His smile became feral and he pulled her out of the seat into his lap. ‘Are you talking about something like this’ he whispered as his hard, scarred, soldier’s hands reached inside her robe to caress her naked skin.
‘Oh yes. Something very much like that. Only fiercer…’
He responded by tearing her robe from her shoulders and burying his face in her small breasts.
‘Will I ever get enough of you?’ he groaned.
She bit him, hard, by way of a reply.
A good while later they lay entwined and he idly ran his hand up and down her slender back.
‘Goodness me, Princess Ida. You do fuck remarkably enthusiastically for a lady of quality.’
She snickered and looked through her eyelashes at him. ‘My Lord will have his joke at the expense of a poor innocent girl’ she replied in a very good approximation of the voice of a empty-headed excessively genteel city girl. Then she pushed him onto his back and lay across his body so they were nose to nose. ‘Why have I never wanted anybody but you?’ she mused in a soft voice.
‘Got me beat. Must be innate bad taste on your part. You could have had any man for the crooking of your little finger. But you chose a paid assassin twenty years your senior. There’s just no accounting for the female of the species.’
‘Ain’t that the truth. Are you glad?’
‘That’s a stupid question if ever I heard one. I’m more than glad. You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. You are intelligent, and funny, and vicious enough to be a match even for me. Plus, I love you almost beyond reason. But why are you making me say that now?’
‘Because I have something to tell you, and I don’t know how you are going to react. I was softening you up.’
He laughed, then with a lightning twist of his hips he reversed their positions before grinning down at her.
‘Out with it.’
‘I’m pregnant.’
For an instant he neither moved nor breathed.
‘Do you mind saying that again?’
‘I’m pregnant.’
‘That’s what I thought you said.’ He shook his head like a dog coming out of the sea. ‘That’s unexpected, after all this time. I’m sure I’ll be happy about it when it has sunk in. For now, why were you unsure of my reaction?’
‘Well. We are right in the middle of the most dangerous thing we have ever attempted. And I’m essential to the plan. So I thought you might think pregnancy would mess up the plan, or that I should go home and wait for the baby like a proper wife would. Or a thousand other things…’
‘Silly. Pregnant or not we’re in this together, like we’ve been in everything since I threw you onto Ali’s bed and screwed both our brains out. I love you, you silly woman. And we’ll just work around junior.’
She gave a great sigh of relief and wound her arms around his neck. ‘I should’ve trusted you shouldn’t I love? It just knocked me for a loop. We’ve been together twenty years and not a sniff of a pregnancy.’
‘Indeed. But one can’t predict these things. Do you think we’ll be crap parents?’
She laughed shakily. ‘Possibly. But any child of ours will probably inherit all our our worst character traits, and need our sort of crap parenting.’
‘It will, but we’ll love it anyway, won’t we?’
‘Yes. We will.’

From Billion Dollar Mountain by Jane Jago

The face smiled, belying the words it spoke.
“We have decided it’s not in our commercial interests to allow you to continue to use those chips in your tech.”
Targena drew a sharp breath.
“Is there nothing we…?”
“The decision’s been taken at the highest level and is final. All future shipments are cancelled.”
A moment later the smiling face vanished from the screen.
Targena sighed then picked up her phone and spoke into it.
“You have your funds, professor.”
It took less than a year to develop a superior chip and wipe the smile off that face for good.

E.M. Swift-Hook

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

The Tribune breezed into the room like a beak-nosed hurricane. She rather wished that she could see her new partner’s face when the formidable Decimus Lucius Didero lifted her in his brawny arms and kissed her on both cheeks. She wriggled and kicked and he put her down.
“Llewelyn,” he grunted, “you take care of my little foster sister.”
Dai looked as if he couldn’t think what to say. Julia was very sure this was not the way he usually saw Romans interacting. The Tribune grinned.
“She will grow on you, and she can’t help being Roman any more than you can help coming from a place where they make up songs about everything and shag sheep. Now. I’ll assign you a contubernium of praetorians.”

Julia winced inwardly knowing how that would sound to the Briton and was not surprised that Dai’s looked furious although he said nothing. Decimus smiled a wolf’s smile.
“Calm down, you and Julia will still be in command and you can keep your own posse too, if you can trust them all. It’s just that my lads can get away with doing things you and yours never could. And they don’t have to wait for anybody’s permission. I’m thinking that by the time your boss has consulted all the people who are paying her, our bird could easily have flown the coop,”
Once again, Dai kept his mouth shut and Julia could see the knowledge that Decimus was right, openly warring with his loyalty to the force to which he belonged. She gave him a sympathetic look and he actually smiled back at her, a thin smile to be sure, but definitely an upward tilt of the lips. The Tribune, who she knew would have missed nothing, grunted at them, but it wasn’t an unfriendly sound.

