Thrilling Tales of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Read online

  “Oh!” Caity dropped her hand to clutch at the pistol in both hands, mindful to keep the snub nose pointing down. “The Bell and Badger.”

  Miss Snow waved that away. “Be prepared for another fight.”

  “You think so?”

  “I do more than think so, my dear girl.” Miss Snow’s smile, this time, revealed a great deal of even white teeth. “I intend to ensure it.”

  The barman had not put the pub to rights after they had gone. The stools still lay broken where they’d been left, and the men Miss Snow’s smoke concoction had blinded remained where they lay.

  They weren’t groaning anymore.

  “Jay-sus, Joseph an’—!”

  Miss Snow clapped a hand over Miss Kennedy’s mouth before she completed the gasped refrain. “That’s enough of that, I think,” she said, not unkindly for all the girl had gone white as a sheet and possibly twice as fragile. “The last some poor fool had called on saints in such circumstances, they appeared.” Too much peculiarity about the place. Such things were dangerous.

  When the girl swayed, Miss Snow cupped a hand under her elbow and navigated her to the nearest stool.

  Only once she was sure the girl had no intention to repeat the names did she remove her hand from Miss Kennedy’s mouth. Poor pitiable thing. It was quite obvious that Miss Kennedy had not been prepared for such an outcome.

  Unfortunately, Miss Snow had.

  The hearty Irish lads trounced so soundly by Miss Snow’s alchemical workings and Miss Kennedy’s pugilistic fists had not been allowed to regain their senses. They lay where Miss Snow had last marked them, each in a pool of blood, with crimson gashes carved in their necks. Ear to ear, no less.

  Someone, or something, had spooked.

  The facts just weren’t adding up. Miss Snow found herself wishing she had easier access to the archival arm of the secretive ministry she worked for. Surely the sagacious Thaddeus Monk would know at a glance which piece of the puzzle was missing.

  The barman was gone, no surprise there. She should have been more cautious. Bertie Bannigan had been listed as an informant in the research delivered with Director Fount’s orders, but in hindsight, it seemed odd that cruach would be forefront of a common informant’s thoughts.

  “The universal issue with informants,” she said thoughtfully, surveying the pub with great care, “is that eventually, even the extremely thick ones start to put things together.”

  “You lost me,” the girl replied, croaking it a little.

  “Did Bertie Bannigan ever work with your father?”

  “Some. In fact, the day before he took ill, he—Oh.”

  “Oh, indeed,” Miss Snow agreed. The pub was like most—polished wood and relative bric-a-brac showing off its patrons’ love for all things Irish, ale, whiskey and song. There was a certain discrepancy amongst the Irish that Miss Snow had never quite grasped. All their songs about life and love, war and peace, lust and drink, tended towards a merriment that belied the sorrow of a thousand years of death, heartache, and loss.

  An extremely resourceful people.

  Her gaze narrowed upon a crack in the farthest wall, little more than a seam.

  “Do you suppose Bertie made me da ill?” Miss Kennedy asked, a note of steel entering her voice.

  Miss Snow looked at her with measured confidence. “And if he did?”

  Her fists clenched, roughened hammers of righteous wrath. “I’d like to hear him say it while he’s still got teeth to say it with.”

  Teeth were less than essential for speech, but Miss Snow refrained from pointing this out. “Good girl. Take your coat off and turn it inside out, would you?”

  “Why?” The girl did as asked without waiting for answer.

  Miss Snow did the same. “Caution. Now, we need somewhere quiet, cool, and like as not to be overlooked. Any thoughts on the matter, Miss Kennedy?”

  As she expected, the girl’s gaze went straight for the back. “Aye,” she said, and strode for that wall. She rolled her sleeves up as she did, baring sinewy forearms pale as milk save where the natural ruddiness of her colouring tinted the skin. The revolver in her hand remained gripped tightly.

  As it turned out, Bertie Bannigan was every bit the fool Miss Snow considered him.

  The first bullet splintered the stairwell she hurried down. Caity’s heart surged into her throat, but she did as instinct demanded and leapt to the floor to hide behind a stacked mass of barrels.

