Hello and welcome to this Behind the Scene post here on Track of Words, and welcome too to author Solitaire Townsend, whose debut Fantasy novel Godstorm is out now from Bedford Square Publishers! For this article Solitaire has kindly provided an annotated excerpt from the second chapter of Godstorm, with commentary setting the scene and giving a bit of insight into what’s going on in this scene, and what to expect from the novel as a whole. If you like a bit of alternate history with your Fantasy, definitely check this out!
First, let’s have a look at the publisher’s synopsis for Godstorm:
In a petrol-fuelled Roman Empire which never fell, Arrow, a gladiatrix turned governess must rescue the child she has loved as her own, a girl who could tear down the world.
When Livy is abducted during a devastating Godstorm, Arrow must unleash years of the gladiator training she’d sworn to forget in order to save her. Defying her owner, a heartless Consul, Arrow turns to her ex-lover and the illegal druid underworld in a desperate attempt to rescue the girl she has come to think of as her own.
Her search will take her across Londinium, a city of petrol-powered chariots, to the pagan Old Town, and eventually the edge of the known world: the Amazon, where destiny and destruction intertwine
Facing battle and betrayal Arrow must choose: reclaim her past as a killer – or risk everything for the child who might call her “mother.”
And now, over to Solitaire.
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Solitaire Townsend: The first cracks of Arrow’s carefully cultivated respectability start to bleed open in this scene. As a governess in a ‘Roman Victoriana’ London, Arrow is petticoated and carefully polite. But when the girl she’s charged with raising, Livy, is abducted, the simmering violence beneath her civil demeanour is finally unleashed.
We are in the Imperium Museum (based on our British Museum), which has been ravaged by a hurricane-like Godstorm. As it broke through the high windows, Arrow and Livy carefully avoided both powerful Citizen families and lower-class Druids in the tearoom. Within moments, Arrow’s anxiety about engaging with either is overborn by her anxiety for Livy, who at just eight-years-old, isn’t safe in Londinium alone.
Another reason I love this scene is that Arrow doesn’t react like a servant but a mother. She doesn’t even realise that herself yet, but as readers, we see that caring for Livy is more than Arrow’s job. As the story unfolds, that love will be tested beyond what either woman or child could imagine.
Writing alternative history is a balancing act. The historical parallels must be plausible, and the worldbuilding complete. But I can’t list out a new historical arc since Marcus Aurelus (although maybe I should pop that up on my website!). Stories like Godstorm demand research as extensive as a direct historical fiction, even if people will never see it. I even had the book peer-reviewed by my former Classics professor and a climate scientist! Although any clangers are entirely mine and justified as poetic justice.
Gladiators, pirates, rebel queens and tribes of warrior women, Godstorm has them all! But beneath the adventure are themes of family, and the future we leave our children.
Excerpt (from Chapter 2)
The girl wasn’t standing where she had been.
Arrow jumped up. ‘Livy! The door’s closed!’ She reached up on tiptoes, searching for a flash of blue. ‘Come out now, dearest!’ No answer.
Arrow shoved past people, ducking to look under tables and throwing aside boxes to check the corners of the kitchen. Bile caught in her throat and her heart ran riot, not being able to set eyes on the child.
‘Livy – LIVY!’
Holding still, she hoped for an answer or even the sound of tears. The girl couldn’t have gone far in the minutes since the door blew in.
But Arrow could only hear the rough voices of adults shouting.
As she ran back out into the tearoom, a raggedy man grabbed her arm, dragging at her. Arrow bashed the side of her hand into his elbow joint and raised her forearm to connect with his falling head, then pushed onwards, not even looking back to see if he dropped.
The pale Citizen woman in yellow was windswept and swaying in the chaos.
Arrow seized her. ‘Have you seen Livy? The little girl with me?’
‘What? No. Don’t hurt me!’ the woman wailed through rising tears.
A scream rang out from the main hall – older and deeper than Livy’s light voice, but Arrow ran towards it anyway, guts wrenching. She drew the blade hidden in her waistband and turned into the hall, scanning its far corners, her blood pounding in her ears, but found no hurt child, no lost girl, no Livy.
Arrow stood in the middle of the great room, glass crunching beneath her feet, dagger drawn, loosed hair swirling with the howling winds, as the bones danced crazily above her. Growing panic and her old training warred with each other, heart racing but senses coldly alert.
Once before, the girl had gone missing whilst they played amongst trees in the small public park near their garret. Arrow’s heart had raced then too, but she waited, trusting the girl to either find her or shout out. Livy had popped up from behind a tree within minutes, but it took hours for the panic-poisons to leave Arrow’s muscles.
The girl’s drills had started in earnest that very day, in how to stay calm, find her governess, and never, ever, to hide again.
Arrow fervently wished that Livy had forgotten all of that and was about to slip out from a corner with a sheepish look. But wishing wouldn’t make it so, and Arrow knew how to listen to her instincts and make swift judgements.
Even if she had failed both her duties today – Livy was neither secret, nor safe.
The riffraff had slipped away as she searched, leaving only a handful of the museum’s usual patrons wandering forlornly around the devastation. Her worries about a riot were unfounded. The only person panicking was her.
