The Remnant

by Charlie Fletcher

there was silence.

  And she was in the water, but she could not see the city.

  And in this moment there is nothing but the pain of the now: no past, no future.

  And she can see nothing but flame.

  And failure.

  And her hand, reaching, trying to catch the sky, trying to hold onto the air, trying to stop the growling river swallowing her too.

  She is the last of the Last Hand.

  She does not wonder if there will be another.

  She does not wonder if one day The Smith will return and build anew.

  She only wonders why snow is falling again, this early in the year.

  CHAPTER 54

  FIRE ON FIRE

  The Wildfire would burn the city.

  The Wildfire would burn the world.

  The Wildfire would burn everything but itself.

  And Emmet knows this. And that is why he walks into the fireball.

  That is why he can walk into the fireball. That is why he was made. That is why he is a hollowness.

  That is why he ignores his clothes flamed to cinders as they burn off his powerful clay body.

  That is why he ignores the pain of the conflagration as it wraps around him, for Emmet does indeed feel pain. He feels it as keenly as if he was made of flesh and blood.

  That is why, as the explosion bellies a rapidly expanding circle of flame across the Thames as it searches for new things to burn, he is reaching for the still, small point that will now not move until the world has been put ablaze by the spreading ripple of fire.

  And that is why he grabs the tiny brightest candle flame at the centre of the light.

  And crams it in his mouth.

  The candle tumbles into the void inside him and he breathes in, and as he breathes in he grips the Green Man’s bracelet and feels the deeproot strength of the oak and the healing of the ash and the resolute protection of the thorn, and he keeps breathing in.

  And the sound of his inbreath is low, an almost subsonic scream borne on a mighty wind.

  And the scream is a scream and it is his scream but it is only part pain and the other part is defiance, because Emmet is now, at the end, everything Sharp felt him to be, and part of the reason that he is this—a feeling being, with a mind of his own beyond mere mulish obedience—is because Jack Sharp befriended him and loved him and in so doing showed him how to be more than the empty clay automaton his original creator had made him to be.

  So the pain was part physical, as the Wildfire hardened him, firing the wet clay of his body from within, beginning to turn him into that unmoving statue he sometimes resembled, and it was a heart’s pain too, a farewell to the freedom of motion, of life.

  The part of the scream that was defiance was life’s own shout, hurled into the destructive core of the fire he was swallowing.

  He felt his hand beginning to stiffen as the Wildfire acted like an internal kiln. Before he dropped it, he jammed the Green Man’s bracelet around his wrist. The woven twigs stretched and a couple sprang free, but the amulet stayed together, and as he looked around the featureless, roaring world of fire in the middle of which he now stood, he saw the city slowly fade in and reappear as the ball of flame was sucked back towards him by his screaming indrawn breath, and then he saw it clear again, with no flames between him and it as the Wildfire was all pulled back inside him and he clamped his mouth shut, clenching his jaw tight.

  Sara, in the water, surfaced in time to see him swallow the last of the Wildfire.

  “Emmet!” she shouted.

  The clay man turned towards her, moving with great effort now, with an unusually creaky movement. And in the instant before he toppled stiffly over the side of the tilting deck and disappeared into the water below, she saw three things.

  His empty eye sockets were now full of fire.

  He looked down at the hand on the arm that bore the Green Man’s bracelet.

  And then he looked up at her.

  And tried to force his hardening face into a smile.

  It is Sara who is now hollow inside. Where her heart was is nothing but a great void, an inner emptiness to match the brutal loss of her friends, her companions, her one true love.

  Maybe it is the hollowness that keeps her afloat, moving downriver, away from Traitor’s Gate, away from the cut at Irongate Steps, towards the great curve of Blackwall Reach, hidden around the bend ahead of her. Maybe it is this hollowness that stops her sinking into the comforting oblivion beneath the cold river water.

  Maybe it’s just duty.

  She decides to cry later, and starts swimming towards the passing riverbank.

