A Lover's Redemption Read online

  A LOVER’S REDEMPTION

  The Misrule: Book Three

  Andy Graham

  Contents

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  A Map (of sorts)

  1. Lesau Rising

  2. Remembering Rose

  3. Remembering The Past

  4. Remembering Lena

  5. Remembering The Way

  6. Remembering The Future

  7. Remember A Lover

  8. Remembering Rick Franklin

  9. War

  10. White Coat. White Noise

  11. A Twin Arrives

  12. Corporal Orr's Obedience

  13. The Sub-Metro

  14. The Antidote

  15. The Musical Labyrinth

  16. Remembering Bethina

  17. The Morgen Towers

  18. Brooke

  19. Fight For The Towers

  20. Regroup. Return. Rebel

  21. A Meeting. A Refusal

  22. VIPER

  23. Cobwebs

  24. Manoeuvring

  25. The Angel City

  26. A Change of Plan

  27. Corporal Orr's Disobedience

  28. Transit

  29. Remembering The Arch Trees

  30. Corporal Orr's Legend

  31. The Best & Worst Of Friends

  32. It Begins

  33. Higher Ground

  34. Tradition

  35. Brothers & Bullies

  36. The Monster Under The Mountain

  37. The Battle For The Angel City

  38. It Ends

  39. Lenka

  40. Epilogue

  The Morgen Towers

  Stay Up To Date

  Reviews

  Also by the Author

  Contact

  The Cast of this Book

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright & Disclaimer

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  Details can be found at the end of this book.

  A Map (of sorts)

  In place of a real map, which rarely show up well in eBooks, this ‘written map’ should help you imagine where and when this story takes place.

  Fifty years from now, a second moon is ripped into the orbit of planet Earth. The tidal upheaval drowns much of the world. Once the waters retreat, the survivors emerge to find that most of what they knew has been lost. Humanity is reset to a technological year zero.

  Post-Flood, as humanity scrabbles to re-establish itself, the still partly-submerged country of England (UK) is renamed Brettia. At an unspecified time before The Misrule starts, Brettia becomes Ailan.

  Approximately two thousand years after the Great Flood, and following on directly from the events of A Mother’s Unreason (The Misrule: Book Two), we find ourselves in this story. A lot of the action is based in the triangle formed by London, Oxford and Cambridge – now known as Effrea, Axeford and Camp X517.

  Ailan’s territory has spread west, taking a chunk out of its neighbour Mennai (Wales). After centuries of shifting fortunes, Ailan is dominant and Mennai exists as a form of protectorate.

  The Donian Mountains (the Snowdonian National Park with a few extra crags and folds and mines thrown in for the sake of the story) straddle the border between the two countries. A race of people from the Middle East fled there for safety just before the Flood hit. A combination of the harsh conditions and being caught between the Ailan-Mennai feuding, have led to the Donian people developing a proud, warlike tradition in order to survive.

  This is a familiar future: the infrastructure and vehicles are similar to what we have now, as are the weapons and medicine. Fragments of pre-Flood history survive, along with some traditions and technology. There are also differences. Religion has been banned, at least officially. Science is in the ascendant. Government control is ubiquitous.

  Most human traits remain, however, both those we aspire to and those we succumb to. This story is built around two of those timeless needs: love and power.

  1

  Lesau Rising

  Randall Soulier, vice president of Ailan and a man with bloody promotion on his mind, stormed into his superior’s office. The door shuddered on its hinges as the heavy boots of his 13th legionnaires stamped in his wake. There was a struggle, brief and fierce. Two guards died. A third would soon wish for the same fate.

  The cold, clinical detachment Randall had felt under the streets of the Bridged Quarter of Tye was gone. Rose Franklin, his mother, was dead by his hand. Ray Franklin, his half-brother, was locked up in the old cells, waiting on Randall’s displeasure. And now he, Randall Soulier, got to deal with Bethina Laudanum permanently. The president of Ailan had taken too many liberties, robbed him of too much respect, upended his past. This was Randall’s time. His future. He could rewrite his family history from this point on.

  “Who’s that?” A woman’s voice.

  She’s here. Near the window. His breath caught in his throat. Deep in the rash of fear and excitement that clouded his mind was a quiet whisper: Am I really going to do this?

  “Sir?” Captain James Brennan, Randall’s second in command, his pocket thug and chief enforcer, offered him a syringe. A bead of purple fluid bulged out of the needle point. Brennan’s forehead was grooved with a deep V-shape. His thinking look. His worried look. An ugly look. At least it ruined the similarity between Brennan and his sister. For that, Randall was thankful. It helped preserve the ferocious memories of nubile young Lena, of her long limbs tangled in Randall’s lust-soaked bedsheets. The memories soured. Lena was dead. Murdered yards from Randall’s home while the sheets were still warm.

  Brennan’s flat gaze was fixed on Randall, the syringe quivering in his hand. What do you see when you see me, Brennan? Your sister? Do you see her in my bed, or murdered by that excuse of a woman, the Famulus?