  Miss Snow did much the same, choosing another barrel to crouch behind, so that they viewed each other across a narrow causeway.

  “Bannigan, cease fire this instant!”

  Caity didn’t expect Miss Snow’s demand to be obeyed. On cue, another bullet cracked against the stone floor, shooting sparks between them.

  Her jaw set. The pistol in her grip shook, but she firmed her hold and tried not to imagine that she might have to shoot a body, after all.

  The air was wrong down here. It should have been fresh and cool, but it smelled of old rot and forgotten meat.

  “’Tis not too late,” Miss Snow called, her back pressed to the wooden keg. She spared an encouraging smile for Caity. It faded just as quickly. “You can still make this right.”

  “You’re the one meddling,” the barman shouted, his voice sounding not at all as Caity remembered. Hoarse. Shrill despite the rasp. A little bit mad. “All you have to do is go back to where you came from and this will all fix itself!”

  “Bertie, come out here this moment!” Caity called, injecting her voice with all the stern authority she’d heard her da employ. “Enough is enough.”

  Her demand earned another shot, echoing in the dank cellar. “I’ve unlocked the old ways. The famine will ease, don’t you understand? Without your nosey friend, this might have gone on without blood.”

  “Without blood?” Caity repeated, aghast. “Bertie, me da’s dead! Fifteen more, all gone, because of you!”

  “I had nothing to do with it.”

  “Lies,” Miss Snow called, her tone sweet but firm. “You might not have intended it, Mr Bannigan, but you know as well as I the nature of artefacts. Especially that of the old ways. What did you do?”

  For a moment, he was silent. Wood creaked. Then, “In my family’s field. We found a gold idol in the earth.”

  Caity frowned. “Why didn’t you sell it?”

  “I was going to,” he called back, impatient enough that Miss Snow lifted a finger to her lips. “Then I remembered about... about—”

  “You can’t say his name, can you?” Miss Snow asked. She sidled along the barrels. “They won’t let you.”

  “They?” Caity whispered.

  “Him,” Bannigan shot back. “I’m being respectful!”

  “You are being puppeted,” Miss Snow replied. “Set down your weapon, Mr Bannigan. You know the consequences for toying with artefacts.”

  “No! I won’t let you interfere,” he shouted, and another gunshot tore through the edge of the barrel Miss Snow had sidled away from.

  Caity flinched. “Miss Snow?”

  “I’ll duck about,” she said, pitching her voice low, but reassuring. Her eyes sparkled, a becoming flush upon her cheeks. “I want for you to pop out and fire wildly at whatever you choose. Keep him occupied so that I might sneak up on him.”

  Caity nodded, though her heart was beating all too hard and she wasn’t certain she could hit anything. Perhaps if she fired, he might duck for cover.

  “I am ready,” she whispered.

  As one, Miss Snow slipped around the far side of the barrels just as Caity leaned out, her shoulder hitting the floor, and fired the pistol gripped in both her sweaty hands.

  In that moment, she glimpsed Bertie Bannigan, his hair wild about his head and his eyes so wide, the whites were clearly visible. He saw her just as she fired, and while the panic that filled his face gave her pause, it was nothing to the sudden, pointed silence that followed when the small board set up on the table beside him flew into the air.
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  The pieces upon it—one gold figure and twelve of bone—scattered over the ground. Blood spilled in a red gleam, to spatter to the floor.

  For a long moment, nothing in the cellar moved. Not breath, not body, not time.

  Bannigan’s eyes bulged.

  “Caity, get down!” Miss Snow rushed through the narrow divide, seized Caity by the shoulders and wrenched her from view. A wind blasted through the cellar, so cold and foul-smelling that Caity gagged before Miss Snow covered her face with her gloved hand. “Don’t look,” she shouted, needing to despite their proximity; the screaming now erupting from beyond the barrel flooded through the ears and turned the blood to ice.

  It seemed as it might go on forever. She squeezed her eyes closed, her face buried in Miss Snow’s jacket. On and on, the wind howled and raged—but it did not turn over the barrels. She heard no crashing, no splintering.

  Just as soon as it began, it was over.

