The Rook

by Daniel O'Malley

  Those of us with powers are sought out by the Checquy through a variety of means, and the group was long ago granted the authority to claim any citizens it wanted. Parents are coerced or duped into releasing their children, sometimes with massive payoffs. Adults are lured in with promises of power, wealth, and the opportunity to serve their nation. The initiation is a mixture of ancient oaths and modern contracts under both the official and unofficial secrecy acts of the government. By the time an individual has become a full member, he is bound by a million different ties. Do you realize now what your leaving would have meant?

  I’ve only ever heard of three people who tried to leave the Checquy, and I know the history inside and out. Of those three, the first was a powered individual called Brennan the Intransigent who made a break for it in 1679. He was about to step across the English Channel to France, where he had been lured by the promises of the French government, when he was taken into custody. He was crucified on the cliffs of Dover.

  The second was a soldier in 1802 who was driven insane by something he saw in a burrow at John o’Groats and who fled to his parents’ home. He was carefully brought back to the Checquy stronghold and then buried alive in his village’s graveyard.

  The third was a woman who could grow tentacles out of her back and exuded some sort of alarming toxin through her fingertips. In 1875, she fled to Buenos Aires and managed to live there for three months before the hand of the Checquy caught up with her. Her stuffed body is currently displayed above the mantelpiece in one of the London offices. The little bronze plaque indicates that she lived for six months after they caught her.

  See how the Checquy Group deals with those who try to leave? They like to make examples of them, and they tend to be creative about how they do it. And did I mention that none of those who tried to escape were members of the Court? Can you imagine how much more creative they would be if you had fled and they caught you? Don’t worry, you would have escaped safely. As soon as I accepted what was going to happen to me, I began to consolidate all my resources and knowledge into designing a means of protecting you.

  You don’t need to know all the details, but suffice it to say that I created a series of contingencies that if activated would have simultaneously crippled the Checquy’s ability to pursue you and disrupted the daily functioning of the organization in such a way that they could not have spared the staff or the resources to pursue a Myfanwy Thomas—especially a Myfanwy Thomas who had had plastic surgery and drastically corrupted the records that contained her personal details.

  How? I can almost hear you ask. Well, it involved a few things.

  1. Lots and lots of research, which started as an attempt to figure out who would have a reason to attack me and ended up giving me a far better understanding of the organization and how to evade it. It also allowed me to build up some rather detailed dossiers on the various Court members. Some of those dossiers describe—well, let’s call them indiscretions. They’re not crimes on the level of a bring-down-the-government scandal, but they’re grave enough that if certain highly placed officials found out about them, it would prompt some inconvenient investigations that would take up an enormous amount of the Court’s time.

  2. The systematic alteration of most of the files that describe me, including fingerprints and DNA details. The hard copies, anyway. I’ve used my rank and a few little computing skills to write a program that will corrupt the electronic copies.

  3. The insertion of a virus into the computer systems that will, if put into motion, hamper even the most mundane work. The Checquy would still be able to carry out its day-to-day activities, but with far less efficiency than usual. The resulting confusion would give you ample time to get out of the country, get a new face, and attend to a few other things.

  If you had elected to leave, I would have had you stop by an unmanned Checquy outpost office in Waterloo Station, log onto the terminal, and e-mail keywords to some accounts in the Checquy mainframe. Once you’d activated these contingency plans, you would technically have been guilty of committing treason against the nation by (temporarily) weakening its defenses. So in some ways, staying and assuming my life is safer. It’s a very complicated business, I’ll admit.

  If it’s any consolation, I’m really glad you made this decision.

  So, while I don’t know exactly who is currently trying to kill you, there are seven candidates—the other members of the Court. One of the psychics confirmed that.

  Oh, but before I give you any more details, check your watch and see what day of the week it is. If it’s a weekday, well, I suppose it’s fairly obvious that you’ve missed work. Is it too late to call in sick?

  Automatically, she checked her watch and saw it was Saturday. Then she did a double take.

  Yes, you’re going in to work. Yes, you’re going in to an office where someone is trying to kill you. You chose not to leave, and this is the only way you can stay. There’s a purple binder in the suitcase with the letters. It’s thick. That’s because it describes the Checquy and what you do for them. You’ll probably need to consult it a lot. If it’s a workday today, then you should call in sick. Instructions on how to do so are at the top of here. Otherwise, you’ll want to pick out a businesslike outfit for your first day at work. If it’s a weekend, read on.

  When last we left our heroine (us), she was nine years old and about to stuff her gob with a chocolate digestive. As I recall, we had all finished our tea, but neither Lady Farrier nor Sir Henry spoke directly to me. I remember feeling somewhat irritated by this but not so irritated that I didn’t start wolfing down everything on the pastry tray. And then Lady Farrier sent me away to the Estate.

  The letter continued, but she was too tired to read further. The pages fell back into her lap, and soon she was asleep on the couch, a couch that had been chosen for its extreme coziness.

  If she had any dreams, she did not remember them.

