William McGully was an anarchist. It had been like sliding down a muddy hill in spring: starting slowly, then quicker and quicker until there was no stopping it. If he ever bothered to pause, look back, self-reflect, he wouldn't have been able to pinpoint a time when he consciously chose anarchy. It wasn't even about patriotism: he'd lived most of his adult life in England, and it was England he wanted to change for the future and didn't waste his time thinking about the ills of the past.

He'd begun like most: born into a well-off but hard-working family, he'd inherited the family business only to lose everything after a few bad turns of luck. He'd blamed it on everything he could: society, the government, the unfair economic system, everything except his bad management that had actually run the business into the ground. He wasn't like most anarchists, though, because instead of philosophical debates and arguing and doing nothing but sending a strongly worded letter; William McGully wanted to do something about it. William McGully wasn't afraid to blow something up if it meant it would help bring the government down.

He didn't self-reflect, however, didn't think about questions like 'was it his own fault the business had failed' or 'what would killing the queen really accomplish?' He wasn't a philosopher, didn't like arguing with his words half as much as he liked arguing with his fists.

That was why when he saw Robert Blackwell again he bought him a drink.

"McGully," he introduced himself.

Blackwell grunted.

"You likely don't remember me," he lamented, more to himself than to his companion. "I loathe those self-important arseholes who give their speeches and insist they're right. Think I slept through all of their talks. Liked the fight, though. Wasn't that one for the record?"

Blackwell looked at him appraisingly, guardedly. "No," he said, his voice flat. "I don't remember you."

"But I remember you, Mr. Blackwell. Oh, yes, I remember you. Not too long ago, the meeting a couple months back. I saw you sitting across the room, and you were looking as frustrated as I felt with all the speeches and ideas and theories and nothing at all getting done that would be worth doing. Not a damn thing worth doing got done that meeting. Not a single conversation led to anything real. But I saw you, Mr. Blackwell, sitting in the back corner with a few others, talking. And it looked, sir, like you might be talking about something that's worth a damn. And I remember thinking to myself, 'Here is a man who might be willing to actually do something.' I have a feeling I was right."

Blackwell took a long drink, glancing covertly around the bar, taking another long look at McGully. His eyes betrayed nothing of what he was thinking, his whole face a blank expressionless mask. He was slightly shorter than McGully and only a touch older, but he had a gravity to him that made him seem both taller and older than he was. On the direct center of his face he had a fat, ugly, twisted nose that looked like it had been broken at least twice, once by a right hook and once by a left. The unnatural crookedness of his nose made his small, dark eyes look like they were sunken deeper into his head than they should be, giving the impression that he was always peering at the world. His hairline climbed high on his forehead and was thin and wispy, making his thick, black, bushy eyebrows seem out of place on his face, like black caterpillars on the pale, wrinkled surface. He smelled putrid, like urine and vomit and alcohol, and his clothes told of the kind of life he'd been living. When he finished his swallow his yellow teeth were visible and a grin that was almost evil slipped across his thin lips for just a second before his face resumed its hard mask.

"Yes," he drawled, and his voice was low, scratchy, like he was used to yelling. Or whispering, keeping his conversations low and secret and dangerous. McGully leaned forward just slightly, pretending to examine his drink but really listening. "It was a bit frustrating, wasn't it?" Blackwell continued. "That Keller and James couldn't just stop bickering like schoolboys over ideologies."

"Was that who it was?" McGully drawled. "Must have been right that I didn't pay attention to him; I thought it was Knight and James. Must have gotten it mixed up when the brawl started: now that was something to pay attention to. Not that I took sides, mind. Any man swinging at me was as good a target as any. That's what I like about our kind: they've got some backbone, know how to fight. Bloke took out my tooth, actually, but I showed him why it's best not to mess with an Irish… well, you know," McGully said, shrugging and keeping his voice low to match Blackwell's.

