I finished talking.
Sinclair was eating something that looked like a miniature version of Table Mountain, carved out of yellow goo and black grain. He took a careful sliver, and ate it. He put his fork down. He dabbed at his round lips with the end of a napkin. Charlie’s food sat uneaten on the plate in front of him. We scraped something that might have been gravy on the end of our fork, and licked. The restaurant was emptier, people gone on to a sexy midnight time, or maybe just to bed, only a few tables still inhabited in the gloom.
At last he said, “Well . . .” And then stopped. Then tried again. “Well, what times you have been living. You know, saturates are . . .”
“Rare. Yes. I know.”
“Saturates and spectres.”
“Both rare.”
“And you seem to walk into both - unfortunate, so very unfortunate.”
“We’re rare too.”
He smiled, a knife-thin flash of teeth in a great stretch of mouth. “So,” he said at last, “what do you propose to do about all this?”
I hesitated. “Well, there’s some choices.”
“Such as, Matthew, such as?”
“One - run away.”
“A somewhat ignoble suggestion, perhaps, in light of your otherwise gentlemanly conduct so far.”
“Two - find the creature that killed Nair.”
“That would make some sense.”
“No it wouldn’t. If it could flay him alive without trying I have no reason to believe it wouldn’t do the same to me. It would be madness. Pointless. Suicide by pinstripe suit. Besides, I have every confidence that if I stick around long enough, trouble and abuse can find me out just fine on their own terms. Which leaves option three - find the kid.”
“You’re not interested in this . . . this curious writing on the wall? This ‘give me back my hat’?”
“I am interested. But I don’t know what I can do about it. If Nair was looking for Mo, then he must be more important than I thought. He said - Swift has the shoes. Their only use is finding the kid. Nair was killed only a few miles from where I was when I let the shoes carry me walkies. And we promised . . . I promised to help her. Loren. What else can I do?”
“So you’re going to, as it were, carry on as normal? Continue doing what you were doing, regardless of the fact that you are now Midnight Mayor, last defender of the city, protector of the magicians and midnight magics of the streets, saviour and general all-purpose valorous champion and so on and so forth?”
“Yes. Pretty much.”
“I imagine the Aldermen won’t be entirely pleased about that.”
“That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I don’t want the Aldermen involved. I don’t want anything to do with them. I know you have . . . connections.”
Sinclair sighed, long and low. “Yes,” he said at last. “I have connections. It is my business, my pension, if you will, to have connections. To keep a keen interest on matters such as these - tiresome though it can be. But you have to understand, Matthew, having connections is about much, much more than being a messenger boy. I can inform the Aldermen that you are the Midnight Mayor, ask them to help you or, if you really feel it is necessary, to leave you alone. Of course I can do this, of course.
“But then how will they feel about me, who let you walk away into an almost certain - as certain as these things can be for yourself - almost certain death, without clarifying what is going on, what the brand on your hand means, what
must
happen for the good of all? It is a fine balance, keeping my connections. Sooner or later you have to make some sacrifices.”
It wasn’t just the way he said it.
We reached for the nearest knife.
“Bang,” said a voice. “Bang.”
It was a woman’s voice. It was accompanied by a woman’s hand. The hand went round my neck, fingers under my chin, pulling it back. The other hand was somewhere nearby. Probably at the other end of the gun pressed into my skull. We recognised the voice.
“Bang,” she said.
“Oda,” we whispered. “We wondered.”
That’s the problem with psycho religious nutcases. They’re never there when you need them. And when you could really do without, they decide to crash the party. Oda had never been a social animal.
Sinclair stood up, pulled the napkin from his throat and folded it up neatly in front of his plate. “I am honestly sorry about all this,” he intoned. “But while I trust you, Matthew, to come round eventually and do the right thing, or at the very least, the thing that needs to be done, there is no guarantee I can offer in heaven or earth that
they
won’t take the first option you happened to suggest, and just run. Fire and light and freedom and life, isn’t that how it goes? Terror and love of life, so big and so bright that you think you’ll drown in it? Too big and too bright to ever let go. I am sorry, Matthew, that for their sake this has to happen.”