“Right. Listen carefully. There are some things you need to know but I’m not supposed to tell you. Privileged information, praetorian confidentiality and that kind of merda. Well I’m not having it. My little sister doesn’t go to war unprepared.” He pointed a thick finger at the pair of them. “You need to know about your corpses. Bellicus and Docca were in big trouble. They were being targeted by a betting syndicate who try to get players taking money to fix Games. And I don’t mean any of your little Londinium locals, I mean the big boys from Rome. Those people do not play nice when someone says ‘no’. They also don’t take kindly to anyone poking a nose in their affairs, no matter who it might be.

“More of a worry, though, is this Luca. He left Rome under a cloud. It was either exile or death. He chose exile. You don’t need to know precisely what he did but you do need to know that at least six very powerful families had reason to want him punished. Whether or not they succeeded at arm’s length, I don’t care to speculate. Just be aware that he was very good at making enemies. The interesting thing is he was supposed to stay in Gallia Lugdunensis where Daddy has extensive estates around the town of Lutetia, under a form of house arrest. But clearly he didn’t and I heard today his wife didn’t either. We have no idea where she is right now.”
Julia looked at her old friend.
“That explains a lot. That old cunnus Marius looked as if he was eating merda when he had me in his office and sent me on this mission. He about halfway forbade me to bring Edbert and the dogs.”
“I hope you ignored him.”
“I did.”
“Good. You’ll need them. But you will also have an apartment here. Inns are insecure at the best of times. This is starting to smell bad.”
Julia opened her mouth to object, then thought better of it. Things were indeed smelling bad. She began to formulate a thought, but before she had time to work it through, Didero turned his attention to Dai.
“You’ll move your men in here for the duration of this case.”
Again, Julia could see the flare of pride in the Briton’s blue eyes being quickly damped by rational thought. She realised, at that moment, that she was dealing with a man who lived in a steady state of war with his own passions, a very Celtic trait. Somehow that thought just made him more intriguing.
“As you will, dominus,” Dai said. “And I see that would be safer. We’ll be in the barracks?”
“They will be, yes. They can share with the men assigned to you and Julia. I’ll arrange your accommodation too.”
Dai bowed his head.
“Dominus.”

Dying to be Roman by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook

The statue’s flat, fish eyes followed her wherever she went. She was afraid, but he was cold marble. How could he hurt her?

Yet his fixation with her even disturbed the other statues who creaked and groaned their disapproval.

“Leave her,” Zeus growled, but his sea brother sneered.

“I want.”

“You may not.”

“Stop me…”

The statue of Poseidon was presumed to have fallen from its plinth and it lay on the floor broken into a thousand pieces. Only its eyes were alive and they rolled across the floor to lay at her feet, looking up her skirt.

She screamed….

©️Jane Jago

It was a long time later, when the wagon ground to a halt, that Avilon opened his eyes, aware his mind had regained most of its normal sharp-edged clarity. Outside he could hear the sound of a camp being established: poles being thumped into place and the muted thud of pegs being driven into the ground. Above the babble of voices he caught the occasional dog bark, burst of laughter, the crack of a whip, a strange light clattering noise that was almost musical, and the sound of running feet and hooves.
The old woman had got up and was searching around in the various boxes and bundles that filled the rest of the wagon producing an assortment of small pouches and a large water skin. Then she began mixing the contents of the pouches with some water in an all too familiar bowl. Avilon cursed silently, the old hag was going to try and drug him again and short of strangling her with the chain that linked his wrists together, there was nothing he could do about it. And that was an unworthy thought, she was clearly trying to help him in her own way.
So far, he had no real evidence that his captors held any truly hostile intentions towards him. If anything these people had seemed to be trying to look after him – at least by their primitive best methods. They had not killed him when he was helpless – and they certainly seemed to be concerned enough with his welfare to set someone to treat him with their available medical skills. The chains, uncomfortable as they were, could even be explained as a reasonable precaution after what they would have seen as his unprovoked assault on one of their own. But he had no wish at all to submit to more of their brain-numbing drugs.
Avilon cleared his throat.
“Do you speak any Standard?” he asked, pleasantly surprised that this time his voice seemed a little hoarse but otherwise fine.
The old woman looked up from her work and muttered something in her own language.
“Perhaps you could find someone who could understand what I’m saying.”
The woman looked at him and gabbled some more, then gestured to the bowl she was preparing and nodded towards him. Avilon sighed and shook his head.
“Look, I don’t need any more of that. I am feeling a lot better and can assure you that I’ll recover much faster now if you don’t make me drink more of it.”
She obviously did not understand anything he was saying. The woman pointed at the bowl again and said something in a very firm tone of voice before busying herself with mixing once more.

