by Kate Griffin
“You killed Robert James Bakker. Your teacher, your mentor, your—”
“Robert Bakker was the fuel that kept a walking shadow feeding on blood and death for two years! Robert Bakker was the man whose shadow ripped out my fucking throat and killed my apprentice, who . . .”
“You’re not human, Matthew Swift. To be blunt about it. You’re not human.”
We stood up slowly. “We are human,” we replied. “We have all the apparatus of humanity and more. We were made by humans. You mortals pour your thoughts, feelings, stories, knowledge, everything you have, you pour it into the phone lines and sooner or later, it had to live. We are everything that you are and more. We did not kill your Midnight Mayor.”
Silence again. Then Mr Kemsley said, “I don’t believe a word of it.”
Mr Earle said nothing. Lips the colour of old slushed snow pursed beneath a pencil-sharpener nose.
Vera said, moving towards me calmly, “If the old Mayor is dead, who’s the new Mayor? Is it done by appointment or what?”
No one felt inclined to answer.
We put our head on one side and looked at Mr Earle. His fingers twitched at his side. “No,” he said finally. “Either way, it’s not going to work.”
It’s not very easy to kill a sorcerer with magic, since nine times out of ten the sorcerer in question will be so hyped up on the stuff that they won’t even notice you’re trying. It’s very easy to kill a sorcerer with bullets. We die like everyone else — most of the time.
I knew this. I’d been reminded the second Ms Anissina’s hand went into her coat pocket. Which is why I pushed my bandaged hand up to the ceiling and curled my fingers around the lights, snuffing them out of existence before she had a chance to fire.
The good news was that Ms Anissina was, at the end of the day, an Alderman, trained in use of magic, not firearms. She fired anyway: blinding whiteness in a room of adjusting eyes. I heard something go, very quietly, ah. It wasn’t me. It was a sound somewhere between surprise and being stung by a nettle. Then Mr Kemsley’s hands were at my throat, and his fingers, once he bothered to stretch them, weren’t just mortal flesh; they sprouted aluminium, unfolded metal armour from between the tiny curved lines of his fingerprints, sharp and cold and harsh and unremitting, and above all else, conductive.
I fell back beneath his weight, letting him push me, throwing him off balance, overborne by his own momentum, and as I fell, reached out towards the nearest socket and grabbed for its power. Electric fire snaked through the air to my fingertips, obedient to command, and with a fistful of lightning I slammed my fist into the side of his head, hurling him across my body and over towards the opposite wall.
The light of the electricity gave Ms Anissina a glimmer to see by; she was the black shadow raising the gun. So I hurled the stolen brightness of the snuffed lights at her face, a blinding sphere the size of a football containing the illumination of the whole room in a bundle. She turned her head away, covering her eyes, and the gun fired again, flashing a starlight explosion from the end of the barrel and poking a hole in the ceiling.
I crawled back onto my feet, scooped up my bag from the floor and fumbled in the darkness round the back of the sofa. As my eyes began to adjust to the yellow light from the streetlamps and the blue glow of the electricity spun around my fist, a claw closed round the back of my neck. Five fingers had sprouted five painted black metal claws; skin had turned silver and weakness had turned to a vicelike strength that threatened to pop my spine out from beneath my skin. No one should have that kind of strength, but Mr Earle wasn’t just anyone. He pulled my head back so I could see the ceiling, and my back arched and bent to follow. In the light of the streetlamps and spitting electric flame I could see his face, and as I watched, the silverish metal covering of his skin was spreading even there, covering his lips, eyelids, spilling into his ears. His tongue flickered between his lips, and it was a thin red rolling fork; his breath was so hot it rippled the air and sucked moisture from my eyes, his eyes were bulbous, fishlike, burning white fire inside, and as he bent my head back even further, so far I thought it would break, I saw that the little pin on his lapel, the red cross of the Corporation of London, was glowing. Interesting, that. Very rarely do items of personal fashion glow, even under magical circumstances, unless they have something to do with events more than just bad taste.
Then Mr Earle raised his other hand, and it was a claw, and the curved tips of his spiked fingers were looking for the sockets of my eyes. I tried to reach up with electric fingertips, but his grip was so strong and so low that I nearly overbalanced and fell with the action. His lips rippled; not just human emotion, but an animal rippling.
