Season of Skulls

Charles Stross Season of Skulls The New Management - Book #3 ISBN: 9781250839404, 9781250839398 Kindle / ASIN: B0B9KWWHPV Genre: Fantasy, Science Fiction Goodreads Rating: 0.00 Hardcover, 384 pages Published: 2023 This is the final novel in the trilogy that began with "Dead Lies Dreaming" and continued with "Quantum of Nightmares". "Season of Skulls continues Hugo Award-winning author Charles Stross's Lovecraftian Laundry Files series. Welcome to the sunlit uplands of the 21st century! Britain's avuncular Prime Minister is an ancient eldritch god of unimaginable power. Crime is plummeting as almost every offense is punishable by death. And everywhere you look, there are people with strange powers, some of which they can control, and some, not so much. Hyperorganized and formidable, Eve Starkey defeated her boss, the louche magical adept and billionaire Rupert de Montfort Bigge, in a supernatural duel to the death. At least, she has reason to hope he's dead. But though she's now in charge of the Bigge Corporation, she's not free of him yet. Through the fecklessness of her brother Imp, combined with the intricate feudal law of a tiny Channel Island, it would appear that unbeknownst to her, she was married to Bigge--and that proving his death and releasing herself from his arcane bindings will take years and cost millions. Then an emissary of the Prime Minister arrives with an offer that she absolutely can't...well, you know. 2023 - ePub verification and revisions by zardox Begin Reading Table of Contents About the Author Copyright Page For Caitlin UNWANTED COMPLICATIONS It was a bright, cold morning in Hyde Park, and a detachment of Household Cavalry was riding along North Carriage Drive in parade dress, escorting a tumbril of condemned prisoners to Marble Arch. Imp—Jeremy Starkey, also known as the Impresario—paused beside the Peter Pan statue to watch. A tall, skinny man in his early twenties, with swept-back hair and a narrow, intense face, Imp might have been a grown-up Pan himself: a Peter Pan who’d lost his wings and grown up hard and cynical under the aegis of the New Management. He tugged his scarf with unease, then checked his counterfeit Mickey Mouse watch. He wasn’t going to be late to the meeting with his sister and her lawyer if he took an extra ten minutes, he decided. Nevertheless, he drew his disreputable duster tight and hunched his shoulders. A chill wind was blowing, as if practicing to set the cartful of fettered felons swinging once they danced the Tyburn tango. It was 2017, yet some things in Bloody England never changed. Albeit not quite everything. Cavalry soldiers in polished silver cuirasses riding huge animals through the park were nothing new. But beside their cuirasses and high-plumed helmets these riders wore polished steel plate that covered them from head to foot, with wireless headsets and grenade launchers, quadrotor observation drones whining overhead. Their faces were blank behind curves of bulletproof mirror glass. Their horselike steeds had sickle-bladed claws on either side of their hooves: their heads bore fanged maws and the front-pointing eyes of predators. Someone was clearly concerned about rescue attempts. Imp shuddered and looked away from the dour procession. The distant noise of the crowd gathering around Marble Arch to watch the execution hurt his ears. He didn’t want to hear the taunts of idiot rubberneckers who couldn’t imagine that one day it might be them. “Not my circus, not my monkeys,” Imp muttered under his breath. Not my holiday, not my hanging, he meant. He brought his roll-up to his lips and began to inhale, but the joint had burned out, and besides, it was down to the roach. He walked across to the dog-waste bin and dumped it, then continued on his way. It wouldn’t do to keep Eve and her solicitor waiting, even though he feared the coming meeting almost as much as his own personal execution. There’s a fine line between love and hate, Eve reflected, as she watched her brother explain his mistake to the solicitor. Will she testify against me if I murder him? Eve asked herself. Is provocation a defense? Like her brother, Eve was tall and lanky, but there the resemblance ended. She’d carefully curated her image as a blue-eyed ice queen in a designer suit. A penchant for sudden-death downsizings and the warm and friendly disposition of an angry wasp went with the territory. It had been utterly essential while she’d been Rupert’s executive assistant. But now she wondered if the weight of armor she wore was worth the cost: even the lawyer seemed leery of her. The solicitor cleared her throat, glanced at Eve for permission, then addressed Imp. “Let me get this straight, Mr. Starkey. You didn’t ask your sister to confirm that she was undergoing a security clearance background check. You did not seek professional advice before initialing every page of the, um, ‘nondisclosure agreement,’ and the witness statement attached to it. You didn’t read pages two through twenty-six. You did not ask for a translation of section thirteen, paragraphs four through six, even though it was written in medieval Norman French. Nor did you read section fourteen, the special license, which was drafted in fourteenth-century Church Latin, or the codicil stating that the contract—most of which you didn’t read—was subject to adjudication under the laws of Skaro—an island in the English Channel with its own unique legal code—and that by signing you ceded your right to redress in any other jurisdiction. At no point did the messenger offer you any payment or inducement for your signature. Is that right?” Imp nodded sheepishly. “I was very stoned. We’d just buried Dad.” Eve’s cheek twitched, but her expression remained as coldly impassive as the north face of a glacier. The solicitor clearly found it a struggle to maintain her facade of professional sympathy. “Well then. To summarize, you signed an affidavit certifying that you were the oldest living male relative of your sister, Evelyn Starkey”—the lawyer sent Eve a tiny nod that might have passed