The Remnant Read online

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  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Man Sunday Ltd.

  Excerpt from Battlemage copyright © 2015 by Stephen Aryan

  Excerpt from A Crown for Cold Silver copyright © 2015 by Alex Marshall

  Cover design by Lauren Panepinto

  Cover illustration by Kirk Dou Ponce/DogEared Design

  Cover copyright © 2017 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  Hachette Book Group

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  Simultaneously published in Great Britain and in the U.S. by Orbit in 2017

  First U.S. Edition: March 2017

  Orbit is an imprint of Hachette Book Group.

  The Orbit name and logo are trademarks of Little, Brown Book Group Limited.

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  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016960630

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-27956-7 (trade paperback); 978-0-316-27958-1 (ebook)

  E3-20170202-JV-PC

  Contents

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  EPIGRAPH

  SNOW ON THE RIVER

  FIRST PART: TRAVELLER’S TALES ON THE UNCERTAIN MECHANICK OF THE MIRROR’D WORLD AND ITS ILLUSORY POTENTIAL

  CHAPTER 1: FROM A DISTANT SHORE

  CHAPTER 2: HERNE THE HUNTER

  CHAPTER 3: THE BLOODY HOMECOMING

  CHAPTER 4: THE RUNNING DOG

  CHAPTER 5: OF FIRE AND MIRRORS

  CHAPTER 6: UNDER THE HORNBEAM

  CHAPTER 7: THE PROCTOR

  CHAPTER 8: THE LUSTS OF ABCHURCH TEMPLEBANE

  CHAPTER 9: AN UNEXPECTED DIVERSION

  CHAPTER 10: FOR WANT OF A TWELVE-INCH BASTARD

  SECOND PART: THE RETURNED ON THE UNKINDNESS OF RAVENS

  CHAPTER 11: EVERY HOMECOMING A BETRAYAL

  CHAPTER 12: NORTH BY STEAM

  CHAPTER 13: WIGHTS

  CHAPTER 14: THE GUARDIAN

  CHAPTER 15: HOME AND NOT HOME

  CHAPTER 16: ARMBRUSTER AND MAGILL

  CHAPTER 17: THE COMING STORM

  CHAPTER 18: THE ISLAND WITHIN THE ISLAND

  CHAPTER 19: ARRIVAL

  CHAPTER 20: THE KINGLESS COUNTING-HOUSE

  CHAPTER 21: THE HOUSE AT THE END OF THE WORLD

  CHAPTER 22: OLD FRIENDS

  CHAPTER 23: THE DEATH OF HOPE

  CHAPTER 24: THE SOUTERRAIN

  CHAPTER 25: THE ADMONITORY FLOORBOARD

  CHAPTER 26: THE UNKINDNESS OF RAVENS

  THIRD PART: BREAKING AND ENTERING ON THE AMERICAS

  CHAPTER 27: THE CUNNING MAN CASTS A FLY

  CHAPTER 28: PLANS AND DECISIONS

  CHAPTER 29: THE VIGIL

  CHAPTER 30: HUNTER’S MOON

  CHAPTER 31: SILENCE IN BEDLAM

  CHAPTER 32: BLOOD CRIES OUT

  CHAPTER 33: THIEVES IN THE NIGHT

  CHAPTER 34: A SHORTCUT FROM MARBLEHEAD

  CHAPTER 35: A SCOWLE BY MOONLIGHT

  CHAPTER 36: THE OLD ENEMY AND A NEW RECRUIT

  CHAPTER 37: THE TWIG AND THE RILL

  CHAPTER 38: THE VIOLATION

  CHAPTER 39: NIGHT AND THE DREADNOUGHT PORTER

  CHAPTER 40: THE MONARCH ENGAGED

  CHAPTER 41: THE DOG DIGGER AND THE BAD STEP

  CHAPTER 42: A DEAD DAY AFTER

  FOURTH PART: THE LOWEST TIDE ON THE GOLEM

  CHAPTER 43: THE EXCHANGE

  CHAPTER 44: OUT OF THE GLASS CLOSET

  CHAPTER 45: EXCHANGE OF GIFTS

  CHAPTER 46: THE INBOUND CHILL

  CHAPTER 47: UNDER THE KILLING FLOOR

  CHAPTER 48: A BLADE TO SHUCK AN OYSTER

  CHAPTER 49: MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS

  CHAPTER 50: THE FINAL CUT

  CHAPTER 51: A FACE AT THE WINDOW

  CHAPTER 52: THE BLOODIEST BOY

  CHAPTER 53: THE WILDFIRE UNBOUND

  CHAPTER 54: FIRE ON FIRE

  CHAPTER 55: TIME PASSED

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  EXTRAS MEET THE AUTHOR

  A PREVIEW OF BATTLEMAGE

  A PREVIEW OF A CROWN FOR COLD SILVER

  BY CHARLIE FLETCHER

  ORBIT NEWSLETTER

  For Jackmo and A-Girl from C-Dog

  with all love, forever

  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 – own
er 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 no
t 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.