Then Vera said, “Ah, shit.”
He looked round.
I did my best to look, and saw, in the very corner of my eye, Vera, standing with kettle in hand, an irritated expression on her face and blood running out of a neat, bullet-sized hole in her chest. Then she smiled.
Not blood.
Paint.
And her skin was shining a bit too brightly, a reflective, acrylic glow, and her hair was dribbling down her back, melting and running down her face like eyeliner in the rain, and her face was melting, draining pale pinkness into her clothes, which wobbled and bubbled and fused into each other, and when she smiled, liquid white plastic sloshed over her running lips. Mr Earle and I stared at this shrivelling liquid thing in silence, both too surprised to say or do anything. Then Vera raised the kettle, little finger dropping off in a thick splat of pink as she did, and with what was left of her melting hand, swung it firmly into the side of Mr Earle’s face.
He crumpled without a sound, and I fell on top of him, balance completely gone. In a moment I had scrambled free again. But he had merely fallen, nothing more, and as I staggered up, a fist curled round my foot and a pair of burning eyes looked up into my own. Thin red blood was trickling over the silver skin of his face. Acting on instinct, good education and pure adrenalin, I bent down and grabbed the glowing badge pinned to the front of his jacket. It was cool to the touch. He grinned as my fingers closed over it, revealing that forked little tongue, and white teeth grown to little fangs, and for a moment I doubted my own logic. But then his grin turned to something else, darker and more afraid, as I tore badge, lapel and silk away from his chest in a crackling heave, sparks flickering off my skin as my concentration lapsed and electricity stolen from the mains earthed itself around me.
The silver on his face immediately began to retreat, melting into his skin as fast as it had grown, and the blood, that had been a trickle, started to gush thick, gloopy rivulets into his hair. To my left, Vera was nothing more than a melted snowman of spreading paint, a sad lump of expanding coloured liquid pooling on the floor. I dragged my foot free of Earle’s suddenly weakened grip and ran for the door. The lollipop lady painted on the inside had her back turned to me, one hand held up towards an invisible truck on the other side. I pulled the door open without thinking about it, ran out into the corridor, slipping Earle’s now dull badge into my pocket, and walked into the fist of the fourth Alderman, the one who I’d seen waiting by the car. It wasn’t a particularly hard punch, and he wasn’t sure what to do with it after it had landed, but it sent us staggering back against the wall and automatically we threw our hands up, snarling our anger and unleashing a blast of electricity, dragging it out from the walls and the ceiling to slam firmly into the Alderman’s chest. The shock picked him off his feet and slammed him back against the banister, which hissed and crackled as electricity earthed down the metal railings.
Then I was running again, tripping on the stairs and fumbling in the half-dark for support and guidance. The front door was open, the black cars of the Aldermen humming outside. I looked for a back way out, couldn’t find one, and hammered on the door of a ground-floor flat until a serious-looking gentleman with an important beard and a tartan dressing gown opened it. “Can I . . .” he began.
I kicked the door open before he could fin
ish the sentence, marched straight into the flat, down a corridor lined with pictures of dead fish and serious ancestors, sometimes in the same frame, found a kitchen, the window too small and blocked by an extractor fan, then a bedroom, in which a woman wearing far too little lace, designed for someone twenty years younger and five stone lighter, started screaming. It was none of my business. There was a window at the back of the bedroom; I opened it. It looked out onto a small cobbled mews, full of recycling bins, dumpsters and impossibly angled parking spaces. I crawled out of the window and pulled it shut behind me. The woman just kept on screaming, as if I had the energy or the interest.
There was only one way out of the mews, into a street of expensive cars and not enough space to keep them in. No sign of the Aldermen, no sound of sirens. I ran to the end of the street, where I came to a network of zebra crossings and traffic lights, over which black taxis and delivery trucks swooshed in busy indifference. Here I slowed, skulking along the gloomy edge of a private garden square, and, sticking to the shadows at first, started to walk. A walking man never causes as much interest as a running man, and can sometimes get places faster. My head hurt, pounding from the inside out, against my skull. I walked with the confident, businesslike lollop of your good Londoner. Even if you’ve no idea where you’re going, you have to look like you do. It’s what keeps the locals different from the strangers.
