And now I’ll . . . I’ll . . . he had no more ideas. As she came toward him, violence in quicksilver, he hesitated.
And he was lost.
Hello, Ingrid? It’s Shantay Petoskey. Is our girl there?”
“Just a moment, please, Bishop Petoskey.” The American woman took up her cup of tea, which was still warm, and drank. She’d given up smoking years ago, and she was in someone else’s house, but if there’d been a cigarette handy, she’d have snatched it up without hesitation.
“Shan? What’s happened?” The Rook’s voice was anxious.
“Hey, I’m fine. He did come to your house, though.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“Yeah,” said Shantay. “He had your purse from the racecourse. Did you cancel all your cards?”
“Is he dead?”
“I’m sorry, Myfanwy. He was rabid; I had to put him down.”
The Rook sighed. “Yeah, okay. Thanks, Shan.”
“Don’t thank me too soon,” said Shantay. “It’s a good thing you got all your stuff out of the house, because your couch is ruined, and you’ll need to get your kitchen redone.”
“Great, well, the Checquy can pick up the tab for that,” said Myfanwy sourly.
“Fortunes of war,” said Shantay. “But I actually kind of like what’s happened to your backyard. You might want to think about keeping that. Very alternative-ice-sculpture chic.”
“I dread to think,” said the Rook. “Anyway, I’ll send a cleanup team around immediately. Do you want to go to a hotel tonight? I can have a car come and pick you up.”
“Nah, I’m fine. The guest room’s untouched, and it’s a bit late,” said the Bishop.
“Then I’ll see you at Balmoral tomorrow.”
It’s a lovely day,” said Odette. “I didn’t think it would be. The weather reports all agreed that it would storm.”
“There was supposed to be a thunderstorm today,” said Felicity, “but Celia from the Finance section can control the weather in a mile radius around her. They brought her up from London so we could have a nice day here and take advantage of the Balmoral gardens for your grandfather to kiss hands.”
“Kiss hands?” repeated Odette.
“It’s what they call it when a government minister formally takes office. Now it’s just a term—they don’t actually kiss the monarch’s hand.”
“Someone better tell Grootvader Ernst that,” said Odette. “Because they did it in his time and—oh! Too late.” They watched as Ernst rose from his knees. Once again, he is a warrior and a general, she thought, happy for her grootvader.
“And now he’s kissing the King on both cheeks,” said Felicity, sounding very cheerful. “Splendid!” The startled-looking monarch was smiling broadly. “Royalty is always rather fond of tradition.”
Tradition was certainly the flavor of the day. The delegation of Grafters had come to Aberdeenshire to officially join themselves to the Checquy, committing themselves and their people back in Europe to the service of the British Isles. Dressed in their best, they had knelt on red carpets laid out on the lawn and taken an oath of citizenship and then an oath of fealty, and, when they had risen, they had been embraced by cheering Pawns and Retainers. Several of the embraces had been stiff and perfunctory, but most had been genuine.
“Your ancestor looks very pleased,” said Felicity. “I hope he’s not disappointed that he wasn’t made a member of the Court.”
“No,” said Odette. “I think he’s quite satisfied with the fact that they’re making him a duke.”
And once again a nobleman, she remembered. For all her life, and the lives of her family going back generations, Grootvader Ernst had been their leader, respected for his power, his age, and his foresight. But his lost noble status, his fiefdom long since stripped from him in the horrible aftermath of the Isle of Wight, had been abstract knowledge to the Grafters, less real than their fear and hatred for the Checquy.
“Once, we were nobles,” a Grafter mother might say, knowing that it was a nice thought but nothing to compare to being a member of the Broederschap.
But that wasn’t true for Grootvader Ernst, I’d bet, thought Odette. It’s so easy to know that he’s old without realizing, really understanding, that he was alive in those days. That the man who sits at the head of the table with a however-many-greats-grandchild on his knee and a beer in his hand was the man who rode horses to war, sat with his dogs in a great hall, bargained with kings, and invaded a nation.
And for him, noblesse oblige, the obligations and responsibilities of nobility, would be real, and eternal. Is that why he did what he did? Is that why he joined us to the Checquy? Not so that he could become a duke again, but so that he and his people could be of genuine service? She watched him talking with the King, and her heart was filled with love, not just for her liege lord and leader, but for her great-grandfather, who had taught her so much about honor and duty. Then she frowned.
“Felicity, that guy over there, the one who’s right up by the front. He’s not in the Checquy, is he? I mean, he’s wearing a dress military uniform.”
“No,” said Felicity, biting her lip slightly to keep back a laugh. “He’s not in the Checquy.”
“It’s just that he was at the reception,” said Odette. “He was one of the men I danced with.”
“Yeah, he’s one of the VIPs.”
“Oh? I suppose that would make sense,” said Odette thoughtfully. “He’s cute, isn’t he? We danced quite a few times. Chatted a bit. It was very nice.”
“You hit it off?”
“Oh, well, I don’t know,” said Odette, blushing a little. “He said we should go shooting sometime.”
“Really?” said Felicity.
“Yeah. I said I had some really nice shotguns but that I’d only ever shot clay pigeons, and he said he’d be happy to teach me.”
“Odette?”
“Hmm?”
“He’s third in line to the throne.”
“Oh. Really.”
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book took longer to write than I’d expected, but it would have taken much, much longer if not for the support of a multitude of people. There are too many to thank each one individually, but I am supremely grateful to all of them.
Whenever I require inspiration to write about public servants who do extraordinary things, I need only look at my colleagues at the Australian Transport Safety Bureau. Especial gratitude to Brett Leyshon and Dave Grambauer, who blithely shared harrowing insights from their days in medicine, which I promptly stole. Also, many thanks to my colleagues in the operational search for MH370.
