by Kate Griffin
“You seem to be enjoying yourself,” she replied, self-consciously flicking bubbles of paint off the back of her hand.
“I think I understand what’s going on.”
“Perhaps you can explain it to me.”
“I think the whole thing is a bloody inane test.”
“A test?”
“To see if we’re really any use whatsoever.”
“‘Use’?” she echoed with disdain.
“Are you just going to repeat select parts of what I say?”
“I just wish to remove any hint of cryptic mystery you’re attempting to push.”
I sighed. “In the good old days you said, ‘Hello, I’m a sorcerer and this is what I want’ and people bloody listened. But these days… I guess Bakker has given the profession a bad name.”
I relaxed, turning my fingers towards the floor, and slowly let the electricity on my skin make its way to earth, tickling its way down my legs, across my feet and into the concrete.
“If I understand you, is that wise?” she asked, watching the last sparks die.
“Bollocks if I’m going to play their games,” I replied. “We have too much we need to do.” I raised my head and shouted down the corridor, “All right, you’ve had your fun, you’ve seen what we’re up to. Now either you cut this crap right now or I’ll bring the bloody street down on your head, and don’t think I’m not in the mood.”
“Can you do that?” asked Oda quietly.
I dropped my voice again. “Oda, even if I was inclined to tell you the extent of my abilities, do you really think now is the time for an academic exploration of the subject?”
“You were saying?” she asked, lifting her eyebrows and smiling a sickly smile.
“Oh, right, yes.” I raised my voice again. “I mean it! We talk right now or everything goes fucking mythic. Right now!”
From the far end of the corridor a petulant voice said, “Oh, all right, sorcerer, you’ve made your point. Jesus, it’s not like we wanted the sermon on the fucking mount.”
I grinned at Oda. “Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”
We ended up back in the room with the round table. She said her name was Vera and she was, she coldly informed us, the mostly properly elected head of the Long White City Clan, and proud of it.
“What’s a mostly properly elected head?” I asked.
“It’s generally accepted that if there was an election, I’d win,” she answered, with a dazzling tight smile. “So I figure – why bother?” She sat down, stretching out a pair of legs clad in more tight leather than it seemed circulation could bear, and said casually, “So, you really are a sorcerer. I wasn’t sure.”
“You could have bloody asked,” I said. “No one these days seems interested in just asking.”
“I thought it’d be more telling to see what you did on your own initiative,” she replied. “And I figured… if you were out to get us we would have been got quicker. Sorry about the sandwiches. Would you like something better?”
“Not hungry,” said Oda, in a voice like icebergs creaking in a high sea.
“I wouldn’t mind,” I answered. “But I would like to know – why the theatrics?”
“We have to be careful; the Clan is under siege. Guy Lee has promised to destroy every trace of us, and is throwing around a lot of money and a lot of threats.”
“So you lock up anyone who comes to say hello?”
“Until we can find out some more information about them. For example, in the day and a half we’ve had you here…”
“Day and a half?” echoed Oda incredulously.
“Yes.” Statement, matter-of-fact; this was not a woman used to remorse or even polite social embarrassments. “I’ve learnt that you” – one long, pointed finger uncurled luxuriously in my direction – “are almost certainly Matthew Swift, sorcerer, ex-corpse, formerly a cleaner for Lambeth Borough Council and…”
“You were a cleaner in Lambeth?”
“I needed the money,” I said.
“You cleaned?” Oda couldn’t have looked more surprised if she’d been told that I’d built the pyramids in my spare time.
“… and the chosen and favoured apprentice of Robert James Bakker,” Vera concluded with an irritated exhalation, her moment of revelation spoilt.
“That’s all true enough,” I admitted. “Although again – you need only have asked.”
“Can’t be too certain.”
“How did you find out?”
“It wasn’t too hard; sorcerer, living and not in a mental home, ostensibly not working for the Tower, grudge against Bakker. Amiltech in pieces, Khay dead, no one to blame and a rumour going round that Bakker’s apprentice is back, with a serious grudge against the master. Just needed to match up some photos and sweet-talk a few filing clerks, to get the proof.”
I shrugged; there didn’t seem much use denying it.
“Heard you were dead.”
I shrugged again.
“Good recovery,” she added, eyeing me up for a reaction.
“Thanks.” I didn’t feel like offering her anything more.
A moment while she waited; it passed, she moved on. “As for you” – another finger uncurled at Oda – “I have no idea who you are or what you want, and that bothers me.”
Oda tilted her chin proudly and said, “You cross me and mine, and you die.”
“Don’t give her any credit for humour,” I agreed quickly. “She really does believe all that.”
“Quaint. Who are you?”
Oda glanced at me. I said, “Give her the bad news.”
“I belong to the Order.”
“Never heard of you.”
Oda smiled thinly. “That’s how good we are.”
Vera hesitated, then a slow, nasty smile spread across her face. “I see.”
“We can help you destroy Bakker.”
“Charming of you. Where’s the catch?”
“I need to make a phone call,” said Oda flatly.
“Tough,” retorted Vera, eyes flashing.
