Lady Fiona Holder said. “Wake up!” The accents of the vanished American West were still strong in her voice, despite forty-six years in and around and across post-Blackout Australia and all the seas that bordered it; she’d been born in a trailer park in what was then the d...
Huon asked an hour later; he thought the younger boy wanted to talk. Lioncel shook his head. “No…they, assassins like that, tried to kill my lady the Grand Constable in Walla Walla a few months ago, the very same day I’d been made squire. And the Count, and my lord my father, all on the same nigh...
It was a gray-brown mountain of flesh, the thick skin deeply wrinkled and the great triangular ears ragged; even a hundred yards away they could hear the quick exhaled huff of breath as it backed off. Then it curled its trunk high, trumpeted in anger and shuffled forward, head down and big curved...
The coast of England was green and silent, save for birds in numbers that made the sky restless. It might have been a morning before man, except that—she focused the binoculars—there was a haze of smoke a little farther to the northeast. Well, well, Marian Alston said to herself. Then, aloud: “S...
It was even called by that name, since Boise under the Thurston family’s rule had always had a weakness for things Roman. Where it met South Capitol a triangular fortress rose sixty feet to cover the gates and the two bridges; the core of it had been, oddly enough, a library building and the whol...
When music rises in a city street, every man who hears it with his soul forgets the uncouth noises. —REV. JOSEPH COOK, SCEPTICISM AND RATIONALISM: ELECTIVE AFFINITIES AND HEREDITARY DESCENT (1881) MONDAY, 8 JUNE 2015, ABOUT 10 A.M. RAFTER XOX RANCH, WESTERN NEBRASKA Glor...
The sense of sick dread got worse as the flames erupted through the door and Eric Salvador was flung back to lie helpless in the dust of Afghanistan that had eaten so many soldiers’ bones in so many wars. This time he could see the figure who walked through the fire. It was a woman, young, naked,...
The moon was up, and it glittered on the ruffled surface of the water to his left, where swans and ducks slept or swam lazily. But there was still little light under the three tall yews and the big oak; the night around him was still save for night birds, the whoo-whit of tawny owls and the scree...
The map covered one wall of what had been the main hall of the city’s old public library, built in Edwardian times with a splendor of gray-veined white marble and brass inlay. That and the easily adapted heating system were why he’d picked it as his city palace, back right after the Change, and h...
That was the only way Havel could justify this last-minute dash through the night to himself; he prayed with every footfall that they were going to be in time. Idiots, he thought. They’re acting like idiots and it’s making my job harder. Doesn’t seem fair. The bandits had flogged their horses on ...
Having a great time, see you soon with full details. Órlaith read the note from John again and smiled as she and Reiko walked to the north of the manor-house a few hours after sunrise. There was a pleasant allée of ancient oaks there along a graveled roadway that led down ...
Thanks to my friends who are also first readers: To Steve Brady, for assistance with dialects and British background, and also natural history of all sorts. Thanks also to Kier Salmon, for once again helping with the beautiful complexities of the Old Religion, and with . . . well, all sorts of st...
“Hey, hup!” Kenneth Hollard said, tapping his camel on the joint of its foreleg. At the second tap the beast folded itself like an organic leggo set and knelt, front legs first. He stepped off, whacked it on the nose with his riding crop as it considered biting him—it was a skill you acquired q...
Astrid asked conscientiously. It wasn’t that she wouldn’t send people on a suicide mission, Ritva knew. It was just that she wouldn’t lie to them about it first. She wanted them to know what they were getting into without a shadow of a doubt. The warehouse belonged to a Mormon merchant who’d trad...
Waken from nightmare of being caught by the sun in night-walker form, of his self peeling away in flakes and strings of fire . . . “Ah, you’re with us again,” Harvey said. “Give it a few minutes and maybe you’ll stop wishing you weren’t.” He stubbed out his cigarette, flicked it out the window an...
I’m a weaaaasel!” the boy shouted as he dove over the chamiso bush in an explosion of powdery snow. “Woof! Woof! I’m a wolfie and I’ll eat you up!” his sister caroled as she raced after him, eight-year-old arms pumping. “Come back here, you little par de esquintles!” Eusebia Cortines yelled. Eric...
Joseph Starbuck said. “Morning, Joseph,” Jared Cofflin replied; even in the later months of the Year 10, the government of the Republic of Nantucket remained pleasantly informal. The Councilor for Finance and the Treasury leaned back in his chair. That was in an office of the Pacific National Ban...