The Remnant

by Charlie Fletcher

  It was a relief in more ways than one to escape the narrow confines of the ship and find herself on a gangplank that promised the new freedoms of a wider world so reassuringly beckoning at its far end.

  She took another deep breath and scanned the milling scene spread out below her. She saw potential; she saw variety; she saw sights that were familiar, and others that had an indefinably foreign air to them.

  She did not, however, see the pair of eyes watching her, eyes hidden in the shadows of an impressive brick and stone warehouse across the wharf.

  On a normal day Prudence Tittensor had what she thought of as any passingly clever wife’s natural abilities to manage her husband without recourse to her own somewhat more than natural faculties. And on any normal day she would have relied on them alone to dictate the style with which she welcomed him ashore after what must have been a long, cold voyage home to Boston, fighting the wind all the way across the sullen grey swells of the Atlantic.

  She stood in the shade of the colonnade fronting the warehouse by Belcher’s Wharf, neatly folding the note she had just hurriedly written as she watched him move around the deck of the Lady of Nantasket, supervising the crew as they went through the well-drilled routines of berthing up and un-dogging the cargo hatches in preparation for imminent invasion by the stevedore gang waiting on the quayside below. She knew that in a moment—in fact as soon as she made herself visible to him—he would remember that his first mate knew every bit as much as he did about the matters in hand and was, in addition, a bachelor. Captain Tittensor would then, as ever, hand responsibility for ship and cargo over to him and become, for the next few hours at least, merely a land-bound spouse. And—on any normal day—Prudence Tittensor was not only expert in ensuring that he was a very happy and carnally satisfied land-bound spouse, but herself genuinely enjoyed the affectionate private warmth of their frequent reunions.

  The sight of the two young women who had appeared on the gangplank had made her step sharply back into the depths of the warehouse colonnade and reassess her plans.

  This had not been going to be a normal day from the get-go, since she was going to have to explain to her husband that the child they had adopted and brought home from London was gone, simultaneously finessing the moment of revelation by explaining that the reason for this was a happy one: nature had granted Prudence the miracle they had both long wished for, a miracle that she carried proudly before her in her expanding stomach. She had rehearsed the rationale behind her decision in passing the adopted infant on to a more deserving couple, and was confident in her ability to manipulate her husband’s reaction.

  What she had not been prepared for was the pair on the gangplank. She had seen them and immediately known both what they were and how much trouble they were bringing. She had stepped back into the shade and thought fast, then pulled a small pad of paper and a slender pencil from her bag and written three terse sentences.

  The bitch at her side thumped her tail and made a low growling plea of barely controlled excitement.

  “No, Shay,” said Prudence. “No. You’ll see him later.”

  She peeled a glove off her left hand, slid the note into it and folded it into an improvised envelope of sorts. She then handed it down to the dog, who gently took it in her mouth.

  “This for the Proctor,” she said. “And fast, girl.”

  Prudence then smoothed her hand over the growing bulge of her belly and stepped out of the shadows waving at her husband with a sunny smile that betrayed not a hint of her inner turmoil, her eyes resolutely ignoring the young strangers whose arrival had turned this into a decidedly abnormal day.

  Lucy joined Cait at the foot of the gangplank and found she was expected to carry her mentor’s bag as well as her own.

  “Now,” said Cait shortly, “let’s be going. We’ve things to settle before we deal with the matter in hand.”

  “Do you think that’s Mrs—?” began Lucy, observing the approaching figure of Prudence Tittensor, who was looking past them, up into the beaming face of her husband, who was leaning over the taffrail and waving enthusiastically back at her.

  Cait gripped Lucy’s arm with her free hand and squeezed it firmly.

  “Don’t look,” she said calmly. “We’ve time enough for her later, once we’ve found out when the next ship sails home.”

