The Minority Council (31 page)

“And what are people like me?”

“Individuals… outside a certain age range.”

“What?”

“The culicidae is designed to neutralise aggressive tendencies in the young. We wished it to target the same tendencies in adults, but the variables were too great, the effects too hard to predict. Yet, curiously enough, in the young we were able to identify a pattern of behaviour, a loss, as it were, of control, which allowed a very precise tuning of the culicidae to their behavioural patterns. There is a sound…”

“A high-pitched sound?”

“Quite so.”

“I couldn’t hear it; Nabeela was screaming.”

“It is only audible to the young. As you age, you cease
to hear certain high frequencies of sound; by the time you are, say, twenty-five, there are some which to you will be inaudible, but which cause distress to the young.”

“So I’m too old to hear what Nabeela heard?”

“Exactly so. The culicidae should not have targeted you; even provoked, it is bound and commanded to disperse and dispel, to cause no harm until it is next summoned. That it did not obey is a cause of some concern.”

“It killed a kid, and that didn’t concern you?”

“Of course it concerned us; it concerned us very deeply. But in all other respects the culicidae has been functioning within acceptable parameters. There were some within our number who advocated a period of observation, to monitor the development of the creature—I was one among them—but I was outvoted. We are very democratic.”

I drew in a long, slow breath, feeling the pressure of it down to the pit of my lungs. The fire in my ribs had reduced overnight to a throb that merely shot agony to my fingertips whenever I moved too fast.

“Okay,” I said. “Here’s the question of the moment, the reason we’re all here, the bank-breaker, whatever. Who the hell are ‘we’?”

Templeman registered a thought unseen. “We, Mr Mayor, are your Minority Council.”

First Interlude: The Minority Council

 

In which a brief explanation is offered.

Templeman said, “Let me cast your mind back.

“Let us recall your inauguration.

“Your predecessor in this office, Nair, was one of us. A wizard who had, in time, found his way to the ranks of the Aldermen and, again in time, been chosen through fair debate and council as the most worthy candidate to be Midnight Mayor. When his predecessor died, and Nair succeeded to the power and responsibility of this office, there was general satisfaction, for Nair was, if nothing else, a safe pair of hands. Reliable, upright. University degree, seven years in the civil service, another eleven in finance; a conservative but essentially sound practitioner of magic. He even played golf, if you enjoy such things, and when an issue became too heated for discussion in the office, he would invite the concerned parties to join him for long walks, by the river in Kew and Richmond, to cool heads. He made no remarkable decisions, but he made the decisions that needed to be made.

“And yet, in time, there came a feeling that Nair himself was dissatisfied with the office. He never spoke of it; he was an intensely private man. But whereas he had accepted the role eagerly, as the years went by he seemed more withdrawn, taking to walking the city streets late at night, by himself, talking to things unseen in the shadows. You have not been Midnight Mayor for long, Matthew; you do not yet, I think, fully grasp its implication. You are part of the city now, and for a while you may feel as if nothing significant has changed within you, but in time… to serve a thing so big, so magnificent, you must be prepared to give up that part of yourself that is small, petty, and which in being small and petty is so very human. It is a lonely thing, to make the choices you must, and fight battles that no others can, without thanks, and with death the only certainty—for it is very rarely that a
Midnight Mayor dies peacefully. You will find all this, I think, in time.

“Of Nair, then.

“In his last years of office, his isolation from the Aldermen grew ever more pronounced. Some thought it was a natural part of his power, that he was achieving a state of awareness that surpassed our mere comprehension—for me, this was too theological an interpretation. Others said the burden of the decisions he had to make, as a price paid for the greater good, was weighing on him. Others said perhaps he just knew his time had come, that he was growing older and that his safety could not last.

“Whatever the case, all agreed that things changed when you came back.

“Or rather, when the other part that is you came back.

“For some time we had been monitoring the activities of your former mentor, Robert Bakker. We knew about the Tower, about his organisation to monitor and control magicians for his own ends. We knew that sorcerers had been dying in the city; and while we could not link these murders to Bakker himself; nonetheless, as many died and he survived, a process of elimination seemed to confirm what we had always suspected: Bakker was killing sorcerers—Bakker had killed you. You were the first, you see, the first sorcerer to die in the purges he began, and your death was unremarkable, as your life had been.

“And then, two years later, the blue electric angels stopped singing. We monitor all spirits whose activities concern the well-being of the city. So we were listening when the blue electric angels vanished from the telephone lines. One minute they had been dancing their dance in the static of the wires, and the next… nothing. Gone. Just
a dialling tone to empty air. And not two days later, Matthew Swift, Bakker’s dead apprentice, is walking around London, apparently alive and well, and his eyes are now blue, and his vengeance is unlimited, and he is doing what no one else had dared, no, not even Nair, and striking out against the Tower. We watched you raise your allies; watched you battle Bakker’s peers, then Bakker himself. We saw your blood burn blue, and began to suspect what you were.

“There were some who said we should ally ourselves with the Tower; that no matter what evil Bakker had done, he was still a force for stability. I do not say, for good—no one could deny that by this time he was quite, quite mad—but he kept the magicians of the city quiet, and afraid, and that kept them from doing others harm. A benevolent tyrant, a casual dictator. Yes, there were Aldermen who would have allied with Bakker, to remove from our streets what seemed to be the far greater threat—you.

“Nair would not authorise it.

“The debate on what to do with you, as your battle with Bakker reached its peak, was one of the most divisive to have reached my ears. A sorcerer—a dead sorcerer at that—and walking the earth together with the blue electric angels. And your campaign of retribution against the Tower hardly gave you a glowing press.