I was in Bayswater. A tiny place in a big city, all things considered, but with its own unique character compressed between broad streets. If you didn’t look too hard, it was an upper-class part of town, all grand houses in white terraces. Pay a little more attention, and the wandering eye would notice the broken window against the tatty tea-stained cloth hung up for a curtain; a dozen doorbells on a single house; the council flat housing an old lady, wedged between the restored mansions with their knocked-through basement. There’s no place in London that’s ever just one thing. I passed graffiti in a dozen languages; alongside the long flowing curves of Arabic script, all kinds of names and doodles.
RIDAMMI IL CAPPELLO
Or:
SUPPORT THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
Or:
SuPasTARz
And other slogans and messages, meaningless except for the one person who knew already what the meaning was. There was something that made us uneasy about the secret scratched paintwork sprawled across the bare walls, or slapped onto the side of postboxes. Wizards had long known the value of leaving their marks in their regular haunts, back from when the first druid thought it might be interesting to carve a star into the bark of a tree and see if it started to burn. I thought about Mr Earle. Aldermen only ever came out for the big things.
The seeming dignity of Bayswater began to deteriorate into the endlessly changing buildings on the Edgware Road. Office blocks and underground car parks; palm trees in fake terracotta pots outside sliding glass doors; coffee shops; and all things Arabic. Every other sign was in swirling, elegant Arabic script, running right to left above the left-to-right English translation. Giant windows full of carpets, shisha pipes and overstuffed furniture; cars swooshing down the busy street; men in silk suits, walking ahead of women holding brown-eyed kids whose noses they dabbed with tissues from a gilt-trimmed box. Edgware Road believed in consumerism and cash. There were people, cars, CCTV cameras, restaurants and clubs, and shops that stayed open till 2 a.m. to serve Turkish delight and flat bread.
More to the point, there was the Tube.
There are two Edgware Road stations. Getting from one to the other involves taking a train four stops and changing. Getting from one to the other by foot involves walking under a small motorway. I went to the larger of the two, tapping in with my travelcard and staggering down the steps onto the first platform that took my fancy. Direction was an irrelevance. I slumped on a bench, holding my burning hand to my chest and fumbling in my pocket for painkillers. There was a vending machine selling a bottle of volcanically pure, organically treated, beloved, chilled and pampered water for £2.50, or a cardboard pack of sugar-laced, chemically treated fruit juice for 60p. I slurped blackcurrant-flavoured stickiness through a straw and swallowed the painkillers, then kicked another vending machine until it gave me chocolate.
A train pulled up on the opposite platform. It claimed to be going to Barking, but on its arrival it just sat there, chugging and clunking and not bothering to close its doors. The few passengers sat in silence and didn’t seem surprised.
Above my bench the board announced an eastbound Circle Line train was coming, but didn’t tell me when. If London Underground isn’t telling you when the next train is due, you can usually assume it’s bad news. I slurped more fruity sugar and waited. On the far side of the track, an enterprising graffiti artist with no fear of electrocution had written:
GEEF ME MIJN HOED TERUG
My thoughts, which had been left behind when the rest of me decided to run, had finally slipped back into the hollow comfort of my brain. Now they were setting up shop, putting out their wares and asking for a health and safety assessment.
Earle had said: the Midnight Mayor.
Which was alarming enough in itself, but then he’d gone further: the Midnight Mayor is dead.
And the Aldermen thought we’d killed him.
Which, while not true, was still justification for our execution. And we had been attacked at 2.25 a.m., and they said that the Mayor had died at 2.26 a.m., and what was the use of their lying about it?
Even if the Mayor was real.
Even if the Mayor was dead?
I caught the Circle Line from Edgware Road to Baker Street; at Baker Street, changed to the Bakerloo Line for Oxford Circus; and from there took the Central Line, towards Bank and the City of London. The old city; the Golden Mile. The hunting ground of the Aldermen, and home of the Midnight Mayor.
