The Remnant

by Charlie Fletcher

  “Found what?” said Armbruster.

  “Sara Falk’s hand,” said Lucy. “He got lost in the mirrors looking for it, but …”

  She stopped, trying to work out how to explain it and figure out why Cait was stepping on her foot again.

  “Well, he ain’t lost now,” said Magill. “He knows his way round the mirrors better than anyone could. That’s why he’s looking for more of these, that’s how come we’re here, reporting on what we found so the First Circle here is up to speed.”

  “And what have you found?” said Cait.

  “Closest way I can tell it is this,” said Magill, “and this is Sharp’s view, really: the French, you know the Paladin? They been working against The Oversight and The Remnant ever since never was ever. And they found out about the mirrors, and they didn’t like the way the Spanish and the British were carving out new colonies on this side of the Ocean.”

  “So they decided to cheat,” said Armbruster. “They paid woodsmen from Upper Canada, that is fur traders and coureurs des bois, French and Scots mainly, to move fast and deep into uncharted territory. They didn’t survey and they didn’t leave settlements as they went. They just upped and headed west, travelling light except for two things.”

  “Mirrors and these tablets,” said Magill. “It was a genius scheme, except for it broke the prime law we’re all sworn to uphold.”

  “Which is that the supranatural is not to predate upon the natural,” said Cait.

  “Yep,” said Magill. “And vice versa. Except they was sent by kings, and kings cheat and lie as easy as other folks breathe air. Which is why The Remnant and The Oversight never had kings in their number. The French though, the Paladin? They ran things different. And this one French king got so obsessed by mirrors I heard tell he built a vast hall of them in his palace at Versailles, hoping to use it as a place to go anywhere in the world he wished to, once they’d mapped the trails beyond the glass.”

  “See, the plan was to plant new mirrors as far into uncharted territory as they could, then head back, resupply, and then leapfrog by jumping to the last mirror placed without having to trek on foot, and continue pushing on west,” said Armbruster. “These tablets, they put them on the closest, highest point in the surrounding area to where they’d cached the mirrors, in case they got lost. They’re always hidden in a cavern or a crack in a mountain or some such. The writing gives precise directions to the mirror.”

  “Was mainly a family of trappers called de la Vérendrye done it, but it wasn’t just coureurs des bois,” said Magill. “They got one tough little Scottish kid called Mackenzie to walk all the way to the damn Pacific, years before Lewis and Clark done it.”

  “Anyway,” said Armbruster, “it was a scheme as would have given the French control of everything, once they’d started putting settlers and soldiers through the mirrors. But they had them a revolution and cut that king’s head off, and something broke the mirrors, so the passages don’t quite seem to line up like they did, and they never finished their plan.”

  “And this is what Jack Sharp has you helping him with?” said Cait. “Why would he need your help?”

  “Because we’re mountain men,” said Armbruster. “The chain of mirrors the de la Vérendryes strung out across the uncharted territory is broken. And that’s a good thing. But we don’t know where they all are, and we don’t want those who were behind the plan thinking to repair it and use it again. So what Sharp can’t scout through what remains of the mirror’d world, we been scouting in the real world.”

  “A two-pronged attack,” said Magill.

  He pointed at the tablet.

  “We didn’t find that one. It was brought to us by a Dakotay from up in the Black Hills,” said Armbruster. “But this is all by the by. Point is we’re engaged to help Sharp map the hidden mirrors and neutralise them, and because of that we can give you a shortcut of sorts.”

  “We can have you in St. Louis in a minute,” said Magill. “Murano Cabinets mean you don’t even have to walk the mirror’d world. You could outfit yourselves for the territories, if you had cash money and we got another pair of mirrors set up where the Laramie meets the Platte at Fort John but like Fred said, I wouldn’t recommend two young ladies getting themselves snowed in with the kind of lowlifes that hang around the fort until spring. You should stay in St. Louis and overwinter there in comfort.”

  “Where is Sharp?” said Lucy.