I tried to turn my head; Oda’s fingers pinched into my throat, her arm pressed against my windpipe. She leant in close, so close her breath drifted over my eyes, and whispered again, “Bang.” I could just see the blackness of the gun out of the corner of my eye; you can’t outrun bullets. The other guests in the restaurant didn’t seem to be paying any attention, were bent over scrupulously studying their dishes, not looking up, the buzz of good-mannered chit-chat continuing in the gloom. A waiter came over, laid down the bill in a leather case by Sinclair’s plate.
“If you kill us,” we hissed, “what will happen then to the Midnight Mayor?”
“You pose an interesting and pertinent academic question,” exclaimed Sinclair. “One that, in truth, I have never really considered until now. No doubt the brand will move on to some other unfortunate, who will no doubt be as confused as you were to discover themselves so cursed. Or blessed, I suppose, depending on your point of view. Traditionally the Midnight Mayor could control these matters, command them before he died - but then, I don’t think you really know how, do you? You have no idea what it really
is
to be the Midnight Mayor, because as I believe you yourself have suggested, you don’t even believe he exists. Thankfully,” he exclaimed, flicking open the leather case with the bill and glancing down the list, “there are concerned citizens willing to consider this possibility in further analytical depth that I, alas, in my ignorance, cannot.”
He turned his head. I couldn’t see what he was looking at, who he was smiling at; there were just shadows, noise in the corner of my vision. But I could guess. Charlie was on his feet as well, reaching into his pocket for something, a slim black box from which came a slim silver needle attached to a very small glass tube.
We snarled, “Keep away!”
“Bang,” whispered Oda in our ear. “Bang three to the chest two the head. Bang, bang.”
“Oda,” I whimpered. “Please, Oda, this isn’t . . .”
She didn’t care. Or if she did, I couldn’t tell.
There was some sort of drug behind the needle.
It had my name on it.
Lights out. Goodnight and good luck with your next coagulation . . .
. . . sweet dreams my sweet . . .
End of the line . . .
Darkness.
Part 2: All Roads Lead to Kilburn
In which a pair of shoes gets to complete its journey, a plot is discovered and the death of cities gets dust on his suit.
Her name was Oda. I didn’t know her last name, and it was more than possible that she didn’t either. She believed in magic, the same way the Pope believed in Satan. Vera had always called her psycho-bitch. It wasn’t far wrong. I knew she killed magicians. I hadn’t thought she’d do it to me.
And the Lord said - let there be light.
And lo it came to pass that the nine-volt battery was invented, shoved into a torch, stuffed into the right hand of a woman and shone in our eyes.
We kicked out instinctively. Our foot hit the torch, sent it flying back, struck the hand that held it, knocked it to one side. It occurred to us that we had to be lying down, and lo, that also came to pass. We rolled to one side, tried to get up, found our eyes were full of water and our stomach full of grit, crawled onto our hands and knees and verily the Lord God smote us with the butt of a 9 mm pistol swung by a woman known mostly, of course, as psycho-bitch.
There was a lot less light.
There was a bit of time. There was some blood. Mine, I guessed. It seemed the norm.
I was aware of hands pulling at mine. I turned my head and saw somewhere on the other side of the equator my right hand, stretched out on a dirt floor popping with weeds. Someone was pulling off my glove, unwrapping the bandage. A lot of light was being shone on my hand. I twitched my fingers and a boot - big, black, with straps instead of laces, in case you hadn’t got the idea - pressed down on my wrist hard enough for us to cry out, turn away, losing sight of the scrabbling at my palm.
We felt the bandages peel away. We heard a voice, male, mutter, “Fuck shit.”
The pressure on my arm relaxed.
Faces crowded in to look closer at my hand. I recognised some of them. Earle, Kemsley, Anissina and, behind them, others, more men and women dressed in preacher’s black, peering in with a collection of torches and rifles, examining me and my damned hand. Oda. A face almost as dark as her close-cropped hair. She had the damn gun pointed at my face, not in an offensive way, but casually, as if it had just happened to flop there from the end of her trigger-pulling fingers. She looked at the brand on my hand and there was nothing there but contempt.
