The Rook

by Daniel O'Malley

  “Black with sugar, please,” said the Grafter, shifting to get out of his seat.

  “Please don’t get up,” said Myfanwy hurriedly. At least not until I get you a robe, she thought ruefully, and with perhaps a twinge of regret.

  He was, after all, exceptionally attractive.

  42

  Monica Jarvis-Reed sat, cross-legged, on thin air. She sipped from a juice box and drank in the view of the deserted Italian beach below her. Sapphire waves stretched on for miles, crested into white, and then washed onto the sand. The bay was small, with cliffs arching up at the sides and olive-green shrubs drawing a perfect line around the sand. The sun was bright even through her sunglasses, and she was glad that she’d worn a long-sleeved shirt and trousers. Monica lifted a pair of high-powered binoculars from the strap around her neck and peered down as a tall figure in a swimsuit wove through the shrubs and made its way to the lonely beach chair on the sand. She pulled a satellite phone from its clip on her belt and put the phone to her ear.

  “Signal?” she said.

  “Standing by with bated breath” came a bored voice.

  “It’s him. He’s wearing that smirk. And far too brief a swimsuit. Plus, I saw a small puff of smoke when he sat down.”

  “Well, my darling, biometrics from the satellite verify your findings” came the amused answer. “It’s our wayward Bishop. Confirmed.”

  “Okay,” said Monica. “Patch me through to Rook Thomas.”

  That’s brilliant,” said Myfanwy. “Yes, please go ahead and take care of that. And then enjoy the rest of your week in Italy. Yeah, thanks, Monica.” She hung up the phone and turned her attention back to the coffee.

  “So if it wasn’t an abusive boyfriend, then what happened to your eyes?” asked Bronwyn curiously. Myfanwy kept her gaze down and continued pouring coffee into three mugs. She added sugar to two of the mugs and milk to one.

  “Airbag,” said Myfanwy, handing one mug to her sister. She picked the other two up and walked into the living room, where Shantay was lounging on the sofa reading a magazine. The American Bishop had arrived in England three days earlier, accompanied by a Rook of Comanche descent and a cohort of lawyers to help negotiate the terms of the merger.

  Shantay accepted the coffee gratefully and pulled her legs up to allow Myfanwy to sit on the couch. Bronwyn sat down in a chair and lifted Wolfgang onto her lap.

  “Airbag?” she repeated.

  “I was in a car accident,” said Myfanwy. “Passenger seat. We got rear-ended, the airbag unfurled, and it hit me in the face.”

  Shantay rolled her eyes behind her magazine.

  “Ouch,” Bronwyn said, wincing. “When did this happen?”

  “The day after we went out partying.”

  “Didn’t your two black eyes cause any problems during your business meetings?”

  “There were some embarrassed stares,” said Shantay, “but your sister is so important that no one was brave enough to ask any questions.”

  “Plus makeup,” said Myfanwy.

  “Plus that,” conceded Shantay.

  “And the whole merger thing is going to work out okay?” asked Bronwyn languidly, stroking Wolfgang just behind the ears. It was clear she didn’t have any real interest but cared that it was a big deal to her sister. Shantay looked at Myfanwy and raised her eyebrows.

  “Yeah,” sighed Myfanwy. “Of course, the details are going to take months to hammer out. There will be lawyers squabbling, and compromises, and arguments. They’ll be too proud to agree to some of our terms, and we’ll be too untrusting to agree to some of theirs, but in the end it will all work out.” And it will, she thought. We’ll bind them with contracts and oaths and promises of full disclosure. You keep your friends close and your enemies closer, and the Grafters are both.

  In the meantime, we’ll be raising up a new Rook, a new Chev, and a new Bishop, and I’m determined to put a few non-powered people onto the Court. And a couple more women. Farrier keeps dropping hints that she wants me as the new Bishop, which is insane. Although…

  Of course, there will be the typical day-to-day weird happenings around the world that we need to tend to. But with the help of the Grafters we’ll be able to do a better job.

  “Well, that’s nice,” said Bronwyn distractedly.

  “Yeah, it’s pretty satisfying,” agreed Myfanwy.

  “And Jonathan will be back in two days,” said her sister. “You’ll finally be able to see him after, what? Twenty-two years!”

  “That’ll be great,” said Myfanwy with a smile. “A brother. A family. A job. A rabbit. It’s a pretty good life I lucked into, really.”

  “Yeah, now all you need is a boyfriend,” said Shantay dryly.

  “Ms. Thomas, did you want this business card?” asked Val, coming in carrying a basketful of laundry. “It says ‘Call me if you fancy that drink’ on the back.”

  “Where did it come from?” asked Myfanwy.

  “I found it in the pocket of this heavily stained men’s business shirt,” sniffed Val.

  43

  Dear You,

  I thought that I would scribble you one final note before I took my last set of letters to the bank in the morning. It’s late now, and I am at home, sitting on my couch, with my rabbit nestled against my feet. It’s snowing outside, but there’s a fire going, and it’s cozy in here. It’s safe and warm, and I’m finding it hard to stay awake. But I want to write these things down—for you and for me.

