Stiletto

by Daniel O'Malley

  Oh God, please make it not be true. Please, God.

  To her horror and confusion, she started crying. Felicity was not a crier. If you wanted someday to be a Barghest commando, you did not cry. She had made a very deliberate decision never to cry again in her last year at school. She hadn’t cried when her class graduated from the Estate, and everyone cried then. She hadn’t cried last year when her boyfriend broke up with her because her schedule got in the way of their life. She hadn’t even cried when one of the team died on a mission in Wapping—not at the funeral, and not when they all went out afterward and got completely drunk and told stories.

  But now it wouldn’t stop. Gasping sobs continued to bubble out of her. She tried to marshal her thoughts, to calm herself down, but she couldn’t focus. Her mind kept presenting her with images of her comrades—mental snapshots—and at each new picture, another wave of grief would flood through her head, prompting more sobs.

  The driver eyed her sidelong and handed her a handkerchief from his breast pocket. It was not clear whether this was an act of gentlemanly compassion or simply his fear of her getting more fluids on the upholstery. He didn’t say anything at all, for which Felicity was grateful. They kept driving, and as they finally came to the outskirts of London, she managed to stop crying. Maybe my body has just run out of water, she thought weakly, and she sat, slumped in her seat, not looking at anything.

  Pawn George Korybut watched, disbelieving, as the group of men and women in suits were guided down the hallway past his office. They looked normal but he knew what they were. It didn’t seem real. He’d known this day was coming, but he’d always secretly believed in his heart of hearts that the Court members would change their minds at the last minute and declare war on those abominations. They hadn’t. Instead, the Grafters were walking about in Apex House, treated like honored guests. For a moment, he felt like a frightened child back at the Estate.

  As a rule, Checquy children didn’t scare easily. When your parents willingly give you to the government because you are inhuman, and your roommate has been known to inadvertently turn into a poplar during the night, and your mathematics teacher sometimes absent-mindedly projects holograms of angry leopards during class, you become a trifle blasé. Horror stories tend to lose their impact when you are a horror. This effect was only amplified by the fact that much of the curriculum at the Estate was taken up with lectures on the various supernatural abominations they would be called upon to deal with when they graduated.

  But the stories about the Grafters were different.

  Those stories were a litany, passed down through generations of Checquy youth. They were history. They dated back to before the creation of the Estate, to a time when Checquy education had been based not on schools but on the tradition of master and apprentice. The stories told of the events of 1677, the year that the entire Checquy had been called to the Isle of Wight to defend Britain against invaders.

  So dire was the Grafter threat then that the Rooks (at that time the military leaders of the Checquy) had rallied the entire organization. Not only the soldiers but the scribes and scientists, the craftsmen, the statesmen, and the men of the church—all of them had come to throw themselves at the invaders. Only the very youngest, the infants and the smallest children, remained on the mainland, guarded by unpowered Retainers. But there were child soldiers, apprentices still learning how to use their powers. They had marched alongside their masters, ready to do good toward their country. What they experienced would change them forever—those who survived.

  There was never any question of quarter being given. The unannounced invasion, the inhuman army, and the atrocities committed upon the general populace had established that the rules of civilized warfare no longer applied. And so, unrestrained supernatural war commenced.

  Events from the ensuing combat entered Checquy history. Pawn William Goode, after being disemboweled by a Grafter, haughtily re-emboweled himself and then backhanded his opponent, sending him flying nine miles. Pawn Morag Campbell ripped all the moisture from her foe, leaving behind nothing but dust, fractured bones, and a rather gaudy uniform. Bishop Rosemary Chuzeville summoned gouts of steam out of the turf and boiled Grafter soldiers in their shells like lobsters.

  The child soldiers reached moments of glory as well. Twelve-year-old Sarah Jessup managed to hurl three hulking soldiers into the atmosphere. Henry Wright trapped one of the Grafter commanding officers in a pond—if one goes there and stands in the right place, one can still see his reflection, screaming to be released. Little Robert Savory, whose only power was the ability to increase the nutritional value of root vegetables, lured an enemy off a cliff through a combination of foot speed and sheer wits.