From The Fated Sky part one of Fortune’s Fools Transgressor Trilogy by E.M. Swift-Hook

Becca offered a silent prayer as the engine failed to catch then did. The car was too old but she couldn’t manage without it. Today, her day off, she had been temping as a receptionist. Tomorrow it was back to an early start as a home carer. But now she had to collect the kids from her mother’s. A neighbour’s daughter would babysit for her evening shift waitressing.
On the radio, a slimy politician sucking on his silver spoon was saying that poor people should get a job.
She wondered how many jobs she needed not to be poor anymore.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Have you ever asked the question “What if…?”
What if things had turned out differently, what if history had taken another turn, what if our world had gone another way?
That’s the question at the heart of the genre of alternate history – and that powers the stories in the new Inklings Press anthology, Tales From Alternate Earths 3.
Alternate history has had quite the renaissance in recent years – from TV shows such as The Man in the High Castle, an adaptation of the Philip K Dick novel, to the HBO series Watchmen, and more light-hearted adventures through history such as Timeless or Legends of Tomorrow. Even Disney is getting in on the action with their “What If?” series looking at what might have happened if key moments in the Marvel Cinematic Universe had gone differently.
That’s the fun of it – there’s so much range in the genre, but all so close to home that it could just be the slightest difference that takes us there.
That difference is usually called the point of departure, the moment when history departs from our own. That can be something huge – an alien ship arrives, say – or it can be a tiny difference. In one of the stories in the new anthology, it hinges on a man having a pair of boots.
Stories in the book span the world, from Hitchcock directing Titanic to a hunt for Jack The Ripper, from Cold War chicanery to a Roman Empire that never ended, from mythological beings turned real to post-World War Two genetic experiments. It’s a big canvas and it’s great to see what the authors involved bring to the table.
There are stories by Alan Smale, Daniel M Bensen, DJ Butler, Minoti Vaishav, Brent A Harris, JL Royce, Jeff Provine, Ricardo Victoria, Rob Edwards, Matthew Kresal, Aaron Emmel, Christopher Edwards, and the fabulous EM Swift-Hook and Jane Jago!
Oh, and there’s a story by me, Leo McBride. It’s called Heaven Above, Hell Below, and here’s an extract right here:

The manmade island was quite a sight from the air. Two islands would be a more accurate description – an outer ring around the central island. Four long roadways connected the two as if they were spokes, making it look somewhat like a wheel. The outer rings had the most construction going on, with vehicles and workers buzzing around putting up hotels, while groynes extended into the sea to help to create the beaches shown on the glossy cover of the brochure on Ellie’s lap. But it was the central island that was her business.
“Make the most of it, no one will get a view like this soon,” said the man sitting across from Ellie, a slim older white man dressed in the clothes of a pastor, complete with white collar and crucifix around his neck.
Without looking away from the window, Ellie replied: “I know. Anyone tries to get this close, two F15EX2 Eagle 2 jets will blow them out of the sky. If that’s not enough, the tower has Sea Sparrows mounted on all corners able to take anything down far enough away not to worry about fragmentation.”
The man coughed. “I’m sorry,” he said, “Clearly you know far more about the defenses of Shinar than I do. Allow me to introduce myself, I’m Bishop John Wilson. And you are?”
He extended his hand across the space between them, and Ellie took it, his pale skin a contrast to her own black skin.
“Ellie Floyd,” she replied, “and yeah, I guess you could say I do – I designed the defenses. You here with the religious advisory body?”
“That I am. Although I do fear my opinion might not matter much, I’m not sure how much I can offer to a project as ambitious as Shinar.”
Ellie paused. “That’s the second time you’ve called it Shinar. So far, it’s just Pacific Base while the marketing teams do all the brand testing. Why are you calling it Shinar?”
The pastor raised his hands. “Oh, you know what they say, if you want something try to speak it into being. I figure if I keep on using it, it might stick in someone’s mind and might just make it to the final list. My own little contribution.”
Ellie smiled. “Well, clearly you know far more about where that comes from than I do. I’m afraid my days of learning scripture are a long while back. What’s Shinar?”
“Ah,” he said, “well, Shinar was once—“
He was interrupted by the chopper pilot calling back. “On final approach, buckle up, we’ll be touching down in a moment.”
Ellie smiled. “Something to tell me over lunch,” she called, as she buckled her belt and the helicopter banked and descended to the central island.

A Bite of… Leo McBride  

(1)  What draws you to write alternate history? Is it the what ifs? Or maybe the  if that happened it would be funs? Or something deep in your soul. 

For me, it’s all about the tantalising possibilities. It’s great when you think back to that moment where everything shifts and realise how differently our world can play out. That’s only half of it, thought, you have to tell a story in that world, and that has to get right to the heart of who the characters are and what is important to them. So the change in history sets the backdrop, but the people still tell the story.  

(2)  Do you think your writing is driven by character or storyline? 

