The Oversight

by Charlie Fletcher

  As she turned toward the cabinet and the waiting mirrors, The Smith cleared his throat.

  “There is no Ivory to guide you. There is no get-you-home. You will be lost in the mirrors.”

  She whirled on him, cold fury in her eyes.

  “Mr Sharp too is lost! And maybe I will never find him. But then we will be lost together. I will not have my dearest friend go into darkness alone.”

  The silence in the room crackled with things left unsaid.

  “And I will not have you go alone,” said Hodge gruffly.

  He reached up and let the Raven hop onto his hand. He then put the bird onto her shoulder. The Raven clacked its beak and shook itself.

  Sara was unable to speak for a moment.

  “Look after her,” said Hodge.

  Sara swallowed.

  “I will,” she said.

  “I was talking to the Raven,” said Hodge. “It’s a he.”

  The Smith and Cook exchanged a look.

  The Raven nudged Sara’s ear and clacked its beak.

  A ghost of a smile lifted one side of Sara’s mouth.

  Lucy saw it and thought it made her look suddenly invincible.

  “She says, ‘Whatever gave you that idea?’,” said Sara.

  And then without another word, perhaps because she hated goodbyes, perhaps because she could not trust herself to speak, she raised a hand in curt farewell, and stepped into the mirror.

  And then she was gone.

  As they walked silently back out of the room Cook stopped and pointed at the newest handprint on the wall, next to Mr Sharp’s.

  “She lied,” she said, her voice catching.

  “What?” said The Smith.

  She pointed at the handprints and suddenly had to rummage in her bloomers for a clean handkerchief.

  “If Mr Sharp should ever come back, she did tell him she loved him,” she said.

  Under the JS and the SF, midway between the two handprints, were three more letters scratched into the plaster, linking them.

  “Who’s Avo?” said Charlie.

  The letters were A, V and O.

  “Amor vincit omnia,” said The Smith.

  “Love conquers all,” translated Cook, thundering into her handkerchief. “It’s Latin.”

  “Powerful stuff, Latin,” said Lucy.

  Cook stopped wiping her eye and fixed it on the younger woman. Lucy didn’t blink.

  “Don’t forget much, do you?” said Cook, a hint of approval in her voice.

  “I have forgotten too much,” said Lucy, looking at Charlie. “But I intend to learn a great deal more.”

  EPILOGUE

  She stood among the eels in the dark, singing quietly to herself. She could see that it was dusk from the way the light on the river beyond the grilles had dimmed, and she could feel that the eels themselves had become sluggish around her feet.

  She sat on the walkway and pulled her legs from the water, still singing. She sang on as she heard someone trying the door. It was early for them to be letting her out but she had no fear of them. They never beat her after she had been alone with the eels. They thought it was punishment, and punishment enough.

  But the door didn’t open. It wasn’t them. It was someone whose noises she did not recognise. Someone trying to get in. Trying to break the lock.

  Someone cold, looking for somewhere to stay the night. Or maybe steal a bushel of eels.

  She tried to think who it was, reaching out for them with her thoughts—

  And then someone touched her mind back, and she stopped singing.

  She felt them listening to her, inside and outside.

  Just as she was doing to them.

  Hello, she thought, who are you?

  She felt them recoil from her mind, a slight feeling like a cobweb being yanked across her brain.

  Don’t be scared, she thought. I mean you no harm. There is a key hidden on the lintel above the sluice. Don’t drop it in the river.

  There was silence. She cast about for him. He was keeping his thoughts away.

  The eels began threshing in a boiling mass at her feet.

  Then the door clicked open. And there he was.

  A dark stranger with a tinker’s pack on his back.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  He nodded. His eyes were frightened, but not enough to run; they were interested too.

  “Do you talk?” she said.

  No.

  He looked embarrassed.

  I am Mute but Intelligent.

  And a tinker, I see.

  How can you talk in my head?

  How can you listen to my thoughts? she replied.

