fate write up a spider diagram with useful footnotes and references?
So here we were, in the offices of Harlun and Phelps, surrounded by the Aldermen (how we loathed Aldermen!), who in turn were surrounded by empty hoods playing loud bass beats through their headphones, while somewhere down in the streets below a man in a pinstripe suit looked up at the black windows of the darkened office and just kept on smiling, because he knew, of course he knew, that there’s no point finding the hat if you didn’t give it back after.
I said, “Do you have beer or fags in this office?”
“Do you really think this is the time?”
“Bottles of beer, packs of fags,” I replied sharply. “Weapons.”
Earle’s face was a grey shadow in the darkness. I was grateful I couldn’t see his expression. “Catering department,” he said. “You can try office drawers.”
“Good. This place must have some sort of warding, protective spells, yes? I mean, if the Aldermen work here . . .”
“Some, yes. Wards against evil, hostile intent, that kind of thing.”
“Will they fire automatically?”
“The second anything steps across the threshold. I don’t think they can stop the death of cities; our insurance doesn’t cover it.”
“Mr Earle! Was that a moment of light-hearted humour?”
“No.”
“Oh. ‘Course not. My mistake. I don’t suppose anyone here knows what the spleen does?”
Silence in the darkness, then a polite cough, Oda’s voice. “I do. But for the sake of keeping you focused on Mr Pinner, I’m not going to tell you.”
“Terrific. Mr Earle?”
“Yes, Mr Swift?”
“You Aldermen lot do whatever it is you do when forces of primal evil are about to obliterate you and your . . . I nearly said loved ones, but you get the idea . . .”
“Where are you going?”
“Fags and bottles of beer,” I replied. “Oda?”
“I’m coming with you,” her voice drifted from the darkness. “Just in case.”
“It’s nice to have certainty in life. These wards . . .”
From somewhere below, there was a crack, a crash, distant, far-off, almost embarrassed to have its effect ruined by the weight of cold winter air between us and it. The Aldermen all at once turned their faces towards the window, and, since this was strange behaviour for anything that wasn’t a pigeon, we followed their gaze as well.
In the darkness of the city outside, a single red light came on, somewhere on the other side of Aldermanbury Square. Then another, then another, a line of little red lights, here embedded in the walls, here stuck on above the street signs, here in the tops of pavement bollards. A spreading line of bright scarlet rippled down from across the other side of the square, shimmered in the double red parking lines on the streets, reflected off the red warnings on the signs, bounced and reflected off the darkened windows of the lurking buildings around, and then more. The light crawled out of its sources, spilt across the square, seeped between the legs of the hoodies - how many spectres could one guy summon?! - illuminated the empty nothings in their hoods, the cracks of nothingness between their loose, grey clothes, and still spread.
It shimmered up the side of the tower, spilt through the windows of Harlun and Phelps and kept growing and rising, a bright, unremitting crimson light that made our head hurt, a photographer’s lamp amplified to the point where the eyes ached to see it. The red light ran up through the whole height of the tower, crawled out of the walls, the floors, the ceiling; everywhere there was a surface to shine, it shone red. When the Aldermen moved, they seemed to trail scarlet behind them, as if the light were a thin solid, or a floating fog, rather than a thing of insubstantial energy, and it occurred to us with the slow shuffling pace of a thought slightly shy to have been caught late to the party, that this same all-pervading light was the same blood-red of the dragon’s cross, and that, looked at from the right angle, the office of Harlun and Phelps might well make a strong starting line from which you could draw the same cross on the very streets of London.
By the bright blood glow, I turned to Earle. “I gotta hand it to you . . .”
But he raised a hand, commanding me to silence. “Domine dirige nos,” he breathed, and the Aldermen chanted it in reply. “Domine dirige nos.”
Then, “They’re inside. They’re coming up the stairs. Spectres and . .