Survivors
Chapter the First: An Unexpected Visitor
London, England 2 January 18--Number Fourteen Cogman Street was, like the buildings to either side, a shop of perfectly ordinary provenance, but for one significant difference: it was always clean. For a city wherein the early morning fogs were sometimes known to leave asphyxiated perambulators in their wake, this was no small feat and, to some observers, it smacked of magic. (Those observers were closer to being correct than they knew, but the proprietor of the shop saw no reason to tell anyone that.) No coal-smut adhered for long on its respectable red-brick façade, its largish display windows, or its outrageously vivid green door. Its simple gilt-lettered signboard ("Bookseller") went unmolested by the local hooligans, who had long since learned that attempting to fling filth at it was an exercise in futility. Even the brass plaque ("Books, Periodicals, Curiosities, Fine Stationary, Notary, Translations, Lessons") bolted to the door never seemed to collect the usual patina of tarnish, though the proprietor insisted that this was just the result of regular replacement. The proprietor occasionally allowed his neighbours to catch him doing such reassuring things as actually tightening the bolts on the door-plaque or wiping rain-deposited grey streaks off the windows with a realistically grubby cloth. Newcomers to the little cul-de-sac square of shops and flats still expressed the requisite amount of surprise and disbelief until the long-timers either disabused them of their silly notions or the new wore off. Almost no one paid attention to the ancient beldams and greybeards who hissed that, if you watched closely on certain nights, you could actually see that place shiver like an offended cat and flick the grime off its face. The proprietor was a more interesting topic of gossip than his strangely clean establishment anyway.
Even in the middle of London, the largest city in the world, the beating heart of the largest Empire, washed in refugees from the late unpleasantness on the Continent and travellers of all sorts from even further abroad, he cut a memorable figure. He was, by all decent standards, too young to be a partner in someone else's firm much less the sole owner of his own demonstrably successful business, a standard he serenely ignored. By a similarly decent standard, he was too old to be without that most pleasant of a successful businessman's life accessories – a charming wife and children to help him spend his money – and his lack of a wedding ring was a taunt to the neighbourhood scolds and a temptation to their unmarried daughters. Most of the residents of the Street and the larger community of Addersby Square thought him foreign, possibly an American, for all that he spoke the Queen's English without the slightest trace of an accent. The nature of his foreignness wasn't an easily identifiable attribute, nothing as material as a defect of language or manner, because his manners were very good, though not a gentleman's manners by any stretch of the imagination. If pressed on the issue, his neighbours tended to shrug and say, "There's just something about him," or, more precisely, "Just look at him."
And, in truth, there was some justice to that observation: the bookseller stood out against the backdrop of his staid and colourless neighbours like a tropical bird amongst starlings, though there was little enough he could do about that. He wore his untameable mess of copper-red hair cut closer than he had years prior, short enough for the silver starting at his temples to show him compounded as mortal as the next man, and clothing of a solidly conservative cut and colour that did an admirable job of disguising the quality of the leanly muscular body underneath it. Only sharp-eyed women noticed that his ears had once been pierced. The eye-patch invariably excited quite a bit of comment, though his explanation ("Tragic stone-skipping accident in my misspent youth") had been accepted as local common knowledge. He made no attempt to explain his oddly-shaped cane or the slight but noticeable limp that made walking with it a necessity rather than an affectation. (The rumours about it ranged from the ridiculous to the romantic, though none of them came close to the truth. His neighbours generally thought him far too young to have been involved in the 'late unpleasantness' and if someone had told them of the precise intimacy of his participation, that person would have been laughed out of the Court.) He had the sort of face that looked as though it was once more accustomed to smiling but had fallen out of the habit, as he'd fallen out of any habits involving friendly pints at the tavern after a long work-day or regular attendance at any church, Catholic or Protestant, or sharing his Christian name with anyone at all since his arrival seven years prior. The name on his calling-card, and painted on his shop's sign, was "R. Bookman," which, given his profession, was at least appropriate. For the first few months, his neighbours tried gamely to call him "Mr. Bookman," but even to them it never sounded quite right, and soon he was just "the Bookman" of Number Fourteen with the bright green door, the familiarly strange bachelor not-quite-gentleman who lived in the little flat over his shop and doled out donations whenever Our Lady of Sorrows came calling for the widows and orphans of the Continent, who gave every child in the neighbourhood all the free paper they could possibly need for their lessons and two good pens each when they first went off to school, who tutored the some of the more gifted boys and girls personally and underwrote a substantial number of their educational expenses from his own pocket, who directed those attracted to certain unusual curios on his shop's shelves to a particular house in Chelsea with the murmured suggestion that they might seek a career in the Church and the only smile most saw out of him, which was a sad one. In such ways did he become part of the life of Addersby Court, an eccentric but good-hearted and generous neighbour, solitary but not standoffish, a source of rumour and romance and colour but not danger.
