The Oversight

by Charlie Fletcher

  “But I assure you it is,” spluttered The Smith. “The driver of the Hackney that brought me here was quite definite on the matter.”

  “I am afraid you have been worked on,” said Coram, drawing himself a prideful inch taller. “This is the house of Templebane & Templebane.”

  A sharp eye would have seen The Smith drop his bumbling look for an instant as the name hit him, but Coram was reaching past him to open the street door and so missed it.

  “Who and who?” said The Smith.

  “Mr Issachar and Mr Zebulon Templebane, Attorneys at Law,” said Coram with a hint of pride. “My fathers.”

  “Templebane,” said The Smith. “An interesting name.”

  “But not the one you were seeking, I am afraid,” said Coram, pushing him politely back out into the street.

  “I have one question,” said The Smith, putting his foot in the door as Coram tried to close it.

  Coram rolled his eyes.

  “I am sorry,” he said, the smile wearing thin now. “I do not know where Chapman’s chambers are. I have never heard of him.”

  “That wasn’t my question,” said The Smith, who suddenly, to Coram’s surprise, did not look so bucolic and doddery as he had seemed a moment ago.

  “My question is: are you expecting sunshine?”

  And he looked up into the drizzle.

  “Sorry?” said Coram.

  The Smith pointed to the smoked glass pince-nez hanging from the ribbon around his neck.

  “I think you’re not going to need those today, are you?”

  Coram fumbled his fingers towards the glasses, and then let them fall limply to his side as The Smith’s eyes bored into his.

  “I am The Smith. You will forget that when I am gone, but if anyone should come to you and say that The Smith sent them, you will accommodate them. And if you happen to be wearing those glasses when they come, you will take them off and look directly into their eyes, do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Coram, looking slightly puzzled.

  “Good,” said The Smith. “And as a last parting gift, would you be so kind as to tell me the name of the man who came here in a black coach earlier, and left looking a little exercised?”

  “Viscount Mountfellon?” said Coram dully. “You mean him?”

  “I didn’t,” said The Smith. “But now I do.” And hearing footsteps approaching from behind Coram, he turned and walked off into the passing crowd.

  Coram sneezed three times and then jumped as Issachar tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Who was that, boy?” he said, peering into the street.

  “Just someone, no one, Father,” said Coram, shaking his head to clear it. “Wrong address.”

  “Well, stop standing there in a dwam and close the door. We don’t need the weather inside,” said Templebane. “And mop that up.”

  The Raven was still perched patiently on the roof overlooking the house at the end of Chandos Place. Its black and lively eyes were fixed on the contrastingly opaque milk-glass windows opposite, windows that kept whatever happened within the building entirely invisible from the outside. It was a peculiar arrangement: when seen in conjunction with the main door which was offset and not in the centre of the façade, as might have been expected from the otherwise symmetrical Georgian proportions, it gave the building a wall-eyed, crippled look, as if it were blind and tilting to one side.

  If the Raven had been a fanciful bird, it might have thought it an unlucky building.

  “A crooked man in a crooked house,” said Hodge, five floors below in the dog cart. “Have a closer look, shall we?”

  Jed trotted across the street and began to sniff his way around the perimeter of Mountfellon’s house as if in search of rats.

  The rain squalled into a greater fury, and Hodge pulled his coat tighter round his neck as big drops spattered the street around him.

  The Raven fluttered over the road, somehow unbothered by the water pouring out of the sky at right angles to its slow trajectory. It landed on the top of the portico and tapped at the glazing bars which divided each sash into six panes of glass.

  “Iron,” said Hodge in surprise. “Now that’s something you don’t see.”

  The raven dropped to the front step and hopped up to the door, rapping its beak against it once.

  “And an iron door,” said Hodge. “Well. Someone’s protecting himself.”

  The Raven curved round the side of the house to where Jed had smelled a rat and was forcing his head down a drain-hole in order to smell it better. Jed and the Raven had an unspoken agreement. Whenever Jed killed a rat, which he did on strict principle and not out of any desire to eat them, the Raven got to pick at the squishy bits, which he particularly enjoyed.

