The Rook by Daniel O'Malley
Dear You, The body you are wearing used to be mine, a letter opens. It goes on to say the body is called Myfanwy Alice Thomas, she is deathly allergic to bees, has no dietary restrictions, no head for alcohol, and is in pretty good shape. There is a wallet in the pocket with all the vital ID cards for survival in the name of Myfanwy, except three in the name of Anne Ryan, and a PIN code 230500. The letter suggests she withdraw some money, check into a hotel and open the second letter. This letter is signed: Sincerely, Me.
It’s raining hard and there are bodies surrounding New Myfanwy, each of them wearing rubber gloves. New Myfanwy follows the letter’s instructions, withdraws money, catches a cab and finds a hotel. When she’s alone, New Myfanwy looks in the mirror to finally see her face. She is very non-descriptive with brown hair, brown eyes, and is short, scrawny, and covered in bruises. Tired beyond belief, New Myfanwy goes to sleep and dreams. Possibly they are her memories before the amnesia, possibly the body’s memories, or possibly they are really happening. An older lady in Victorian dress in her dreams seems to know (New) Myfanwy and be begrudgingly indebted to her, then she realizes New Myfanwy is not Old Myfanwy and calls her a rook with no memory, tells her she will keep the secret and kicks her out the maybe-not-dream. When New Myfanwy wakes, she orders breakfast, fresh clothes and settles in to read Letter 2.
The letter explains that Old Myfanwy finds the whole situation alarming. She had a nice, orderly, comfortable life, if a trifle unorthodox. A psychic told her something would happen, but no specifics, so Old Myfanwy had tried to piece things together. Old Myfanwy gives New Myfanwy a choice to make at the bank, opening one of two lock boxes. Option one will allow her to live a new life (Old Myfanwy has enough saved for her to be comfortable) and option two will allow her to take over her life and become Myfanwy Thomas. Whatever New Myfanwy chooses, she must remember that people wearing latex gloves will be after her. New Myfanwy chooses option one.
At least she does until she gets to the bank where the safety deposit boxes are being held and is attacked by latex glove wearing goons. They begin to fight and as a goon approaches her with a syringe, New Myfanwy feels pain as her arm is being pulled by another goon. She closes her eyes as the pain explodes and screams, and when she opens them, four goons are lying on the floor twitching uncontrollably. What the hell just happened? Stepping over them, New Myfanwy finds the actual, non-gloved bank receptionist unconscious, gathers the safety deposit box keys and opens the box for option two allowing her to take over Old Myfanwy’s life. There are two suitcases inside. One has a number of objects wrapped in bubble wrap, the second is filled with numbered letters. New Myfanwy leaves the bank, now fully Myfanwy Thomas.
In the taxi, Myfanwy opens the second letter in which Old Myfanwy gives her the address to an apartment. Though the apartment shows no signs of its occupant’s personality and clearly hasn’t been lived in, it’s comfortable and fully furnished. Old Myfanwy has seen to it that Myfanwy has the essentials. Settling on the very cosy sofa, Myfanwy takes out letter three, substantially thicker than the previous two, and starts to read.
Old Myfanwy explains she has the power to control a person's nervous system. It developed when she was nine and she experienced extreme pain after falling from a tree and a branch jammed into her leg. Some days later, after an eventful time at the hospital, Myfanwy was taken to see Lady Farrier, a woman with a striking resemblance to the “dream” lady, and Sir Wattleman. Turns out that due to her powers, she legally belongs to the Checquy Group. Old Myfanwy’s father didn’t really protest his daughter being commandeered by a secret arm of the government.
Within the Checquy Group, Old Myfanwy rose to the illustrious Court, a position that can only be held by someone with special powers, though Old Myfanwy’s ascension was not really based on her special powers of exploding people's nervous systems as one would assume as much as it was her being meticulously detail-oriented, organised, and damn good at bureaucracy. The Chequey Group goes back to Oliver Cromwell and his Lord Protector days, and are a tool of the nation. No one ever leaves. Though Old Myfanwy would have enabled Myfanwy to do so using her powers of bureaucracy, it’s probably better she stayed. On another chipper note, it’s very likely that a member of the Checquy even as high up as the Court is a traitor who betrayed Old Myfanwy and got them into this pickle.