  And out loud she said,

  “Do you have mirrors for sale in that pack?”

  He held up one finger. Only one.

  She hid her disappointment.

  “No matter. One will do. If you come with me, back to the poorhouse garden, I have another one, and then I shall show you a trick which will really impress you.”

  As he followed her across the water meadow, through the rising mist, she had another thought.

  And do you have a knife? A very, very sharp one?

  Yes, thought Amos. Why?

  We shall see. Are you squeamish?

  1 An amulet or charm worn on the body

  2 A sign, a mark.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks to my editor Jenni Hill at Orbit/Little, Brown for her enthusiasm and help in bringing The Oversight out of the shadows and into the world, and to Joanna Kramer for her painstaking copy-edit. Any infelicities are mine, not theirs. Thanks to Fergus Fleming, Barnaby Rogerson and Rose Baring for secret reading and encouragement along the way. I’m grateful to Willi Paterson for lending me “Lord” George Sanger’s memoir of life in a mid-nineteenth-century travelling show Seventy Years a Showman, which was as invaluable a resource for creating the world Sara fell into as Dickens’s essays from Household Words are for the London that she fell out of. The Sangers aren’t in my book, but the Pyefinches are close kin. Na-Barno Eagle and Hector Anderson his great rival did really exist, and Georgiana… well she existed too, but what happened to her you’ll have to wait and see. In real life she touched royalty.

  The Westphalian-born Rabbi Samuel Falk was a kabbalist and an alchemist and is reputed to know the true name of God, hence his title of “Ba’al Shem” (Master of the Name), and he did indeed live and keep a laboratory in Wellclose Square. He counted Casanova as one of his wide acquaintance. He is reputed to have used his knowledge of the Name to create and animate the only golem ever to walk London’s streets. There is no official record showing he had a granddaughter named Sara. But then The Oversight doesn’t officially exist either, so who knows?

  John Dee is of course an historical character, and his magic paraphernalia is still on display in the British Museum. You’ve probably unmasked The Citizen’s real identity, but if not you’ll have to wait, but he too existed and we’ll see more of him. The “estimable Mr Henderson” whose “receipt” Cook uses for her Eccles cakes is with us now: I’ve never met him but I have always deeply enjoyed his restaurants and especially the said Eccles cakes (with cheese), so I hope he doesn’t mind being anachronistically thrust back into 1840s London as a bizarre thank you from a stranger.

  Anyone who knew my dad and has read this far may have recognised bits of him earlier, if not in The Smith himself, then certainly in his workshop which is my dad’s, minus the blacksmithery. Dad introduced me to Wayland Smith when he shared his love of Kipling with me as a young boy. I think he’d have enjoyed the way I repaid that gift by making him a part of this story, but he died before I finished it. Deaths are tough times for all families, but we and he were greatly helped and served by truly great district nurses in his final illness. Thank you Siobhan Dickson, Tina Dodd and Janice Colley, and also thank you Kathy, Karen, Theresa and Cheryl from St Michael’s Hospice. I am enormously grateful for the professionalism and enormous patience and good humour of Paul Allsopp, w
hose visits brightened up some very dark days for both my parents. Special thanks to my wonderful cousin Tracey Little, brick of bricks. You all helped us keep our promise to him, and we couldn’t have done it without your graceful help.

  And speaking of grace… Domenica. Always and forever, thank you. Nothing is ever quite as much fun without you. A.V.O.

  Also by Charlie Fletcher

  The Stoneheart Trilogy

  Stoneheart

  Ironhand

  Silvertongue

  extras

  meet the author

  CHARLIE FLETCHER lives in Edinburgh and divides his time between writing for page and screen. His Stoneheart trilogy for children has been translated into a dozen languages. The first volume, Stoneheart, was shortlisted for the Branford Boase award and longlisted for the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize. His standalone YA novel, Far Rockaway, was published last year to great critical acclaim and has been longlisted for the Carnegie prize and the Catalyst Book Award. The Oversight is his first adult novel and the beginning of a new series.

  introducing

  If you enjoyed

  THE OVERSIGHT

  look out for

  PROMISE OF BLOOD

  Book One of the Powder Mage Trilogy

  by Brian McClellan

  It’s a bloody business overthrowing a king…

  Field Marshal Tamas’s coup against his king sent corrupt aristocrats to the guillotine and brought bread to the starving. But it also provoked war with the Nine Nations, internal attacks by royalist fanatics, and the greedy to scramble for money and power by Tamas’s supposed allies: the Church, workers unions, and mercenary forces.