  Hodge looked up at the milky-eyed house.

  “I don’t like this,” he said. “Not much at all I don’t like it.”

  It wasn’t just the blank and well-protected face of the building. It was the rain-slick roof tiles above it. They pricked his memory like a twinge from a bad conscience and made him think of other roofs recently visited, and coops full of dead birds.

  In the teeth of this new crisis, he was aware that he was perhaps dangerously ignoring the day-to-day duties of The Oversight entirely.

  CHAPTER 39

  ILL-MET

  Zebulon Templebane travelled north through Bethnal Green, secure in his night carriage which was driven by his son Bassetshaw who rode with two blunderbusses hanging in coaching holsters on either side of his narrow seat. Bassetshaw spat out his chewing tobacco as they crested the narrow bridge over the Regent’s Canal, and had the satisfaction of seeing the wad break the calm crescent of the reflected moon into rippled shards beneath them. At the bottom of Mutton Lane, Zebulon banged sharply on the roof and Bassetshaw stopped the coach abruptly, with little regard for the mouths of the two horses as he tugged on the bits and yanked the brake with his other hand.

  For a moment they sat there in the quiet of the street, the only movement being the steam coming off the horses’ backs in the chill of the night, backlit by the half-moon.

  A trap slid open behind Bassetshaw’s shoulder.

  “You have the guns?”

  “Loaded with iron nails, Father, as you said,” said Bassetshaw. “I don’t need to be told twice. Especially on a night like this.”

  “When we next stop, cock them both and be ready when I am talking to them. At all times be alert. You know what to look for.”

  “You could stay in the coach, Father,” said Bassetshaw.

  “I won’t show fear to them, boy. We never have, not us nor our father nor his grandfather and all the way back. Show them fear and you open a door into your mind that they will happily exploit. Have you your spectacles?”

  “Father…”

  “Put them on. I do not want them working on your mind while your finger is on the trigger. Now mind me: if you have to shoot, shoot straight. Only shoot in extremis, only if it goes bad, then shoot straight, shoot fast and think of nothing but hitting those closest to me first.”

  “But, Father, what if I hit you?”

  A grim laugh trickled out of the trap and Bassetshaw glanced back to see Zebulon attaching his own smoked-glass spectacles inside the darkness of the coach.

  “If it goes wrong and I am still within their reach, better you should hit me than they take me off into the dark. But don’t worry. I carry iron of my own. Now drive on and stop at the junction at the top of this street. There’ll be a triangle of grass where three roads meet, and that’s where we’ll find them. Move now.”

  When they stopped a couple of minutes later, the grass was deserted. The travellers from the previous night had travelled on, leaving only the scorched patch where they had lit their camp-fire as a memorial. The grass was pale as frost in the moonlight, and Bassetshaw shivered at an unseasonal coldness borne towards him by the wind gently soughing through the leaves and shadows of the trees ahead. He had the strong sense of being on the edge of s
omething, with the warmth of the known city huddled at his back and the chill of the unseen country ahead stretching away into a wilder world beyond his ken. He quickly cocked both blunderbusses and laid one across his knees while holding the other ready. He only realised he had forgotten to breathe when he exhaled involuntarily and sucked in a big breath to ease the ache in his lungs.

  “Breathe steady, boy,” said Zebulon from the trapdoor behind him. “This is no time to swoon.”

  “What do we do?” whispered Bassetshaw.

  “Wait.”

  Time passed. A dog barked somewhere on the far side of the canal, but it was too late at night for any other dogs to join the chorus. An owl screeched in the woods ahead and something small and low to the ground rushed out of the undergrowth and disappeared into the ditch with a splash. Then there was more quiet for quite a long time.

  “There’s no one coming,” whispered Bassetshaw.

  “They’re here,” said Templebane and opened the coach door. As he eased his bulk onto the road, the springs squealed in relief and the coach bounced lightly. He stretched and pointed at the road.

