Shadow of the Templar: Cuckoo's Egg, Extended Edition: Chapter Eleven

On timeline: early to mid-1990s, ten to fifteen years before the events of the books
Spoilers for: the usual
Warnings: same as ever

11.

      As the summer wound down Bran found himself in the grips of a vague, shifting malaise. At loose ends, with nothing real to do and nothing new to learn, he started to shut down, bit by bit. The days were long and occasionally even bright, however, so there was no hope of pushing the job ahead—at least, not without putting himself at even more risk—so he searched for things to fill his hours while he waited for the horrible weather of autumn.

      Even Jeremiah would have done for that, but Jeremiah was always off with Claude or in deep conference with Ethan or running the stupid maze of fishing line in the back hallway or in the pool or bobbling about on the pommel horse. Or, or, or, always an or. Now that Bran wouldn't have minded having Jeremiah about (well, having him about a bit more, anyway) most of the time Jeremiah was nowhere to be found. Some company Ethan had found him. Some company indeed!

      Faced with long, dull hours to fill Bran finally saw the point of Ethan's stupid game with the jars. He spent most of August combing the vast property with a fine-toothed comb, or at least with a torch, a pair of binoculars, and a key-ring. He'd skipped the loft, since the layers of dust on the floor proved that no one had walked through it in years, but then he'd thought what if they didn't walk, precisely and spent the next three days tearing the loft apart. He found any number of odd things up there, but not Jeremiah's jar, and not Ethan's.

      Bran got into the habit of bringing his latest finds down and unpacking them in Ethan's workshop, where it was cooler and the floors could be hosed down. Seven thirty-year-old police uniforms, an entire box full of early versions of Ethan's working goggles (some incomplete, most heavy, all broken), assorted devices from the seventies complete with hideous casings of thick brown and tan plastic: it was awful and fascinating. One afternoon Bran lugged down a dusty box labelled 'PHOTOS' and popped it open to find not only hundreds of ancient yellowing/reddening Polaroids of people he didn't know and places he'd never been, but the Polaroid camera itself and several battered old boxes of film. "Huh," said Bran. He picked up a handful of pictures and leafed through them. Some pretty woman in terrible seventies clothing, posing beside the entrance to a bank—in front of a jeweller's—on the front steps of a museum—at the foot of several pieces of sculpture—standing by an oil painting—it made Bran laugh, when he got it.

      "What's that?" Jeremiah said, thumping down onto the floor beside him.

      Bran jumped a bit, skin all prickling. Through some miracle he managed to avoid glancing at Ethan's safe in the corner. He'd meant to find a better place to hide his jar, really he had. Jeremiah had stopped trying to get into the safe, though, and Bran had been so relieved that his jar was in a good place... he'd just forgot, that was all. No, not forgot: decided to leave his jar where it was, safe, while he turned his attention to finding Jeremiah's. Ethan hadn't said anything about it, but eventually he'd moved his desk back where it had been and stopped locking his bedroom door, a clear (if silent) declaration of 'on your own head be it'—Bran shook his head and dropped a handful of photos into Jeremiah's lap. "Old photos, if you must know."

      "Huh." Jeremiah picked up some of the pictures and flipped through them, ticking his head to the side. "Wonder who this lady is."

      "Dunno. Someone Ethan knew." Bran fought with himself for a moment and finally added, "And trusted a bit, aye?"

      Jeremiah smiled down at the pictures. "Must have done, to use her as a blind to take pictures of his targets, like."

      Bran grunted and fetched out another handful of pictures. Mixed in with the souvenirs of jobs long since pulled were ordinary snapshots, or what looked ordinary, in any event: people caught sitting around the dinner table or lounging on couches or playing about in parks, all with awful old hairstyles and clothes. Many of them looked familiar. Bran mentally put twenty years on them and saw some of Ethan's oldest friends, the ones who dropped by for tea and came early to Christmas.

      A clattering noise from beside him snapped Bran out of his reverie: Jeremiah had picked up the camera and was fumbling an old flash-bar into the top. "Here, best not break that," Bran said.

      "I won't," said Jeremiah. He ripped open the foil on a packet of film. Bran dropped his handful of pictures into his own lap and watched Jeremiah load the camera. Probably Ethan wouldn't care even if Jeremiah wanted to take the camera out back and hit it with a rock until it broke, but all the same it made Bran nervous to watch Jeremiah mess about with something of Ethan's—Jeremiah shut the camera. It made its odd tidal-wave loading sound and spat a piece of cardboard out the front. "Still works," Jeremiah said, pleased, and he swept the camera up to his eye and triggered it. Bran threw up an arm, just in time: the flashbulb exploded in his face.

      Bran lurched back, blinded. The camera whined out a picture. "Give it over!"

      "Won't," said Jeremiah happily. A second flash exploded and the camera whined again.

      "Do it again and I'll twat you one!" Bran snarled from behind his upraised arm.

      Jeremiah, flapping a Polaroid about in the way that everyone did, only rolled his eyes. "You're not a bit of fun." He looked at the picture, then went back to flapping it around.

      "Bet you can't even get film and flashes like these any more," Bran said, "and here you've wasted two of them already. Good show."

      "Wasn't wasted, see?" Jeremiah held up one of the pictures. Bran's own face grimaced out of it, dead white in the flash, with a black stripe across his eyes where the shadow of his upraised hand had fallen. He looked like some sort of sea-creature up out of the depths.

      Bran plucked the picture out of Jeremiah's fingers, scowled down at it, and dropped it into the pile of old pictures in his lap. "Was so."

      "Wasn't." Jeremiah held up the second picture, still mostly grey but just starting to display a wincing flash-blinded Bran in profile, one of his shoulders raised to ward off the attack. Bran grabbed for that picture, as well, but Jeremiah twitched it away, a wide grin blooming on his face. "That one's mine," he said.

      "Augh, fine, then!" Bran itched to smash him right in that grinning face, but Jeremiah still had the camera in his other hand and the floors in here were hard—"You'd best put that back before Ethan catches you with it."

      Jeremiah looked askance at the camera, then ducked into the neck-strap. "You're the one who brought it down."

      "Only to look at! I was going to put it back once I'd done."

      "I'm going to go and ask Ethan if I can muck about with it," Jeremiah said, scrambling to his feet, the camera bouncing off his chest like a medallion.

      Bran jumped to his feet as well, scattering photographs all over the floor. "Here," he said, but Jeremiah was already gone, the door flapping to behind him. In a mild panic Bran ran after, chasing Jeremiah down the stairs and into the kitchen. "Here, give that back," he was saying, but Jeremiah rode right over Bran with a loud "Ethan can I play with this?" all gasped out in one excited breath.

      Ethan fixed them both into place with a mild inquisitive look. "What have you got there?"

      Jeremiah picked the camera off his chest and held it out, the strap still around his neck. "Bran found it in the loft and brought it down," he said, "and I'd like to muck about with it, like, if you're not going to use it any longer—"

      "My God, I haven't seen that in years." Ethan fetched the strap from around Jeremiah's neck and brought the camera down, turning it over in his hands. "I thought it would be useful when I first bought it, but it was so loud that it always caught everyone's attention. The pictures weren't even very good."

      "I just wanted to look at it," Bran said lamely. "Didn't mean any harm, did I—"

      Ignoring Bran Jeremiah plunked into the chair next to Ethan. "So can I play with it? There's plenty of film and such left, like, and it looks like it's been left up in the loft for yonks."

      "Mm." Ethan turned the camera over again. "I'll make you a deal, shall I?"

      "What?"

      "You may have the camera... if you can force yourself to stop finishing your sentences with 'like'."

      Jeremiah hunched his shoulders. "Aaaaw. All right, then. I'll try to stop."

      "Then it's yours," Ethan said, handing him the camera again. "Do try not to drive everyone to distraction with it."

      Jeremiah threw the strap over his head again. "I'll try," he said, and—sure enough—he threw up the camera and snapped off a shot of Ethan with it, the strobing light making Bran's head hurt. Both of Ethan's hands flew up to ward him off, a moment too late. Jeremiah lunged out of his chair and ran for the kitchen door, the camera bobbling against his chest.

      "Aw, aye, that's brilliant, innit," Bran said sourly. "We'll all be blind by the end of the day, seems like."

      Ethan let his hands drop, blinking. "I'm beginning to get that idea."

      Sighing sharply (all the better to communicate his feelings on this matter) Bran pulled out the chair that Jeremiah had been sitting in and sat down himself. A not-unpleasant silence fell as Ethan went back to his tea and his newspaper; Bran looked down at the handful of photographs he'd managed to bring down with him. The pleasant brown-haired woman smiled out at him from beside a framed painting of a little girl in a swing. Bran raised an eyebrow, then dropped the picture onto Ethan's newspaper. "So, who's that, then?" It came out sounding belligerent and Bran hastily added, "I was only wondering, like. Never seen her before."

      "Mm? Ah." Ethan picked up the photograph and looked at it for a long moment in silence. "Ah," he said again.

      Bran waited. And waited. "Well?" he finally said.

      "That's Genevieve," Ethan said, putting the picture back down with absurd and gentle care. "The woman I should have married, if you'll pardon an old man's sentiment."

      Bran blinked. "What, really?"

      "Oh, yes." Ethan laughed a little, passing his fingers through the space just over the photograph, as if to stroke it. "In point of fact, we were once... engaged to be engaged, if you follow me. In retrospect, a terrible idea. People in our line of work really shouldn't fall in love—it only ends in tears."