On Monday morning, Myfanwy heads to the Checquy Rookery office, the base responsible for domestic operations. According to the big binder of instructions left for her by Old Myfanwy, she will be picked up by chauffeur service and therefore will need to get to Old Myfanwy’s official residence first, which is fancy and huge, but she has no time to look inside as she’s whisked away to the Rookery. Outside, people are protesting government conspiracies but are sketchy on any details, and inside is a warren of corridors to Myfanwy’s office. Myfanwy notices on her way up, people are extremely deferential to her, they bow, curtesy and stutter in her presence. Ingrid, Myfanwy’s personal assistant, runs through her VERY busy day which includes a visit from Frau Blümen, or Sheffield, Chief Instructrix of the Estate, a buxom and effervescent lady who cares for Myfanwy and enjoys a spot of gossip, and Rook Gestalt, her unique counterpart. Myfanwy’s big binder of instructions says Rook Gestalt was born as three boys and one girl, two of which are identical twins. They are one person in four bodies which can operate independently or together in any combination. They are deadly, perceptive, efficient, and dangerous, and when graduating from the Estate into the field, they completed a series of impossible tasks including taking out a 488-year-old vampire. In 1980, it took four or five agents to take out a sixty-four year old vampire. If Gestalt is the traitor who wants Myfanwy dead, she is in deep shit.
Gestalt is… unnerving. The twins come in, Robert is in their office and Eliza is leading a team against an antler cult in Aberdeen. While Myfanwy is desperately trying to be Old Myfanwy, the twins suddenly stop and stare off into space, Eliza’s team are about to go into the cult's headquarters and offer to give Myfanwy a blow-by-blow. For the next forty-five minutes, Myfanwy listens to their commentary, and when they are done, the twins are exhausted so they call a halt to the meeting. Phew! A few moments later Ingrid comes in. Myfanwy and Gestalt have been summoned to witness an interrogation. Thank goodness, Ingrid can show her the way!
Myfanwy settles into the interrogation observation room, noting a paper bag on her seat that Gestalt is happy to remind her is for her weak female constitution. The heads of department are also there, male, condescending, and boorish. Unconventionally, Myfanwy asks Ingrid to stay with her. The interrogation starts, and Dr. Crisp, who is examining the body, is giving facts about his history, lifestyle, etc. almost like he’s reading the person like a fortune teller except accurate and specific. After a heated exchange between Dr. Crisp and Perry, a particularly annoying head of department, Myfanwy tells everyone to please shut up and get on with the job at hand. Dr. Crisp continues the interrogation except this time it's invasive. He doesn’t cut the subject open, but uses his power to make the man feel pain, his teeth literally rattling in his skull. Myfanwy can feel the waves of power which is what caused Old Myfanwy’s nausea. She also finds out that her own powers are potent and that she can switch off the interrogation subject's pain receptors. Dr. Crisp goes harder until he pushes over Myfanwy’s wall, but unfortunately this causes the man to die with smoke coming off him. This needs to be looked into. The menfolk in the room are shocked by Myfanwy’s assertiveness in stopping Gestalt strangling Dr. Crisp and calling for action to find out what exactly happened and what the man said as he died. The whole situation pisses Myfanwy off and she has a good old rant to Ingrid in the elevator as they head back to her office. As she’s enjoying a Toblerone waiting for Ingrid to come in for tea and a chat about what went on, Gestalt arrives. Oh goodie.