  It’s up to a few…

  Stretched to his limit, Tamas is relying heavily on his few remaining powder mages, including the embittered Taniel, a brilliant marksman who also happens to be his estranged son, and Adamat, a retired police inspector whose loyalty is being tested by blackmail.

  But when gods are involved…

  Now, as attacks batter them from within and without, the credulous are whispering about omens of death and destruction. Just old peasant legends about the gods waking to walk the earth. No modern educated man believes that sort of thing. But they should…

  Chapter 1

  Adamat wore his coat tight, top buttons fastened against a wet night air that seemed to want to drown him. He tugged at his sleeves, trying to coax more length, and picked at the front of the jacket where it was too close by far around the waist. It’d been half a decade since he’d even seen this jacket, but when summons came from the king at this hour, there was no time to get his good one from the tailor. Yet this summer coat provided no defense against the chill snaking through the carriage window.

  The morning was not far off but dawn would have a hard time scattering the fog. Adamat could feel it. It was humid even for early spring in Adopest, and chillier than Novi’s frozen toes. The soothsayers in Noman’s Alley said it was a bad omen. Yet who listened to soothsayers these days? Adamat reasoned it would give him a cold and wondered why he had been summoned out on a pit-made night like this.

  The carriage approached the front gate of Skyline and moved on without a stop. Adamat clutched at his pantlegs and peered out the window. The guards were not at their posts. Odder still, as they continued along the wide path amid the fountains, there were no lights. Skyline had so many lanterns, it could be seen all the way from the city even on the cloudiest night. Tonight the gardens were dark.

  Adamat was fine with this. Manhouch used enough of their taxes for his personal amusement. Adamat stared out into the gardens at the black maws where the hedge mazes began and imagined shapes flitting back and forth in the lawn. What was… ah, just a sculpture. Adamat sat back, took a deep breath. He could hear his heart beating, thumping, frightened, his stomach tightening. Perhaps they should light the garden lanterns…

  A little part of him, the part that had once been a police inspector, prowling nights such as these for the thieves and pickpockets in dark alleys, laughed out from inside. Still your heart, old man, he said to himself. You were once the eyes staring back from the darkness.

  The carriage jerked to a stop. Adamat waited for the coachman to open the door. He might have waited all night. The driver rapped on the roof. “You’re here,” a gruff voice said.

  Rude.

  Adamat stepped from the coach, just having time to snatch his hat and cane before the driver flicked the reins and was off, clattering into the night. Adamat uttered a quiet curse after the man and turned around, looking up at Skyline.

  The nobility called Skyline Palace “the Jewel of Adro.” It rested on a high hill east of Adopest so that the sun rose above it every morning. One particularly bold newspaper had compared it to a starving pauper wearing a diamond ring. It was an apt comparison in these lean times. A king’s pride doesn’t fill the people’s bellies.

  He was at the main entrance. By day, it was a grand avenue of marbled walks and fountains, all leading to a pair of giant, silver-plated doors, themselves dwarfed by the sheer façade of the biggest single building in Adro. Adamat listened for the soft footfalls of patrolling Hielmen. It was said the king’s personal guard were everywhere in these gardens, watching every secluded corner, muskets always loaded, bayonets fixed, their gray-and-white sashes somber among the green-and-gold splendor. But there were no footfalls, nor were the fountains running. He’d heard once that the fountains only stopped for the death of the king. Surely he’d not have been summoned here if Manhouch were dead. He smoothed the front of his jacket. Here, next to the building, a few of the lanterns were lit.