  3

  My name is Myfanwy,” she said, concerned by how unsure her voice sounded. The face she saw in the mirror might belong to someone named Myfanwy, but it was taking her a little while to think of herself as such. She was, however, beginning to think of the person who had previously occupied her body as Thomas.

  “I’m Myfanwy,” she said again, a bit more convincingly this time.

  “Were you a morning person, Thomas?” she wondered aloud as she struggled up out of bed. She’d spent most of the previous day sleeping and reading through the dossiers that Thomas had left her. She’d fallen asleep around midnight, her face covered by a report on the Checquy’s diplomatic relationship with the Great Barrier Reef. Now it was five o’clock on Monday morning, and she’d woken with a start, petrified that she was late.

  For a moment she’d toyed with calling in sick, but a number of factors had dissuaded her. To begin with, the letter writer had seemed reluctant to suggest that missing work was even an option. In addition, the prospect of staying alone in the contrived apartment another day was, well, kinda creepy. Nope, it was definitely time to go in to work and figure out what the hell was going on. She stumbled to the shower and ran through a variety of possible wardrobe combinations in her mind before settling for a suit. It was Myfanwy Thomas who had picked out the clothes, so at least she didn’t need to worry about turning up and not looking like Myfanwy Thomas.

  She’d noticed the previous morning that the cupboard was surprisingly bare of breakfast foods. Slipping a little, aren’t we, Thomas? What kind of “extremely capable administrator” doesn’t take care to leave breakfast for the woman inhabiting her future amnesiac body? Not even a Pop-Tart? A frozen croissant? Honestly. Still, there were coffee beans and a grinder, and she was able to sit down with a cup of coffee and that big-ass purple binder.

  Thomas seems like a decent sort, but she’s a glorified paper pusher, she thought ruefully. Even if she does work for a paranormal version of the MI5, she’s probably dealing with the boring bits. “Heavens! Some kind of werewolf is eating the Queen! Fetch so
me forms and ask her to fill them out in triplicate, and then perhaps we can attend to her needs at some point during the next quarter.” Snorting to herself, Myfanwy opened the binder and read the instructions Thomas had left for getting ready for the office.

  Half an hour later, she was wearing one of the ugly suits from the wardrobe, holding a briefcase, and anxiously explaining to the man on the phone that she’d like a cab as soon as was humanly possible and admitting that yes, she was in a hurry, and so, yes, she should have planned ahead. The next fifteen minutes were spent in the lobby of the apartment building looking out for the cab. When it finally appeared, she gave the address to the extremely scruffy driver and was then forced to concede that she didn’t know where it was.

  As the driver perused his map, she thumbed through the purple binder. She’d only managed to read the summary, which had been mind-bogglingly intricate. She’d found some sticky notes in the flat’s office and was marking various important-seeming passages. As a result, every page was marked, some of them three times. Apparently Thomas had not felt an index would be necessary, although there was a vague table of contents.

  “So, you have no idea where this house is?” the driver asked. He was elderly and wearing one of those dubious flat caps.

  “No,” she admitted as she turned a page and found an entirely new alarming topic.

  “Whose house is it, then?”

  “Oh, it’s mine,” she said distractedly and was sufficiently absorbed in her reading not to notice the look he gave her. In fact, she kept her head down for the entire trip and so had no idea where the house was located even when they arrived. She thanked the driver as she stared in utter bemusement at the building in front of her. Goddamn! I must be loaded!

  “You live in a big house,” the taxi driver remarked.

  “Yes, it seems I do,” she replied.

  “Tasteful too,” he added. “I’d say it’s mid-nineteenth century.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. The features around the windows and the gables are a dead giveaway,” he said.

  “Those and the engraved 1841 above the door.”

  “There’s a Rolls-Royce pulling in the other end of the driveway, and the driver is dressed in purple,” he pointed out.

  “Yes, that’s my ride, I think,” she said; she closed the purple binder, paid the man, and got out of the cab.

  “If you ever feel the need for a taxi and a driver you can tip heavily, ask the dispatcher for Hourigan,” he called after her. “I’ll even put on a purple shirt if you like.”

  “Thank you,” she called back over her shoulder. The driver of the Rolls stepped out, and she eyed him carefully. There had been a note about this in the binder:

  The Retainers

  Rank is complicated in the Checquy Group, the result of centuries of tradition and leaders who look upon a lack of change as evidence of cultural stamina.

  But to put it very, very simply: If you have powers and you’re not in the Court, then you’re a Pawn. If you don’t have powers, you’ll never be in the Court, and you’re a Retainer.

  Of course, there are a lot of different levels within that framework. Pawns aren’t automatically higher ranked than Retainers—at least, not anymore. A Pawn and a Retainer can possess the same level of authority; they can both be supervisors or section heads. A Retainer can be in charge of Pawns, and vice versa. Admittedly, prejudices endure. For the most part, if it comes down to a choice between a Pawn and a Retainer, a Pawn will get the job. But there are more Retainers than Pawns.

