“This is an intrusion into my dear friend Octavia’s privacy,” the woman said imperiously. “It is intolerable.”
Dai lifted his head to see her eyes flash with anger and felt the sudden insignificance of a being a mere non-citizen, provincial Briton in the presence of over a hundred generations of pure Roman patrician breeding.
“I – I apologise, domina,” he said quickly, eyes downcast.
“I should think so. And if you wish to keep your job you will be certain this does not make it into any official report – or unofficial one. If a single word gets out, I promise you that I will ensure you have no job and no licence to live in Londinium ever again either. Do you understand?”
Dai felt his throat dry up. She more than had the power to do precisely that if she chose.
“I understand you, Domina Lydia.”
There was a slight flush of colour then in her face and for a moment Dai wondered at it, then he realised that she had not thought he recognised her.
“I am glad you do,” she said quietly. “You can leave now. I will look after poor Octavia. But remember what I said.” 
Dai bowed again and moved towards the front door, as Octavia detached herself from Bryn and was scooped up into the arms of Domina Lydia who made soothing noises and stroked her hair whilst glaring over her head with cold command at Dai and Bryn.

They left the apartment block in stunned silence and it was only once they were walking back to their vehicle Bryn broke it.
“You handled that well, Bard, your poet’s charm worked a treat.”
Dai shook his head.
“I’m out of practice, is all.”
Bryn stopped by a street stall.
“Two portions of garum and chips, not wrapped.”
They stood waiting as the chips were thrust into paper cones and the pungent sauce poured all over them. Bryn paid with his wrist phone and they continued walking, eating the chips as they went.
“Did you notice something odd?”
“I noticed a lot. Like the way you buried your head in her tits for example.”
“More like she did the burying bit.”
“You weren’t exactly fighting her off. Can’t say I blame you though. Not every day you get to put your face in the perfumed cleavage of a Roman matron. Or not without having your balls sliced off for it. Must have made it almost worth the threats from that pompous bitch at the end. Like we give a cracked cack whether some Roman lives in the lap of luxury or not.”
“It wasn’t that,” Dai said quietly.
Bryn looked at him.
“Oh?”
“No. She was just terrified we’d seen her there. She didn’t ask what had happened to Rufus or even who we were, which means she must have known us. And I don’t know if you have a celebrity job on the side, Bryn, but I’m really not that famous.”

From Dying to be Roman by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook, a whodunit set in a modern day Britain where the Roman Empire still rules. You can listen to this on YouTube.

Writing made easy – if you don’t mind the bumps!

The wit, wisdom, joy and frustration of a writer’s life summed up in limericks…

Be careful with words I was warned
For they can be spiteful if scorned
And an innocent verse
Can become something worse
If you don’t watch for meaning and form.

Jane Jago

“Have you known Avilon long?”
The Vavasor seemed not to notice the intense interest which underlay her casually phrased question.
“Since the Alfor Fair – although we met in less than sociable circumstances. Qabal Vyazin paid fifty-thousand reynar for him – left him to rot for the best part of a half-moon then gave him to me to look after.”
“He was your slave?”
“Hardly. Qabal doesn’t part with a fifty-thousand reynar investment that easily. A keeper is not the same thing as an owner.”
“Then you must have liked Avilon a lot to take him with you when you left the Warlord,” Aisha observed thoughtfully.
The Vavasor looked uncomfortable for a moment.
“Sore point – I wasn’t thinking too clearly right then and if I had been given the choice I’d not have opted to drag a Kashlihk fighting-slave across the countryside whilst playing tag with Qabal Vyazin for my life. Fortunately, although I thought it far from fortunate at the time, the gods intervened in the person of that famed humanitarian and liberator of slaves, Durban Chola.”
“Durban Chola?” Aisha echoed with amazement. “What in the world would Durban Chola want with Avilon?”
“Ah, I see you know the selfless man,” the Vavasor sounded ironic.
“Well enough to know that there isn’t a bone in his body that is selfless nor one that isn’t as devious as a sneak-thief. I’ve had a few dealings with him in the past.”
“That I would like to have seen,” the Vavasor said reverently. “The thought of an irresistible force meeting an immovable object springs to mind.”
It was a compliment and he delivered it with a gallant smile that almost made Aisha forget she was an old woman with a son and two daughters grown and five other children buried.
“We drove a hard bargain between us,” she agreed, but was unwilling to be diverted from her objective. “So why did he want Avilon?”
The Vavasor shrugged.
“Who knows? Spite, perhaps. But it has been exercising my brain for the past fifteen days on and off.”
“Has Avilon no idea to it?”
“If he knows he’s not said so – not to me at any rate.”
“He seems to care for you, a lot.”
The Vavasor glanced at her slightly puzzled.
“Who does? Durban?”
“No. Avilon. He hardly left your side when you were ill.” Almost immediately Aisha regretted her words as a tangible cloud settled between them.
“I didn’t know that,” he said softly and then, in a strange tone. “I am afraid that the Kashlihk has made something of a habit of saving my neck.” Then he smiled suddenly. “It seems a popular hobby for people. At this rate, I will be indebted to half of Temsevar before the year’s out.”

