The Remnant

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

THE OVERSIGHT

The Smith – smith, ringmaker and counsellor

Sara Falk – keeper of the Safe House in Wellclose Square

Mr. Sharp – protector and sentinel

Cook – once a pirate

Hodge the Terrier Man – ratcatcher at the Tower of London, blinded

Charlie Pyefinch – apprentice ratcatcher

Ida Laemmel – huntress, mountaineer and member pro tem, from Die Wachte in Austria

and

Emmet – a man of clay

Jed – an Old English Terrier

Archie – a young Old English Terrier crossbreed

The Raven – an ancient bird

IN LONDON

Francis Blackdyke, Viscount Mountfellon – man of science turned supranaturalist

The Citizen – a sea-green incorruptible, thought dead

A captive Sluagh – an experimental subject

A Green Man – a similarly unfortunate captive

Lemuel Bidgood – magistrate and fount of local knowledge

John Rogers Watkins – owner of the steam-tug the Monarch

William Ketch – a Bedlam porter once a bibulous reprobate, now dry

A whey-faced child – a housebound invalid, given to watching the world from her window

Ruby – a rentable lovely with sharp eyes

IN THE COUNTRYSIDE AND THEN LONDON

The Ghost of the Itch Ward – formerly of the Andover Workhouse, real name unknown

Amos Templebane – adopted son of Issachar (mute but intelligent)

THE TEMPLEBANES AND THEIR SERVANTS

Issachar Templebane Esq. – lawyer and broker

Coram Templebane – adopted son, once a favourite, now much reduced

Abchurch Templebane – lustful adopted son, of considerable viciousness

Garlickhythe Templebane – adopted son, sharpshooter

Vintry, Shadwell and assorted other Templebane sons – adopted, variously talented, uniformly malevolent

and

Dorcas – a housemaid, accidentally beautiful and purposefully no coward

ON THE CONTINENT OF NORTH AMERICA

Caitlin Sean ná Gaolaire – a venatrix, from Skibbereen

Lucy Harker – a Glint and a lost girl, notionally her apprentice

Obadiah Tittensor – owner and master of Lady of Nantasket, out of Boston, Mass.

IN PARIS

The red-faced man – eminent merchant, fur trader, surprised

Clothilde – a biddable domestic

The Wachman brothers – Alps

THE REMNANT

The Guardian – first among equals in the Great Circle of The Remnant

Prudence Tittensor – wife of Obadiah, holder of secrets

The bitch Shay – a running dog of great accomplishments

The dog Digger – her offspring

The Proctor – an armed regulator

Sister Lonnegan – owner of an unbridled tongue

F. Armbruster Esq. – hunter, guide, trapper, prospector, mountain man

Jon Magill Esq. – the same

IN THE HEBRIDES

A driver – from Portree; owner of pony and trap, for hire

Donald Ban MacCrimmon – steward of Dunvegan Castle, not the piper his forefathers were

Beira – "Màthair nam Fitheach," very old lady living at the House at the End of the World

RUTLANDSHIRE

A footman

Coachman Turner – an unfortunate Phaeton

The head gardener – a poor man of fatally good intentions

BETWEEN THE WORLDS

John Dee – known as The Walker between the Worlds

Two roundheads – Mirror Wights, brothers

A woodsman and a pussers mate – Mirror Wights, unrelated

BEYOND LAW AND LORE

The Herne – a hunter, horned

The Nose and the Sight Hound – his bone dogs

Badger Skull – a Sluagh chieftain

Hawk Skull – a vengeful Sluagh

Woodcock Crown – an irreducible Sluagh

The Shee – wives to the Sluagh

Geradeso wie unsere Leben aus dem Nichts entstehen

und im Nichts enden,

so sind alle Reisen ein Kreis.

Und ganz egal wie weit uns unsere Reise fuehrt—wir enden alle an unseren Anfangen.

Just as our lives come from nothing

and end as nothing,

so all journeys are a circle.

And no matter how far the road takes us, we all end at our beginnings.

Carl Fleischl von Marxow

SNOW ON THE RIVER

In the end there is silence.

In the end she is in the water, but she cannot see the city.

In the end, at the very end, Sara Falk drowning in the Thames can see nothing but flame.

And failure.

