“It’s thirty quid,” he said, just a voice drifting in from the driver’s compartment.
“What?”
“Thirty quid,” he repeated.
“OK. Great. Thanks.”
I fumbled in my wallet for the money.
“And her gun.”
I glanced at Oda, whose lips pursed. I mouthed,
please
, and she reluctantly pulled a gun from a pocket, all black metal and power, and pushed it through the gap between passenger and driver compartments. As her fingers slid in, a hand moved in the front, locked down on her wrist and dragged her forward so sharp and hard I heard the seat belt lock around her chest and saw her face wrinkle in pain.
“Her hand,” said the driver. “You seen her hand?”
I realised he was talking to me. “Um . . . yes?” I hazarded.
“You seen the blood?”
I glanced instinctively at her fingers, grasped in his, stretched across the panel separating front from back. I couldn’t see any blood, not a shimmer of darkness on that deep chocolate skin, dry and thick.
“No?” I mumbled.
“Hey, now, I just drive cabs you know, but I gotta tell you, I’ve noticed, and it wasn’t like that a few years ago. Fucking government!”
“Um . . .”
“Immigrants! I mean, I’m no racist, some of my best friends are foreign, but no one can deny it’s a problem and now look at this.” He dragged her hand forward and Oda cried out as her chest strained against the seat belt, which seemed to refuse to budge. “Look at this! A disgrace!”
I couldn’t see his face, couldn’t see if he was smiling, joking. There was just a dark oval where features should have been. “Here’s your thirty quid,” I mumbled, leaning forwards against the line of my seat belt, forty pounds in hand. “Keep the change.”
“£30, her gun, her hands.”
“What?”
“
What?!
” Oda didn’t do shrill, but she was close.
“You see the blood?” asked the driver. “Look at it! Dead wizards, dead magicians, dead witches, dead warlocks, dead, dead, dead - and you know, none of my business, but the
smell
! It’s just been rotting down under the skin for like, you know, like years. Little brother and little sister and little sister and all dead and rotting and you know, sure, you know she buried them back home but they’re still rotting, can’t stop the air, you know? It’s like the fucking taxman, gets everywhere and you’d be surprised how long it takes the eyes to decay until they’re no longer staring, it’s the casing, you see, once the outer muscle’s gone then the jelly just sorta evaporates. Nah, trust me. Better this way.”
He pulled at her hand, so hard that Oda now cried out, face bunching in pain, dragging her forward against the tightness of her belt. “Wait!”
He meant it, he actually meant it, the silhouetted black oval shape of the driver: he was going to pull the hand from her arm, pop it out of the bones and just pull until the muscle tore and it was snapped away from her flesh, just like that.
“Wait!”
I tried to lean forward, but the belt held me back. I fumbled at the catch, but it wouldn’t open, wouldn’t unlock. I tried to duck my head beneath the diagonal strap, and it just tightened, so sudden and so hard I was pressed back against the seat barely able to breathe, choking and wheezing. Oda wasn’t a screamer, wasn’t a moaner, but every part of her shook with pain; I could see the skin around her wrist turning strange beige-white, hear every terrified breath.
“Wait!” I shouted. “For God’s sake, wait! Look at my hand before you take hers!”
The dragging stopped. The pressure on Oda’s arm seemed to relax for a second. The strain of the seat belt against my chest relaxed a little; in the tiny extra space it allowed, I gasped for breath.
“Let’s take a gander,” said the driver.
The belt let me lean forward just far enough. I got the glove off my right hand, slipped it through the narrow gap in the dividing glass, unfolded my fingers. The twin red crosses were still burnt on my skin, glaring in the gloom. I felt a pair of hands, metal-cold, steel-hard, take my palm and turn it this way and that, dragging me further towards the driver’s compartment. The belt was cutting into my throat, a dull knife against my windpipe.
This close, I could see more of the driver’s face.
Nothing to see.