  But for every victory, there were dozens of terrifying stories. Children were shot, stabbed, bludgeoned, burned. Christopher Madoc’s skin and clothes were permanently dyed by his sister’s blood as he tried to stanch the bleeding of her fatal wounds. Luke Hathaway’s skull was crushed beneath the boot of a Grafter foot soldier. Helen Murtaugh, brought face-to-face with the enemy, lost control of her own powers. Ribbons of black fire erupted from her spine, flogging the comrades around her and consuming her alive. Eventually, her master was called upon to put her down.

  The Broederschap recognized the effect that the loss of each child had on the Checquy and began to target the youngest troops specifically. On the battlefield, they dispatched them as brutally as they could. At night, the Checquy camps were infiltrated and the children were snatched away, never to be seen again. The atrocities did not break the spirit of the British. Rather, they inflamed them. Rage drove the Rooks to throw caution to the wind and put their defenses aside to ensure that they brought their foes down. The Checquy moved forward, implacably, and scoured the land clean.

  Three weeks after the Grafters set foot on British soil, the war was ended with a final gunshot. The enemy’s leaders fled, bursting through the lines of Checquy soldiers and hurling themselves into the ocean. Their army had been smashed, wiped off the Isle of Wight. However, it had been at horrendous cost. The Checquy had suffered catastrophic losses, especially among their young. A generation of Britain’s supernatural youth had been decimated.

  Of course, that was not the end of the story. The Checquy Court traveled to Brussels to oversee the dismantling of the Wetenschappelijk Broederschap van Natuurkundigen. But for the apprentices of the Checquy, the war was over. Their wounds were stitched up, their comrades were buried. They went home. Some of them had lost their masters, and these went to new houses to resume their training.

  They were changed, of course. How could they not be after what they had seen, after what they had done? Quieter, more solemn, utterly dedicated to their mission. But there was very little of the crippling residual trauma one might have expected. The children of the Checquy had never been coddled and had never labored under any delusions about what they were and what they might be called upon to do. When they came back, they were hardened, tempered. Hatred for the Grafters smoldered within them. They could still feel joy; there were still times when they could play and romp. Yet they all remembered what they had seen, and they made sure it was not forgotten.

  When the new generation of children began their apprenticeships, they brought a little more light into the lives of their sober older siblings. It’s remarkable what exposure to genuinely innocent happiness can do. Inevitably, the younger students adored the older, quieter boys and girls who patiently helped them with their lessons. When it came time for the older apprentices to leave their master’s house, they would take the younger ones aside. They might sit in the master’s library, or at the top of a nearby hill, or simply on the back stoop. And then the veterans of the Isle of Wight would tell their stories, remembering the names of their fallen comrades and recounting the events of those weeks.

  The stories were all different, of course. Different soldiers had seen and felt different things. They had lost different people. But, as if by agreement, all the tales ended the
same way.

  “Remember,” the older apprentice would say. “And pass the memory along to those who come after you.”

  And so it went, for decades, for centuries. Each generation passed the stories on to the next and instructed them about the debt owed to the dead. It was not a formal practice or a requirement. In the official histories they were casualties, figures, names, honors. In the stories, they were people, friends, comrades.

  In the mid-twentieth century, when the Estate was established as a school, the very first students, former apprentices themselves, brought the stories with them to Kirrin Island. There, finally, all the memories and anecdotes came together, and a new chapter in the oral history of the Checquy began.

  When students at the Estate entered year seven, the upperclassmen would sneak into their rooms in the dead of night and take them down to the echoing assembly hall. They would sit, silent in the dark, while the older students took turns telling them carefully memorized accounts of what had happened all those centuries ago. There might be a pupil with a gift for illusion who would fill the darkness with images or perhaps just a budding actor who could draw people in with the sound of his voice. But for hours, the memories of long-dead children would wash over them. When the sun came up, every student was shaken, wrung out, and exhausted. And they all came away with certain important lessons drilled into them.

