Charlie Fletcher , generator of the Stoneheart Trilogy , is about to publish his first phantasy novel for grownup , and we ’ve get an undivided first feeling at the screen . The Oversightfollows the last remaining penis of a once - neat organization that guard the border between the worlds . arrest out the first two chapters below .
Art & Design by Kirk Douponce / Dogeared Design
Here ’s a synopsis for The Oversight , which come out May :
“ Only five still guard the border between the worlds . Only five keep back back what expect on the other side . ”
Once the Oversight , the cloak-and-dagger order that policed the lines between the mundane and the thaumaturgy , count C of brave souls among its phallus . Now their numbers can be count on a single hand . When a vagrant bring a screaming little girl to the Oversight ’s London HQ , it seems their hopes for a new recruit will be fulfilled – but the girl is a trap .
As the delimitation between this world and the next start to break up down , murders erupt across the city , the Oversight are deplume savagely apart , and their foe closely in for the final blow .
This dark Dickensian fantasy from Charlie Fletcher ( the Stoneheart trilogy ) spins a story of beldam - hunters , supra - naturalists , mirror - walkers and magicians . Meet the Oversight , and remember : when they strike , so do we all .
And here are two sample chapters :
CHAPTER 1The House on Wellclose Square
If only she would n’t struggle so , the damned female child .
If only she would n’t shout out then he would n’t have had to bind her mouth .
If only she would be quiet and tranquil and biddable , he would never have had to put her in a firing .
And if only he had not had to put her in a pouch , she could have walked and he would not have had to put her over his shoulder and carry her to the Jew .
Bill Ketch was not a animal . animation may have pink out a few teeth and unwrap his nose more than once , but it had not yet turn him into an creature : he was man enough to find high-risk about what he was doing , and he did not wish the means that the girl moaned so loud and wriggled on his shoulder , drawing attention to herself .
Hitting her did n’t kibosh anything . She may have screamed a heap , but she had flint in her heart , something hard and unbreakable , and it was that tough burden that had unnerved him and decided him on selling her to the Jew .
That ’s what the representative in his forefront severalise him , the quiet , sly voice that nevertheless was handily able-bodied to drown out whatever his conscience might attempt to say .
The street was empty and the fog from the Thames damped the accelerator lamps into blur of slow light as he walk past the Seaman ’s Hostel and turned into Wellclose Square . The flash of a peer catch his eye as a swelled man with a red beard lit a pipe amongst a grouping standing around a cart stack with cd - boxes outside the Danish Church . gratefully they did n’t seem to notice him as he slink speedily along the opposite side of the route , manoeuver for the dark house at the bottom of the square beyond the looming bulk of the lolly refinery , outside which another horse and bearing stood unattended .
He was pleased the square was so subdued at this time of night . The last thing he want to do was to have to explain why he was pack such strange load , or where he was heading .
The shaggy travelling serviceman in The Three Cripples had generate him directions , and so he ducked in the front gates , avoid the main door as he edged round the corner and down a flight of slippery endocarp steps leading to a side - incoming . The dark slit between two houses was illuminate by a lonely gas globe which fought severely to be seen in murk that was much slurred at this scummy end of the public square , closer to the Thames .
There were two doors . The out one , made of Fe bars like a prison house gate , was open , and held back against the brick paries . The dark oak inner doorway was closed and studded with a grid of raised nailheads that made it take care as if it had been hammered shut for good measure . There was a grip marked “ Pull ” next to it . He did so , but hear no answer jangle of a bell from inwardly . He tugged again . Once more silence recognize him . He was about to jerk it a third time when there was the phone of metallic element sliding against metallic element and a narrow judas hole open up in the door . Two unshrinking eyes look at him from behind a alloy grille , but other than them he could see nothing aside from a dim glow from within .
The owner of the eyes say nothing . The only sound was a moaning from the sack on Ketch ’s berm .
The eyes moved from Ketch ’s fount to the sack , and back . There was a sound of someone sniffing , as if the hall porter was sense him .
Ketch illuminate his throat .
“ This the Jew ’s firm ? ”
The eyes continued to say nothing , total him up in a most uncomfortable way .
“ Well , ” bury Ketch . “ I ’ve got a miss for him . A screaming girl , like what as I been say he favours . ”
The accompanying smiling was intend to ingratiate , but in realness only exposed the squatty ruins of his tooth .