“Please let her make the phone call,” I said wearily, “she’ll be insufferable until she does.”
“Why should I?”
“Because she’s a member of the Order, an evil group of unimaginative people who are holding an acquaintance of mine hostage against my good behaviour, and I’d like him to survive long enough to join you and to join me in helping bring down Bakker and all his works. How does that sound?”
“What kind of sorcerer are you?” chuckled Vera, doing her best to look unimpressed. “A reasonable one. I know that I can’t fight Lee alone, not now he knows I’m coming; I know that I need your help. Will you help us?” To my surprise, Vera grinned. “When you put it like that, sorcerer, we may have grounds to talk.”
—
Oda got her phone call, and I got a tour of the Kingsway Telephone Exchange.
“It’s built to survive a nuclear attack,” explained Vera as we wandered through the bland, tight tunnels. “Nuclear attack didn’t happen so they used it as a telephone exchange. You could come down here at seven in the morning and go out nine hours later; and in winter it’d still be dark, the entire day gone, poof, just like that. Time loses its meaning away from the sunlight.”
“What are you doing down here?” I asked as we drifted through the endless corridors of psychedelic paint. “Why’s the Clan here?”
“We used to be in White City – that’s where our name came from. Then they demolished our home in order to build this new shopping mall, and by then, Guy Lee had decided we were a pain. Harris Simmons has fifteen million invested in the shopping mall – tell you something? Fingers in every pie. The Clan picks up lost magicians – kids who don’t understand that the things they draw are coming alive, voodoo artists possessed by the spirits, enchanters who can’t control their own creations – we look after our own, make sure that the word doesn’t get out about what we do, keep the authorities out of our hair.”
“What
makes you better than Lee?” I asked.
“In the grand scheme, I suppose not much. Our members will still steal, bewitch, bedazzle and charm when they need to, in order to profit or survive. We have a lot of strays to look after; you mustn’t be surprised that some of them bite. Prostitutes who are not afraid of a cantrip for temporary beauty, thieves who sometimes find that it is useful to be more than just a metaphorical shadow – these things happen, you live with it. But we don’t nail people to trees if they break our rules. And we don’t rape the women who don’t obey us when we order them to cast a spell. And we don’t torture the fortune-tellers who refuse to give us money, and we don’t experiment on the plucked-out eyes of the seers to see if we can leech away any of their sight, and we don’t poison beggars with heroin so we can ride their trip without the drugs in our blood, or sacrifice human flesh to the spirits of a place for their good favour, or cast impenetrable glamours enriched with the blood of children to make our whores seem more beautiful, even the pig-ugly ones. And we don’t like to talk with the dead. They tell you things that are sometimes best not heard. Is that what you wanted to hear, sorcerer?”
“I was hoping for something in shining armour, but thanks for the run-down,” I said.
“You’re welcome. So, Lee doesn’t like us. He thinks we’re treading on his toes. He wants things from us.”
“What sort of things?”
“Money. Services. Snitching. We’ve got a lot of contacts and he doesn’t like rivals. And he’s tough – there’s an army out there who’ll follow him, and more just waiting at the Tower to do his word. He likes to have control. Whites don’t like to be controlled. It’s only going to get shittier. Although, with Amiltech kinda fucked…”
“It’ll recover,” I sighed. “Sure, it’s bad, it looks bad, but Amiltech will always recover while the Tower’s around.”
“Even though San Khay is dead?” she asked quickly.
I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t kill him. Let’s get this sorted right here, right now. I didn’t kill him.”
“Pity,” she sighed. “Why not? I would have.”
“Someone else got there first.”
She waited.
I said nothing more.
She shrugged. “Fine. OK. So Amiltech are fucked for now – that’s a good thing. What can you do for me?”
“I can help you against Lee.”
“How?”
“I can get you some help.”
“Warlocks, bikers and religious psycho-bitches? Thanks; I’d rather take my chances.”
“The Beggar King too.”
“And you of course!” Mocking doubt bit acid into her voice. “Our own pet sorcerer, hand-trained by the man sitting at the top of the Tower.”
“Bakker is my enemy too.”
“Yeah. I heard he might be. Why can you get me all this help, when no one’s given a fuck until now?”
I considered the reasons, ticked them off on my fingers. “One: I’m a sorcerer, and I’m told that right now, that’s a bit of a novelty. Two: Sinclair has already laid the groundwork for this, I’m just finishing it off. Three: I was Bakker’s apprentice. His chosen pupil, surrogate brat kid, spoilt adopted fucking son. You’re scared of him? Be scared of me too. Four…”
We hesitated.
“Four?”
I thought about the telephone exchange, looked into the bright knife-edge of Vera’s gaze, bit back our words. “Never mind about four,” I said quickly. “It’s not important, yet.”
She grunted, half-shook her head. “OK. Whatever. There’s something else I need to ask you, though.”
“Ask, then.”
“You heard how so many sorcerers died? About Awan, Akute, Patel…”
I nodded.
“Good. Then you’ll know the basics. A creature that can’t be killed, that delights in the death of its enemies, that kills Bakker’s enemies, that can’t be stopped and…”
“I stopped it. Ask Oda. I held it back.”
