The Rook (The Checquy Files, #1)

by Daniel O'Malley

Do you know the name of the body you are in? It’s Myfanwy. Myfanwy Alice Thomas. I would say that it’s my name, but you’ve got the body now, so I suppose you’ll be using it.

This is who I am, she thought bitterly. I don’t even get the luxury of not knowing what my name is. I don’t get a chance to start a life. Whoever this Myfanwy Thomas was, she managed to get me into a whole lot of trouble.

“Myfanwy Thomas lost her memory,” the younger woman said levelly with that strange detachment that comes in dreams. “I’m what woke up.”

I wonder, are you made up of parts of me? Or are you a completely new person? You don’t know who you are, that much I can be certain of, but what else is gone? I

For whatever reason, an injustice has been committed against both of us. An injustice against you because you did not do anything, and an injustice against me because I cannot believe that I will do anything to deserve it.

Can you hear me somewhere in the back of this brain? If so, then hear this: Don’t flatter yourself, darling. Your life holds absolutely no appeal for me.

Thomas put some thought into this place, she reflected. This wasn’t just a bolt-hole but somewhere to be comfortable. She felt a little pang of fondness for the woman who’d lived in her body. You couldn’t help liking someone who put all this effort into making you feel welcome.

am the youngest person in the current Court. I got there after ten years of working in administration. The next-youngest got in after sixteen years of highly dangerous fieldwork. That’s how good an administrator I am. “What a geek,” she sighed.

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.

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 some 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.”

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.

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.

“Miss, it might shock you to know that this building is home to one of the greatest conspiracies in history!” he declared. “Oh?” she said weakly. “In this building the government keeps its secrets about the truth!” he explained. “The truth?” “Yes!” he said, and he paused impressively. “About what?” she finally asked. “Excuse me?” “The truth about what?” she prompted him patiently. “Everything they’ve been concealing! Are you aware that the British government has been hiding evidence of alien landings for the past twenty years?” “They have?” We have? She resolved to look up aliens in the files Thomas had left for her.

God, who knew it would be so horrendously complicated impersonating oneself?

I guess Thomas wielded some authority, mused Myfanwy. Pity she controlled the nerds.

Nine years before I was born, some poor woman had to give birth to four children in one sitting. Three boys and one girl. Two of the boys were identical. That’s not the weirdest thing, however. The weirdest thing was that when all four pairs of eyes opened, only one mind was looking out from behind them. This was Gestalt.

Whatever the other bodies looked like, these two were gorgeous. Thick blond hair, blue eyes, and golden brown tans. In this country? How in God’s name do they manage that? Do their weird genetic powers include the ability to bronze without sunlight?

One notorious Rook, Rupert Chamberlain, was kept chained up in the vaults beneath the White Tower until he was needed, at which point he was transported in a cage to the appropriate location and unleashed upon whatever hapless target the leaders had selected. During his tenure, he devoured the Duke of Northumberland, the ambassadors of France and Italy, an archdeacon, and one of his fellow Rooks.

It’s all fairly self-explanatory, really. Oh, well, thanks an awful lot, Thomas, Myfanwy thought bitterly. It sounds like I’m the Defense Minister of Ghosts and Goblins, but as long as the job is “all fairly self-explanatory,” I’ve no doubt it will be fine. The country might get overrun by brownies and talking trees, but what the hell—there’s always Australia!

Crisis officers tend to be the calmest people in the entire organization. Possibly the calmest people on earth. If this one sounded worried, then I could almost believe there wasn’t going to be a city of Liverpool the next morning.

I’m glad I have these letters to write. At least I can confess my fears to somebody, even if we will never meet and you won’t find out what I’ve been through until after the fact. Exhaustedly yours, Me

Ah, so that’s the way it is, Myfanwy thought. Gestalt gets the deference, and Thomas does the bookkeeping.

As their skin made contact, she felt a shock. It was as if she had been plunged into a pool of water whose currents were winding their way around her. Each stream was distinct, separate from the others. She felt as if she could reach out and disrupt the course of that movement—re-channel it, warp it, or stop it entirely. The ribbons were complex, horrendously complex, but she could tell that the system encompassed the physical being of Gestalt.

She looked at Gestalt in wonder and saw smug satisfaction on his handsome face. You think I’m in a daze because you’re handsome? I’m in a daze because I could crush you.

Amazing, she thought, tracing the paths of his nerves. So this controls pain. She turned her attention to another portion. And this web is linked to the eyes. But what is this? This can’t be right. As she examined the anomaly, she frowned. Much of his system seemed obvious to her, almost self-explanatory, but there were sections that made no sense at all.

That’s the way it was at the Estate. Every aspect of our lives had been carefully designed and coordinated to be as efficient as it could possibly be. And so had we.

I associated my powers with blood, pain, and doctors screaming and flailing about. I also understood that it was these powers that had led to my abruptly being taken away from my family. Combine that with a new wariness of other people, and you have a child who is extremely disinclined to touch people at all, let alone try to connect with their nervous systems.

Somehow or other, they mastered the art of fleshcrafting, of radically altering the properties of the human body. This brotherhood of medieval geeks could mold and re-form the raw materials of people. They could liquefy the flesh and bones of a person, resculpt them. They could attach new limbs. They could create new creatures.

