Liars' League

We Accept Your Demands by Oliver Bussell

Read by Sarah Feathers (final story in podcast, here)

We accept your demands.

There is a flurry of static and she can’t be entirely sure what she’s heard. She presses the button again: What?

We accept your demands.

You accept?

That’s what I said (says the voice). We accept.

Oh, she says. They accept. Wren turns to address those around her: the fifteen linking arms, the group secured to lampposts with cable ties, the Painted People, The Tattooed Man, the students glued to pavements, the elderly couple handcuffed to the railings.

The King's Potatoes by Jerome McFadden

Read by Paul Clarke (fourth story in podcast, here)

Joachim sat in the dreary cell waiting to be executed. The turnkeys would open the massive iron door late in the afternoons to read off the list of names. A few of the men would stand up bravely, clanking in their ankle and wrist shackles, as if wanting to be done with it, tired of the agonizing wait. Others would scuttle deeper into the shadows or try to hide behind their fellow prisoners. The jailers would drive them out of the dungeon with their heavy batons.

A Queen Cannot by JJ Surtees

Read by Lin Sagovsky (third story in podcast, here) NB Content warning for miscarriage & child loss

'What's this now?' the doctor asks her lady-in-waiting as he leaves the bedchamber, 'number nine lost?'

Her lady-in-waiting confirms he's correct and closes the door after him, leaving her mistress alone. A rare occurrence. Alone and alone, the Queen thinks, and doesn't smile.

She should call them both back in she knows, reprimand them for the insult, for daring to discuss her. But she does not, she's just so tired and asserting her authority would do nothing. You can be God's anointed and still out of His favour, a Queen and less fortunate than the lowest serving girl. Queen Anne and nothing. No screaming, no prayers to the Almighty will change this.

Heads of State by Richie Jones

Read by Nathaniel Ashley (second story in the podcast, here)

The boardroom has been prepared tastefully, for the session with three representatives of what we refer to only as the State.

Lilies in vases either side of a large wall-mounted TV at one end of the room. The conference table, dark wood with a pleasing grain. Top-tier glassware. The room smells faintly of the lilies and nothing else. Behind us the floor-to-ceiling window displays London in high resolution — there to be coveted. The clients sit facing the skyline. We have been extensively prepped on choreography this morning; the way we would deftly suggest where the clients should sit, without telling them where to sit, and with nothing so gauche as place settings.

The Princess and the Kennel Girl by Fiona Mossman

Read by Patsy Prince (first story in podcast, here)

There was once a princess in a high, far, wintry kingdom who had a very strange gift that some called a curse. It was on account of this that the princess was locked away, her contact with other people forbidden, and gloves of the most curious kinds ordered for her from the lands to the south, where costly materials were woven by many skilled artisans, softer and kinder than the rough wools of that mountainous kingdom.

The princess was treated well and wanted for nothing, but her heart was sore from loneliness. She could often be seen at the window of her high tower, talking to the birds and to the air. The folk in the fields below saw her, and looked down again to their work.