The Gestalt twins enter Myfanwy’s office, they intercepted a runner on the way carrying a note with the interrogation subjects' dying screams deciphered on it, I scout for the invasion… we will kill you all. Well, bugger. They both agree the Court must be informed and send Ingrid to set up an emergency meeting for sundown that evening. Gestalt also apologises for trying to strangle Dr. Crisp, blaming the interrogation subject's mention of the Grafters as being the trigger, which, we all know about them don’t we. No we don’t, but there is a big binder of instructions to look at, which Myfanwy takes to the garish pimped out bachelor pad Old Myfanwy suffered as leftovers from the previous Rook to find out and have a nap.
Meanwhile, members of the court are alerted about the emergency meeting. Lady Farrier is told though still plans to have dinner with Rook Thomas after a nap and forage through dreams in America. Chevalier Heretic Gubbins, Harry to his friends, is interrupted abusing his computer by his secretary to inform him of the meeting. Conrad Grantchester is disabusing a minister's notion to visit Australia with a graphic PowerPoint presentation which leaves the official crying, vomiting and mentally scarred. Joshua Eckhart is informed while on the way to a potential torture chamber or kink dungeon where a member of the royal family with multiple heads seems to be. Sir Wattleman uses the phone call summoning for the meeting as an excuse to leave the dull gentleman’s club early, no, no he insists he better leave now and not in three hours.
Turns out, the Grafters (or Wetenschappelijk Broederschap van Natuurkundigen) are a group of alchemists from the fifteenth century who never found out how to turn lead into gold, but did find a way to manipulate flesh. They could mold and reform raw materials of people, liquifying and resculpting them, attaching new limbs, and creating new creatures. It was a couple of centuries before the Chequy began to be worried when a note from an operative came back telling of a giant killing machine. There was a war with the Grafters, and eventually it seemed they disappeared, though there were some reports of people working with corpses during the Great War, but all became quiet and they turned into the boogeymen of Chequy history.
Well, disturbing history aside, it's time for Myfanwy to get dressed for her dinner with Lady Farrier after her meeting with The Rookery head of security, Clovis, where Myfanwy raises concerns over the protesters outside. Clovis isn’t worried, if anything, it helps disguise The Rookery as protesters are often ignored even when they’re talking sense. On another security matter, someone has been Googling Myfanwy Thomas and that concerns him. Anyway, time for dinner.
Dinner with Lady Farrier isn’t like a gathering of two friends, it’s distinctly uncomfortable, but at least Lady Farrier knows Myfanwy is not Old Myfanwy, she’s just the new resident, and she is very impressed Myfanwy has so neatly and quickly stepped in Old Myfanwy’s shoes. Myfanwy is pleased to find out Lady Farrier’s high opinion of Old Myfanwy’s administrative capabilities, but learns she's hugely disappointed in her choosing not to use her unique and strong power. After dinner, they ride separately to the emergency meeting of the Court.
The meeting is at Apex House, the building where the Lord and Lady of the Checquy are based, as well as the Bishops (Alrich, who has recently woken and is the epitome of dark, handsome and brooding with a supernatural presence about him, and Conrad Grantchester from earlier with his threatening PowerPoint). The Chevaliers, Eckhart and Gubbins, who are responsible for foreign operations, are based at the Annexe. The Court filters in and thankfully Myfanwy is able to identify who is who of the other members before any accidental slips, Old Myfanwy could have provided pictures and maps! Myfanwy and Gestalt bring the rest of the Court up to speed about the Grafter invasion as they watch a recording of the prisoner’s capture which is not pleasant with his abilities to manipulate his flesh. Everyone's first concern is how the domestic and not the foreign operations of the Checquy found out about this, secondly, there are a lot of higher ups who need to be informed as unpleasant as it may be to talk to them. Myfanwy suggests using sniffer dogs at airports since reports show the grafters smell different so Sir Wattleman agrees to plant a suggestion with the Home Secretary about new screening procedures for travellers. With that, it’s decided the Rooks and Chevs will work together and present conclusions over the invasion threat.