The black, face-shaped, featureless thing that I had glimpsed from the back of the cab was, close to, the same. Empty, a pair of carved eyes around a carved nose and a pair of carved, slightly parted lips, drawn out of ebony darkness. Taxi drivers are among that great mass of people in the city who you go out of your way not to notice - just extensions of the machine. This one had taken it literally. His back melted into the chair he sat in, his feet were the pedals. His fingers clackered like the click on the fare indicator when he moved them over the palm of my hand, tracing with one metal fingertip the twin crosses.
“So,” he said finally, “you’re like, you know, Midnight Mayor, yeah?”
“I guess so.”
“What happened to the last guy?”
“Killed.”
“Shit. See? Didn’t I tell you? I mean the radio talks about it plenty but no one listens - times are getting hard. Fucking politicians. Corrupt, the whole lot. Need a clean sweep, if you ask me.”
The pressure around my hand released. I drew it back, rubbing at the fingermarks in my skin. Then Oda’s hand was released as well, and her gun handed back.
“Keep the thirty quid.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Midnight Mayor’s got an account. Direct debit. I’ll send the bill to the Aldermen. Receipt?”
“The Midnight Mayor has an
account
?”
“Yeah. Jeez, didn’t they fucking tell you?”
“I’m new.”
“You should get your act sorted, I mean, seriously! The perks, man, the perks of a cushy job like that - if I had the damn perks you think I’d ever walk anywhere? Hell no. Bureaucrat fat cats - hey, but all respect, like.”
Oda had undone her seat belt, so I undid mine. It snapped free in a perfectly ordinary, respectable way. A piece of paper was handed back to me. I took it carefully. It was a receipt. It said:
Thank you for using Black Cab Ltd. Your account will be billed at a later date. Have a pleasant onward journey.
And a serial number.
One problem at a time.
Keep moving. Don’t stop to think. Thinking only led to trouble. Keep moving. Your body is smarter than your mind. It gets hurt easier.
Oda and I unloaded Kemsley from the cab. There was no gentleness in what we did; there didn’t seem any point. Nothing we could do could possibly make it worse than it was. The taxi rumbled away behind us; Oda dragged Kemsley by the armpit. I hammered on the plywood door of the hospital, slashed at the padlock, which was smart enough to know when not to argue, unlocked the door, barrelled Oda and Kemsley inside.
“Hello?! We need help!”
Dead, dark corridors. Buddleia was growing out of the walls, water dripping down into stagnant, green-drifting pools, walls of faded drained colour, floors of broken forgotten trolleys and shattered old glass. I dragged neon out of my skin, tired, we were so tired now, wanted to sleep, hadn’t slept for too long; too many days, too many nights, it seemed longer than it was, too long; by the pinkish glow I managed to drag into my hands I spread light across the corridor, called out again, my voice inhumanly loud, “Help! We need help!”
A voice from the darkness said, “Well, don’t stand there fussing, come on!”
I dragged the light across the shadows cast from the shattered, badly boarded-up windows, to where a nurse stood, wearing an old-fashioned blue and white uniform, complete with peaked hat, hands folded neatly in front of her apron, watch hanging off its silver chain by her breast, a pair of sensible shoes turned slightly outwards, toes towards the distant walls. Her steel-grey eyes fell on Kemsley. She tutted. “Well,” she said, “hardly nothing, is it?”
Oda looked at me in surprise and unspoken question. We didn’t answer, but helped her drag Kemsley down the rotting hall, following the nurse to where a chipboard blue door had been pushed back into a room full of yellow foam. It had been dribbled along the cracks of the walls and floor, along even the ceiling, in an attempt to stop the cracks spreading, and keep out the wind; but it had expanded too much, and now the room looked like a great yellow fungus had come up from the bowels of the earth to colonise with sticky alien threads this friendly, dripping, rotting warm planet for itself.
There was a trolley in the middle of the room, all metal slat and thin white covering, and a single lamp. The lamp wasn’t connected to any power source, but hummed and glowed with white electricity despite itself. The nurse clapped importantly, and we lowered Kemsley onto the trolley. She waved us back, barking, “Are you friends or family?”
“Neither.”
“Then you cannot remain for the procedure!”
“But we . . .”
“How was this done?” she asked, examining the shattered skin.
“By a creature who bleeds paper and calls himself the death of cities,” I replied with a sigh.