And her hand, reaching, trying to catch the sky, trying to hold onto the air, trying to stop the growling river swallowing her too.

She is the last of the Last Hand.

She does not wonder if there will be another.

She does not wonder if one day The Smith will return and build anew.

Instead she wonders why the snow that is falling from the sky into the flaming river has come so early this year.

And she wonders when it will start to hurt.

And then she realises it already hurts. She realises it has always hurt. She realises it will never, ever stop hurting now, even if she alone survives this.

Because the others have not.

Because Sharp has not.

The Last Hand fallen. The Wildfire free.

No more hope.

No more heroes.

No more him.

FIRST PART

TRAVELLER'S TALES

Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt.

Those who run across the sea change the sky, not their soul.

Horace

ON THE UNCERTAIN MECHANICK OF THE MIRROR'D WORLD AND ITS ILLUSORY POTENTIAL

There are two ways in which the precise geometry of the mirror'd world may be accessed to effect a journey between widely separate physical locations: in the first, the traveller, equipp'd with both the ability and two parallel mirrors, steps through the surface of one looking-glass into the infinitely receding passageway afforded by the reflection of one upon the other, and then negotiates his way within that passage and all its attendant crossways. Wayfinding through the wilderness of mirrors is effected by a curious device of nested ivory balls known as the Coburg Ivories. Using this first method is fraught with danger and subject to too much unwonted jeopardy to be seriously considered, except in desperation. The second way allows for instantaneous transmission of the traveller between two looking-glasses that have in some manner been tuned one to the other, as a match'd pair of viols sustaining the same vibratory note: the traveller steps into one glass in—say—London and steps out of the twinn'd mirror in—again say—Leiden, as simply as striding through a doorway … The mechanicks of this are not known to me, but passage by the looking-glass is ever a perilous and unchancy thing, for there is nothing to be trusted about the mirror'd world. It is both snare and illusion. If this was not enough to discourage the putative mirror-walker, there are the added dangers of the Mirror Wights who reportedly haunt the world behind the glass, and though a man may travel the wilderness behind the world's surface, time does not travel with him at the same rate which is its own kind of peril …

From The Great and Hidden History of the World by the Rabbi Dr. Hayyim Samuel Falk (also known as the Ba'al Shem of London)

CHAPTER 1

FROM A DISTANT SHORE

"It smells different," said Lucy Harker, looking down at the bustling quayside from the temporarily elevated vantage point afforded by the top of the gangplank leading down from the deck of the Lady of Nantasket, newly berthed alongside Belcher's Wharf, Port of Boston.

"What does?" said Caitlin Sean ná Gaolaire, who had already reached the foot of the plank.

"America," said Lucy. "It smells … cleaner."

"Cleaner than the wide, wind-scoured Atlantic?" said Caitlin. "Sure but you're joking, aren't you?"

"Cleaner than London," said Lucy.

Caitlin filled her nostrils and considered the redolent mixture of smells as if noticing them for the first time.

"Less shite, more pine," she scowled, after a beat of reflection.

Lucy sighed. The fact was that the voyage across the Atlantic had not been an easy one for either of them: the Lady of Nantasket had been vexingly beset by contrary winds, and then something noisy and abrupt had happened to the steering gear which had necessitated a running repair that had added extra time and discomfort to the journey. More than that, relations between herself and Cait had changed markedly. Lucy was not sure what had happened, but it was as if the enforced proximity within the confines of the vessel had made Cait regret the generous last-minute impulse with which she had agreed take the younger girl on and act as her mentor. In her own case, Lucy disapproved of the way Cait had worked on the captain and used her considerable powers to charm him, though she was aware enough of her own heart to know that the disapproval was not a moral one, being built rather from resentment and jealousy.

"It just eases the way," Cait had said after Lucy had betrayed her feelings with an overly acid inquiry as to whether her notional tutor had enjoyed a recent visit to the bridge. "He's flattered by the attention, but he's a moral enough fellow, loves his wife too. Him liking me is just a means to our end. What I'm not happy with is you mooning about with a face like a slapped arse because I'm flirting harmlessly with the old feller. We had that conversation; we're not having it again. Now, have you washed my things?"