The next day at the Rookery, Myfanwy meets with Dr. Crisp who reveals that the prisoner effectively killed himself, or at least the augmentations to his body sent that signal. His whole body seemed to be wired up and acting like a giant mobile phone. The pain he was undergoing wasn’t from the interrogation, it was the additions made to his body moving about, and when it got to be too much, a kill signal was activated. Myfanwy relays this to Gestalt, Eckhart and Gubbins, then later the Bishops. For the moment, investigations will continue, there does not seem to be an immediate threat of invasion by the Belgians. The Americans, however…
Back at the Rookery, Ingrid takes great delight in flustering Myfanwy by telling her that her American counterparts from the Croatoan will be arriving in 45 minutes. That’s enough time to consult the Big Binder of InstructionsTM and change into something more business appropriate from the residence. Myfanwy and Bishop Shantay Petoskey get on very well. Shantay informs Myfanwy that her report on the Grafters came at just the right time as a Grafter operative was caught soon after entering their country. She was detained after killing several people and is currently being held in Nevada for interrogation, but she’s not talking. They go to lunch, have a pleasant time, and on the way back, someone familiar-looking approaches Myfanwy. She says her name is Bronwyn Thomas, Myfanwy’s sister.
A sister suddenly turning up now is super sus so Myfanwy and Shantay get to researching and everything seems to point at Bronwyn being genuine. Myfanwy arranges for Bronwyn to come to her residence that evening. When Bronwyn arrives, they are both full of questions. Myfanwy makes up some convoluted story about being ill as a child and at death's door and taken away but then getting better only to come away with a nasty drug habit then luckily securing a lucrative job that can afford a nice big house in London. Bronwyn randomly Googled Myfanwy (that answers that question), and after checking the births, deaths and marriages register, and checking their (now dead) parents’ records, was able to track down Myfanwy to this house. She saw her one evening getting out of a car and it’s not creepy or stalkerish at all. They chat a bit longer and Myfanwy shows Bronwyn to a guest bedroom before going back to the living room to put the hidden gun away.
A letter from Old Myfanwy talks about her following the Checquy financial statements and finding a second Estate hidden in Wales. She went for a jaunt to see it one weekend and managed to sneak in. Old Myfanwy found records that there was no Court oversight of this Estate, Camp Caius, even though it has been around for twenty years. It looks like all their money was going into training fees and surgical facilities. Students, of which only something like fifteen have been produced though many have died there, don’t leave until they are twenty-three before moving to some place called Albion. Before leaving, Old Myfanwy photocopied the information.
The next morning, Myfanwy has breakfast with Bronwyn before heading to the Rookery where Shantay is waiting. Myfanwy and Shantay head to the pimp-pad to catch up about the sister situation and look through reports. Myfanwy confirms she used her powers on Bronwyn and found no augmentation or surgeries to suggest her sister is anyone other than she says, and she believes her. Ingrid interrupts, there’s a major situation in Bath. A house is having a rave and eating people, including members of the public, police and Chequey. They want to send in the elite Barghests warriors but need a Rook on site and Gestalt is busy. Myfanwy and Shantay head to Bath.
Pawn Poppet brings Myfanwy up to speed, following standard operating procedure, there is a purple fleshy fungi-like substance in the house. People are going in but not coming out, they’re being liquified and big fleshy bits keep bulging from the inside. Myfanwy orders the Barghest to proceed, they have body cameras, so Myfanwy, Shantay, Pawn Poppet and the operating nerds can watch. There is a horrible chanting over the camera which is sent to the Rookery for analysis. By the time the analysis is complete, the Barghest team has cleared the ground floor and as they are proceeding upstairs where the chanting is coming from, they are whipped inside and the camera feeds cut off. Vital signs show the team are still alive but unconscious. The chant is saying send in the Rook… send in the Rook… because of course it is.
To everyone’s surprise, Myfanwy gears up as does Shantay because the Croatoan’s dossier on Rook Thomas is probably as big as the Checquy have on her, so she knows Myfanwy is not a field operative. Inside the house, Myfanwy tries to “read” the funky fungus and for about 20 minutes seems to phase out digging around it. It seems to be layers of something. They continue upstairs and find in each room people of all ages kneeling, chanting in a trance and covered in the fungus. Eventually they find Pawn Goblet, Pawn Poppet’s superior who had called in sick, being all weird with a group of chanters. He’s talking to the Rook, but he thinks it’s Rook Gestalt not Rook Thomas.
