The Minority Council (3 page)

They are the first kind of Alderman.

The second kind of Alderman picks up the reins after a suitable dinner break, and works between 6 p.m. and 5 a.m. These are the Aldermen who track down rogue nightmares and put them back to sleep; the kind who watch the old boundaries of the city walls for monsters
that may come knocking in the night; who seal up the gates that should not have been opened, and hardly ever, if at all, hold parties with nibbles on sticks. In theory they serve the Midnight Mayor, soldiers in his army; reality having met theory, however, it clearly decided that theory didn’t have the horsepower to move in these kinds of circles and told it to get back to the car park. They were magical, they were dangerous, a lot of them were dabblers in high finance, and if all of this wasn’t enough, they liked to wear black and talk in short sentences to let you know just how mean they were. They were the banes of my life and it was of only some small satisfaction to think that we were, in our own quaint way, the bane of theirs.

And there on the staircase one stood in front of me.

Born a few inches shorter than me, she’d more than made up for it with a pair of knee-high black boots complete with heels that should have been internationally outlawed for crimes against flooring. Her Alderman’s black jacket was buttoned up tight round her neck and pinched closed around the wrists; her shape inside it was only mildly distorted by the weight of concealed weaponry. Her hair was auburn, cut to a bob; her nose was button and her chin was sharp; her ears too small and her eyes a little too large; she looked like a woman for whom good breeding had reached its logical conclusion and then run a bit too far. In one hand she had a black briefcase with a black lock, in the other she held a half-eaten tuna sandwich.

“Mr Mayor!”

She was smiling, a sound of triumph in her voice at having found me. Doubt and suspicion bloomed in the murky corners of my mind. “Uh… yes?”

The tuna sandwich waved in the air, shedding pieces of lettuce. “I’m so glad to have bumped into you; I just happened to be passing this way and when I saw you I thought, ‘What a perfect opportunity’!”

I looked round at our surroundings. Service corridors in big financial institutions were not meant to be seen or understood by anyone earning more than a minimum wage. This one’s only feature was a single fire extinguisher. “You just happened to be passing?” I echoed, moving towards the goods lift in the hope that her boots would prevent her keeping up.

Hope faded as with a snick-snack of pointed heels she easily matched my pace. “Yes! Isn’t it fascinating down here? I often come down to say hello to the gentlemen who work security, or just to explore. Of course office blocks are all supposed to look the same these days but you know, if you’re just willing to open a few doors you’ll find that there’s a whole microcosm waiting to be found.”

“Will you?”

“Oh yes!” she exclaimed, my meek not-quite sarcasm rolling right off her. “And fancy meeting you here, Mr Mayor, such good luck. Now I’ve got a few forms…” The next words vanished into a wodge of tuna as she stuffed the sandwich in her mouth and with her freed-up hand attempted to open the briefcase. I jabbed forlornly at the lift’s call button and watched the indicator above flash its way down from the sixteenth floor.

With the sandwich back in her hand and the briefcase on the floor, she flourished a bundle of documents stapled together on thin green paper. “Now has Ms Somchit talked to you about the liability insurance? We’re covering everything from reasonable property damage through
to unavoidable contamination with vampiric substances or lupine contagions…”

Some bastard had stopped the lift at the ninth floor and seemed to be holding it there.

“… and until you get it we cannot guarantee any extra medical costs or more than a budget funeral should you find yourself injured in the line of duty…”

“I’m sorry, but…”

“Then there are the diary requests. Would you be free next Thursday to address the Worshipful Company of Magi, Maguses and Mages at their annual fundraising dinner on the subject of thaumaturgy in the modern age? I believe they do an excellent meal—three courses, canapés, string quartet, wine—shall I say yes?”

“What? Yes. No! Wait, no! Um…”

“We’ve had a request from a coven in Thamesmead regarding a blockage in the sewage system. Apparently someone’s been dumping their waste straight into the system and now they can’t get any peace for the cockatrice matriarchs hunting at night…”

“I’m sorry, who are…?” I tried again.

“… and we just need your final go-ahead on the payment to the enchanters to reactivate the deep wards in the building, against any further magical invasion…”

The lift went bing, and the doors swished open just as I said, “Who the hell are…?”

There were five waiters in the lift. They had white sleeves, black waistcoats, white aprons and polished black shoes. They stood round a trolley slung over with a white cloth, on which rested a single plastic bottle. Inside the bottle was a thick yellow-red mixture, bubbles rising furiously to the top. Every face was serious as they hurried
past us, muttering earnestly to each other. I slipped into the lift, hoping the woman would be too busy watching their retreating backs to have noticed, but then a voice said, “Are we going to the twentieth floor, Mr Mayor?” and there she was, already pressing the button.

The doors slid shut with a finalistic ping.

We started to rise.

“Look,” I said, “I don’t mean to seem rude, it just happens that way, but who the hell are you?”

She gave a little “Oh!” of surprise and dismay, and in a flurry tucked the papers under one arm and the briefcase between her knees, and wiped her right hand on her jacket before holding it out.

“I’m Kelly!” she explained, and waited for me to understand.

I raised my eyebrows.

“Kelly Shiring?” she added, with an uncertain hope in her voice. “Your new PA?”

The sun was setting over London.

