The Minority Council (35 page)

“I dunno. Not many guys with guns, are there? Not many braying bloodhounds, not much in the way of sheet plastic on the floor or a big dollar sign above the door.” I hesitated, glancing around the quiet interior of the house. Our mouth was dry, eyes itched. Templeman was looking at me closely, rigid at the knowledge of this too-still, too-empty place where the dust had come crawling out of the walls. “Thanks for pulling me out,” I said.

He nodded in acknowledgment of the deed, but his eyes were elsewhere, running over the cracks and torn wallpaper, listening for something that shouldn’t be. We opened the front door, and the world outside was too bright and too natural, possessed of too much normality to be true. I fumbled in my pocket for the painkillers, swallowed two of them dry. The ache in our head made it difficult to think, the fire in our chest, hard to breathe. I leant on the side of Templeman’s car and closed my eyes against the light. Templeman was there, always right beside me but never too close.

“Are you all right?” he asked, in the concerned voice of a man who knew the answer.

“The Beggar King said they were experimenting on his people. Tramps, junkies, runaways, the lost. Dragging them off the street, locking them up, feeding them on dust, dust to dust. Three days ago I didn’t know a bloody thing about fairy dust and now look at this!” I gestured behind me at the silent house, reluctant to look. “What a bloody mess. What is the bloody point of being bloody Midnight Mayor if I can’t even stop this?”

“You’re stopping it now,” he said. “You can’t save everyone and everything.”

“What time is it?”

“Just after lunch. Why?”

“Bed rest,” I groaned. “It’s going to be a busy night.”

He gave me a lift to a hotel.

Our silence held as far south as Turnpike Lane. Then we said, “Do you know why we are part of this? This… thing we’ve just seen… and the dusthouses?”

Templeman shook his head, not taking his eyes from the road.

I didn’t realise I was speaking until after the sounds had entered my ears. “There was a woman. Her name was Meera. We met on a boat and she performed a spell that should not have been performed, a magic that even we, though we do not fear these things, would have called forbidden. Forbidden in that it could not have been, forbidden in that it should not have been, forbidden in that it can unleash things that cannot be contained, consequences whose causes are forever unreachable. And she did it… because it was beautiful. And because it was splendid and
it was bright, and because when she wove that spell, she was part of the city, a buried deep part of that city, roots in time as well as place. Glorious. Bright and brilliant and glorious.

“And when it was done, she said, ‘Come with me,’ and we did. There was no reason why; and there was no reason against. For the first time in… in we could not say how long… there was only action without cause, wishing without consequence, no cries of men or deeds of monsters to force our hand either way but merely us, and her, and the chance to choose. We imagine you would call it pure. In the time we have lived this life, been in this world, we have never encountered purity. Do not think we have built her up to be more than she is. She was a witch, and an addict, and her magics were dangerous, and thoughtless, and beautiful, and mad. But she made us feel… human. And nothing else has.”

We slowed for a set of traffic lights, behind a bus driver contending with a taxi cab where two lanes became one, a cyclist trying to edge by. Templeman said, “The fairy godmother would argue that she also chose. She chose to take the dust.”

“Yes,” we said. “We know.”

“Then…”

“Vengeance is human. When one you care for dies, vengeance is what humans do. It is the human thing that must be done; it is what makes the difference between humans and everything else. It cannot be defended before the wise, it cannot be explained in a court of law, it will not stand before the theologians who believe in judgement day, but it is very human. We want to be human. What you want from the Midnight Mayor, what you think
should be done, what needs to be and ought to be and should be… sometimes it’s good to remember that we are…
I
am human.

“Anyway,” I sighed, too loud, “that’s me. That’s why I’m here. What have you got against the dusthouses?”

Templeman hesitated, then the corner of his mouth curled into what might have been an animal smile. “Vengeance,” he said. “Just like you.”

“Is it something I’ll find in your file, when I eventually get round to reading it?”

“No.”

“Is it something that’s going to get in the way?”

“No. At least,” the smile softened, widened, “no more than it does for you.”

“Okay then.”

The road was widening in the traffic-crawl up to Manor House, a crossroads almost American in the width of traffic fighting through its lights, where red was a five-minute experience and green happened in the blink of an eye. Shifting uncomfortably in my seat, I said, “About the experiments. In that bloody house. What do you make of it?”

“If the motives for the experiments were not financial, then that leaves only so many options.” His voice was matter-of-fact, at the end of a worthwhile and simple thought train. “Do you really have no idea who was behind it, if not the fairy godmother?”

“No.”

“The Beggar King has eyes everywhere,” he pointed out.

“They were busy.”

“But if he knows about the house…”

“An escapee.”

“Ah,” he breathed. “I see. And where is this escapee now?”

“Dead.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that.”

“Please,” I groaned. “Like you didn’t taste the death dribbling out of every inch of that bloody house.”

“Did she say anything?” he asked as we turned off the bottom of Green Lanes, heading for the centre of the city. “There must have been something.”

“Nothing concrete. A place, a warning, and a bad death.”

A thought scratched at the painkillers smothering my brain, fingernails over a blackboard. When I tried to pin it down, it danced away, like a fly escaping a spider. I rubbed at my eyes, and felt uneasily at the back of my head, where kicks and bricks had been doing their merry best to knock out my brains. I asked, “Do Aldermen spend much time getting the crap kicked out of them? I mean, when you sign on, is there a training course or anything? Two days’ magic, two days’ manipulation, and a week and a half of getting kicked to shit?”

“There is an induction week,” Templeman said.

“There’s an induction week?”

“Yes. Junior Aldermen are assigned to more senior members of the establishment, introduced to useful contacts, taken out on a few duties. Naturally the basics—spellcraft, enchantment, observation, combat magics and communication skills—are all assessed pre-admission.”