Goblet mentions things were not supposed to have started yet, a back door to shut them down, and stopping them from attacking the Barghests. When he sees Myfanwy, Goblet turns into some kind of weird porcupine beastie and attacks. Myfanwy takes him down by cutting off the signals in his spine, unfortunately he has seven interwoven spines and it also takes some brute strength from Shantay’s magical metal hands to bring him down. Myfanwy then faces one of the chanters and tries to use her powers. Again, Myfanwy is under for a while. Shantay sees fungus dusting her and her nose bleeding, and then she starts convulsing, so she tries to help Myfanwy and the chanting gets louder and more frantic.
Some time later, Myfanwy comes back to reality to the ringing of her phone. It’s Pawn Poppet. She tells him to give her half an hour and everything will be sorted. Myfanwy mapped out the fungus and, with a little mental push, was able to manipulate it. She touches Shantay who has passed out and been covered by the fungus and switches on her metal skin powers and kills off the fungus. She then does the same to each of the chanters and the pods in the basement where the Barghest operatives are. Eventually, Myfanwy is able to use her power to force Pawn Goblet back from porcupine to human and they leave, arresting Pawn Goblet for treason. Soon Myfanwy and Shantay are headed back to London for a posh dinner at Apex House to welcome the Croatoan contingent. The dress Ingrid suggests Myfanwy wear is red, sheer, small and so thin a slight breeze could whip it off and is the polar opposite of everything Old Myfanwy has in her regular wardrobe rotation.
Myfanwy heads to Apex House with Ingrid and her bodyguard Anthony and the dress receives the reaction it deserves. Whilst the members of the Checquy Court and Croatoan delegate mingle, Gubbins asks about the manifestation event Myfanwy and Shantay oversaw. Myfanwy was hoping not to talk about it, what with Gestalt’s involvement, but she ends up loudly accusing her fellow Rook of treason. All hell breaks loose as the four Gestalt bodies and Court retainers attack. The fight is bloody and vicious leaving Gubbins dead along with more than twenty-five retainers. As one retainer was attempting to strangle Myfanwy, she reached into his nervous system and could tell something was not wired correctly. Even Gestalt was strange, not physically in any of his bodies, but almost like his mind went somewhere else at one point, but luckily Myfanwy was able to subdue two of the Gestalt bodies, Teddy, one of the twins, and Robert, the brother, for questioning. As the remaining Court are being doctored, they discuss the situation. The Grafters have infiltrated the Checquy.
On Sunday morning, Myfanwy, Ingrid and a near-army’s worth of personnel head to Gallows Keep, the Checquy’s prison for enemies they can’t kill, in the wilds of Scotland. Myfanwy interrogates the Teddy Gestalt body who is in the stocks. Gestalt finds Myfanwy and her threats ridiculous and refuses to give her anything other than threats, curses and insults about how they worked to get her in place because she hides behind her numbers and is too afraid to act. Myfanwy, bored now, promises dismemberment while his other body watches which makes the Teddy body freak out. Oh well, if Gestalt isn’t going to give Myfanwy any information she digs into him instead. As she holds him in place, Myfanwy can see through the eyes of Gestalt’s bodies: one is looking intently at a computer screen; another is sleeping on a heated blanket to soothe their muscles; another is staring at Myfanwy; another is sitting on a hard bed in a dark room; the last is watching television as a tall woman with blue eyes walks in. Wait a minute… that's too many bodies!!
