Unusual friends
Rendezvous at The Peak
The Triverse is
Mid-Earth, an alternate 1980s 1970s London
Max-Earth, a vision of the 26th century
Palinor, where magic is real
Previously: An arrest warrant has been issued for Detective Lola Styles. She’s escaped from the Bruglian Wastes with Princess Daryla and have reached The Peak…
The Peak.
3202. Frostfall.
The tavern hung from the side of the mountain, suspended above the plunge in a manner that defied Lola’s understanding of physics. The city wrapped itself around the sheer cliffs like a coiled snake, spiralling up to the fortress at the very top. The Peak lived up to its name, most of the city built above the clouds and inaccessible other than by flight or the web of bridges and cable cars.
Yawning again, Lola gulped as big a breath as she could. The air was thin, leaving her with the permanent sensation of having just completed a long run. She dearly hoped she wouldn’t be asked to actually run anywhere.
Carved directly into the rock and then extended with a wooden structure, the tavern featured a large terrace open to the elements, despite the chill. The locals didn’t seem to notice the temperature and were quite happy to lean on the guard rail above the precipitous drop into the valley somewhere far below. Not being able to clearly see the ground through the clouds did nothing to convince Lola that she wanted to be near the edge; far better to remain further in, towards the building, where she could pretend that they were somewhere entirely normal.
Three days had passed. If she didn’t think too hard, Lola could almost trick herself into thinking she was on holiday. A chalet somewhere in the Alps. Not that anyone would try skiing down The Peak. There was no gradation to the mountain, hence its name: it went straight up to a point that was almost as high as Everest, measured from sea level, but without a gentle approach. She’d been told many stories by the locals: it was the blade of Unihex, God of Space and Time; it was the tail of an ancient dragon, trapped deep underground; it was one finger of an even larger hand, reaching out from within the planet’s core. Everyone had their own theory.
Whatever the explanation — she found tectonic movement most likely — it had resulted in a mountain that thrust up from the surrounding plains, so high that it cultivated its own climate.
“Here,” Daryla said, arriving with two steaming mugs of tea. “That’ll warm you up.”
“Thanks.” Lola cupped it with her hands, grateful for the respite from the chill air. She leaned forward, inhaling the sweet smell and letting the steam caress her face.
“Careful,” Daryla said, smiling, “if we were any higher that steam would freeze to your face and leave you with icicles on the end of your nose.”
Jolting back, Lola eyed the mug with suspicion. Another foe she didn’t understand. “How do you know all this stuff?”
“What stuff?”
“How to do things. Survival stuff.”
Daryla tilted her head to one side, which always reminded Lola of pigeons back in London. She’d decided not to say anything about that particular observation. “Hot liquid cools rapidly in a cold, dry climate. That’s not hidden knowledge, Lola.”
“OK, fair. But you’re so…practical. I always end up feeling like an awkward Mid-Earth city girl who needs her TV programmes, sofa, slippers and kettle.”
“And there’s nothing wrong with any of those things,” Daryla said, placing her hand on Lola’s. Between her warmth and the wooden table, Lola felt a wash of comfort. “I’ve travelled a lot,” Daryla continued, “to many different places. Albeit usually in more luxury. You’ve not had those opportunities. You can’t learn everything living in one city.”
Lola nodded. “That’s why I always wanted to get out of London. I didn’t grow up there, but once you move it’s hard to leave. You get trapped by the work.”
A squeeze of her hand. “You made it here, though, Lola. You made it to Palinor. To me.”
“I’m not sure that did either of us much good.” She sighed, then gazed up at the tower of rock above the tavern, lined with buildings and walkways and lifts. “I’d have been arrested or long dead without your help.”
Taking a sip of her drink, Daryla shook her head. “Don’t underplay your part, or underestimate your talents, Lola Styles. I wouldn’t run away with just any random girl.”
Lola could feel her cheeks burning, so dropped the conversation. Matters were hard enough without burdening them both with her inadequacies.
“So,” she said, “any word from your contact?”
Daryla stared out across the terrace and the tavern’s various patrons. “My guess is that they’re already here, and have been watching us for the last day or two. Possibly since we arrived.”
Frowning, her eyes feeling dry in the cold air, Lola glanced around the tables. Everything was foreign to her, from the clothes people were wearing to the design of the furniture and building. Many languages were being spoken, none of them familiar to her. “They’re waiting to see if we were followed?”
“Most likely. They have to be careful. Plus, they don’t really know you. You’re Mid-Earth police. SDC, even — your job was to capture and prosecute people from Palinor.”
Shooting her a disbelieving glare, Lola harrumphed. “That’s not quite how I’d describe my job.” She sighed, and ran her hands through her hair. “Would be nice to actually have a job, mind you. Turns out I quite like having a purpose. I miss working on cases. Solving mysteries. Investigating crimes and shutting down criminals. Every week, working on something new. Making a small difference, you know? One case at a time. It wasn’t always that simple, but I knew what I was doing.”