  “Sharp’s in the mirrors,” said Magill. “But we got a rendezvous planned to see him.”

  “In London?” said Lucy.

  “No,” said Armbruster. “That takes days, from what I hear. No, there are no shortcuts to London. Maybe there was once, mirror to mirror, but there aren’t any more. You have to walk the long passages of glass to get there and though it’s faster than a sea passage, it’s likely a brutal walk. No. We’ll meet on this continent, and we’re engaged to report on what the Guardian here does, whether or not she agrees with the plan.”

  “Is that so?” said Cait. Lucy wondered if the momentary smile on her lips was to do with the prospect of seeing Sharp, for whom she had expressed admiration on several occasions. Admiration and something a little baser, something that curdled in Lucy’s heart and stung like jealousy.

  “What plan?” she said, hoping to move the subject on. Magill pulled his ear thoughtfully before speaking.

  “Ever since things went real bad real fast with the first settlers and the Indians, there’s been an agreement not to interfere with them, not to have their gifted work with ours. Our two ways of seeing the world don’t match up, see. So we don’t deal with them, they don’t mess with us. We stay separate, and funnily enough, that’s how we stay friends. But Sharp thinks we should ask them to look for the tablets, so he can deal with the mirrors and stop unscrupulous leftovers of the Paladin reviving it. Those who’d put king and country or gold before keeping the balance between the natural and the supranatural. There’s a damn sight more of them than us, and they know the land a thousand times better than we do. It’s in both our interests.”

  “We don’t have the power to make that decision,” said Magill.

  “And Jon’s leery of it,” said Armbruster.

  “Just a lick,” said Magill. “Seems good on the surface, but I don’t know if it’s a good thing to start pulling the Indians into our doings. Not like they ever come well out of it when that happens. Still, it’s the devil and the deep blue sea, so I’m happy for older and wiser heads to have a say on whether we should jump with Sharp’s plan.”

  “And what has the Circle decided?” said Cait.

  “Guardian is minded to agree with Sharp,” said Armbruster. “Just this once. That’s what we’re telling Sharp when we see him.”

  “You got more questions, you can ask him yourself,” said Magill, looking at Lucy. “If you’d like to take us up on our invitation?”

  “We’ll come with you,” said Cait. “Once we’ve got Mrs. Tittensor’s dog, that is. If that’s all right with you, Miss Harker?”

  Lucy nodded. The “Miss Harker” stung, as was intended.

  “It will be good to see Sharp,” she said. And in her head she thought the best thing about it would be his advice on whether to spend a winter in this St. Louis or not. Perhaps as a member of The Oversight he could take responsibility for Cait, if that was what The Remnant required, and Lucy might be able to be, finally, free to start a fresh life of her own in this new country.

  Magill and Armbruster excused themselves and said they would go and communicate the decision to the Guardian who seemed to have got waylaid in her stated plan to bring them coffee.

  Lucy looked at Cait.

  “I was trying to help,” she said. “And I have helped. And you’re behaving like I’m suddenly your enemy.”

  Cait said nothing.

  “Do you trust them?” said Lucy.

  “Trust is a romantic notion,” said Cait, not turning to look at her as she spoke. “And you heard the gentlemen say what r
omanticism gets you out here in this brave new world you think so much of …”

  “And Sharp being here,” said Lucy. “That’s good, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe,” said Cait.

  “Maybe?”

  Lucy was filled with a very strong urge to hit Cait, just to get a reaction from her. She bunched her fists and jammed them in the pocket of her coat, sitting hunched and miserable in front of the fire.

  “A lot of things could have happened in London while we were on the voyage over,” said Cait. “But as to this plan, once the Tittensor woman’s dog is here, if it gets me west, we go with it. And if we see Jack Sharp, no one’ll be more please than I.”

  Lucy waited for her to thank her for enabling it, but Cait just walked over to the Murano Cabinet and examined it as if Lucy was no longer in the room.

  As they closed the door to the meeting room behind them—and discreetly bolted it—Magill spoke softly to his taller partner.

