Issachar Templebane examined his own dead face with more disappointment than sorrow. He noted how surprised it looked at the sudden interruption of all the clever plans that had once boiled so vigorously through the lifeless brain already beginning to rot behind that high forehead. The rictus of shock frozen on the waxy skin gave the lie to those who claimed that death by drowning was a peaceful and a painless departure, though it did occur to him that the expression might merely be one of distress at the taste of the noxious mix of Thames water and sewer effluent that had been his final fatal inhalation.
“Well,” he said, reaching his good hand down and thumbing open an eye which gave a slight sticky pop as the lid detached unwillingly from an eyeball now devoid of life or lubrication. “Well, brother, you are a fool to have fallen in so untimely a manner, and I shall have to carry on without you.”
The eye stared gummily back at a spot on the ceiling over Issachar’s shoulder. He in turn hung over the face that was–his dead brother being also his identical twin–notionally but not actually his own. The movement was awkward and made him wince as the broken arm that was hanging in a sling twisted uncomfortably.
“I was thinking that I might unman myself by looking at your dead face, but now that I do so I must admit my first reaction is one of determination, for sad and distressing though it is to see you thus, it chiefly makes me resolved never to be seen by my own survivors with such a surprised and disappointed expression. I have to say that for such a preternaturally bright and accomplished man, brother, you look shamefully taken aback.”
He let the eyelid go and sucked his teeth.
“It won’t do though, it won’t do at all. I am diminished by your death. I feel like a…”
And here, unusually for Issachar, words quite left him. He waited for them to return, eyes turned to the ceiling, blinking more rapidly than normal. He took a deep breath, then released a long, calming exhalation, massaging his broken arm with his good hand as he did so.
“I feel something has been stolen from me,” he said. And the snarl with which he said it made it clear that the flush beginning to pink the ridges of his cheekbones was not grief but anger. “Well, brother, the dissolution of the partnership does not signal the end of the enterprise. I will continue alone, and I will destroy them. The precious Oversight may be adept at fighting the insubstantial and the arcane; we shall see how they are guarded against an assault in the real world. They think they have stopped us, but they have not. They have simply confirmed my opinion that our future prosperity is only guaranteed by their eradication, root and branch. I shall grub up their vines, burn their storehouses and sow their fields with salt. Once gone they will stay gone for ever. Their last thought will be an agonised regret that they attempted to thwart the House of Templebane.”