Chapter Twenty-Three #2
Bristol for the best part of a year. Then, one day in late autumn, Irene comes home from work and thinks a figure is shadowing her in the early evening gloom.
She can’t describe her shadow, has caught only shaved glimpses, the prickling back-of-neck sensation of being followed, but her fear is gut deep and contagious.
They pack up and move. Irene hands in her notice next day, cites family illness.
They zigzag across the country again, disappear into the windswept anonymous flats and newly sprouted forest outgrowths of East Anglia.
They wind up on the sleepy northern outskirts of Norwich.
This time, they get more than a year. But in the end, once again, the shadow falls.
Oxford follows Norwich.
Coventry, Oxford.
Macclesfield, Coventry.
But everywhere, sooner or later, the shadow follows and finds them, and the old terrors set in once more, and they flee.
“Did you ever see these figures?” Duncan asked.
Susan shook her head. “I dunno, maybe once? In Coventry. One night I couldn’t sleep.
I went an’ looked aht the winder, it was snowin’ and…
it was like there was someone on the pavement in the shadders over the road.
Not like a man you could see, nuffin’ like that.
But it looked like somefink was stoppin’ the snowflakes, makin’ a space they couldn’t blow inside.
” She shook her head again, like someone shown a conjuring trick they can’t explain. “Dunno, maybe I jest dreamed it.”
“Maybe y—”
Someone in the hall…
The same flicker-flash awareness as before. Duncan raised a finger to his lips, shuttled his eyes sideways toward the door.
“Susan,” he said casually. “Do you think you could maybe crank that window sash up a wee bit, let some air in?”
She caught on instantly. Rose from her seat. “Yeah, stuffy, innit.”
She levered the sash upward with a soft grunt. The wood graunched protest—
Under cover of the sound it made, Duncan was already in motion. Up on his feet, spinning, diving for the doorway and the hall.
Hesitant figure, hovering just inside a front door pushed gently open. Familiar fa—
He saw Duncan, panicked, tried to get back out the half-open door.
The splintered jamb caught him at the shoulder.
Duncan reached him in two strides, stomped down hard into the back of his knee.
The intruder went down hard across the threshold and the raw concrete steps outside, yelped as he hit.
Duncan grabbed him at collar and armpit, dragged him back inside.
Slammed the door as close to shut as it would go, put his back to it and stared down at what he’d caught.
“You?”
Young, pockmarked face, clean shaven. If the features alone hadn’t rung any bells, the big, puffy yellow discoloration around one corner of the mouth would have given Duncan a hefty clue.
His incautious tail from the day he met with Hardy, now scrabbling backward away from him on the cheap wooden boarded floor.
“Mr. Silver, I—”
“You don’t fucking learn, do you pal?” Duncan hooked the sgian dubh from his back. “You follow me here?”
“No, no! I was watching the house. I mean no harm!”
Duncan crouched closer. The other man’s gaze hung hypnotized on the blade in his hand. “That fuck Hardy send you?”
“No!” Grabbing at the name like a drowning man, gabbling. “Not Hardy! I don’t work for Hardy!”
It brought Duncan up short. Flicker of movement in the corner of his eye—Susan had come partway out into the hall, stood face half hidden by the jamb, a hand pressed to her mouth, watching.
He grew aware that he loomed over his tail in his coat, knife in hand, like some illustration from the cover of a penny dreadful about vampires or spring heel Jack.
He hefted the knife, reversed the blade away from the other man.
“You followed me from Hardy’s offices last week. If you’re not his, who the fuck do you work for?”
The other man pushed himself semi-upright against the wall. He lifted pleading palms. “Yes—yes, I’ll tell you. Show you. Look.”
He dug frantically under his collar, tugged out a long gold chain from around his neck.
He held out a small pendant on it for Duncan to see.
At first glance a crucifix, then, as Duncan peered closer, resolving into a stylized great sword with a radiant golden blister swelling from the crux of its hilt.
Duncan rocked back on his heels. “You’re a fucking Orbster?”
“I—that is not—yes.” A gulp. “Yes. My name is Jeremy Ewart. I am an aspirant second degree in the Erlsley lodge of the Holy Order of Sword and Orb. Tasked with observing and protecting the life of Lady Ada Ulver and her child.”
“Well, you’re doing a bang-up job of that.”
“Uhm. I—we did not expect such a violent incursion.” Ewart fumbled his pendant back under his shirt. “I—I’m not a soldier. It was my part to report back. By the time I did…”
Duncan grunted. “Hardy outmaneuvered you. Know the feeling.”