  It is dark under the gravel, and he cannot move.

  If he could move, he would move his hand inside his jacket and then he could light a candle and then he would be able to see and then he remembers he could not because he is blind and he would laugh if he could get a full breath, but he can’t. There is hard gravel and cold mud between his teeth. He tries to move again but, despite his great strength, the weight of debris has him clamped tight.

  He feels a sharp pain in his legs as he tries to twist and realises that they are broken.

  It does not matter. He stops twisting. He will be gone soon.

  Something growls in protest and he realises Jed is in his head.

  He grins but his mouth is half full of mud and stones.

  He remembers he can see through Jed’s eyes if he tries and so he does so.

  All he can see is a blur of gravel and mud and paws, too many paws and then he realises Archie is digging next to his father, the young dog tearing at the landslide with equal fury.

  Hodge is glad he got Jed across that red-haired bitch. At least the bloodline will continue.

  At least he is now seeing the light, even if it is through his terrier’s eyes and not his own. At least he will not die in the dark. And Jed too is telling him he will not die alone.

  That’s something.

  It feels like his chest is being crushed from all sides. He can’t expand his lungs any more.

  It doesn’t matter. The air in the narrow pocket between the beam of wood and the gravel is not enough to breathe much more of anyway.

  He is beginning to fade now. Even what he can see through Jed’s eyes is becoming faint and jumpy. He can feel his grip on what was and what is beginning to loosen, maybe because what will be is now nothing, nothing and more nothing, for ever.

  It’s not so bad.

  There is comfort in knowing he is not alone and he drifts into the past, to when he was a boy, to the long brutal night he spent trying to dig Jig, his first terrier, out of a collapsed hole in a riverbank just like this. The night his heart first broke. He’d failed, but he hadn’t stopped digging until he’d found the dog’s body, hoping for a miracle right up until the very last.

  He’d sworn he’d never lose another dog, and he never had.

  That was something.

  And he now knew that not giving up on Jig had given the long-departed dog some comfort as it died in the dark, alone but not alone.

  That was something else.

  And the last thing he saw, before he lost his connection with Jed, was that other hands were joining the dogs’ paws, helping scoop away the gravel, but they were not hands that he recognised, not friends’ hands, they were hands looped and whorled with dark tattoos, the hands of enemies, impossible hands, and so he knew his oxygen-starved mind was now giving him hallucinations, and so before he lost the ability, he told Jed that he was the best friend he’d ever had and that he loved him, but that he would have to go now and it was all right.

  He told him that Charlie Pyefinch would look after him now, and that he in turn should look after Archie who was a fine young pup but needed some …

  … and then he forgot what the younger dog needed and told Jed to stop digging, because he could feel the dog’s great heart pounding to bursting point, and he knew that Jed, being a terrier, would literally work himself to death rather than give up any kind o
f fight.

  He told him he was a good dog.

  And then the next shallow breath wouldn’t draw in and the nothing he had known was coming arrived and the world went away.

  And outside in the air a high keening note cut through the sound of the digging and the Sluagh paused in their work and looked down at the inconsolable dog howling up at the failing light through which snow was beginning to fall.

  CHAPTER 55

  TIME PASSED

  And now, weeks later, it is Christmas and London lies buried under a deep blanket of snow, which for a brief, unsullied moment makes everything look magical and clean.

  Out on the Isle of Dogs, on the coldest curve of Blackwall Reach, The Folley is silent. No smoke comes from the chimney, the kitchen is empty and the forge is cold. There are two long mounds between the holly and the rowan behind the forge. They are dug close to each other, as if for companionship and shared warmth against the cold. There are no headstones, but one has a huge and much-used copper cooking pot on top of it, and the other has a narrow-bladed ratcatcher’s spade at its head. There is an old half-barrel on its side by the spade, and inside this improvised kennel is a well-worn dog blanket.

  Of the dog there is no sign.