In the car, Ingrid asks how things went, did Myfanwy learn anything or did Gestalt reveal he knows about Myfanwy’s memory loss? Hang on! Myfanwy freezes Ingrid and asks her to explain. Ingrid was in the office the night Old Myfanwy lost her memory. She found Old Myfanwy curled up and crying on the bathroom floor babbling about finding out who it was, who took her memories and that others are coming, but Old Myfanwy didn’t reveal anything more, she played with her own mind to calm herself down and left through a secret stairway in the floor to the carpark. On Monday morning, Myfanwy walked in and seemingly nothing was the matter, but a personal assistant knows their boss and Ingrid could tell something about Myfanwy was different, she was assertive and confident, and then she wore that red dress! Myfanwy tells Ingrid what happened with some selective edits, leaving out Bronwyn. Ingrid points out that Gestalt wouldn’t have been able to put Myfanwy in place as a Rook by himself, someone else was helping him from the Court.
Back in the Rookery, Bronwyn calls asking Myfanwy if she wants to go clubbing. Clearly, Myfanwy has never been clubbing and she accepts. After a meeting with Head of Security Clovis finding out the ridiculous measures the Checquy are having to take to identify and root out Grafter infiltrators, Myfanwy sneaks out through the tunnel Ingrid told her Old Myfanwy used. In it, she finds the usual bugs, cobwebs and three dead retainer bodies all oozy from decomposition, and a few very nice, very expensive cars. Clearly Old Myfanwy was a bit of a petrol head. The sleek, red, curvy number should do well that night.
Bronwyn makes Myfanwy change from her “business casual coated in tunnel dust” into something not as risqué as The Red Dress, but it comes close. They head to a club and it’s a sensory overload for Myfanwy. She heads to the bar for water, parting the dancers with her powers, and runs into sexy brooding Alrich. He smelled her in the city and came to investigate; and yes, he is a vampire if you hadn’t worked that out yet. Did you know they hatch from eggs? After a short pleasant exchange, Alrich leaves with a stunning young man who won’t remember the night at all and Myfanwy returns to her sister and friends. She has a drink and dances with Bronwyn, and when she finally feels relaxed, a guy approaches her. She can’t understand what he’s saying, but his smile is full of literal razors. Well, naturally.
After stereotypical threats from both sides, Razor Mouth escorts Myfanwy outside and into a waiting limo where there is a thing lounging in a tank of slime taking up the majority of the space. It looks like a freshly flayed, mismatched eldritch horror. It explains he is a Graaf Gerd de Leeuwen of the Grafters (Wetenschappelijk Broederschap van Natuurkundigen) and it wants Graaf Ernst von Suchtlen. After a lot of confusion, Myfanwy is able to ascertain that Gerd is an original member of the Grafters, making him centuries old… well in part, and Ernst is another head of the Grafters that Gerd assumes the Checquy have. Myfanwy’s ignorance is not faked. Gerd starts ranting and raving, flailing in his tank and tearing what parts are pinned together, sloshing Myfanwy in tank gunk. Myfanwy gets out of the car, finds somewhere to clean up and heads back to the Rookery.
At the disgustingly early time of 6:30am Ingrid wakes Myfanwy for her Anti-Grafter medical examinations and they are thorough! While Myfanwy is being poked, prodded, scrapped, licked, and having all manner of examinations, she asks Ingrid to check her and the other Courts’ diaries for any meetings with a Graaf Ernst von Suchtlen. Ingrid isn’t able to find anything.
Graaf Gerd de Leeuwen turns out to be highly impatient and calls Myfanwy only ten hours after their meeting to demand Graaf Ernst when he originally gave her three days to find him. After her morning, Myfanwy is in desperate need of caffeine and is pissed, so she resoundingly puts Graaf Gerd in his place to the astonishment of Ingrid and her two new beefy bodyguards watching. Ingrid points out the call could have been traced, so it’s lucky that Graaf Gerd calls back for round two of Myfanwy’s verbal barrage. The call ends with Graaf Gerd threatening Reading and saying there may not be much left of John Perry’s house. Myfanwy is confused. To add further annoyance to the whole situation, Graaf Gerd sends a fax, reminding them he will show his strength in Reading. A few moments later, an incident alert comes in and they’re all packing off to Reading, including Pawn Alan who only came to deliver a message. In Reading, they’re met by site manager Pawn Cyrus who tells them John Perry was from Reading and was the Rook who stopped the Grafters’ last invasion. As they draw closer to the incident site, which is a police station in the city centre, Myfanwy gets an intense headache, but she describes it as being outside her head.
