was interested in rocking the boat, let alone founding an institute of further education.

It was not until Lady Emily arrived on the scene that dreams of a university started to take shape and form. Lady Emily not only had the wealth and prestige to found an institution, but also largely unquestioned possession of Heart’s Eye, a school that was occupied by a necromancer and eventually liberated by Emily herself. Gathering a handful of friends and supporters around her, ironically in the months between her departure from Whitehall and her apprenticeship with Void, she set out to found a university.

She did not find it an easy task. The necromancer had left surprises behind in the rubble, surprises that came very close to destroying the entire university. Many of her allies had ambitions of their own, from the former students of Heart’s Eye to believed the school belonged to them to others who had dreams of power without restraint, and it is greatly to her credit that by the time she left the university under the control of Administrator Irene, and Deputy Administrator Caleb, the institution rested on fairly solid ground, and stood ready to receive the first collection of prospective teachers and students.

Naturally, matters did not go as smoothly as many had hoped.

Chapter One

Caleb stood on the podium and looked down at the audience, trying not to groan.

He had always known it would be difficult to attract top talent to Heart’s Eye, to the university Emily and he had planned over the last few years. Long planning sessions – his heart twisted at the memory of what had followed those sessions – had led to concepts that looked great on paper, yet were frustratingly hard to turn into something real. The vast majority of younger students went to the older magical schools, while the older and freshly graduated magicians tended to look for a master, so they could specialise in their chosen subject. It was never easy to find a master at the best of times, and it grew harder as the prospective apprentice grew older. There was no escaping the simple fact that the first students attending the university wouldn’t be the cream of the crop. They would keep going to masters until the university proved itself.

Caleb knew, without false modesty, that he had always been a dilettante. He hadn’t been interested in a single subject so much as he had been interested in them all, reading around magical topics in greater depth than they were covered at either Stronghold or Whitehall, if they were covered at all. It had made him something of a dabbler, and he’d said as much to Emily, but he’d learnt a great deal through combining the different magical fields into one. There was no inherent reason why a student couldn’t study both alchemy and enchantment, or construction and a dozen other subjects. The divide between them owed more to masters demanding their apprentices specialise in their fields, rather than studying magic itself. It was a two-edged sword, Caleb had often thought, although few agreed with him. The apprentice who became a master might be an expert in their field, but they rarely knew more than the basics of any other field. It was no surprise, not to him, that the different guilds treated each other with barely-hidden disdain, even when they were supposed to be united against a common enemy. There were feuds that went back hundreds of years, originating so far back that no one truly knew what had started them. No wonder cooperation was impossible.

He kept his face as blank as possible as he surveyed the newcomers. A handful of older masters, whose ambitions had outstripped their talents; a cluster of apprentices, some taught the basics at school and others largely self-taught, or taken into their master’s household years before their time. It was technically frowned upon to take on an apprentice who hadn’t had at least four years of generalist education under his belt, but like so many other magical customs it lacked an enforcement mechanism. They were flanked by a handful of young magicians who had the spark, but lacked the money or connections to attend a proper school, and a cluster of apprentice craftsmen, printers and engineers, lacking in magic but deeply steeped in the New Learning. It wasn’t going to be easy to keep them from leaving, Caleb reflected, when they realised how dangerous it could be for a mundane in a school of magicians. Emily had laid down the law, and he intended to enforce it, but it was just a matter of time until someone challenged him. The hell of it was that the challenge might not even be deliberate. Too many magicians saw a mundane in their territory as someone who was being uppity, someone who needed to be taught a lesson. But that rule didn’t apply here.

His eyes lingered briefly on a redheaded young woman, her pretty face set in a scowl that made her look like an overgrown child, and winced inwardly. She was here because of politics … and she didn’t want to be. A handful of aristocratic youths stood near her, looking so absurdly self-confident and entitled that it was hard not to feel a flicker of the old resentment and hatred. They thought the world owed them everything, but if that were true they wouldn’t be attending Heart’s Eye. The new tutors standing at the rear, by contrast, looked worried. They knew they weren’t good enough to get tenure at any other magical institution. Heart’s Eye was their last chance to be something more than independent teachers, moving from city to city and student to student. He hoped they’d be reasonable. Too many magicians were decidedly unreasonable.

He tried to see the hall through their eyes, feeling his heart sink still further. The famed mirrors were gone, some shattered and others removed, and the plain stone walls had been left largely unadorned, save for a handful of portraits of research wizards. The chamber had been swept repeatedly, but there was still a hint of dust in the air. He wondered what the newcomers were thinking, as they waited for him to speak. The events of the last few months, the crisis that had come very close to destroying the university and so much more, felt hazy and dreamlike even to him – and he had lived through it. Others seemed to have forgotten it completely, as if the whole affair had been so far out of their context that they refused to acknowledge it had happened. It was hard to blame them.

Caleb was not good at public speaking. He disliked it profoundly. But he was the Deputy Administrator and it was his duty.

“Welcome to Heart’s Eye,” he said, simply. “This is not a school. This is not a master’s workshop. This is not an institution focused on any one topic, magical or mundane. This is a university. Our goal is to allow students to study multiple subjects at once, be they magic or science, in hopes of expanding the sum total of human knowledge and developing newer and better ways to do things. We are gathering experts in every subject and students who are willing to learn, in the hope of creating a melting pot of knowledge. You may find it strange, if you have spent your early lives or careers in one of the schools or served an apprenticeship under a master before taking apprentices of your own, but we hope you will find it interesting as well as educational.”

He paused. “You’ll notice that a great many of our arrangements are fluid. We have no intention of slavishly copying tradition, at least when there is no clear reason for a given tradition to exist, and our willingness to keep any traditions is entirely dependent on their value and practicality. If one tradition is worthless, we will discard it; if it serves a valuable purpose, we will keep it. You may find it hard to grow accustomed to such changes, and to understand the importance of adapting to the ever-changing world, but we believe that there is no way change can be prevented forever. We aim to surf the waves of change, rather than letting them destroy us.

“In this place, titles don’t matter. Wealth doesn’t matter. Magical power or training doesn’t matter. We will not give you favour because your father is the King of Blank or your mother is the Grand High Witch of Somewhere. We will not look down on you because your father is a mystery, or your mother was a scullery maid; we will certainly not look down on you because you barely have enough magic to boil water, or don’t have magic at all. You will have the opportunities to learn from the tutors, regardless of your origins, and the opportunities to make use of what you learn.

“That said, this is not a school. You will not be scolded for being late to class. You will not be caned for handing your homework in late, or not at all. You will not be expelled for failing your end-of-year exams. We offer you – all of you – equal opportunities. We do not promise equal outcomes. That would be silly. We offer you these opportunities, but what you make of them is up to you. If you study hard, read around your subjects and practice what you’re taught, you will do well. If you never attend class, and spend all your days drinking and carousing in Heart’s Ease,  you will do poorly. You will not graduate. You will do nothing with your lives.

“And it will all be your fault.”

He paused again, letting the words hang in the air.