  Miss Snow eased to her feet, dusting off her trousers, and then helped Caity stand. Her expression was rather more sad than accomplished. “I had hoped to avoid this,” she sad, though low enough that Caity wondered if she spoke to herself.

  “Where’s—”

  “Mr Bannigan?” Miss Snow stepped out from behind the stack of barrels. She gestured.

  Much to her chagrin, Caity was not wholly surprised at what she found.

  Bertie Bannigan lay dead, his neck twisted at an odd angle and slashed ear to ear as if in sacrifice. A bullet hole marred the surface of the board he lay sprawled upon, courtesy of her wild shot, but it was the scattering of white crystals all over that caught her eye.

  She knelt beside his twisted body, the first wash of tears pricking at her eyelids. There was no pulse in his limp arm, nor any signs of life behind his wide, staring eyes.

  Miss Snow crouched beside her, one hand coming to rest upon Caity’s shoulder. “They’d claimed him, in the end.” She reached over, brushing the white grains from the dead man’s cheek. “The Folk always do. It’s the price, you understand?”

  Caity dragged a forearm across her burning eyes. “I don’t. I thought this was the doing of...” She halted, the name placed already on her tongue but panic gripping her throat when she tried to say it.

  Miss Snow’s smile was small and compressed. “Being unable to say his name was a subtle clue, but one I should have paid attention to earlier. They wouldn’t stand for it, here.”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “I mean,” Miss Snow explained patiently, “that Mr Bannigan here dabbled in a bit of old magic that should have been left well alone. By utilising the artefact he’d found, he attempted to call forth the god who could end the famine. Unfortunately, his methods...” She reached over the corpse to pick up one of the scattered twigs, stained and wrapped with twine. “The god’s symbol is that of a golden figure surrounded by twelve smaller figures in stone. By taking twelve sacrifices, the first born, he would guarantee a harvest.”

  “That’s bone, isn’t it?” Caity did not attempt to touch the board, or the droplets of red scattered amidst the crystals. “And chicken blood, I think. It smells like it.”

  “Correct.” Miss Snow sighed. “By failing to uphold the old ways as written, he only caught the eye of them eager to subvert such things. His intent was pure, but the dead are drawn to the dead. No god came here.”

  Caity clasped her hands together around the pistol she had wielded to such strange success. “The bells were the clue, weren’t they? The Folk are said to be repelled by them.”

  “Some are,” Miss Snow confirmed, and looked up as a dull report echoed faintly through the still air. “Without testimony from an archivist, I’m afraid all I can do is guess, but I believe that Mr Bannigan gained the attentions of the sluagh.”

  “The restless dead,” Caity murmured. “Said to be rejected from heaven or hell, and even the Otherworld.”

  “What Mr Bannigan did not realise,” Miss Snow said, her expression going quite grim, “was that gaining the attention of such forces always goes awry.”

  “You mean the sluagh are here? Now?”

  “Indeed, dear girl, and they have not wasted time. In distorting the legend of—” Even her mouth hitched on the name, “—the Irish god, they have created a landscape where slaughter has taken root, not bounty. They will feed on the dead and harvest the innocent for their hungers. That is what toying with artefacts will gain one.”

  Caity heard it again, the scattered report she recognised as gunfire.

  She shot to her feet, a cry on her lips, and dashed up the steps.

  “Caitriona, wait!”

  She did not. Sprinting through the pub, she pushed her way outside and choked on the wind.

  It tasted of hatred, smelled of an anger deeper than any human heart could carry.

  Shouting filled the city as calls of violence turned to flame.

  Caity froze.

  Which side had lit the wick of war?

  Miss Snow fetched first the golden figure laying on its side in the salt. She wrapped it carefully. Even touching it bothered her, and she wore gloves.

  Whether this were truly the symbol of Cromm Crúaich or not, Miss Snow was not qualified to know. That it contained a power eager to be harnessed was without a doubt truth.

  She carefully pocketed the item in her coat, still inside out, and hurried up the stairs behind the scattered Miss Kennedy. She found the girl on her knees just outside the pub, watching in horror as smoke rose from the square.

  “Up, you go!” Miss Snow ordered, seizing the Irish lass by the arm and hauling her bodily to her feet. “Can’t stay here, the fire’s spreading!”

