Jasper Fforde - Early Riser

I heard a shout from somewhere outside and I frowned. It sounded a lot like ‘Lobster’, but there was only one person who might be saying things like that, and they shouldn’t be anywhere but safely in Mrs Nesbit’s.

Mrs Tiffen.

With a sudden sense of foreboding I ran as fast as I could to the front entrance and pushed the heavy door open, the sharp air outside hitting me like a wall of ice. The light was failing and the wind was blowing the snow into rotating eddies among the buildings. There was no one to be seen, but I noted fresh tracks in the snow running out from the cab rank.

‘The taxi before you,’ I said to the driver of the remaining cab, an old man with a face so full of soft pendulous folds I don’t think he’d seen the Summer, ever, ‘who was in it?’

He stared at the Consul’s badge I was showing him.

‘I didn’t see the man but the woman looked kind of…’

‘…dead?’

‘Yeah.’

After asking him to find out where the cab had gone and then to stand by to take me there, I ran back towards Mrs Nesbit’s, almost slipping and falling as I trod the snow onto the marble floor. The bouzouki was still lying on the table with our half-finished plates.

I felt a nasty, hollow, sinking feeling. I’d liked Foulnap and, foolishly, trusted him . Footmen move with the prevailing cashflow, and nightwalkers can be monetarised in a number of ways. Given the dead woman’s relative youth, parting her out on the underground transplant market could be a possibility, but add her potential fertility and there was another cash possibility: he was going to farm her. I looked up as the proprietress approached.

‘Lose your date?’ she asked in a mocking tone.

‘Where will he have taken her?’

She furrowed her brow and stared at me, unsure quite what I was suggesting.

‘Wait – you’re going to try and get her back?’

‘Yes.’

‘How, exactly?’

It was a very good question. Taking on a seasoned Footman would be at best extremely foolhardy, and at worst suicidal – and in the current time frame and with my level of expertise, well on the other side of impossible.

‘I’m not sure.’

She stared at me for a moment, her anger mellowing to an attitude, I think, of motherly concern. She suddenly reminded me of Sister Zygotia.

‘What made you become a Consul?’ she asked in a quiet voice.

‘I needed a job that would grant me Morphenox.’

‘Makes no sense,’ she said. ‘To avoid the risks of a no-drug Winter you take on every risk the Winter can throw at you?’

‘Now you mention it,’ I said, ‘it does seem kind of dumb. But at least I’m away from St Granata’s.’

Luckily, Chief Logan chose that moment to walk in the door.

‘Hello, Fran,’ he said, moving forward to greet her with the traditional Winter embrace, then making some reference to ‘sprightly times’ they’d spent together during some Winter I-don’t-know-when in Sector something-or-other. Fran, it appeared, had been part of the established Winter crew on Logan’s first placement. Consuling was a small, close-knit family, tighter than the military, they say. They chatted for a while – reminded each other of the time they were charged by a frost-deranged glyptodon – but it was only a matter of time before he noticed me.

‘Remember my bacon sandwich, Worthing?’ he asked, then, annoyingly and predictably: ‘Where’s Mrs Tiffen?’

‘I… remembered the bacon sandwich,’ I said a bit stupidly, ‘and the tea.’

‘Good of you. And Mrs Tiffen?’

‘She was… stolen . I think she’s going to be farmed.’

Logan gave me a pained expression.

‘You bloody idiot, Worthing. Who took her?’

I explained as quickly as I could what had happened.

‘Terrific,’ said the Chief once I’d finished. ‘You should cross off “babysitting nightwalkers” from the short list of things you can do. Pull your finger out, Worthing, or you’ll be mucking out breedstock for the Winter. Fancy that?’

‘No, sir,’ I said. Looking after the Winter breedstock was a job usually reserved only for convicts and people who were, well, hated .

‘But,’ I added, ‘we have to get her back, right?’

‘No, we do not. Hold fast and think for a moment. We lose a nightwalker and HiberTech are mildly pissed off they lost a Tricksy walker, but really, who’s hurting here?’

‘Mrs Tiffen?’

‘Mrs Tiffen died five years ago. What you lost was something she used to walk around in. She’s gone, it’s done, you screwed up, move on. Let’s get on the train.’

I backed away.

‘No.’

I said it in the manner of a petulant child, and regretted it instantly. Logan stared at me with a quiet, unblinking gaze.

‘What do you reckon, Fran?’ he said. ‘Gross insubordination or the idealism of youth?’

‘Idealism of youth,’ she said. ‘In the Summer it’s perfectly harmless albeit mildly tedious – but in the Winter it’s a killer on a par with hypothermia and the measles.’

Logan moved closer and lowered his voice.

‘Listen up, Novice. Drop the high ethical stance or get out before you do something you can’t live with. And let me tell you, it’s inevitable, once the cold and the fear and the hunger get a grip. Something will go wrong, you’ll try and make the best of two bad calls, and bing : the Winter has you in its pocket, and you’re tundra. High ideals, my friend, are a luxury ill afforded.’

I stared at him and he took a deep breath.

‘Yes, okay, we try and break up farming cells, and no, we don’t like it. But the end product is a whole series of happy parents and up to a dozen children. And when it’s all over, she’ll be parted out at the end of their life. Agreed, bootleg parts – but someone benefits. We’re Consuls, Worthing. We strive to ensure the most favourable outcome is enjoyed by the majority.’

‘But the law—’

‘During the Winter, we are the law. I’ll say it again because you must have missed it: however unpleasant and barring injured pride, this is a favourable outcome. Now, we’re going to Sector Twelve, I’ll speak to Toccata and see what she has to say about this viral dream bullshit, then we come out on the last train and I try so very hard to forget this, and you try ever so hard not to screw up again. Is there any part of that you don’t understand?’

I stared at the bouzouki, a crushed, empty feeling in the pit of my stomach. Failure has a taste all of its own – a sort of hot, sticky doughiness. We could tell HiberTech she died on the journey. They’d not even question it. Nightwalkers die all the time. I was right to make the point, but I wasn’t going to flush my career down the pan for her.

But then a voice rang out, clear and bright, and everything changed.

‘That was the shittiest piece of mentoring I’ve ever heard,’ said a voice from across the room. It was a woman sitting with some workers in HiberTech uniforms, also waiting for the train. She had silver-streaked black hair tied up in a loose ponytail and a pale complexion that was almost creamy. Her battered combat fatigues displayed the shoulder stripe of the 4th Arid Legion, her twin Bambis were rigged for a cross-draw and around her neck was the dark burgundy pashmina worn by those who had served in the Ottoman campaign. Most notable about her, however, was her left eye, which looked blankly off and up – but her right eye stared at us all with a curiously unnerving intensity. She was knitting what appeared to be a bobble hat.