“There are few rules here, but they do exist. You may not bully or assault other students. You may not disrupt class or impede the education of other students. You may not use your birth or power or both to put someone else down. You may not continue old feuds here. If you have problems with other students, we expect you to handle them maturity; if you have issues with your tutors, we expect you to bring them to the university board. If you are caught breaking these rules, there will be consequences. You will not enjoy them.

“I don’t expect you to like or love your peers, or your tutors. But I do expect you to treat them with respect.”

His eyes surveyed the newcomers again. Some looked pleased, others looked sullen. The red-haired girl managed to look both bored and irked at the same time. The tutors were far more practiced at hiding their emotions. Caleb hoped that didn’t mean they’d be trouble. A single poisonous tutor could do more damage than a dozen entitled aristocratic brats. He wondered, idly, how many would stay, when they realised their qualifications wouldn’t guarantee them tenure. Emily had been very set against any sort of permanent tenure, for reasons Caleb knew the tutors would not approve. The harder it was to sack any offending tutor, the greater the chance one would offend.

“If you want to leave at any moment, the door is over there,” he finished, pointing to the rear door. “If not … I hope you enjoy your time here, and that it benefits both you and our newborn university. The student assistants waiting in the next room will show you to your dorms and bedchambers, if you have any issues they can’t handle ask a tutor. Dismissed.”

A ripple ran through the air as he stepped off the podium, the majority of the students heading towards the next room. Caleb hoped they wouldn’t cause too many problems with the student volunteers, as they struggled to get used to the dorms. Whitehall didn’t have dorms, he knew,  and Mountaintop segregated its students by birth as well as sex. He wondered how long it would be until he heard the first complaint about the lack of private bedrooms, or demands to know why magicians had to share space with mundanes. Probably not very long, if he was any judge. He knew better than to believe mundanes were dirty and smelly brutes who couldn’t count past ten without taking off their pants – and uncouth enough to do it too – because his father was a mundane, but he’d heard magicians say just that and worse too.

Of course they do, his mother had said, years ago. They’re not smart. They’re not talented. The only thing that sets them apart from the mundanes is magic – and they don’t even have much of that. They put the mundanes down because they know, deep inside, that the only thing that separates them from the mundanes is magic – and without magic, they’d be no better than those they hate.

The red-haired girl stalked past him with nary a nod, her face set in a pinched line as she left the room. A handful of young men followed, no doubt intending to try to chat her up. Caleb suspected it wouldn’t go very well, not for them. The girl was a member of a high-ranking family and her would-be suitors were trying too hard, the very finery of their clothes suggesting they weren’t that high-born at all. And the very fact they were in the university was proof they didn’t have their pick of masters …

“You’re Caleb, Son of Sienna,” a student said. He shoved out a hand. “I’m Parson, of House Garland.”

Caleb hid his annoyance with an effort. His extended family hadn’t been too pleased about his mother’s choice of husbands, although they’d been reluctant to take the final step of actually disowning her if she refused to give up her partner and return home. Lucky for them they hadn’t, Caleb reflected. His parents had five children who were handsome, talented, and very strong in magic. His brother had died bravely, facing a necromancer, but the rest of his siblings were powerful assets. House Waterfall had to be glad they hadn’t disowned their wayward child. Her decision had worked out very well for her family.

“Pleased to meet you,” Caleb said. Parson was a little too handsome, a little too overdressed for his role. His handshake was very firm, disturbingly so. Caleb’s father had once noted that the more someone played up his honesty and openness, the more alarmed you should be … Caleb wished, not for the first time, that he’d listened more to his father as a child. “Welcome to Heart’s Eye.”

Parson smiled. “Is it true that you and Lady Emily are secretly married? And that you were given this post as a wedding gift?”

Caleb felt a hot flash of anger. He’d been dreaming of a university – or at least something along those lines – well before he’d known Emily as anything other than a name, let alone a friend and a lover. Their break-up had hurt, and he was honest enough to admit it had been partly his fault, but they’d managed to remain friends and stay in touch, eventually working together to lay the groundwork for a university. The idea that he was nothing more than Emily’s lover was not only insulting, but wrong. It was just frustrating to have people think of him as nothing more than a bit character in her life.

“No,” he said, flatly. “Lady Emily and myself, and a handful of others, devised the university and worked to put it into practice. I have this post because it is my responsibility to make the university work.”

Another student joined them, wearing the livery of a formally-acknowledged bastard. “Why didn’t Mistress Irene greet us?”

“Administrator Irene is currently dealing with a more important problem,” Caleb said. “The university is very new, as you know, and a great many issues were simply not recognised as problems until they came into the light. We are learning through doing here, and …”

Parson frowned. “We are high-ranking students,” he interrupted. “Should we not be welcomed by …”

Caleb met his eyes. It was hard to keep the irritation out of his voice. “There are no ranks and titles here. I told you that. If you are mortally insulted because Mistress Irene did not leave a problem to fester so she could greet you, you may leave at any moment. If not, I suggest you concentrate on your studies. We have a lot of work to do.”

He waited, wondering what Parson would say. Parson bowed instead and headed for the door, surrounded by a handful of other wealthy or well-connected brats. Caleb was sure he was going to be trouble. Some aristos got knocked down hard and learnt from the experience, growing into better people; others, he reflected coldly, didn’t get knocked down until they were too set in their ways to change. He made a mental note to look into Parson’s history. With that sort of attitude, it was very likely he’d never been to Whitehall. Or Stronghold.

“I thank you for your offer of employment,” an older man said. He bowed rather than holding out a hand. “Master Ballymore, at your service.”

Caleb bowed back, studying Ballymore thoughtfully. He was a short slender man, with a ratty face and a weedy little moustache that looked somehow wrong, as if it shouldn’t be there at all. He wore the outfit of a travelling tutor, but there was something about his attitude that suggested he was always one missed payment away from total disaster, a sense of quiet desperation that poisoned the air around him. Caleb tried not to show his concern. The contrast between Ballymore and the confident tutors he’d known at Whitehall could not be greater. If he hadn’t been able to find a permanent post …

It doesn’t prove anything, Caleb reminded himself. There were more candidates than there were posts. If someone could only find work by travelling from place to place, teaching a handful of students the basics and then moving on when their students went to school, it didn’t mean they were bad tutors. There hadn’t been any reason to worry about them, when references were checked. For all I know, this guy needs some stability to flourish.

“You are welcome,” he said, finally. “I hope you will do well here.”

“I will,” Ballymore promised. “My students always do well in their exams.”

Caleb nodded, curtly, as Ballymore hurried away. Exams weren’t everything, but they were a good indicator of a student’s capabilities. It had taken weeks of arguing to get Heart’s Eye accredited to offer the standard exams, let alone their more advanced counterparts, and the White Council wasn’t entirely happy with the arrangement. A failure now, even a relatively minor one, could cost the university the right to offer exams, which would cripple its future development and make it impossible to recruit the best students and teachers. And that would be disastrous.