  Retainers are drawn from a variety of places. Of course, we gather from the government, the military, and the clergy. We have drafting agents in the universities keeping eyes out for those who have skills and can manage to be discreet. There’s always competition for the best and the brightest, but we have an outstanding budget, and our people have a talent for spotting the exceptional at an early age. And we also draw them from the private sector.

  Retainers are crucial to the Checquy Group. They work in administration, intelligence, security, medical—everything. There are only a few sections of the Checquy where a Retainer cannot be employed, and those are positions where having powers is vital.

  One subset of Retainer that you should know about is the personal staff of the members of the Court. That includes secretaries, drivers, bodyguards, etc. Bodyguards attend members of the Court only during ceremonial occasions or at times of high alert. So, yes, you’ll have several people who periodically guard your body, but presumably, they weren’t around when I lost my memory. In any case, you can distinguish the personal staff from regular Retainers because they dress in purple—it’s a livery thing, dating back centuries. I’ve included a list of your personal staff, with photos, in the back of this binder.

  The Retainers are bound to the Checquy through a variety of means. Legal contracts. Religious oaths. Oaths of fealty. Penalties under the Official Secrets Act. Penalties under various unofficial secrets acts. Vaguely worded threats of nebulously horrible vengeance. People don’t learn the real secrets of the Checquy until they’re a part of the group, and then they can’t get out. Of course, there’s no real reason why they would want to. They’re doing good and earning well, and we provide an excellent and understanding staff of therapists.

  “Good morning, Rook Thomas,” said the man in purple, opening the car door for her.

  “Good morning,” she said awkwardly.

  “To the Rookery then?”

  “Uh, sure. I mean, if it’s Monday, then I have to go to the Rookery, right?” she said, trying to pass her befuddlement off as a joke.

  “Monday through Friday,” said the driver ruefully.

  “It’s the price of having a job, I guess.” He smiled but looked a little surprised. Great, I’m already breaking character, she thought dismally. “Well, we’d better be off.”

  She’d skimmed some material about the Rookery earlier but now decided she should better acquaint herself with it. She scanned anxiously through the binder’s table of contents and then turned to

  The Rookery

  Of all the Checquy strongholds, the Rookery is simultaneously the most obvious and the most well concealed. Located in the City, the Hammerstrom Building was acquired some years ago under the auspices of then-Rook Conrad Grantchester. It serves as the headquarters for in-country operations and the barracks for the Barghests, and it features a temporary holding and interrogation facility. It also contains one of the key arsenals for the Checquy as well as alternative residences for the Rooks to use in times of emergency or on occasions when we stay at work too late to go home. Both situations arise with depressing regularity. As far as the outside world knows, the building is used only by several law and accounting firms, none of which have any non-Checquy clients on the books. In the areas open to the public, there is a bank, a restaurant, and a pub. The restaurant is terrible; avoid it.

  It took years for the building to be refurbished to Grantchester’s specifications, which involved a multitude of secret passages, special wiring, and concealed security fortifications. He was also responsible for the astonishingly tasteless decor in your secure residence. How tasteless? you ask. Well, since you’ll be seeing it, I probably shouldn’t ruin the surprise. But what the hell—I’m facing betrayal, personal attack, and the prospect of my entire identity being wiped away, so I think I should be allowed to take what pleasures I can. Besides, it’s absolutely hideous. We’re talking about the ultimate bachelor pad, with lots of attention devoted to the sound system, and a carpet so thick and deep and verdant that you need a machete to get to the bathroom. It was designed specifically to get women to go to bed with its occupant.

  In many ways, the residence is the worst part of your new life. Compared to the decor, the fact that someone is trying to kill you is almost tolerable. There are two such apartments; it’s just my luck that I got the one whose previous owner didn’t die but instead rose to become the second most powerful man in the group, and my immediate s
uperior. He insists on asking about the residence every time we meet, which is at least three times a week. So I’ve never been able to redecorate it.

  In any case, as a Rook, you are one of the bosses of the Rookery. Thus, you have access to all areas and know all the secret passages, and everybody has to do what you say. All the secret passages are marked down on an electronic organizer in your office desk drawer and in the schematics in the binder, and the locks are keyed to open to your fingerprints, your palmprints, or the access code I gave you in the first letter. Officially, the secret passages were put in for the sake of the Rooks’ privacy and security, but I’m convinced that really they’re there because Grantchester’s years as an agent in the field made him utterly paranoid—and also because he liked to sneak chicks in.

  That’s the Rookery. It is hidden from the eyes of the populace, a secret fortress that protects the normal people even as they remain ignorant of it. It is a testament to the willingness of humanity to ignore the obvious.

  “Front door or garage, Rook Thomas?” asked the driver.

  “Oh, it’s a nice day,” she replied. “I’ll go in the front door.”

  The car slowed and she looked up in anticipation, eager to view this bastion of concealed power. Her eyes widened when she saw that there seemed to be an encampment in front of the building. Various small tents had been set up on the sidewalk, and badly dressed people were picketing the doorway, wielding placards that screamed with red exclamation points.