      "Well... well, you can't just stop there!" Bran protested. "What happened? She had to be one of us or you wouldn't have had her pose for these pictures, it's not like I can't tell what those really are—"

      "Yes, she was." Staring off somewhere over Bran's shoulder, Ethan picked up his cup and took a sip of his tea, then made a face. "Ugh, I've let that get cold—at any rate, you're absolutely correct, she was 'one of us'. Genevieve specialised in old ladies with estate jewellery that they'd never managed to get properly appraised. She'd come to their house and drink their tea and be proper and polite and self-effacing and, well, she'd do as she saw fit once she'd seen the pieces. You understand."

      "Aye."

      "At any rate." Ethan took another sip of his cold tea, purely as a stalling tactic from what Bran could tell. "We'd always got along quite well, personally as well as professionally, you understand." Bran was afraid he heard all sorts of layers of meaning in that phrase and it made him feel a bit sick. Oblivious, Ethan stared off into space over the rim of his cup. "We'd actually discussed marrying on more than one occasion, but she could never quite get over her fear that if she let herself fall in love with me, then one or the other of us would promptly be sent off to prison and she'd be left alone."

      Bran ducked his head and rubbed his temples, staring down at the old photograph. "... s'pose that's fair," he said eventually.

      "Oh, yes. Quite fair." Ethan coughed. "Particularly since she was caught at it a few years after that picture was taken and sent off to women's prison for five years."

      "Ooer," Bran said, his face pinching shut in an embarrassed wince. Unable to think of anything to say to that, he settled on squirming in his chair.

      "Quite." Ethan's voice was very dry. "In any case, once she got out she was determined to do whatever it took never to be put back in again. Never spoke to me again, I'm afraid. As I understand it she's moved to... Finland? Sweden? Somewhere Scandinavian."

      Bran fidgeted, knotting his fingers into a lump on top of the photograph. "Sorry to have bothered you with it," he finally said, sweeping up the pictures and tapping them on the table.

      "It's all right," Ethan said. After a terrible moment, he laughed, a very little. "Just think, if things had been only a bit different you might have a mother now."

      "I'll do without, thanks," Bran grated out, standing up as quick as he could. It wasn't the sort of thing he'd wanted to hear today and he was horribly embarrassed for everyone involved, mostly himself. "I'll put the pictures back," he said over his shoulder, already heading for the kitchen door.

      "Mm." Ethan spun his empty cup on the table with a faint clattery ringing sound. "Yes, do that."

      Bran slammed out of the kitchen and hurried up the stairs, not quite running away. He'd barely reached the top of the stairs before a laughing Jeremiah popped out at him, camera already to his eye—Bran fell back a step and jabbed two upraised fingers at the camera, wincing away from the flash. "Fuck's sake!" Bran cried over the sound of the camera's action, and he pushed past Jeremiah with all his strength and slammed on into his room.

      "Here, Bran: smile!"

      "... you Christing little fuck, leave off!"

      Jeremiah snickered and darted down the front stairs, camera in hand. Resisting the urge to chase Jeremiah down and pummel him until he howled, Bran fell back and rubbed the spots from his eyes. Two days now Jeremiah had been driving everyone mad with that camera. Particularly Bran. When Jeremiah wasn't leaping out at people from hiding, he was out in the yard photographing birds or bushes or trees or clouds caught on the corner of the house (actually, Bran rather liked that last picture, although he'd sooner die than admit to it). Jeremiah had even managed to take a few awkward, disproportionate pictures of himself, holding the camera at arm's length with his thumb on the button.

      All of his snapshots were piled messily on his desk, sorted into piles with no rhyme or reason to them that Bran could discern, each one with something written on the white strip beneath the picture: a title or the date or just a description of the contents of the picture. As if you could look at a picture of Ethan and not know that it was Ethan without the word 'Ethan' written below. The piles changed daily as Jeremiah sorted them according to whatever whim was pushing him about at that very moment.

      The pile of battered film boxes grew smaller by the day, at least. Jeremiah ought to run out in another day or so, and then maybe this mad little fit of his would pass. Bran hoped so, in any case. He tromped on down the back stairs and into the kitchen. "I've just been ambushed by the camera fiend again," he announced, aggrieved, and then stopped as he realised that no one was about to hear him whinge.

      Frowning, Bran poked about. Ethan positively lived in the kitchen when he wasn't in his workroom or in the gym, so where could he be? It took Bran a few moments to search him out, in the back garden with Claude. Claude was perched on the steps to the guest cottage again, smoking one of his black-papered cigarettes; Ethan stood a prudent distance away, arms crossed over his chest, staring out into the middle distance. He blinked and came back to himself as Bran jogged up. "Bran."

      "I've just been ambushed by the camera fiend again," Bran repeated, now that he'd found his audience. "Wish you hadn't given him that old thing."

      "Mm." Ethan's smile flattened into a wry straight line. "I'm rather sorry myself. Still, he can't have too much film left, can he?"

      Bran ducked his head. "Well, no."

      "Good," Ethan said fervently. "I am glad that he's happy, but enough is enough, I think."

      "Aye, and more than. So what are the two of you on about?"

      Ethan looked down at his feet to hide a little smile. "Talking about Jeremy's progress, mostly."

      "Oh, progress," Bran said, and snorted. "Like to see that little arse make any sort of progress, I would."

      "Mm."

      Emboldened, Bran added, "Closest thing to progress I've seen is that he's sorted out how to keep himself clean."

      "I find he's actually doing very well," Ethan said, glancing up. "Surprisingly well, honestly. He's still rough, but he's made such progress."

      "He's like a little sponge," Claude added, pausing to blow out a cloud of smoke. "Anything I say, he's got five questions to ask about it, and his accent's improved since I arrived, as well. He'll have wrung me dry by next Christmas, I swear to you."

      Ethan laughed a little. "As to that, I'd meant to apologise—never meant to keep you here this long—"

      "Bah, it's nothing! A welcome respite! Bit of breathing space to consider what to do next, always appreciated, and truth be told I enjoy Jeremy's company more than I thought I would." Claude sucked in another lungful of smoke and breathed it back out. "He's still certainly an adolescent boy, with all that entails, but I suspect he'll finish up well in time."

      Bran huffed. When it gained him no attention, he huffed again, and then both of them laughed at him. "Yes, yes, you're certainly the adolescent exception to the rule," Claude said.

      "They're both growing up so fast," said Ethan, staring foggily off into the middle distance. "My God, I can remember when Bran was five—" Bran threw up his hands and took a theatrical step back. Ethan's eyes snapped back into focus and he smiled crookedly. "Yes, yes, I'm only doing it to embarrass you, you've caught me."

      "I don't have to stand for this," Bran said as loftily as he could manage, and spinning on one foot he headed back towards the house. Their laughter followed him, gently enough, and he banged on back into the house feeling fairly good.

      The corner of a Polaroid stuck out from under his door when he got back upstairs, apple in hand. Nerves all prickling Bran fished it out: a shot of the front garden, looked like, but up high, such that it looked like a sea of leaves under grey. The roof, then, and Jeremiah's favourite perch atop the dormers. Bran glanced up, his brow furrowing, then let the photograph flutter back to the floor.

      An hour later Ethan tapped on Bran's door and let himself in, as he did. "Bran?"

      "Aye?" Bran glanced up from the stack of photographs he'd snatched up off his desk.

      Ethan let himself the rest of the way in and shut the door behind himself, one hand lingering on the knob. "I need to ask a favour."

      "... aye?" Bran said again, a good deal more suspicious.

      "Starting tomorrow I'd like for you to spar with Jeremy in the afternoons."

      "Whuh—" Bran's tongue froze up, along with the rest of him, as he tore in two like a sheet of paper. The primal joy at the prospect of beating the utter snot out of Jeremiah was powerful enough on its own, but the equally primal terror of touching that threw Bran backwards again. His mouth dried out and his skin prickled with goose-flesh and he fancied he could hear his heart beating in his ears.

      Ethan looked away. "You certainly don't have to, but you'd be doing me an enormous favour. I fear that Jeremy is growing too used to my sparring style—that he's learning to defend against me, not to actually fight. He needs to mix it up a bit."

      "I can," Bran grated out, then stopped and swallowed about five times. "I can try, like."

      "I'd appreciate it." Ethan inclined his head. "Just... try not to do him an injury, that's all I ask. Or at least not a severe one."

      Bran forced himself to say "Aw" and bit off a grin that he felt like strangling on.

      In any case it seemed to be enough, as Ethan answered Bran's fake grin with a smile of his own. "Thank you, Bran."

      "Aye, right," said Bran. Ethan let himself out and closed the door. The grin fell off Bran's face. Experimentally Bran smacked his fist into the palm of his hand, once, then again. How many times had he wanted to smash that smirky little face in? And now he'd been granted permission...

      Bran flopped out in his chair and folded his hands over his stomach, slitting his eyes mostly closed. Picturing Jeremiah on the mats wasn't difficult—he'd seen that before, hadn't he—and putting himself into Ethan's place wasn't difficult either. Bran's fingers twitched as his imaginary self fired off a blistering strike that crunched into Jeremiah's face. Jeremiah went stumbling backwards in Bran's mind, his usual smug grin wiped clean away by pain and fear. No, not fear: respect. Respect and awe in Jeremiah's eyes, Jeremiah staring up at Bran like suddenly he knew his place in the world and it was under Bran's heel, right enough. Bran's mind got stuck in that three-second loop for a few minutes: the punch, the reel, the grimace, the respect. The punch, the reel...

