Read the book: «Three Kings»

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Saturday February 29th

Sunday March 1st

Monday March 2nd

Tuesday March 3rd

Wednesday March 4th

Thursday March 5th

Friday March 6th

Saturday March 7th

Sunday March 8th

Monday March 9th

Tuesday March 10th

Wednesday March 11th

Thursday March 12th

Friday March 13th

Saturday March 14th

Epilogue

Closing Credits

The Wild Cards Universe

About the Publisher

F ASCINATING.

It should have been impossible to ambush Badb, Goddess of War. Every crow in Belfast lent her their senses. She soared over a bleeding city, from one pocket of violence to the next. From the women shaving the head of a weeping collaborator to the screams of a man shot through the back of the knees. The city had half the population it should have had. Its buildings crumbled, paint flaking away except from slogans that every day were refreshed: ‘NOT AN INCH!’ ‘BRITS OUT!’ ‘NO NATS HERE!’

She had caused it all. Manipulating the angry; creating heroes and renewing herself through their sacrifice.

But she hadn’t expected this.

Three teenaged boys with hurley sticks caught her in an alleyway.

‘Hand it over!’ cried the nearest, his voice breaking mid-sentence. He had blonde hair and a shamrock tattoo that might get him killed only three streets from here.

Behind him, a second boy, darker this time, pushed forward. ‘Yeah!’ he cried. ‘We want all of it!’ Despite the braggadocio, this was their first robbery. Badb could tell such things. Their knuckles were white on the wood of the hurls. Their Adam’s apples bobbed and bobbed.

‘Let me get my purse.’

She really didn’t have time for this. Something was very wrong. She left her body, flicking from crow to crow, finding nearby streets to be far too quiet. No bombs went off. No snatch squads screeched out of police stations.

‘Smash her, Paddy!’ the second boy said as she returned to her body. ‘She’s delayin’. It’s on purpose.’

‘I have it here,’ Badb said, allowing a quiver of fear into her voice to make them feel more manly. ‘Please don’t hurt me!’ She knew what they were seeing. An old, old woman. Which she was. With aching joints to slow her movements and additional indignities they couldn’t imagine – constant bleeding from cracks in her skin that only a layer of sopping bandages hid from view.

‘Hit her, Paddy.’

But Paddy probably had a granny of his own at home, and a conscience too. ‘No,’ he said, and licked his lips. ‘Not if she hands over the pension money. An Irishman keeps his word.’

Badb’s arthritic fingers got the purse open as the three boys crowded closer. Inside was a razor blade. With shaking hands, she drew it across Paddy’s throat. While he stared, amazed, still on his feet, she hobbled forward two more steps and got the second boy too.

Badb’s hips stabbed at her as she turned. She would need to regenerate very soon, or old age would leave her incapable of any movement at all.

By now the third boy was turning to flee. But she had a crow waiting. It swooped down from a nearby building, a missile of beak and black feathers, aimed straight at the teenager’s eyes …

And that’s when it happened. A pain such as the goddess had not felt in the longest time. A wrongness that jerked her out of her body and flung her awareness across the city to Sandy Row.

Disoriented, she tried to understand what had brought her here.

It had begun to drizzle. Boys and girls stood by the gable end of a house where patriotic hands had painted Queen Margaret on the day of her coronation. Badb watched the children from the eyes of one crow and then another until, suddenly, the gang sprang forward as one. A boy and a girl carried a net between them, she in sneakers, he in boots, the laces dangerously trailing.

What are they hunting? Badb wondered. But only for a second, because then, the net came down over the crow she occupied. She flicked to another bird and then another, but they too had been caught. Other children smashed at the birds with planks of wood. With rocks. With the soles of their Doc Martens. The pain! The pain!

Half the flock escaped, and Badb with them. What was going on? Who had ever heard of such a thing? Even in this city where the spilling of blood had not slowed in fifty years?

Badb wheeled with the other crows, toying with the idea of sending the flock back to peck some manners into the children, but she knew better than to give herself away like that. Over the last decade she could count on the fingers of two hands the number of people her flock had killed. Even so, the idea had leaked out into the city’s subconscious. ‘Crow’ had become a slang term for treachery or for informers. Criminals and terrorists regularly warned each other to ‘keep your beak shut’.

She led the surviving birds over the Peace Wall between Sandy Row and Belfast’s jokertown, known locally as ‘the Island’.

They would be safe there, she felt sure, while she tried to work out what was going on.

She returned to her body in the alleyway to find the third boy had escaped. Inconvenient. A loose end that would need snipping and she—

The crows in the Island were under attack now too. Again, it was children. Misshapen ones that not even Picasso or Dalí or Goya might have imagined. Their assault on the crows was less organized, but several birds were taken out before the flock could flee once more.

