The Rook

by Daniel O'Malley

  “For some of the time,” said Myfanwy testily. “So, the name never appeared anywhere?”

  “No. And it wasn’t easy, but I arranged to have all the non-personal diaries of the Court members analyzed as well.”

  “And nothing?”

  “No Belgians,” said Ingrid apologetically.

  “Figures.” Myfanwy sighed. “Now, how many more of these tests do I have to undergo?”

  “Blood tests, urine tests, sputum tests, stool tests, hair tests, fingerprinting, eye exams, ear exams, DNA scrape, and a few minutes inside something the techies referred to as ‘the swarm of bees.’ ”

  “Why is it called that?” asked Myfanwy suspiciously. “Because it buzzes?”

  “Oh, probably,” said Ingrid evasively. “After that, we have to have the dogs sniff you…” She trailed off as she scanned her list.

  “You know, the dogs didn’t react to the Grafter that Shantay’s people pulled in,” said Myfanwy. “They walked her past them and there was no growling at all.”

  “True,” said Ingrid. “But Security Chief Clovis feels that since the dogs picked up Van Syoc, the chance is worth taking. Now, after the dogs we have three gentlemen who are going to lick you.”

  “Lick me?” Myfanwy asked in horror.

  “Yes. Actually, we’re very lucky. We only had two men who were qualified to lick, but we were able to bring one of the students in from the Estate. Really, you have to pity them, because they’re the only three lickers we have and so they’re going to have to lick every member of the Checquy.”

  “But how old is this student?” asked Myfanwy desperately.

  “He’s seventeen.”

  Myfanwy’s stomach turned at the news. “And where is he going to lick me?”

  “In the examination room,” said Ingrid.

  “What? No, what I mean is, whereabouts on my body will they be licking me?” demanded Myfanwy.

  “The tip of the index finger of your right hand,” said Ingrid, as if it were obvious.

  “Oh, thank God,” said Myfanwy, limp with relief.

  “Honestly, Rook Thomas, what were you thinking?” asked Ingrid with amusement. “That they were going to lick every inch of your body?”

  “Stupid, I know.” Myfanwy laughed weakly.

  “Very stupid,” agreed Ingrid. She checked her list. “We don’t have anywhere near the amount of time that would take.”

  32

  Dear You,

  I really think I deserve much more credit for not developing a drinking habit in light of the repeated prophecies of my doom. But then, I’ve always been cautious of alcohol. At the Estate, booze was strictly forbidden. “A clean mind and a clean body make for a perfect weapon” was what one of the teachers used to say. Of course, there was always something available if you really wanted it. Once in a while, a group of kids would sneak out to the nearest village, or try to. I mean, we were on an island, so it wasn’t easy. Plus, as you can imagine, our teachers had been well trained in the art of surveillance.

  But for those who wanted a little kick, there was that girl whose hair would get you high if you ate it.

  Or that guy who could trip you out if you let him touch your eyeballs with his fingertips, which I was never willing to try.

  But I digress.

  Several weeks after my shopping spree with the immortal Greek fashionista, I was sipping my coffee and watching the sun come up. Generally, Ingrid is the first person in, but I had somehow managed to beat her into the office by a few minutes and was taking advantage of the opportunity to do my most favorite of tasks: go through the mail. It’s probably the result of my years at the Estate, where no one ever got any letters, but I adore getting mail. Normally Ingrid gets to it first, but this time I did, and so I was the first to see that intriguing little package.

  Most of the post wasn’t particularly interesting. A couple of scientific journals on the nervous system and neuroanatomy (I do a lot of studying). Interoffice memos from the Estate, the Annexe, Gallows Keep, and Apex House. A couturier in Gloucestershire had been imprisoned for using rodents as indentured servants. That damn mobile forest had been told in no uncertain terms that it should stop mobbing lonely farmhouses. The accounting department was going to review the R & D department’s requests for Clydesdales. And there was an invitation to the annual Court Christmas party, to be held at the house of Conrad Grantchester. All the members of the Court had been invited, along with their families.