He spoke briefly to the other tutors, trying to avoid the sense they were scraping the bottom of the barrel. It wasn’t easy. A couple appeared competent, and willing to believe in the university’s stated goals, but others were far less suitable. One was clearly reluctant to take orders from a young man who had been a student himself a couple of years ago. Another looked ready to leave at the slightest provocation. But they were all he had. They would have to do.

Give us five years and we’ll be solidly established, he told himself. And then we’ll be well on the way.

Sure, his thoughts countered, expressing doubts he dared not admit openly. Not yet. And if these tutors aren’t up to the task, they’ll take the rest of us down with them.

After a cataclysmic interstellar war that came very close to exterminating humanity, the Daybreak Republic has risen from the ashes and embarked upon a mission to unite hundreds of human colony worlds under its banner, in hopes of preventing a second and final conflict that will complete the destruction of the human race. But not everyone agrees that the empire’s ends justify the means.

Though a technicality, Lieutenant-Commander Leo Morningstar commanded the lone starship in the Yangtze Sector, but no more. The arrival of reinforcements brings a senior office who has no patience for jumped-up officers, and an axe to grind against Leo personally. Relieved of command, Leo finds himself serving under an old enemy and then assigned to an isolated war-torn world while his rival steals the glory Leo rightfully earned. They think they’ve gotten rid of him for good …

But that didn’t work out very well last time, did it?

Read a FREE SAMPLE, then download from the links here: Amazon US, UK, CAN, AUS, Books2Read.

Idle Thoughts On Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, And The Future

The iron rule of politics is that if there are real problems in society and responsible parties don’t deal with them, the irresponsible parties will jump on them.

-Daniel Schwammenthal

It is a sad irony of history that the greatest President of the United States of America, Abraham Lincoln, was succeeded by a President who was arguably the worst. Neither Jefferson Davis nor Robert E Lee managed to do quite so much damage to the United States as Andrew Johnston, a man who came close to undoing the verdict of the American Civil War and managed to do enough to ensure that the racial question continues to plague America to this day. It was a serious mistake. Lincoln knew there was a very real risk of assassination, and if that happened his vice president would assume the presidency and make his own mark on history. If Lincoln had survived, Johnson would have remained a non-entity. But history did not work out that way.

President Roosevelt came very close to repeating that mistake, with far less cause. FDR was nearing the end of his life as he campaigned for his fourth term in office, and he should have known it. He was already showing signs of losing his touch, from working with Stalin and giving him far too much for nothing to alienating his allies, and the odds of him surviving long enough to leave office were extremely low. Fortunately for the United States, FDR was smart enough to choose Harry Truman as VP, and Truman rapidly proved himself a decent president. Imagine if Henry Wallace had remained VP! He was even more trusting and gullible, where Stalin was concerned, and if he had assumed office it is quite likely America would have betrayed their European allies to the Soviet Union.

In ideal times, the VP is little more than a placeholder, a president-in-waiting who will assume office in the event of something happening to the president. His formal roles are very limited and historically vice presidents struggle to carve out a name for themselves. They tend to be chosen for political reasons rather than actual competence. Biden, Pence, and Cheney were picked, I suspect, because they brought something to the ticket, rather than being envisaged as future presidents themselves. The vice presidency is not a guaranteed ticket to the Oval Office unless the president resigns or dies in office.

With that in mind, why did Joe Biden choose Kamala Harris as his vice president?

It is a question that has puzzled me ever since Biden won the Democratic nomination in 2020. Was she qualified? Possibly, but there were others more so. Did she have a power base that could be convinced to support Joe Biden? No, her supporters would likely have voted blue no matter who. Was she someone who could be relied upon to work closely with Joe Biden and support his presidency? Probably not, she had attacked Biden heavily during the early debates and could not be trusted to support him. Was she someone who could serve an apprenticeship under Biden, and then assume the presidency in her own right? No, she lacked popularity and an independent support base. Was she a DEI hire? Perhaps, but once again there were others who were more qualified.

Why Kamala Harris? Why not someone who enjoyed more support within the Democratic Party and/or could appeal to swing voters? Why her?

I have a theory, and it is not flattering to Joe Biden.

It was generally asserted, in 2020, that Joe Biden would be a one term president. He would boot the despicable Donald Trump from office, then refuse to seek the nomination for a second term, opening the field to newer and better candidates. His prospective successors would have plenty of time to get their names in front of the public, line up support from donors, and eventually one would emerge with the legitimacy needed to carry the party into the 2024 general election. But was this actually true?

I don’t believe that Joe Biden had any intention of becoming a one term president. Biden has spent much of his career in pursuit of the presidency. He certainly had reason to feel that he had been pushed aside in 2008 and again in 2016, the latter tainted by the fact Hillary Clinton lost to the detested Donald Trump. Whatever agreement was made in smoke-filled back rooms, if indeed there was an agreement, Biden had no intention of honouring it. If winning the presidency is the height of a politician’s career, being re-elected to office is confirmation that you enjoy popularity far beyond your party loyalists. Why would Biden want to give it up?

In that light, choosing Kamala Harris as VP makes perfect sense. She was incredibly unpopular outside California, and never earned a single vote outside her own state (until 2024): indeed, she actually quit the nomination process before the first votes were counted, although is quite likely she would have come in dead last. Having Kamala as VP would force the Democratic party to make a painful choice, if they needed to force Biden to step down. Kamala Harris would be his logical successor, yet she was so unpopular that the odds of her winning against a decent Republican candidate would be extremely low. If the Democrats accepted her as their nominee, she might destroy their hopes of keeping the White House; if they forced a primary, the ensuring civil war would tear the party apart, because they had refused to give a woman of colour the role she was technically entitled to have. Either way, the Democrats would be staring at disaster.

From a political point of view, this is an old and trusted trick. If your prospective successor is far worse, people will think twice before kicking you out of office. A politician as experienced as Joe Biden would know it, and use it. But from a practical point of view, this was utterly disastrous. The Democratic Party could not stop Biden saying he would run for election, nor could they prevent complete disaster when it became clear the entire country that all the fears for Biden’s health were, if anything, understated. A party that spent years insisting that Biden was mentally sound and that anyone who suggested otherwise was spreading fake news could not survive the truth coming out. It was very much the worst case scenario for the party. They put Kamala Harris into the hot seat because it was the best of a set of bad choices, and it cost them. And I think that Biden is currently enjoying their disarray. Who knows? If Biden had stayed in the race, he might have won. No one will ever be able to prove otherwise.

In the end, the problem with Joe Biden was that he put his political career ahead of the long-term good of the country. He won the presidency under circumstances that will (hopefully) never be repeated, circumstances that allowed him to hide his weaknesses and make it easier for him to manipulate the movers and shakers within the party. He did not choose someone who could be a rival for power, nor did he give her any roles that would have prepared her for the presidency. If he chose Kamala Harris because he wanted to safeguard himself, it was a serious mistake. In the end, it helped ensure that Donald Trump would return to the White House.

Does this make sense? What do you think?

