The Neon Court (25 page)

“Midnight Mayor,” I wheezed. “Midnight Mayor.” The eldest, who I took to be their leader, held up his hand, and while the pressure on my throat didn’t exactly relax, it didn’t do anything worse. I slowly stretched out my right hand, uncoiling it to reveal the twin scars burnt into my skin. “First thing you should know,” I gasped, careful not to speak too loud in case the volume should propel my neck onto the blade, “is that if we die, the telephones will scream vengeance at you, your words will be fire, your dreams will be burning
blue. Second thing you should know is that if I die, the Aldermen will need no further reason not to ally with the Neon Court, as they already want to do, and will annihilate you and yours. Which, I guess, could be a good thing considering the aforementioned electric retribution which we shall pour down upon you from the wires and the radio waves as long as you live. So … you guys heard of diplomatic negotiations or what?”

Silence.

Chatty, they were not.

Then the leader jerked his chin, and the boy with the brass bones, and eyes simmering the colour of old overcooked chips, swung his fist, and the world said night night.

We do not fall easily.

I had been in the fuzzy land of bouncing brain cells for less than a minute, but times had been busy. Someone had pinned my hands behind my back with what felt like gaffer tape. Someone else had flung me over their shoulder and was carrying me like a bin-bag, as casual and easy as dirt. There was the taste of blood in my mouth. My head felt like someone had been injecting it with vodka and iron filings. I could see feet: big feet, small feet, feet in boots, feet in trainers, feet in bandages, feet in nothing at all, feet missing toes, feet bursting with blisters and blood, feet that were, really all things considered, reasonably normal if a little world-beaten. The dull glow of firelight was all around, and I could smell burning tyres, heated metal, woodsmoke and baked beans, hear the sound of voices, gabbling, shouting, cursing, swearing, laughing, all raised out of proportion and attacking their words as if it was the power of the sound, rather than the shape it took, which gave meaning.

I was deposited on a concrete floor at the heart of the hubbub, shoulder first with a bang. I curled up instinctively, waiting for bad things to happen, and when they didn’t, uncurled a little at a time, and risked looking round. Somewhere overhead, a long way overhead, a voice said,

“Wat is dis?”

I tried to wipe blood away from the corner of my mouth on my shoulder, and crawled onto my knees.

Another voice said, “Som guy says hes from midnite mayor.”

A face drifted down to fill my world like a balloon. Metal stuck out of every spare scrap of skin, and where metal couldn’t penetrate, scars, ancient and new, had so churned up the flesh of this creature that his features resembled more a map of some craggy range of rocks than any kind of humanity. A hand with two fingers and two little stubs where there should have been fingers caught me by the chin and pulled me back onto my knees. A pair of eyes, irises the colour of tar, whites the colour of cigarette ash, blinked down at me. The owner of the face said, “U from da midnite mayor?”

It wasn’t that he didn’t speak intelligibly; he made perfect sense. But there was something in the way he formed his words, something deep and cut off, as if he couldn’t be bothered to waste his time with this syllables crap.

“I am the Midnight fucking Mayor, arsehole,” I wheezed. “Jesus, you know how to hold a party.”

“Da midnite mayor is ded. nair. he woz slo n now hes ded.”

“I’m the new guy.”

“Wat new guy?”

“Didn’t they tell you? The Midnight Mayor isn’t just one bloke – it’s a whole tradition, a power, a wandering job description passed down for thousands of years, one git to another. It’s the guy who stops the nightmares, it’s the dude who calls the dragons, it’s the magic that turns back the tide, and, oh yes, wouldn’t you know, it’s me and I’m having such a bad day as you would not bloody believe!”

“Yeh,” he said finally, “ok yeh. but if u is so powerful, den y u a stinky lil streak of piss?”