Or so his neighbours thought.
When the dark man first arrived in Addersby Court, it was a phenomenon that excited very little notice or interest. It was Christmas time, after all, and there was neither a shopkeeper nor a householder not up to their elbows in business or preparations for the holiday. The tobacconist took the money he slid across the counter for a pouch of brightleaf and a package of rolling papers without even looking up for a glance at his face. The haberdasher who sold him a new band for his hat answered his questions about the bookseller's hours without a thought, coming as they did from such a well-dressed, well-spoken gentleman. Those who thought about it guessed him by his looks to be a Spaniard, which was simultaneously so close to the truth and yet so far from it that it was almost laughable. A minor expenditure from his vast reserves of personal charm loosened the tongues of every gossip on the Street, particularly the women, and through such sources he collected sufficient intelligence as to confirm his suspicions: the reclusive bookseller was the man he'd been searching for. Then, as quickly as he'd come and before anyone could think to become concerned by the direction of his queries, he disappeared again from their society – or, at least, one face of him did. No one drew the connection between the elegantly well-spoken Spanish fellow who'd come round asking questions and the rougher, somewhat threadbare around the elbows fellow who came round looking to pick up some work which, given the season, the Court's shopkeepers were quite willing to provide, even if they thought him a gypsy and underpaid accordingly. He could, and did, more than make it up at cards.
He took a room in the cheapest of the Court's lodging houses and for several weeks thereafter simply watched his objective, which he could afford for the time being, and considered his options. He watched as the Bookman, utterly oblivious to his presence, went about the routines of the life he had built for himself, alone and well outside the boundaries of the Order's remaining ability to protect him. The shop opened promptly at seven o'clock every morning without fail and closed its doors at that same hour in the evening. In between, a vast amount of correspondence was delivered ("From all the quarters of the compass, I tell you, and places I've never heard of before – if I didn't know better, I'd think him a damned insurrectionist.") and a not inconsiderable volume of correspondence went back out ("Where the devil is 'Komui,' anyway, Rumania? Oh, wait, that might be the fellow's name…"); driving the mail cart for the carrier, whose rheumatic joints bothered him in the cold, he got a good look at most of it, unmarked by any official signs or seals beyond the personal stamp he used, a quill on the darkest red wax to be had. Wednesday was tutoring day and one could observe through the front windows at least a half-dozen youngsters labouring over lap-boards and ink-stained copy-books for the best part of the morning. Stock resupply arrived on Tuesdays and new merchandise Thursdays, which generally resulted in a good bit of business on Friday as many of the Square's residents turned out to ogle, even if they didn't buy anything. Otherwise, the custom tended to fluctuate unpredictably, whole days passing without a shopper crossing the threshold followed by days spent attending the needs of parish purchasing agents and wealthy individuals of leisure with money to waste on expensive stationery imported from the Orient and books of dubious improvement value. As the holiday drew closer, those sorts of customers became more consistent visitors, departing with presents wrapped in paper stamped with the quill-sigil at all hours of the day.
Just walking through the front door at the moment seemed not to be the best of ideas. Or even through the back door. The Bookman never seemed to sleep, or even leave his business/domicile for any significant length of time. If the lamps burning inside where any indication, he rose early, usually well before dawn, and retired late; his oil bills must have been horrendous. The proprietor of the local grocery came by every week to take his order and delivered provisions accordingly. Coal for the stoves and oil for the lamps arrived at regular intervals. He didn't go to church, any church, an unusual state of affairs and one of the few genuine black marks his neighbours had down against him. He posted every notice for skating-parties or carolling outings or charitable organizations brought to his door, but never seemed inclined to take part. It was odd, considering what he knew of the man. Or at least the man he'd been seven years before.