  The plan was simple and well-rehearsed. Lucy ran it through her head as she followed Cait through the milling crowd towards the port office. Being both youthful and handsome, there was no shortage of importunate masculine offers to “help them with their bags,” but Cait smiled and declined and never broke pace, and Lucy followed dutifully in her wake, trying to assume her mentor’s easy air of knowing exactly where she was going in this town in which she had never before set foot. The plan was to find out the next sailing that could take them back to the other side of the ocean they had just crossed. Once this had been determined and passage booked, Cait intended to repossess the stolen infant at the last possible moment before the said sailing, and return it to the Factor and his wife at Skibbereen, from whose crib it had been stolen nearly a year ago now. The child had been taken by a changeling who Cait had tracked from County Cork to the City of London, a changeling Lucy had last seen imprisoned in the secret cells beneath the Sly House adjacent to the headquarters of The Oversight in Wellclose Square.

  Captain Tittensor had been worked on by Cait on the voyage over to the extent that he believed it was his own idea that she should present herself at his home at the earliest opportunity in order that she might offer her services as a nurse to the adopted baby she had in fact determined to remove. The captain had given Cait his home address with the suggestion that she present herself for his wife’s perusal at her earliest convenience, and had congratulated himself inwardly about the excellence of the plan. He liked all he saw of Cait and could not conceive of Mrs. Tittensor liking her a whit the less.

  Caitlin Sean ná Gaolaire had none of Prudence Tittensor’s qualms about using any supranatural faculties on the captain. But then she was a venatrix, a hunter sworn to rescue the child, come what may. And Lucy had noticed that Cait was—on dry land at last—both blithe and bonny but also utterly ruthless in the prosecution of anything she believed to be the right thing to do.

  Within half an hour, they had found their way to the port office, and determined there was a ship sailing on the morning tide for Liverpool.

  “So we leave in less than a day?” said Lucy, unable to keep surprise and disappointment out of her voice.

  “Did you have other plans, missy?” said Cait, raising an eyebrow.

  “Seems a shame not to see a little of this new country while we’re here,” said Lucy.

  “We’re not on a grand tour. We’re on serious business,” said Cait. “And I’ve found one place is pretty much like another, when you look closely.”

  “Would be nice to have a chance to look closely,” mumbled Lucy as Cait led the way into an inn which the young man in the port office had recommended as being close, clean and cheap.

  Cait turned and blocked the door.

  “I’m no believer in Lady Luck, Lucy-girl, but when she smiles it’s as well to smile back, bob a curtsey out of respect and take what she offers. It’s an ugly thing we’re to do here, because the captain’s a decent enough man and likely has no knowledge that his babby’s been stolen from another, so it’s as well to do it fast, like pulling a tooth.”

  CHAPTER 2

  HERNE THE HUNTER

  Far to the north of London, close to the ancient heart of Britain, a Herne was on the hill, hunting by moonlight.

  Like all Hernes, he pursued his prey with a brace of bone dogs, a Sight Hound and a Nose. The short-legged Nose was fifty yards lower on the slope, belly-down, snuffling along the curved edge of the ancient woods that ringed the bald upland like a tonsure. The tall Sight Hound stood beside the Herne, tense as a drawn bowstring, back legs quivering with anticipation, ready to explode into movement the moment the Nose f
lushed prey from the shadowy undergrowth below.

  Though his face was a whorl of interlocking tattoos and he was sworn to the night, the Herne was both Sluagh-like and not-Sluagh: Hernes long ago removed themselves from the company of the Sluagh proper, disdaining to travel in their troops or to join their hosts at the ritual times of the year. They were no longer especially hostile to the Sluagh, to whom they were after all kin, but they chose to live solitary lives, alone with their bone dogs. The most startling visual difference to regular Sluagh was the deer antlers they strapped to their heads, the bases carefully chamfered to a thin, angled bevel and bound so securely in place that they appeared to sprout directly from the Hernes’ own skulls.

  The Herne on this moonlit hillside had short but vicious roe-deer antlers swept back from his head, each with three sharp points, which gave him a streamlined look, an impression confirmed when he ran alongside his Sight Hound, with whom he could almost keep pace.