  Of course, since I don’t have any family to bring, I generally find myself pounced upon by a Court member’s wife who wants to hook me up with someone. I don’t know whether their husbands go home at night and tell them all about the spinster at the office or if it’s that obvious I’m single. The only consolation is that they do the same thing to Gestalt.

  Oh, well. At least this would give me a good excuse to wear one of those dresses Lisa had picked out for me. Not the red one, of course. Nor the purple thing with the straps and the mini-bustle. And certainly not that one with the feathers. Mentally going through the list of garments and crossing a line through each of them, I reached for the package. That one black dress might do, if I found someone who could figure out how all the ribbons braided through each other. I absentmindedly cut the tape on the box. To be honest, I was quite keen on wearing the necklace with the opals. But the dress that Lisa said I should wear it with was cut quite low. Both in the front and the back. And on the sides. In fact, it was really just a skirt with straps. Sighing, I opened the box.

  Inside, raw and bloody, was a human heart.

  Now, Rook Thomas, I can assure you that we will get the blood out of your carpet,” said Ingrid.

  “And we’re having it tested for anything unfortunate,” said Dr. Crisp as he swabbed up a minute amount of gore from my desk with a Q-tip. A multitude of his assistants were swarming over the table and carpet where the blood had spattered. As soon as I had clapped my eyes on the thing in the box, I’d flung it away with what I later heard Ingrid describe to one of her friends as “the squeal of a terrified piglet.”

  “And we’re scanning both the heart and the box for any dangerous devices,” said Security Chief Clovis, taking a break from talking busily on his mobile. “See if we can’t trace it through the courier company,” he said to a subordinate who was hulking behind him. “It probably won’t work, but I want to cover every possible base.”

  “Rook Thomas, are you sure you won’t come out of the corner? I think you’d find the sofa more comfortable.” Ingrid turned away and spoke quietly to Dr. Crisp. I saw her cast a concerned look back over her shoulder at me.

  “Trauma?” Crisp said bemusedly. “I shouldn’t think so. She probably just needs a nice strong drink.”

  “Or a good slap!” said Teddy Gestalt as he walked into the room. The Pawns and Retainers scattered out of his way as he swept past the trail of blood and looked down at me with undisguised disgust. “Look here, Thomas, this is not acceptable behavior from a student, let alone from a Rook of the Checquy! Now stop that shaking, get up, and quit making a fool of yourself in front of the staff.” He cast a final look at me, rolled his eyes, and turned on his heel. “Dr. Crisp, Chief Clovis, I expect a copy of the reports on this development. And try to figure out why anyone would bother sending a heart to Rook Thomas.” He said this last in a tone of withering contempt and then strode out of the room, leaving a horribly awkward silence.

  33

  Aching, sore, and in dire need of caffeine, Myfanwy sat gingerly at her desk. She wore soft, gentle pajamas and a dressing gown. Hours of unpleasant, time-consuming, and highly intrusive examinations combined with only a few hours’ sleep had left her in a foul mood. This condition was exacerbated by the feeling that she shouldn’t go back to sleep because she had to find Graaf Ernst von Suchtlen and the fact that the office coffee machine had broken and she didn’t know how to work the one in her residence.

  While Ingrid had gone off to beg coffee from some other department, Myfanwy
had combed back through Thomas’s purple binder and found nothing that mentioned a meeting with any of the Grafters. She was now beginning to regret that she had left the letters at home in her study. In desperation, and in the throes of caffeine withdrawal, she was now reclined in her chair with her eyes closed. The phone rang, sending a blast of agony into her skull.

  “Yes?” she said tightly into the phone.

  “Rook Thomas, there’s a call for you” came Ingrid’s voice.

  “Did you get me any coffee?” she asked hopefully.

  “Yes, there’s some being sent up from the kitchens.”

  “Great. Let me know the second it gets here,” said Myfanwy, and then she hung up and closed her eyes once more. A moment later, the phone rang again.

  “Excellent, is the coffee here?”

  “No, I’m sorry, Rook Thomas, but you actually did have a call waiting for you.”