The previous Midnight Mayor had had an office on the highest floor of the building. Before being torn to pieces and, in the moment of his demise, taking the monumentally stupid decision to lumber me with the job of being his successor, A. Nair Esq. had sat behind a great long desk topped with leather, in a great long room whose windows looked over great stretches of London to the south and west, across the silver River Thames, through the summits of Centre Point and the BT Tower, past the four chimneys of Battersea power station and the red-white blip of Crystal Palace, to the greyness where the green belt began and the city toyed with maybe ending. At this desk, from three in the afternoon until six in the morning—
for Nair was nothing if not serious about his job—he would be brought salads and thick drinks of semi-congealed vegetables and tortured vitamins, along with files on witches and wizards stepping out of line, news of phone calls that he might one day feel like taking, and the morning newspapers still warm from the press. All these would be laid in their appointed place, behind the pot for the black biros, which stood no more than half an inch away, and at a ninety-degree angle, from the pot for the blue biros, which was itself lined up at a right angle above the single, treasured, red pen for writing words that merited being in red. (Beware.)

As Nair’s successor, I was offered a range of equally god-like premises for the conducting of my mystic affairs, and at long last chose a small office tucked away between the photocopy room and the canteen. I had no interest in the photocopy room, but we liked the idea of never being more than ten yards from a fridge and a cup of coffee. Twenty-four hours after choosing this office, I arrived to find my presence announced by a nameplate on the door. Some two minutes and thirty seconds later, this plate was gone and I was finding a place to hide the screwdriver. Twenty-nine hours later it was back; eighty seconds after that it was gone, my skill with the screwdriver having improved. The message was eventually received, and after a while it was generally understood that my office served merely as an open-plan recycling unit where things were thrown which might come in handy but were unlikely to be read any time soon. A schedule replete with committee meetings, forums, management discussions and policy events was quickly trimmed down to the barest minimum of time spent in the building. Only one Alderman had been able to win from me anything
bordering on management synthesis, but she had met her end in a tower block in Sidcup. And I had stood, and watched, and failed, and she had died for my mistakes. Since then, no one had tried to raise the question of my attendance record at senior management meetings.

The floor inside my door was covered with paper. In an electronic age, a forest had died for me to walk upon it. I stepped over requisition orders for summoning rituals, overtime forms for a project team of scryers seeking out a rogue necromancer somewhere out in Northolt, and pie charts dissecting various abuses of magic over the last twelve months—illusions, curses, enchantments, invocations and abjurations against persons or private property that were considered, by the Aldermen, to be a greater threat against the well-being of the city as a whole. Only a greater threat, mind. The Aldermen were tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime, but didn’t give a damn about the criminal or the victim. Who had the time?

The window looked north, across a city of shadows in the setting sun. Low clouds formed a dark patchwork on a fiery sky of crimson and gold. In five minutes they would fade to cobalt blue, then bluish-grey, then the stained orange-black of an urban night. I couldn’t see the centre of the sunset itself, but its reflection blazed from the windows of the Barbican’s three towers, and made the pinnacles of St Pancras darken the streets below. Lights were coming on across the city, catching behind them the shapes of people still at work, framed like living images.

I played stepping stones until I got to my chair, and looked down at it. Anything absolutely, supremely important was usually left there; tonight someone had pinned a note to the chair back, written in large black letters:

THE BEGGAR KING WANTS TO TALK

It hadn’t been signed, and where the Beggar King was concerned, it didn’t need to be. Certain forces there are in every city which you learn, fairly early on, not to muck around with.

Another note caught my eye. A yellow Post-it, noticeable only for its smallness, was stuck on the corner of my desk. Someone had written, freehand with a blue fountain pen:

You can’t save those who don’t want to be saved.

I considered this, then scrunched it up and threw it in the bin on my way out.

Getting out of the building without being accosted was always hard. Word had usually spread and today when I closed the door behind me there was a small crowd of men and women in matching black coats and matching black expressions. The default expression for an Alderman in my presence was unimpressed, and this group was not breaking new ground. There were seven of them and, to deal with their collective lack of initiative or willpower, they had appointed a leader. He stepped forward, a man of about twenty-eight going on twelve, with caramel hair combed into a ridge above his forehead and locked in place with a wall of grease. He looked at me, and his silence suggested I should understand from that glance all the fine details of what currently annoyed them.

I said, “Hi,” and tried making my way back towards the elevator.

They moved together, and he dropped into step beside me like an angry mother marching a child away from after-school detention.

“Mr Mayor…”

“You’re Bryce, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Mr Mayor.”

“You’re a stockbroker, by day, right?”

“That’s correct, Mr Mayor.”

“And you’re here to tell me to leave off, have I got it?”

A wittier man might have smiled. He was not witty. “Mr Mayor, if I may say, your pursuit of Burns and Stoke is becoming detrimental.”

“Nope.”

“If you will hear me out…”

“Nope.”

The syllable bounced off him like a paper aeroplane off ebony. “Mr Mayor,” he explained, all soothing tone and restrained gesture, “Burns and Stoke’s quarterly pre-tax profit has increased and they have been very earnest in their development of community outreach on the wave of this…”

“Burns and Stoke,” I replied, “are a money-making machine abusing magic to achieve their success, and while I’m the first guy who’d say ‘Well, what the hell’s the point of knowing a few spells if you don’t use them occasionally?’ what Burns and Stoke do is not a little light dabbling in enchantment. It’s not hiring an affable seer to make a decent stab at the projected loss on the gold market in the next three days, it’s not getting a scryer to have a peek into the nickel mines of Kazakhstan just to make sure the investment is ticking over nicely, it’s not getting a corner witch to dress your CEO up in a pretty glamour when they shake hands with their business partners from Tokyo. I could overlook all that, all that would be completely fine.

“What Burns and Stoke are doing, Mr Bryce, is using
power to beget more power and beget more power and what do they do with that power? Knock me down with a feather but they go and beget yet more power until suddenly I’ve got tectonic plates rupturing in Eastcheap, flooding in Hampstead and a lawyer standing in my office with a pair of vampire fangs dripping virginal blood and an expression on his face of ‘wasn’t me, guv’nor.’ ”