Marie Brennan - Midnight Never Come

Like I said above, certain key events in the plot came from the game Memento. That served as a kind of outline for me, and normally, I’m not an outlining kind of writer. Between that and my own growth in the craft, I found myself going through this book less asking myself, “how is this going to get resolved?” and more “how can I make the resolution of this more awesome ?” Add in the richness of the history and backstory, and the greater number of pieces on my mental chessboard… you get the idea. Pretty much every aspect of this book, down to the words I used to tell it, really challenged me. And you don’t meet a challenge firing on only half of your cylinders. I said in a post on my journal that this was the fourteen-year-old boy of books: it ate everything I fed it and demanded more.

Would you write a historical fantasy again? If so, what time period?

I’m pondering this very question right now, actually.

If anybody had asked me right after I finished the draft, I would have screamed “HELL NO” and dived for cover under the bed. But people were smart and didn’t ask me. Now that I’ve had some time to recover, the answer is “maybe, if I get an idea that grabs me.” I found it deeply satisfying, slipping my story into the cracks and open spaces of history, and as I said, the research was fun. But, as I also said, it was a huge amount of work, so it isn’t the kind of thing that I’d enter into lightly.

The question of time period is pretty wide open. If I were smart, I’d do more with the Elizabethan period, so I can make use of the research I’ve already done. Unfortunately, I’m not smart, and so I’m likely to skip off to a different century entirely. Running Memento introduced me to a broad swath of English history; I might latch onto any part of it. Of course, then there’s the rest of the world — who says it would have to be England? But I boggle at the thought of setting something in a country where the best research materials wouldn’t be in English. Knowing me, I’d feel like I ought to get fluent in Arabic or whatever before I try to write the thing.

But all that is dancing around the question. Honestly? Right now the nineteenth century is trying to look enticing. I’ve got a couple of ideas, unrelated to each other, that would all benefit from me knowing more about that era — even if some of them are modeled on that culture rather than being set in it. Only time will tell which ones will struggle to the top of the heap in my head and make it out into the light of day.

These questions were collected from Marie Brennan’s online fan community. If you would like to read more about Marie Brennan and the world of Midnight Never Come, please visit her Web site at www.mariebrennan.net.

Rain pattered steadily through the leaves of the wood and dripped to the ground below. Two figures slipped between the trees, all but invisible in the darkness, silent under the cover of the rain. The one in the lead moved well, but the one trailing him moved better, ghost-like and undetectable, and he never knew she was there.

Three men waited for him, crouching in a tight clump under an old elm and shivering in the rain. He came up to them and spoke in a low voice. “She’s alone. And looks like she’ll be bedding down soon enough. If we wait, she should be easy to take.”

Hidden in the trees just a short distance away, the woman who had been following him smiled thinly.

“I still don’t like this,” one of the other men hissed. “What if she’s got spells set up or something?”

The woman’s jaw hardened, and the amusement faded from her face.

“She ain’t a witch,” someone else said, with the tone of a man who’s said it several times already. “You saw her in the alehouse. She damn near cut that fellow’s throat when he called her one. And Tre would have said if she’d been singing when he looked in on her.”

“She wasn’t,” the spy confirmed. “Just talking to her horse, like anybody does. And besides, witches don’t carry swords, or play cards in alehouses. She’s just a Cousin.”

“We’re wasting time,” the last of the men said. “Heth, you go first. You make friends with the horse so it don’t warn her. Then Nessel can knock her out. Tre and I’ll be ready in case something goes wrong.”

“Some help that’ll be if she is a witch,” the fearful one said. “How else did she manage to get five Primes in one hand?”

The leader spat into the bushes. “She probably cheated. Don’t have to be a witch to cheat at cards. Look, there’s four of us and one of her. We’ll be fine.”

Ten of you wouldn’t be enough , the woman thought, and her smile returned. Not against a Hunter. Not against me.

Mirage didn’t object to being accused of cheating at cards, especially not when it was true. She did object to being called a witch — or a Cousin, for that matter. And she objected to being driven out to sleep in a rain-drenched wood, when she’d been hoping for a warm, dry inn. Now these idiotic thugs were planning on jumping her?

They deserved what they were going to get.

She slipped away from the men and returned to her campsite. Surveying it, she calculated the directions Heth and Nessel were likely to come from, then arranged her bedding so it would look as though she were in it. The illusion was weaker from the other direction, but with the fire in the way, any scouts on the other side shouldn’t be able to see anything amiss.

Then she retired to the shadows and waited.

The men took their time in coming, but Mirage was patient. Just as her fire was beginning to burn low, she heard noise; not all of the men were as good at moving through the forest as Tre. Scanning the woods, she saw the spy nearby, already in place. She hadn’t heard him get there. Not bad.

Quiet whispers, too muted for her to pick out. Then one man eased up next to her horse.

Ordinarily that would have been a mistake. Mist was trained to take the hand off any stranger who touched her. But Mirage had given her a command before leaving, and so the mare stood stock-still, not reacting to the man trying to quiet the noises she wasn’t making.

Mirage smiled, and continued to wait.

Now it was Nessel’s turn. The leader, who had slid around to the far side of the fire, gestured for him to move. Nessel came forward on exaggerated tiptoe, club in his hands. Then, with a howl, he brought the weapon crashing down on her bedding.

Tre went down without a sound half a second later. Fixed on the scene in front of him, he never noticed Mirage coming up behind him.

“She’s not here!” Nessel yelled in panic.

Mist, responding to Mirage’s whistle, kicked Heth in the chest and laid him out flat. Mirage stepped into the firelight next to the horse. “Yes, I am,” she said, and smiled again.

Nessel, a credit to his courage if not to his brain, charged her with another yell. Mirage didn’t even bother to draw a blade; she sidestepped his wild swipe and kicked him twice, once in the chest and once in the head. He went down like a log. Mirage, pausing only to give Heth a judicious tap with her boot, leapt over the fire in pursuit of the last man.

He fled as soon as she appeared, but it wasn’t enough of a head start. Mirage kept to an easy pace until her eyes adjusted once more; then she put on a burst of speed and overtook him. A flying tackle brought him down. She came up before he did and stamped on his knee, ending any further chance of flight.