  The Sight Hound was a rangy lurcher with a lot of greyhound in its blood; small yellowing bones from different prey animals were tied along its back, bound into the long shaggy fur like an external spine, and it was on these ancient trophies that the Herne kept a steadying fingertip. The barrel-chested Nose snuffling below them had similar but shorter articulated decoration along its backbone, but what looked regal on the lurcher looked more workmanlike on the Nose, which was a bastard cross between a badger-hound and a spaniel.

  There was a sudden anticipatory beat of silence, like a hole in the world, and then something burst noisily from the tanglewood, followed by the baying Nose. The Herne lifted his fingertips from the plait of bones and the Sight Hound exploded into motion, heading for the fleeing creature with long, loping bounds which seemed to eat up the distance between it and the Nose in three heartbeats, and to hit the prey in a solid snarling thump in one heartbeat more.

  The Nose barked excitedly, tail thrumming the grass as the Sight Hound shook the hare once, twice and dropped it dead. Both dogs turned to look back uphill at the Herne. The Sight Hound cocked his head; the Nose whined nervously.

  The Herne had his back to them, looking at the crest of the hill.

  “What do you want?” he said.

  A lone figure stood on the skyline, clad in a long badger-pelt coat. He wore a badger skull in a circlet around his forehead, his face was heavily tattooed and a blade like a broken-backed sickle hung from his belt. He was unmistakably Sluagh.

  “A hunter,” said Badger Skull.

  “What is the prey?” said the Herne.

  “A daywalker,” said the Sluagh. “Nothing dangerous. Just hard to get at, or we should have got him already.”

  “I do not hunt daywalkers,” said Herne. “You know this.”

  The Sluagh walked down the slope towards him. The Herne snapped his fingers at the bone dogs who only now turned their attention to the hare they had caught, both tearing into the dead body with an unusual lack of competitiveness. They wrenched it apart and each lay with their own half, side by side, eating companionably.

  “Fine dogs,” said the Sluagh.

  “They do not hunt daywalkers either,” said the Herne.

  The Sluagh squatted on his haunches and looked at the feeding dogs. He carried a large leather bag high on his shoulders like a pack.

  “There is a man called Mountfellon, who splits his time between London and a house to the north east of here,” said the Sluagh after a while. “He committed an outrage on one of us.”

  “Is this not rightly a case, then, for The Oversight?” said the Herne, who did not choose to squat next to him. “They are sworn to protect the two worlds from each other, and here is a daywalker harming—”

  “The Oversight itself is all but dead and gone,” spat Badger Skull. “You know it failed to protect us long ago and its writ no longer runs further than the inner bounds of London, and hardly there even, for—”

  “The Oversight is most dangerous when most reduced,” interrupted the Herne. “There are many Pure now dead and gone who did not remember that.”

  The Sluagh spat on the grass.

  “Sun rot The Oversight, brother. Their day is finally done. Besides. This was far from London.”

  “This is not for me.”

  “Look at this and tell me again that this is none of your concern,” said the Sluagh. He opened the leather pouch and held it out to the Herne. The Herne took it and sniffed the contents, then turned it upside down.

  A tangle of large bones fell onto the grass, followed by a human skull and what looked like a large ragged roll of parchment.

  “I have seen skeletons before. What of it?” he said.

  “Unwrap the bundle,” said Badger Skull.

  The Herne did so, unrolling the stiff parchment until it was clear it was not parchment but a skin, and what’s more, a skin that had once covered a Sluagh. What began in impatience slowed down into a kind of reverence as he finished flattening out the hide and smoothed his hand over the distinctive tattoos that covered it. The whirl and tangle of black lines all came together in a giant tattoo of a woodcock’s skull centred on what would have been the shoulder-blades, with the beak running down the cleft of the spine. The two large, hollow eye sockets seemed to gaze back at him in the moonlight as he stared at it.

  “He skinned one of us.”

  He looked at the Sluagh. The Sluagh nodded.

  “Captured, killed, flayed him either before or after, and boiled the flesh from his bones. This is not hunting for sport. This is hunting for justice. Someone must pay, like for like, Law and Lore,” he said. “The Herne are sworn to help us when Pure blood has been spilled by daywalkers.”