Two days before Christmas, the dirty but at least hard-working gypsy that had appeared in Addersby Court collected the last of his wages, paid the last of his rent, and disappeared. The only people who noticed were the ones that appreciated his strong back or wished he'd hung about for one more game, as he was decent enough company and rarely hustled the same fool twice.
No one on Addersby Court knew, or even suspected, that the Christmas season was the Bookman's least favourite time of year, a week and more book-ended in holidays that were, for him, more a trial of endurance than a time of joy or peace. He never let on in any significant way: the shop was properly decorated with evergreen and holly, a sprig of mistletoe over the door and a hideously clashing pomegranate wreath on it, a basket of hothouse fruit and plates of pastries scattered about for customers and visitors to sample from as they wished. He returned Christmas greetings every time he got them. He still received a polite share of invitations for dinners and wassails that no one expected him to attend and everyone had long since ceased to be offended by his own polite refusals. Most of the unmarried girls who hoped he'd marry them when he first arrived were wives and mothers now, and he doted on their children with small presents he kept in a basket behind his desk, handing out dozens of shichi-fuku-jin dolls and painted paper carp kites and little boxes of exotic sweets over the years. He accepted the little gifts they offered him in return and made good use of them, too: the contents of all those cordial bottles helped him sleep through the latter half of December, when he dared close his eyes at all, and otherwise filled out the baskets he sent to Komui and River on their birthdays. He made a point of taking down his decorations at the stroke of midnight on the New Year and made a merry Hogmanay bonfire of them in the burn-barrel out back, in honour of General Cross, who never recovered from his Scottishness in any serious way.
January 2nd was, every year, a sort of relief for him.
It was also the traditional start of the winter slow-down in his business. Oh, certainly, the usual suspects showed up without fail on Fridays to peruse the new merchandise and purchase their naughty Eastern block-print books in plain brown wrappers but, in general, he could usually count on January and February and occasionally even March to barely even pay for groceries. If he owed anyone a mortgage payment, he'd be in dire straits, indeed. As it stood, he invariably ended up dipping into his rainy-day-or-the-seashore fund for one thing or another and spending more time on his own writing than anything else during the drear days of deepest winter, which were never as desolate for him as the days leading up to Allen's birthday. Occasionally he could even lose himself in it, like he'd been able to before, hours drifting by in the scratch of the pen on the paper, in words and tiny margin illustrations, without even a sense of time passing beyond the need to turn the lamp higher. He wrote, for the most part, about the past – the distant past – translating portions of the Archive left to languish in obscurity for decades or centuries and inserting modern annotations, sorting myth from fact and offering evidence-and-observation supported clarification of his predecessors' findings. He'd filled four monographs of colourful historical commentary thus far and, thus far, Komui hadn't pressed him for anything more than that, and the work he did for the Order in identifying young accommodators and shooing them in the right direction.
Occasionally, of his own recognizance, he would bring out another book, its leather binding dyed black, stamped on its cover and its spine with the silver rosen kreuz of the Black Order, its fine pages almost unmarked. He would open its cover and read what he'd written in it, thus far, and pick up his pen to write more. And, after a sentence or two, he would put his pen back down, feeling like the resident of an Andersen fable and every word like a knife's edge, and close it again. He was beginning to suspect that there were some things that he would never be far enough away from to write about in the manner his office dictated. Neutrally. Without favour or bias. He was the Bookman, after all, and he owed the future at least that much.
That was what Ravi told himself as he sat staring at the blank pages opened before him on his desk, pinned down at the corners by paperweights and decorated around the margins in an artful little repeating pattern of flowers and cruciform leaves. He had made, as a part of his annual burning of the decorations festivities yesterday morning, a resolution: that this would be the year that he conquered both inertia and self-pity and finally wrote the damned thing. He would do it now, while he had both the time and the opportunity and the absence of distractions to get in the way of progress. It had been seven years. There was no excuse not to beyond sheer procrastination at this point, he could admit that frankly to himself, even if the knowledge didn't put a single extra word on the page. He had sat down that morning with every righteous intention in the world, with his pens laid out and a fresh pot of ink to hand for them, with the stove that kept the shop warm and dry filled and set to burn slow, with his desk-lamp full of oil and a fresh wick that wouldn't need trimming. And he hadn't managed to write a word all day. He couldn't even blame it on customers – there hadn't been a one. No, instead he did a perfectly wonderful job of distracting himself with the need for fresh, hot tea and some biscuits and discovering that half the poetry section was out of order and that he really ought to take down all those old notices and that there were still fallen evergreen needles and withered holly leaves hiding in a few corners. Here it was, five to closing, and all he had to show for himself was a pretty border decoration that, true to form, his capacity for doing nothing productive really wanted to paint with some of those nice coloured inks and perhaps a bit of that gold foil left over from embossing book spines. In the back of his mind, he could hear exactly what Panda would have been saying to him at that moment, and it wasn't pleasant.