  A figure emerged from the darkness. Adamat tightened his grip on his cane, ready to draw the hidden sword inside at a moment’s notice.

  It was a man in uniform, but little could be discerned in such ill light. He held a rifle or a musket, trained loosely on Adamat, and wore a flat-topped forage cap with a stiff visor. Only one thing could be certain… he was not a Hielman. Their tall, plumed hats were easy to recognize, and they never went without them.

  “You’re alone?” a voice asked.

  “Yes,” Adamat said. He held up both hands and turned around.

  “All right. Come on.”

  The soldier edged forward and yanked on one of the mighty silver doors. It rolled outward slowly, ponderously, despite the man putting his weight into it. Adamat moved closer and examined the soldier’s jacket. It was dark blue with silver braiding. Adran military. In theory, the military reported to the king. In practice, one man held their leash: Field Marshal Tamas.

  “Step back, friend,” the soldier said. There was a note of impatience in his voice, some unseen stress—but that could have been the weight of the door. Adamat did as he was told, only coming forward again to slip through the entrance when the soldier gestured.

  “Go ahead,” the soldier directed. “Take a right at the diadem and head through the Diamond Hall. Keep walking until you find yourself in the Answering Room.” The door inched shut behind him and closed with a muffled thump.

  Adamat was alone in the palace vestibule. Adran military, he mused. Why would a soldier be here, on the grounds, without any sign of the Hielmen? The most frightening answer sprang to mind first. A power struggle. Had the military been called in to deal with a rebellion? There were a number of powerful factions within Adro: the Wings of Adom mercenaries, the royal cabal, the Mountainwatch, and the great noble families. Any one of them could have been giving Manhouch trouble. None of it made sense, though. If there had been a power struggle, the palace grounds would be a battlefield, or destroyed outright by the royal cabal.

  Adamat passed the diadem—a giant facsimile of the Adran crown—and noted it was in as bad taste as rumor had it. He entered the Diamond Hall, where the walls and floor were of scarlet, accented in gold leaf, and thousands of tiny gems, which gave the room its name, glittered from the ceiling in the light of a single lit candelabra. The tiny flames of the candelabra flickered as if in the wind,
and the room was cold.

  Adamat’s sense of unease deepened as he neared the far end of the gallery. Not a sign of life, and the only sound came from his own echoing footfalls on the marble floor. A window had been shattered, explaining the chill. The result of one of the king’s famous temper tantrums? Or something else? He could hear his heart beating in his ears. There. Behind a curtain, a pair of boots? Adamat passed his hand before his eyes. A trick of the light. He stepped over to reassure himself and pulled back the curtain.

  A body lay in the shadows. Adamat bent over it, touched the skin. It was warm, but the man was most certainly dead. He wore gray pants with a white stripe down the side and a matching jacket. A tall hat with a white plume lay on the floor some ways away. A Hielman. The shadows played on a young, clean-shaven face, peaceful except for a single hole in the side of his skull and the dark, wet stain on the floor.

  He’d been right. A struggle of some kind. Had the Hielmen rebelled, and the military been brought in to deal with them? Again, it didn’t make any sense. The Hielmen were fanatically loyal to the king, and any matters within Skyline Palace would have been dealt with by the royal cabal.

  Adamat cursed silently. Every question compounded itself. He suspected he’d find some answers soon enough.

  Adamat left the body behind the curtain. He lifted his cane and twisted, bared a few inches of steel, and approached a tall doorway flanked by two hooded, scepter-wielding sculptures. He paused between the ancient statues and took a deep breath, letting his eyes wander over a set of arcane script scrawled into the portal. He entered.

  The Answering Room made the Hall of Diamonds look small. A pair of staircases, one to either side of him and each as wide across as three coaches, led to a high gallery that ran the length of the room on both sides. Few outside the king and his cabal of Privileged sorcerers ever entered this room.