rectangles of mud that might one day hold flowers. Smart, to take an urban sorcerer to a park. Things were harder here.
Earle’s face looked scalded, anger turning him livid pink. He prowled up and down in front of me; I didn’t bother to watch, but counted the beats of my heart, matching them to each turn he made.
“Sinclair thinks he’s telling the truth,” said Oda at last. “He’s good at being right.”
“What do you care?” snapped Kemsley.
“I am thinking of the sorcerer’s use,” she replied. “I have no love for his kind, and find this situation as ugly as you do. But let’s not deny how useful he can be.”
We raised our head, grinned at her, tasted blood on our lips. “She’s thinking about it,” we said. “She’s scared too - scared mortal, little scared human, seen a man turned to meat, seen a human reduced to raw flesh, so scared—”
Someone without a sense of humour kicked us behind our knees. We cried out and sank forwards. Our hand was aching and burning, the red crosses carved into our skin smarting in the cold air.
“These things,” hissed Kemsley, “can’t be allowed to desecrate the Mayor!”
“Which things?” we demanded. “Do you mean me? I am us and we are me, we are me and I am us.” Then we laughed, and turned our face back to Oda. “It’s all right to be scared,” we hissed. “The fox was scared, so why shouldn’t you be?”
“What’s he saying?” snapped Earle, to Oda, not to me.
She shook her head. “Not him,” she replied. “Them.”
“No,” I snapped. “Me. I think you’re scared too. You’re all scared. Because here’s what it boils down to - you kill me, someone else will become Midnight Mayor. Maybe one of you. And then what will you do? Go and find the thing that killed Nair? Go stand in front of it just like Nair did and have the skin carved away from your bones by a piece of paper? Go turn from walking human with a brand in the hand, to dead meat with no skin left on your bones? Isn’t that what you’re thinking?”
“You assume we think you’re innocent,” snapped Earle.
“You know I didn’t kill Nair. You’re an arrogant arsehole, but even you, even you will have had time now to find the evidence. You’ll have gone to Willesden, you’ll have found my blood on the phone, you’ll have talked to the foxes, talked to the pigeons, done all the things you should have done at the beginning if you hadn’t been so stupid! Stupid blundering stupid bastards who took one look at the dead Mayor and thought, ‘Ah-ha, let’s go beat up a sorcerer. Hey, the apprentice of Bakker is still alive, and he should be dead, because he was last time; let’s go shoot him just to be on the safe side!’ Well up yours with a pineapple, lights out, good night, good luck, good evening, goodbye, good—”
Earle hit me. It was pure anger, pure anger and redness and scalded fire, a backhand swipe like a girl, wearing as many rings as a girl, with the strength of a man. We fell away, pain and fury and indignation burning every part of us, tasted blood in our mouth, wanted to set it on fire, just a little fire, a little blue electric fire and then they’d burn . . . and . . .
Oda said, “As I understand it, you’re hitting your new master. Don’t let me stop you. Tear each other apart.”
I dragged my head up, fighting fire and blue sapphire fury. Something was wrong with my left arm, I could feel hot blood rolling over the pain. “She gets it,” I whispered. “She understands. You kill me, then one of you will have to deal with all this shit. One of you will have to get flayed alive. There’s a lot of you, so it’s fairly good odds, but carry on like this and there’ll be less and less and less of you. The thing that killed the ravens destroyed the Stone and killed the Mayor and it makes sense, if you’re going about killing a city’s defences, it makes sense to take out the Aldermen next. So shoot away - get on killing. It’ll only speed things up. Fire, flood, crumbled, crushed, cracked, splintered, shattered, torn, tumbled - pick one. The city is going to be ripped apart because no one stops it. End of the line.”