He got to his feet, brooding. He had no more time for the Sword and Orbsters than he did the Theosophicals, Rosicrucians, United Church of the Spirit, what have you. Just so many grandiose gilt-laden empty vessels on the stream and flow of the Unbinding.
But they’d crossed his path now. He stared down at Ewart where he lay, sprawled and clearly terrified to move.
“None of this,” he said, “explains what you were doing at the Forestry Commission last week, and why you followed me.”
“No, I—I followed you to the Forestry Commission. You, well, you didn’t notice me then.”
He remembered his hangover that morning. Truth to tell, he could have been followed through the streets by a ten-foot Christ in effigy and a Welsh male voice choir in song, and he likely wouldn’t have noticed either.
“You picked me up here.” It dawned on Duncan. “Tracked me all over town until I got home, came back the next day.”
The Sword and Orb adept shook his head. He propped himself up a little straighter on the wall.
The tremor in his voice had damped out. “My orders were to stay in place. I spotted you when you left with the changeling, and I reported it when I was relieved. One of our telepathists was able to pull your face from my memory, make a sketch of it. They sent me to your offices the next morning with orders to follow you.”
“They recognized my face?”
“Oh, yes.” Matter-of-factly. “You are quite well known to the Order. Your successes in the Forest are—”
“Never mind that. You were following me. If I hadn’t stopped you, what was next?”
Ewart cleared his throat. “I was to make an approach.”
“An approach.”
“Yes. The arch—uhm, the senior adepts, at the heart of the Order—there are people who would like to speak with you.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know.” Ewart must have seen something in Duncan’s eyes. “No, really. I am only a second-degree adept. I am not yet worthy of the greater mysteries.”
Duncan hesitated a moment. But under the circumstances…
“All right. Get up.” He held up the sgian dubh, made a show of stowing it again at his back. He gestured with the cup of his now-empty hand. “C’mon. Get up. I haven’t got all day.”
Ewart pushed himself up the wall, eyes still warily fixed on Duncan, until he was standing. He did his best to straighten some dignity back into his clothes. He licked dry, bitten lips. Back down the hallway, Susan still hovered.
“Can you get him a glass of water?” Duncan asked her.
She went. Duncan leaned in closer to Ewart.
“You a local boy, Jerry?”
“Yes. I was born in Erlsley—well, Rashford. Just outside. But I’ve lived in the city all my life.”
“You know Crawgate, then.”
“Oh. Yes. In—in fact, I—”
“Good.” Duncan checked the Mappin & Webb. “These seniors of yours still want to talk to me, then you meet me outside Number 37 Crawgate at say…two o’clock this afternoon. Got that? You can take me to them from there.”
“You will…?” Relief flooded the other man’s face. He bobbed his head eagerly. “Yes, of course. I can do that. Number 37. I will be there. Of course.”
Susan brought the water in a chipped mug. Ewart slurped it down, wiped his mouth. He looked uncertainly at Duncan. Duncan nodded.
“The Orbsters give you money for expenses?”
“Yes, some.”
“Good. Give what you’ve got to Susan here. You can keep tram fare back. The rest—hand it over.”
“I—what…?”
“Think of it as an apology. For how badly you’ve failed these people.”
“But—”
“If you have to account for it, tell your seniors it was my price for meeting them.”
Ewart hesitated. Duncan looked at him. The other man dug hurriedly in his pockets, came up with a small leather drawstring purse.
Duncan plucked it out of his hands. Tugged it open impatiently, spilled coins and a handful of green and brown pellets into his palm—tightly folded ten-shilling notes.
He shingled the coins back into the purse, dropped one of the pellets in with them, handed the purse back.
“There you go. Now get out of here. Run that message to your masters.”
The Orb adept needed no encouragement. He turned to leave, and as he did Duncan grabbed his arm.
“One last thing. When you come to Crawgate, you come alone. I don’t respond well to unexpected company.”
Ewart swallowed and nodded. Duncan judged him convinced. He watched him out the door, closed it after him. He came back to Susan and held out the handful of notes.
“Here. Take it. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next few days, but you’re going to need funds. To fix your door, if nothing else. What I hear, the Gracious Fucking Order of Sword and Orb have money running out of their ears. They can spare some.”
Finally, grimacing, she put out her hand and he tipped the pellets into it.
Then he reached into his coat and dug out his own wallet. Crammond had loaned him a fistful of cash to operate on until he could find a way to get into his own funds either at the bank or in his apartment. He took out a loose sheaf of ten-shilling notes, held them out to Susan.
“And that’s from me,” he said.
She blinked. “But…that’s yours…we—”
“You paid me to bring Mimi back,” he said flatly. “Think of it as another apology.”