  “On a Saturday?” said Myfanwy plaintively. “Oh God. Fine. Who is it?”

  “Someone named, let me see, I had to write it down phonetically. It was a… Gerd de Leeuwen.”

  “Are you serious?” asked Myfanwy.

  “You do not put me on hold!” screamed a voice in her ear. Myfanwy flinched, inadvertently hurling the phone away from her, into the ornamental roses in the corner of the room. Clutching at her ear with one hand, she fumbled the phone onto speaker setting.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “I am Graaf Gerd de Leeuwen!” shrieked the unmistakable voice of the skinless Belgian she’d met the previous evening.

  “How did you get this number? I don’t even know what this number is,” said Myfanwy, too tired and cranky to be polite. This man’s organization was the cause of her recent bout of examinations. In addition, her fear of him was much diminished by the fact that she didn’t have to look at him.

  “Do not question me! I possess the knowledge of the ages!” he gargled.

  “Big deal,” said Myfanwy with a snort. “You know, fifteen minutes before I met you I had drinks with a vampire. The man has been dead since the eighteenth century, and he still manages to be quite well mannered.” She paused, waiting to see if her mention of Alrich would elicit an incriminating reaction from the Grafter—perhaps some evidence that the Bishop was the traitor.

  “Where is Ernst von Suchtlen?” demanded the voice, apparently willing to ignore her remarks.

  “Are you on crack?” asked Myfanwy. “You said three days! And you said that ten hours ago.”

  “Where is he, that you need three days to produce him?” came the triumphant voice down the phone.

  “Oh God.” Myfanwy sighed as the Belgian launched into a long-winded diatribe. “Look, hold on a moment, I have another call coming through.” She pressed the button, cutting off a scream of impotent rage. “Hello?”

  “Rook Thomas, I have your coffee.”

  “Excellent, Ingrid. Bring it in.” Myfanwy switched back to the Grafter’s line and rocked slightly from the blast of seventeenth-century Belgian abuse. The bodyguards opened the doors, and Ingrid came in with a large mug of coffee and a new mobile phone and froze when she heard the torrent of shouting. Even though he was speaking in an unintelligible language, the caller was clearly neither polite nor businesslike. Ingrid cautiously approached the desk.

  “Does this have anything to do with that Graaf Ernst von Suchtlen you were asking about?” whispered Ingrid, wide-eyed at the language spewing out of the speakerphone.

  “No, this is his partner, who has no skin,” said Myfanwy, pushing the mute button and looking longingly at the coffee. “They’re the leaders of the Grafters. This guy waylaid me last night and demanded to know where his partner was.”

  “You’re talking with the Grafters?” exclaimed Ingrid. “Why don’t you have the call traced?”

  “We can do that?” asked Myfanwy in surprise.

  “As long as you keep them on the line,” said Ingrid.

  “… and I shall unleash the terror now!” screamed de Leeuwen, breaking into English and then hanging up.

  Well, what do you want from me?” snapped Myfanwy. “I’m a genius in administration, not telecommunications.”

  “So now what are we going to do?” asked Ingrid.

  “I don’t know, wait for fungus to carpet the Cotswolds?” said Myfanwy with irritation. Then the phone rang and Ingrid went to answer it but hesitated over the empty cradle.

  “Where is the phone?” she asked.

  “I threw it into the roses,” said Myfanwy, hitting the speakerphone button. “Hello?” she said wearily.

  “This is Graaf Gerd de Leeuwen,” said the voice of the skinless Belgian.

  “Oh, hi,” said Myfanwy, gesturing frantically to Ingrid and knocking the coffee over. In her haste, Ingrid slammed her shin into a footstool before limping out of the office to her own phone. The precious caffeinated nectar spread over Myfanwy’s desk, saturating various documents of national importance and engulfing her new mobile phone. She gave a little anguished moan and tried scraping some of the coffee back into her mug using her laminated security pass.

  “I have been advised that I may have acted rashly,” said de Leeuwen. “With that in mind, the original offer of three days is reinstated.”