I think I tend to be focused more on character. Maybe part of that is years of playing roleplaying games and having one single character that you’d play for session after session and while the adventures changed, it was the growth in your character that was important. But yes, I like to get as close to the character as I can in the story, and why the events that take place matter to them.  

(3) What is your favourite street food/takeaway?  

Parmo. I may live very far from there now but the Teesside parmo is a thing of legend. Chicken parmesan, which sounds healthy when you say it like that, but it’s beaten and baked and smothered in cheese and béchamel sauce and served like a pizza with oodles of chips, a big splosh of garlic sauce and some salad just for show. It’s unhealthy, it’s far from fancy, but by golly it’s magnificent.  

Leo McBride is a journalist, editor and fiction writer born in Northern Ireland but who has since drifted across the ocean to The Bahamas. He has been published previously in each of the Inklings Press anthologies, along with collections from the Sci-Fi Roundtable, Rhetoric Askew, Starklight Press and elsewhere. He has also self-published his own short story collection Quartet, and ghost written and edited a number of biographies. You can find more of his work on his blog, on Twitter and on Facebook. 

The dress called AnnaMaria with all the seduction of a lover. But it was as expensive as it was beautiful so she could only look. Then one morning it was gone. She and her mother speculated about who might have bought it as they ate their meagre supper.

The next day there was a dress box on the table when she got home from school.

“Who?” 

“Your father.”

“The one who only sends eating money when the judges make him?”

Mother nodded.

AnnaMaria never opened the box. 

She wore her old dress to the dance and kept her pride intact.

©️Jane Jago

Because life can be interesting when you are a character in a video game…

The airship was moored to a platform just along the waterfront from where the real ships came in. It turned out to be a boat-shaped basket which could hold perhaps eight people if they stood close together. Above the basket was a bright red egg-shaped bubble, decorated with some kind of complex heraldry and attached to the basket by ropes. At the back, behind the basket was a large whirling device which Pew told her was called a propeller. Which made sense as it was this which propelled the airship along.
Pew and Glory both ran up the stairs to the top of the platform and jumped into the basket. Milla followed them more cautiously, wondering what would happen. It didn’t look very safe to her. Indeed, no sooner had she got in than the ground dropped away below them. Milla’s stomach felt as if it was still on the ground, but the rest of her was high in the air. She gripped the sides of the basket and closed her eyes, waiting for her heart to stop pounding and her stomach to rejoin the rest of her body.
When she finally managed to open her eyes, she saw an amazing sight. There, beneath her, were hills and fields and forests, rolling away. In all the time she had lived in Wrathburnt Sands she had imagined what other places the Visitors talked about might be like. Over the last few months she had pestered Pew with questions about the places he had visited and so she thought she had some idea of what to expect. But the reality was incredible. Her fear evaporated and she stared with awe and wonder at the world.
Then the ground below became stoney and bleak. There were massive wooden houses almost tall enough to touch the bottom of the ship and a group of giants waved their huge cudgels and snarled up at the passing air ship.
“They don’t seem very friendly,” Milla said. But Pew and Glory were bickering about something they called ‘stats’, throwing initials and numbers around fiercely and apparently oblivious to anything else. It was odd to think that they took this incredible journey so much for granted that they didn’t even look at the view.
The airship had begun following the course of a river and then suddenly Milla’s stomach dropped away again as the river thundered over a cliff and the airship plunged down with it. For a few giddy moments she thought it had lost it’s magic and was falling, but Pew and Glory didn’t even stop their argument, they both just grabbed the edge of the basket and carried on. Reassured, Milla looked down again and felt as if she could see to the very edge of the world, but a world that was now purple and brown. And very flat. This, she assumed, must be Seersucker Swamp.
Odd creatures like giant slugs and worms and other things with tentacles that Milla really didn’t want to know anything about, slithered in and out of the rusty looking pools which pocked the surface between close pressed tussocks of purple grass. There were occasional trees with trailing branches and uplifted roots, with the same purple foliage and grey trunks. These trees grew more frequent as the swamp progressed until the airship had to swoop to avoid it’s canopy. A pathway snaked through the swamp, marked by posts with skull shaped lanterns and the airship moved to follow it towards some kind of village which was built on stilts with walkways connecting the various buildings.

We will return to Wrathburnt Sands by E.M. Swift-Hook next Sunday.

Return to Wrathburnt Sands was first published in Rise and Rescue Volume 2: Protect and Recover.

The halcyon days of summer
Lazy dust motes sailing by
Timid clouds can find no shade
Beneath a copper sky
The grass throws seeds
That itch against our skin
And finding clothing
Tuck themselves within
Whilst flags hang windless
In the noonday heat
And even green is harsh
Beneath our feet
The summer embers burning
In their shades of gold
Trick us to forgetting that
It will soon grow cold
But leading us a dance
The season cries
Come love me now
Tomorrow I may die

©️jj 2021