*
Among the briefs the old Myfanwy Thomas had left for the new Myfanwy Thomas were dossiers on prominent members of the Checquy. In her early days, the new Myfanwy had focused on the people with whom she worked closely. Mostly, these had been the members of the Court. Unfortunately, one of the Court was promptly killed in battle, and two others were revealed to be traitors. One of the Rook’s responsibilities was to help select replacements, and so she’d become very familiar with the histories of the candidates. As she approached Raushan Singh Attariwala’s office, Myfanwy ran through what she knew about the newly minted Bishop.
Raushan’s family, devout Sikhs, had emigrated from India to the United Kingdom when he was an infant and settled in Blackpool. Mr. Attariwala was a pharmacist; his wife was a secretary for the local government council. They had four children (Raushan was the eldest), all of whom grew up speaking with English accents and proudly wearing the tangerine strip of the Seasiders. However, they never forgot where they had come from and remained fluent in Punjabi and Hindi.
Raushan was a sober child who took his responsibilities as eldest son very much to heart. Studious in school, he had friends, but his teachers described him as reserved. Life proceeded along a relatively standard course until Raushan turned nine. At that point, while bowling at a school cricket match, he managed to throw the ball in such a way that, with an earsplitting crack, it shattered the opposing team’s bat.
Nobody was injured, but the batsman started crying out of shock. There was some momentary consternation among the spectators, but then it was generally agreed that the occurrence was the result of a cheap bat getting hit in just the right spot by a lucky bowl. A one-off fluke. The batsman was told briskly to stop being soft, the wreckage of the bat was tidied up, a new bat was produced (the ball was never found), the game continued (Raushan’s team lost), and for a few weeks, Raushan enjoyed some local celebrity.
However, two people knew that it hadn’t been a one-off fluke. The first was Raushan himself, who had felt a powerful tingling in his fingertips as the ball tore itself out of his hand. The second person was one of the cricket umpires, who happened to be a retired Checquy operative. A keen cricketer and former commando, he was able to identify a cheap bat or a supernatural manifestation from a mile away, and he knew that only one of those had been present that day. He passed on his thoughts to some of his old colleagues who were still in the game (of Checquying — not cricket). They were intrigued and placed the Attariwala residence under surveillance.
Over the next few weeks, the Checquy observers watched as Raushan secretly experimented with his newfound abilities to manipulate kinetic energy. His efforts were crude but impressive. He flipped a coin through the roof of his house and threw a tennis ball two miles out to sea. When he kicked a football through the trunk of a pine tree, they decided it was time to acquire him.
It was an aspect of the Checquy that Myfanwy had experienced some difficulty coming to terms with. Apparently, in the United Kingdom, the monarchy reserved certain rights for itself, entitlements known as “the Royal Prerogative.” Many of these rights had to do with government policies, defense, foreign affairs, and judicial matters. They also included a few unexpected privileges, such as automatic ownership of all unmarked mute swans in open water and any whales, sturgeons, or porpoises that might turn up around the place. If you found an unclaimed porpoise, it belonged to the monarch.
But an unpublicized element of the Royal Prerogative was automatic guardianship of “any and all persons or creatures exhibiting traits and capabilities for which no explanation can be divined.” If you gave birth to a child whose breath baked bread, it too belonged to the monarch.
Of course, the monarchy didn’t want these people (and creatures) hanging around the palace, being all unnatural and touching the furniture. Thus, the throne delegated this authority of guardianship to the Checquy, so, by royal writ, the Court of the Checquy held the right and the obligation to take into its custody any person on the British Isles who was possessed of supernatural abilities.
In times past, it had been a fairly simple (if cruel) process. There were different approaches depending on the social class of the target. For the literate classes, a representative of the Checquy would present a flowery letter from the King or Queen ordering that the child be taken and impressing upon the parents the requirement for secrecy. There would be a discreet stipend and possibly some sort of medal awarded. For the illiterate (read: poor) classes, if they were lucky, they’d get a coin or a ham chucked at them before their kid got picked up. If the Checquy sensed that the parents were going to make an inconvenient fuss, they might just snatch the child away and offer no explanation at all, leaving distraught and bewildered families to mourn and wonder for the rest of their lives. In none of these cases would the parents ever see their child again.
But society moved on, and eventually it wasn’t as acceptable to just bludgeon people with the authority of the Crown (which was becoming a trifle averse to its name getting thrown around in relation to stolen children). And so the Checquy adapted its methods. Families would be observed for weeks or months before the target was acquired, and an appropriate approach would be designed. Paramount, however, was the requirement that the families not raise a fuss. In the age of newspapers, radio, and outraged citizens, there could be no trail leading back to the government. Parents were left with the belief that their child had died, or run away, or been kidnapped. It was ugly, but it was necessary.
The acquisition of Raushan was not as smooth as others had been, owing primarily to the Attariwala family traits of suspicion and strength of will — traits that would serve Raushan well in his later career. But eventually, after some missteps, he was placed in the Estate school on Kirrin Island to be tutored in the use of his abilities. And while he would attend the Church of England–based services at the Estate with the other students, he was unyielding in his insistence that he would continue to receive instruction in Sikhism. It was one of a series of compromises he successfully negotiated with an organization whose usual level of compromise was along the lines of “We don’t exist. Now do what we say or Claire from Accounting will bite your head off.”
During his time on Kirrin Island, Raushan pursued his studies with determination and focus. Like all the students, he worked closely with the Estate scientists, exploring the extent of his supernatural abilities. Soon, he could flick a toothpick clean through an egg, toss an egg clean through a car, and shove a car clean through a wall. It turned out, after some painful experiments with tennis balls, that he couldn’t drain the kinetic energy out of an object that was traveling toward him. Nor could he increase the speed of vehicles he was traveling in, although he could give them a hell of a push start.