"Tomorrow. There's always tomorrow." In the sense that there was, at some unspecified point in the future, a time when he might actually overcome his own reluctance to put pen to paper and get the thing done, once and for all. He rather doubted it would actually be 'tomorrow.'
With a sigh, he rose to put out the shop lamps and bank the shop's stove for the evening and, at that very instant, the bell above the door rang and a breath of icy air curling around the bookcases screening his desk from the draft announced the entrance of a customer. It was five minutes past seven.
"I'm very sorry," He began and found the rest of the words he'd been about to speak coming to a halt on his tongue as he stepped around the case and caught sight of his visitor. He hadn't, it seemed, changed much since the last time Ravi saw him: still tall (of course he was, it wasn't as though he'd shrink, it wasn't as though he'd be physically diminished by defeat or failure), still slender (though the breadth of his shoulders hinted at the strength he could bring to bear if necessary), still impeccably dressed (black layered over black, immaculately white gloves, hat set just right to conceal the Mark across his forehead), still dusky of skin and dark of hair. He stood with one hand still on the doorknob and the other on the head of the cane he carried, but didn't need, some dark wood polished to a high gloss and fitted with silver. Smiling. Ravi still had nightmares from time to time about that smile, and the last place he saw it.
Wolf-golden eyes regarded him over top a pair of smoked glass spectacles, crinkled slightly at the corners in what appeared to be genuine amusement. "I know – it's past hours. But I rather thought you wouldn't appreciate a call in the middle of the work day."
For what felt like a horribly long moment, Ravi could think of absolutely nothing to say in response to that. Nor could he convince his limbs to move despite the parts of his mind that, even then, were shaking off the dust of several years of disuse and shouting suggestions involving Odzuchi Kodzuchi and assorted vigorous applications that it could be put to, more or less immediately. Then, with an inner sensation like oil applied to half-rusted machinery, instincts that he'd nearly allowed to atrophy completely lurched back to life, patterns of thinking and planning and doing. Yes, it was after business hours, if only just. Outside, the Street was mostly empty of shoppers; of the merchants on the Square, his shop was one of the latest closers, the establishments most likely to draw a substantial crowd closed their shutters and doors with the sunset, having made their money during the busiest parts of the day. Most of his neighbours were, at this hour, sitting down to supper, or to glasses of Port and a pipe by the fire, or putting their young children to bed, or any number of other activities that didn't deserve to be interrupted by bolts of heavenly fire or a massive local earthquake or giant serpents forged of fire and molten iron. Or, for that matter, a swarm of butterflies that enjoyed dining on human flesh.
"That was…very civilized of you." He reached around the bookcase and took hold of Odzuchi Kodzuchi's hilt, hammerhead reshaped into a credible imitation of a cane handle. "To what do I owe the honour? Business or pleasure?"
"Business, I assure you." His visitor reached up and removed his spectacles, folding them neatly and tucking them away inside his coat.
"Well, then," Ravi replied, as evenly as he could through the sudden dryness of his mouth, "Shall we take a walk?"
His visitor regarded him steadily for a moment, then his shoulders lifted in a slight shrug. "If you like."
"I'll get my coat."