“How?”
“It was just temporary, a spell – but it came looking for us, and didn’t succeed. Not this time.”
“You know about this creature? Can you kill it?” She spoke quickly, eager – afraid. “Kill it and you’ll have a bargain.”
She knew about Hunger.
Better – she knew enough about it to be afraid.
That, I could respect.
“I think I can kill it,” I said. “But I need to see Bakker first.”
“Well, that’s a problem, since I’m imagining you’re not his favourite person right now and the guy’s as hard to find as El bloody Dorado.”
“You misunderstand. I think, to kill it, I’ll have to kill him.”
“Why?”
I lowered my voice. “You keep a secret?”
“No,” she replied. “Not unless it’s fucking monumentally important.”
“This one could be. This could be the key to everything, the answer to the question you didn’t know to ask.”
She shrugged. “Hit me; no promises.”
“The shadow, and Bakker?”
“Yeah?”
“I think they might be the same thing.”
She opened her mouth to protest, then hesitated, face shuttering down, blanking off all emotion. “Oh,” she said finally, a long slow sound. “Shit. You got proof?”
“I’ve got… a lot of circumstance.”
“Who else knows – suspects – whatever?”
“No one that I know of. Although I guess the Beggar King will have it figured out, and if there’s any sorcerers still left alive, not hiding or mad, they’ll have guessed. But they’ll be afraid.”
“What makes you so sure of this?”
I thought about it, licking my lips, remembering the taste of blood. “The people who are attacked. The nature of the attacks and the creature – hungry, longing for life that it can’t have, a shadow. Something Bakker’s sister said; he wanted her to summon some creatures, voices in the wire, he thought they would keep him alive. ‘Make me a shadow on the wall’. It attacked her and let her live – why? And lastly…”
“Lastly?” she asked, sharp, when I hesitated.
“I’ve seen the creature’s face. It has his face, withered and pale, but still his face. The shadow is related to Bakker – I don’t quite know how, but I’m almost convinced of it. I think that if you stop Bakker, you stop the shadow. Chicken and egg.”
She drew in a long breath. “Yeah. Right. OK. Let’s say I’m running with this for a moment. But to kill Bakker you’re going to have to eliminate his security: Guy Lee, maybe a few others – Dana Mikeda, almost certainly. To do that, you risk drawing the attention of this shadow. You’re also going to have a problem with Mikeda.”
I looked up sharply and saw her eyes fixed, intelligent and bright, on my face. “It’ll be fine,” I said.
“She was your apprentice,” she said mildly. “I hear that sorcerers get quite attached to their apprentices.”
“It’s complicated.”
“I bet it is.”
“I’ll deal with it,” I said, harsher than I’d meant.
“I hope you do. You’re going to have to anyway. Were you and Elizabeth Bakker…?” I didn’t answer the lilting question in her voice. She added, “Probably not important.”
“No,” I said sharply. “Not to you.”
Her smile lurked for a second; a moment of cruelty, verging on laughter. “All right, Mr Matthew Swift,” she said finally. “I think it’s fair to say that you have got our attention. What exactly do you want to do?”
I sagged, unable to hide the sudden relief. “It’s very simple. I need to eliminate Guy Lee and his underworld army, and I need help to do it.”
“I don’t trust that girl you’re with.”
“Neither do I. You ought to know that she won’t be your friend, when this is over.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Have you brought me trouble?”
“I’m sorry. I had no choice.�
�
“No choice? In what?”
“I need people to help me against Lee. I’m willing to pay as high a price as need be.”
Her jaw tightened. “I see. Sorcerers.”
“What does that mean?”
“You are usually so high on your own power that you forget the other bastards in your way. You say things like ‘necessary sacrifice’ or ‘needful losses’, because you have to be the fucking hero.” She rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Bloody sorcerers.”
“You’re leaping to conclusions,” I said mildly.
Her eyes flashed. “It’s how Bakker began,” she said. “Things are necessary.” I said nothing.
“You’ve got some way of beating Lee without getting my people killed?”
“Does he know you’re here?” I gestured at the paint-encrusted walls. “I mean, down here, in the Exchange?”
“No. Perhaps. No.”
“I imagine it’s a secret you like to keep well.”
“Very,” she said. “Why?”
I looked down the long, splotched corridor. “Nuclear bunker?” I asked.
She nodded.
“That could come in handy.”
The doors were painted green, were thick and made of iron, and clanked, with solid locks. The walls between each room were half a foot thick, the fire notices thirty years old, the ventilation system chugging and clogged with the thick dirt that drifts down eventually on all things in the city, turning even white marble foggy black. There were a lot of doors; they at least had been well maintained. There were miles of dipping and winding tunnel, slowly sloping upwards, their gradients almost imperceptible. Signs had been painted onto the occasional wall with an arrow pointing towards their destination – Chancery Lane – High Holborn – Lincoln’s Inn – Aldwych. As we walked I could feel the rattling of the Piccadilly line in the walls beside us. Vera said, “There used to be other trains too.”