The Rook: A Novel

by O'Malley, Daniel

  “Plus,” noted Tidy Twin, “he said so during his interrogation.”

  “We don’t have enough information to plan our next move yet,” said Myfanwy. Some of us don’t even know who our enemies are. “We need to learn more.”

  “Excellent! Good thinking, Rook Thomas!” said Wattleman happily. “The Rooks and the Chevs will work together and present their conclusions to the Bishops tomorrow evening. Unless, of course, we’re invaded tonight. In which case, you may have us woken up. Ah-ha-ha.” No one else laughed as Wattleman and Farrier rose from their chairs and made their way toward the door. Grantchester nodded and smiled faintly at them all, the smile of someone who has not been obliged to take any responsibility for the problem at hand. Then he left the room also, smoke trailing behind him.

  The Rooks and the Chevaliers were left with Alrich, who simply sat there. God, he’s gorgeous, thought Myfanwy. If only he’d blink once in a while. Or move. It’s kind of creepy. In fact, Bishop Alrich seemed to be freaking the others out as well. Gubbins appeared to be dislocating his fingers out of nervousness, and Eckhart was paying his cigarette far more attention than it warranted.

  “I do not envy you,” Alrich said, suddenly rising from his chair with eerie smoothness. “Still, I am quite certain you will come up with some good solutions.” And he was gone.

  The four remaining members of the Court (well, five if you wanted to include Gestalt as two, which Myfanwy didn’t) stared at one another.

  “Bring it up at the club?” said Gubbins. “What is he going to say? Ah, nicely played bit of backgammon there, Chumsey. Fancy another brandy? Oh, by the way, damnedest thing. Some arcane group of Belgian mutants that tried to conquer us a couple of centuries ago are coming back to finish the job. Foreigners, eh? Now, where’s the sporting section of the Times? Unbelievable.” He had stood up, kicked his feet into the air, and was now balancing on the table on the points of his elbows.

  “Could you please stop that?” asked Myfanwy. “It’s just not pleasant to look at.”

  “Sorry,” said Gubbins, easing himself down to his feet.

  “Now,” said Eckhart. “What do we need to do?”

  “Secure the country,” said Cool Twin, as if it were obvious.

  “Of course! It’s only twelve thousand four hundred and twenty-nine kilometers of coastline,” said Eckhart with withering sarcasm. “Maybe we could mobilize the lighthouse keepers and the fishermen.”

  “We could put the nation on heightened alert,” said Gubbins slowly.

  “We’d have to tell them why,” pointed out Myfanwy.

  “And then we’d need to enlighten the Americans,” said Eckhart. Nobody looked pleased at the prospect.

  “Stop a moment and think,” said Myfanwy. “We are as well informed as anybody. Have any of you noticed anything that would prompt you to believe that some sort of invasion is imminent?” They all shook their heads. “So, presumably, we have at least a bit of time. Invading Britain is no small endeavor,” she went on thoughtfully. “We need to gather information on the Grafters. Their activities abroad, and their activities here.

  “We’ll need to assign teams. So far, our one lead is Van Syoc. I know we have a team back at the Rookery cutting him open, so we’ll be able to gather some idea of the Grafters’ current abilities. Sound reasonable?” No one responded, but Gubbins managed to rouse himself to nod before Myfanwy continued.

  “We’ll have to assign another team to trace his movements back and find out exactly where he came from. The Rookery staff will get all the details we have on him and distribute them among us. You two gentlemen,” she said, pointing at Gubbins and Eckhart, “you must have operatives on the Continent whom you can order about. You’ll need to set them chasing down the Grafters. We’ll meet tomorrow morning and coordinate.”

  Myfanwy stood up. “Now, I have had a very long day, I have a splitting headache, and I am going home.” Everyone followed her as she walked out, and hers was the first car to pull up.

  It whisked her away to Myfanwy Thomas’s house.