“Evening classes?” I asked.

“Only in advanced weapons skills.”

“Funny.”

“Is it?” he asked blithely. “I suppose it must be.”

The thought was back, annoying, a thing just out of
reach, an impulse I couldn’t name or satisfy. I tried to grab at it but Templeman was saying,

“… specific I can find?”

“Hum?”

“The culicidae,” he repeated. “I assume you have a plan?”

“Oh, that. Yes, I’ve got a plan. I mean, it’s no blitzkrieg, but yes. There’s a plan.” I grinned. “And you’re going to hate it.”

I told him.

He hated it.

I said, you got something better, jimbo?

He was silent.

No one did silences like Templeman; they were the place between the notes of fine music, the pause before the crack of drums, the lightning that preceded the thunder. They were beautiful, tuned and elegant, and when it was done all he said was, no. No, he didn’t have anything better.

Fantastic, I said. Now get on that little phone of yours, and find me a nice big bit of railway line and some willing volunteers. And make sure that the volunteers are Minority Council, thank you.

He agreed.

Not happily, but we weren’t looking for inspirational. Not today.

There was time to kill between then and now.

There was a hotel.

This one was part of a chain, tucked in behind the wharves and converted jetties of Rotherhithe, at the place where fashionable river living met unfashionable urban life. I showered while Templeman sat on the end of the
bed, making calls. I tried the water very hot, then very cold, then regretted the cold and went back to very hot. Somehow my ribcage had come out the colour of rotting aubergine. As injuries went, it had two disadvantages: it was painful enough to inhibit action, but discreet enough to limit sympathy.

The extractor fan in the bathroom had been working overtime and still couldn’t clear the steam. I wiped away condensation from the mirror above the washbasin and looked at my bright blue eyes, which had once been brown, and realised.

It hit like an ice cube lodging in our throat.

There it was.

The thing that was wrong.

So tiny as to barely make a mark, but itching like a mosquito bite. A hum just on the edge of hearing.

I stood for a while, unable to think, then sat on the edge of the toilet with my hands between my knees and tried to construct patterns of thought from the gabble in my mind.

Templeman knocked on the bathroom door. “Mr Mayor? Are you all right?”

It took two attempts to answer. “Yes,” I stammered. And added, “Fine.”

“I’m going downstairs for a second, to check a few emails.”

I listened for the sound of the door slamming, then came cautiously out, checking round the room shadow by shadow, looking for anything, listening for anything out of the ordinary. My satchel was on the end of the bed; I opened it up, reached instinctively for my mobile phone, hesitated.

Be still and think.

Be still.

I sat on the edge of the bed, turning the phone over and over between my fingers.

Perhaps nothing.

Perhaps everything.

No easy way to be sure.

I pulled my clothes back on, socks and shoes, and was struggling one aching arm at a time into my coat, when my phone rang.

I jumped, not knowing why.

I didn’t recognise the number, and let it ring for almost half a minute, wondering whether to answer.

We did.

A voice on the other end said, “Hello, Mr Mayor. My name is Oscar Kramb. Some people call me the fairy godmother. I heard that this would be a good time to call; am I bothering you?”

Fairy godmother.

Not exactly the sugar plum fairy, not about to take Cinders to the ball.

A voice with the hint of a northern accent reduced through years of snobby voice training, sliding over its words like oil across a crystal pool.

Magic gone mobster.

I heard myself say, more defiant than I’d meant, “Really? Heard it was a good time from where?”

A creamy chuckle. “Naturally, Mr Mayor, I have friends; but don’t worry, I’m not phoning you to let you know that your life is about to end, though obviously that was my first instinct. You are, for the moment, safe.”

“I suppose your friends gave you this number?”

“I really couldn’t say.”

“Hold that thought,” I said, and hung up.

I thumbed off the phone, pulled the battery from the back and the sim card from behind that, and put the various components in separate pockets. Then, moving with deliberate slowness, I finished struggling into my clothes, slung my bag over my back and headed for the nearest exit.

Look, and be still. Unobtrusive and quick. Any pain was briefly forgotten.

Down the stairs, past the kitchens, out of the back door, into the street. Eyes open for pursuers, the aroma of curry clinging to my clothes like an old friend. Two things we believed: firstly, that if the fairy godmother knew our location, we would not be walking free, but secondly, that even the most medieval-minded of magicians could track a man through his mobile phone.

And there it was again, that cold certainty, the sickness in our stomach that out-annoyed the burning pain in our chest. Kramb had even said as much: you didn’t randomly collect the mobile number of the Midnight Mayor, you didn’t just happen to catch him on a tea break. Had we made a mistake, talking so soon to the Minority Council? Had we blown open too wide a hole in our defences?

Walk, and be still.

Thoughts fell into the straight lines of the paving stones.

Get help.

We looked for the places where the beggars would go, unwatched ATMs and local churches, anywhere cash or kindness might be in supply. Rotherhithe was not necessarily a corner of town where you’d expect beggars, but once you started to look, sooner or later you would find.

So long as it was sooner.

And there she was, a girl maybe twenty-five, going on fifty, with faded tangled hair and a big green waxy coat, huddled between an ATM and a greasy chicken shop, a torn coffee cup at her feet and a long-tongued mongrel keeping lookout by her side. I scuttled straight towards her and she cringed, not knowing what to make of this. At her fear, we held out our hands, placating, stopped a few paces away and sought frantically in our pocket for any money, paper or coin, didn’t matter, no time for it to matter. I still had most of Templeman’s three hundred pounds; we put twenty into her cup and, as she mumbled ‘thanks,’ squatted down in front of her. “Domine dirige nos,” I breathed. “Domine dirige nos, you understand? I need to see the King. Help me?”