  “Three days from now?” asked Myfanwy, pausing in her coffee-reclamation efforts. You bloody bipolar Belgian bastard. “Or three days from the time of the original offer?” She looked through the doors to Ingrid, who was talking rapidly on the phone and making frantic gesticulations to keep him on the line. Myfanwy made a face indicating she had no control over the conversation, and then tried in vain to catch up with the thread of the Belgian’s diatribe, which unfortunately had just ended with the phrase “do you understand?”

  “Well, frankly, sir,” she fumbled. “Today is Saturday, and although we have many people working over the weekend, we may not have enough.” Yes, that makes complete sense, she thought, and tried to interpret Ingrid’s expression.

  “What have you done, that you need more people to get him?” came the suspicious question. Myfanwy’s head had begun pounding again, and since the tender ministrations of Dr. Wills and Dr. Engel had turned out not to be so tender, her own tender bits were aching. She took a sip of reclaimed coffee and winced. Diplomacy isn’t working. Good manners aren’t working. Hell, even sanity isn’t working, she thought. I’m just going to have to talk plainly with this thing. She took a deep breath.

  “Think back to last night. I know it may be lost somewhere in the centuries of accumulated material in the filing cabinet of your brain, but it was just last night. You were floating around in a fish tank of sewage, and I was there looking like I was going to throw up. You were shrieking unintelligibly, and you might remember that I said that we… Did. Not. Have. Him. Now, we will do our best to help you, but if you’ve misplaced one of your men, then you have only one person to blame, and it’s not me.” Myfanwy looked up and saw that Ingrid and the bodyguards were staring at her incredulously. Maybe that was a little too plain, she thought guiltily. “Plus, as you may know, I am the most junior member of the Court. There are other people you may wish to speak to regarding your endeavor.”

  “What endeavor?” came the suspicious question.

  “The whole, I don’t know, ‘We exist, and we’re sneaking agents into England and America’ thing.”

  “Not only will I not speak to other members of your Court about this, but you will not do so either,” said de Leeuwen flatly.

  “I beg your pardon?” said Myfanwy.

  “You have been contacted because Ernst sent something to you, the general of our greatest enemy. If I did not think you knew where he was, you would be flayed, your sister would be dead, and I would be watching troops vat-grown in Mechelen rape your Prime Minister in Trafalgar Square on a pyramid of Cockney skulls.” Myfanwy felt ice water bleed into her veins.

  “What?” she whispered.

  “That is right,” the Belgian confirmed in a tone of deep satisfaction. “So, I su
ggest you drop this little pretense that you do not have him because now you understand exactly how serious this is.”

  “You said they would not be touched or investigated,” she said in horror.

  “Do not be naive” came the reply.

  “You motherfucker. Where do you get off threatening my family?” Myfanwy shouted into the phone. “You make one single move toward Bronwyn and I will have your country carpet bombed. I will track you down and seize control of your body, and you will tear your own guts out of your arse. You fucking corpse!”

  “You do not talk to me like that!” the Belgian shrieked. There was the sound of splashing in the background, and she realized that he was still in his tank.

  “I’ll have one of my large bodyguards shit in that tank of yours, and you’ll rub it into your flesh like it came from the Body Shop,” Myfanwy continued. “All those little modifications of yours? Well, you’ll pick those out with your fingernails, you reject carcass from a butcher-shop window.” Over the speakerphone came the sound of someone having a fit of apoplexy in a swimming pool.

  “Now, Mr. Graaf Gerd de Leeuwen, call me in three days and we shall see what the situation is. If my sister feels even the slightest bit of discomfort before then, you’ll be receiving your partner in the form of a set of matched luggage. Good-bye,” Myfanwy said, then she disconnected the phone with shaking hands. She turned to Ingrid, who had entered the room again. “Hi.”

  “So, in addition to telecommunications, you’re also not much of an expert on diplomacy, hm?” said Ingrid weakly.

  “I need a drink,” said Myfanwy.

  “I think we both do,” said Ingrid, swinging open a portrait that concealed a well-stocked bar. She poured each of them a shot of something amber while Myfanwy shook the coffee off her new mobile phone.