  12

  Dear You,

  I’ve realized that I never entirely explained to you how I came to know that I would lose my memory. I mean, I’ve mentioned that there were psychics—but that’s about all I’ve told you. Sorry about that.

  Psychics are not generally held in the highest esteem in the Checquy. I know, it seems like it would be the most common and the most useful sort of power around. After all, everyone’s granny is supposed to be able to read tea leaves. And what could be of greater use in the Checquy than knowing what someone else is thinking or what is going to happen in the future? Plus, it would be supremely useful for funding purposes. But in fact, genuine psychics are rarer than rare, and extra difficult to detect.

  “I’m getting an impression… that you’re thinking of… this! Am I right? No? Well, does that mean anything to you? It does? See, I’m psychic!” Even worse are the vague predictions and prophecies that seem to maybe have come true. If you look at them with your eyes sort of squinted.

  Actually, the most effective psychics are the ones who never realize they’re psychic and instead manage to live excellent lives by consistently making the right decisions. Their powers effectively guide them through the shoals of life without their knowing. And one major shoal tends to be the Checquy. The best psychics pop up on our radar only after they’ve died, when their powers no longer keep them out of our sight.

  There are so many impressive fakes around, and it’s such a vague sort of power anyway, that the Checquy maintains a very skeptical stance. (This is partly the result of a frantic two weeks under a previous Lord during which the members of the entire organization had orders to imprison any tall dark stranger they met.) We’re far more likely to accept that a subject might have the power to turn people into footstools than that he can read minds or see the future. The closest we’re likely to get are the palm-reading efforts of Dr. Crisp, and he deals only with a person’s past. So when I started receiving warnings from random people, I was dubious.

  The first prediction came during a lunch break—one of those rare occasions when I didn’t have a meeting and wasn’t obliged to eat at my desk. It’s a little eerie to look back at that. It was the last day that all I had to worry about was running a major government agency and coordinating covert operations that deal with the supernatural. It was the last day that I woke from an untroubled night’s sleep.

  I’d decided, since it was such a nice afternoon, to go out into the city and get myself some lunch at a little pub I knew. Every so often, it’s pleasant to walk around with the normal people. Of course, one can’t help scanning the passersby looking for any little tells that give them away as special. The training we receive is so rigorous that even Checquy desk jockeys are always on the lookout for an ultra-perfect manicure that suggests self-sharpening retractable claws or a cleverly tailored suit that conceals skin made of cheese graters. Checquy statistics indicate that 15 percent of all men in hats are concealing horns. But going out for lunch is still an enjoyable thing to do.

  So I was strolling down the street, savoring the sun on my face and with no more thoughts in my head than what kind of sandwich I wanted. The footpath was full of people, and while I was careful not to bump into the normals around me, I rather liked the sense of being lost in the crowd. I was just coming up to the Ivy and Crown when I heard something that caught my attention.

  “Ruck.”

  I looked around and spotted a homeless gentleman squatting against a wall. He had a hat in front of him with some coins in it, and he was staring at me intently.

  “Are you talking to me?” I asked. He brought up a hand and pointed a dirty fingernail at me.

  “You,” he said. “Your memories will be taken. They’ll be licked out of you, everything that makes you who you are. Gone forever. You’ll flee to a park, and there, in the rain, someone new will open the eyes that used to be yours.” He spoke in a voice that cracked, and I stared at him in
horror. “They’ll open your eyes, your black eyes, and see corpses all around them. Corpses wearing gloves.”

  “I—I beg your pardon?” I asked.

  “You heard me,” he said, lowering his hand.

  “I’m not giving you any money,” I said faintly.

  “Fine,” he said. At this point, I realized that, unlike most painfully awkward interviews I take part in, I was able to walk away from this one. So I turned aside from the homeless crazy person, though I didn’t fully turn my back on him, and walked into the pub.

  Now, London is a big city with the requisite number of homeless crazy people. And I’ll freely concede that I am not an expert on their behavior. But a few things struck me as kind of… off about this guy. Like the fact that he didn’t ask for money (not that I would have given him any). And that he singled me out of the crowd. But since his body didn’t explode into ravens, and he didn’t call down a hailstorm, I put it down as an upsetting encounter with someone outside of the Checquy and resolved not to go out to lunch again for a while.

