A Cloudless Sky

The air supply has switched to the recycled stuff now. The others ask how he can tell, but Harrison swears he can taste the difference. He sits in the chair, as he has for the last ten hours. Since the alarms started and they were all rushed in here. The Waiting Room. A place to...

Airport Lines

The line moves in spasms, little fits of stopping and starting. All around: coughing, grumbling, the whining and crying of children, the barks of irritated adults. He is adrift in a river of misery, drawn slowly on towards the little booths with their tired attendants and thumping stamps. He clutches his passport, making sure he...

Shadow Queen

There is a power in trees deeper than that of kings, a power in the gnarled and reaching branches, in the winding of ancient roots. The elders said that there were trees yet living that had known the world before the coming of their people, with axe and fire and nations gleaming in their minds....

Nameless Places

There are no maps of the City with no name. It is announced on no roadsigns, mentioned on no surveys. But it's there, if you search for it, if you wander the strange and wandering paths and backroads of the untamed world, if you are prepared to find it. The City is a mess of...

A Witch Should Own No More Than She Can Carry

Past the village fence and down the winding forest path sat the witch's crooked house. The villagers came to her with their ailments, their wants, their petty vengeances, asking for cures, for spells, for curses. She gave cures without conditions or promises, spells only after long consideration, and curses never at all. Once, the villagers...

The Jacobites

The army of the Pretender encircled the high rock of the castle, armed with bullets and steel and Parliament. They would win. There was no question of that. The commander of the castle walked its wall, speaking words of encouragement to his men, offering easy smiles in the face of difficult defeat. He looked upon...

The Way Out

Three days and three nights the Lawgiver's men chased Verity across the Dying Land, their horses kicking up storms in the dust. They dressed in black from hat to boots. Their eyes were dark, shallow sockets. They did not pursue by sight. Sight could not be trusted. They followed the scent Verity left in the aether,...

The Birth of a Goddess

When first they made her, from straw and string and wood, she was just a scarecrow. The children drew her face and laughed at the paint on their fingers. They dressed her in cast-offs from the bins and set her over fields and flowers, that she might keep watch for the cawing crows. She didn't...

The Story of Red Jack

It was only when he was dangling from a tightly-knotted rope around his ankles that Red Jack – former Captain of the Avenger and current prisoner on Crossbones Isle – realized that a lot of the problems in his life could have been avoided if he'd been a bit less of a cliché. If he'd gone for...

Silence in the Music Hall

There was a time when the music hall was the place to be on a Friday night. Records spun; laughter rang; dancing shoes tapped; light glinted on sequined dresses. It seemed as if the nights would last forever, as if the dance could never stop. But nothing lasts forever: not stone, not steel, and certainly...