  “Mutton Lane. It’s on a way-line, as is that road and that one. Where the old way-lines meet like this there’s always more than a fair chance a watcher has been set.”

  “I don’t see anyone,” Bassetshaw whispered.

  “Good…” said the darkness. And Bassetshaw forgot to breathe again. Nothing moved for another long time.

  “Father…” he breathed.

  “Don’t whimper, boy,” said Templebane.

  “Where is our flag?” hissed a different bit of darkness. Bassetshaw whirled his blunderbuss in the direction it came from.

  “It’s safe,” said Templebane, walking calmly into the centre of the grassy triangle.

  “Safe?” said the darkness from the other side to which it had just spoken, “Safe?”

  Bassetshaw had just turned to cover that particular bit of darkness when a voice came from right behind him.

  “We had a bargain,” it rasped.

  Templebane was not reacting to the game of hide and seek. He just stood four-square and talked to the darkness straight ahead of him.

  “The bargain was that you would turn the girl’s mind so that she would follow our instructions once in the house.”

  “We did,” said the darkness.

  “She didn’t,” said Templebane.

  “Impossible,” snarled the darkness, suddenly making itself visible as the tall Sluagh with the billycock hat crowned with woodcock beaks detached from the shadows. He did so so suddenly that Bassetshaw nearly shot him, shocked by the fact that he had been looking at him for a good five minutes but had thought him part of the tree trunk.

  “That is impossible,” hissed the Sluagh.

  “Well,” shrugged Templebane. “There are those who would say the Sluagh are impossible, the stuff of nightmares, old wives’ tales and fairy stories, but here you are…”

  “What do you mean?” said the Sluagh, slowly circling round him.

  “That the impossible happens,” said Templebane. “The world is too various for it not to.”

  The Sluagh shook his head as if trying to rid himself of a troublesome horsefly instead of an unwelcome idea.

  “We had a bargain,” he repeated.

  “No,” said Templebane.

  And before he could continue, and much faster than Bassetshaw could possibly react to, he had a bronze blade at Zebulon’s throat and the Sluagh was behind him, his other hand twined in the man’s hair and pulling his head back.

  “No?” said the Sluagh. “No? I will skin you for that…”

  Zebulon Templebane was a strong man. He kept his head straight.

  “No,” he said. “We have a bargain. It is just not yet fulfilled.”

  The Sluagh tugged at his head again.

  “I should point out that my right hand holds a small pistol somewhat awkwardly pointed at your stomach, but pointed there none the less. The pistol is charged with iron filings. At this range you will enjoy it quite as little as I am enjoying your blade at my neck.”

  The Sluagh held him for a beat and then stepped away, disappearing the blade inside his long coat as if it had never been there.

  “Where is our flag?” he growled.

  “Your flag is out of your grasp but remains within your reach. If you still want it.”

  “Of course we still want it. It is ours.”

  “Then find the girl and it will be in your hands.”

  “Why should we find her? We gave her to you. We turned her mind, and that of the drinking man who carried her. You lost her…”

  “No!” said Templebane, the syllable sharp as a whip-crack in the night quiet. “You did not bind her mind enough, and she has escaped.”

  “No, no…” said the Sluagh, waving a finger at Templebane as he began to pace round him again slowly, like a big cat circling its prey. “You want a new deal. You sent your son on an errand…”

  And he tossed something onto the ground between them. It was a rectangle of brass with a recently broken leather strap: the words “Mute but Intelligent” clearly readable even at ten paces distance.

  Templebane cocked his head, betraying surprise for an instant before covering it up with his impregnable smile.

  “Yes, yes,” continued the Sluagh. “We know who you serve, man-inthe-middle. We know where our flag must be. Here is a new bargain: your son for the flag. I can have him brought here tomorrow night. Bring the flag or I will cut his—”

  Templebane broke the night with a bullet of dry laughter.

  “Cut him where you will. That bargain is not to our taste or our interest.”