  The purple bead of liquid burst. It hit the wooden floor, breaking Brennan’s gaze and putting a slouch in the man’s spine. Even a man as emotionally ruined as Brennan would find the death of a little sister hard to take. That, Randall decided, was a problem for later. He laid a hand on his captain’s arm and pushed the syringe away. “Not the drugs. I’ll deal with Bethina myself.” The answer to the questioning whisper in his head, it seemed, was: Yes, I am going to do this.

  The president was illuminated by the smaller of the two moons. The other was obscured by Bethina’s Folly Tree — a tree on a balcony at the top of a skyscraper. She’d claimed it was a representation of what should and shouldn’t be. For Randall, it would serve a different purpose. A frown flitted across Bethina’s face as she crossed her legs. It was an oddly prim mannerism from her. “Oh, it’s you,” she said, placing a sheaf of papers into the red leather binder on her lap.

  “Just following orders, ma’am. I came within the hour, as you requested.”

  One of the president’s fingers drifted up to pull at the mole on the end of her nose. Her eyes cut left, took in Brennan’s lifeless face, the freshly chipped tooth of the legionnaire beside him. “I don’t think you—”

  The door slammed open and two dogs barrelled in from the balcony. The Folly Tree strained against the gusting wind. The office was filled with flat-eared growls. Shots rang out. One animal collapsed in a whimpering heap as the second launched itself at the chip-toothed legionnaire. The man stumbled and fell. Hands beat at the dog. Grabbed lumps of fur. The thunder of automatic fire skewered the animal and hurled it into a corner. The legionnaire clawed at his throat, gurgling, choking on his own blood. His colleagues ignored him. Randall stepped over the man, careful not to get his shoes messy.

  “Oh my.” Bethina clutched the binder to her chest, a shield of red lea
ther and old paper. “Randall, I really don’t think you—”

  Her words choked off into a gurgling squeak as he wrenched her off the sofa. His fingers clamped round her neck. He squeezed the skin under her jaw. It felt like velvet, just like he had imagined. The binder fell. Loose pages see-sawed in the air. Her nails scratched across his hands, carving criss-crossed lines into his tendons.

  Squeeze.

  Harder.

  Tighter.

  The angle of her jaw rammed into his knuckles. The Folly Tree thrashed at the sky, its leaves gold in the moonlight. Whirlpools of grey clouds spun beneath the stars. The burning sensation built in his forearms. Bethina’s struggling weakened as his fingertips numbed.

  “Stop.” Her words leaked past blue lips. “You don’t under—”

  “Shut up.” He dragged up every slight, threat and insult, no matter how big or small, no matter from whom or about what. The thump of her heels was fading. He grit his teeth. A bone in her throat snapped and her hands slipped off his wrists, thudding to the floor.

  The tree branches on the balcony stilled. The plaintive wail of sirens rose and fell in the distance. North, a plume of red-tinted smoke drifted into the night, staining the sky above the dead city of Tye. Still straddling the woman, the air rattled out of Randall’s lungs. How long had he been holding his breath? It felt like all his life. “Get a rope.”

  As the Unsung legionnaires set to work, Randall helped himself to a drink. Cheap crap that curdled on his tongue but was wet and alcoholic. He picked up the antique phone receiver from her desk.

  “Hello?”

  Wait. Let her stew.

  “Beth? Is that you?”

  Let her sweat.

  “Bethina, are you—”

  “Field-Marshal Chester,” he said.

  There was a hissing intake of breath through the receiver.

  “I do hope you’re feeling better,” Randall lied. “Such an unfortunate incident with that gas canister in your apartment. Someone could have died.”

  “Someone did die, you bastard.”

  “Accidents happen, Chester.”

  “Accidents?” she screamed down the phone.

  Randall’s foot squelched in something red. Blood from the chipped-toothed legionnaire was pooling under the desk, mixing with the dog’s. The pulse in the man’s neck fluttered weakly. One of his colleagues knelt by him, medi-kit ready. Randall waved him away. “Yes, Chester. Accidents.” His irritation was growing: with Brennan for his brooding silence, with the legionnaire for bleeding on his shoe, with Chester for still being alive.

  “You—” Not screaming now, just furious and hateful.

  “No, you, Chester. Not me. You. You need to discharge yourself from your sickbed and come to the president’s private office immediately.”

  “How dare you talk to me like— What? Beth’s office? What’s wrong? Is she OK?”

  A chair clattered to the balcony floor outside. Two feet swung centimetres above that floor. One had lost a shoe; it was hiding under the chair. A long shadow clung to those feet, stretching into the night. The wind picked up. The tree branches swayed their lament. The shadow hanging across the flagstones rocked with them, in time with the spittle-mouthed, bug-eyed pendulum dangling from the Folly Tree.

  “It appears that our president’s past has caught up with her,” Randall said. “The guilt must have been too much. We were too late. Her dogs were mad, killed one of my men.” A red bubble burst in the dying legionnaire’s mouth as he finally choked to death. “We had to shoot the filthy animals.”

  “Randall?” Chester’s voice was cut with panic.