From Transgressor Trilogy: The Fated Sky a Fortune’s Fools book by E.M. Swift-Hook.

The last day of the world was scheduled for the following Tuesday.

After a lot of heated discussion as to what should be the exact date, a compromise was reached between the scientists, the religious communities and the politicians. Next Tuesday it was.

Despite some panic, Tuesday came and went. People carried on working, playing, learning, loving – living. There was outrage, of course. The scientists said it had been a political decision, the religious leaders praised their gods for saving us all. The politicians were heard to observe, acidly, that they had not specified which ‘next’ Tuesday they had meant.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Things are not quite how you might remember them in the 100 Acre Wood for Christopher Robin, Pooh Bear and their friends…

***** ***** *****

Jane Jago

Writing made easy – if you don’t mind the bumps!

The wit, wisdom, joy and frustration of a writer’s life summed up in limericks…

You’ll have freedom to travel they said
But I’d much rather stay in my bed
An airline hostess
Has far too much stress
So I’ll just be an author instead

Jane Jago

The tale of a bold knight, a valiant steed, an innocent maiden and a cunning dragon…

The maiden wasted little time in considering her options. “Although I’m firmly of the opinion you lot are hallucinations brought on by fear on the off chance you aren’t, I’d suggest the young man comes down here and does something aside from waving his sword around.”
Salazar swallowed his surprise and kicked Barney firmly. “You’d better turn around, sir knight. Your fair lady awaits. And it doesn’t sound to me like she is accustomed to waiting.”
Barney turned and looked ruefully down at the girl. “I’m really sorry about this, Princess .”
Aurora offered him a sunny smile, which awoke a dimple in her left cheek.
Judging it politic to leave the humans to their own devices, the big horse turned his back while Cicero made an enclosure of his wings. Finding the sounds of sliding cloth and murmured comment a bit distracting, he turned his attention to Cicero who was looking pinched, and uncomfortable, and disapproving.
“I don’t know what I imagined,” he said thinly, “but that young female person just giggled.”
“Sir Barnabas has a bit of an effect on females. We’re only here because The Queen’s Majesty has designs on his virtue. He’s not interested – because even if she wasn’t married she’s scarcely a catch. So we bravely ran away.”
“You ran from a female?”
“No. We ran from her mad bastard of a husband. He’s about eight feet tall, built like a wyvern, and completely mental. He’s never lost a tournament, or a duel, or a battle in his life. And he is said to have killed ten dragons.”
Cicero winced. “Oh. Right. One of them. I’ve read about that sort of a king.”
They were quiet for a few moments, then Cicero spoke pettishly.
“Do you think those two will be much longer about their business? This is beyond embarrassing.”
Salazar was casting about in his head for something anodyne to say when the giggles and murmurs were interrupted by a sharp cry. He opened his mouth to say something about the job mostly being done when the ground beneath his hooves began to tremble. He looked to the north, where the lush meadowland gave way to scrubby moorland.
“Oh no. By the hairs on my granddam’s fetlocks please let my eyes be deceiving me.”
But they weren’t. It looked as if Nemesis, in the shape of a mad half-giant and his equally deranged horse, was galloping towards them bellowing imprecations.
“Is that?” even Cicero sounded impressed.
“Yup. That’s his mad-jesty.” Salazar raised his voice. “Hopefully you two have done the needful, because it’s time we weren’t here.”
Barney stood up and his companion straightened her skirts before standing beside him. Cicero dropped his wing and they both stared open-mouthed at the nightmarish vision that was The King’s Royal Majesty in a killing rage.
“Avaunt ye foul fiend,” he bellowed and the spittle flew from his lips. “Prepare to meet thy doom.” His barbed lance rested on his right boot and he swung a battle axe of about a man height negligently in his other hand.
“I thought my brother was a mad bastard,” the Princess murmured. “What happens now?”
“Now, hopefully, we get the hell out of here.”
“Grasp my foreleg,” Cicero commanded.
Barney and the Princess did what they were told, and the dragon took a firm grip of Salazar’s bridle. He sent a gout of flame towards the approaching madman before touching his snout to the rock and muttering a word in dragonish.
Came a flash of something beyond lightning, the western sky turned as black as tar, and the Dragon Rock split from top to base falling in two halves on the cold grass. The king’s gigantic horse stopped galloping, and his mighty hooves cut deep channels in the moorland peat. His royal rider had all he could do to keep his seat in the face of this sudden cessation of movement even though he dropped his weapons, and groped for the reins. By the time he had collected his wits and his shredded dignity the dragon and its companions were nowhere to be seen.
“Come out and face me you lily-livered lizard. Ye can’t hide forever,” he bawled as he rode around the ruins of the only true Dragon Rock in his kingdom. “Coward,” he roared into the darkening sky. “Cowardly son of a cowardly father.”
For a brief second there was a tear in the storm clouds that were rolling in from the west and a blunt saurian face smirked at him before blowing a single blue flame in his direction.
The dragon disappeared again, and as the king’s beard burned merrily a disembodied voice spoke from the sky.
“Game over.”