Finally, the exhausted crows came down in the grounds of St Louise’s Comprehensive School where thirty girls stopped their game of camogie to stare at the arriving flock. As one, they charged forward and began stamping on wings and feathered bodies. A nun and two other teachers looked away, as though indifferent to what must have been a shocking sight.

Each time Roger Barnes felt he had adapted and made peace with his body, it found some new way to betray him.

He sighed and took off his robe. He liked to consider himself a practical man, but of late the rituals of self-care left him glum, all too aware of how much he had changed, and was still changing.

He stood before an antique full-length mirror with doors that contained additional side mirrors when opened. The frame was scuffed by time and travel, but it was still sturdy. Appropriate, thought Roger. Like all the things he owned, it had been purchased with cash, and by someone else. There were no accounts in his name; the cards and phone that he sometimes carried were not registered to him and they were cycled at regular intervals, just to be on the safe side. They, much like the basement he currently dwelled within, were transitory parts of his life, functional, impersonal, disposable.

The fingers of his right hand were too thick to manage the delicate clasps holding the doors of the mirror in place. Roger knew this but tried anyway. It was a little game he played with himself. Perhaps this time I’ll manage it, he’d think. As if the passing of the seasons would grant him more manual dexterity rather than less. Three times, his thumb was tantalizingly close to hooking the thin strip of gold metal, but it soon became clear that it wasn’t going to happen, so he switched to his left hand and the clasp opened easily, though not, he noted, as easily as it once did. Compared to his right hand, his left appeared normal, but the wooden fingers were still longer and thicker than they once had been.

For years Roger had not thought of himself as Roger at all, but as Green Man. Green Man was many things to many people. To some he was a prominent figure of London’s underworld. To others he was a benefactor to be approached by those unwilling or unable to call on the authorities. And to a select few he was the head of the Twisted Fists, an infamous group of joker terrorists. In the three and a half decades since his card had turned, Green Man had been labelled killer, saviour, traitor, and monster; simultaneously a champion of the oppressed, an opportunist thug, and a dangerous revolutionary.

But at these times, when he stood naked, exposed, his Green Man mask sitting on the desk next to his wardrobe, he saw something of the man he once was. A small, neat man. Conservative in politics and manner. A man of principle. A family man.

Nearly all traces of that man were gone. Roger Barnes had been short, and the Green Man was now seven feet tall. Roger Barnes had been slight, and the Green Man was, while still long-limbed, undeniably sturdy. Roger had kept his hair neat, while the Green Man had no hair at all, unless one counted the persistent moss he was forever having to trim.

Roger sighed again, picked up a pair of secateurs, and started to prune the shoots sprouting from a spot on his chest. He’d been shot there, many, many years ago, and like all of his injuries it had healed swiftly, but never quite the way it had been. This was most evident in his right arm, which he’d lost in a fight with … with … He paused, shocked that he couldn’t immediately recall her name. He could picture her face, could hear her voice in his head; swearing, predictably. But her name eluded him. How could I forget the name of that foul-mouthed creature?

A twinge in his shoulder brought his attention back to the mirror. His body hadn’t forgotten. Thanks to her, one arm was now thicker than the other, rough to the touch and prone to sprouting leaves, which he found terribly embarrassing. He flexed the bark-heavy fingers on his right hand, working them until they were no longer stiff.

Wielding the secateurs awkwardly in his left hand, he trimmed his right as best he could, and then turned his attention to his back. There were several old bullet wounds there. All caused by his daughter when she’d tried to kill him – do not think about Christine, he admonished himself sternly, not today. Though they’d healed, they’d become a never-ending source of itching and unsightly growths. Being on the middle of his back they were devilishly hard to reach too.

There was one he just couldn’t get. It was tempting to call Wayfarer and ask her to clip it for him but he resisted. In part because he would be crossing a line – What next? Have her clip my toenails? Polish my head? Uh, the very idea! – But mainly because it would be showing vulnerability. It was fine for Roger Barnes to ask for help, but not the Green Man.

He took another look at the mournful face in the mirror, and then redoubled his efforts with the secateurs. And there, at last, was the satisfying clip and a whisper of pain that meant he’d got the bastard thing.

The secateurs were put down, and the mask picked up. It was lavishly carved, every leaf lifelike from stem to tip, linked together to form the shape of a face. A trio of leaves stood proud at the forehead like a badge of office. It was larger than life, larger than Roger Barnes, both a shield for him to hide behind and a symbol to inspire others.