  Sure enough, the first tongues of flame licked the dark sky. Given the direction of the wind, it would blow the flames their direction quick as tinder.

  Good girl that she was, Miss Kennedy followed. The streets were filling with British and Irish alike, a veritable mob screaming at each other. Fists and shillelaghs flew, fires were set deliberately, and glass shattered in shop fronts as looters seized the opportunity to make a point.

  They ran fast as they could, dodging groups of men prowling for Irish and British blood to spill, until the gates of the cemetery loomed out of the smoke-encrusted black.

  Remembering the arch, Miss Snow tucked her hand into the crook of Miss Kennedy’s elbow and dragged to the locked fence. “Up and over, my dear,” she shouted.

  The girl did not balk, clambering up the grating with only a minor disagreement between her feet and hanging skirt.

  As soon as she was on top, Miss Snow scaled the fence with the easy agility of a trained agent.

  Almost immediately, the air lightened, smelling now of tilled earth, burning wood and smoke rather than the wrongness that permeated the rest.

  Miss Snow took a deep breath as she landed beside Miss Kennedy, who had wrapped her arms around herself and watched her city burn.

  For the first time, Miss Snow wasn’t quite sure how to address the situation.

  She touched the girl lightly on the arm. “They’ve taken their payment in fortune and flesh,” she said, as kindly as she could. “Twelve souls for the story, and a burning for the end as proper. It’s unlikely they’ll linger past the night.”

  “What of Galway?” Miss Kennedy asked, her voice a whisper strained to the point of breaking.

  Drawing the girl away from the wrought iron gate—a protection this city did not know it afforded its dead—she tucked an arm about Miss Kennedy’s waist. A companionable gesture.

  A comfortable one, no less.

  “Chin up, Miss Kennedy,” she said. “Although it’s true Galway is caught in the eye of the storm, the land war was bound to spill over eventually. That they were surely given a helping hand does not change the realities of it.”

  “But if Bertie hadn’t—” She lowered her head. Her breath shuddered out on a white mist—distress fragmented by the bitter wind. “The Folk are known for mischief, but this is cruel.”
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br />   “Such peculiar beings often are, my dear,” Miss Snow said quietly. “That is why we must be ever vigilant.”

  “What of the fighting?”

  “Ah, my sweet girl,” Miss Snow said, now a little sad for this harsh lesson. “There are peculiar occurrences, and these require a solution which we are uniquely suited to. Then there are matters of mortals and men, which by and large will only be slaked by blood.”

  Miss Kennedy said nothing to that, though she did walk away to stand alone on a small hill, facing the orange flame reaching hungrily for the sky.

  Thunder rumbled overhead, and the skies opened up over Galway’s silhouette. The rain poured from the clouds, a torrential flurry that soaked them both within moments.

  Not only did it freeze them to the bone, it tamped the fire down, until the city that burned and the passions that raged cooled abruptly as they started.

  If she were a woman to believe in such things, Miss Snow might think that somewhere, a forgotten god—aggrieved to find his legend so abused—might have reached out a cooling hand to shelter his people.

  Miss Snow wrapped her arms around her self, huddling to conserve warmth, and watched the tall Irish lass with the shoulders of a blacksmith and the hands of a tinkerer.

  Some time later, Miss Kennedy picked her way to where she perched upon a worn stone marker, twisting the Ministry ring upon her finger.

  “I think I’d like to see the world, Miss Snow.”

  Miss Snow smiled. “As the nearest branch is in Dublin, we shall be sure to introduce you immediately. Here, have a rest.” She inched to the farthest part of the marker, making room for the Irish girl to sit.

  Miss Kennedy perched with care, her arm against Miss Snow’s. When her head came to rest upon that shoulder, Miss Snow said nothing of it. “What of the gold figure?”

  Miss Snow was very much aware of it, heavy in her pocket. “It shall be archived, as all dangerous items must.”

  “Good.” And that was all the girl had to say of that.

  Later, when Miss Snow would compose her report for Director Fount, the news of the near-fire had been watered down to minor reports of violence between forces angry over the famine, the land, the evictions that would not cease.