The eyes added this to the very precise total they were evidently calculating , and then abruptly stepped back and mosh the slit shut . The daughter flinched at the noise and Ketch cuffed her , not too hard and not with any real intent to hurt , just on a reflex .
He stared at the blank door . Even though it was now sightless , it still felt like it was front back at him . Judging . He was mixed-up . Had he been rejected ? Was he being sent away ? Had he walk all the way here transport the girl – who was not getting any lite – all for nothing ? He felt a familiar anger chassis in his gut , as if all the tinny gin and dour beer it held were beginning to boil , sending warmth flush across his grimace . His clenched fist bunch up and he stepped onward to pound on the studded wood .
He swung angrily , but at the very moment he did so it opened and he flounder in , following the electric discharge of his blow across the room access , nearly dumping the girl on the floor in front of him .
“ Why – ? ! ” he blurted .
And then check short .
He had stumbled into a space the size of it and shape of a sentry box , with no obvious way forrad . He was about to step anxiously back out into the fog , when the wall to his right swung outdoors .
He took a gait into a tumid room line in wooden tongue - and - channel panelling with a table and chairs and a dim oil lamp . The ceiling was also Sir Henry Wood , as was the base . Despite this it did n’t smell of wood , or the oil in the lamp . It smelled of wet stiff . All in all , and maybe because of the loamy smell , it had a distinctly coffin - like atmosphere . He shivered .
“ Go on in , ” enjoin a calm vocalization behind him .
“ Nah , ” he swallowed . “ Nah , you know what ? I cogitate I ’ve made a mistake — ”
The red-hot butter churn in his sand had go methamphetamine - cold , and he felt the goosebumps rise on his skin : he was suddenly positive that this was a room he must not enter , because if he did , he might never leave .
He turned tight , do it the lady friend on the doorpost , her yip of pain lost in the crash as the room access slammed shut , bar his escape route with the sound of heavy bolts flap down home .
He pushed against the wood , and then kicked at it . It did n’t move . He stood there breathing heavily , then slid the little girl from his shoulder and laid her on the floor , holding her in station with a fast deal .
“ Stay still or you shall have a kick , my girl , ” he sibilate .
He change by reversal and immobilize .
There was a man sitting against the back wall of the room , a big valet , almost a giant , in the case of caped greatcoat that a coachman might wear . It had an unnaturally high collar , and above it he wore a travel - sully tricorn lid of a style that had not been see much on London ’s street for a generation , not since the other 1800s . The chapeau project over the collar and regurgitate a darkness so deep that Ketch could see nothing of the face beneath . He stared at the man . The man did n’t move an in .
“ Hoi , ” sound out Ketch , by way of introduction .
The giant remained motionless . Indeed as Ketch stepped towards him he clear that the principal was angled slightly away , as if the man was n’t looking at him at all .
“ Hoi ! ” repeated Ketch .
The figure detain still . Ketch bat his backtalk and ventured forward another footstep . peer under the hat he saw the piece was brown - skinned .
“ Oi , blackie , I ’m a - talking to you , ” say Ketch , veil the fact that the goliath ’s stillness and apparent obliviousness to his comportment was unnerving him by putting on his best bar - room swagger .
The man might as well be a statue for the amount he moved . In fact —
Ketch reached forward and tipped back the hat , slowly at first .
It was n’t a man at all . It was a mannequin made from clay . He escape his thumb down the side of the face and looked at the brownish smear it left on it . Damp clay , unfired and not yet quite hardened . It was a well made , almost giving aspect with high cheekbones and an impressively hooked nose , but the eye beneath the prominent frontal bone were empty golf hole .
“ Well , I ’ll be damned . . . ” he whisper , stepping back .
“ Yes , ” said a womanhood ’s voice behind him , cold and tranquil as a bowelless razor slicing through silk . “ Oh yes . I rather anticipate you will . ”
*
CHAPTER 2A Woman in Black and the Man in Midnight
She stood at the other end of the way , a apparition made material body in a foresightful tight - bodiced dress buttoned to the neck and wrists . Her sleeve were pen up and black leather glove cover her manpower . The dress had a dull lustre like oiled silk , and she was so straight - support and slender – and yet also so finely muscled – that she looked in some ways like a rather dangerous umbrella leaning against the wood panelling .
The only relief from the black was her font , two gold hoop she fatigue on top of the gloves and her lily-white fuzz , startlingly out of kilter with her otherwise youthful coming into court , which she wore pull back in a sozzled pigtail that curled over her shoulder like an albino snake .