***

A while back, I was talking about the public perception of Donald Trump and his enemies, particularly the oddity that the more Trump is attacked legally (with varying degrees of legality) the more popular he becomes. And I came up with this metaphor to explain the situation.

Donald Trump is a selfish cruise ship passenger, who blithely ignores the NO SMOKING signs and lights up his cigars in his cabin. His enemies are the ship’s crew, who try to get water to put out the fire by chopping a hole in the bottom of the ship!

I think this explain something about Trump’s appeal. A man who smokes in a no smoking zone is a jerk, but a crew who actually sink their own ship in a desperate bid to put out the fire is dangerously insane. One might compare it to a farmer who eats up his seed corn, or an astronaut who uses his emergency oxygen supply to perform tricks in zero gravity. The risk is not just born by the farmer or the astronaut, but the people who depend on them. It takes a great deal of effort to make Donald Trump seem like the better candidate, but the Democratic Party succeeded. From the moment Donald Trump became the Republican candidate, his enemies have attacked him in a manner calculated to undermine the United States: they have accused Trump of being a fascist, a Russian agent, a criminal, and twisted the law into a pretzel in a bid to finally defeat the accursed Donald Trump. In doing so, they have severely insulted his voters and make themselves look like the worse choice.

I have said this before and I will say it again. The central paradox of Trumpism is that it has very little to do with Donald Trump. Trump would not have become the Republican candidate, let alone President, if there hadn’t been a mass of desperate, alienated, and largely unheard Americans who were just waiting and praying for a leader. Getting rid of Donald Trump would not get rid of his supporters, who would start looking for a new leader. Trump did not create the tensions dividing the United States. He merely took advantage of them.

The key to defeating Trump would be to acknowledge that his supporters have a point and take steps to reach out to them. This would require, however, both the Democratic and Republican parties to give up the one thing they won’t – power. Both parties have lost the ability to connect with their base, understand their aspirations, and indulge in practical politics and reasonable compromises to create a world that everyone can tolerate, even if they don’t get everything they want. Instead, they have resorted to delegitimizing Donald Trump and his supporters, which has served as proof that the parties are unable or unwilling to address the issues that matter most to their voters.

The core of the problem, however, is that managers have taken over both parties.

This probably requires some explanation. Most institutions consists of producers and managers. Producers are innovators, practical men of hard science who have a realistic view of the world combined with the imagination to think outside the box. Managers are organisers, people who try to keep the institution going and refuse to think outside the box, for fear it might be enough to destroy them. At an extreme – I’m talking about stereotypes and generalisations here – Tony Stark is a producer, Dilbert’s Pointy-Haired Boss is a manager.

The Pointy-Haired Boss looks incompetent to Dilbert, and by extension the readers, but he is actually very competent in his own field. He has an understanding of how the company bureaucracy actually functions, and how to manipulate the corporation to secure his own position. He may not understand that 2+2 = 4, but he does understand the importance of making himself look good even if his actions are actually detrimental to the corporation and/or his staff. At base, he puts appearance over reality: he will hire an employee who can make him look good, rather than someone who can do good work. This is partly why managers get caught up in insane fads and internal reporting that is worse than useless: it doesn’t matter to a producer if the staff is properly diverse or not, or if the TPS reports are in on time, but to a manager the appearance of failure is worse than actual failure (particularly if he can escape blame for the disaster.)

Producers and managers rarely get along, particularly if there is a personality conflict right from the start. Producers are focused on actually doing something, managers are focused on procedure and policies rather than practicality. Producers are forthright and plainspoken, good men if not always very nice men, while managers have a nasty tendency to dance around the subject and refuse to make their feelings explicit, for fear someone will hold them to account for it. At base, most managers are subconsciously afraid of producers. A man who can do something real is a man who has options most managers lack, which means he has to be kept under control. When they feel they have actual power, managers enjoy making producers jump through hoops. It isn’t a coincidence that vast numbers of managers gravitate to HR departments.

A small number of managers is often good for an institution. The greater the number of managers, however, the more problems they will cause in a desperate bid to justify their existence. A middle manager like Bill Lumbergh wastes time and resources on pointless diversions, while the company itself goes to the dogs. The more managers take power, the more they promote their fellow managers (choosing recruits for going to the right schools instead of having the right experience, for example, or picking people they know will support them) and the more they use their understanding of internal procedures to drive out producers from their company. At some point, an institution reaches a tipping point where there is a critical mass of managers who have completely lost touch with the reality of what they are trying to do and the company itself is no longer fit for purpose. If there is competition, the company collapses and its assets sold to more productive companies: if it has secured a dominant place in the market, it shambles on, producing worse and worse produce, until it finally collapses. I suspect that both Facebook and Microsoft are currently in this state.

This problem bedevils both the Republican and the Democratic party, and to a very large extent much of America. The most significant figures in both parties are old (Nancy Pelosi, for example, is 85; Mitch McConnell is 83; Donald Trump is 79; even Kamala Harris is 61) and perhaps the only major exception amongst the senior politicians is JD Vance (41). This has provided fertile breeding room for both managers and the bureaucracy they bring in their wake, but also a lack of understanding of what is truly important. The elites have lost touch with the people they represent, and put appearance over reality. They are no longer capable of imagining what life is like for people without their privilege, and in many cases put forward policies that are at best useless and at worst completely out of touch. This drives middle managers to do stupid things to prove their value, many of which are actively harmful and/or mind-boggling stupid.

Worse, they are incapable of recognising their supporters no longer have any trust or faith in them. The election proved, beyond a doubt, that supposedly solid Democratic voters were willing to give Donald Trump a chance – and while this seems absurd, it does make a certain degree of sense. The voters want sensible policies, not foolish and short-sighted policies designed to please college students rather than the people they affect. Berating these voters, mocking and censoring and treating them as de facto children, lacking agency of their own, is the act of a manager, not a producer. Denying them any say in who should be the Democratic candidate, after Joe Biden stepped down, was the icing on the cake, but insulting them was even worse.

A producer would actually listen to the voters, then actually adapt his tactics to give them what they wanted. This is inconceivable to managers. The idea that their power could be questioned is unthinkable, because if it were to be challenged it would force them to justify themselves. Why, they might be fired! This provokes a panicky response, which in turn fuels hatred and contempt amongst their employees. It also makes it harder for them to understand what is really going on. If no one is telling them the truth, how can they adapt? Indeed, one of the more persuasive explanations for Hillary Clinton’s failure to adjust her tactics in 2016 was that she thought she was winning, because no one was ready and willing to tell her the truth!

The sad truth is that vast numbers of Americans did not vote for Donald Trump, but against government managerialism. Against bureaucratic overreach, against distant government agencies that blight the lives of people they know nothing about, against corporate exploitation and mass migration and political correctness and many other problems that have blended together into a tidal wave of discontent and anger that is currently lapping against managerial castles of sand. They voted against people who put appearance ahead of reality, people who believed that declaring something to be true was enough to make it so, people who mindlessly attacked anyone who didn’t get with the program the moment it was announced. Donald Trump did not create this wave. The dispute over H-1B visas is a sign that the wave may wash against him too, if he fails to get ahead of it.