He put it on.

Green Man again.

Then he reached for his suit, not the dark green he usually favoured, but his funeral suit. One of his jokers had died, and though any public appearance carried its risks, Green Man must be seen to pay his respects.

Green Man must be seen.

It took longer to dress than usual. His trimming had been less than perfect and he had to ease his shirt over his arms and back for fear of tearing it. The knot in his tie threatened to be too much for his fumbling fingers but, in the end, it succumbed to his slow, persistent assault.

When he had finished, however, the lines of his suit were crisp, the tailoring doing much to smooth his uneven limbs. He silently thanked Bobbin for his skill. Such a blessing that one of the few tailors willing to cater to the needs of jokers was the protégé of London’s finest.

‘Yes,’ he said to himself. ‘This will do.’

With a satisfied nod, he shut the mirror, trapping Roger Barnes and all of those old ugly thoughts inside.

It wasn’t the cold grey misty day that made Constance cross. London weather was so predictably appropriate for a funeral. It wasn’t even the crush of mourners – that was to be expected when a celebrity died. It was knowing that Glory lay in the casket before her, that the flowers on Glory’s head – the expression of her joker – were rotting away, soon to be joined by Glory’s flesh.

With a shudder, Constance remembered the time Glory’s flowers had been brutally shorn from her head. The blood. The dying lilies. Constance tried to shy away from the memory, but it was still there, same as ever, sharp and clear as glass.

Bobbin took her hand in his. It was warm and surprisingly soft despite his constant handling of fabric. He was careful not to squeeze too tightly. The bony protrusions between his long, spindly fingers – so useful when he was sewing – could also hurt like nothing else. She glanced down and was amazed by their wrinkled, veiny hands. When had they become so old? She didn’t feel old at all. It was but a breath in time, and here she was seventy-six and Bobbin only a few years behind her.

Bobbin tucked her hand into the crook of his arm, then gave it a pat. The small gesture almost made her cry. But Constance wasn’t a crier, at least not in public. If there was any crying to be done, she’d do it in private, where such things belonged.

‘How’re you holding up, m’dear?’ Bobbin asked. His face, as familiar to her as her own, was blessed by beautiful and kind gold-rimmed cerulean eyes. She let that kindness wash over her. Normally, she might have shied back from it – even with Bobbin she was careful not to get too close – but today was an exception.

He knew the answer to his question. After all, they’d known each other for forty years. He knew her moods. Knew when to jolly her along and when to let her be. She leaned on him. Depended on him. And yet had kept one thing from him. (Not just one thing, my girl, she thought.) The dark, secret thing she and Glory shared.

She studied the mourners. The cast from Wannabe A Hero were clumped together. She appreciated them showing up. Glory had been a guest judge on the episode in which the American ace, Golden Boy, had humiliated all comers – just as he had on the American version of the show.

But the majority of the mourners were jokers. Normal people whose lives had been destroyed by the alien wild card virus.

Certainly, there were jokers who had managed to do just fine. Jokers like Turing or the woman with the talk show, Peregrine. But that wasn’t the bulk of them. And her anger grew, because she burned with hatred for the Takisians and – fair or not – that included Dr Tachyon.

And hating jokers? It didn’t supplant the old animosities, it just gave people an extra, new thing to hate.

Bobbin squeezed her hand again and she managed a quick smile at him and some of her rage drained away.

Bobbin had grown so important to her and the business that making him her partner seemed sensible. And in addition to hiring as many female tailors as they could, they also made a point to hire jokers, no matter the gender. If you wanted a Constance original, then you had to accept that it was lovingly made by women and/or jokers.

But that all seemed rather unimportant standing here beside Glory’s casket. At the head of the casket was Mick Jagger in his lycanthrope form. It seemed as if time had taken its toll on him only in the sprinkle of white on his muzzle. Tears wetted the fur under his eyes, turning it dark.

A massive blanket of white roses covered the casket. Constance knew this gesture was Mick’s because Glory had sprouted those flowers whenever he was near her. He might have had a lot of other women, but his one true love had been Glory. And that had been a tragedy.

At moments like this Constance wished she’d never acquiesced to Bobbin’s suggestion and become an online presence. She knew her thousands of followers on Twitter and Instagram would be expecting her to say something about the funeral, especially with so many celebrities present, but they were going to be disappointed. This was personal. This was private.

On the other side of the casket, hanging back near the edge of the cemetery, she saw Green Man. He was shadowed by a few dangerous-looking jokers. But then he was almost always in the company of dangerous-looking jokers. She knew he was a gangster and might even have ties to the Fists. Everyone in the East End suspected as much. It didn’t matter that she’d moved away decades ago, she still had deep roots in the community and was perfectly well aware of what was happening there.