She had n’t been there when Ketch get in the way , and she could n’t have entered by the door which had been on the boundary of his vision throughout , but that was n’t what most upset him : what really unsettled him was her eye , or rather the fact he could n’t see them , hidden as they were behind the two modest circular lense of smoked glass that made up her spectacle .
“ Who – ? ” start Ketch .
She withstand up a finger . Somehow that was enough to lay off him talking .
“ What do you want ? ”
Ketch gulped , smack his own reverence like rising bile at the back of his throat .
“ I desire to speak to the Jew . ”
“ Why ? ”
He saw she carried a ring of keys at her belt ammunition like a jailor . Despite the fact she looked too young for the chore he decide that she must be the Jew ’s housekeeper . He used this thought as a joint to steady himself on : he ’d just been unnerved by her sudden appearance , that was all . There must be a hidden door behind her . Easy enough to hide its edges in the clapper and groove . He was n’t drop dead to be bullyrag by a housekeeper . Not when he had business with her victor .
“ I got something for him . ”
“ What ? ”
“ A screaming girl . ”
She looked at the long sack lying on the floor .
“ You have a girl in this sack ? ”
Somehow the way she asked this carry a lot of threat .
“ I want to speak to the Jew , ” repeated Ketch .
The woman flex her nous to one side and rap on the wooden paries behind her . She mouth into a little circular brass grille .
“ Mr Sharp ? A instant of your meter , please . ”
The dark lenses work to look at him again . The silence was intolerable . He had to fill up it .
“ humanity in The Three Cripples state as how the Jew would pay for screaming girls . ”
The gold ring caught the lamplight as the black gloves bend undetermined and then clenched closely again , as if she were containing something .
“ So you ’ve get to trade a girl ? ”
“ At the correct price . ”
Her smile was sloshed and showed no dentition . Her voice persist icily cultivated .
“ There are those who would say any price is the faulty one . The respectable Mr Wilberforce ’s bill abolish thraldom nearly forty long time ago , did it not ? ”
Ketch had coiffe out on a childlike errand : he had something to trade and had get a line of a likely purchaser . unfeigned , he ’d felt a small like a Resurrection Man malinger through the fog with a missy on his shoulder , but she was no clay and he was no bodysnatcher . And now this woman was ask questions that were befuddle that simple matter . When life was square , Bill Ketch sailed through it on unruffled water . When it became complicated he became disjointed and when he became mazed , ira blew in like a storm , and when he became angry , fists and rush flew until the human beings was stomped flat and simple again .
“ I do n’t know nothing about a Wilberforce . I desire to mouth to the Jew , ” he grunted .
“ And why do you cerebrate the Jew want a girl ? By which I mean : what do you conceive the Jew want to do with her ? ” she asked , the parole as taut and measured as her smile .
“ What he does is none of my business . ”
He shrugged and hid his own clump fists deep in the pockets of his coating .
Her words crock up sharply across the table like a whiplash injury .
“ But what you think you are doing by sell this miss is mine . reply the interrogative sentence ! ”
This abrupt modification of tonus stung him and made him bang the table and lurch towards her , face up like a thundercloud .
“ No man tells Bill Ketch what to do , and indisputable as hell ’s hinges no damn woman does neither ! I want to see the flaming Jew and by God – ”
The bulwark next to her seemed to blur undefended and shut and a man burst through , slicing across the room so tight that he outpace Ketch ’s optic , pass on a smear of midnight blue and blink steel as he came straight over the table in a vortex of coat - tails that ended in a sudden and dangerous pricking sense experience against his Adam ’s apple .
The oculus that had add him up through the judas hole now star into him across a interruption bridged by eighteen inches of razor - acute sword . The long blade was held at exactly the right pressure to give up him doing anything life story - threatening , like be active . Indeed , just swallowing would seem to be an act of self-destruction .
“ By any god , you shall not take one step further forrad , Mr . . . ”
The heart swept over his face , seek , reading it .
“ Mr Ketch is it ? Mr William Ketch . . . ? ”
He lean in and Ketch , frozen , watched his nostril solar flare as he appeared to smell him . The midnight blue that the man was dressed in seemed to absorb even more light than the woman ’s black dress . He wore a human knee - distance riding coat cut tight to his body , beneath which was a dual - summit leather vest of exactly the same hue , as were the shirt and tightly ravel silk stock he wear around his neck . The only break in the color of his wear was the brown of his soft leather riding boot .
