Free Excalibur Rising by Eileen Hodgetts Page A

the airport, and there were no gates to use, just a taxi with an unflappable driver who would not be hurried.
     “You should have taken the tube, mate,” the driver informed him, when he complained yet again about their slow progress through the choking traffic.  When the taxi finally came to a halt outside Victoria Station the one-eyed man was tempted to use his dagger.  Ending the driver’s miserable existence would take but a moment, and he would be inside the station before anyone would know what had happened.  He slipped his hand into his coat pocket enjoying the feel of the metal and the possibility of a small, secret, personal revenge.  He glanced around and saw them, just as he had been warned, cameras; cameras everywhere, and one aimed directly at him.  Things had changed since he was a boy here. How could the people of Britain live that way, he wondered, with cameras watching their every movement?  He would have to be careful. His mission was not yet accomplished.  He released the dagger and thrust a handful of paper money at the driver, and then he hurried to join the crowds pushing their way into the echoing vastness of the train station.
     On board the train he reached the end of the last corridor without finding his quarry. He had traveled almost the entire length of the train and found no sign of the man.  The way ahead was blocked by a locked door separating the everyday commuter from the first-class compartments.  Of course he should have thought of that, the man he was looking for would surely be in first-class.
     He felt the train slowing for its first stop. A muffled voice announced its arrival, weary commuters pushed past him, brief cases and umbrellas in hand.  He stepped down from the train and moved along the platform and pulled open the door to the first-class compartments.  Yes, this was where he would find him, in the cool quietness of padded seats and burnished woodwork.  
     The train pulled out of the station. The leafy suburbs gave way to open countryside, rolling hills, and a vast sky that held the promise of a cold ocean somewhere just ahead. 
      Maybe his quarry would give him useful information, and maybe he would not, but he would most certainly die. The one-eyed man reached into his pocket. No, not this dagger, the other one, the one he was going to leave behind just for fun. He wanted to set them a puzzle that could not be solved in their miserable little world of cameras and commuters .

 
    Violet Chambray
Key West
     Violet flung herself down among the tie-dyed cotton pillows on her bed.  She closed her eyes, opened them, closed them again, opened them again, and stared at the familiar damp stains on the ceiling.  She tried to concentrate on the idea of using Michael Mandretti’s money to fix the roof, and perhaps there would be enough to hire the exterminator they so badly needed.
     Last night she had told Todd and Maria that they might be able to pull it off. With a mixture of intuition, careful research, and a good deal of showmanship,  she might lead Mandretti to discover an old, long buried sword. Of course it would not be Excalibur because Excalibur had never existed, but it might be something sufficiently ancient and mysterious to satisfy Mandretti’s inner romantic. When Todd brought up the possibility of linking together a series of Wikipedia illustrations of early English kings, to create the possibility that the Great Sword of England had been in King John’s baggage, she knew she had found the bait to catch a big fish.
    The search for the sword was not what was troubling her.   It was not because of the sword that she was now shut away in her room frightened to close her eyes in case the feeling swept over her again.  The fragment of paper, the one that Ryan had handed to her, terrified her.  She had always had the gift, the ability to sense an object’s history simply by holding it in