It was one of the old style, forced on him by River the last time he was at the motherhouse despite his general preference for something shorter, part of a uniform lot that was about to be permanently retired to storage. The Science Division had, in deference to his wishes, made it over slightly: none of the white trim could be removed, of course, but the ornate silver buttons had been replaced with horn toggles and the rozen kreuz carefully picked out stitch by stitch so that not even a hint of it remained over his heart. Nonetheless, it was armour that covered him from neck to knees and kept the cold out admirably besides. His visitor watched from the door as he lowered the stove's air intake and doused the lamps, then held it for him in a perfectly courtly manner as they stepped outside together, into the teeth of a January wind that whipped their clothing around them and immediately drove knives of frost into his weak leg for good measure. He leant heavily on Odzuchi Kodzuchi's handle until the worst of the twinges passed, and considered which way would be the best to go by, which streets would be least busy at this time of day and in this abominable weather, while his guest waited patiently at his shoulder. Close enough, point in fact, to put an end to their business in a single motion as they made their way through every back alley and disreputable side-street that Ravi could think of between Addersby Court and the Marble Arch, of which there were plenty. Halfway to the Park, it began to sleet, the wind driving the weather into their faces and forcing his companion to fall back a step to keep hold on his hat and, with his attention thus temporarily distracted, Ravi whispered, "Grow."
Beneath his gloved hand, Odzuchi Kodzuchi shifted slightly, reshaping itself subtly, becoming less hiltlike and more hammerlike with each whispered instruction.
Under any normal circumstance, Oxford Street leading to the north-eastern entrance of Hyde Park would have been lined in itinerant vendors at that hour of the evening, selling everything from penny glasses of hot elderberry wine or spiked peppermint water, to roast potatoes or steamed oysters of dubious freshness. Street tarts regularly retailed themselves in the circles of light beneath the gas-fed streetlamps, with a dozen or more loiterers of untrustworthy nature and a constable or two making certain nothing too illegal went on added to the mixture. Fortunately, the circumstances weren't all that normal, and even the homeless wretches who gathered outside the park's entrance begging charity were nowhere in evidence, much less the usual rogue's gallery. The temperature was dropping by the minute and the wind stiffening likewise, pelting the streets and everyone foolish enough to be out on them with sleet and half-frozen rain – which, in this case, meant himself and his companion, the rest of the street being empty as far as the eye could see. Ravi found that a completely satisfactory state of affairs given the situation. Inside the Park's gates, a few feeble lights burned: guttering fires contained in barrels, around which huddled a bare handful of the Park's most destitute residents trying to eke out enough warmth to keep body and soul together, those too mad or enfeebled or ill to find a place even at the most charitable work-house, even on a night this raw. Beyond that was darkness, illuminated only by the half-full moon peeking in and out through the fast-flying clouds, shining on the snow lying thick across the Park's open expanses and the ice riming the Serpentine. The uneven, unpaved path was a treacherous mess of melted and refrozen muddy slush and fresh-fallen ice that made walking alone something of an adventure.
"You know," Ravi observed as they walked deeper into the Park, each word emerging in an explosive puff of frozen vapour, "I rather thought you were dead."
"I was fairly certain that you did," His companion admitted, easily enough, "since, in order to suspect otherwise, you'd have to be me."
"To be perfectly honest," Ravi continued, ambling slowly in the direction of the Serpentine bridge, Odzuchi Kodzuchi's tip ringing with a sound not unlike steel striking stone as it tapped across the hard-frozen ground, "I also rather hoped that you were."
"Yes, I imagined that you would." A certain wry amusement came and went in his companion's voice. "I promise you, I'm not offended."
"Decent of you, that." Ravi cast a glance over his shoulder and found his visitor standing a respectful distance back, one hand still holding his hat in place, golden eyes shining in the dark like a cat's. "Shall we settle our business now?"
Behind them, the Serpentine reared out of its bed with the roar of a dozen cannon firing simultaneously as the death-cold water surged upward against the dictates of both common sense and gravity, inches-thick sheets of ice cracking and splintering, spraying the path with fragments as long and sharp as spears. Ravi shifted his grip on Odzuchi Kodzuchi, fingers winding around its hilt, extended to the length and thickness of a sturdy shepherd's staff, light-and-dark banded hammerhead glowing the same pale blue-silver hue as the moonlight on the snow as he silently invoked its true power. Wood Scripture bent the revoltingly polluted substance of the Serpentine to his will, roiled it into a churning column a dozen yards high that swayed on its axis like a cobra readying to strike.
"Wait." A single white-gloved hand came up. "This actually isn't the sort of business I had in mind."
"Really?" Ravi smiled tightly. "I'm afraid that's entirely too bad."