  It’s been a long day with no startling revelations or bizarre occurrences (which is kind of bizarre in itself). I had no time to do any detective work—just the day-to-day duties of being me. During my lunch hour, I went to the Rookery infirmary and had a quick checkup. I want to leave you a relatively fit body to inherit.

  I want to leave you with as much as I possibly can.

  It’s so easy to despair. I know that I have no choice in what’s coming, and for me it’s not a matter of faith or fatalism. It’s simply knowledge. I guess you could say this means there’s no free will, but in writing these letters, I like to think that I’m making my own choices. And besides, free will has never been something I had too much of in this life. I’m grateful for whatever I can get.

  In the back of my mind, there’s the knowledge that you might choose the other option, use the other key, and go off to build your own life. I couldn’t blame you if you did. Of course, it means that all the work I’m doing now, all the preparations and letters, are mostly for nothing. But they’re there for you if you want them.

  In the end, no matter what choice you make, I hope you can be happy. I don’t know what kind of person you are or what you’ll do, but I’ve written dozens of letters to you, and I find myself caring desperately. You don’t exist yet, but you’re my sister (identical!). You’re my daughter. You’re my family. Maybe you’ll be Myfanwy Thomas, or maybe you’ll pick yourself a new name and never think of me. But no matter what life you choose, know that I think of you and pray that everything works out for you and that you have the very best life you can.

  Love, always,

  Me

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Oh boy. There are so many people to thank. And, inevitably, I will forget someone.

  Firstly, my early readers, compassionate and insightful, who consented to go through The Rook when it had a different name, then gave thoughtful and merciful feedback.

  The staff of the Foundry, who have been so helpful and welcoming. Cecilia Campbell-Westlind, Kendra Jenkins, and Hannah Gordon, especially, endured several thousand ludicrous questions from me, and still resisted the urge to have me assassinated.

  My copyeditor, the eagle-eyed yet astoundingly tactful Tracy Roe, who gently pointed out that I have been misusing hyphens my entire life.

  Stéphanie Abou, foreign-rights agent and international woman of mystery.

  Jerry Kalajian, my ambassador to the West Coast.

  My editrix, the glorious Asya Muchnick, whose work and belief were invaluable
and who made this story so much better. She was willing to engage in long and entertaining debates about the most incidental of points, such as what color of fungus was funnier. And her colleagues at Little, Brown, whose efforts have made all the difference.

  The incomparable Mollie Glick, queen of agents, she of the diplomatic tongue and the razor mind. I am so fortunate to have a friend as enthusiastic, encouraging, and wise as she.

  My dad, Bill O’Malley, the font of all knowledge, who was willing to answer spontaneous questions about a multitude of topics, ranging from the etiquette of government reports to how best to dispose of a duck that can tell the future.

  And finally, my mom, Jeanne O’Malley, who really made it all happen. She comforted me from the other side of the planet when I called, utterly distraught because my aging computer had eaten the first two hundred pages of this novel. She congratulated me twenty-four hours later when I found a backup copy hidden in the bowels of the hard drive. (People, I implore you, back stuff up! The novel you save may just be your own.) My mom was the first to read the book, and she pronounced it good. She believed in it, and in me, and it was she who urged me to get an agent and then helped me find one. (The perfect one!) My mom gave me invaluable advice on how to proceed at every step of the way. She always thought big, and it is because of her that you are holding this book.

  Reading Group Guide

  THE ROOK

  A NOVEL BY

  DANIEL O’MALLEY

  A conversation with Daniel O’Malley

  You’ve mentioned previously that you were worried you may have made mistakes in your attempt to write a believable female character. I think you actually did a better job with Myfanwy than a number of popular science fiction and fantasy women writers do with their heroines. Our Rook has friends she both is open with and relies on, a rare trait in genre main characters despite it being true for most real women. Why did you buck the trend?

  I didn’t set out to buck the trend, and hadn’t really realized that I had. But Myfanwy’s friendship with other characters, especially with Shantay and Ingrid, was important—partially because I didn’t want her to be defined solely by her power (both supernatural and governmental) and partially because she’s a person, and people need friends. From the beginning of the book, Myfanwy is very alone, both because of her rank and because of her amnesia—she knows no one at all, and she’s concealing the truth about everything. In that situation, I would have needed people that I could rely on.

  Plus, of course, there is no concealing anything from one’s executive assistant.

  One of my favorite characters in your novel is pre-amnesia Myfawnwy (whom we meet through a series of letters she writes to her post-amnesiac self). Did you always plan for her to be a character in her own right, or was she mainly a clever way to relay exposition?

  Pre-amnesia Myfanwy needed to be a few things. Firstly, she was going to provide a lot of info-dump (and I’m not being pejorative here; I love a good info-dump). Secondly, I wanted to demonstrate how different new Myfanwy was from old Myfanwy. And also she helped to show how the Checquy (my supersecret supernatural spy service) worked. I just found myself getting fonder and fonder of her as the book went on, and, yes, she demanded more attention, and commanded more affection, than I had originally intended. So it was a little sad that the whole story had to be based on the idea that she would cease to exist as a person.