  The vacant lot in Wellclose Square where the Safe House once stood is a flat expanse of white, and the congregation emerging from the Danish Church in the middle of the square is treated to an uninterrupted view of St. George Street, the London Docks and the glitter of the river beyond.

  In Templebanes’ counting-house the snow on the skylights has brought an unaccustomed gloom to the long main room. A figure stands listening to the silence, just beside the stove where Abchurch met his end. He shakes himself, pulls a coat from the stool at his side and walks to the main door. He locks it, for it is his house now and he values its contents if not its history, and limps out into the street, heading north.

  “Merry Christmas, Mr. Self!” says the greengrocer’s boy, who is sweeping the snow from the pavement opposite.

  The figure nods and gives him a smile.

  Despite himself he hears the boy’s thoughts.

  ’E’s not like the rest of them Templebanes as used to live there. Maybe that’s why ’e changed ’is name to Self. Anyway. ’E’s all right, that one, for all ’e’s a mute.

  Amos Self grins. The boy is correct. He is all right. And he changed his name because he didn’t belong to any damn Templebane. He took the name of the one person he did belong to.

  In the Bedlam Hospital, Coram Templebane, now the last to bear the name, sits and looks out at the snow-covered courtyard below, wondering if Bill Ketch will bring him something special to eat for his Christmas meal when he has finished gently escorting the grey-haired madwoman who is carefully walking round and round, well muffled against the cold as she happily looks into the sky and snatches at the air, trying to catch snowflakes as they fall.

  He does not hear the Ghost tell Ketch that they are not snowflakes, but May blossoms, and that now all is well and spring has come and her daughter will be coming to see her soon, and will no doubt bring sugar-plums as she did yesterday.

  The house on Chandos Place is no longer milk-eyed and blank-looking. The opaque window-panes have been replaced with clear glass, and through it can be seen candles and the warm glow of the fires banked up within.

  The whey-faced girl watches from the bedroom window opposite as a man’s hand reaches up to the front door and knocks on it, the bloodstone ring on his finger making a sharp rapping noise.

  A slender young woman, newly elegant in a green oiled silk riding habit, opens the door. Her dark hair is pulled back and her gloved hand, which she extends in greeting, also bears a ring.

  “Amos,” she says with a smile. “Welcome.”

  Merry Christmas, Lucy Harker.

  He looks at the thick garlands of evergreen boughs decorating the hall behind her.

  Your house is looking very festive.

  “That was Ida. She and Charlie are in the kitchen arguing about the pudding,” she says, beckoning him in. “And it’s not just my house, Amos. It’s all of ours.”

  Sara Falk is walking down the stairs, leaning on Emmet’s arm to hide her limp.

  “That’s why it’s called the Safe House,” Sara says. “Now come in. Jack has been making something called a wassail cup from Cook’s book of receipts and whatever it is I think we should help him drink it before he tastes any more. There’s a severe danger he might start singing if he keeps sampling, and though I’d follow him to the end of the world, the truth is he couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.”

  Emmet moves with unaccustomed stiffness, which makes him almost stately as he walks at Sara’s side.

  In the aftermath of the massacre at Irongate Steps, Sara engaged another tug for three weeks, fruitlessly scouring the riverbed for his body, reporting her failure to the recovering Sharp every night. It was actually Jed who found him early one morning when Charlie, still recuperating from his own wounds, limped to the riverside at Traitor’s Gate to see what the old dog was barking so insistently at: low tide had revealed a familiar clay hand wound around a rusting chain shackled to one of the pilings, just below the waterline. Emmet had seemingly hardened into a statue, and the Wildfire was gone from within him. They had taken the unmoving figure straight to The Folley in the dog cart, convinced he was lost, intending to inter him next to Cook and Hodge, only to have Sharp notice that his arm still bore the triple-wood bracelet, and claim he felt living warmth in his hand.

