The Paradox

by Charlie Fletcher

  The troop was, for the first time, almost merry. They slid off their ponies and gathered around a small copse of dwarfish willow trees. There was laughter, which was new and there was back-slapping and smiles for everyone.

  What’s happening?

  I don’t know.

  Her lack of knowledge was strangely disconcerting to him. She was his enemy, his own betrayer, but she was at least familiar and had so far been able to parse the supranatural for him. This made the unsettling holiday mood being displayed by the nightwalkers seem like a threat.

  “I’ve never heard of them being like this,” she whispered. “So…”

  He waited for her to find the word, but she couldn’t.

  Normal?

  She nodded.

  “I suppose that’s it.”

  Badger Skull turned and looked at them.

  “And why should we not be normal? And who are you to say we are not normal all the time?”

  Amos had only recently realised that the Sluagh could hear at least some of his thoughts, and he was far from comfortable with it.

  “I meant no offence,” she said.

  Badger Skull grinned.

  “We are relieved. We are happy. We have come to one of the great slip points on the landscape, where the Thames rises. Here things intersect: the Old Straight Roads and the Winding Paths. In this field is the source of the river. Seven Springs. Here we may walk around the impassable barrier the river puts between north and south for us, just as someone can walk around the end of a wall and see both sides. This is a blithe spot for us.”

  And he sprang over and pulled Amos from his horse, not roughly, but amiably.

  “Stay, lady,” he said. “The boy may come and join in the ritual, but it is not for you.”

  He kept his arm on Amos’s shoulder as he walked him through the meadow to where the rest of the Sluagh had gathered in a circle around the willows. He pushed him into the perimeter and smiled at him.

  “Please,” he said. “Join us.”

  He caught the eye of another Sluagh who was raising an eyebrow at him.

  “He can’t do any harm, and he has at least some old blood, so the more the merrier, I say, even if his contribution might be a little weaker than the Pure.”

  And they all nodded and smiled and laughed and busied themselves with the fixings of their trousers and britches.

  And then in concert they began to urinate, making exaggerated groans of relief that provoked more laughter.

  “Go on,” said Badger Skull, his britches already around his knees as he added to the inundation. “For luck.”

  Amos began to fumble at his flies.

  “The Thames as all flowing water is an enemy to us, and will always be,” said the Sluagh, looking up at the moon as he voided his bladder in an impressively long-lasting and thunderous stream. “And so a long time ago the custom began of our adding to the source whenever we pass it. Some believe it was just so we could boast we had wetted the head of the river to show our disrespect, others say the old ones thought that in time we could dilute the river and make its hold against us weak. Whatever the reason, when we come to the source of a river…”

  He made a grand gesture with his hand like an impresario, and then shrugged.

  “We piss in it.”

  Amos felt the Ghost’s voice in his head.

  What are you doing over there?

  Nothing.

  He let go like the others and enjoyed, for a brief moment, a sense of freedom from the living prison the Ghost had trapped him in.

  Are you doing what I think you’re doing?

  If you think I’m smiling, then yes.

  He had ridden out of that meadow with two strong memories which he turned round and round in his mind as they travelled onwards. The first was of that mild perturbation she had displayed at being momentarily excluded from the band, which made her a little less infallible to him. And the second was the truly discomfiting sensation he had got standing among the Sluagh as they had laughed and pissed and made bawdy jokes–just as if they were normal blunt men the like of which he knew a hundred back in London: they had not seemed scary or eldritch, or representatives of some ancient other order of life; they had seemed ordinarily coarse and–for an instant–less cruel because of it.

  As they continued their crooked way towards Rutlandshire, Badger Skull took to riding beside him more often. Though he had the ability to hear Amos’s thoughts, since the Sluagh were practised at getting inside people’s minds and influencing them, he quaintly insisted on talking out loud himself.

  They were detouring alongside a new stretch of railway beneath a cloudless sky lit by a high crescent moon. The Sluagh could not cross bare iron any more than they could traverse flowing water, but they could pass under it if there was a bridge or viaduct. The landscape they were travelling across was relatively flat, so bridges were few and far between, and the Sluagh were visibly frustrated by the enforced dogleg.

  Badger Skull turned to Amos.

  “Can you do it? As she says you can? Can you bend Mountfellon’s mind?”

  I don’t know.

  The Sluagh grimaced and pointed at his neck.

  “The warrandice cannot be undone, you know.”

  I still don’t know.

  “She says you can,” said Badger Skull, looking back at the Ghost who was riding at the back of the troop with a dreamy look on her face, which was turned to the moon just as someone riding by day would soak in the healing warmth of the sun.

  She’s mad. You do realise that, yes?

  The Sluagh nodded.

  “Mad doesn’t mean wrong.”

  There was a noise from their left, a rising insistency of percussive chuffs reverberating off the walls of a deep cutting as a locomotive laboured up a mild grade towards them, a bull’s-eye lantern throwing a baleful glow ahead of it as it came.

  The troop of Sluagh melted into the dappled shadows of the beech wood lining the road, and were still as the ancient trees around them.