  Then I had a roast lamb sandwich, which quieted my mind significantly.

  But the incident still nagged at me.

  The next day, Gestalt and I had to go to the Estate in our capacity as governors of the school. We don’t give speeches on graduation days, that’s strictly the role of the Lord and Lady of the Checquy, but we are obliged to go up four times a year to make sure the students are being taught and that the entire campus hasn’t been reduced to a big smoking crater. It’s tedious and a waste of a day, and being forced to spend several hours in a car with one of Gestalt’s bodies has always been kind of a drag. Generally it’ll put the body to sleep and then go on conducting business elsewhere with the other three.

  This time, I got the female body, Eliza, as company. She’s everything I’m not: tall, blond, exquisite, with large breasts. I realized abruptly that I hadn’t actually seen Eliza for months and was secretly pleased to see that she’d put on a bit of weight. I was even more pleased when she stretched her long legs up on the seat with a sigh, closed her eyes, and left me to read through my reports.

  I was reviewing enrollment records for the Estate but found my attention wandering. I kept thinking about the homeless guy. He’d obviously had some problems, of which being homeless was only one, and I couldn’t be certain that he’d actually said Rook. It sounded more like Ruck or possibly even Rewck. It could very well have been that he’d wanted to tell some guy named Rick about the memory-licking thing. In any case, it soon became abundantly clear that I was not going to make much progress with my files, and so I contented myself by looking out the window and watching the landscape glide by.

  The Estate is lovely. It’s located on an island off the northeast coast of England. Up until the 1950s, young inductees into the Checquy were trained under a rotating master-apprentice scheme. Wattleman was instructed under this old system. Every year he was placed with a new mentor, who would train him in a variety of disciplines. The teacher would take him into his home and instruct him in everything from diplomacy to a pointed lack thereof. Of course, the Checquy also tried to categorize and study different powers, but our powers somewhat baffle scientists even now, so you can imagine how unsuccessful their studies were in previous decades.

  After World War II, however, one of the Bishops did a little evaluating. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had brought home like nothing else just how far science had come. For the first time, a man-made device had surpassed the highest-known power level of any operative in the history of the Checquy. Everyone was nervous about that, but people were also curious about what else science could do. Could it provide answers about the Checquy operatives and their powers? Perhaps a more rigorous testing regimen was needed.

  Also, it had become evident that not every Checquy mentor was equipped to be a teacher. Agents were being produced who exhibited deficiencies in certain areas. So, Bishop Bastin set about designing a curriculum in the finest tradition of the public service (preternatural or otherwise): he put together a committee.

  Unlike most committees, however, this one was designed to get things done. It was composed of dons and professors from universities, generals and sergeants from the armed forces, and a variety of scientists (even a few folks with German accents and some very original ideas who had abruptly found themselves without homes). As a result, we got the Estate.

  So, back to this trip. Eliza and I soon stopped at a tiny little village and got on the Checquy boat that ferries us across to Kirrin Island, where the school is. We disembarked at the dock and were met by Steffi Blümen, who shook both our hands but gave me a kiss and observed that Eliza had put on weight (yes!) and looked tired (double yes! If this makes me a bitch, so be it).

  We walked up to the school, which is a collection of handsome brick buildings with red roofs, gardens, shooting ranges, gymnasiums, and all sorts of carefully sculpted terrain suitable for specialized training. It has cliffs, a specially designed bog, and large glasshouses with mini-jungles and rain forests. I saw the dormitory I’d lived in and the heavily buttressed medical center in which I’d undergone a deluge of tests every month.

  We walked around the classrooms and quietly sat in on some classes, and the students looked at us out of the corners of their eyes. I thanked my lucky stars that this wasn’t one of the visits where we had to meet with any students, and from Eliza’s weary step, I gathered she was thanking hers too.