Put unkindly, managers have become a little like Colonel Jessup, loudly proclaiming “you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall. We use words like honour, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline.” And just like Colonel Jessup, they don’t realise that their actions have proven they cannot be trusted to be on that wall. They are incapable of taking decisive action, which means that problems tend to fester (like the grooming gangs in the UK) and when pushed into a position where they have to do something, they have a nasty habit of blaming the messenger instead.

The lesson of the election is that the Democratic Party needs some time to rebalance itself, to purge the ageing gentocrats and the crazies and work to get back in touch with the American people. It must put forward candidates who are not professional politicians, but people who have grown up in the real world and understand the importance of keeping politics practical, and compromising where necessary, people who are capable of remembering that politicians work for the people. It must stop gathering issues into a huge bundle where one bad apple can be used to taint the rest; it must isolate issues, and address them one by one, and it must always take into account the needs and feelings of those who are affected by changes in the law, or culture, or society. Most importantly of all, it must commit itself to rebuilding the social contract, to rebuild the legitimacy that so many Americans think the federal government has lost.

It must be capable of making hard decisions, including the hard decision to give up power and give up the pretence that they are the parents and they know better, while the rest of the population are the children who must obey. It is never easy for any parent to let the child fly free, to make their own mistakes, but failing to do so means a child that will never grow up (despite having an adult body) or a child driven to perpetual rebellion, to endless pointless defiance even if defiance is not in their best interests. Voting for Donald Trump should not have been an act of rebellion, but that was what it was. The Democratic Party must take heed.

And after two defeats to Donald Trump, perhaps the time is right for a change.

I wasn’t impressed by most pro/anti-Harris or pro/anti-Trump memes this time around (most were cringe or just plain silly) but this one points out the problem nicely:

Hi, everyone

This probably requires some explanation.

If you have been following my work for some time, you will know that I created Schooled In Magic – a cross between Harry Potter and Lest Darkness Falls in which the heroine is transported to another world, goes to a magic school, and start introducing semi-modern ideas, innovations, technologies that eventually create a steampunk world in which magic and technology not only coexist but enhance each other in a number of surprising ways. It is a world where airships and guns face witches on broomsticks and wizards with magic wands. At this point in the saga, the pace of change is picking up and nothing is certain any longer, from the limits of magic to politics and just about everything else.

Naturally, you can download the first book in the series from Kindle Unlimited here (it will be free between 8/1/2025-12/1/2025):

And you can see the other books in the series here:

https://chrishanger.net/Published/SIMseries/SIMindex.html

The Princess Exile is a stand-alone book set in that universe. You do not have to know much more about the universe than what I said above to understand it, as pretty much all the characters in this book are new. Some locations are not, but I will try to fill in as much detail as possible as I go along.

And now I’ve got your attention …

Please join my mailing list (https://chrishanger.simplelists.com/chrishanger/subscribe/) as in this day and age it is the only way to keep up with every new release. I promise I won’t spam you with anything other than my releases: I do have a blog, which is a little more than just new releases, and you can see it at https://chrishanger.wordpress.com/

or you can just follow me through any of the other ways listed here: https://chrishanger.net/How%20To%20Follow.html

Links to the general theme, Fantastic Schools are currently (and constantly) looking for new authors. If you are interested in writing for us, please check out the link below:

.https://chrishanger.net/Fantasticschools/FSindex.html

Thank you for your time

Chris

Prologue

The most frustrating thing about Princess Anastasia, Circe had discovered over the last two years, was that she didn’t have any idea how lucky she was.

She was the only child of King Arthur and Queen Marion, the acknowledged heir to the Kingdom of Rockfall. Her kingdom was not inherently opposed to a woman taking the throne and ruling in her own right, and there were no suggestions she should marry a good man and let him rule the kingdom in her name. She was young and beautiful, with long dark hair, a pale face and a well-developed body that had the poets writing sonnets to her beauty, sonnets that were not in any way exaggerated by crawlers hoping for Royal patronage. Her beauty owed nothing to the magic flowing through her veins, nor a small collection of cosmetics the castle staff kept on hand for older and far less secure aristocratic woman. The Princess truly was a lucky girl.

She was also lazy.

She had the very best of tutors, from a father who ruled his kingdom with a combination of a firm hand and practical politicking to experts in everything from magic to reading, writing, and numbers. She was very far from stupid, and she could learn a great deal about anything that interested her with remarkable speed, but she had little interest in making use of the resources around her to broaden her mind. Her father found it hard to convince her to attend court, her tutors found it harder still to make her pay mind to her lessons. She had mastered the basics – she could read and write and few would deny her calligraphy was the equal of her father’s – but showed no interest in learning more. She spent more time riding her horse than she did behind a desk, learning the skills she would need when her father passed on and left her the kingdom.

Circe found it outrageous. She had climbed out of the gutter through a combination of magic, ruthlessness, and sheer dumb luck. If she hadn’t found someone willing to school her in magic, and so many other skills denied to a lowborn guttersnipe, she knew it was unlikely she would have survived to reach adulthood. She had made a devil’s bargain, trading her body and her mind for lessons the Princess was offered for free, and it was hard not to feel anger and resentment at how the Princess disdained the learning that would likely save her life. She had so many opportunities and she declined them all, to her own detriment. The Princess was too intolerant to pay attention to politics, but Circe was not. Her father was holding the kingdom together through sheer force of will and bloody mindedness. It was unclear if his daughter could master the arts of government in time to take the helm when he died. Circe would not have cared to put money on it. Rockfall was in for some rough times.

The worst thing of all, she reflected in the privacy of her own mind, was that it was hard to hate Princess Anastasia.

The Princess was lazy, and intolerant, but she wasn’t a bad person. Circe had seen aristocratic girls and women treat their maids like slaves, lashing out at them physically or verbally every time they were even slightly displeased. She had heard tales of far worse, from young women who took service the households of the great and the good to maidens who found themselves seduced and then abandoned by their aristocratic paramours, and compared to many others life in the Princess’s tiny household was surprisingly pleasant. If Circe had been a genuine Lady’s Maid, she would have lit incense in thanks for such a caring mistress.

And if Circe had been less driven to attain power, by any means necessary, she might have had second thoughts about what she intended to do.

It would have been easier, in some ways, if her mistress had been truly unpleasant. Circe would have had no qualms about displacing a horrible person, and anyone who noticed the swap would likely keep their mouth shut for fear of the original returning. She knew better than to allow sympathy, or even guilt, to distract her – she had already gone too far to stop now – but it was still a little harder than it should have been to take the final step. She told herself that she was doing the Princess a favour, giving Anastasia the sort of lesson her parents should have given her a long time ago, but Circe doubted Anastasia would feel the same way. The hell of it was that Circe herself would have been delighted, if someone had made her the same offer.

But the Princess did not know how lucky she truly was.

The bell rang. Circe stood, brushing down her dress. It was time.

