Sovereigns of the Collapse Book 1

Cross market place. I was so sick of my job—I was working at ZEEBRI adding up columns of numbers and checking stock. It was rotting my mind. So, I went in and took a test, all funny shapes and having to circle the right one. They told me later I got a score of 127, whatever that means. Seemingly I did well, because they asked me back to face a panel of officials, who grilled me to death about school, my work, people who could vouch for me. I felt like my life had been picked clean by the time they let me go. A month later, a messenger turned up at our gate with a passport. I was now citizen of the Lands of Krossington! I had to go to this place Oban I’d never heard of in my life. Christ, it seemed like I was going to the moon. They laid on a charabanc to take me and some others to the Port of Erith, where we boarded Krossington’s yacht, the Neptune. That was when I grasped just what a leap up I’d made. It’s another world. Everything on her gleamed—even the toilets. She absolutely tore along. You couldn’t stand on the deck because of the wind and spray. Mr Krossington put on a dance for us up in their part of the ship—he even danced with me! It was like I had a new family. Even despite all that happened, I don’t believe he knew about it. You can tell when people are straight up. He had a real air of being boss—not that he deserves what he has—he is quality though, I’ll give him that.”

She started work as a clerk in the trading department of Oban Castle. It was a large office, as the Mull and Morvern Estate produced monumental quantities of goods for the homeland of Krossington in the south.

“It was watching the fortune Krossington took off that landscape that made me think how the world was set up. How could one family take so much while the rest of us just watched?”

One day a big glory officer asked her on a date—completely out of the blue. She had been too surprised to say no. Everything she had heard about glory officers confirmed they were vain and corrupt. It was a surprise to find Lawrence held similarly contemptuous views to hers—and despised the corruption as much as she did. It amused them both to scandalise the petty society of the town.

She sighed, struggling to keep back her tears.

Then Lawrence vanished. She picked up a rumour he had been arrested. After furious pestering of the General Wardian HQ in Oban, she finally caught Turner out for a walk with his wife. The rumour was true. He told her Lawrence had been charged with corruption against the Krossingtons. The charges were very serious and they were getting more so as evidence came to light. A couple of days later, a squad of Krossington marines took her to the butler of Oban Castle. Certain documents missing from the office had been found in her flat. She must be gone from the town before dusk, else be barged to Glasgow as extracted infestation. She walked to the docks in the clothes she stood in and spent all her savings haggling a ticket on a shitty water tanker only going as far as Morecambe. Very luckily, she met someone there who knew the name Newman; but for that, she would still be in Morecambe earning God knew what kind of a living.

“Working on your back is what you’d be doing,” Bartram said. Nightminster and he had finished their business. They poured tankards of beer from a copper drum and pulled up chairs. Nightminster sat beside Sarah-Kelly and gave her a hug, kissing through her blonde hair. At such close range, Nightminster’s sheer physical size was phenomenal. His thighs were the size of the hounds on guard outside, the shoulders broad like a door. Sarah-Kelly tolerated him while in no way returning the affection.

So, thought Donald, here we have a story. Nightminster is chasing a woman half his age—but why? He has been intimate with the Newman family since the days of Jakub Newman, which means he must have watched Sarah-Kelly grow up “from crayons to perfume”, as the saying goes. Why make a move now, when Sarah-Kelly is searching for her lost love? Was this an older man’s folly the Newmans tolerated because they could not afford to lose his business?

Donald pushed the conversation on; it would be dark in an hour.

“What was Lawrence accused of?”

“He was found guilty of large scale of corruption against the Krossingtons and sentenced to eight years’ Night and Fog,” Sarah-Kelly said.

“Are you repeating what someone told you?”

“I was on my way to the docks, bag in hand, when this fat little merchant laughed across the promenade at me—he scurried right through all the wagons and trucks sneering all over his face. Those were pretty much his words. He said my lover-boy was gone for good. Did that bastard sound pleased about it.”

“What was his name?”

“Gustavus Rackland, one of the biggest traders in Oban.”

“What does he trade?”

“Everything. Fresh water, slate, timber, cattle, pigs, sheep, dressed stones, hides… Everything was under the sovereignty of Krossington, the traders merely competed to get the stuff in and out.”

“Divide and rule,” Bartram said. “Oldest trick in the book.”

“Out to where?”

“Portsmouth mostly,” Sarah-Kelly said. “That’s the main port of The Big K.”

“Were there other officers with grudges against Lawrence?”

“They all had grudges, except maybe Turner. The two of us snubbed their pretensions, with Lawrence being an officer and me being a pleb, not some merchant’s daughter, plus we were too white—Krossington is very anti-racist.”

“Any officers in particular?”

“There was one, a double-barrelled ponce. He had a swish motor car, always cruising up and down the promenade with his silly wife.” She concentrated. “Peterson-Veitch. That was it.”

“There is one point I don’t understand: mature organisations do not assassinate talent. You tell me