      Eventually Bran shoved himself over that loop. As much as the fantasy appealed he couldn't count on Jeremiah going down after one hit, could he? After he'd punched Jeremiah's smirk straight off Jeremiah would try to hit him. The imaginary Bran flung out an arm and brushed aside Jeremiah's clumsy strike, the heel of his hand thumping into Jeremiah's breastbone and sitting him on the mats, coughing for the breath he'd just lost. Yes, Bran liked that bit. He played it over a little, his thoughts starting to drift as he dozed off.

      Jeremiah'd never known when to give up, that was the problem. So he'd come up off the mats and try to hit Bran again—imaginary Bran stepped aside and threw Jeremiah over his hip, sending him crashing back to the mats. Jeremiah would land on his back, all his limbs splayed out, and he'd be starting to roll at once, so the proper thing to do would be to wait until he'd got onto all fours and then drop onto him, pin him on his stomach on the mats... yes, on his stomach, so he couldn't kick or bite or do much else... Bran could get Jeremiah down and pin him down while he yelled and thrashed and bucked, one of Bran's arms across the back of his neck, that was the ticket... pin him down, Jeremiah wriggling about, making little grunty noises, struggling under Bran, unable to do a thing about it—

      —Bran snapped awake again in a wash of cold panic and threw himself out of his chair to pace.

      After dinner that night Bran went back to the gym instead of going upstairs. Most of the mats were still piled up on the far side, remnants of an afternoon's swim, but the punching bag fit into the narrow corridor behind them and Bran thought that would do. Filching a pair of weight-lifting gloves from the bench Bran put them on, meditatively pulling at the cuffs until they fit just so. He tried to remember what Jeremiah had looked like, the last time Bran had seen him spar. Tentatively Bran thumped the edge of his hand against the bag. It made a dull sound, and dust rose. Bran turned his hand a bit and thumped the bag again.

      All right, so, say that the bag was Jeremiah. Jeremiah was about that tall (Bran poked the bag with stiffened fingers) and when he crouched to attack he was that tall (Bran's fingertips hit the bag a bit lower) and Ethan had tried to teach him to stand sideways on and present a smaller profile, so Jeremiah's shoulder would be towards Bran there (Bran folded his first two fingers and dented the punching bag with his knuckles) and the best first strike would be to strike that nerve cluster there (Bran punched the bag, making it swing lazily on its chain). Bran flexed his fingers and waited until the bag settled again.

      So: defence. Jeremiah wasn't likely to hit all that hard, but he was a small fellow and tended to be fast, so deflection was key (Bran curled his left in towards his chest, palm out) and Jeremiah couldn't be light on his feet, not sounding the way he did when he clomped down stairs, so a leg sweep would be almost necessary (Bran scuffed an arc on the mats with the toe of his trainer) which would get him down so that Bran could pin him to the mats—Bran shook his head and fell back a rapid pace or two, huffing out a breath.

      Pivoting on the ball of his foot Bran snapped off a side-kick that smacked into the bag at about the height of Jeremiah's ribs. Probably a bit much unless he could pull it. Bran kicked the bag a few more times, attempting to pull the kick at the last moment, then gave in and kicked the bag for all he was worth. It made a satisfying whoomp sound and rocked on its chain, creaking.

      Bran bounced on his toes for a moment and then stopped trying to plan things and just hit the bag, his fists thumping against the leather in a lilting rhythm. He'd always loved boxing and sparring and such, particularly like this, when it was just Bran and the bag.

      He was still at it twenty minutes later when the hairs on the back of his neck rose, all of a sudden. Bran whipped around, certain that he was being watched, but there was no one else there. Still, now he was all on edge. Bran scratched the itch on his neck and let himself back out of the gym.

      One leg stretched out along the barre and the other folded neatly underneath himself, Jeremiah was already working through his warm-up exercises when Bran turned up the next afternoon. Jeremiah paused with his little arse stuck out in mid-air and tilted his head back to offer Bran an unbalanced upside-down grin. "Hallo."

      "Oh, that's charming, that is," Bran said. "Like a little monkey what's learnt to speak."

      "Ook," said Jeremiah, snickering.

      Bran slid out of his track-suit jacket and tossed it in the corner before finding his own little stretch of barre. His stomach ached a bit. He wanted to come up with some excuse to leave before this farce could get itself underway. Bran had been learning to fight since he was six—even before!—and Jeremiah hadn't been at it for more than a year... Bran paused and frowned, then counted back. That wasn't right, was it? It was... seventeen months, just about. Hadn't seemed that long (although of course it had felt like forever).

      In any case (Bran shook his head sharply) he had almost nine years' worth of practise that Jeremiah hadn't got, and that wasn't fair, was it? No fun in beating on someone who couldn't take it. At best Ethan would decide that Bran was giving Jeremiah too much of a thumping and call the whole thing off.

      Shaking out the muscles in his arms, Bran scowled at his reflection in the mirror. He wished he was happier about this. He wanted to pound the snot out of Jeremiah—every muscle in his body cried out for the chance—but... but not like this. Not like this, that was all.

      "Are the both of you just about ready?" Ethan enquired, putting his magazine down.

      Jeremiah bounded to his feet. "I am!" he cried, flashing Bran an enormous grin.

      "Aye, s'pose," Bran said. He dragged himself onto the mats in Jeremiah's exuberant wake.

      "Do try not to hurt each other too badly," Ethan said dryly, taking his place beside the mat and completing the triangle. Bran huffed out an acknowledging breath and flexed his fingers; Jeremiah rose onto his toes and dropped again. Ethan raised a hand. "On your mark."

      Both of Jeremiah's hands whipped up into a ready stance and the smile fell off his face like it had never been. He aged three years in that one moment, the cool and superior Jeremiah of the London trip back in full force, and it unnerved Bran so badly that he fell back a step before remembering to fall into his own stance. Ethan either didn't notice or didn't care to. "Get set," he said.

      Belatedly remembering his thoughts of the night before Bran flicked his left hand about into a defensive gesture and rolled his weight forward onto the balls of his feet. One step forward and he could start right off with a leg sweep, Jeremiah wouldn't be expecting that—he'd be expecting a punch of some sort, most likely. If Bran charged in—"Go," Ethan said, his hand sweeping down, and Bran made a choking sound and lunged.

      Forward on his left foot, sweep with his right, and... somehow Jeremiah wasn't there, he'd leapt back, and his left hand scythed down, its edge bouncing off the outside of Bran's thigh just a little too close to his knee. Bran sucked in a breath and fell back. "Christing bastard," he snarled, his vision going black about the edges. Bran clenched his hands into fists and went in for the kill.

      He'd been right, some small still-rational part of Bran realised, Jeremiah's year-and-a-bit of training was no match for nine-some-odd. Jeremiah was taking a hell of a beating and no mistake. The problem was that he didn't seem to realise it. The other problem was that Bran was connecting less than he thought he ought—Jeremiah proved a fast and slippery little weasel who kept easing himself around Bran's wilder blows. When he hit back (and he hit back hard) he always managed to pop Bran in the ribs, or close to the knee, or up the side of his head (making Bran's ears ring). Jeremiah's refusal to lie down and quit made Bran's initial rage start to melt into panic. What could he do that he wasn't already doing? How was he going to make Jeremiah quit? It was too hard to think straight—"Give in already," Bran wheezed between hits. "Give—"

      "Like fuck I will," Jeremiah said under his breath, and his next lucky shot buried itself almost to the damned wrist in Bran's stomach.

      Gagging, Bran stumbled back, only then realising that the faint buzzing sound that he'd been hearing all along was Ethan shouting for them to break. Realising that his efforts were in vain, Ethan stuck two fingers in his mouth and blew an ear-piercing whistle. Jeremiah lurched to a halt, sweaty and gasping and pink about the face. A thin thread of blood leaked from his split lip. Jeremiah bared his teeth in a nasty thin grin and scrubbed the back of his wrist against his mouth, smearing blood all over his chin.

      "That was... perhaps a bit intense for sparring," Ethan said. "I do draw the line at bleeding."

      Bran coughed and fell on his arse. "He pushed his face straight into my fist there, he did. I was trying to pull it."

      "It's true," Jeremiah said, startling Bran. "It isn't his fault." Jeremiah pulled up the bottom of his t-shirt and scrubbed at his face with it.

      "You're going to have a bit of a mouse, I think," Ethan told Jeremiah. "And you've got blood on your shirt."

      "Don't mind a bit." Not even looking at Ethan, Jeremiah gestured peremptorily at Bran. "Come on, let's have another go."

      "I don't," Ethan started to say—Bran scrambled back to his feet. "Think you're so hard," he said, and he lanced one stiff-fingered hand towards Jeremiah's shoulder, aiming for the nerve cluster there, just as he'd planned.

