nervous system will essentially shut down. Then you’ll just collapse. You’ve got a few hours. Like I said: could be worse. Lucky man.”
“Anissina . . .”
“We’re going to Harlun and Phelps. If we don’t find the hat, I’ll kill her. Ngwenya. I’ll kill her, Swift. And if you try and stop me, I’ll kill you. I’ll tell the Aldermen everything. I know . . . why . . . you protected Penny Ngwenya. It was . . . human weakness. The Midnight Mayor cannot be so . . . soft. If you cannot break the spell, I will gun her down. Do we have an understanding?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Lie still, apply pressure, and consider whether you need a deity in your life.”
“I thought it was too late to repent.”
“Never too late to repent. Just too late to avoid your fate.”
“Thank you.”
“Any time.”
“I mean, thank you.”
“I know what you meant.”
The lights of the sleeping city.
What time was it?
“Oda?”
“Yes?”
“For any hurt I did you. For any hurt you think I have done. For all that there needs to be something said, that I . . . that we did not know to say. I am sorry.”
“It sounds like a death speech.”
“I mean it.”
“I know. Too late, sorcerer - it’s too late. But thank you for trying, Matthew Swift. It means nothing to me, but I imagine for you, it is important.”
Sleeping roads, sleeping streets. Even Bethnal Green was turning out the lights, the buses slinking away up Mare Street towards the mysteries of Dalston, Clapton, Stamford Hill and the north. I watched the lights go by the back window, pressed my fingers into the blood seeping from my skin. Anxiety, high breathing, high heart rate. What did a spleen do anyway? Little mortal little fleshly death by a dribble at a time.
Railway lines overhead, a face that might have been ours reflected in the black background behind the glass. Names with a hundred years of history slipping by on the street signs, the shadows watching as we swished through the soaking streets. Midnight Mayor, protector of the city, stay and fight for stones, shadows, memories, strangers, family, whatever, pick one, pick them all, all of them valid reasons to die, if that’s what it came down to. Three Colts Lane, Dunbridge Street, Shoreditch, Grimsby Street, Oakly Yard, Great Eastern Street, Holywell Lane, Curtain Road, Willow Street, Blackall Street, Old Street, City Road - and there it was! The silver-skinned dragon holding his shield, red crosses in red crosses, eyes too mad to comprehend, tongue rolled out in a hiss against the night-time air! We almost jerked with the touch of it, felt its magic hit us like electricity; closed our eyes and the shadows were still there, bleeding into the red lines of the city cross, Domine dirige nos, Lord lead us, trust in a higher power, a miracle day by day, this was what it meant to be the Midnight Mayor, mad eyes in a dragon, City Road, Finsbury Road, Moorgate, Swan Alley, White Horse Lane, Kings Yard, so close, Masons Alley, Basinghall Street, just there, Aldermanbury Square.
Empty, sleeping; but the lights still burnt in all the offices around, windows into an empty room, a thousand empty rooms, coats hung up on the backs of chairs, pictures of kids and wives, executive toys that distracted from any work and even more the personal touches of the little empty rooms. A model yacht on the lit-up sixth floor of a sleeping office tower, a conference room, table covered in old coffee cups, a meeting room with pads laid out in perfect geometric style, a floor entirely of computers in rows, an office with a tiny roll-out crazy golf course stuck into a corner. Close your eyes and you could imagine the windows of the lit-up office blocks watching you back, a thousand insectoid eyes peering out of the towers, just like the shadows.
“Oda!” we hissed. “Can you see?”
“See what?” she grunted, dragging us out of the back of the car.
“Look!” We waved at the lit-up towers.
“See what?”
“Magic!” we exclaimed. “Can’t you see? The city is the magic, we made it, we made the magic out of the stones and the streets and the life! How can you not see?!”
“This had better be the pain talking,” she growled, and half dragged, half carried us across the lit-up neon courtyard to Harlun and Phelps.
The doors were locked, but seeing us, the security guard lounging sleepy inside unlocked them, the great swish spinning door beginning to turn