Part 1: The Midnight Mayor
In which the nature of telephones is discussed, a connection made, a curse exposed and a title transferred to an unsuspecting inheritor.
This is the story of the Mayors of London.
Once a year on a usually cold and often drizzling November morning, a heavy carriage of tasteless gold and plump velvet is wheeled out from its resting place in the Guildhall, at the heart of the Corporation of London, the oldest borough of the city. It’s dusted off, given a pair of footmen in white tights and a driver with a big hat, and sent to collect the Lord Mayor of London. In bright red robes and a ridiculous chain of office, this individual will then ride through the centre of town, swear a number of oaths, shake a lot of hands and generally celebrate and make merry for the good of the city. Ludgate Circus and Fleet Street are shut down for his procession; likewise Cheapside, London Wall and Bank are sealed off, cars out and policemen in, along with the tourists and onlookers who come to see the parade. Giant floats of distorted gaseous proportion, dancing bands and singing dancers, jugglers and hot dog vendors take to the streets and generally a fine if slightly pompous time is had by all. As the sun goes down, the Lord Mayor boards a boat on the Thames, between Blackfriars and Waterloo Bridge, and from anchored barges in the middle of the river fireworks are set off, funded by the big financial firms of the city. Champagne is drunk by dignitaries onboard, and the onlookers, as soon as the last boom has died away above the Oxo Tower, are quick to seek out the hidden pubs in the alleys between Fleet Street and Farringdon Road, or behind the National Theatre, Gabriel’s Wharf and Southwark. And so the day is partied away quite nicely thank you and, for another year, the people forget that the Lord Mayor exists.
In the intervening time, the Lord Mayor of London fulfils his duties, promoting the financial district of the city, and making deals with names like KPMG, Merrill Lynch, Price Waterhouse Coopers and other megaliths lurking within their glass towers. He attends meetings with Governors, Committees, Secretaries, Aldermen; he shakes no less than a hundred new hands a week, goes abroad on expenses to promote the wonders of London, snarls quietly at the Greater London Authority and its Mayor, who regard th
e Corporation of London as something of a historical blip in the history of local councils, and perhaps in his vainer moments remembers that Magna Carta permits him, technically, to ban the Queen from visiting the city within the old London walls. He opens museums, attends parties, networks on behalf of the city and every now and then is invited to a wedding at St Paul’s or tea at the Palace and all things considered, has a good time and does an OK thing.
So a year passes; so another Lord Mayor is chosen by the arcane reasonings of the Guildhall and Corporation staff, with no small interest expressed by the great financial giants of the city.
It is only after the Lord Mayor is in bed that the Midnight Mayor comes onto the streets. He too, like his daylight counterpart, must have his procession. Crawling out of the shadows, he carries around his neck the great black key of his office, an iron monster that once used to lock the gates of the wall of London. In his hand he carries a black staff whose thumping upon the cobbled stones can call rioters to order, on his back he wears a black cloak sewn together out of soot and the shrouds of the plague victims. When he walks past St Paul’s Cathedral, they say the statues turn to watch him go. When he stands by the Monument, the great golden flame on its head flickers and spins with burning fire. When he processes around the old wall of London, the shadows follow him wherever he goes. He too, like the Lord Mayor, has his duties. Like the ravens in the Tower, the London Stone, even the river itself, he protects the city, watches over it and keeps it safe from . . . who knows what? It is in the nature of his duty that we never find out what he has protected us from, since to keep us safe, he ensured that it never happened. Some theorists say that he isn’t a man at all, but a creature grown out of stones, a statue come alive from old cobbles and river mud. Others say it’s just a title, just a title as if titles didn’t have power, passed down from one old scrounger to another, generation after generation. Some say that the Midnight Mayor is a man, whose soul has become so consumed by the city that he often forgets he has feet at all, but sees with the eyes of the pigeons and breathes the thick fumes of the double-decker bus and finds in them ambrosia. The Aldermen are his servants — not the mundane, attend-a-few-parties, shake-a-few-hands aldermen of the Lord Mayor, but the other Aldermen, the hat-wearing, gun-toting arseholes of the magical community. And so while the city sleeps, the Midnight Mayor wanders, keeping us safe from all the nasties at the door.