There will be a new serial for you to enjoy next Sunday!

There is no greater writing gift
Than giving those who sigh a lift
No better use of word or craft
Than beating sorrow with a laugh
There’s no better plot nor ploy
Than that our work will bring you joy
I have no literary aspiration
Save to bring smiles by my creation

Jane Jago

Holly dragged a couple of very heavy bags out of the back of the Land Rover and hauled them into the kitchen. She went back for a second load, and as she was passing the staircase Alan’s voice floated down.
“Did you get it?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Bring it here and let me see it before you wrap it up.”
“As soon as I’ve finished hauling groceries.”
There was the sound of movement overhead and for one delirious moment Holly actually thought he was coming down to help. But then she heard a door slam. Her slender shoulders drooped, and she soldiered on alone.
Some half an hour later, she trudged up the stairs holding a small box in her left hand. Walking into Alan’s office she placed it carefully on the desk in front of him. He looked up from his computer screen.
“At last. Knowing how much I want to see this, I’d have thought you could have brought it to me before now.”
“I could. But then the groceries wouldn’t have been put away before the twins get home from school.”
He opened his mouth to make a scathing retort, but his wife was already on her way out of the room. Instead, he opened the box and looked gloatingly at the heavy gold bangle in its layers of tissue paper. It had cost a great deal of money and meant he wouldn’t be buying his wife or his twin sons Christmas presents this year, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. All he could see in his mind’s eye was the image of his daughter with the bangle clasped around one slender wrist. She was going to love it.
Downstairs Holly got on with preparing the evening meal, presenting the world with her usual face of calm good sense. Inside, however, she was far from being serene and happy. Not for the first time in the ten years of her marriage, she wondered what maggot had entered Alan’s brain. How could a man who was constantly bewailing his own poverty possibly justify spending four thousand pounds on a bracelet? She allowed herself one small kitten-like snarl, before popping a huge shepherd’s pie in the oven. She was just putting the kettle on when the back door slammed.
“Paddy, Sean, shoes,” she shouted. “And before anyone considers arguing, I have fresh doughnuts.”
There was the sound of masculine laughter, and a couple of minutes later the kitchen door opened and two huge young men all but fell in. They surrounded her and subjected her to a certain amount or good natured rumpling, before sitting down at the scarred wooden table.
“You are,” Sean said, “very possibly the nicest stepmother in the world.”
“She is,” his twin concurred. “Which begs the question of how the miserable miser upstairs ever persuaded her to marry him.”
“Behave, you pair,” Holly couldn’t help laughing, as she put a huge mug of very strong tea in front of each and a plate of doughnuts between them.
While they were eating, Holly looked at their broad, good natured features and did her own wondering. She wondered exactly how two such self-centred people as Alan and Corinne, came to have produced a matched pair of nice sons. Paddy grinned at her.
“Stop frowning Stepmama, you’ll put wrinkles in your pretty forehead.”
She smiled at him, and he shoved a whole doughnut in his mouth.
“He’s been practicing,” Sean explained with simple pride. “That’s school over until January. So what now?”
“Tomorrow. Nothing. Unless you’d like to go shooting.”
“We would,” the boys chorused. “How did you swing that?”
“I have my methods.”
“And after tomorrow? What are you softening us up for?” Sean was the quicker on the uptake of the duo, although Paddy was the leader.
“Sunday your mother arrives.”The boys groaned. “And what else?”
“Christmas Eve, Anna and Christabel will be here. Staying until the day after Boxing Day.”
“Oh won’t that be fun. The two ex-wives at each other’s throats except for when they join forces to have a go at you. Plus the most spoilt young woman on the planet, Daddy’s darling Christabel, expecting to be waited on hand and foot.” Paddy looked at Holly. “I dunno how you stick it. And don’t say it’s for love of our despicable father, because you aren’t that stupid.”
“I stick it because I promised myself I’d be here for you two until you were old enough to leave home. When that happens…”
The boys looked at her with round eyes before getting up from the table and enveloping her in a group hug.
“I’d give a great deal,” Sean said, “to know what the old bastard has done that’s gotten you rattled enough to admit that.”
Holly waved her hands distractedly. “I shouldn’t have said it. And I don’t want you two to be thinking about it…”
“Okay. We won’t.”

From Team Holly by Jane Jago

They stand, these sentinels of human pride, that ask
Silent questions, shouting out from the past in stone
Where once walked feet brought here by many urgent tasks
Now stand we, gaping.

The mighty raised each edifice that all might see
The depth of dominion they could summon forth
A legacy of tears, of wars from sea to sea,
Or maybe wisdom.

Could they guess the lessons their history would teach,
Each one who strutted proud and strong upon life’s stage?
When their sun shone and these proud buildings were upraised,
Did they sleep nights?

E.M. Swift-Hook