“Have you given him anything?”
“No.”
“Not for the pain?”
“We didn’t have anything.”
“Does he have any allergies?”
“I don’t know.”
“Disabilities, is he diabetic, asthmatic, cursed, bane-spawn, epileptic, any long-term medical conditions?”
“None that I know of.”
“He’s an Alderman, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Very well. Kindly call the office of the Aldermen and request full medical information is sent here as soon as possible.”
“Can you do anything for him?”
“I can always do something, but that may simply be the relieving of pain. This is not a place for miracles! This is merely an A and E ward that happens to have a subspeciality in magical injuries! That does not mean we can perform magic beyond the laws of nature!”
“Is he going to die?”
“Everyone is going to die,” she replied. “And when, is a question no one, not even the NHS, can predict with any accuracy. Now if you will excuse me, I have work to do and you are not going to be able to assist me. Shoo!”
In the corridor, Oda turned her gaze upwards and murmured, “What kind of place is this?”
“It’s what it says on the cover,” I said. “An A and E ward that happens to have an unusual speciality.”
“And is there a fee here?”
“It’s NHS.”
She shrugged, waiting for my meaning.
“Free.”
“The NHS runs a unit specialising in magical injuries?” It was a question that maybe wanted desperately to be a shout.
“Yes.”
“Taxpayers’ money is going to . . .”
“Magicians pay tax.”
“You don’t.”
“I did. I know the thrill of a rebate and all. And look on the bright side - the Order kills so many magicians so efficiently so much of the time that we are rarely a burden on the NHS in our old age. That, or we feast on newborn babe’s blood by moonlight and thus spare ourselves the indignity of the nursing home.”
Her face darkened. “In the taxi . . .”
“Let’s not talk about it.”
“What he said . . .”
“Is true. We’ll only fight if we have this conversation. You want to keep me useful, I want to keep you useful. We don’t want to get hung up on the details. Let’s not talk about it.”
She shrugged. “OK.”
We were silent a while. Then, “What now?”
“I guess we should do what the nice lady said.”
“The nice . . .”
“The nurse. Let’s talk to the Aldermen.”
Just a thought.
Anissina?
Dead meat in assault gear.
Smog and biting cables dragged from the floor.
Anissina?
Just a thought.
Too much thinking is trouble.
Someone had to call Earle.
It was always going to be me.
“H-H-Harlun and Phelps.”
The boy with the stutter was on duty on Earle’s number, even in the little hours of the morning.
“It’s Matthew Swift. You might remember me. I want to talk to Earle.”
“M-M-Mister Earle is a-asleep.”
“Does he sleep in the office?”
“I’m his p-personal assistant.”
“You should get another job.”
“C-can I . . .”
“Tell Mr Earle that Kemsley is in hospital, probably going to die; that Anissina might be dead already, along with a number of your pet mercenaries; and that the death of cities is in London and wearing a pinstripe suit, please. He’ll know how to contact me.”
He did.
He contacted me in under two minutes, and didn’t sound like a man who’d been asleep.
“Swift? What in God’s name is going on?”
“Nothing in God’s name, unless you want to discuss theology with Oda. But enough to go around for the rest of us.”
“What is this about Kemsley? And Anissina?”
“He’s dying, Mr Earle. His skin has been peeled from his flesh - most of it, from what I can see. Anissina is . . . I don’t know where. She isn’t answering her phone. She vanished into smog and that’s the last I saw of her. We were attacked by a Mr Pinner. He bleeds paper, bullets won’t stop him, magic won’t stop him, his suit is sewn into his flesh. And . . . no, no I think that’s about it. I don’t want to rush to conclusion, but I think we’re buggered. Oh, and the nurse wants to know Kemsley’s medical history.”
“What nurse?”
“We’re at Elizabeth Anderson Hospital.”
“Have you been followed? Is this Mr Pinner there?”
“We took the Black Cab.”
“I wish you hadn’t. The bill will be . . .”
“We were being flayed alive by a man with a smug smile, Mr Earle. I’m sure you don’t want to go through the trouble of having to find another Midnight Mayor so soon after the previous incumbent died that particular death.”