  “She didn’t know about the lead tablets,” said Magill. “The Harker girl.”

  “Saw that,” said Armbruster.

  “Trouble you?” said Magill.

  “Her ring’s real. I looked close,” said Armbruster leading the way up the stairs.

  “But she doesn’t seem to know about Sharp’s mission over here.”

  “She’s a young one, Jon. Maybe they don’t share everything,” said Armbruster.

  “Well. They’re not going anywhere. I like ’em. Both feisty in their ways,” said Magill. “Younger one’s troubled by something, wears it like a cloud, but who isn’t troubled by something? ’Cept you. You’re troubled by everything.”

  “I’ll be less troubled by them when Sharp gets a look at them and confirms they’re both who they say they are,” said Armbruster.

  “Well, it won’t be long. We said we’d step through tomorrow, didn’t we?”

  “We did.”

  “Well, how much trouble can they get into in one night?” said Magill. “We’ll take them to meet Sharp when we make the rendezvous. You keep an eye on the Lucy girl, I’ll keep mine on the redhead. Now let’s go tell the Guardian we’ll take ’em off her hands.”

  “Why do you get to watch the redhead?” said Armbruster.

  “I’m just guarding her, Fred, not taking her to a damn cotillion …”

  CHAPTER 35

  A SCOWLE BY MOONLIGHT

  The Herne had found the Sluagh at the rendezvous that had been set deep within a certain scowle in a wild and largely untravelled area of woodland in the Forest of Dean, “scowles” being the local name for the peculiar rock formations which the entanglement of ancient trees grew out of, a moss-covered maze of pits, hollows and shake-holes, some of which led to secret caverns formed by erosion of the natural underground cave networks that interlaced their way through the limestone beneath.

  “Mountfellon is at Gallstaine,” he told Badger Skull.

  “Good,” said Badger Skull. “We will do what we must do here for the fallen Woodcock Crown he violated, and then we shall go north and violate him in the same manner.”

  “No,” said the Herne. “He is unreachable.”

  The Sluagh band growled in disappointment. The Herne held up his hand.

  “He has a stream of running water circling the house, and I have watched long enough to see he will not cross it. He only moves by the bright light of noon, and I suspect if he travels it will be by fast coach and by daylight.”

  A rumble of protest grew, again waved down by the Herne, whose bone dogs stood on either side of him—tense as bowstrings—like guards.

  “There is another who came to meet him. By sight and by smell, I think him to be an old family of daywalkers known to us. I think he is a Templebane.”

  “Issachar Templebane is known to us, but he is gone from London and we do not know where to find him,” said Badger Skull.

  “Or whether to trust him,” said the Woodcock Crown. “Or just skin him too.”

  There was another low rumble of agreement.

  “Whichever,” said the Herne. “I marked your words about mayhap getting to Mountfellon through his friends, and so I followed him and have found where he and his sons are hiding.”

  “Then we should go and visit him when we are done here,” said Badger Skull, quieting the murmur of the band with a sharp gesture of his hand. “Maybe we should ask him what this business is that takes him to Mountfellon’s lair.”

  There was a general murmur of approval and then, all of a sudden, a woman’s voice cut through it like a clear bell and stilled it instantly.

  “Well met, the Sluagh.”

  It was a deep voice for a woman, and Badger Skull turned from the Herne, who took the opportunity to twitch his head at the bone hounds and fade into the night before the Sluagh and the band at his back were able to take their attention away from the indistinct forms flowing out of the scrabble of darkness in front of them.

  “And well met, the Shee, for here you are,” said Badger Skull. “As and where you always are.”

  And he bowed his head in greeting as a tall woman stepped into a slash of moonlight. One side of her head was clean-shaven, and on the other her hair was long, thick and braided with the bones of small animals. A thick tracery of tattoos circled her head in a band running sideways between her eyebrow and her cheekbones, so it looked as if she was wearing a mask of coarse black lace. The eyes that held Badger Skull’s were steady, blue and unusually pale.