  “You look a little stressed, Rook Gestalt,” said Steffi. “Perhaps we should go somewhere a bit more calm.” She opened a door and ushered us into a softly lit room.

  I looked around with interest because the room contained the most precious resources of the Checquy: nine babies, drawn from all parts of the United Kingdom. I’d reviewed their files the previous evening and could name each of them. Two little boys of Indian descent. An African girl. Three tiny Anglo-Saxons. Two Arab-Britons. And a perfect little Japanese girl who had delicate silver antlers spiraling out from her temples.

  “Shuri Tsukahara,” I murmured. “That must have been a nightmarish birth.”

  “She was a cesarean, of course,” said Steffi. “Performed by Checquy surgeons in Checquy facilities as soon as was safe for both mother and daughter. We’d been making preparations and tracking her progress since the very first ultrasound.”

  “She’s beautiful,” I said. “What was the cover story?”

  “Complications,” said Steffi. “It’s a word that encompasses a lot, and thanks to the surgery we provided, the mother survived and will be able to have more children.” We stood in the nursery looking at the future and breathing in the soft smell of babies. It had been a particularly fecund year, and the nine infants represented a strong continuation for the Checquy. And in time, they’d be joined by others, those whose powers hadn’t been revealed in the womb.

  Back in the 1800s, when the theory of evolution was being bandied about, there were some concerns raised that the gifted of the Checquy might be an endangered species. It is rare for a supernatural individual to produce a supernatural child, and while the members of the Checquy were only distantly aware of Mendel and regarded Darwin’s work with a certain amount of skepticism, the principles of breeding were well known to them. A bit of digging in the archives and an ongoing count have shown, however, that the Checquy population remains relatively stable in relation to the British population and, even more interesting, remains relatively stable in relation to the number and level of threats that arise. Mostly. Read into that what you will.

  In any case, it was very pleasant looking at the babies, right up until one of them stirred and began squalling. A nurse came in, gently scooped the little Arab girl up, and carried her over to a rocking chair. She briskly undid her shirt and put the child to her breast. Cheeks flaming, I jerked my head away and was surprised to see Eliza doing the same thing. She had so many bodies, I wouldn’t have thought she’d be prudish. At that moment, her phone rang. She answered, and listened intently
.

  “Right,” she said. “I understand. Stay on the line.” Eliza put the phone against her chest, and turned to us. “Steffi, something has come up—is there a room where I can take this call?”

  “Of course,” said Steffi, ushering her out of the nursery and into an empty classroom.

  “Anything I can help with?” I asked her as she left.

  “No, it’s something that really only I can handle,” said Eliza. “Go on with the tour, and I’ll catch up.”

  “We’re heading to the san next,” said Steffi. “If we finish there before you finish here, just give Miffy a call.” We left Eliza and walked down the hallway. “Well, that’s extremely convenient,” she remarked. “You and I can have a nice wander without her.” And we entered the san.

  They say that smell is the sense most closely linked to memory. I can’t confirm that, but if you ever happen to be at the Estate, stop by the san, open the door, take a big breath in through your nostrils, and see what happens. I tell you this because, although I had never before been to the nursery, I was intimately acquainted with the sanatorium. In the course of my time at the Estate, I had been taken there with multiple bouts of flu, night terrors, crying hysterics, skinned knees, nervous diarrhea, stress-induced vomiting, anxiety-based nosebleeds, sprained ankles, and exposure to the elements after getting lost on a camping trip; in one memorable incident, I was decanted there after being dredged from the bottom of the pool half drowned. So I felt a trifle uncomfortable as I walked in.

  One of the medical staff immediately grabbed Steffi to discuss the recovery of a child who’d injured his spinnerets on the obstacle course, leaving me to stand awkwardly by myself. The sick children and I regarded each other with a certain amount of wariness. They were there for a variety of things, ranging from sports injuries to having multiple appendices removed to tonsillitis to a bad case of laminitis.