The New World

THE NEW WORLD AN ORIGINAL RED QUEEN’S WAR STORY Mark Lawrence Author’s Note: This is the beginning of a new Jalan and Snorri book I started writing, but it also makes a nice reasonably self-contained short(ish) story. The book may get finished one day, and it may even get published, but I have a lot of projects on the go, so it won’t be any time soon. Enjoy! ONE “A nun?” “Well.” I tried my penitent face. Despite all that practice, I still wasn’t very good at it. “Nuns.” “Nuns!” Omar threw up his hands. “You said it was just the once!” “It was!” I fiddled with the sleeves of my cassock. “Just once. I swear it . . . Only with more than one nun.” Omar puffed air through his lips. I doubt that I found his attempt at surprise any more convincing than he found my penitence, but I was touched that he made the effort. Barras had just raised an eyebrow. Lisa had given a slow shake of her head then dashed off after one of the triplets. Even the pope hadn’t seemed that surprised, and he only knew me by reputation. “Aren’t nuns supposed to be, you know, celibate?” Omar knew more about the Church of Roma than I knew about the followers of Allah, but the truth was, neither of us was that bothered about our own faith, let alone someone else’s. “They are,” I said. “Whereas the clergy aren’t. Which makes a nonsense of all this outrage I’m getting, if you ask me! Send Sister Caren and Sister Messa to the New World! Send Sister Mellony! I don’t see—” “Three!” “Well, there was Sister Ruth too . . .” Technically, Ruth wasn’t guilty of fornication, but only because whoever wrote the Vatican’s rules on the subject seemed to have had a very sheltered upbringing. “Four!” Omar blinked. I excused his obsession with the numbers side of the affair on account of him being a mathmagician. “Look, we’re getting off track here. The important thing is that they’re punishing the wrong man. I never took any vows of celibacy. Good luck recruiting enough priests to run a church if you’re going to make that a rule!” “Actually.” Omar frowned. “I believe I read that it used to be like that a long time ago.” “Nonsense. I think I would know a thing like that.” I waved the idea away. “Anyway, the point is that I shouldn’t be going. And, given that I am, you should be coming with me.” “Why would I want to do a thing like that?” Omar fixed me with shrewd dark eyes. The truth was that I didn’t have a good reason, other than a vague desire to share the misery. A pudgy five foot six in his thickest socks, Omar wasn’t ever likely to be much help in a fight. As the seventh son of the caliph of Liba, his connections came in useful from time to time, but they didn’t stretch as far as the New World. And yes, he was a mathmagician, but the magic had drained from the world, and that meant that he was really just a math . . . person. Very useful when it came to addition, subtraction, and counting nuns. Less useful on a prolonged sea voyage. “It’ll be great! A whole new world!” I reached out a hand as if the vision of it lay just before us. “A new . . . fantastic . . . um . . . point of view! Think of it! They probably have new numbers over there . . . or something.” The fact that I had lasted three years as a cardinal before creating any major scandal was as much a surprise to me as to those who knew me. When my grandmother, the notorious Red Queen, had leaned on the pope to appoint me at the age of twenty-three to my late father’s office, I had imagined that I might manage a few weeks before they realized how utterly unsuited I was to the role. My training for the second highest tier in the church’s hierarchy had consisted almost entirely of drinking, gambling, and whoring my way through my allowance and thoroughly enjoying the life of a minor prince, close enough to the throne of Red March to bathe in the reflected glory, sufficiently distant not to have to worry about any real responsibility. Evidently, though, the pope was as scared of my monstrous grandmother as I was. In the end it took four nuns at once to even get me told off. I let everyone who would listen know how much I regretted my deeds. But up until the point that the New World entered the conversation, it was all a lie. I never could resist a woman in a wimple. Four brief months is all it took from abasing myself before Pope Gomst III in Roma to being turfed from my bed at an ungodly hour to shuffle out onto a blustery Marsails dockside. My motley entourage awaited me in front of the Hesperus. She jostled against her ropes, a beast at bay, ready to tackle an ocean. By the time I finally parted company with that ship I would be able to name every part of her with nautical eloquence. That morning, however, I barely noticed how many masts she sported, seeing instead a collection of ill-matched timbers held together with tar and optimism, ready to carry me far from everything I cared about. Well, from the few things I cared about that weren’t me, at least. I had thrown myself on the new pope’s mercy. It turned out that in the place where one might hope for compassion for his fellow man, Pope Gomst III instead kept a cruel sense of humour. He declared that since I was so keen on exploring virgin territory, I could do it for the church on a full-time basis. To this end, the