Washing Cait's clothes was part of Lucy's duties. When she had asked what laundry had to do with being trained as a venatrix, Cait had sharply told her it had nothing to do with the deeper arts necessary for survival as a supranatural huntress, but everything to do with obedience, and that obedience was a necessary pre-condition to instruction.

"If you can't bend yourself to do the simple things without bridling, you're not going to be worth anyone's while as a pupil," Cait had said. "And certainly not any of mine. I'm not trying to break your will, for it's a strong one and it'll serve you well one of these days: I'm just seeing if you've the heart to put it aside when you need to."

And maybe this was as much the problem as anything: her will. Becoming Cait's apprentice had seemed like a welcome way of staying with her, but the truth was that the reason Lucy had wanted to stay was more to do with the great ache she felt when she looked at her tutor than any real desire to spend the stated year as her pupil. Cait had been frank and open—painfully so—about identifying the crush that the younger girl had on her and explaining that it would pass and that even if it didn't, she was not disposed to return the affection in kind. What had not been properly assessed by either, on reflection, was whether Lucy was constitutionally able to take instruction.

She knew she was bad at this. She had been forced to survive on her own for most of her life, and was already resourceful and tough in her independence. She had enjoyed the unfamiliar companionship of The Oversight because she had come, despite herself, to like the other members of the Last Hand. But it was also in her nature to mistrust comfort as a softening snare and delusion, so as soon as she had noted this she had determined to leave, a decision only partially explained by her longing for Cait's company.

The reality of the deal they had made on the quayside in London was less congenial than either had imagined. Rather than bonding, Lucy saw they had drifted apart. From her perspective, Cait had not recovered her normal good humour following an initial week of the voyage that had seen them both badly beset by seasickness. Lucy had regained her appetite and vigour, but apart from the time when she found smiles and laughter for the captain, ocean-going appeared to have sucked all Cait's normal cheerfulness clean away.

It was a relief in more ways than one to escape the narrow confines of the ship and find herself on a gangplank that promised the new freedoms of a wider world so reassuringly beckoning at its far end.

She took another deep breath and scanned the milling scene spread out below her. She saw potential; she saw variety; she saw sights that were familiar, and others that had an indefinably foreign air to them.

She did not, however, see the pair of eyes watching her, eyes hidden in the shadows of an impressive brick and stone warehouse across the wharf.

On a normal day Prudence Tittensor had what she thought of as any passingly clever wife's natural abilities to manage her husband without recourse to her own somewhat more than natural faculties. And on any normal day she would have relied on them alone to dictate the style with which she welcomed him ashore after what must have been a long, cold voyage home to Boston, fighting the wind all the way across the sullen grey swells of the Atlantic.

She stood in the shade of the colonnade fronting the warehouse by Belcher's Wharf, neatly folding the note she had just hurriedly written as she watched him move around the deck of the Lady of Nantasket, supervising the crew as they went through the well-drilled routines of berthing up and un-dogging the cargo hatches in preparation for imminent invasion by the stevedore gang waiting on the quayside below. She knew that in a moment—in fact as soon as she made herself visible to him—he would remember that his first mate knew every bit as much as he did about the matters in hand and was, in addition, a bachelor. Captain Tittensor would then, as ever, hand responsibility for ship and cargo over to him and become, for the next few hours at least, merely a land-bound spouse. And—on any normal day—Prudence Tittensor was not only expert in ensuring that he was a very happy and carnally satisfied land-bound spouse, but herself genuinely enjoyed the affectionate private warmth of their frequent reunions.

The sight of the two young women who had appeared on the gangplank had made her step sharply back into the depths of the warehouse colonnade and reassess her plans.

This had not been going to be a normal day from the get-go, since she was going to have to explain to her husband that the child they had adopted and brought home from London was gone, simultaneously finessing the moment of revelation by explaining that the reason for this was a happy one: nature had granted Prudence the miracle they had both long wished for, a miracle that she carried proudly before her in her expanding stomach. She had rehearsed the rationale behind her decision in passing the adopted infant on to a more deserving couple, and was confident in her ability to manipulate her husband's reaction.

What she had not been prepared for was the pair on the gangplank. She had seen them and immediately known both what they were and how much trouble they were bringing. She had stepped back into the shade and thought fast, then pulled a small pad of paper and a slender pencil from her bag and written three terse sentences.

