Rook

artisan in the world. The mold that had coated her skin was scythed off by the spreading metal, and Shantay glittered in the near darkness.
    Myfanwy stared in awe at her friend, a fashion model dipped in quicksilver. Her finger on the back of Shantay’s hand was grubby compared to the shining perfection beneath it. But she resisted the urge to draw back and instead sent another little message downthrough the metal skin and coursing along into Shantay’s system. Shantay shuddered, as if she’d been shocked by electricity. Once, twice, and then she sat up, opening her eyes. While her skin was silver, her eyes were hard and shiny, like black gemstones.
    “Wakey, wakey,” said Myfanwy. “I’m sorry we don’t have any coffee or tea, but that’s what you get when you elect to take a nap in a manifestation site.”
    “That,”
said Shantay hoarsely, “was no fun at all. I feel like I brushed my teeth with a loaf of old bread.”
    “Yeah, well, not to fret,” Myfanwy said with a sigh. “I figured out the problem.”
    “So you know how to stop all this?”
    “Sure, it’s as simple as doing
this.
” She blinked.
    And the chanting stopped.
    S o what exactly did you do?” asked Shantay. They were sitting in the lobby of a youth hostel waiting for a car to come get them, surrounded by a crowd of backpacking students from Australia and America. Both of the women had insisted on showers after they emerged from the house, but the Checquy headquarters in Bath had been packed full of Pawns, soldiers, and doctors, all of them trying to do fifty things at once. No doubt they would have stepped aside in the face of Myfanwy’s superior rank, but their need was greater. There hadn’t been a vacancy in any hotels (“There’s some sort of convention in town, Rook Thomas. I’m dreadfully sorry”) and so it had been the youth hostel or nothing. Apparently they didn’t let you use the Roman baths anymore, not even if you were a Rook.
    “It’s hard to describe, but it involved disrupting the flow of instructions from the fungus to the hosts. The main thing is, I was able to get them to shut up and open all those little pods down in the cellar where they were keeping our troops,” said Myfanwy.
    “Do we know what they were trying to do?” asked Shantay. “I mean, other than grow something that looked like the back of my refrigerator?”
    “Well, didn’t our friend with the spines say that he was worried about it spreading? Maybe it was going to eat Bath or something. It was growing. It wasn’t going to stop.”
    “A mold bomb?” asked Shantay, looking around in irritation as she was jostled by a college student carrying a backpack twice her size.
    “I guess. That’s not what’s worrying me though,” said Myfanwy. Her brow furrowed for a moment as she thought. “There was something funny about Goblet.”
    “The fact that he’s a high-ranking member of your organization who’s apparently engaged in treasonous activities?”
    “Well, I’ll admit that that’s a trifle peculiar,” allowed Myfanwy. “But that’s not it.”
    “Maybe the fact that he implicated your counterpart in the conspiracy in front of an important representative from a foreign government?”
    “Well, not
just
that,” said Myfanwy with a bit of irritation.
    “How about that we have to go back to London for that dinner thing, and you look like a wreck?”
    “You know, you’re not helping. Ah, the car is here. Thank God.”
    “So,” said Shantay. “Does this mean we’re not stopping to take the waters?”
     
Norman Goblet
    Goblet was inducted into the Estate during a time of change. The original curriculum and philosophy of the Estate had been a combination of the postwar mentality and the traditions of the Checquy—a sort of hybrid military camp/guildhall. It was certainly an improvement on the previous master-apprentice approach, but as the years passed, the Checquy decided that a new system was needed. Drastic changes were made. With this reformation of the Estate and its methods, there were some kinks that needed to be worked out, and, in my opinion, Norman Goblet stands out as one of the kinkiest.
    Make that the most kinked.
    Drafted in at the age of twelve, Norman Goblet was the darling of his teachers. This new incarnation of the Estate was based on the classicboarding-school model. So the Estate was remade as sort of an Eton with tentacles. In any case, in every such academy, there is always one student who plays