      Jeremiah dipped his shoulder into the blow and took it on the muscle, instead, and they were off again. Ethan prudently stepped back and out of the way as Bran and Jeremiah went raging back and forth. Bran tried his best to remember his training and pull his blows, fighting with chops of his open hand rather than with his fists, and for a while he succeeded—until Jeremiah kicked Bran straight in the big muscle inside his thigh, which made Bran's foot fly out from under him. Bran reeled backwards and then lunged for Jeremiah, trying to land a punch anywhere on that smirking face and nearly succeeding, only Jeremiah wasn't backing down, he wasn't going down at all, and what started life as a hard chop to the side of Jeremiah's neck got deflected and turned about and Bran ended up slapping Jeremiah's cheek, hard, like an outraged teen-aged girl might. It made a sound like rifle-shot. Jeremiah's head snapped to the side, his cheek going a roaring pink, and then Jeremiah was laughing too hard to stand up and fell onto his arse on the mats, hugging his stomach as he howled.

      Blushing furiously, Bran stole a look at Ethan. Ethan's lips were set in that thin straight unamused line, but he'd given over interfering. And Jeremiah was still on the mats—Bran darted forward and aimed a kick at Jeremiah's ribs. Jeremiah snatched Bran's foot out of the air and wrenched it over and Bran flipped about in mid-air and hit the mats full-length with a thud, his head spinning, his cheek-bone aching where he'd smacked it.

      "That's it," said Ethan. "No more. We'll talk about the two of you sparring again once you've healed up from this beating you seem so hell-bent on giving each other."

      "Aaw," Jeremiah said cheerfully, scrambling up from the mats, his nose bleeding.

      "Oh, that's lovely," Ethan said, looking up from his tea the next morning.

      Bleary-eyed and sore, Bran turned in his chair to see what Ethan was on about. Jeremiah's sheepish grin was a single bright flash of white in a battered face: his lower lip was damn near pulped and a purpling bruise on one cheekbone threatened to ring his eye. Bran (who was nursing a few lovely bruises of his own this morning, including a nasty foot-shaped specimen that had spread up the inside of his thigh nearly to his balls) grunted in acknowledgment and turned back to his breakfast. "Just lovely," Ethan said, putting his cup down. "I don't know what I was thinking, letting the two of you loose on each other like that. I should have known you weren't ready—"

      "Aaw, no, it was brilliant," Jeremiah said, his swollen lip muffling his speech. "I want to have another go at it later. I feel like I've learned loads, er, a lot just from yesterday."

      "I'd hoped that the two of you would practise and help teach each other, not have a go at battering each other's heads in." Ethan sighed. "Frankly, I'm disappointed in you both."

      Bran slid down in his chair, wishing that he could just slide under the table entirely and have done. Even Jeremiah seemed a bit abashed, looking down at his plate. Ethan watched them for a moment, then sighed. "I'm not saying that I won't let you try again, once you've both healed a bit. But I expect better from you the next time."

      Bran and Jeremiah both made faint embarrassed noises in agreement, carefully not looking at each other. Eventually Ethan stopped staring at them in that horrible fatherly way and went back to his tea, freeing them both to eat the rest of their breakfasts. Bran tried not to shift in his chair too much, as it made his bruises smart.

      Once they'd finished and Jeremiah was washing the breakfast dishes, Bran picked his way back upstairs. No question of having a swim this afternoon, not with his ribs and thigh looking like they'd been hit with hammers, but that was all right: he had a different idea. Or a thought, anyway, which was almost as good. Bypassing his own room he let himself into Ethan's.

      Bran glanced at the closed door, then yanked open the topmost drawer of Ethan's desk. It was still a tremendous mess—it always was—but after a few seconds of scrabbling through with his heart in his throat Bran found what he was looking for: a labelled set of keys to the guest cottage. He slammed the drawer shut, stuck the keys in his pocket, and hurried into the workshop to spend a few hours practising with the makeshift alarm bypass.

      When a glance at his watch told him that it was nearly eleven, Bran shut down the alarm system and let himself back out of the workshop. Claude was throwing himself into making lunch with his usual enthusiasm—Bran could hear the clattering from up here—and where Claude went, Jeremiah usually followed. During the day, at any rate. Bran slunk downstairs and let himself out, crossing the back garden in a long and aimless arc that only bent abruptly towards the guest cottage once his trajectory was hidden by the trees. He palmed the keys and knocked on the back door, once, then again; when no one answered Bran let himself in.

      The guest cottage smelt of old books and, more strongly, of Claude: toast, smoke, and spicy cologne. Bran locked the door behind himself, swallowed a lump in his throat, and set to work. Whether Claude knew it or not, he had Jeremiah's jar. Had to, by now. It wasn't anywhere in the main house, Bran would stake his life on that. The jar was somewhere in the cottage, it had to be, and Bran intended to find it—he went into the kitchenette and threw open the cabinets, finding all sorts of fancy packaged foods but no jar. Nothing in the tiny refrigerator or stove.

      Five minutes later he'd eliminated the kitchen, the front room, the smaller bedroom, and both of the bathrooms. Bran was in the study, shoulder-deep in the closet—why was Ethan keeping four thousand boxes full of junk in here when the main house had a loft the size of an entire football pitch?—when the front door of the cottage clicked and opened. Bran choked and threw himself into the closet, pulling the door shut behind him. He wound up with one leg kinked up on a pile of boxes and the other wedged sideways behind another pile and one hand in a death grip on the closet bar, and all he could hear was the sound of himself panting. Bran caught his breath, tried to hold it, and nearly passed out.

      Somehow, magically, they didn't hear him gasping. Jeremiah asked something and Claude answered him, but Bran couldn't make out the words, not over the sound of himself. What were they doing in here, Claude was supposed to be cooking, Bran had heard him—the two of them headed towards the master bedroom, still chatting. Bran caught the words "—yes, but it's fairly restrictive—" before Claude's voice faded back into an indistinct hum.

      Bran shut his eyes and concentrated on evening out his breath. Ethan would tell him to turn himself inwards, to make himself as small and as Zen as he could, but Ethan couldn't ever tell him how—they'd figure out he was here pretty soon. People had a way of knowing. A sixth sense for intruders, Ethan called it, the ability to detect others existing where they shouldn't be, which was why you had to be very good at concealing yourself and then ceasing to exist. Instead of, say, closing yourself up in a damn closet with the circulation to both your feet cut off, augh, God, Bran hated himself.

      They were still back there talking, fuck's sake, would they ever leave? Bran shifted, trying to spare at least one of his feet, and nearly fell against the door, only barely catching himself by his grip on the rod. Get out, he thought, beaming the idea in their direction like a malevolent shove. Get out, get out...

      After nearly forever the sound of their voices moved back towards the front room, after Bran had lost contact with both of his feet. His bruised thigh ached so badly that he felt like screaming and throwing himself out of the closet—it would be worth getting caught trespassing if he could just stretch out his legs—and then they stopped in the main room to talk some more and Bran made a guttural sound in the back of his throat that stopped just short of being that scream. It couldn't have been more than thirty seconds before they finished up and let themselves back out of the cottage, but every single one of those seconds lounged by, mocking Bran as it went. The door closed behind Claude and Bran promptly fell out of the closet, dislodging a couple of boxes and not even caring, choking on a hoarse cry as the muscles in his calves knotted in response to their sudden freedom. By the time he'd managed to rub the cramp out of his legs and put the boxes back in the closet, he'd been inside for nearly fifteen minutes, which was already about ten minutes too long.

      Bran finished off the study and poked quickly through the master bedroom, not really making much of a go of it. The problem, Bran thought, was that Claude and Jeremiah could have come out here to fetch the jar. He couldn't think of much else that would make Claude leave his meal preparations. Bran put the chair back where he'd got it and made one last quick turn through the guest cottage, just in case he'd forgot something obvious. While he was still nearly positive that the jar was (or had been) here somewhere, it wasn't here now. The mental image of Claude walking out of the cottage with the jar in one hand, leaving Bran wedged in the closet for no reason... it made Bran hunch his shoulders and whine.

      Bran let himself back out and locked up after himself and turned around and made a high, thin shrieking sound like a bird. Jeremiah laughed and hopped off the porch railing. "Thought that was you," he said.

      Bran lurched back, his shoulders bumping off the closed door. "Wh," he managed to say.

      "Didn't find what you were looking for, I'll bet," said Jeremiah, snickering. "Anyway, don't worry, I won't tell."

      "Wasn't worried," Bran managed to say.

      Jeremiah's laugh faded out into a little smile. "Course." He took a step back. "Come on, we'll be late for lunch."

      Bran's hair was still damp from his indulgent late-night swim and the shower he'd taken right after. (His hair was also a bit green from all these late-night swims, but there wasn't any help for that.) It was late enough that Jeremiah was just a snuffling, snoring thing on the other side of the wall; Bran himself should have been in bed an hour ago, but he'd decided against it. Waiting for his hair to dry, that was his excuse. He sighed and took one last long pull at his stolen bottle of Ethan's Italian soda, flicking disinterestedly through the pile of photographs. They were beginning to look a bit tatty. If he kept this up, he'd have to have Ethan print off another set.

      Slumping back in his chair Bran tipped up the bottle and swallowed the last few drops that fell onto his tongue. He turned the empty bottle over in his hand, considering it. He could just drop it into the bin in his bathroom, but then Ethan would know that he'd stolen it. Not that Ethan was likely to mind overmuch, but still, it didn't sit right with Bran, being so obvious about it. If he tossed it into the kitchen trash Ethan was just as likely to dismiss it as one of his own, or even not to notice at all, as he hadn't taken out the garbage since Bran had got old enough to tote it out to the bins on his own.

