glass window, eyes turned down towards her hands, hands turned up towards the ceiling. Something small, quaint and black was resting in her upturned palms. It was made out of the hybrid offspring of felt and plastic, its top dully reflecting the white light. A band of small white and yellow squares ran round its base, just above the shallow, upturned rim, and a small silverish shield had been stuck to the front, that a gleeful child might have mistaken for a sheriff’s badge. It was, in short, a very boring, rather small, quite old-fashioned not-quite-bowler hat, a piece of headgear that in the 1950s would have been the embodiment of modern style and which now was just . . . a bit sad. A piece of uniform that time forgot.
Oda murmured, “Um . . .”
I took the hat carefully from her hands and turned it over.
Inside, a rim of elastic had been sewn in to make the hat sit easier on the head. On this rim, in faded yellow letters, someone had written in lopsided capitals:PENNY
We put the hat down carefully on Anissina’s desk.
We looked at it.
Silence.
“Well?” demanded Oda. “Is it . . .”
“Shush!”
She shushed, then in a lower whisper added, “What’s the matter?” “I’m having a moment of reverence. I would have thought you’d appreciate it.”
“For heaven’s sake, I don’t have time for this. Is it . . .”
“Yes. It’s the traffic warden’s hat. It’s her hat.”
“And can . . .”
“Yes. I can break the curse.”
A pause. Then, “Well? Do it! What are you waiting for? Full moon?” We reached out tentatively, ran our hands over the black dome of the hat, picked it up by one side and turned it over in front of us. “He’s coming,” I muttered. “Mr Pinner is coming.”
“What?”
“He’s just passed across the boundary of the old London Wall. We can feel him. He hurts, right here, in the palm of our hand. He knows we’ve got the hat. The hat is the key to the spell that summoned him. Break that, undo the curse, and he’ll die. He’s coming.”
“Then do it! Do it!”
“I need Ngwenya.”
“If this is . . .”
A voice from the door said, “The traffic warden?”
I looked up slowly, ran my eyes up the immaculate length of Earle’s suit, his black coat, his stern face. There were other Aldermen behind him. None looked happy. Earle carefully pulled off a pair of black leather gloves, passed them over to an Alderman in the corridor, slipped through the door, reached out for the traffic warden’s hat. We snatched it back defensively, cradling it to our chest, and seeing this, he smiled.
“I thought Ngwenya wasn’t a sorceress, Swift? After you ran off at St Pancras, Oda informed us she was . . . just an innocent. And yet you seem to be holding a traffic warden’s hat, and seem to think that the death of cities is coming here, and seem, may I add, to have been shot and to be breaking into the property of one of our missing colleagues. You’ve clearly been busy these last few hours. Did you . . . lie to us about Ngwenya?”
We met his eyes. “Yes,” we said. “Deal with it.”
His fingers tightened on the edge of the desk. “You lied to us about the woman who has damned this city, cursed it, condemned it, whose anger summoned the death of cities, whose power is going to rain mystic vengeance down on our streets, and you . . . you dared to lie?”
We thought about it, then nodded. “Yes. And would do it again. Anissina, by the by, is a loony backstabbing bitch, and yeah, thanks for your concern, I’ve been fucking shot and yes, Mr Pinner is coming. Very very much is he coming: we can hear him on the stones, inside the city. He’s coming for this.” I twiddled the hat in the air. “So, since there’s not much time left for you to get angry in, Mr Earle, why don’t you ask me the incredibly important question - why, Mister Swift, Mister Mayor, why oh why oh why did you get shot trying to find this damn hat, and quite how are you going to save the city with it?”
“Doesn’t really matter, now I know to kill Ngwenya after all . . .” he began, turning away.
We reached up, grabbed his arm, pulled him tighter towards the desk. “It matters to us. We can break the spell, and she doesn’t have to die.”