The vicar began intoning yet another prayer. Constance tuned him out. Her eyes burned, and things got blurry. She told herself it was because the wind had picked up, but that was shite and she knew it. The sharp pain of losing Glory wouldn’t leave and, unconsciously, she gripped Bobbin’s hand tighter, not even noticing when his thorns pierced her knuckles.

‘I’m always here for you,’ Bobbin said softly. ‘I know I’m not her, but you can count on me.’

‘I know,’ she replied quietly. There was a hitch in her voice and a lump in her throat that made it hard to swallow. The vicar kept droning on and Constance thought she might scream, Get on with it, you git!

At last, the vicar finished, and the mourners began to make their way past the coffin. White flowers – lilies, chrysanthemums, and gladioli – were lovingly placed around the casket. She saw Green Man begin to make his way through the crowd carrying a delicate bouquet of violets.

It made her like him a little, but only just a little.

It pained Green Man to arrive anything less than early, but it wouldn’t do to be hanging around. He’d learned long ago that the trick to maintaining any kind of mystique was to give people as little time to talk to you as possible. And so, at the very last minute, he slipped in quietly at the back of the cemetery.

Manor Park had lost none of its gravitas over the years. Even under a drab London sky it managed to look stylish and timeless, from the clusters of mature oak, ash and birch trees to the wrought-iron gates tipped with gold, to the neatly kept grass. Where many places of this calibre would have turned their back on the resident jokers, Manor Park and the rest of the East End had welcomed them with open arms. To them, jokers were just another quirk of an already vibrant community.

A good-sized crowd had assembled to pay their respects to Glory Greenwood. She’d been something of a star during the sixties, and always popular. That was the thing about being different: to be accepted you had to be easy on the eye, and for the most part harmless. Glory had been both, and charming with it. A little bit of brightness in the East End that would be sorely missed.

He allowed himself the slightest smile as the crowd became aware of him. Furtive glances were cast his way and a little ripple of reactions passed out from where he stood. He watched carefully, noting which faces seemed pleased, which afraid, and the few that were openly hostile – he’d make a point of talking to them later.

Somewhere nearby, Wayfarer would be sitting in an innocuous-looking van with the engine running. A few of the more discreet Fists were also around, ready to run interference if need be. It was unlikely anyone would be crass enough to move against him here, but it always paid to take precautions. In his pocket, his phone was set to vibrate if Wayfarer got word of trouble. The old code: one buzz for police, two for armed units or military, and three for the Silver Helix.

So far it had stayed as quiet as the park itself.

His turn soon came to step up to the grave, several of those already in the queue giving up their places out of respect. Among them he saw one of the few nats present: Constance, alongside Bobbin. They stood together, almost like an old married couple, but not quite. Green Man favoured them with a slight nod as he passed.

Despite the sombre nature of the day, it felt good to be outside. Too much of his life was spent cooped up inside the back of vehicles or below ground. He relished the feel of the wind on his body: he was virtually immune to the cold these days, and was delighted when rain fell on him.

When he reached the grave he stood for a while, head bowed, to give the impression of deep thoughts and feelings. The truth was he hadn’t really known Glory at all. Their lives had followed very different paths. She’d always seemed too much of a hippie for his liking. He much preferred tidy, practical people. And she would likely have found him dull.

Still, regardless of any personal feelings, it was important that Green Man be seen to care and, in a vague way, he did care. Jokers like Glory were rare and important to the cause. The world would always see him as a monster, but she’d been able to touch people, joker, ace and nat alike. She was the other side of the coin. The Twisted Fists could fight the worst of humanity, but they would never win over the best of it.

He stooped down, and left his bouquet of violets.

When he made his way out, he saw some of the old jokers laughing together as they shared stories of their time with Glory. He saw them hold each other, their misshapen bodies leaning together for support.

And he envied them.

Alan Turing stood outside the door to the Queen’s bedchamber, collecting himself. She had summoned him, and he had come at her command, as always.

Margaret had been so beautiful as a girl. Beautiful and wild. An eighteen-inch waist, the papers had reported, and the rest of the figure to match, plus a face lovely enough to paint. Both before and after his card had turned, Alan had felt no flicker of desire for the stunning princess, but he had appreciated her beauty, like a work of art. And though time had worked its ravages, buried in the wrinkles of ninety lay the lovely bones of the girl who had flirted her way across Europe. Pregnant Elizabeth had surely been relieved when Townsend had actually proposed to Margaret; marrying a divorcé was still scandalous back then, but better than a babe born out of wedlock. She’d thrown her considerable weight behind the match, and the marriage, a mere seven months after Elizabeth’s own, had featured the most splendid of cakes.