  The Sluagh stared at him. Templebane shrugged his great shoulders and smiled wider.

  “We have many ‘sons’. One more or less is not even an inconvenience. The poorhouses of London are full of replacements.”

  The Sluagh circled closer and peered into his eyes.

  “You think to pitch your cruelty against mine? You think you can make your heart harder than one who has forsworn the ease of daylight and embraced the dark?”

  “Foreswearing the daylight does not impress me much,” said the Night Father, holding his gaze. “We both know daylight is dilute, watery stuff when compared with the richness of the night.”

  The Sluagh shook his head.

  “We Shadowgangers have dealt with your family for generations. If you do not know we will walk away from a broken bargain without a qualm, you have learned nothing of our ways or the strength of our will and our honour. You know less than nothing, for what you think you know is wrong—”

  “I know you want the flag.”

  “WE HAVE WANTED OUR FLAG FOR CENTURIES!” shouted the Sluagh. “But we can wait. Maybe your son’s sons will be better men to deal with.”

  And with that he spun on his heel, clattering the small bones hanging off his tattered coat, and walked away towards the darkness of the woods.

  “The boy who does not speak, cunning man? Your son? Do not expect to see him again.”

  As he stepped into the darkness, Templebane spoke.

  “I can offer you more than the flag.”

  There was a beat of silence and then the darkness spoke with a weary laugh.

  “Go away. Our business is done. Your father’s father was a better man than you or your brother, Zebulon Templebane.”

  “No,” said Templebane. “No, he was not. Because he could never have offered you what we can: he could never have offered you the destruction of The Oversight and the end of Law and Lore.”

  The hiss that greeted this seemed to come from all around, and Bassetshaw was suddenly horrified to see how many of the innocent shadows and shapes around him stepped forward and revealed themselves to be Sluagh.

  There were seven and they all looked into the darkness which had enveloped the tall one. After another moment he walked straight out of it and back towards Templebane.

  “How?” he said.<
br />
  Zebulon unwrapped the square of paper Mountfellon had given him earlier. He held it out, the fragment of bloodstone stark against the whiteness that held it.

  The Sluagh stared at it, poking it with his finger.

  “This is from her own ring,” said Templebane.

  “Unicorn,” said the Sluagh, looking up at him. “She is one of The Oversight then?”

  Templebane laughed.

  “No. Not at all. Even she does not know what she is. But I know she is the means of their destruction.”

  The Sluagh picked up the bloodstone and put it in his mouth. He held his lips open and Templebane saw it vibrating between his teeth as he tasted its resonance. The Sluagh looked round at his blood brothers. All had the same expression: teeth clenched, lips drawn back, nostrils distended as if they too were tasting the stone. One by one they nodded and turned away. In a moment there was just the one with the woodcock crown. He spat the stone back into the paper in Templebane’s hand.

  “We have her taste. My brethren will pass her on one to another. If she is abroad we will find her.” And with that he turned and was, for the last time, part of the darkness again.

  Two minutes passed and neither Zebulon Templebane nor Bassetshaw moved. Then Bassetshaw cleared his throat.

  “Have they gone?” he whispered.

  Templebane turned and walked back to the coach without meeting his eyes.

  “They are always somewhere in the dark,” he said. “Watching.”

  The coach tilted as he opened the door and hoisted himself on to the step.

  “Amos…” said Bassetshaw.

  The face Templebane turned suddenly up at him was terrible in the moonlight. There was no more emotion than an axe-head.

  “Amos is dead. As you will be if you breathe a word of this to your brothers.”

  CHAPTER 40

  THE ALP IN THE ATTIC

  The breath-stealer had made a bad mistake. It knew it as soon as it saw the man with the terrier for the second time. It looked out of the narrow garret window, jammed in beneath the dripping eaves of the high building, and saw him in the flat space between the mismatched roofs of the buildings below, searching among the pigeon coops by the light of a lantern. The coops were empty now, only feathers showing where the dead pigeons had been.