  Sharp had insisted on sitting with him, holding that hand and talking to him and sleeping on a palette beside him for almost a week, after which the golem had slowly sat up one morning and leant over and woken the sleeping Sharp with a slow smile.

  It was at that point that things generally seemed to have taken a turn for the better, and Emmet was well on the road to regaining his former mobility.

  Amos smiles at the golem.

  You have a new coat.

  Emmet looks at him and nods slowly.

  Jack Sharp gave it to me. He made a joke.

  Jack Sharp made a joke?

  He pretended he wouldn’t give it to me until I told him where I have hidden the Wildfire.

  And did you?

  Of course not. It’s our job to protect it. And it’s safer if no one else knows, because then no one can tell.

  And then when nobody else was looking, he winked at Amos behind Sara’s back.

  And I can’t talk, Amos Self.

  Lucy Harker remains behind in the doorway with her back to the plain Georgian grandeur of the pillared hall, looking out at the snow-muffled street. She can’t believe this is her house, that she has a home, but she is Mountfellon’s only child, and though she did not appear on any will he made, she did appear on the one his lawyers immediately believed he had made following a visit from Sara and Sharp. Lucy asked them if using their powers on the unsuspecting normal attorney was not a violation of The Oversight’s prime mission, to stop the natural and the supranatural from preying on each other.

  Sara had snorted and Sharp had gripped her shoulders and told her very firmly that Law and Lore was one thing, but that natural justice was there before they were. And he, and all of them had a great debt to nature, due to the healing power of the Green Man’s triple-wood bracelets. The hidden force of the deep green was perhaps the oldest and most normally benign of the supranatural powers that The Oversight came into contact with, and they did that so rarely that Sharp understood very little of it. But he and Charlie certainly owed their lives to it.

  She closed the door and followed the noise to join the others in the kitchen below, not thinking about Law and Lore, or natural justice, just happy there were so many of them down there: Sharp, Sara, Charlie Pyefinch, Amos and Emmet made five. A full complement for a Last Hand, even if Ida went back to Austria as she was due to do at the turn of the year.

  And then there was the tall woman presently fussing over the glistening bronze turkey, t
he strangely reassuring one who had recently taken over the cooking (on the strict understanding this was only a temporary measure, as she and her tough and cheerful husband overwintered their wagon in the mews behind the house instead of their more normal out of season billet with the other show-people in the yard behind the Old Harry Inn). Who was to say they might not relent their current refusal and be the basis of a new, second hand? It would certainly make their son very happy to have Rose and Barnaby Pyefinch close by, especially since he was now going to be much less likely to travel, due to his new duties as Terrier Man to the Tower of London.

  He would need something cheering if Ida left, thought Lucy, seeing how he watched the girl carefully topping up the water in the boiling pan in which the knotted muslin ball that contained Cook’s last plum pudding was steaming. She had refused to let anyone near it in the weeks leading up to the feast, keeping it topped up with brandy and making it quite clear that Rose’s culinary duties stopped at the precise point where she, Ida, would be fulfilling Cook’s final wish.

  That wasn’t why Charlie was unable to stop looking at her. She was—scandalously—not wearing her normal soft leather hunting garb, but a previously unsuspected tight-fitting dress and low-cut under-blouse which revealed a trim-waisted curvaceousness that her usual more utilitarian garb failed to make apparent.

  “Not a dress, idiot,” Ida had said with a toss of her pigtails when he’d first sputtered his surprise on seeing her in the unaccustomed clothes. “This is a special occasion, no? Can’t be Trousers all the time. It’s a dirndl.”

  “That’s not a dirndl,” Sara had said under her breath, for Sharp’s ears only. “That’s a provocation. Charlie’s gone redder than Cook’s handkerchief.”

  And then she saw that Lucy had overheard, and stared at her. Lucy had felt embarrassed for a moment until Sara dropped an eyelid at her in what was, most disconcertingly, a friendly wink.

  Lucy looked at them all cheerfully arranging themselves around the groaning table piled high with all manner of festive foodstuff.