Livy wasn’t in the hall.
Arrow took two sharp breaths, focused her mind and sheathed her knife. Why did her instincts scream at her when the girl could just be lost?
Those blasphemous Druids with their plaits and bravado.
The wrongdoer often is the one who has left something undone, not always the one who has done something.
She raced back to the kitchen and, on hands and knees, she searched the floor. A smear of blood by the door? No, that was from the ass who’d opened it.
The Druids had no reason to push into a dangerously damaged museum, guarded by a Legionary. What did they want? There were dark rumours, ones that until now Arrow had dismissed, that the followers of the old religions still gave sacrifice to their spirits. Horrible images crept into her mind of plaited hair, and drums, and Livy screaming.
She scrambled around on her knees, scanning and fingers searching every inch of the gritty floor.
Livy would have struggled.
Arrow’s fingertips touched a small lump of cold metal under the largest table in the kitchen. She drew out a silver amulet, a flutter of bright blue fabric caught in its geometric tracery.
It was from the cloth of Livy’s bonnet, torn off where it had snagged on a Druid’s talisman.
‘LIVY!’ she screamed into the devastated museum.
But she knew the girl wasn’t lost. She’d been taken.
Every second counted. But Arrow couldn’t move.
A lifetime ago, a much younger woman, so unlike Arrow that she sometimes struggled to admit they were the same person, had felt this before. The sinking dread of loss and terror, clutching for answers when there were none.
For years, that old memory had hidden deep below the daily routine of lessons and meals, stories and sewing. Now it leapt back up, wielding grief in one fist and shame in the other, pummelling Arrow as she held her head in her hands, breath slicing through gritted teeth.
She’d lost a child, again.
Never do what you’d blame others for doing.
That was one of her mother’s favourite sayings, especially when her daughter’s wayward nature caught up with her. Arrow herself had started repeating it whenever Livy was being particularly impish.
Arrow straightened her shoulders.
Panic was poisoning her, and no governess, especially not one with her skills, should be kneeling on a kitchen floor when there was a child to save. She forced a full inhale, and another out, like regimented soldiers marching – I, II, I, II.
If Livy had been deliberately taken, then there was only one person she could turn to. She pressed the amulet so hard into the palm of her hand that her heartbeat throbbed against it.
Her orders to avoid contact with Citizens or soldiers were now irrelevant. Arrow strode over to the tall Legionary as he tried to appease a group of nobles. The broken glass was already being swept from the doorway, but the fine Citizens didn’t appreciate having to wait even a moment longer in the wreckage.
Arrow forced herself to modify her voice to that of a worried but reasonable servant woman. ‘Sir, a young girl is missing.’
The Legionary turned to her, leaving the Citizens with raised eyebrows and huffs at the slight. ‘A child, lost in all this? Is she hiding?’
‘She was taken. I must tell her guardian that his ward is missing…abducted. He will order a proper search.’
‘Abducted? Come now, surely the child simply ran away from the fuss. We will search every cranny of this place. She’ll be found soon, no doubt.’ He reached out as if tempted to pat her shoulder.
She only needed to flash the amulet to convince him. But then he might call for reinforcements, hold her to be interviewed by his superior, or even lock down the museum itself. Arrow tucked the small ornament with its blue fabric into one of the concealed pockets in her sash.
Better to be thought hysterical then be held here. She knew one name that would open any door: a name she’d been ordered never to use on pain of a lashing or return to the slave market.
Hades to that: Livy was gone.
‘I must tell Consul Derain. He is Livy’s legal guardian. If you do find her, send a runner to his office in the Spire, and I will return.’
The Legionary’s eyes widened at the Consul’s name, but before he could answer, a booming voice interjected.
‘The Consul, you say?
The large puce-clad matron from the tearoom strutted to Arrow’s side.
‘The Consul must, of course, be informed about the loss of the little child!’ the old lady went on, the full force of her imperious gaze bearing down on the Legionary. ‘I have our charo outside. I was only waiting for Tarquil to gather his wits. I will transport this young woman to the Consul immediately and offer all our aid to recover the dear, sweet – ’ she paused and narrowed her eyes at Arrow – ‘girl, was it?’
‘Yes!’ Arrow seized on the unexpected offer. ‘May we leave at once? I don’t want to delay the news to Consul Derain.’
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Solitaire Townsend is a climate expert by day, and storyteller by night. After decades of teaching governments, global brands and even movie studios how to communicate sustainability, she now has stories of her own to tell. She regularly blogs for Forbes, has a popular TED talk, and wrote the critically acclaimed non-fiction book The Solutionists. While some of her characters might not know that they are ‘LGBTQIA+’ or ‘neurodivergent’, Solitaire does because she’s also both. She lives in London, and once visited an oil-rig in the Amazon, which caught on fire.
For more information visit www.solitairetownsend.com
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Thanks so much to Solitaire for contributing this excerpt and commentary, and also to Jaime from Ink Editorial for organising everything. Hopefully that’s given you a sense of what to expect from Godstorm, and whetted your appetite to get hold of a copy!
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