  “We are Shee. You are Sluagh,” she said with a ghost of a shrug. “You choose to troop abroad. We choose to remain.”

  Behind her, a large band of women coalesced out of the tenebrous landscape, all dressed in variations of the theme she set. Her clothes were a long patched leather tunic worn beneath a black and white cloak of magpies’ feathers, the tunic fastened with a wide belt, slit at both sides to reveal doeskin leggings tucked into high, well-worn boots. The whole was decorated with animal bones, like the Sluagh, and around her long neck she wore a thick necklace made from barnacled limpets with a single hawk skull hanging at the centre of it, the beak plated with beaten silver which caught the moonlight as she moved.

  His lips peeled back in a smile as he reached for her.

  “Shee and Sluagh are but two sides of the same leaf, wife.”

  She shook her head and stepped away from his hand.

  “You and I are no mere leaf, husband. Leafs wither, fall, die.”

  “And what are we then?” he said, conscious that the band of Sluagh behind him had seen his overture if not rejected, neatly sidestepped.

  “We are an endless war, broken by truces,” she said. Behind her, the other Shee laughed in quiet approval. He hoisted one side of his mouth higher, turning the smile into a vulpine leer.

  “I like the truces.”

  The Sluagh at his back laughed now, a low ribald sound compared to the more controlled laughter of the women. He reached for her again, and once more she neatly stepped out of his reach.

  “And I the absences,” she said. “In your absence things can grow.”

  A tic of irritation jerked the tattooed lines on his face.

  “You do not just mean bellies and children.”

  “I mean lives. And thinking. And plans.”

  “You have plans,” he said, dropping to sit on the ground with a sigh. “And we have actions. Did you not marvel at how we broke the Iron Prohibition?”

  “It was marvellous,” she said, looking down at him. “But only of real interest to you, who like to go among the daywalkers. To us, who have no interest in their doings, it is less so.”

  “Were you always so hard to impress?” he said with more bitterness than good humour.

  “I hope so,” she said, almost smiling for the first time.

  “But the Iron Prohibition,” he said.

  “It was a great deed,” she said and neatly sat herself against the mound opposite him. “But too late. It was a deed for the old days, for the time when our forefathers made legends of them
selves. Now the time for such things has been overtaken by the daywalkers and the Hungry World. You have broken the chain of iron, but they will still come. It will not stop them. The quiet places and the lonely retreats will be probed and broken and lost.”

  “So they win?” he spat.

  “Yes,” she said. “Maybe they do, if you see everything as a battle. But they do not win because they are right, or more virtuous, or braver or more cunning, husband. They just win because there are more of them, and they have found a way to move faster and dig deeper than we ever can.”

  “I thought we came to bury the Woodcock Crown,” he scowled, “not our hopes.”

  “I did not say we should bury our hopes,” she said. “I said we should make new plans.”

  “New plans for a new world,” he hissed, shaking his head. “You’ve started to sound like one of them.”

  “And you say that as if it’s a bad thing,” she said, cocking her head on one side, giving him a long look.

  “Change is weakness,” he said. “We are Pure because we do not change. Change is betrayal.”

  “And those are just words,” she said. “But if you stay still and watch things grow—from a seed to a tree, from a cub to a fox, from the fleshly pleasure of a … truce, to the laughter of the child that comes from it and on to the strength of the woman or man that child grows into—you cannot see change as a bad thing: you see it as life itself.”

  “You would have us betray our history?” he said. “Our long past?”

  “No,” she said. “I would have you think. But maybe if you stopped holding onto that past by running away from the present, maybe if you stayed still and thought sometimes instead of always being moving and doing, you might come to see things as we have come to see them. And we might have a future.”

  She rose fluidly to her feet. The rest of the Shee rose with her as one.

  “Now let us go and bury this crown. And if you are congenial afterwards, maybe I will tell you what news came to me by a raven from the northern isles.”

  “A raven from the north?” he said, shock and disbelief writhing across the inked lines on his face. “From her? But … I thought she was long gone under the hill …”