“And now you’re having to find a new path, without that structure. The scaffold has come down and you’re having to stand by yourself. Figure out who you are without the job.”
“Alright, Doctor. I didn’t ask for a diagnosis.” Lola slurped at the tea, and was grateful for the warm liquid as it slowly spread through her insides. “But, yes, everything you just said.”
She had nothing to complain about, she knew. The others were back on Mid-Earth in a jail cell, while she was off on her adventures with Daryla. Then again, you were less likely to be eaten by a vaksha in a London prison. Resting her forehead on her palm, she groaned at the unfairness of it all.
On the table, drawn as if with a finger, was a word. It was marked out on the frosted wood by the absence of ice particles. It was in English: safe?
“Daryla?”
“Keep calm, look normal.” Daryla moved her hand across the table, as if wiping it for crumbs. The word disappeared with the brush of her sleeve.
There were footsteps, crunching on the snow-flecked ground, and someone pulled out a chair and sat at their table, placing a drink before them. A woman, perhaps late-20s or early-30s, with piercing, pale blue eyes and a sharp glare that might draw blood given too much exposure.
“Princess,” she said, quietly, smiling at the both of them as if they were old friends. Her eyes said otherwise. “You must be the detective.”
“Hi,” Lola managed, feeling decidedly unsafe.
“Slava,” Daryla said, evidently relieved. “Thank you for coming.”
“It was a long way. Don’t make me regret it.” Her brusque tone contrasted with her happy smile; any onlookers would pay them no attention. “You said you were compromised? What happened? Give me it in a sentence.”
“It wasn’t me,” Daryla said, nodding in Lola’s direction. “She was about to be arrested. We needed to get out.”
Slava frowned. “Maybe she needed to, but why you? It was useful having someone in the palace, close to the university.”
“We go together,” Daryla said, quickly. “And besides, Bruglia was about to tip over. It wouldn’t have been safe for me for much longer.”
“I see,” Slava said, looking Lola up and down as if assessing her worth. “You’re a lucky woman to have someone like Daryla on your side.”
“I know.” Lola started to extend her hand. “I’m Lola Styles—”
“I know who you are, and put that down. We’re keeping this nice and quiet. No big introductions. You’ll just draw someone’s attention.”
Daryla leaned over the table. “I heard you could divert people’s attention. The ‘Silent Shadow’, is that not true?”
Slava laughed, and folded her arms on the table. “If I’m walking down a street, sure. I’ll tweak a few neurons, cause momentary blindness, or blackouts, or mini-strokes. Make someone think they heard or saw something that they didn’t. That’s when I’m on the move. Sat on a pub terrace? That’s going to raise questions.”
Thinking through what the woman had said, Lola thought she had an inkling of what it meant. “You’re a micrologist as well? Like Daryla? You can move small things?”
Both of them laughed, then said together, almost in unison: “It’s a bit more complicated than that.”
Retreating, Lola wished she’d said nothing. Wielding wasn’t something she could understand innately — she was relegated to observing, to watching from the sides while everyone else on Palinor got to play with magic. The humans, at least. Maybe she had more in common with the aen’fa: never quite fitting in, always at the mercy of far more powerful people.
“So what now?” Daryla asked.
“I’ve prepared travel for the morning. We’ll head south and to the coast, meet up with the others.”
Lola looked between Daryla and Slava. “The others? Where are we going?”
“Into the wilds, Detective,” Slava whispered, with a knowing grin. “You’re part of the rebellion now.”
Thanks for reading.
Triverse has plotted the rise of populist, corrupt governments over its three-year run, and it’s been interesting1 to see real world events keeping pace and going off on thematically related tangents. A populist government coming to power and immediately looking to arrest any opponents is hardly an original idea, but it’s one that real history keeps recycling, and we as human populations keep blundering into.
It’s cathartic, in away, to write about fictionalised versions of all this.
The Leading podcast has a fascinating interview with Audrey Tang:
It’s remarkable in that Audrey is a tech optimist, but it doesn’t feel like bullshit. The rest of the world has a fairly toxic relationship with tech by this point, but Taiwan has been doing all sorts of exciting things for years, and it sounds like they’ve been working rather well. It’s a podcast I need to go back to and listen again, there’s so much going on in it.
I’m still making my way through this and taking notes as I go, but
has a detailed breakdown of how to publish a book through IngramSpark:
Like me, Brian published his first book through Amazon. Quick and easy. It was a useful way for me to dip my toe in the water with No Adults Allowed. Do check out Brian’s anthology, The Stars Will Fall.