Hardly anyone noticed her as she made her way to the Princess’s chambers. She had always taken care to dress as drably as possible, to make no attempt to exploit her position as the Princess’s maid, to do as little as possible to draw attention to herself. A handful of castle servants, more observant than their masters, had wondered at her willingness to remain in the shadows, but none had realised the truth. Being unseen gave one a kind of freedom, a freedom she had ruthlessly exploited. It had taken months of effort to subvert the castle wards, to allow herself a degree of access and control that would have shocked the court wizard if he ever realised what she had done, but it was about to pay off.

She stopped outside the door and centred herself. Once she stepped inside, she was committed. She could still stop herself …

No. That wasn’t possible. She had committed herself long ago.

And now it was time to make the final move and reap her reward.

Chapter One

“I don’t want to hear any more,” Princess Anastasia said, firmly.”I’ve had quite enough.”

The Royal Tutor blinked owlishly at her. He was younger than most tutors, with an air of grim determination that was oddly subverted by the way his tutoring robes hung oddly around his body. The appearance of an elderly man of letters, a person of great knowledge and practical wisdom, was difficult for a young man to project, no matter how well he knew his material. He’d yet to master the skill of making his lessons interesting, no matter how boring the subject matter, and it cost him. There were few other ways to keep a young woman of noble blood, let alone a princess, focusing on her work.

“But Your Highness …”

“You are dismissed,” Anastasia said. She picked up the textbook, the latest – and probably already outdated – tome on political developments since the end of the Necromantic Wars and passed it to him. “I’ll send for you when I am ready to resume the lessons.”

The tutor bowed, moving far more spryly than most of his peers could hope, and backed out of the chamber. Anastasia watched him go, somehow resisting the urge to point out that his wig was crooked, on the verge of falling off. Whoever had designed the poor man’s robes had a great deal to answer for, particularly the insistence that their wearers should either dye their hair grey or wear a grey wig. It might give an elderly man a sense of dignity, but it made a young man seem a fool, a child wearing his father’s clothes. They just didn’t suit him.

She sank back into her chair, feeling a twinge of envy. The tutor – it dawned on her, not for the first time, that she honestly didn’t recall the young man’s name – had chosen his life, devoting himself to studying politics, the New Learning, magitech and a dozen other subjects that interested him, even though he had little hope of ever practicing them personally. Her future was fixed, as sure as the sun rose in the east and sank in the west. She was the Crown Princess of Rockfall and she would be Queen, when her father passed into the realm of the dead. There was no competition, no sibling or cousin who might make a bid for the throne themselves. She would be Queen. There was no point in trying to pretend otherwise.

And I can’t even pass it on to someone else, she thought, numbly. It is my fate.

She rang the bell and leaned back in her chair, waiting. Patsy materialised a moment later, entering the room so silently it was hard to notice her until she announced herself. Anastasia almost envied her maid’s talent for remaining unnoticed, her dress and demeanour so subtle that she was often invisible in a crowd, without even a hint of magic. She had no interest in building a power base of her own, exploiting her position as the Princess’s personal maid to enrich herself or even find a good husband from the lower ranking aristocrats or merchants. It was hard, sometimes, to describe her. She was so bland and boring, carrying out her duties without drawing attention to herself, that Anastasia had to think to recall the colour of her maid’s eyes. Her outfit was just … bland.

“Your Highness,” Patsy said, dropping a neat little curtsy. She hadn’t adopted the modern custom of showing too much flesh, or even wearing something that drew attention to her curves without showing anything below the neckline. “What can I do for you?”

Anastasia stood, brushing down her dress. “I feel like going for a ride,” she said, shortly. If she left now, she’d be well away from the castle by the time her next tutor arrived. “Send someone to alert the stablemaster, then help me get into my riding clothes.”

Patsy raised an eyebrow. “You have an appointment with the Court Wizard at eleven bells, then lunch with your mother at one …”

“I’m sure they’ll get on just fine without me,” Anastasia said, waspishly. The Court Wizard expected her to memorise volumes of magical theory before he taught her more than the basics, her mother veered between lecturing Anastasia on her duties and moaning about events in Alluvia. It might be Patsy’s duty to remind her, but Anastasia had no intention of going. “My mother hasn’t had a single new thing to say for years.”

“As you command, Your Highness.” Patsy turned to the door, opened it to summon a messenger boy, and sent him on his way with a few short words. “Do you intend to ride far?”

“Far enough not to be found,” Anastasia said. She strode into her bedroom, cursing the fashion that made it hard to get out of a dress without help. “It’s going to be one of those days.”

Her maid made no comment as she helped Anastasia to undress, then presented her with a set of riding clothes. They were so much more convenient – breeches, a jacket, boots – that she had determined she’d wear them all the time, when she was Queen. The dresses might show off her family’s wealth and power, just in case one of the courtiers had forgotten where he was, but they were uncomfortable and irritating. It wasn’t as if anyone was likely to forget she was the princess. Her face adorned the wall of everyone who was anyone, who wanted to be. She’d certainly sat for enough portraits over the years.

She stood, studying herself in the mirror. Long dark ringlets of hair framed a tinted olive face, dark eyes and lips that drew the eyes of everyone in the room. Everyone said she was beautiful and she knew for a fact they were telling the truth, although it would be a rare courtier indeed who suggested their princess was anything less than stunningly beautiful. Rockfall had fewer courtiers trying to outdo their peers by singing the praises of the Royal Family, if Queen Marion was to be believed, but … Anastasia shook her head. Her father had cautioned her to be wary of taking such crawlers seriously. They would change their tune in a heartbeat if they felt it wise.

“You need a cloak, Your Highness,” Patsy said. She’d changed too, into a riding outfit that was as drab as her regular dress. “And you should take your amulet.”

Anastasia snorted, but reached for the amulet and placed it around her neck. Patsy was right. The golden design was surprisingly simple, compared to the jewellery showered on her by everyone who wanted to buy her favour, but the charms woven into the metal were designed to protect her against almost any threat, at least long enough to buy her time to escape. Her father wouldn’t be pleased if she left the castle without it, and she didn’t want to upset him. She loved her father. And yet, he never had enough time for her.

“We’ll go down the back stairs,” Anastasia said. “We wouldn’t want to be stopped along the way.”

“No, Your Highness,” Patsy agreed. “That would be most inconvenient.”

There was a faint hint of sarcasm in her voice. Anastasia ignored it. Patsy’s job was to do as she was told, while serving as a maid, chaperone and woman-of-all-work. Anastasia knew little about Patsy and that was how it should be. She did her job well and that was all that mattered. She certainly didn’t have the kind of relatives or connections that would press her to take advantage of her position, or try to influence their princess. Anastasia wasn’t looking forward to assuming the throne. She would have to take the young ladies of the kingdom as her handmaidens then, enduring their presence in her most private moments. Her mother had often complained about the custom and Anastasia didn’t blame her. She had little privacy of her own too.