The Internet really is an extremely handy little thing. Periodically I will throw out a question on Facebook or Twitter, and an answer will come winging its way back. My thanks to all the people who gave me advice and encouragement, whether we’ve met or not.
Liesbeth van Alphen and Frank de Jong had me to stay with them during my time in the Netherlands and ferried me about without a word of complaint. They, along with Eva Lemaier, were also the recipients of frantic messages asking for Dutch vocabulary (obscene and otherwise) and guidance on pronunciation. (I also shamelessly pillaged their lists of Facebook friends for cool names.)
Nikki Keene kindly answered all my questions about Royal Ascot, even the inane ones. (Any differences between my descriptions of the racecourse and reality are entirely the fault of reality.) Her and Boyd Allen’s hospitality means all the more since they had never met me before in their lives.
Kimberley Stewart-Mole fed me and watered me and squired me around Cardiff.
Erik and Katy Davis let me stay with them in London, and in return I stole their home and stored three Checquy agents in it. My discussions with Erik about the nature and impact of terrorism greatly informed my thoughts about the Antagonists, and his guidance on how to storm a room with armed troops was invaluable.
Hillary Noyes furnished me with some ghastly symptoms to inflict upon innocents, and her Pomeranian, Wallac
e, was the inspiration for Grenadier.
Stuart and Fiona Anderson Wheeler also dared to have me in their home. My friend since high school, Stuart advised me on shooting and showed me some stunning examples of shotguns, which I promptly gifted to Odette.
The staff of Foundry Literary + Media, Little, Brown and Company, and HarperCollins Australia continue to be incredibly kind, incredibly patient, and incredibly incredible.
Finally, of course, I must thank my parents, Jeanne and Bill O’Malley, for absolutely everything.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DANIEL O’MALLEY graduated from Michigan State University and earned a master’s degree in medieval history from Ohio State University. He then returned to his childhood home, Australia, where he works for the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, writing press releases for government investigations of plane crashes and runaway boats. He is the author of The Rook.
PRAISE FOR THE ROOK
‘The Rook is just outrageously good. It gives us a rich secret world to play in and a sympathetic, superpowered, and frequently hilarious heroine to play in it with. What more can you ask from a novel? Reader, The Rook will capture you.’
Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians
‘Harry Potter meets Ghostbusters meets War of the Worlds. The Rook is a scintillating supernatural swashbuckler, replete with spores, slime, and unrelenting suspense — and with three intrepid heroines (two of them sharing the same body!). Daniel O’Malley’s debut is refreshingly unique in the realm of fiction.’
Katherine Neville, author of The Eight and The Fire
‘The pace never lets up in this entertaining high-action read . . . First-time novelist O’Malley has fashioned a near-perfect supernatural thriller. The heroine is appealing, the villains all monsters or freaks, and something unexpected happens on almost every page. Don’t start this book unless you’ve got lots of time, because you won’t want to put it down. It’s that good.’
Library Journal
‘Adroitly straddles the thin line between fantasy, thriller, and spoof . . . O’Malley is a nimble writer, effortlessly leaping back and forth between comedy and action. There’s plenty of room here for a sequel that readers will no doubt begin clamoring for before they’ve even finished this book.’
Booklist
‘Peppered with sly humor, referential social commentary and the ironic, double-layered self-awareness that will have genre fans believing Buffy the Vampire Slayer has joined Ghostbusters.’
Kirkus Reviews
‘Once I picked up The Rook, my weekend reading plans were totally derailed. I’m always waiting for the book that crosses fantasy and reality in the right way, and this was it for me — great world-building, totally charming, and it finally addresses a truth we had all long suspected: that modelling your secret organisation after a chessboard sounds cool but gets really awkward after a while.’
Austin Grossman, author of Soon I Will Be Invincible
‘The Rook is wildly inventive and startlingly hilarious. Part Bourne Identity, part X-Men, and with a hefty dose of Monty Python, this genre-bender is a refreshing addition to contemporary fantasy.’
Jaye Wells, author of Red-Headed Stepchild
‘The Rook is hard to pin down — it defied my expectations at every turn. A supernatural thriller wrapped around a mystery wrapped around a cleverly constructed story of self-discovery.’
Charles Yu, author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
‘[An] impressive debut, a supernatural detective thriller distinguished by its adept use of humour . . . Dry wit, surprising reversals of fortune, and a clever if offbeat plot make this a winner.’
Publishers Weekly
COPYRIGHT
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. All the hats are real. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
HarperCollinsPublishers
First published in the United States in 2016
by Little, Brown and Company
a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
First published in Australia in 2016
by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited
ABN 36 009 913 517
harpercollins.com.au
Copyright © Daniel O’Malley 2016
The right of Daniel O’Malley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
HarperCollinsPublishers
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ISBN 978 0 7322 9686 5 (pbk)
ISBN 978 1 7430 0991 6 (ebook)
Cover design by Lindsey Andrews
Cover art: octopus © Imagezoo/Getty Images; lion © Jim Snyder/iStock Vectors/Getty Images; teapot, rabbit, and crown © Shutterstock Images
* Which could be translated as “the Scientific Brotherhood of Scientists” if your Dutch wasn’t great and you weren’t keen on making the Grafters sound good.
* Charles II of England was not Carlos II of Spain. Confusing one for the other would probably have earned you a backhanding from Charles and a bewildered stare from Carlos.
* Some thoughtful soul had added a footnote explaining that a hoogleraar was a professor.
Daniel O'Malley, Stiletto
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