  It was the first time Amos had seen a train pass by at night in the countryside, though he was used to seeing them in the city. Here in the stillness, the sound of the steam engine seemed discordant, a harsh, straight-edged kind of noise in a gentler, more rounded world. It overrode the night sounds as it approached, and then the oncoming bulk of the locomotive and following carriages was doubled in the clear air above them as the dirty plume billowing from the engine’s smoke-stack left a thick smear to mark its progress.

  There was a sense of power and velocity as the engine passed, the glow of the bull’s-eye being replaced for an instant by a blazing glimpse of the open firebox as it went by, and then the lit windows of the carriages chopped the night into bands of yellow light that flowed over them, like the strips of candlelight from within a zoetrope.

  Amos looked to his side and saw them pass over the gaunt features of the hidden riders–slices of modern gaslight strobing across grim faces inked in ancient patterns. He had the strangest sensation that he was seeing two worlds staring at one another and that he was, in a way he could not quite comprehend, lucky to be seeing it.

  None of the Sluagh moved until the clattering monster had disappeared around the bend that hugged the edge of the rising scarp beyond.

  When they were back on the road, Badger Skull spoke again.

  “When we have the flag, we shall not have to dance attendance on iron abominations like that, hiding as they pass. We shall just cross the rails and put them behind us as if they were no more than a hedgerow.”

  What is the flag?

  Badger Skull rode on for a while before speaking. Amos thought he had decided not to answer, but then they came to the dip in the road where the anticipated bridge provided a way beneath the rails, and once the whole troop had passed through onto the road beyond, the chief stopped his horse and pointed back at the rails.

  “Once the land held no obstacle to us but flowing water. Then iron came and changed everything. The old one
s rose against the iron bearers and tried to banish the cursed metal from the island. But the iron bearers were not Pure, as we are; they were a mixed and mongrel people, those of our own who had mingled their rich blood inheritance with weaker tribes. But this iron, it gave them power and the wise men among the old Pure saw it would win in the end, unless we remade our vows to the darkness that made us, the fell dark whence we drew our strength.”

  I don’t understand.

  It might have been a trick of the moonlight, but Amos thought he saw the Sluagh smile for a moment.

  “It is not important that you do. It is old history, tales lost in the fog of long-past time. But all that matters, to answer your question, is that the iron-bearers triumphed. They won the day. And they imposed a terrible peace on the Pure. They took our pennants, each tribe they conquered, and they joined them into one huge victory flag. And then they made a warrandice of their own. They knew the true Pure were not susceptible to iron as other weaker bloods, as changelings or the mara or Green Men and the like were. But they imposed a warrandice, that the true Pure, the mighty Sluagh, would from henceforth also cringe at the dull grey metal and be burnt by it And so we let them have the day and retreated into the night. We became Nightgangers and Shadow-walkers and abjured the light. We became wanderers, and trooped the old winding ways of the land. And for centuries that was our lot and we had little to do with lesser breeds. And then this happened.”

  He spat towards the twin moon-silvered rails stretching away into the dark behind them.

  “They would not even leave us the night. They cut the flowing lines of our old paths with more iron than we had seen in centuries, caging the land, stealing our ancient ways without thought or conscience. And who has protected us from them? No one. But all that will change now. When you get us the flag.”

  The flag will do what?

  “The flag contains the warrandice that unmans us in the face of iron. And while it is in the world, while any trace of it remains we remain gelded and helpless,” said Badger Skull.

  So you are going to destroy it?

  “More.”

  Burn it?

  “Burning leaves ash, makes smoke–they stay in the world and the warrandice remains.”

  So what will you do?

  The Sluagh definitely smiled this time. Amos saw the flash of his teeth as he leant over and slapped Amos’s horse into motion, and the two of them trotted to catch up with the troop ahead.

  “We will put the flag out of this world,” said Badger Skull. “And then we will be free to go where we will, no matter how they try and stake their damned iron tracks across the free land.”

  CHAPTER 32

  WHAT THE HAMMER SAW

  The truth of it is that if The Smith had not hidden the Black Knife, Lucy would not have given in to the need to scratch the itch. That’s what she told herself. The stone dagger had disappeared the morning after Lucy had heard the Sluagh taunt him about it, implying that it held the key to a conflicted allegiance. And of all the misgivings that she had about belonging to The Oversight the fact that one of the leaders had a questionable fidelity was the biggest by far.

  So after one night too many spent studying The Great and Hidden History of the World by candlelight in the upstairs room at The Folley, with no companionship other than the sound of the wind coming straight off Blackwall Reach and rattling the windows with a promise of winter to come, she gave in. The itch would have to be scratched. Maybe she wouldn’t glint the knife, but she would find it and examine it with her gloves on. It might provide a missing piece of the puzzle which was discomforting her. So she listened for the regular snores of The Smith in the room across the passage, and then crept downstairs, keeping to the risers and boards she knew were creak-free from careful prior observation.

  Then she took a candle and, with a small spark of pride at a new skill acquired under Cook’s careful instruction, concentrated on it, closed her eyes and flicked her wrist.