The bitch at her side thumped her tail and made a low growling plea of barely controlled excitement.

"No, Shay," said Prudence. "No. You'll see him later."

She peeled a glove off her left hand, slid the note into it and folded it into an improvised envelope of sorts. She then handed it down to the dog, who gently took it in her mouth.

"This for the Proctor," she said. "And fast, girl."

Prudence then smoothed her hand over the growing bulge of her belly and stepped out of the shadows waving at her husband with a sunny smile that betrayed not a hint of her inner turmoil, her eyes resolutely ignoring the young strangers whose arrival had turned this into a decidedly abnormal day.

Lucy joined Cait at the foot of the gangplank and found she was expected to carry her mentor's bag as well as her own.

"Now," said Cait shortly, "let's be going. We've things to settle before we deal with the matter in hand."

"Do you think that's Mrs—?" began Lucy, observing the approaching figure of Prudence Tittensor, who was looking past them, up into the beaming face of her husband, who was leaning over the taffrail and waving enthusiastically back at her.

Cait gripped Lucy's arm with her free hand and squeezed it firmly.

"Don't look," she said calmly. "We've time enough for her later, once we've found out when the next ship sails home."

The plan was simple and well-rehearsed. Lucy ran it through her head as she followed Cait through the milling crowd towards the port office. Being both youthful and handsome, there was no shortage of importunate masculine offers to "help them with their bags," but Cait smiled and declined and never broke pace, and Lucy followed dutifully in her wake, trying to assume her mentor's easy air of knowing exactly where she was going in this town in which she had never before set foot. The plan was to find out the next sailing that could take them back to the other side of the ocean they had just crossed. Once this had been determined and passage booked, Cait intended to repossess the stolen infant at the last possible moment before the said sailing, and return it to the Factor and his wife at Skibbereen, from whose crib it had been stolen nearly a year ago now. The child had been taken by a changeling who Cait had tracked from County Cork to the City of London, a changeling Lucy had last seen imprisoned in the secret cells beneath the Sly House adjacent to the headquarters of The Oversight in Wellclose Square.

Captain Tittensor had been worked on by Cait on the voyage over to the extent that he believed it was his own idea that she should present herself at his home at the earliest opportunity in order that she might offer her services as a nurse to the adopted baby she had in fact determined to remove. The captain had given Cait his home address with the suggestion that she present herself for his wife's perusal at her earliest convenience, and had congratulated himself inwardly about the excellence of the plan. He liked all he saw of Cait and could not conceive of Mrs. Tittensor liking her a whit the less.

Caitlin Sean ná Gaolaire had none of Prudence Tittensor's qualms about using any supranatural faculties on the captain. But then she was a venatrix, a hunter sworn to rescue the child, come what may. And Lucy had noticed that Cait was—on dry land at last—both blithe and bonny but also utterly ruthless in the prosecution of anything she believed to be the right thing to do.

Within half an hour, they had found their way to the port office, and determined there was a ship sailing on the morning tide for Liverpool.

"So we leave in less than a day?" said Lucy, unable to keep surprise and disappointment out of her voice.

"Did you have other plans, missy?" said Cait, raising an eyebrow.

"Seems a shame not to see a little of this new country while we're here," said Lucy.

"We're not on a grand tour. We're on serious business," said Cait. "And I've found one place is pretty much like another, when you look closely."

"Would be nice to have a chance to look closely," mumbled Lucy as Cait led the way into an inn which the young man in the port office had recommended as being close, clean and cheap.

Cait turned and blocked the door.

"I'm no believer in Lady Luck, Lucy-girl, but when she smiles it's as well to smile back, bob a curtsey out of respect and take what she offers. It's an ugly thing we're to do here, because the captain's a decent enough man and likely has no knowledge that his babby's been stolen from another, so it's as well to do it fast, like pulling a tooth."

CHAPTER 2

HERNE THE HUNTER

Far to the north of London, close to the ancient heart of Britain, a Herne was on the hill, hunting by moonlight.

Like all Hernes, he pursued his prey with a brace of bone dogs, a Sight Hound and a Nose. The short-legged Nose was fifty yards lower on the slope, belly-down, snuffling along the curved edge of the ancient woods that ringed the bald upland like a tonsure. The tall Sight Hound stood beside the Herne, tense as a drawn bowstring, back legs quivering with anticipation, ready to explode into movement the moment the Nose flushed prey from the shadowy undergrowth below.