      That settled it, then. Bran heaved himself out of his chair and padded out into the hall, the carpet soft under his bare feet. He picked his way down the back stairs entirely by feel, his eyes mostly closed against the darkness, and he'd actually placed his hand against the swinging door that led to the kitchen before he heard the voices. "—really has been an unalloyed relief," Claude said, his voice ever so slightly blurry.

      Bran froze where he was, the door open only a finger's width.

      "I can imagine," Ethan said, his own voice dry. "Sometimes it feels as if I spent twenty years never sleeping for more than an hour at a stretch. Couldn't get into the bath without imagining the police smashing down the door."

      "Mmph."

      Leaving his finger stuck in the gap between door and doorway Bran dropped into a crouch, putting the empty bottle on the floor before inching forward just enough to put his eye to the gap. The main lights of the kitchen were out; only the little breakfast nook was lit, a pleasant little island of light in the darkness. Bran could see most of it just past the edge of the island counter. Ethan and Claude sat at either side of the table, a bottle of wine between them. Claude looked exhausted, slumped back in his chair with his stumpy little legs kicked out in front of him. His chair made tiny screeching sounds under his weight whenever he shifted or took a drink.

      "So," Ethan said, "how many are left?"

      "Two more." Claude picked up the bottle and topped up his glass. "Two more bank-boxes and then I'll have it all, and... well, honestly, I can't see myself going back to the trade. I never had the nerve for this business, I shouldn't have picked it up, it was just that I was so good at it..." Claude's voice trailed off into a tired little laugh.

      "So you'll retire, then."

      Claude's laugh this time was a good deal less forced. "Oh, yes, follow your example!" he said. "Of course I'm only just past forty, I'll have to find some way to occupy myself, just... nothing so fraught. My heart can't stand it, that's all."

      "Well." Ethan chuckled. "I daresay there are a few clever bastards out there who'll be quite put out to learn that you're getting out of the business."

      Instead of answering, Claude held his glass up to the light, frowning intently at his wine as he studied it. Eventually he brought his glass back down and threw back half the wine, just like that. "I expect so. I hope so. Nothing worse than going away and not being missed, that's what I say."

      "As long as they don't miss you badly enough to do something about it?"

      "There is that." Claude put his glass back down and spent a few moments examining his nails under the light. "I suppose the best thing to do would be to retire abroad. Some place where I've never worked. The only problem is... where? I've worked in every civilised country out there, and I simply won't stand for exile in Siberia or what have you. I'd rather take my chances with former employees and suspicious police and live here, or in France, or possibly down in Italy if the damned place doesn't fall apart in the next five years."

      "You could always go to America," Ethan suggested, his voice very bland. "Or Canada. I hear it's almost liveable now."

      Claude made a horrible croaking sound and clutched at his chest. "Do you hate me?! Is that it?"

      "No, no, if I hated you I'd be recommending that you go back to the life."

      "I know." His mannerisms melted away and Claude slumped back into his chair again. "It's a terrible thing if you don't have the nerve for it."

      "It's a terrible thing, full stop," said Ethan. "I don't regret my years on the edge, but honestly, if I hadn't promised Lindsey that I'd continue to raise his son as he began, I wouldn't have brought Bran into the fold at all. I'd have given him the gift of a normal childhood. Sent him to school—" Ethan broke off there with a self-deprecating snort, his hand flicking through a sharp gesture. "I say that, of course, but when fate provides me with Jeremy, the first thing I can think of is to keep him and mould him into my image. I suppose that's pride. Hubris, even. You can take the thief out of the world but you certainly can't take the thief out of the thief."

      "Oh, well, Lindsey," Claude said meditatively. Outside the kitchen Bran's heart paused in his chest and he craned towards the door, the world thrown into sharp relief. "Doesn't surprise me a bit. I met him a time or two back when I was first starting out, you know. Every time I come to Christmas I have a moment in which I think Bran's him come again."

      "Oh, I know. And it isn't just the face, either. It's the voice—"

      "—and the eyes—"

      "—even acts like him, a bit." Ethan sighed. "Although I do wonder how much of that is Liam's doing."

      "A bit, perhaps." Claude ran his fingers up and down along the stem of the wineglass. "Those Irish fellows always gave me a case of the willies, I have to admit."

      "Mm."

      Bran squeezed his eyes shut and flung forth a silent and heartfelt prayer, please go on, please, you'll never speak about my da when I'm about...

      As if he'd heard—as if the finger of God had stroked a message down his spine—Ethan went on. "They always did have such a capacity for violence, Lindsey and the others. Even when Lindsey was laughing you could see the rage back of his eyes. I don't think he'd ever have hurt Moira or Bran, not on purpose, but anyone else... do you know, I've always suspected that he kept up his IRA ties not because of any belief in Irish independence but just so that he'd have an excuse to flit about and blow things up and hurt people."

      Claude grunted. "He never struck me as the type to believe in much of anything, if you'll pardon me."

      Ethan waved that away. "No, no, I agree."

      "You'll forgive me if I presume..."

      "Oh, of course."

      "It's only that I don't understand how the two of you ever got along at all," said Claude. "You couldn't have been less alike, after all. I'd have thought he'd have hated you."

      "Mm. Well." Ethan sighed again. Bran couldn't see Ethan's face, but he saw Ethan's shoulders slump. "Lindsey believed in success, that was one thing he believed in. As long as I continued to be lucky and make money and stay out of prison, he'd grant me that my way of doing things was working. And when I retired with all this money, I... well. I think he saw me as the perfect safe harbour for his wife and son, should anything ever happen to him. A rich fool who knew the ropes but hadn't the balls to take any more risks, that was me. What could be safer than that?"

      Bran ran his tongue over his lower lip. It stuck and pulled; his mouth was dry as cloth. Forcing his jaw closed he worked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, bringing up another mouthful of spit while his ears rang and his chest hurt. Inside the kitchen all was quiet but the little sounds, the refrigerator humming, the oven making its last little ticking sounds, the two men shifting and breathing—Claude broke the stalemate by running a hand over his face, clearing its expression and smoothing his little beard back into its point. "In that case, allow me to say that I don't quite understand why you liked him."

      "I suppose it's complicated," Ethan said. "It suited me to get along, it always has. And Lindsey was talented, and... well, useful, and if you want to talk about nerve—!"

      "Oh, yes, he had that."

      "Now there's something I wish Bran had inherited from his father," Ethan said, his voice brittle and bitter. "He's got the anger, right enough, and I suppose if Lindsey had raised him he'd have developed the nerve to match, but under my care—not a bit of it. I suppose Lindsey was right. I haven't got the balls any more."

      "Bah," Claude said, tapping the table in front of himself. "I'd like you to show me where it's written that knowing your limits is the same thing as having no balls. I would like for you to show me that!"

      "Have you got a pen?"

      "Oh, very funny."

      Bran hung his head and sucked in a few steadying breaths. The world slowly returned from the dark and narrow little place where it had gone, although his limbs were still locked with that panicky static that he'd always known and hated. He couldn't have left now if he'd wanted to. "It's just that sometimes I fear that Bran's got the worst of both his fathers," Ethan said.

      "He's a good lad, though." Claude was watching Ethan carefully, his face twisted up into something like worry. "Talented, you can see that."

      "Yes, he's that." Ethan blew out a breath, then forced himself to laugh. "And of course I'm only maundering with half a bottle of wine in me. Bran'll do me proud. I know that much."

      "I expect that Jeremy will, too."

      "Oh, yes." The mood in the kitchen lightened visibly as both men shifted and shook off the gloom of their earlier conversation. "Cheeky little tearaway," Ethan said fondly. "That one's got nerve. Hasn't got much else just yet, though. If I'd just had him from the beginning—!"

      "Someone should have had him from the beginning. Anyone. It's a bloody crime. Fourteen years of likely lad, just wasted."

      "Why do you think I needed your help?" Ethan shook his head. "My God, the things that boy needs. He'll never be half the thief that Bran will, of course—he simply can't make up for all that lost time just by gritting his teeth and wishing—but he's certainly making a proper go of it."

      Claude also shook his head, then laughed down at his clasped hands. "Even if you can't make him into a thief, I'll have made him into a clothes-horse, I'm afraid. Looking at him you'd never have thought—"

      "Oh, I would. And that's something I know nothing about, honestly."

      "I don't know, that shirt's nice enough—"

      Bran shook his head, a single convulsive movement, and rocked back onto his heels. Sliding his hand free of the door-frame he let the swinging door settle shut again, a stingy millimetre at a time, until it was closed and the voices from inside were just a faint and wine-drenched hum. Snatching up the bottle Bran slunk up the stairs, one huge soft-footed step after the other. He barely dared breathe until he'd made it back to the relative safety of his room.

      Ethan touched his knuckles to the open door and then put his head in. "Bran?"

      Bran, propped up in his bed with a largely-unread book, let his hands fall to between his upraised knees. The book dangled forgotten from the tangle of his fingers, inches above the bedspread. "Aye," he said, unenthused.

      Ethan, either not noticing or deciding to give Bran his privacy, only offered Bran a small smile. "I thought, well. You've been so good about keeping the pool chemicals properly balanced—I thought perhaps you might like to learn a bit of basic, er, applied chemistry."

      It took a moment for the offer behind the offer to push on through Bran's mental fog. Once it had, all he felt was a sodden twinge of vestigial interest. "Aye, all right," he said, fetching up his book and marking his place before laying it aside.