  The Herne rubbed his face as if scrubbing sleep from it. He shook himself like one of his bone dogs and then nodded.

  “Who told you I would do this? Who told you I was kin-sworn to these markings?”

  “Woodcock Crown,” said Badger Skull, his eyes on the bony Mohawk of sharp beaks running along the Herne’s head, between the horns.

  “So you sought me to claim kin,” said the Herne.

  “Affinity,” said Badger Skull. “Not to me. I think you would sense one who had wronged one who bore your mark more strongly than any another.”

  “If this Mountfellon is gone into London, then I am as barred from him as you,” said the Herne. “It is a useless hunt. London is ironbound and webbed with running water.”

  “Barred by iron? Iron like this?” said Badger Skull, his smile flashing white in the thicket of blue lines swirling across his face. He drew a knife from his belt and held it up to the night where it caught the moonbeams and flashed silver against the darkened sky. It was no ancient bronze blade like the ones normally carried by the Sluagh; instead it was a well-worn bread knife, but that was not what made the Herne gasp in surprise. What shocked the Herne, born generations deep in an instinctive fear of iron, was the fact that Badger Skull not only held the cursed metal, but then licked it without even wincing, without his tongue sizzling and blistering—without any effect at all.

  “What is this?” said the Herne, his voice hoarse and strained with both the shock and the unfamiliar sensation of having to express surprise: the Herne was in his own way master of his hidden, solitary demesne. Badger Skull’s actions had just shaken the very roots of that world.

  “The Iron Prohibition that was laid on us aeons past is broken,” said Badger Skull. “I broke it.”

  He threw the knife to the Herne. Instinctively he stepped away and let it bounce on the grass.

  “You can pick it up, and no harm will come to you,” said Badger Skull. “If you can’t then I withdraw my request, for you are clearly no kin and time has indeed sundered out ancient common bond. But if you can hold it, then the good I have done touches us both, because the prohibition no longer lies heavy on you either, being thus provenly Sluagh-kin. And all I ask, if this is so, is that you repay me by finding this Mountfellon and a way to have at him.”

  The Herne bent slowly and skated his
hand in the air just above the blade, as if feeling for warmth or some malignant fizzing in the air around it. He looked up at the watching Sluagh.

  “What have you done?” he said hoarsely.

  “Touch it,” said Badger Skull.

  The Herne paused, then decisively laid his fingertips on the blade. He kept them there, then picked it up, sniffed at it and then, as the Sluagh had done, licked it.

  “You spoke truth. There is no longer any ill in it for us,” he said in wonderment. And he held the knife out to the Sluagh.

  “Keep it,” said Badger Skull. “I stole it from the inn at the bottom of the valley. I can steal another whenever I like. Daywalkers’ houses are open to me now; their iron locks and bolts and horseshoes are no hindrance any more. We are putting the world back to rights, and we will have our place in it.”

  The Herne said nothing, and for some long minutes they stood there, looking out at the moonlit landscape stretching out below them like a secret kingdom rendered in silverpoint. The only sound was the dogs cracking the bones of the hare as they continued to eat, unaware that their master’s world had just become miraculously unbound.

  The Sluagh collected the skeleton and the skull together and placed the parts back in the leather pack, then carefully rolled the flayed skin and held it in his hands.

  “What will you do with him?” said the Herne.

  “We will take him to the Scowles,” said Badger Skull. “To the Shee. They will do what they can to restore his honour and put his parts to the long sleep.”

  “He was a Woodcock Crown,” said the Herne.

  “The Shee will mark his passing better than anyone,” said the Sluagh.

  The Herne nodded.

  “His house is north east of here?” he said. “This Mountfellon.”

  “The big ironstone mansion by Bowland’s Gibbet, on the rising land before it drops to the fen country,” said Badger Skull. “But he was not there. We were there, and if he had been too I would have killed him myself. He may be in London, he may be on the road between or he may have another rathole to hide in. Finding him will be a challenge for any hunter. You may have to sit and watch in the shadows. You may have to track him by his friends. But you are not just any hunter, brother. And that is why we came to you.”