A flowering of British beauty, British glory, such a relief after the ravages of the war followed by Wild Cards Day. And then, things fell apart, as the poem said. Had Yeats known, somehow? The centre did not hold: Elizabeth’s baby was born dead, followed a few years later by Elizabeth’s own passing, her health broken by the birth. She had fought so long, so hard, their princess, and the country had been heart-stricken. When George VI died a year later, Margaret had been so distraught that she’d needed sleeping pills for months. They’d tried to keep that out of the papers, but to no avail.

Still, in the end, she’d rallied. Young Henry to live for, and then Richard following a few years later. Twenty centuries of stony sleep put back to rest by a rocking cradle? Margaret I, ruling over a realm that had been, for the most part, peaceful. And if she had her lovers on the side, as some whispered, Townsend never said a word, and so neither could anyone else. He’d loved her to his grave, his wild girl, and now, finally, she would follow. Alan turned the doorknob, pushed open the heavy door, and entered.

The Queen’s crimson bedchamber, crowded with relatives and quiet murmurs of conversation, was lit by candles. Electric lights hurt her eyes. The flickering light caught the gilt of framed paintings on the walls, a long pageantry of prior kings and queens, with Elizabeth prominent in the room. Had Margaret spent her entire reign under her sister’s stern gaze? Never quite good enough, proper enough, to satisfy? Yet Margaret had held England together, through the advent of the wild card, where other countries had faltered – surely Elizabeth would give her points for that? The candles lit shadows in the forest-green curtains that draped the bed, edged in royal purple and gold. On the flower-embroidered coverlet, the Queen’s hand lay, the thickness of middle age dissolved through her long years, until it was thin again, the skin gone papery.

Alan Turing had served George through the war, and Elizabeth after, served as well as he knew how, but it was Margaret he had loved. Something in her wild heart called to his own, though so few could see it, cloaked as it was in his skin gone metallic, and his mind that had always worked more like a computer’s than most. Yet Alan was human after all, and when the Queen called to him in a thin voice, his heart squeezed in his chest. Ah, this hurt.

‘Alan?’

He spoke over the tightness in his throat. ‘I’m here, Your Majesty.’

‘Ah, look at you.’ The Queen’s eyes filled with the easy tears of age. ‘You’re two decades older than I am, Alan, but you look in the prime of life. What I could do for England with those extra years! Henry – Henry, take them all away … need to speak to Alan.’ Margaret had to pause between breaths, but decades of command held, and the family dutifully filed out. Henry, soon to be king, with his young fiancée. Richard and Diana and their children as well. Richard’s young grandchildren had been spared this death-watch. Finally they all left Alan alone with Margaret.

‘Come here.’ She raised a hand, and Alan hurried across the room to take it in his, careful not to press too hard.

He listened as Margaret spoke, her words slipping out of coherence, rambling at times. But he’d known her a long time; even if she dropped words here and there, it was easy enough for him to fill in the gaps. ‘Henry is too rigid … blinkered. He clings … to pride and privilege … might have pulled a kingdom … on the battlefield, but … not what England needs now.’

Turing couldn’t disagree with her assessment of Henry. Yeats had said it best: The best lack all conviction, while the worst / are full of passionate intensity. But Henry would be king; somehow, England would survive.

Margaret’s soft voice rambled on. ‘And my Dickie’s … an attractive man – you know that, Alan …’

Intimation in her voice – she couldn’t possibly know, could she? His metallic skin could not flush, but Turing felt the heat rise in his face. But the Queen was already moving on.

‘But I don’t know … the strength to hold the throne … the figure that England needs … symbol of our past, our future. When the throne falters, England falters!’ She sighed, a pale hand fluttering on the richly worked bedspread. ‘I didn’t understand that … a girl … Elizabeth worked so hard to show me … almost too late by the time I learned. Alan – you must find the other.’

There was a gap Turing didn’t know how to fill. ‘The other, Majesty?’

‘The other heir. Lizzie’s little boy. He wasn’t right, you know. But still. Maybe better than my boys.’ Margaret was pushing herself up in the pillows, her eyes blazing now, almost feverish. Her words came fast and sharp, despite the tears trembling in her eyes. ‘You can assess, Alan, better than anyone else. You have seen decades of history, fought in our wars, served multiple rulers. You will likely see many more – you can judge better than any other living man. How would he be, for England?’ Margaret sank bank on the pillows again. ‘… such hopes for my sons, I tried to raise them right, but the demands of the throne …’