In the Operations trailer, two Pawns, one who can see through walls and the other through flesh, describe the giant cube of absorbed people amassed in the front entrance room of the police station. It’s filled with multiple organs, patchwork flesh and bones. It’s also a honeycomb design inside and the Pawn seems fascinated and in awe of it. As they are agreeing on their plan of action, a full aggressive strike by a nine year old child still in training at the Estate which will probably leave a crater and hopefully not kill the operative child, the flesh cube begins to move and reform, almost using the bones as anchors. The front doors to the police station open and flesh tentacles whip out and grab the operations trailer, drawing it in. Myfanwy orders an evacuation. A chainsaw happy Pawn, who was also at the Bath manifestation, stands atop the trailer merrily slicing at the flesh tentacles, but they go all hydra and more tentacles pour forth from the open wounds, dragging him, Myfanwy, and one of her bodyguards inside.
Myfanwy is drowning in the flesh. She tries to reach out like she did in Bath but it’s a chaotic mire of consciousness and she has to pull back. Thinking about the description of what the flesh cube looked like on the inside, Myfanwy then tries to freeze and overload the central brain, but again that doesn’t work. Eventually she starts to run out of air and blacks out. Her subconscious self-preservation kicks in and a thousand different orders and impulses project from her panicking mind, tearing into the flesh cube. Around her, the flesh cube begins to dissolve. Her remaining bodyguard covers her naked body with his coat and carefully picks her up. In the hospital, as she’s undergoing more tests, scopes and probes, she learns that her mind created a shield around her protecting her from the corrosive juices that killed all the others, leaving Myfanwy with nothing more than bleached hair and light sunburn. On the way back to the Rookery, Myfanwy receives a phone call about the phone trace, no dice, however the fax was traceable to a private London resident. As she’s stuck in Reading and the only other member of the Court who has been tested and cleared of being a Grafter is Eckhart, she calls him in to take that operation.
Back at the Rookery, and weary to the bone, Myfanwy tries to rest in her office and kicks at the paperwork piled on her desk, scattering it. Something catches her eye and suddenly she knows exactly who the traitor in the Court is. Running out to reception, Myfanwy asks Ingrid to call an emergency meeting of the Court that night. With her two bodyguards in tow, Myfanwy makes her way to Apex House ready to accuse treason. When she gets there, the court isn’t waiting for her, only the person she has come to accuse.
Bishop Grantchester. Myfanwy orders her bodyguards to shoot him, but instead they take a bullet to head by Grantchester’s goons, so Myfanwy uses her powers to make them shoot each other. Myfanwy turns her powers to Grantchester and can feel all the reservoirs of chemicals and enzymes churning under his skin and the intricate system of pores and apertures which vent them. It’s disgusting. Unfortunately for Myfanwy, Grantchester has more than two (dead) goons. He's brought Norman and Miriam, two very special and obedient children from Camp Caius. Norman is a scaly child with a mouth full of fangs who is responsible for Old Myfanwy losing her memory and Miriam is super fast with a killer uppercut. Along with them is Eliza and Alex (one of the Gestalt twins). Time for the bad guy monologue!
