The Paradox by Charlie Fletcher

Author:Charlie Fletcher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction / Fantasy / Historical, Fiction / Fantasy / Paranormal, Fiction / Literary, Fiction / Occult & Supernatural
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2015-08-18T04:00:00+00:00

The passage of time seemed to accelerate for both Lucy and Charlie as the late and lazy summer began to feel more like autumn. In part this was because they were both kept busy learning and doing what Cook described as “getting good and seasoned”. Once it became apparent that the venatrix now had her own reasons for staying in London, awaiting the return of Lady of Nantasket, the ship that had taken the object of her hunt across the Atlantic, The Smith and the others seemed to relax about her. The two younger members of the Hand enjoyed walking the city with Cait almost as much as they liked doing so with Hodge. She was sharp and observant, and had the knack of alerting them to anomalies in such a way that made them feel partners in the enterprise, rather than mere students. She was, in simple terms, fun. Partly this was her nature, partly it was perhaps because she was so much closer to their own age than the other members of the Hand. And partly she was herself diverted by the great teeming variety the city presented them with, being herself, as she said, “no more than a simple country girl from the rolling green”, and some of her wonder and mirth at the city was passed on to them. She was also a steadying influence on Lucy, who was able to talk to her about her misgivings about The Smith. When she first broached it, she had felt she was betraying a confidence, maybe even being needlessly open about a fear she would more normally have kept to herself, but Cait had listened to her carefully and seriously. And then she had said that in her mind, misgivings were always useful, and that she should listen to them and be willing to change her views if experience added new information to the picture.

“It’s important to have strong beliefs and opinions,” she said, “because you want to steer your own life according to your own lights. But the other side of being strong like that is you have to be open to the fact that you might be wrong, and be willing to change those opinions if the evidence rises up and smacks you in the eye.”

And because Cait had doubts about being part of a group like The Oversight but was willing enough to work with them on a temporary basis, Lucy decided she was, for the moment, in the right place, where the benefits outweighed the dangers. And the education she was getting was undoubtedly both strange and useful.

Hodge was a good teacher in a wholly different way to Cait. He knew the city from rooftop to riverbed with the compendious detail of a true native. London was in his blood, and indeed the scars on his body attested to the fact that, like the pugnacious Jed who was now always at his side, quite a lot of his blood was spread around London in return.

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