“But Nair said, no. You were not to be touched. It was then that I began to realise—he wasn’t afraid of you; he didn’t consider you a danger to the city. He was envious of you, Matthew. He was envious because you were standing up and doing the things that he could not do. Not that he lacked the means, but that the burden of his responsibility forbade him from doing what his heart longed to achieve.
We all want to defeat evil, Matthew, all of us. But too often the greater good asks us to let a little evil live, for the good of us all.

“I think it was then that Nair decided to make you his heir.

“He told no one. He knew, I think, the outcry that would have followed. Perhaps he knew also that there were worse things out there than Robert Bakker, and that you, if angered, might be one of them. I think he chose you as Midnight Mayor to guarantee you would never be the city’s enemy. It was a canny choice, and a dangerous one.

“I confess, our previous animosity towards you may have made us too hasty in judging you. Your current apprentice, Penny Ngwenya, ignorant of what she was, in rage summoned a creature we know as the death of cities. First it targeted the Midnight Mayor, and moved so fast, and so quietly, we did not understand what it could be, and when we found Nair’s corpse, the things that had been done to it… there were only so many creatures in the city capable of such power, and such cruelty.

“You seemed a likely candidate for having killed Nair—powerful and dangerous, your human mind, we thought, long since gone, subsumed into the fury of the blue electric angels, who know no laws and have no concept of our mortal morality. Our pursuit of you was violent, and the discovery that, far from our enemy, you were now our new Midnight Mayor, was traumatic for many.

“There was a vote taken.

“I believe it was the very first ever taken in the history of the city.

“We, the Aldermen, who are chosen by our peers, not by mystic forces and dead men’s wills, voted on whether
or not to kill you. The Midnight Mayor can control his heir, but you—you were only a few hours into your new position, you had not yet been inaugurated into its power, did not understand its strength—the risk of the power moving to a new subject seemed marginal compared to the risk of keeping it with you.

“We voted on whether to kill you.

“I must admit, I was surprised, when the decision was made, how close it was. You were saved by two votes. I’m afraid you misunderstand me—my surprise was not that you were saved by two votes, but that the numbers willing to save you at all were even close to the majority required. I had imagined the Aldermen would kill you at once and be done with it.

“Two things, I believe, saved you. The first was the fear that the Aldermen permitted themselves to feel at the time. After all, their Midnight Mayor was dead, murdered without the killer batting an eye, and the defences of the city were falling like sandcastles before the sea. Under such circumstances, if, say, one of our number should become Midnight Mayor, who was to say that the fate which befell Nair would not befall him or her instead? Dangerous you were—you are—but if that danger could be channelled against our mutual enemy, then it seemed a risk worth taking. The second thing that saved you, in my opinion, was the respect the Aldermen held, even then, for Nair. Few of us understood it, few of us appreciated the rationale behind it, few could believe it, but Nair had chosen you as his heir, had made the conscious decision that when he died, the phone would ring and you would answer it, and nothing would be the same again. Perhaps you were what we needed.

“Perhaps you were the right decision after all.

“You did defeat the death of cities. Few can make that claim.

“And when Blackout came, burning out the eyes of all who looked on it, you stopped Blackout as well. You brought peace between the Tribe and the Neon Court, for as long as it will last, and you found us: the culicidae. You took down a dusthouse. No one takes down the dusthouses.

“But, Matthew, you do not see the bigger picture.

“Penny Ngwenya, the woman who summoned the death of cities—she should have been killed. You had the choice to kill her and you rejected it, and dozens more died for your deeds. She is dangerous, unstable, afraid of her own power and what she will do with it.

“When Blackout possessed your friend Oda, you should have killed them both while there was time. Instead you let the city shrink to a bubble of light in a sea of darkness, let the streets tear themselves apart, all because of some misguided notion of saving your friend, which you could not achieve.

“When the Neon Court asked you to honour their alliance, you went instead to their enemy, the Tribe, compromising yourself and your office. The rule of law, the obligations of our treaties, they are what drive the office of the Midnight Mayor. There was nothing to prevent the Tribe from killing you outright at a time of crisis and yet you went, alone and without warning. These are not the deeds of the Midnight Mayor. And yet, because we are the Aldermen and you carry the scars of your office, you are obeyed.

“You asked us who ‘we’ are.

“This then, is your answer.

“We are the Minority Council.

“We were formed after the vote, to observe and monitor. To carry out the duties of the Aldermen regardless of your own deeds. We carry the tradition of what the Aldermen have been, of what the Midnight Mayor should be. We are not your enemies, Matthew, for we perceive now that you are as important a part of this city as any of your predecessors. But we do what you dare not; what you do not have the courage to do. We see the big picture. We protect you, even if it has to be from yourself. I cannot tell you how many there are in our membership. I can only tell you that we are as much a part of this city as you are, and to fight us is to fight yourself.”

After he’d finished speaking, I was silent.

Down below, Cecil Caughey was fuming over his briefcase, the redness of his face visible even from where we sat. Templeman leant back in his chair, steepling his fingers, waiting.

I said, “Shut it down.”

“The Minority Council isn’t for…”

“Not the Council. I’m not interested in them for the moment. Right now, I’m talking priorities. The culicidae, this… thing you’ve summoned, this stupid bloody project, shut it down.”

“There was a great deal of investment in the culicidae. Time, money, effort…”

“This was never a profit-making thing anyway. This was you and your… colleagues… thinking ‘wow, let’s go stick our noses into local government and hey, what the streets are really lacking is a creature that eats the souls of our kids!’ And it’s failed. It’s been a cock-up and it’s failed and now you are going to shut it down.”