“You’re in trouble, sorcerer,” she said.
I tried to speak. My voice was trapped somewhere behind a great warty toad that had taken up residence at the entry to my lungs, inspecting each molecule of air one at a time on their way up and down.
Earle’s face appeared upside down over mine. I was lying on my back in dirt and weeds. I could taste . . . magic of a sort, but different. Distant, shut away. He said, “How did you get this?”
He meant our hand.
I licked my lips and croaked, “Nair.”
“Nair what?”
“He did it. He gave it to me.”
“No.”
“He did.”
“He would
never
have let you be Midnight Mayor. How did you get this?”
“The phone rang. I answered.”
“Tell me the truth!”
“I am.”
“He is.” Oda’s voice, calm and level.
Earle’s face flashed with anger. “You have nothing to do with this,” he spat. “You and your people are not involved.”
“I was invited here for a reason,” replied Oda calmly. “The Order was invited here for a reason. I know the sorcerer. He’s telling the truth.”
“What makes you sure?”
“I know him.”
“Is that it?”
“Yes. That’s it.”
“That’s
nothing
,” snapped Earle. “The Midnight Mayor is an Alderman, that’s how it’s done. It passes from one Alderman to another, has done for hundreds of years, never moves outside the circle. No one outside would understand what’s necessary, what is
needful
to be done. Nair would not have chosen this creature!”
A toe prodded the side of my head. It wasn’t meant to be a hard kick, not particularly, but it was my brain and it was a tough leather shoe and I wasn’t at my best. I could hear the thump of it roll like the sea in my ears, feel the soft tissue of my brain bounce nervously against the sides of my skull.
Kemsley said, “What happens if we kill him?”
I said, “End of the line.” We laughed, let it roll up the desert of our throat. “End of the line!” we cackled, “End of the line!”
“Get him up.”
Earle had authority. A pair of arms helped get me up. I slouched in them for all I was worth, making their lives hard, from spite mostly. Grass and trees, dead leaves and black twigs. We were in a park somewhere, a big park, couldn’t even hear the traffic. Trimmed hedges and neat rectangles of mud that might one day hold flowers. Smart, to take an urban sorcerer to a park. Things were harder here.
Earle’s face looked scalded, anger turning him livid pink. He prowled up and down in front of me; I didn’t bother to watch, but counted the beats of my heart, matching them to each turn he made.
“Sinclair thinks he’s telling the truth,” said Oda at last. “He’s good at being right.”
“What do you care?” snapped Kemsley.
“I am thinking of the sorcerer’s use,” she replied. “I have no love for his kind, and find this situation as ugly as you do. But let’s not deny how useful he can be.”
We raised our head, grinned at her, tasted blood on our lips. “She’s thinking about
it
,” we said. “She’s scared too - scared mortal, little scared human, seen a man turned to meat, seen a human reduced to raw flesh, so scared—”
Someone without a sense of humour kicked us behind our knees. We cried out and sank forwards. Our hand was aching and burning, the red crosses carved into our skin smarting in the cold air.
“These things,” hissed Kemsley, “can’t be allowed to desecrate the Mayor!”
“Which things?” we demanded. “Do you mean me? I am us and we are me, we are me and I am us.” Then we laughed, and turned our face back to Oda. “It’s all right to be scared,” we hissed. “The fox was scared, so why shouldn’t you be?”
“What’s he saying?” snapped Earle, to Oda, not to me.
She shook her head. “Not
him
,” she replied. “
Them
.”
“No,” I snapped. “Me. I think you’re scared too. You’re all scared. Because here’s what it boils down to - you kill me, someone else will become Midnight Mayor. Maybe one of you. And then what will you do? Go and find the thing that killed Nair? Go stand in front of it just like Nair did and have the skin carved away from your bones by a piece of paper? Go turn from walking human with a brand in the hand, to dead meat with no skin left on your bones? Isn’t that what you’re thinking?”