  He let the moment linger and took a swig of the alcohol. It burnt all the way to his toes. “Bethina Laudanum has committed suicide. I am now president.”

  2

  Remembering Rose

  As the chopper juddered into the air, the river fog curled back around the statues of the Stone Bridge. Piece by piece, the sculptures disappeared — a leg here, an arm there, the fingers clutching a scroll, an upraised sword. The fog suffocated the long dead kings and queens of Ailan, turning them into disembodied ghosts. They became something out of the stories Stann Taille had once told around the Hallowtide fires of Tear, though none of the stories he had ever told could rival the horror of what he’d just witnessed. “Rose Franklin is dead,” Stann muttered. “Killed by her eldest son. Doesn’t get much more wrong that that, does it?”

  The rattling of the chopper was the only reply.

  Beneath him, a handful of stone crowns and tiaras poked out of the grey mist. An expanse of flat sky stretched away from him, flickering orange, yellow and gold, lit by the burning city below. Stann knuckled away a tear. He’d refused to grieve when the news had come that his son had been shot for deserting his unit in a war zone. That would have meant Donarth really was dead. Worse, that he’d let his friends down. But Rose Franklin? She’d been a good woman — headstrong, determined and fierce. A woman who had lived what she believed. She’d put herself on the line despite knowing the risks. She’d refused to cower behind the suits and skirts who lied to all the spineless wonders who ‘just wanted to get along in life’, those people who traded uncomfortable truths for a shot at shelter. But even in her darkest nightmares, Rose could never have envisaged a fate like this.

  The helicopter lurched, cracking Stann’s head against a window. He grabbed a pair of headphones. “C’mon, Skovsky. You forget to take the handbrake off this thing?”

  A voice crackled back at him. “You forget what funny means? That joke’s even older than we are.”

  Stann shifted his leg into a more comfortable position. The trek through the tunnels under Tye had taken its toll. The mangled flesh of his thigh was sending throbbing waves of pain up his spine.

  His headphones hissed. “What happened back there?”

  “The usual when you mix guns and a grudge.”

  “Shooting and dying?”

  “Too much of both,” Stann replied. The chopper jumped. “Try and avoid the pot holes, OK?”

  “Would sir like an umbrella in his drink, too?”

  “Just a pilot that can fly in a straight line.”

  “They’re the ones that get you killed,” Skovsky said. “You want a pilot that can duck and barrel roll. They’re the ones that keep you alive.”

  The chopper slid out of the clouds. Twinkling lights blanketed the city beneath Stann: skyscrapers tipped with flashing red dots, lines of viridescent green and ground-bound stars of white. The colours stopped abruptly at the murky black line that was the River Tenns. It separated Effrea from its northern neighbour, Tye. The latter, a city gutted in the Silk Revolution some forty-odd years ago, was burning again. The quiet that had hung over it like a shroud for almost half a century was shredded. Stann could have sworn he could hear the giant beams of wood popping and crackling, as buildings collapsed in on themselves. His stomach dropped. Whether that was Skovsky Senior wrestling with the chopper, Rose’s fate or the thought of Ray Franklin and the others trying to escape that inferno, he wasn’t sure.

  The thrum of the chopper’s engine changed. “Where we going?” Stann asked.

  “I’m to take you back to the Morgen Towers.”

  “Those cursed tin boxes stuck out in the South Sea? Not a chance. I know why they were deserted. I met one of the survivors way back when.”

  “Captain Namoor?”

  “Yup. He’s still afraid of bread knives. Take me to where Axeford used to be, I know the area. I can hide in the Weeping Woods.” The giant distillers’ barrel will do for a while, he thought. Rest up, let the leg recover and maybe have a rummage around and see what the distillers left behind. Maybe some spirits to help the healing, maybe even some guns to help the hurting.

  “Can’t do that, Stann. I got orders.”

  “From who?”

  “Rose Franklin herself.”

  “She’s dead.” The chopper didn’t waver. Skovsky was an old man, but he’d served and lost a child ove
r what may as well have been a political typo. He was the type of old man who performed better under stress than when the stakes were low. “Randall Soulier killed her,” Stann continued. “I got a feeling he wants the president’s job a little too much.”

  “Never liked him.” The headphones and noise of the rotors stripped the emotion out of Skovsky’s voice. It was all the more menacing for it. “Never cared much for people who’ve bought or bribed their way to power. They’re almost as bad as them that inherited it.”

  Stann kept quiet and let his silence do the questioning for him.

  “Guess we’d better stop him then.” Skovsky’s voice hissed in Stann’s headphones. “You sure it was wise to let your grandson and the others stay?”

  Stann’s eyes, sniper’s eyes, strained to see through the mist choking the Stone Bridge. It was the size of his hand now. The bridge connected Effrea, the capital of Ailan, and the spreading inferno that was cremating Tye. As the wail and flash of police cars and army vehicles arrived at the Effrea end of the bridge, Stann imagined he could see three tiny figures racing into the streets: Ray, Dr Stella Swann and her husband, Dan.