He grinned so Blackwell could see his missing tooth, then took a drink from his own glass. "You know, he continued, "the real reason I remembered you is because I... let's say, overheard someone mention something about your little corner of the group. I heard the name Canterhouse, and I know that name, know someone from there."

"A friend?"

"An enemy. Gave him a nice right hook once. Should have finished the job."

Blackwell mused over his drink for a long minute.

"A man," McGully said slowly, "who I also... have been given to understand that you don't particularly fancy, either."

"I see," Blackwell drawled. "Tell me his name."

"Holmes."

"Which one?"

"Sherlock. There's another?"

"Yes. There's another. One more important to our particular cause."

"Would have preferred it if it was the other one," McGully answered.

"He'll get his," Blackwell murmured. "Then we'll see who the better man is."

"I take it he's always been an arse."

"He got more than one sound beating for it in school," Blackwell said, his lips turning momentarily into a grimace that was impossible to decipher, a mix of anger and pleasure. "I was head boy, and everyone knew I'd never report a thing they did to him. I heard that changed fairly quickly when I left, but I did what I could. Couldn't stand him, couldn't stand his brother."

"Arrogant? Pompous? Insensitive?"

"Nothing less. He used to tell boys the news their letters contained before they opened them; he told one boy his uncle was dead before he could read it from his father, told another boy his brother's drinking had killed him and why even though his parents had told him it was the flu. Problem was he was right, of course, and gave his case so convincingly that boy would have burned him for sorcery if he could. Instead, he knocked him off a canoe in the pond and smacked him down with his oar. He panicked, naturally, when he realized the severity of what he'd done and pulled him out, but still it is a fond memory."

"And his brother? Older, I assume."

"Yes, older, and very much the same. Why either of them attended school is anyone's guess. They did nothing but waltz through, making enemies by always acting so superior, even correcting the teachers. Sherlock got plenty of reprimands for that, let me tell you."

"Worst of it, probably, was that he didn't seem to know why he was hated." McGully commented, his inflection rising a bit as if it was a question.

"Yes," Blackwell grunted. "He did, in a way. Always had this kind of hurt, stupid look on his face whenever the other boys would give him a piece of what they thought of him. Made me want to thrash him double, that stupid look, like he was the one who ought to be pitied instead of the father and arbiter of his own messes. Never had any friends, always acted like he was really trying to be be helpful when he blathered on about something the others got wrong. He knew, though, that it was why no one enjoyed being around him. Now, I imagine, it's why so many people want to kill him. He's made a career out of it, you know, out of being a damn know-it-all, of always shoving his smug face into other people's business."

"And, I suppose, since he's the same now, it's the reason he's in our sights." McGully grinned. "As long as he gets his I'll be content."

Blackwell grinned, too, his yellow teeth showing. "Mr. McGully," he said dispassionately. "Have you ever killed a man?"

McGully glanced around, then shrugged. "Have the feeling you're not a man who's going to be bothered by it if I have," he answered.

"Mr. McGully," Blackwell said, "you want in. Fine. But you answer to me now, and there's no questioning me. Whatever the hell your own ideas are, they don't matter. We're not going to accomplish anything if we're always fighting like the others that you yourself have shown a hatred for. You're with us, and there's no room for usurpers or rabble rousers. You may be good with your fists, sir, but keep that for others. Dissent, and your out of the game. Permanently. Understood?"

McGully nodded. "You're doing something. That's more than anyone else. Yes. I want in."

"Yes. We're doing something."

"Then I understand."

"I am a dangerous man," Blackwell warned him. "You're caught with me, you're hanged. And if you turn your back on me, I'll kill you myself. So you only have this one chance to walk away. If you're all talk and not committed, then you have just this once to pretend we never met."

McGully finished his drink. "I've not killed men," he said. "I've killed men, and women, and children. I didn't plan on it, they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I'm still here talking to you. I believe that should tell you what you need to know about the kind of man I am."

Blackwell nodded, finished his drink, put the glass down with a decisive clink. "Come with me, Mr. McGully. I have something I think you should see."