The back stairs were supposed to be secret, although Anastasia was fairly sure everyone knew they existed even if they didn’t have access. Her skin prickled as they stepped through a handful of wards, designed to keep out intruders, and walked down the thin stairs to the bottom. The stables, located at the rear of the castle, teemed with activity, young boys mucking out the stalls while the stablemaster strode from steed to steed, checking their work with a gimlet eye. He showed no hint of surprise as he saw her, merely bowing low and motioning for two of the newer stableboys to bow too. Anastasia pretended not to notice their hesitation, then uncertainty over how deeply they should bow. She hadn’t enjoyed her etiquette lessons either.

“Champion and Lady are ready, My Lady,” the stablemaster said. “I’ve taken the liberty of adding a picnic to your saddlebags.”

“Thank you,” Anastasia said. “I’m sure we’ll enjoy it.”

She allowed the man to lead her to the final stall, Patsy trailing behind her like a shadow. Her horse looked pleased to see her, whinnying as Anastasia put her arms around his neck and gave him a hug. A sudden pang of guilt shot through her – she’d been too busy to come down and see him – and she made a promise to herself that she’d make sure to rub him down and muck out his stall personally, when they returned. It was good for bonding with her steed, her father had said, and besides, it would provide a good excuse for being late for dinner. Or taking her meal alone, in her chambers. Eating in front of the entire court, every eye on her, was never pleasant. And right now, she didn’t have the power to make up for the inconvenience.

“Come on,” she said, to Patsy. She didn’t wait for assistance, merely scrambled into the saddle and took the reins. “We have to be on the move.”

Patsy’s face didn’t change, but Anastasia had the impression the normally imperturbable maid was irked as she clambered onto Lady. Patsy could ride reasonably well, yet she was no horsewoman and clearly wasn’t particularly comfortable on horseback. Lady was as tame as any horse could be, the kind of beast small children would be seated on to learn the basics before they graduated to more frisky steeds, but Patsy had never quite reached the point where she could try a better horse. Anastasia wouldn’t have begrudged her the lessons, if she’d wanted to improve her horsemanship, yet … she shook her head, dismissing the thought. Patsy was her maid. She could easily remain behind …

But I have to be chaperoned, Anastasia thought, with a flicker of irritation. Her mother’s prudish insistence on maintaining her reputation at all times, on ensuring her virtue could not be questioned let alone drawn into disrepute, was just … irritating. No one questioned her father’s conduct, no one raised their eyebrows if he had private meetings … she told herself, not for the first time, that things would be different when she took the throne. I’ll do whatever I want and to hell with anyone who says me nay.

She put the thought out of her mind as Champion trotted out of the stable and through the rear gate, the guards bowing or doffing their hats as she passed. The cold air slapped her across the face, shaking away the lethargy of a morning spent being bored to death by tutors who never used one word when a dozen could do. Lady followed, Patsy so quiet it was easy to forget she was there. Anastasia felt a flicker of dark amusement as they cantered through the streets of Caithness and out into the Royal Forest. The sense of sudden freedom was overwhelming. It would be easy, she told herself, to dig in her spurs and make a run for Rumbling Bridge, the nearest pass through the mountains that surrounded Rockfall, protecting the kingdom from her larger and more powerful neighbours. Or even to just lose herself in the forest. It would feel good to make a choice for herself, even if it were a poor one.

Champion neighed as she pulled on the reins, commanding him to slow and turn. The castle rose up above the city, the largest structure in the kingdom. Caithness was small by the standards of many other kingdoms, but it was still large enough for her. She felt a twinge of bitter regret as she spied a handful of caravans making their way down the Northern Road, carrying trade goods through the passes and in and out of the city. The kingdom was far more progressive than most when it came to women’s rights, and there were plenty of female traders travelling from kingdom to kingdom, but she was trapped. She would spend the rest of her life in Rockfall, both ruler and prisoner of her kingdom. Lady trotted up, Patsy seated uncomfortably on her back, and Anastasia gritted her teeth. Her maid didn’t know how lucky she was. She could leave her post at any moment and find somewhere better, somewhere more suited to her talents.

“Your father is expecting you to read the latest trade agreements this evening,” Patsy reminded her. “We have to be back for dinner.”

Anastasia shook her head, curtly. The king was supposed to be the ruler of the kingdom, but Parliament did much of the work while he sat on his throne and looked regal. Anastasia didn’t pretend to understand how her father could spend so much time in committees, chairing meetings and letting everyone have their say; she wondered, sometimes, why he wasn’t the absolute monarch she knew him to be. Her mother didn’t help, grumbling about her father’s willingness to compromise rather than lay down the law. She had come from a kingdom where the king had lost his grip and faced an outright rebellion, one that had cost him his head. It didn’t help that far too many people wondered what sort of political ideas she’d brought with her …

“You also have to receive a messenger from a foreign suitor, asking for your hand in marriage,” Patsy continued. “He’s supposed to arrive, spontaneously, this evening.”

“This must be an entirely new definition of the word spontaneous,” Anastasia muttered, sourly. The bards had hundreds of songs about princes who left their kingdoms to play at being suitors to a princess, winning their hearts by coming hundreds of miles to press their suits in person, but the real world was rarely so obliging. Any spontaneous visit was planned in advance and no one thought otherwise, save perhaps children too young to realise the truth. A prince turning up in disguise, without warning, would be a major scandal. “Do you think his portrait will look like the reality?”

“I couldn’t possibly say,” Patsy said.

“Parliament will have its say,” Anastasia said. It was true. She couldn’t be allowed to make such a choice for herself, not when the kingdom was at stake. “And so will my father.”

She turned her horse and galloped onwards, cantering to her favourite part of the woods. A small lake, so well hidden within the trees that she could pretend she was truly alone. She knew better than to believe it, but … anyone within the Royal Forest without permission would be careful to remain unnoticed, not when a poacher could have his hand cut off for trespassing. Or worse. She pulled Champion to a halt and scrambled off his back, leaving him to nibble the grass as she stepped towards the lake. The horse was too well trained to run off, not unless something happened to her. Lady arrived a moment later, Patsy dropping herself to the ground with a thud. Anastasia didn’t turn. Her maid might not be a good horsewoman, but it was difficult to imagine anything putting her down for long.

The thought faded as she stared over the lake. It was oddly quiet, the normal sound of birds flying through the trees and small rodents darting through the undergrowth almost inaudible. A twinge of unease ran down Anastasia’s spine, banished almost at once. It was a cold day and most of the forest’s wildlife would be nesting, trying to stay warm. She lifted her eyes to the distant mountains, noting the snow on the peaks. It had been a long time since she’d been so far from Caithness, and she’d never be allowed to travel beyond the mountains.

Patsy came up behind her. “A Crown for your thoughts, My Lady?”

Anastasia surprised herself by answering the question. “I’m trapped in a gilded cage.”

There was a hint of … something … in Patsy’s voice. “There are many who would wish to be in your place, My Lady.”

Anastasia blinked. It was rare for anyone to reprove her, let alone scold her. She was the Princess. No one could ever forget that, not even her mother. Certainly not a Lady’s Maid who could be dismissed at any moment, without so much as bothering with an excuse. Anastasia had dismissed maids before. She could certainly do it again.