But by the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Grafters were able to produce killing machines of such breathtaking efficiency that a Checquy operative who happened to observe them in action wrote a panic-stricken thirty-page report heavily streaked with tears and vomit. He also became a much more religious man.

She grimly opened another closet and found a number of dresses in the same vein as the suits. More offerings from the House of Puritan Blah, she thought. Still, she made the best of a bad lot and managed to put together an outfit that said both elegant and I control a secret government organization.

“What do you call a Rook who has no memory of who she is? At best, you were a liability, at worst a danger. Fortunately, you have proven far more resilient than I anticipated,” Farrier said with some satisfaction.

Rooks (responsible for domestic operations; based at the Rookery) 1. The Gestalt siblings (Alex, Teddy, Robert, and Eliza) 2. Myfanwy Thomas (that’s you)

Chevaliers (responsible for foreign operations; based at the Annexe) 1. Major Joshua Eckhart 2. Heretic Gubbins

Bishops (supervisors of the Checquy, aides to the heads; based at Apex House) 1. Alrich 2. Conrad Grantchester

Lord and Lady (heads of the Checquy; based at Apex House) 1. The Right Honorable Linda Viscountess F...

“Damn that entire EU business!” said Wattleman. “It’s all very well to have nice cheap cheeses, but did no one stop to think that the European continent is connected to ones that aren’t necessarily so… so…” “Friendly?” offered Myfanwy. “Secure?” suggested Eckhart. “Full of nice cheap cheese?” said Gubbins. Farrier shot Gubbins a dirty look.

Psychics are not generally held in the highest esteem in the Checquy. I know, it seems like it would be the most common and the most useful sort of power around.

Actually, the most effective psychics are the ones who never realize they’re psychic and instead manage to live excellent lives by consistently making the right decisions. Their powers effectively guide them through the shoals of life without their knowing. And one major shoal tends to be the Checquy. The best psychics pop up on our radar only after they’ve died, when their powers no longer keep them out of our sight.

“You,” he said. “Your memories will be taken. They’ll be licked out of you, everything that makes you who you are. Gone forever. You’ll flee to a park, and there, in the rain, someone new will open the eyes that used to be yours.” He spoke in a voice that cracked, and I stared at him in horror. “They’ll open your eyes, your black eyes, and see corpses all around them. Corpses wearing gloves.”

“What was the cover story?” “Complications,” said Steffi. “It’s a word that encompasses a lot,

A bit of digging in the archives and an ongoing count have shown, however, that the Checquy population remains relatively stable in relation to the British population and, even more interesting, remains relatively stable in relation to the number and level of threats that arise. Mostly. Read into that what you will.

“I know, you’re Rook Myfanwy,” he wheezed. “I had a dream about you last night.” “Oh, yeah?” I asked. “What did you dream?” “I dreamed that a member of the Court gave the order,” he whispered, “and then a man took your memories.” He stared at me in terror, and I stared back at him, completely stunned. “What?” I whispered. “You won’t know who you are,” he said,

Everything that makes me who I am. My memories. My personality. My soul. Gone forever. Obliterated. That’s worse than dying.

There would be someone new in my body. And little Martin had said that person wouldn’t know who she was. I hadn’t come to terms with any of it—that took a lot longer—but it was the thought of that person, of you, of someone even more alone than I was, that got me through that night and led me to write these letters to you.

The big problem is that I’ve got no idea how to impersonate Myfanwy Thomas. Nobody seems able to agree on what she was like. Painfully shy, yet bold in policy. Quiet and withdrawn, but she rises to the Court. And my taking the lead last night certainly seemed to throw the Court off balance. Am I in danger of blowing my cover? They can’t say that I’m not Myfanwy Thomas, because I am Myfanwy Thomas.

Ever since the Checquy began a systematic acquisition of gifted children, there have been few powered operatives with families. We are trained so rigorously, and our dedication is focused so deliberately on our mission, that the children who come out of the Estate are not really equipped for personal lives. I’ll admit, though I could confide this only to you, that I represent the extreme consequence of this. I’m just not comfortable with the idea of… intimacy. But even the most gregarious and outgoing of the Pawns have trouble with it.

Eckhart can manipulate metal. Under his touch, it becomes fluid, malleable; it assumes any shape he desires. It isn’t magnetism. He can’t attract or repel it. He sculpts it, gathering it up in great glistening handfuls and molding it into new shapes.

Conrad is able to manufacture a variety of chemical compounds inside his body and then vent them through his pores in the form of a fine mist. The properties of these compounds range from a deadly toxin to a nonlethal lachrymatory (tear gas) to a spray that has no effect at all. All of these gases, however, emerge as a dark cloud that blacks out the area it covers.

As Rook, he did a great deal of consolidating and streamlining of the Checquy’s domestic finances. I’ve had the opportunity to review what the situation was like before he took it in hand, and it was a veritable Gordian knot of trusts, accounts, inheritances, discretionary funds, and properties. We weren’t exactly hemorrhaging money, but there was some gradual seepage. Grantchester tidied that up.

“I just received notification that the Americans are coming!” “All of them?” asked Myfanwy. “You know, it’s not wise to be sarcastic with your executive assistant,” remarked Ingrid tightly. “And it isn’t the American people, it’s the American Bishops.”