      One of Ethan's eyebrows quirked, just a trifle. "Of course, if you're not interested..." He trailed off there, waiting for Bran to leap in with protests.

      "S'pose I ought to be," Bran said. Instead of getting out of the bed he looked down at his fingers, thin and splayed, the nails halfheartedly bitten down. "And I am, right enough, but... maybe not today? Had a bad night of it."

      "Mm." Ethan breathed in, breathed out. "Funny, isn't it," he finally said, looking away and smiling to himself. "I remember when you were seven and you wouldn't let me alone about showing you how to make all the 'poison stuff' Liam had told you about—"

      Bran rode right over that before it could get any worse. "Aye, well—" Ethan broke off with a startled blink "—and I'm not seven any more, am I?" Bran finished. His voice grated up into a bitter whine, making him stop and swallow. "S'not that I don't care about the stuff any more, but if you're looking to me to jump up and down with joy, I expect you'll be waiting a time!"

      Silence fell. They looked at each other, Ethan quiet, Bran abruptly unnerved. "I rather expect I will," Ethan said, looking away again. "All right, then. The offer stands. When you're feeling up to it, come and find me and I'll show you a thing or two."

      "Awright then," Bran said. He picked up his book and stared down at the cover, picking at a worn crease until some sixth sense told him that Ethan had gone.

      He went, of course. Not right away—for one thing it took him a day or two to get through the worst of his doldrums, and for another, it wouldn't have done to look too eager—but a few days later Bran found himself leaning against the far end of Ethan's stone-topped workbench. It wasn't like he'd expected at all. Not that he'd known what to expect—white laboratory coats and glass test tubes, most like—but he hadn't pictured Ethan (anonymous and frightening in a massive pair of goggles and a fancy breathing mask) enfolding a frozen card of white stuff in cling-film, that was for certain.

      Ethan worked rapidly, his breath hissing out between his teeth. The film went around and around before Ethan picked up a little metal thing and zip, zip, melted all the edges of the cling-film shut, creating a sealed plastic packet about the size of a business card. Bran craned his neck. "Here, can I see?"

      "Best let it harden up again," Ethan said, flicking the packet into the little laboratory freezer and toeing the door shut. His voice was muffled by the mask. "It isn't terribly dangerous on its own, but all the same I prefer not to handle it unless it's solidly frozen or in the casing."

      Bran settled back, disappointed. "Can I see the casing, then?"

      "Of course." Ethan picked up the thin metal case and handed it over.

      Bran took it, winced, and handled it more carefully. It felt as flimsy as tin foil in his fingers—even the slightest touch warped it out of true, although it seemed happy enough to bounce back afterward. The case flipped open like a book to display two small pockets and a removable centre piece, toothed all over like fish hooks. Bran fumbled this last bit out, pricking his finger in the process.

      "Careful with that, it's sharp," Ethan said. He sounded so serious that Bran knew he was secretly laughing.

      "Aye, I noticed, I did." Popping his wounded finger into his mouth, Bran put the sharp piece down on the table.

      Ethan pulled open the freezer again and brought out another little tray. The frozen stuff on this one was clear instead of white, but otherwise just the same; Ethan flicked the 'card' loose with a pair of tweezers and dropped it onto another sheet of cling-film. "When I was just getting started, we had to make these in the kitchen of a rented flat," Ethan said, folding, and folding, and folding. "And the case was usually just a bit of foil folded over both packets—I'd start the reaction by jabbing it all through with a sewing needle. Burned myself something fierce a time or two, I don't mind telling you."

      Bran winced politely. He was still fiddling with the metal case, twisting it back and forth. As much as he hated to admit to it, he was bored silly—freezers and cling-film, for God's sake. Somewhere inside, the seven-year-old Bran was deeply disappointed.

      Ethan hesitated, then reached under the table and produced a thick piece of slate, a leftover bit from when he'd had the table done. "May as well have a bit of a demonstration," Ethan said breezily.

      "Aye?" Bran said. Ethan brought up a bottle, made of heavy white ceramic with a lot of very small warning text all over it. The second container took both of Ethan's hands to lift: a squat steel tube with walls damned near an inch thick and a velvet-lined interior, all to protect a tiny stone flask barely as long as Bran's smallest finger. Bran took a bit more interest.

      Ethan unscrewed the top from the ceramic bottle and fetched out the dropper, half-full of some white stuff with a God-awful pong to it. Bran screwed up his face and took a step back; Ethan only smiled his meaningless smile and put a drop of the stuff on the bit of slate. It sat there, looking like milk and smelling like hell, while Ethan put the bottle away and pulled on a tremendously thick pair of lab gloves. "Best stay back," he said, plucking the flask from out of the steel tube and undoing the top.

      The drop of clear stuff clung to the dropper for half a second before falling. It hit the white puddle and exploded in furious activity that was all the more eerie for its silence—the acidic stuff bubbled up into a tiny pyramid that writhed and bit its way into the stone. By the time the pyramid fell, there was a pitted spot in the stone big enough to fit the pad of Bran's thumb, not that he intended to put any part of himself anywhere near it. His point made, Ethan tidied away the chemicals again. The calm look on his face threatened to become smug at any moment. "You can see how it foams," Ethan said. "It'll eat its way through the card-case and expand outwards. When it's done its work, you rinse it away with isopropyl—" He picked up the pitted chunk of slate and the squeeze-bottle of alcohol, rinsing the stone clean over the lab sink. "Not water. Water won't do a thing to it, unfortunately."

      "Be half-afraid to carry that stuff anywhere," Bran said. "... well, not afraid, like. Just have to be cautious, that's all."

      "Oh, yes. A good thief should always be cautious, no matter what it is that he's doing." Ethan's eyes glinted behind the heavy goggles. "Just not too cautious, that's all."

      "I know!" Bran winced at the squeak. "I know," he repeated.

      "Mm." Ethan put the slate away again, then stripped off his goggles and pushed his mask down to hang about his neck. He turned his attention to his hands, fiddling off the lab gloves one finger at a time, his expression gone a little soppy—Bran braced himself for whatever embarrassing thing Ethan was about to say next. Ethan opened his mouth, and closed it again, and sighed. "Never mind."

      "Not like I don't know anyway," Bran muttered. He also looked down at his own hands, folded on the corner of the lab table.

      "Mm?"

      "I know what you think," Bran said, desperately wishing that he wasn't saying it but somehow unable to stop himself. "I—" As one they both glanced towards the door, Bran breaking off there, some sixth sense warning them both even before they heard the heavy-footed thud of Jeremiah's rapid approach.

      The thumping footsteps pounded up to the door and Jeremiah threw it open, breathing hard, sodden with sweat, and beaming. "I've done it!" he cried, flapping both hands. "Ethan, come on, I've done it, you have to come and see!"

      "Done what?" Ethan enquired. Bran glanced at the safe—still shut, his jar still safe—and then at Ethan, who looked bemused.

      "The hall! I've done it in thirty seconds—" Bran stiffened. Jeremiah failed to notice. "—I timed myself but I thought I was making things up so I got Claude to time me and he's seen me do it too, he's seen me do it twice, I made him watch twice to be sure!"

      Ethan rocked back on his heels, visibly startled. "Have you now," he said, his voice even milder than usual, completely at odds with the amazement on his face. "Thirty seconds—well, that's something I'd certainly like to see, Jeremy, but I was busy with Bran when you came in—"

      "I know, I know," Jeremiah cried, now nearly wringing his hands. He stopped with a gasp and raked both hands through his wet hair, then wiped them on his wet shirt, then scrubbed one wet sleeve across his wet face. "But I had to come and tell you! It's important, isn't it?"

      "Oh, yes, undoubtedly, but—"

      "Leave off," Bran said, rolling his eyes. "He's not going to stop whinging until you do as he wants, so you may as well, like."

      Jeremiah's expression of hurt would have been almost comical if Bran had been in the mood to find things funny. He didn't stop bouncing about, though, and when Ethan sighed and pulled off his face mask Jeremiah made a sound that was almost a squeak and bolted back out of the room. "Thank you, Bran," Ethan said, sounding almost as tired of Jeremiah's nonsense as Bran was. "We'll get back to it later, shall we?"

      "Right," said Bran. Ethan headed for the door and Bran fell in behind him.

      Jeremiah's whooping led them down to the side hallway and to Claude, who was standing at the near end with Ethan's stop-watch in one meaty paw. They all piled up at the entrance, squeezed into the narrow hallway together so as not to disarrange the complicated arrangement of fishing line hurdles that ran from one end of the hall to the other. Claude took in the traffic jam with a disdainful, almost ladylike snort of laughter and handed the stop-watch to Ethan. "I'll leave you to it," he said, gingerly sifting his bulk through the crowd towards the door. "It's astonishing to watch him at it, but I swear just watching him exhausts me."

      "Ta for the help, Claude!" Jeremiah called after him. Claude flicked him a wave and a smile and left. His absence did a lot to open up the entrance and Bran was able to find a corner in which to lurk, well away from Jeremiah and the stink of sweat.

      Ethan settled to the floor, stop-watch in hand. "Well, then," he said pleasantly. "Are you ready?"

      "Yes!" Jeremiah spun to face the maze of lines, although he didn't drop into a crouch.