“You can have it, if you like,” she said, snarkily. It wasn’t going to happen and they both knew it. Anastasia could no more surrender her birthright than she could cut her own throat. “It’s not a blessing.”

“Thank you, Your Highness,” Patsy said, her voice tinged with dark amusement. “I believe I shall.”

Anastasia turned, quickly. Patsy looked different, in a manner Anastasia couldn’t quite place. She looked … as if she wasn’t trying to be unnoticed, unnoticeable, any longer. Her stance was firmer, drawing attention to her in a manner she normally shunned … she looked, suddenly, very dangerous. Anastasia’s father had a regal presence, one that made it very hard for anyone to disobey his commands; Patsy, now, had a presence of her own. The shock was so great it was hard for Anastasia to think clearly, let alone speak. Her thoughts were spinning helplessly. Everything was just … wrong.

“I …”

Patsy jabbed a finger at Anastasia. Her entire body froze.

The Kingdom of Rockfall

Throughout much of its history, Rockfall maintained a certain degree of autonomy within the Empire and later the Allied Lands, remaining effectively independent despite being considerably smaller than most of the kingdoms that make up the Allied Lands. This surprising level of independence is easily explained: a combination of geographical fortune, the local balance of power and simple bloody-mindedness ensures that Rockfall cannot be effectively invaded and conquered, unless the would-be conqueror is willing to pay a very high price indeed.

Rockfall sits within a mountainous region to the north of the Cairngorms, effectively surrounded by mountains that pose an effective deterrent to any sizeable army. The three passes through the mountains – Rumbling Bridge Gorge, Calder Valley and Icefall – are heavily fortified, to the point that a relatively small military force can hold the passes more or less indefinitely. The terrain within the mountains is patchy, making it difficult for serfdom and/or slavery to take root, giving Rockfall more of an egalitarian base than any other kingdom within the Allied Lands, and that is an uneasy truce between the aristocracy and the commoners that formed well before the arrival of the Levellers and endures to this day.

The kingdom has two other advantages that assist it to remain effectively independent. First, because it controls the trade routes running through the valleys, it is able to make itself very useful to the surrounding kingdoms, as well as remaining in touch with technological and magical developments across the Allied Lands. Second, Rockfall exports a considerable degree of both alcohol – the kingdom’s fine wines bring immense profits – and technology. Even before the arrival of the New Learning, Rockfall had a reputation for having the finest craftsmen in the Allied Lands. Now, the craftsmen have embraced the New Learning to a degree unseen outside Cockatrice and Heart’s Eye.

A further advantage is a considerable degree of education and a willingness to allow young men (and often young woman) to spend a year or two apprenticed to a merchant trader, allowing them to see the world outside their mountains. Many of these youngsters return with stories and ideas that can be introduced quickly, including a number of political concepts that challenge the balance of power (see below); a handful of others migrate to merchant and magical quarters in other kingdoms, forming a number of tiny communities that are ready and able to offer support and assistance to their kinsmen. These communal networks do not pose a political threat to their host nations, but they do ensure that their homeland remains abreast of all developments sweeping across the Allied Lands.

The dependency on trade has produced an interesting balance of power. On paper, Rockfall is an feudal monarchy, ruled by the king who rules in concert and sometimes conflict with the aristocracy. In practice, the importance of trade has ensured that merchants have a considerable degree of influence over the kingdom’s politics, to the point that wealthy merchants have often married into the aristocracy, and that every propertied person has the right to elect MPs to Parliament. It isn’t entirely clear how much authority the House of Commons has over the House of Lords, or the monarchy itself, but all parties are very much aware that a major disagreement within the kingdom, even if it doesn’t rise to the level of an outright civil war, will weaken the defences to the point that one or more of their neighbours will feel emboldened to try an invasion. This produces a surprising degree of cooperation, and a certain lack of respect for aristocrats who don’t live up to their titles.

Unusually for a kingdom, there is a considerable degree of sexual equality. Women can hold property in their own names, inherit from their parents, choose their own marriages, and generally do almost everything their male peers can do. (The only real exception is the army, which is male-only.) It is generally believed that Princess Anastasia, the only child of King Arthur and Queen Marion, will assume the throne after her father passes away. There is no great opposition to this within the kingdom, and most objections focus on the Princess’s character – she is known to be lazy, if goodhearted – or the prospect of her marrying someone from outside the kingdom. None of these objections are considered insurmountable.

There are four cities within the kingdom: Robin’s Peak, Rumbling Bridge, Kinross and Caithness. Caithness is the capital, home to the Royal Castle (Caithness Castle), Parliament, the Garrison and most of the trading centres. Rumbling Bridge is just south of Rumbling Bridge Gorge, hemmed in by the rocky walls; Robin’s Peak and Kinross stick to the west and east of the kingdom respectively. They are not free cities in the normal sense of the word, but they maintain a great deal of internal autonomy. Technically, they are under the king’s rule; practically, both sides refrain from putting too much pressure on the relationship.

Rockfall does not have a school of magic, and most magicians are encouraged to travel to one of the long-established schools or apprentice themselves to a local magician. Unusually, there is no distinct magical quarter within any of the major cities; the magicians live and work alongside their mundane counterparts, respected as educated men without the fear that often surrounds magical communities elsewhere. The Royal Family is well known to have a streak of magic, as do most aristocratic and merchant families, and magical immigrants are encouraged to integrate rather than remaining aloof. It is worthwhile to note that this policy has produced excellent results. Very few Supremacists came out of Rockfall, and those that did were often shunned by their peers.

Despite the importance of remaining relatively united, there are deep and dangerous currents bubbling beneath the surface of the mountain kingdom. Conflicts over land use and management have never been wholly resolved, and the arrival of new political concepts and firearms have emboldened the lower classes, demanding representation in the House of Commons (technically, only the propertied people have a vote) and a certain degree of accountability, even control, over the aristocracy and the monarchy itself. A number of Leveller groups have formed within the cities, some public and others doing their best remain underground while they build up a critical mass of supporters they can leverage to demand reforms. A handful even dream of armed revolution.

The prospect of an Alluvian-style uprising has concentrated a few minds, but also caused others to focus on the loyalties of Queen Marion, on the grounds she was a low-ranking Alluvian Princess before she married King Arthur and became his Queen. Many in the aristocracy think the kingdom has gone too far in accommodating the common folk, particularly those who do not or refuse to contribute, and suspect the whole edifice will collapse after the king’s death. The rise of broadsheets challenging accepted truths and reporters digging into matters the aristocracy wishes left untouched has not helped. The fact that Princess Anastasia appears to be unprepared to step into her father’s shoes, let alone marry and produce the next generation of royals, is worst of all, with some factions eagerly anticipating her coronation and others seriously considering ways to force her into marriage with someone a little more responsible or convince her father to put her aside for someone else.

No matter who comes out ahead, the end result is unlikely to be good for the kingdom.