Though his face was a whorl of interlocking tattoos and he was sworn to the night, the Herne was both Sluagh-like and not-Sluagh: Hernes long ago removed themselves from the company of the Sluagh proper, disdaining to travel in their troops or to join their hosts at the ritual times of the year. They were no longer especially hostile to the Sluagh, to whom they were after all kin, but they chose to live solitary lives, alone with their bone dogs. The most startling visual difference to regular Sluagh was the deer antlers they strapped to their heads, the bases carefully chamfered to a thin, angled bevel and bound so securely in place that they appeared to sprout directly from the Hernes' own skulls.

The Herne on this moonlit hillside had short but vicious roe-deer antlers swept back from his head, each with three sharp points, which gave him a streamlined look, an impression confirmed when he ran alongside his Sight Hound, with whom he could almost keep pace.

The Sight Hound was a rangy lurcher with a lot of greyhound in its blood; small yellowing bones from different prey animals were tied along its back, bound into the long shaggy fur like an external spine, and it was on these ancient trophies that the Herne kept a steadying fingertip. The barrel-chested Nose snuffling below them had similar but shorter articulated decoration along its backbone, but what looked regal on the lurcher looked more workmanlike on the Nose, which was a bastard cross between a badger-hound and a spaniel.

There was a sudden anticipatory beat of silence, like a hole in the world, and then something burst noisily from the tanglewood, followed by the baying Nose. The Herne lifted his fingertips from the plait of bones and the Sight Hound exploded into motion, heading for the fleeing creature with long, loping bounds which seemed to eat up the distance between it and the Nose in three heartbeats, and to hit the prey in a solid snarling thump in one heartbeat more.

The Nose barked excitedly, tail thrumming the grass as the Sight Hound shook the hare once, twice and dropped it dead. Both dogs turned to look back uphill at the Herne. The Sight Hound cocked his head; the Nose whined nervously.

The Herne had his back to them, looking at the crest of the hill.

"What do you want?" he said.

A lone figure stood on the skyline, clad in a long badger-pelt coat. He wore a badger skull in a circlet around his forehead, his face was heavily tattooed and a blade like a broken-backed sickle hung from his belt. He was unmistakably Sluagh.

"A hunter," said Badger Skull.

"What is the prey?" said the Herne.

"A daywalker," said the Sluagh. "Nothing dangerous. Just hard to get at, or we should have got him already."

"I do not hunt daywalkers," said Herne. "You know this."

The Sluagh walked down the slope towards him. The Herne snapped his fingers at the bone dogs who only now turned their attention to the hare they had caught, both tearing into the dead body with an unusual lack of competitiveness. They wrenched it apart and each lay with their own half, side by side, eating companionably.

"Fine dogs," said the Sluagh.

"They do not hunt daywalkers either," said the Herne.

The Sluagh squatted on his haunches and looked at the feeding dogs. He carried a large leather bag high on his shoulders like a pack.

"There is a man called Mountfellon, who splits his time between London and a house to the north east of here," said the Sluagh after a while. "He committed an outrage on one of us."

"Is this not rightly a case, then, for The Oversight?" said the Herne, who did not choose to squat next to him. "They are sworn to protect the two worlds from each other, and here is a daywalker harming—"

"The Oversight itself is all but dead and gone," spat Badger Skull. "You know it failed to protect us long ago and its writ no longer runs further than the inner bounds of London, and hardly there even, for—"

"The Oversight is most dangerous when most reduced," interrupted the Herne. "There are many Pure now dead and gone who did not remember that."

The Sluagh spat on the grass.

"Sun rot The Oversight, brother. Their day is finally done. Besides. This was far from London."

"This is not for me."

"Look at this and tell me again that this is none of your concern," said the Sluagh. He opened the leather pouch and held it out to the Herne. The Herne took it and sniffed the contents, then turned it upside down.

A tangle of large bones fell onto the grass, followed by a human skull and what looked like a large ragged roll of parchment.

"I have seen skeletons before. What of it?" he said.

"Unwrap the bundle," said Badger Skull.