  You will face horrible things. Admittedly, this lesson did not come as a tremendous surprise to the students. But it had a certainty to it now.

  You could die. This message struck home, hard. Up to that point, the Estate education had always emphasized triumphant victory. Their bedtime stories and lessons had revolved around adventures in which grown Checquy warriors always overcame the threat. But the children at the Isle of Wight had been called to duty, and many of them had not come back.

  You will never be alone. The Checquy will always be there for you. Coming from the bigger students, this meant the world to the year-sevens. After the night they’d had, the lack of sleep, the litany of atrocities and warnings, this was the reassurance that would bond them to their siblings and give them courage to hear the final caution.

  The Grafters were normal men. Normal men who wanted to be like us and made themselves into monsters.

  All of the students came away from the experience with a smoldering hatred for the memory of the Broederschap. The Checquy generally didn’t hate the monsters they hunted—it would have been unprofessional, and exhausting. But the brutality at the Isle of Wight meant that centuries later, Checquy dinner parties would still frequently end with a toast of “Fuck the Grafters, we’re glad they’re dead! Oh, and God save the King.”

  Except that now, apparently, they weren’t dead. Instead, they were walking around the hallways of Apex House. Pawn Korybut’s grip on his desk tightened, and a slick of something slid out from under his touch.

  12

  Well, I think that all went very nicely,” said Lady Farrier. “Apart from your little tumble, Miss Leliefeld. How’s your face feeling?”

  “Fine, thank you,” said Odette.

  “And your throat?” asked Marcel.

  “It’s fine, really,” said Odette testily.

  Once she’d been picked up by the aghast executives, and all the scattered possessions from her purse (including those damned stockings, a tampon, some shiny and clattering surgical tools, and several dozen pills that had burst out of their containers and made a desperate break for it across the tiled floor) had been gathered up and gingerly returned to her, there had been a humiliating few minutes in which Marcel insisted on checking to make sure that she hadn’t done herself any serious injury. He’d taken her pulse, made her say “Ahh” loudly for three minutes, and asked in a disconcertingly carrying voice if any of her sutures might have ruptured. She was sure the gathered VIPs now thought she was an invalid or an idiot or both.

  An invalidiot.

  Odette remained silent throughout the ensuing introductions and morning tea and was then given the petrifying news that she was to join Marcel and Grootvader for a little stroll around the building with the Court of the Checquy. The only bright spot had been the fact that Pawn Bannister was not approved to join them. They’d left him sulking by the little cakes and had been led away through some stodgy wood-paneled corridors to a much nicer corridor. And then they stopped.

  “And here we are,” said Lady Farrier.

  “We are?” asked Marcel.

  “We are,” said Rook Thomas. “And now we need to have a little meeting.”

  It was a genuinely odd place to hold a meeting. The hallway ran around the courtyard; on one side of the corridor, there were huge, ancient stone arches, their openings glassed in, and on the other, the wall was completely tessellated in oil portraits of all sizes. There was absolutely nowhere to sit.

  “This needs to be a very discreet meeting,” said Rook Thomas. “It deals with some topics that we don’t want on the record, so there are no stenographers or scribes.”

  The three Grafters—Ernst, Marcel, and Odette—looked at one another warily.

  “Do you know who this is?” Thomas pointed at a portrait of a strikingly handsome man with a knowing gaze.

  Odette looked at it, half ready for the man to step out of the picture. It was the sort of thing she believed could happen in a Checquy art gallery. As she examined it, however, she actually found herself wishing that he would step out of the picture and then maybe lead her to his Jag, drive her to 1967-era Annabel’s, and buy her a gin martini. His eyes seemed to smolder at her. It was like the artist had mixed a whole load of pheromones and a hint of cologne into the paint.