      "On your mark, then." Ethan checked the stop-watch. "Get set—go."

      Jeremiah didn't burst from his starting position, not precisely. He went forward in a light-footed poncy drift that carried him through the first three sets of lines before Bran could blink. After that... as near as Bran's stunned mind could figure it was like watching an eel darting about in one of the big tanks at the aquarium, not a wasted move, all boneless and swift and looking like it might tie itself in knots at any second. Jeremiah didn't actually look much like that, but he looked even less like anything else. Faster than Bran could credit Jeremiah slipped past the last set of wires and slapped the far door with a breathless, explosive "Ha!"

      Ethan had automatically stopped the watch when Jeremiah's hand hit the door. He looked down. So, too, did Bran, unable not to. After a moment, Ethan cleared his throat. "Twenty-nine seconds, Jeremy. Well done."

      Jeremiah crowed out a blissful "Yes!" from the far end of the hall and eeled back through the wires towards them. "I told you!" he said as he came. Even babbling and celebrating he moved through with that eerie, ridiculous speed. "Bran said it wasn't possible and all, but it is, you just have to figure out how to go through, you can't think about it while you do it, that's all! You have to go all in a piece, not one at a time, and you always go over if you can, even if it's tall, because going under wastes too much time—"

      There was more in that vein, lots more, but Bran tuned it out. The bile rose in his throat so quickly that he gagged on it and only barely turned it into a cough. Jeremiah was still prattling on when Bran found his tongue—"Oh, come off it!" he cried, so loudly that Jeremiah jerked away from him. "You haven't done anything real, you've only memorised the pattern! If we change those about—" Bran waved blindly at the hallway "—you won't get anywhere near thirty seconds after, it's just repetition that's got you this far!"

      "Right, right," said Jeremiah, flicking that away, "but I can learn another pattern just as well, and anyway I've learnt how to do it now! The theory and all!"

      Ethan shook his head like he was coming out of a trance. "So you have," he said. "Well done."

      Jeremiah beamed. Bran threw up his hands and turned away, which didn't do him much good because he ended up with his face to the wall. Ethan turned off the stop-watch and absently stuck it into his hip pocket, then rose to his feet. "Bran does have something of a point, however. I'd like to see how fast you are at a different arrangement straight out of the gate—" Jeremiah was already turning, pulling down suction cups "—and also count how many tries it takes for you to get the new arrangement down under thirty seconds," Ethan finished. Bran rolled his eyes again (not that anyone was watching) and left them to it.

      The thumping and crowing seemed to follow him wherever he went. Eventually it chased Bran straight off the property: he put his hood up against the misting rain and ran down to the town, pushing himself hard to avoid thinking about it. He arrived blowing and wet, his cheeks blotched with red. Now that he was here he wasn't certain what he intended to do; he only knew that he wasn't going to turn about and run back up the hill towards the house. Not yet, at any rate.

      Without any better ideas Bran found himself heading towards the little chip shop. Claude's cooking had done a great deal to put him off indifferently fried stuff, but right now it sounded brilliant, honestly. Even if the chips weren't much, he could sit and get dry, pass the time until he felt cool-headed enough to go home again.

      The chip shop reeked of old oil and cheap cleanser, but it was warm and dry, at least. Bran got himself some chips and a fizzy drink and sat in the corner to have them. The chips were terrible, old and soggy, but Bran was in no mood to kick up a fuss. He ate them anyway, like a little penance.

      He was almost done by the time the door clanged open again and the girls came swirling in on a tide of laughter, uniform skirts twisting about their legs. They had their school binders up over their heads for umbrellas but it hadn't done them much good: their hair was damp from the ears on down. Bran looked down at his half-empty cup, then over at the window, then at the far wall. Even though he was the only other customer in the shop the girls paid him no mind, just claimed a table and settled in, animated and noisy—they weren't half loud. The shop rang with their voices.

      He could go and talk to them, Bran knew. He was damp and sweaty and all but he fancied he wasn't bad-looking for all that—Bran checked his reflection in the window and smoothed a hand back over his hair, noting with satisfaction that the red smears had faded from his cheeks. If they'd just glance his way... a simple "What?" would do nicely, he thought. He waited, considering just the right flirty tone to take with it. He didn't want to sound accusing, or aggressive—a grin would help. Half a grin. That sort of sexy slow grin that was always showing up in films. The corner of Bran's mouth twitched as he thought about it, and he risked another glance at the window, checking the slight flash of teeth in his little smile—he glanced back at the girls just as one of them glanced at him. Startled, off guard, Bran twitched and jerked out the "What?" that he'd been planning, but his unused voice caught in his throat and emerged only as a croak he barely heard himself. The girl's eyes moved on. She'd not really seen him, only checked his presence.

      Bran cleared his throat, rattled. He felt the biggest fool—he pushed out from behind his table and half-ran out into the wet, his cheeks burning. If they looked after him, he never knew it, but he knew in his heart that they hadn't.

      Half a block away another girl in a blue uniform stood under an awning, waiting for the bus. Jabbed by his failure, and heartened by the fact that she was alone and not in a pack, Bran sidled up. "Here, d'you go to Aylesbury?"

      "Yes?" the girl said, wary. She pulled in on herself a bit, holding her bag protectively in front of her.

      "Oh, sorry," Bran said, twitching out a smile that he hoped was sheepish. He edged back a pace or two. "It's only—" he floundered "—well, I was wondering if you knew my sister." He mentally kicked himself for the stupidity of it, but there was no hope for it now. "Her name's Anna? Anna Lindsey?"

      The girl didn't look any less wary. "No, I'm afraid I don't know her."

      Bran ducked his head and stepped back again. "Oh. Well." There had to be a thousand ways he could rescue this terrible conversation but they were all opaque to him. Without a plan, he gave up. "Sorry to bother you, then," he said, and he went back up the street as fast as his legs could go.

      "Not thirty seconds yet, mind you," Ethan told Claude, going so far as to punctuate his words with a little jab of his fork. "But he's already got the new pattern down under thirty-five seconds, and he's only run it eleven times by my count. I am impressed."

      Jeremiah looked drawn and grey and exhausted, almost ill, but he was lit all through with joy. Bran couldn't look at him. Bran couldn't look at anyone. He looked down at his plate instead, pushing about the last few carrot rounds and trying to summon up the appetite to eat them. All that afternoon and evening it had been Jeremy this, Jeremy that, and it wasn't even going to stop at dinner.

      "God knows I couldn't do it in less than five minutes, and you'd have to spot me a few," Claude said, rolling his eyes hugely. "So of course I'm terribly impressed as well."

      Bran's hand hit the table, a bit harder than he'd intended, startling them all into silence. Bran went red around the ears. "Just need a bit more to drink," he faltered, using that hand to push himself up and out of the chair. He fled for the refrigerator.

      By the time he came back to the table the flush in his face had faded and he was able to slip into his chair without interrupting the ongoing conversation too much. "—move the schedule up a bit, I think," Ethan was saying as he belatedly tucked into his own dinner. "After today's little demonstration I believe Jeremy can handle it."

      "I hope so," Jeremiah said, frowning a bit.

      Ethan smiled. "We'll spend the rest of this week practising with the pommel horse—you needn't be perfect. Or even very good, honestly, although we should make something of a showing." He ate another bite of his fish. "Bran, how are you with the rings these days?"

      "The what?" Bran said. "Sorry? What are we...?"

      "The Olympic committee," Ethan said patiently.

      "Oh! Oh." Bran knotted his fingers together and looked down at his whitening knuckles. "... haven't actually been on the rings in a bit."

      "Mm."

      "But I can sharpen up," Bran said desperately. "Only need a few days!"

      Ethan didn't answer right away, only finished off his fish. "That would probably be for the best," he finally said, laying his fork across his plate.

      The rings, the rings, Bran hated the rings so much. He hadn't been on them in yonks (what with the job and the stupid jar-hunt and all) and the first thing he'd done this morning after stretching was pop on the ring grips and attempt an iron cross. He'd fallen again after barely a second. Now he was standing on the mats and rubbing his sore hands together and hating himself—what had he expected, going straight into the iron cross from nothing? God, how much arm and shoulder muscle had he lost?

      Bran twisted about to look at himself in the mirrors, looking back over one shoulder. In the gymnastics unitard the definition across his back was quite clear. It looked all right, but was it? He looked himself over in the mirrors every day—he'd never got over the fascination of watching his body putting on muscle—and he thought for certain that he'd have noticed atrophy if it was occurring.

      But of course it had been, hadn't it? He'd been neglecting the rings. All the weightlifting and swimming and such kept him in shape, right enough, but nothing worked that particular combination of muscles but the rings themselves. And he hadn't been using them. And he'd come swanning in this morning expecting to hop up and be just as good as he'd ever been—Bran punched himself in the forehead. "Stupid," he hissed, baring his teeth.

      "What's stupid?" Jeremiah asked, flopping over to grab one foot and stretch.

      "You are," said Bran. He let his arms drop.

      Jeremiah stuck out his tongue and made a rude noise. Bran glanced at Jeremiah in the mirror, then twitched his eyes away. Jeremiah was also in his unitard. Which, unlike Bran's, was white. Which put absolutely everything bang out on display. Not that there was much there to display in the first place, Bran hastily added. ... who on God's green earth thought white an appropriate colour for a skin-tight gymnastics costume, anyway? Jeremiah might as well have been starkers.

