The Inquisitor wears his visor and keeps his eyes on the papers secured on his clipboard. He fusses over forms signed in triplicate, over figures and diagrams and proper terminology. He knows that careers are made, stagnated, and destroyed by words, that a single misplaced comma can hang a man. Indeed, it happens all the time. He remembers his less careful colleagues with a shudder. He is fastidious for a reason. He has held this job now for eighteen years. Almost a record. The Inquisitor jabs his last period with a flourish and does not look up. Instead he exits the building, slides into the backseat of the long, black car waiting for him outside the Constable’s office, and raps on the glass separating the driver from her passenger. The driver clicks the car into gear and allows its girth to glide silently down the quiet street.
The Inquisitor does not stop for pie.
The Constable follows the Inquisitor out of the building, crosses his arms, and watches the silent car disappear into the dark. He draws in a long slow breath of cold night air and looks up at the glowing eyes of the Ministers. He sees a growing brightness, and then a burst of energy shooting across the quiet street from eye to eye to eye, making a multipointed web over his head. He sighs deeply, rubbing his arthritic hand over the loosening folds of his face. He needs a shave. He always needs a shave. He looks back up and sees the slumped figure of the girl on the catwalk, her butterfly still wrapped protectively around her chest. He shakes his head and goes inside to place a phone call.
The telephone on the wall is an ancient thing—heavy black plastic, with a twirling wire that attracts dust. He dials the number he knows by heart and braces himself.
“Yep,” he says. “Got a little sparrow on the roof.” He waits. “There’s been a development.” He holds his breath and nods. “She did indeed.” Listens to the other line. Holds the receiver away from his ear for a bit, wincing. “Well, there’s no call for that kind of language,” he says. “Channel was already open, and we both knew it. Been open for a long time. She just opened it more. Well. A lot more. Fool girl. Don’t matter either way. Secret’s out. Someone blabbed. Don’t know who, but someone did, no mistake. And now we’ve got a whole mess of trouble coming our way.” He waits a bit more. Rests his forehead against the wall. He’s getting too old for this sort of thing. “Yep. I’ll get her down. Why don’t you come and collect her when you can. Bring the other fool too, assuming he’s sober enough to stand.”
Outside, the light emanating from the eyes of the Ministers is so bright that he can’t see the stars. It’s a pity. A little starlight might clear his head or soothe his soul. It usually does. He shrugs, rears back, and with more agility than would seem possible for a man of his age, leaps halfway up the building and clings like an insect to the bricks. He scuttles the rest of the way, scoops up the girl and her butterfly in one arm, and rappels back down, leap after downward leap, gripping the bricks with both feet and one hand. He lands on the ground, as light and soundless as dust. He brings her inside, locking the door behind him, and lays her gently on the cot in his office, crossing the room to put the kettle on.
“Huh,” he says.
The Constable stares at his hands, utterly amazed. He curls his fingers into tight fists and stretches them out as far as they will go. His arthritis is gone. His joints are unswollen and loose for the first time in twenty years. And his performance on the side of the building is a thing he never has been able to do—even when he was young and strong.
And what’s more, he hadn’t even thought about it. His body knew what it could do before he did. He removes his eyeglasses and scans the room, blinking all the while. Crisp, sharp lines; details standing in stark relief. He slides the spectacles into a drawer, closing it with a decisive click, wondering if he will ever need them again.
“Good god, girl,” he whispers to the sleeping child on the cot. “What did you go and do?”
16. Then.
On the morning after the Boro comet finally vanished from the night sky, not to return for another quarter century, the junk man—the man with the wobbly cart and the hand-patched boots, who smelled always of grave mold and vomit and whiskey and piss, the man who came through town every Saturday from the West Road and left every Monday by the East—found the dead child lying on the rubbish heap. The child with the magic mark.
The junk man wasn’t looking for a child—living or dead—nor did he trouble himself with the national frenzy over the Boro comet, whose arrival always meant trouble. Whose presence in the sky, moreover, caused certain . . . anomalies in some children. He had better things to do.
The junk man had begun searching the rubbish heap, picking up treasures as he went. A possibly gold chain. A perfectly good shoe. A solicitor’s briefcase, likely taken before the gentleman in question was thrown into the river with stones tied to his ankles. It was a dangerous profession these days, soliciting.
There were fliers. Signs. Banners. All regarding that troublesome Boro comet with its foolishness and woe. The junk man kicked a banner with his hand-patched boot.
He sang as he picked through the heap. His feet quivered with a bit of a suppressed jig and his fingers began to itch. He loved the rubbish heap. He never knew what he might find in there. Once he found a ring so valuable, it kept him in butter and beef for over a year. He had found