I almost immediately knew that I’d want to go wider next time, or with a re-released of NAA, so I’m very grateful to Brian for figuring out the nuts and bolts.
Talking of No Adults Allowed, if you’ve read it you’ll have seen the dedication at the front: ‘For Yared’. That’s my son, who is nearly 12 and thus old enough to actually read the book. He started reading it a few days ago, which is exciting and terrifying. So far so good, but we’ll see how he reacts at the first act rug pull.
Hope you’ve all had a good week. I’ll see you below for some author notes.
Author notes
It wasn’t immediately obvious at the time, but the established Triverse formula was thrown out the window in March 2024 with the ‘Unintended consequences’ storyline:
That’s when the corruption plot really came to the fore, Holland made his decision, Miller was arrested and the excrement hit the fan for all concerned. That made ‘Railroad’ and ‘Shots fired’ the last of the ‘procedural’ stories, other than the post-time jump ‘Far, far away’, which saw Clarke trying to cling on to the last remnants of his old identity through being a private investigator.
For two and a half years, Triverse was primarily an episodic detective drama, modelled after procedural crime fiction TV. Each storyline focused on a single case, with the detectives investigating. It was always an excuse to explore societal issues, with the detective framework there as a ‘way in’, but that was the structure of the serial.
That’s no longer quite the case: the story has shifted now to a different mode, with an ongoing, larger storyline. The background subplot has become the A plot.
‘Far, far away’ was a reaction to that shift. It wasn’t just Clarke clinging on to the old ways: it was me, as the writer, and you, as the reader. We weren’t ready to move on.
‘Unusual friends’ continues those concerns, specifically with Lola’s lament for her old life and her old job. The shift in the narrative structure of Triverse is mirrored by the changes in the characters’ lives. Lola no longer has a case-of-the-week to deal with. What does that make her? Who is she without that? Clarke’s solution was to recreate his old job in a new context. What will Lola do?
Meanwhile, it’s always fun to visit a new location. The Triverse story has been to so many wacky places already, across the three universes. Plus we get some talk of the old gods (remember when we met a couple of them in ‘Immortality’, back in April 2023?), and get to see Myroslava again for the first time in a long while.
Yes, Slava has been in the story before. You’ll have encountered her in ‘Bombings’ (December 2022) and ‘A distant rebellion’ (August 2023).
And, yes, I’m including the dates on all of these stories to emphasise the temporal scope of writing an online serial like Triverse. There’s really nothing quite like it in prose literature, for writers or readers. Comics have been at it for decades, obviously, but the rest of us have been limited by ‘the book’ for far too long.
If you’ve recently arrived, then welcome. And if you’re an old timer who has been here from the beginning: thank you!
This may not be the right word.
"Wielding wasn’t something she could understand innately — she was relegated to observing, to watching from the sides while everyone else on Palinor got to play with magic."
Soon, Lola, soon.
My lonely hill has a nice view...
Nice of you to link to Slava's earlier storylines, as I admit, I don't really remember much about her after 13 months.
Here's somewhere where comic books and TV shows have a bit of an advantage over serialized novels - the return of a minor character after a year. We're very visual creatures, and, of course, voices, so, when, say, a dockworker on Babylon 5 first seen (US broadcast dates) May 11, 1994 reappears on May 3, 1995, we go, "It's that guy!" with a writer who isn't prone to long visual descriptions of his (dozens of) characters(1) bringing one back after a year, readers don't have that crutch of face, costume, and voice.
I'm afraid of heights. Like Lola, I'd not be leaning over the guardrails. Nope, nosiree.
(1) Observation, not critique. There are writers who do detailed descriptions of everyone and everything, which, in extreme cases, leads to, say, Robert Jordan having Rand walk into a room, deliver a line of dialog, then give (literally, I counted) a full twelve pages of description of the room, the people, their clothes, etc, before the next line is spoken, by which point one has forgotten what Rand said in the first place. Yes, yes, we know, vividly, what every character in "Wheel of Time" looks like, but, damn, sometimes you just need to get on with the story.
Hey Simon, how exciting that your son is reading your book! My son was never much into fiction books, and my daughter, who is the reader, doesn't like fantasy and science fiction. Here's hoping you have better luck. 😉
Regarding IngramSpark, another nugget of info for you based upon my results so far and talking to other authors... Amazon.com won't stock the book, or at least won't advertise it as in stock, unless returns are enabled. Winston enabled returns for "Take Me There" and I did not. As a result, he has 6 books in stock through Amazon.com where mine has none. It's extremely aggravating, but it appears the solution is to do the physical book through Amazon and then do it again through IngramSpark so they pick up the remainder of the distribution channels.
It's all a big learning experience that makes us a little more informed and opens up our options. Best of luck and let me know if you have any questions as you get through the article.