His hair was also of the sullen brown , as were his thick and well - mold eyebrows , and his eyes , when Ketch touch them , were startlingly . . . unexpected .
Looking into them Ketch felt , for a moment , giddy and excited . The eyes were not just one brown , not even some of the browns : they were all the Robert Brown . It was as if he was looking into a swirl of fall leaves tumbling happily in the golden sunlight of a blazing Amerind summertime .
One smell into the tawny glamour in those eyes and Ketch forgot the blade at his pharynx .
One look into those eyes and the anger was gone and all was wide-eyed again .
One flavor into those heart and Bill Ketch was confusingly and irrevocably in something as close-fitting to be intimate as to make no difference .
The humanity must have interpret this because the vane did something quick and complicated and disappeared beneath the skirts of his coat as he reached onward , gripped Ketch by both berm and pulled him close , sniffle him again and then raising an eyebrow in surprise , before pushing him back and smile at him like an older friend .
“ He is everything he seems to be , and no more , ” he say over his shoulder .
The woman stepped forwards .
“ You are sure ? ”
“ I thought I smell something on the air as he knocked , but it did n’t come in with him . I may have been mistaken . The river is full of stink at high tide . ”
“ So you are indisputable ? ” she repeat .
“ As sure as I am that you will never fatigue of enquire me that peculiar interrogative , ” said the man .
“ ‘ Measure twice , cut once ’ is a drug abuse that has served me well enough since I was old enough to call back , ” she said flatly , “ and it has proceed this household safe for much longer than that . ”
“ Are you the Jew ? ” said Ketch . His voice screak a little as he mouth , so glad was he feel , bathed in the warmth of the handsome young piece ’s clear smile .
“ I do not have that honour , ” he replied .
The woman appeared at the gentleman ’s shoulder .
“ Well ? ” she said . The chill returned to Ketch ’s heart as she spoke .
“ He is as harmless as he seem to be , I insure you , ” duplicate the Isle of Man .
She took off her glasses and folded them in one hand . Her eyes were grayish - light-green and frigid as a midwinter undulation . Her words , when they came , were no ardent .
“ I am Sara Falk . I am the Jew . ”
As Ketch tried to realign the realities of his populace , she put a hand on the man ’s shoulder and pointed him at the long megabucks on the trading floor .
“ Now , Mr Sharp : there is a young woman in that sack . If you would be so kind . ”
The man flickered to the megabucks on the story , again seeming to move between time instead of through it . The blade reappeared in his hand , flashed up and down the liberation , and then he was facilitate the girl to her feet and at the same time sniffing at her school principal .
“ Mr Sharp ? ” said Sara Falk .
“ As I pronounce , I smelled something out there , ” he said . “ I thought it was him . It is n’t , nor is it her . ”
“ Well , good , ” she said , the twitch of a smile ghosting round the corner of her oral cavity . “ perhaps it was your mental imagery . ”
“ It please you to make variation of me , my dear Miss Falk , but I venture to point out that since we are institutionalize with anticipating the out of the question , my ‘ imagination ’ is just as effective a defensive tool as your double - checking , ” he answer , reckon at the girl nearly . “ And since our numbers are so perilously dwindled these days , you will excuse me if I do duty as both whang and duo in these matter . ”
The young fair sex was slim and tremble , in a grubby pinafore clothes with no place and tenacious reddish hair that hung down crinkly and unwashed , befog a clear feel at her face . At first glance , however , it was clear she was not a child , and he judge her age between sixteen and twenty days quondam . She cringe when he reach out to push the fuzz back to get a better look at her and make a more accurate assessment , and he stopped and address quietly .
“ No , no , my love , just look at me . see at me and you ’ll see you have nothing to reverence . ”
After a moment her caput came up and eye big as dish antenna peered a question into his . As soon as they did the trembling calmed and she let him to bear on the hair back and unveil what had been done to her mouth to stop the screeching .
He breathe out through his teeth in an angry snort and then gently sour her towards Sara Falk . She stare at the rectangle of shameful Hessian boot that was pasted across the girl ’s human face from below her olfactory organ down to her Kuki-Chin .
“ What is this ? ” sound out Mr Sharp , representative tight , still keep on the girl firm with his eyes .
“ It ’s just a pitch - plaster , some sacking and tar and delivery , like a gluey poultice , such as they practice up the Bedlam Hospital to quiet the lunatics . . . ” explained Ketch , his part quavering lest Mr Sharp ’s regard when it turned to add him up again was full of something other than the prosperous lovingness he was already missing . “ Why , the girlie do n’t mind a – ”
“ Look at her hands , ” said Sara Falk .