Grantchester has been putting people in place all across the Checquy for years, including Gestalt and Myfanwy. Her office and residence, his old office and residence, is bugged, which is how he knew her plans and was able to kill Pawn Alan and Ingrid before any communications could be sent to the rest of the Court. Myfanwy is a pawn (lowercase p) who was put in place to be an administrator until the time the Grafters could harvest her. Myfanwy’s powers are terrifying to the Grafters as she can control living matter, the one power that can truly hurt them, and they want it. On the night Old Myfanwy lost her memory, scaly Norman came to Myfanwy's office, however what he did to her memory didn’t stick, and instead of being pliable for shipping to the lab, Old Myfanwy sat up shrieking and ran for it. All the retainers sent to find and kill her never came back. When Myfanwy came to the office on Monday, plans were moved up, but it seemed like Myfanwy didn’t recall anything as she went on business as usual. Gestalt’s four bodies weren’t told about the plans for Myfanwy, and speaking of four bodies, there are actually five. Eliza, the sister, gave birth and Grantchester adopted that child, and adding to the ick, the father is one of Gestalt’s other bodies. Oh look, here are two of the Gestalt bodies now. Grantchester leaves the room to let his goons finish the job…
Well now. Myfanwy is not about to let Grantchester get away with wiping Old Myfanwy’s memory, killing Ingrid and Pawn Alan, kidnapping and experimenting on children, murder, treason and all the other shit he’s put people through. As Norman puts his hairy tongue down her throat to wipe her memory, she reaches into her coat pocket (thank you Ingrid for always reminding her to wear one) for her EpiPen (thank you Old Myfanwy for writing that she keeps one in every coat) and shoots it into Norman, overloading his system and killing him. Myfanwy then uses Miriam to shoot Eliza dead and shoot Alex in the shoulder. Alex empties his own gun into Miriam. Grantchester watches all this on the monitors and asks Myfanwy to join him, which is obviously a no, so he threatens her. How very stereotypical. Myfanwy wants to take a few moments to gather her breath before informing the rest of the Court what shit they’re in.
In the car back to the Rookery with Ingrid and Pawn Alan, who are not dead (thank you Pawn Alan and his ability to control metal) they assess how the meeting with the Court went. Myfanwy didn’t find it difficult to get the other members to believe her. Eckhart had returned from the mission having skewered Graaf Gerd through with a self-made javelin and obtained photographic evidence for the others to review. Grantchester’s wife and the Gestalt baby were also brought into custody. For now though, Myfanwy will rest, she’s survived being poked and prodded by medical staff three times, an eldritch horror flesh cube, confronting a traitor, and a long executive meeting all on zero coffee and a hangover. All she can think about is sleeping in a nice and securely locked Rookery and a very big breakfast the following day. Unfortunately, Graaf Ernst von Suchtlen is naked and dripping wet in her office. Of course this would happen.
Graaf Ernst is there to broker a deal with the Checquy. He explains to Myfanwy that he and his cousin Graaf Gerd were the original investors with the Grafters, after he lost his leg in a riding accident, the idea of being able to regrow his limb was overwhelmingly attractive. Over time, resentment over the Grafters' failed invasion turned to forgiveness, and Graaf Ernst wanted to start working with the Checquy who had built an invaluable organisation so he started putting key players into the Checquy, set up the mold factory in Bath, and started Camp Caius. To secure the deal, Graaf Ernst cut out his own heart from which he could regrow himself and mailed it to Myfanwy as he didn’t think she would take his call. Old Myfanwy wrote a letter about opening the mail one day only to find a human heart and flinging it across the room in shock, but, unfortunately for Graaf Ernst, that was months ago not weeks. Myfanwy brings Graaf Ernst up to speed about his now dead cousin who seemed to take all the work Graaf Ernst was doing and twist it for his own nefarious purposes and the invasion he was trying to carry out with all the arrangements Graaf Ernst had set up, and a few others thrown in for good measure. Graaf Ernst is disappointed but not particularly shocked by his cousin's actions.
A few days later, Myfanwy gives the ‘OK’ for a strike against Grantchester who is sunning himself on some remote beach in Italy. With the nasty business done, she returns to Shantay and Bronwyn who believes there is a big merger Myfanwy and Shantay are working on, which isn’t entirely wrong. There is still a lot to tidy up in the Chequey, a new Rook, Bishop and Chevalier to appoint, though Lady Farrier has been heavily hinting Myfanwy should have the Bishop spot. Myfanwy also wants to put non-powered people into the Court, and more women. Hopefully, with the Grafters help, all the weird stuff in the world will be easier to tend to.