(twisting fate)
Everything changes. Even the longest, the most glittering reign must come to an end some time. And I'm still here, for my sins...
Even calling what I run "the Watchers' Council" is a bit of a misnomer. It was pointed out to me -- rather needlessly, I thought -- that whatever we choose to call ourselves, we serve at the pleasure of the Slayers, now. We're overrun with Slayers, and have only a handful of Watchers left to ride herd over all of them. Most of the Watchers are either old men, or young ones, hardly more than boys.
The old men are the ones who already took retirement, and weren't an active part of the Old Council when the First cut a swath through its numbers. The young ones haven't been exposed to field-work to any meaningful degree.
Am I really undercutting their authority, when I let the Slayers know how much shit I think they're full of? They're just so full of themselves and their book knowledge, with no practical experience of which to speak that it's quite insupportable... Maybe I am undercutting them. The sad thing is, I couldn't possibly care less if I am. The irony is that the only one under thirty I have any confidence in looks as if he'd as soon rip my throat out as look at me every time we're in the same room together.
I'm not even going to go into how I managed to acquire the money to do this -- not in great detail, in any event. Or, rather, since the money actually belonged to the Old Council, how I managed to acquire access to it. Caleb blew up the Council's headquarters, the building and the people -- he didn't blow up the Council's investments, or its liquid assets.
I never stopped to think about that. But someone did.
I hadn't been back in England for a week when a sallow, long-faced solicitor with the improbable name of Rhys Rhys-Evans showed up on my doorstep with the paperwork that detailed all of it for me. All he required was my signature to set things in motion. The philanthropic organisation the Old Council always pretended to be has smoothly metamorphosed into a public upper school for girls, with a large number of international scholarship students among those matriculating there.
Considering the Watcher/Slayer ratio at the moment, it's as convincing a cover story as I could ask. Our physical location, a converted mansion in Belgravia, leaves something to be desired. The neighbourhood is too good not to attract some notice. On the other hand, the neighbours are far too polite to say anything about it, so long as the girls don't do anything to attract their attention, or get on their nerves overmuch.
Even calling what I run "the Watchers' Council" is a bit of a misnomer. It was pointed out to me -- rather needlessly, I thought -- that whatever we choose to call ourselves, we serve at the pleasure of the Slayers, now. We're overrun with Slayers, and have only a handful of Watchers left to ride herd over all of them. Most of the Watchers are either old men, or young ones, hardly more than boys.
The old men are the ones who already took retirement, and weren't an active part of the Old Council when the First cut a swath through its numbers. The young ones haven't been exposed to field-work to any meaningful degree.
Am I really undercutting their authority, when I let the Slayers know how much shit I think they're full of? They're just so full of themselves and their book knowledge, with no practical experience of which to speak that it's quite insupportable... Maybe I am undercutting them. The sad thing is, I couldn't possibly care less if I am. The irony is that the only one under thirty I have any confidence in looks as if he'd as soon rip my throat out as look at me every time we're in the same room together.
I'm not even going to go into how I managed to acquire the money to do this -- not in great detail, in any event. Or, rather, since the money actually belonged to the Old Council, how I managed to acquire access to it. Caleb blew up the Council's headquarters, the building and the people -- he didn't blow up the Council's investments, or its liquid assets.
I never stopped to think about that. But someone did.
I hadn't been back in England for a week when a sallow, long-faced solicitor with the improbable name of Rhys Rhys-Evans showed up on my doorstep with the paperwork that detailed all of it for me. All he required was my signature to set things in motion. The philanthropic organisation the Old Council always pretended to be has smoothly metamorphosed into a public upper school for girls, with a large number of international scholarship students among those matriculating there.
Considering the Watcher/Slayer ratio at the moment, it's as convincing a cover story as I could ask. Our physical location, a converted mansion in Belgravia, leaves something to be desired. The neighbourhood is too good not to attract some notice. On the other hand, the neighbours are far too polite to say anything about it, so long as the girls don't do anything to attract their attention, or get on their nerves overmuch.