The fille ’s hands were tightly enfold in strips of grubby textile , like little material - bound boxing gloves .
“ Nah , that she does herself , she done that and not me , ” said Ketch hurriedly . “ I contract ’em off cos she ’s no flaming use with hands enwrap into pulpit like that , but she wrap whatever she can find attack ’em the instant you twist your back . Why even if there ’s nothing in the rooms she ’ll rip up her own apparel to do it . It ’s all she does : touches affair and then scream at what ai n’t there and tangle scold round her script like a winding material so she does n’t have to reach anything at all . . . ”
Sara Falk convert a look with Mr Sharp .
“ Touches things ? Then call ? ” he said . “ sometime Harlan Fiske Stone , walls . . . those sort of things ? ”
Ketch nodded enthusiastically . “ Walls and theatre and thing in the street . Sets ‘ er off something ‘ orrible it does – ”
“ Enough , ” say Mr Sharp , his eyes on Sara Falk who was stroke the frightened girl ’s haircloth . Their eyes meet once more .
“ So she ’s a Glint then , ” he articulate quiet .
She nod , for a moment ineffectual to verbalize .
“ She ’s not correct in the head is what she is , ” said Ketch . “ And – ”
“ Is she your daughter ? ” say Sara Falk , clearing something from her throat .
“ No . Not blood tribe . She ’s . . . my ward , as it were . But I ca n’t give to fee her no more , so it ’s you or the poorhouse , and the poorhouse do n’t bear , see . . . ? ”
The spark of commercialism had reignited in his eyes .
“ Do n’t worry about that bless adhesive plaster , peeress . Why , a live flannel held on for a duet of minutes loosens it off , and you’re able to peel it aside without too much cajolery . ”
The humans and the woman asterisk at him .
“ The redness fades after a couple of days , ” he importune . “ We essay a muzzle , see , but she loosen them or gnaws through . She ’s spirited – ”
“ What is her name ? ” said Sara Falk .
“ Lucy . Lucy Harker . She ’s just – ”
“ Mr Sharp , ” she said , cut him off by turning away to kneel by the daughter .
“ What do you require to do with him ? ” say the man in midnight .
“ What I want to do to a man who ’d trade a vernal adult female without a care as to what the buyer might require to do with or to her is undoubtedly illegal , ” said Sara Falk almost under her breath .
“ It would be DoJ though , ” he replied evenly quietly .
“ Yes , ” she said . “ But we , as I have say many time , are an office of the Law and the Lore , not of Justice , Mr Sharp . And Law and Lore say to make the punishment fit the crime . Do what must be done . ”
Lucy Harker see at her , still tongueless behind the jape .
Mr Sharp left them and turned his smile on Ketch , who unwind and grinned expectantly back at him .
“ Well , ” said Mr Sharp . “ It seems we must pay you , Mr Ketch . ”
The thought of money coming was enticing and jangly enough to drown out the dubiousness that had been trying to get Ketch ’s attention for some time now , namely how this soundly - looking youthful man eff his name . He watched greedily as he make into his pelage and pull out out a small leather base .
“ Now , ” sound out Mr Sharp . “ Gold , I think . carry out your manpower . ”
Ketch did so as if sleepwalking , and though at first his eyes tricked him into the thought that Mr Sharp was counting tarnished copper pennies into his hand , after a moment he realised they were indeed the shiny gold pieces he had ever seen , and he relaxed enough to cease seem at them and instead to study more of Mr Sharp . His dark hair was trim dead on the back and side of meat , but was long on top , curling into a cowlick that tumbled over his os frontale in an enjoyably untidy path . A undivided deep blue stone dangled from one pinna in a Au stage setting , winking in the lamplight as he finished his enumeration .
“ . . . twenty - eight , twenty - nine , thirty . That ’s enough , I cogitate , and if not it is at least . . . traditional . ”
And with that the purse disappear and the favorable arm went rotund Ketch ’s articulatio humeri , and before he could quite catch up with himself the two of them were out in the daze , walking out of Wellclose Square into the maze of dismal street beyond .
Ketch ’s affectionateness was hang glide and he feel happy than he had ever been in his life sentence , though whether it was because of the unexpectedly large number of gold – gold ! – coins in his pockets , or because of his newfound friend , he could not tell .
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