  Myfanwy is such an uncommon and difficult-to-pronounce name. Even she mispronounces it. I just gotta ask, why did you name her Myfanwy?

  There was a Myfanwy and a Bronwyn who lived across the street from me, and I used to babysit for them. And I’d never met a Myfanwy before, so I was always rather taken by the name. The Myfanwy across the street pronounced it to rhyme with “Tiffany,” at least I think she did (she was always just “Miff”), but the proper Welsh pronunciation is a bit more complex. The thing is, the real Myfanwy and Bronwyn are identical twins, but I couldn’t put that in the book because I thought it would be kind of a horrendous cliché.

  Though you wrote The Rook when you were in graduate school, you currently work for the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, a government agency. What do your coworkers think of the Checquy, your ass-kicking administrator heroine, and your burgeoning international fame?

  They have been incredibly nice about it, and almost no one has asked if any characters are based on them. In fact, the local bookstore has reached the state where if someone buys the book, they ask if they’re from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau or the Department of Infrastructure.

  You introduce your readers to a wide array of supernatural powers that haven’t been seen before, or at least aren’t common in current genre literature. What were some of your inspirations for them, especially for Gestalt and the Grafters/Belgians?

  Gestalt came to me when I was helping a friend move, and I thought rather wistfully that this would be much less of a pain in the butt if I had a few extra bodies. And voilà! I was so thrilled with the idea that I had to put down a television set so I could scribble down the concept. The Grafters tapped into all my squeamish feelings about surgery, and how much you can do to a person before he or she might cease to be a person.

  If you were to have a power like one of the characters in the book, what would yours be?

  I’ve often thought that flight would be pretty cool, but I get a little nervous around heights. And I’m easily distracted, so I’d be worried about it cutting out at an inopportune time. It’s not going to be a good scene if I can fly, and I never go higher than the top of my house. So maybe superjumping. Like Spider-Man. Or superspeed when I want it.

  A sequel to The Rook is already in the works; is there a chance we’ll be seeing pre-amnesia Myfanwy again? Any other hints about what’s next for the Checquy?

  I’m terribly, terribly fond of pre-amnesia Myfanwy, and her letters were a blast to write, so there might be a couple of those scattered in. But she won’t be returning as a person at all, I don’t think.

  I’m really excited about the sequel. At the end of The Rook, the Checquy were facing some significant changes, and as any public servant can tell you, change means a lot of work. There’s a merger that going to happen (maybe), and a lot of suspicion and paranoia floating around.

  This interview was conducted by Megan Solomon and originally published on StellarFour.com.

  Daniel O’Malley’s suggested reading for fans of The Rook

  Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

  English historians use time travel to do their research. One of them is sent back to the time of the Black Death. It’s clever, it’s absorbing, and you care about these characters so much that it hurts.

  Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser

  If you don’t like the Flashman books, you’re kicked out of the O’Malley family. Any other crime is permissible, but these hilarious, irreverent historical adventures (with the best main character in fiction) are mandatory.

  The Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch

  A novel about supernatural law enforcement in London. I nearly had a nervous breakdown when I heard about this book, but I read it. It’s different enough from The Rook that I calmed down, and cool enough that I immediately bought the sequel.

  Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock

  This was the first book I ever stayed up past midnight to read. And on a school night! A forest in postwar England, where our oldest myths come to life. It’s haunting, it’s intricate, it’s outstanding.

  Death Before Wicket by Kerry Greenwood

  A strong, elegant heroine in 1920s Sydney solving crime, confronting occult practitioners, and taking the occasional lover. One book in a great series.

  The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts by Louis de Bernières

  Magical realism in South America. Guerrilla revolutionaries. Civic-minded prostitutes. A plague of cats. I feel I’ve made my point.

  Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

  I just read this last week and
loved it. I thought about hiding in the fire-escape stairwell at work so I could finish it without getting caught. Atmospheric fantasy tucked away in the corners of our world.

  Pattern Recognition by William Gibson

  The main character is allergic to trademarks. She is hired to track down the source of strange, haunting footage released on the Internet. Gorgeous writing that washes over you and pulls you down into the depths.

  The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz

  These books are so much fun. A smart-ass, kick-ass PI whose greatest adversaries are her equally smart-ass, kick-ass family.

  Hawaii by James Michener

  The extent to which this really has anything to do with The Rook is negligible. Both of them take place on the planet Earth and both of them feature people. That’s about it. But this is a beautiful book, and you should read it.

  Questions and topics for discussion

  1. How would you compare the portrayal of women in The Rook to books with similar sci-fi and fantasy influences?

  2. Myfanwy Thomas’s amnesia results in the emergence of a new, completely different personality. Do you think personality is something one is born with, or the result of our memories and experiences?

  3. In The Rook, the Checquy are empowered to take those children they deem necessary, for both the good of the nation and the good of the children. To what extent do you think this is justified? Can you think of a real-world equivalent, contemporary or historical?

  4. The Checquy works not only to protect normal people from supernatural threats, but also to keep them ignorant of those threats. Do you think real-world governments are justified in concealing dangers from the public?