Whose pen am I holding?

It actually wasn't King, although I'm flattered by the comparison. I modeled it after the opening passage of Dune:

In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an old crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Paul.

It was a warm night at Castle Caladan, and the ancient pile of stone that had served the Atreides family as home for twenty-six generations bore that cooled-sweat feeling it acquired before a change in the weather.

The old woman was let in by the side door down the vaulted passage by Paul's room and she was allowed a moment to peer in at him where he lay in his bed.

By the half-light of a suspensor lamp, dimmed and hanging near the floor, the awakened boy could see a bulky female shape at his door, standing one step ahead of his mother. The old woman was a witch shadow -- hair like matted spiderwebs, hooded 'round darkness of features, eyes like glittering jewels.

"Is he not small for his age, Jessica?" the old woman asked. Her voice wheezed and twanged like an untuned baliset.
Click to expand...
 
Was that last one Dune?
 
Ok, this shouldn't be too hard to guess.

Crowe had been in the Katana for two minutes before Daisy dropped into the seat opposite. "You flying?"
He shook his head. "Nah, I'm clean."
"Good boy. Wanna talk biz?"
He sipped chilled Singha beer from the bottle. "Okay."
She drummed her fingers on the tabletop: Hitachi chrome against battered plastic. "I got six liters of high-grade immunosuppressants coming through Orly Space Terminal on an unregistered flight. I'm putting together a crew to rip it."
Nervous laughter on the far side of the bar. Crowe glanced up, saw endless faces cosmetically altered to this month's standard of beauty. Doll faces, empty faces. "Sure," he said, "and you need me for what?"
Daisy leaned back and grinned. "Half a megabyte of security countermeasures."
 
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It wasn’t so much that Lord Portmore’s features were what one might call ugly, but that he seemed rather ill put-together: two dull eyes floated on his pancake of a face, too distant from each other; tiny lips which were too large to be termed “mean” but too small to be responsible for his vacuous utterings; and a tumuli nose that disappeared when viewed face-on. 1 Lady Portmore was aware of these things of her husband, but thought only of them in a factual manner, the way Monday follows Tuesday, and found herself quite taken with the undemanding shell of a man he represented. 2

That is not to say Lady Portmore was oblivious to her own aesthetic shortcomings. Where her husband was cowed, she was gregarious, and was quite accomplished at ignoring the wary glances (and, at times, wide berth) that she was favoured with. Her boils were not the kind of thing that could be passed on unless the academic magicians she’d upset had now stopped studying the Finest Art and finally started practising it.

In any case, she watched her beloved husband orate to the Greenwich Admiralty with articulate vim, looking around proudly as he droned on about the Midget Terror in France and Villeneuve’s ships gathering off Cadiz.

1 - As many physicians have noted - much to Lady Portmore’s ignorance - the condition of Wide-eye was not one recognised by medical science (beyond apocryphal tales of the resurgence of magic). This obviously having been changed since the latter events in Italy and the reappearance of practical magic. To wit: the case of Audrey Havison on the River Strood who, having happened upon a brace of trout hanging from a low alder bough over the river, appropriated them, only to be scolded by The Grey Vapours. The Vapours claimed they had been catching them for a local wise woman whose failing eyesight precluded her from effective self-care.
Even though Miss Havison knew the abilities and proclivities of the Strood’s Undines and Sylphs, she figured their ability to chase her across dry land to be compromised on account of the stultifying heat of the Great Summer. It wasn’t until Harvest many months later, that Lady Portmore began suffering concerned questions from the gentlefolk of London: how was her sight; why were her eyes drifting apart; was she prone to headaches - and even (from a reprehensibly pernicious physician); was she able to see in “stereo”?

2 - Lady Portmore’s ignorance of her husband’s condition was once again something a knowledge of modern magic might have obviated. Although, with the aforementioned Grey Vapours of the River Strood for example, had she known of the veracity of such things (albeit in the latter days of this century), she might now be seeing Elemental beings round every corner. As she did not, to that end it is important to realise that for practical magic to work, there is no prerequisite for those under a Fae curse to actually believe in it.
 
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Toby Frost said:
Ok, this shouldn't be too hard to guess.

Crowe had been in the Katana for two minutes before Daisy dropped into the seat opposite. "You flying?"
He shook his head. "Nah, I'm clean."
"Good boy. Wanna talk biz?"
He sipped chilled Singha beer from the bottle. "Okay."
She drummed her fingers on the tabletop: Hitachi chrome against battered plastic. "I got six liters of high-grade immunosuppressants coming through Orly Space Terminal on an unregistered flight. I'm putting together a crew to rip it."
Nervous laughter on the far side of the bar. Crowe glanced up, saw endless faces cosmetically altered to this month's standard of beauty. Doll faces, empty faces. "Sure," he said, "and you need me for what?"
Daisy leaned back and grinned. "Half a megabyte of security countermeasures."
Click to expand...

William Gibson?
 
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