The Serpentine crashed down with earth-shaking force, churning the path where Tyki Mick was standing into a mass of mud, knife-edged fragments of shattered ice, stinking water one step removed from an open sewer and every nasty thing dredged up off the lake-bottom by the inexorable suction. It swirled for a moment in place, lapping around Ravi's ankles and the roots of a dozen unlucky trees ringing that section of the path, then surged back into its bed with a roar that drowned out even the wind, dragging its own befouled mass and nearly everything a foot and more down on the path back, notwithstanding a handful of shallowly-rooted saplings. Mud, ice, water, twisted around itself in a percolating maelstrom, surging upward again long enough to batter the bridge to flinders, adding lengths of shattered wood and metal and masonry to the mixture, rising upward into that swaying, twisting column and smashing back down again and again and again. It was a substance near to the consistency of unset concrete that came to rest in the lake basin by the time he was done, dotted with bits of barely recognizable wreckage no bigger than a large man's hand.
Ravi stood alone, gasping for breath, on the scythed-clean pathway, leaning heavily on Odzuchi Kodzuchi for support. The Noah assassin was nowhere to be seen – which, admittedly, didn't mean much as it could have, were he an ordinary man. Either he'd been caught by the water or he hadn't; he could be dead, but Ravi somehow doubted it, even if the Wood Scripture's control of the Serpentine had disrupted his own ability to ignore unfavourable physical realities. Likely, the bastard wasn't more than annoyed. He hefted his hammer and began a secondary invocation.
An ice-cold pair of hands closed around his ankles and yanked his feet out from under him.
For a single, startled instant, he hung in midair, arms wind-milling in an effort to catch his balance. Then gravity reasserted itself and the length of his body connected hard with the frozen ground, knocking every bit of breath out of his lungs and setting off an impressive fireworks display of pain-flashes before his eyes. He didn't lose his grip on the hammer, but it was only just – his elbow slammed down painfully and at just the right angle on a sharp bit of rock to force his fingers half-open. A sensation passed through him, like warm oil being poured across his chest and stomach, and those same cold, strong hands caught his wrists, forced his arms down and above his head despite his best efforts at resistance, the leverage brought to bear against him too great to overcome. As his vision cleared, he realized why: the Noah had come up from beneath him, through both the ground and his body, and was pinioning him at a disturbingly intimate distance, solid enough to hold him down, immaterial enough to be emerging from his own chest in order to do it, faces less than an inch apart.
Ravi wished he had enough moisture in his mouth to spit.
"Bookman," The Noah's breath was coming in ragged, frosty gasps, "unless you want us both to die a rather disgusting and memorable death, I suggest you release the invocation."
He glared up and tightened his grip on Odzuchi Kodzuchi's hilt. The Noah, for all the world, looked perfectly exasperated for a moment – then closed his own grip tightly enough to grind bones together, exerted crushing force on tendons, prised the hand wrapped around the hammer open. Odzuchi Kodzuchi fell off his desperately struggling fingertips with a ringing steely clatter and the luminescence of the invocation guttered and died, leaving them in near-absolute darkness.
"Much better," The Noah's tone was almost relieved. "Now…are you prepared to listen? And talk like a civilized human being?"
Ravi brought his head up as hard and fast as he could, and connected with an extremely satisfying thud of impact. Or, rather, it was satisfying for the six seconds before that impact made itself felt inside his own head, as well. A second round of fireworks went off before his eyes, a round that the Noah appeared to be enjoying as well from the tone of his swearing, and the bone-crushing grip slackened just enough to allow resistance. Ravi squirmed, twisted, wrenched his aching arm free and clawed for his weapon's hilt.
The Noah caught him by the hair and slammed his head into the ground, once, twice, thrice, in rapid succession. Odzuchi Kodzuchi's hilt was under his hand, but his skull was ringing so hard there was nothing he could do about it, great bursts of darkness exploding before his eyes and the whole of the world swirling around him like water draining down a pipe. He realized, with a sickening lurch, that he was on the verge of losing consciousness and tried to claw his way back from that edge.
"No," The Noah observed, in a tone that bore a passing resemblance to regret. "I see that you aren't."
Impacts four, five, and six finished battering his remaining fragments of awareness to incoherent bits, and the seventh rendered him down into a darkness he was rather certain he wouldn't return from. His final thought, as his grip on consciousness slipped, was a quiet one: he would never finish the book, and there would be none after him to do so.
The next morning, the bookseller's shop at Number Fourteen Cogman Street, Addersby Court, did not open at seven o'clock, for the first time in the living memory of the neighbourhood.