  “It is Bishop Conrad Grantchester,” said Ernst finally.

  “The traitor,” said Bishop Attariwala.

  “You mean our traitor,” said Ernst.

  “One of several,” said Chevalier Eckhart darkly.

  “Bought and paid for,” said Ernst in a tone that showed absolutely no sign of remorse.

  This is getting somewhat awkward, thought Odette. Apparently Rook Thomas thought so as well, because she cleared her throat, and when she spoke again, it was extremely calmly.

  “Ernst,” said the Rook, “the problem is that over the past several years, the Broederschap has suborned a number of Checquy operatives at every level of our organization. They were bribed, with money or, ahem, augmentations. You purchased their loyalty, their services, their secrets. Our secrets. You told me that you had done this as part of your preparations to make an overture of peace.”

  “It was a gambit to help ensure that you would listen to us, that you would not simply destroy us as soon as we stepped forward,” said Ernst.

  “Along with the secret research and training facility that you established on British soil using embezzled Checquy funds,” said Eckhart. “And the two biological weapons of mass destruction that were unleashed on British soil.”

  “To be fair, I didn’t unleash them,” Ernst said lightly. “My partner did. And then you, Chevalier Eckhart, killed him by putting a javelin through his head. If I can move beyond that, then I would expect you to be able to come to terms with the actions I took to safeguard my people.”

  “And we are,” said the Rook hastily. “We’ve come to terms with them. And look, there’s precedent for this sort of thing. One of my colleagues? He and his, um, family killed a whole bunch of Checquy personnel before he joined up with us. And now he’s on the Occupational Health and Safety Committee, among other things. So, yes, we can move beyond the violence and the crimes. But your people within the Checquy swore oaths of obedience, loyalty, and secrecy to us. They broke those oaths. And we can’t have that.”

  “I was anticipating that there would be some sort of amnesty,” said Ernst. “Now that we are all friends.”

  “No,” said Lady Farrier, and her voice, though low, was cold enough that they all turned to look at her. “There will not be.” Odette shivered, and she was certain that she was not the only one.

&nb
sp; “What will happen to them?” said Ernst after a pause.

  “The traditional punishments for Checquy oath breakers are very old,” said Bishop Attariwala, “and very detailed.”

  “However,” said Rook Thomas, “we’ve been exploring some more merciful alternatives.” The Bishop was looking at her fixedly, and Odette noticed that the short woman seemed to be avoiding his gaze. “It could be as simple as being imprisoned for life in a Checquy facility or going to the gallows.”

  “That’s merciful?” asked Marcel incredulously.

  “Compared to the law, it’s incredibly merciful,” said the Rook. “Plus, we’d save a fortune on sourcing narwhal ivory and importing lynxes.” Everyone looked at her, and she shrugged. “They’re very intricate punishments, with all sorts of symbolism. They haven’t been performed in centuries. No one’s dared betray us like this in a long time.”

  “Regardless of what their punishments will be,” said the Bishop, “we cannot permit these vipers to remain nestled within our bosom. You must provide us with a complete accounting of every person within the Checquy whom you enlisted. They will be taken into custody, and any augmentations that you provided will be removed, either by our surgeons or by yours under supervision. Then they will stand trial.”

  “Before a jury of their peers?” asked Marcel.

  “No,” said Lady Farrier grimly. “Before us.” Her tone left little doubt about the outcome.

  “So my agents—people I employed—will be punished while I and the other members of the Broederschap are welcomed in?” asked Ernst.

  “They were our people first,” said Lady Farrier. “They allowed themselves to be turned. There must be consequences.”

  “This is not up for negotiation,” said Chevalier Eckhart.

  Odette watched her ancestor as he mulled it over. Despite herself, she could muster up nothing but contempt for the Checquy turncoats. They’ve shown what people will do to gain the power of the Broederschap, she thought. They’ll betray whatever they hold dear just to profit from our work. So how can we believe the Checquy won’t do the same? What are we doing here?