      That was a bad thought. Bran leapt for the rings again, just to stop having it.

      Five minutes later Bran ached in placed he'd forgot that he had, but the ache at least held his attention. Somewhere behind him Jeremiah was moving about, warming up or faffing about or whatever, and Bran didn't care a bit. He hoisted himself back into the iron cross, braced, and fell again, his shoulder wrenching about in its socket. "Fucking ow!"

      "Hate those bloody rings," Jeremiah said, sounding far too cheery about it. "I'm for the horse any day."

      "Aye, well, we can't both be on the horse when the blighter's here, now, can we?" Bran rotated his shoulder, wincing.

      "I expect we can't both be on it, full stop," Jeremiah said. He sniggered. "Although I'm willing to give it a go if you are."

      Bran rolled his eyes and tried to ignore the hairs on the back of his neck prickling. "Whyn't you fuck right off," he started to say, but most of it got lost underneath the sound of Ethan letting himself into the gym. Bran coughed. "Morning."

      "Good morning," Ethan said. "How are the rings working out for you today?"

      Bran almost hunched his shoulders. It was only the ache that stopped him. "Bit off, honestly," he admitted.

      "A bit," Ethan repeated. "Well, keep at it. Jeremy?"

      "Only a bit," Bran said, but Ethan had already turned away, and Bran could only let the words drop into the space between them. Jeremiah was slapping his hands together in a cloud of rosin dust, looking so fucking eager that it made Bran want to be sick. He'd taped his wrists (something which Bran couldn't be arsed to do, normally) and the tape was peeling back on the left. Not that Bran had noticed.

      Without a further word to one another Ethan and Jeremiah crossed to the pommel horse, which was waiting in front of the mirrors. The stitching had popped in one corner, Bran noticed, the stuffing leaking from it. That was new. When had that happened?

      Ethan took up his position to one side. Jeremiah slapped his hands together one last time, took a deep breath, and broke for the line. He leapt onto the horse—after a minute or so, Bran became aware of the low, sick feeling in his gut.

      That Sunday, after mass, Bran rocked to a halt in the aisle and looked back over his shoulder. "Here," he said. "... I want to go to confession."

      Liam and Paula traded troubled looks. As was usual when it came to God, it was Paula that spoke for them both. "If that's what you want to do, Bran luv—"

      "I won't say anything about Ethan or the job or anything," Bran said, flapping his hands at her. "I'll leave all that out. I just... well, I want to give it a try, like."

      If anything, Paula only looked more troubled at that, but she inclined her head. "Liam an' I will wait for you out front," she said, patting Bran's arm. "Take your time, luv."

      Bran watched until they were out of the nave, then turned on his heel and went in search of the the confessionals. He'd not ever been to confession—Liam and Paula didn't hold with it—and his only idea of how it worked came from films. Still, he thought perhaps he'd give it a go.

      Five minutes later Bran was baffled and annoyed. He'd never had any idea that the church came with so many bloody hallways attached, and they never seemed to lead anywhere useful. What was worse, they all looked the same: white walls, bright red carpeting, stained-glass windows. At least once he'd found himself halfway down a hall before he realised that he'd been that way before—and nothing he'd seen looked anything like a confessional, at least not like the ones he'd seen on the telly. Finally, in desperation, Bran gave up on the whole idea and started instead to try to find his way back out of the maze. He'd go catch up with Liam and Paula and go home—

      "Can I help you find something, young man?"

      Bran jumped a mile. "Er."

      The skinny old woman who'd stopped him took a startled step back, both gloved hands clutching at her purse like an impromptu shield. Everything about her reminded Bran of birds, from her pursed lips to the short feathery pouf of her hair to the glittering eyes behind half-moon glasses; the smile she gave him was tight and unpleasant, somehow disapproving. "You've only walked past three times now," she said, patting his arm with one claw and enveloping Bran in the scent of powder. "I said to myself, Mavis, that poor lad is lost. So tell me, what is it that you're looking for?"

      "Ah," said Bran. He fell back a step. "The confessional," he said. "D'you..."

      "Oh, they don't hear confessions on Sunday, dear!" Mavis said. "Saturday's the best day for that, you know. Confess your sins and say your penance, because you ought to be in a state of grace to take communion." She smiled triumphantly at him, like that was an answer to his question.

      Bran coloured right up, much to his disgust. "Oh," he said. "Well, I'll be on my way, then—"

      "Are you new to this parish, then?" Somehow Mavis got right in his path without moving a bit, cocking her head to stare at him with those beady little old-lady eyes. "Where did you come from, that they hear confessions on Sunday after mass when it won't do them a bit of good? I've never heard of it being done that way, but you know what they say, dear, there's nothing new under the sun!"

      "Oh, ah, no, I go here..."

      "And you don't go to confession?" Mavis' hand fluttered up to her mouth. "Oh, dear. Well. I hope you don't take communion, then."

      The dusty taste of the host was still clogging up the back of Bran's throat. He swallowed. "Ah."

      "Oh, no, you mustn't do that," Mavis scolded, reaching out to catch Bran's arm. "It's a sacrilege, you know, taking communion with a mortal sin on your soul. I'm surprised you don't remember that from when you were confirmed, dear!"

      Bran longed to fling off her hand and run for it, but that same old damned panic had him rooted to the spot, roaring in his ears. He mumbled something that was meant to be contrite and explanatory all at once, but he wasn't even certain what he said, not really; he only knew that it made Mavis' face drop and then tighten again, feigned shock giving way to a malevolent, meddling glee. "Oh, no. Oh, my. Oh, that won't do at all, dear! Come on, then, where are your parents? I'll just have a word."

      Something inside Bran snapped at that. He twisted out from under her grasping hand with such violence that his tie flapped over his shoulder. "I haven't got any parents!" he said, nearly shouting it, and then he was off down the red-carpeted hallway, the tails of his jacket fluttering out behind him. He found the main entrance through sheer dumb luck and threw himself through it, red-faced and choking on a lump in his throat.

      Liam had the car in the big circular drive and Bran flung himself into the back seat, crossing his arms tightly over his chest and staring down at his knees. No one said a word until Liam had the car out on the streets proper, when Paula cleared her throat. "Bran luv?"

      Bran grunted.

      "Are you all right, then?" Paula twisted about in her seat, her worried little moon-face bobbing up past the head-rest.

      Bran grunted again. Paula was still watching him, though, and she opened her mouth to ask again, and it was just to make her shut up and stop asking that made Bran shout "So apparently I'm not good enough for God, either!"

      The car slowed, Liam glancing at Bran in the rearview mirror. Paula's face crumpled. Bran tightened in on himself. "Leave me alone," he muttered, and when Paula hesitated, he said it again: "Leave me alone, fuck's sake!"

      Paula's mouth worked, but in the end she faced front again and they rode for a while in a humming, uncomfortable silence. Lost in his newest misery as he was, Bran could barely attend to it. He knotted his fingers together until his knuckles went all white, then unknotted them and watched the colour rush back in. All the while he fought to swallow that damned lump in his throat—it wouldn't go away, no matter what he tried.

      They were nearly back to Ethan's before Bran managed his voice again. "I'm not a Catholic at all, am I."

      "Aaww," Paula said, looking back over her shoulder. "Course you are, luv—"

      "I'm not," Bran insisted. "You only take me to mass once a week, like, I've never done confirmation or confession or anything. It's just going through the motions, innit?"

      Liam cleared his throat with an ominous rumble, startling Paula, who squeaked. "We don't hold wit' all that rot," Liam said firmly. "Doesn't mean we don't believe, lad."

      "But you're doing it all wrong," Bran said, agonised. "It isn't being a proper Catholic, is it, without the confession and all—it's just being a Christian! ... maybe!"

      "I don't think there's any wrong way to love God, Bran," Paula said, worried.

      "That's not... that isn't what I'm on about at all! S'not about God, is it, it's about being a proper Catholic!"

      They all went silent at that. Bran cringed down into his seat and waited for the riposte to come—he could hear it so clearly, but of course being Catholic has everything to do with God. Instead Liam sighed heavily and turned the car into Ethan's drive, stopping just outside the front door. "Your da asked us to bring you up Catholic like he was," Liam said, his big hands knotted about the steering wheel. "An' we've done just that. He was no' much of a religious fellow, Lindsey wasn't. Made a big show out of being a good Catholic just so he'd have an excuse to give those Proddies a right thumping, you want my opinion."

      "Oh," Bran said, knotting himself about this new pain.

      Paula patted Liam's arm and looked back at Bran. "If it bothers you so, Bran luv, we can come in an' talk to Ethan about enrolling you in a proper confirmation class. It isn't too late."

      Bran looked down at his hands, then out the window. "Don't know," he finally said.

      "Well, think on it." Paula rose awkwardly up onto her hip and reached back over the seat to pat Bran's knee.

      "Aye," Bran said, fumbling with the door. It chunked open after a moment and he got out.

      Paula rolled down her window. "An' Bran luv?"

      "Aye?"

      "Try not to take it so hard," Paula said, reaching out a hand to him, which he took. Paula gave him a sad-eyed little smile and squeezed his hand. "After all, even if you haven't crossed every last one of your sevens in your life, God always knows what's truly in your heart."

      Bran's hand twitched inside Paula's. "Course, right," he said, pulling away as soon as he could. His chest felt numb, like he'd stopped a blow all wrong. "Right."