  The candle lit itself. She smiled.

  “Dimmer,” she said. The light became less bright. “Good.”

  She didn’t want The Smith to wake and see her moving around as she searched.

  Searching was a challenge in such a large and jumbled workshop. But she knew her way around it well enough to have an idea where any space large enough to hide the dagger might be, and she worked methodically, starting in one corner and working outwards.

  She was careful not to make any noise, which was not easy in a task that involved moving a lot of tools and opening cabinets and drawers that liked to squeak or jangle as they moved. After an hour she was still only a fraction of the way through the space. This, she realised, might be a job that took more than one night. She decided to get some sleep.

  And then, as she turned to go up the stairs again, she saw it.

  On the bottom step, where it had not been when she descended. And not the stone dagger, not the Black Knife.

  The Smith’s hammer.

  “Not what you’re looking for,” he said.

  She turned to find he was sitting on the anvil, watching her. She had not thought he could move so quickly or so quietly. She swallowed. She felt guilty. She did not like feeling guilty. It proved she had loyalties to others, and that was the weakness she tried to stay away from.

  “I suppose you heard the Sluagh out on Hackney Marsh talking about the Black Knife,” he said.

  His eyes were flat and unreadable, as was his tone. And now she felt worse than guilty. She felt scared. He had known all this time.

  “I didn’t spot you,” he said. “You did a good job.”

  “But how—?” she began.

  “Charlie Pyefinch,” he said. “Hodge gave him the task of watching my tail.”

  And now she felt betrayed on top of everything else.

  “We swore him to secrecy,” The Smith said. “He didn’t like it, if that helps.”

  It didn’t.

  “Remove your gloves,” he said.

  She went cold. She looked at the door. She’d have to get past him to get out, but she was fast.

  “No,” he said. “If you run you’ll always wonder. Don’t be a coward now. Because I don’t think you’ve been one yet, and that’s served you pretty well.”

  His words stung enough to make her peel the gloves off and jut her jaw at him.

  “Right,” she said. “Fine. Where is it?”

  He shook his head.

  “Not the Black Knife, Lucy Harker. I told you. You don’t want to touch it. It’d hollow you out.”

  “But—” she said.

  “But you want to know about it.”

  He stared at her. She nodded.

  “Then touch the hammer. The hammer knows. The hammer was there.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said. The flatness in his eyes was terrible.

  “We do not have time to doubt your loyalty. Without you, there will be no Last Hand. So see what you need to see and make your own choice once and for all. This is no time for uncertainty. If you want to know about the knife, if you want to know about my true allegiance, you can see for yourself. You’re a Glint, girl: you can see what the hammer saw.”

  She walked slowly to the steps. Her hands were clammy. The hammer was the most ordinary thing in the crowded workshop. It was just a well-used tool, dinged and nicked with a long lifetime of hard use, a blunt instrument, its wooden handle worn and shiny. It didn’t look like anything. And then as she reached for it, holding her breath, steeling herself for the impact of the past, she noticed it did look like something else. It looked old. And then her fingers touched it and she jolted and felt the past slam into her–and maybe because she has chosen to glint, for the first time doing it as a matter of choice rather than accident, she found she has more time to think about what she’s seeing, more control—

  The hammer is the hammer in her hand but the metal is brighter and the scars and the scratches have not yet dulled its surface.

  The hand on the hammer is not
hers: it is a man’s hand, a blacksmith’s hand, massive, blunt-fingered and wet with sweat.

  The back of the hand is unfamiliar, covered in interlaced coils of dark blue tattoos.

  Not her hand but the tug of the past is so insistent and personal that she can still feel the hook and swing on her muscles as the hammer rises and then falls repeatedly.

  Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Clink.

  Beneath the hammer, an anvil.

  Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Clink.

  On the anvil, a long bar of metal, red-hot.

  Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding.

  Four times the hammer hits the metal, shaping it.

  Clink.

  The fifth time the hammer moves and smacks the surface of the anvil, clearing the grey-black shale that comes off the beaten iron.

  Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Clink.

  Hiss.

  The red metal is quenched in a pail of water. The tattooed blacksmith carries the hammer into the sun.

  This is not the Isle of Dogs. This is not London. Or at least it is not a London Lucy has ever seen.

  There are no stone buildings, no streets, no river, no stink of coal fires or river reek or sewer smell.

  Nothing rotten.

  She inhales instead the clean smell of wood fires. She is high on the side of a hill. There is a wooden palisade. A ditch beyond, and further below stretches an unspoilt landscape of green upon green.

  It’s an older world.

  There are two groups of men, one kind with rough homespun leggings and hair tied back from their faces. They carry weapons, grey iron swords catching the weak sun in dull silvery flashes, and shields slung over their shoulders. Their faces and arms are striped and whorled with thick blue patterns painted on the skin.

  The other group wears animal skins, and the writhing blue shapes that decorate their faces are finer and more complicated, tattooed on, not daubed.

  The men with the tattooed faces also carry swords, short wide-bladed things the dull gold colour of bronze. The axes some hold are double-headed and vicious-looking. Others carry spears.