I spat a cocktail of blood and spittle onto the floor, and risked trying to climb to my feet. The world wobbled, and for a moment the universe considered kicking me in the kidneys. Then it decided to cut a decent guy doing a tough job a break, and stabilised. I looked my new host up and down. He wore a leather waistcoat, open at the chest, and leather trousers. The waistcoat was open, I assumed, to reveal the mutilation that was his chest, to allow all to see the metal pressed onto his ribs, the steam rolling out from the tears in his flesh, the burns, the scars, the punctures, the still-fresh swollen wounds, the great rises and falls of fluid lost and found beneath his skin, the deformity of his body,
puffed up proudly like a warrior’s scars. He was a tall man, but no higher than a bear and no wider than an ape. His face, such of it as was still recognisably human, gleamed with pride and contempt. Around him were his warriors, forming a circle with us in the middle, the older the most scarred, dressed in every kind of scrap clothing that the charity shop could reject. The number of scars and the amount of deformity seemed to indicate rank. I looked beyond the circle. The warehouse was lit by flames burning in the bottom of great metal tubs, fuelled largely by tyres and petrol, and everywhere I looked, stretched out among broken beer bottles and across mouldering blankets, spilling along the walls and jeering, were the Tribe. The lost, the young, the scarred, the angry, the old, the lonely, anyone and everyone who wasn’t
one of them
, transformed in this place into
one of us
, the outcasts, united by being outcasts. And there were thousands of them, and not one looked pleased to see me. I licked my lips, tasted salt and iron and sand.

“I came to talk nicely,” I said, fixing my gaze on a point just between the laughing, discoloured eyes of the man I hoped was a leader, if the Tribe had such a thing. “You going to talk nicely, or am I going to have to get mythic on you?”

“U? u dont lok lik u can shit a spell.”

“Thing about me is that I’ve got two kinds of magics. I’ve got the nice, sitting-at-home-not-troubling-anyone kinda magics, which is what I’d usually rely on, but which I’m guessing won’t cut the ice here. And we have the magics of fire and death, of destruction with no chance of return, of blood aflame and flesh turned to dust, which I was hoping to get through this little chat without deploying. But, as they say, your fate is in your hands. Which of us do you want to meet?”

The smile flickered, perhaps, a little on his face. “Y u ere?” he asked, voice darkening.

“I was told that the Tribe was preparing to go to war with the Neon Court.”

“Wer already @ war. dey saw 2 dat.”

“Well, thing is, I’m sorta bound by this treaty thing to join the Neon Court in war against you. And I kinda don’t want to, because, you know, I figure, death, destruction, chaos, war – these are the kinda things that a decent Midnight Mayor’s supposed to put the boot into, right? Hey – I don’t suppose if I ask you nicely, you’ll stop?”

I smiled my most diplomatic smile. I even got a mild titter of condescending laughter, which I guessed was better than a punch in the teeth. Then it faded, and so did the smile on the face of the man in front of me. “We dont want u n urs. midnite mayor nothin but shit. wen ours were dyin, wen ours were bleedin, da midnite mayor did nothin. Said dat da streets wer al dat matered, said dat sometimes people must die but city must live, dat all dat der is is der city, n we r just passin thru. n he left us wen we asked for help. so dont fink u can come ere now wiv ur scar on ur hand n fink it givs u som sorta authority. cos it dont. not now, not ever agen.”

I let out a long slow breath. “Right,” I said. “I see. You’re narked because of some ancient dead Midnight Mayor shitting all over your lot. That’s fine. That’s cool. A Midnight Mayor went and shat all over me too, you know? I didn’t want this job. Never did. But some tit decided to lumber me with it. And I figure, you know, I’ve made my bid now, sorry it didn’t work out, which way’s the exit?”

I turned on the spot, looking for a break in the circle, and finding none, turned back to the leader. There was an unnervingly thoughtful expression in his eyes. “U really da nu bloke?”

“Yep.”

“U com ere alone?”

“No – no, sorry, should have mentioned. My apprentice came with me. Her name’s Penny. She summoned the death of cities by accident, because she was pissed off one day. That’s how I met her, you see, why I’m training her. You never want to get a pissed-off sorceress wandering around the city without giving her a quick tour of magic health and safety 101. You can try and beat her up and tie her up like you’ve done to me, but I gotta tell you, I’m the patient one pushing a diplomatic accord, and she’s the one who doesn’t know when to stop. But then again, our patience is not infinite.”

“U talk tough.”

“I’m fluffy inside.”

He grinned, and that was the only warning he gave. A fist, scaled over with dirty aluminium skin that had grown out of his own, green glass protruding where there should have been bone, pumped and fuelled by more than just muscular strength, came up and out from by his right thigh, caught me square in the stomach, picked me off my feet
and only dropped me back down to earth because it would be too easy to go through me and out the other side, and still not worth the effort. I never claimed to be buddies with gravity; I fell. The floor offered limited comfort. I lay, tears filling my eyes and bile burning at the back of my throat, curled up around a great black hole of sickly pain, and wheezed. There was laughter.

We rolled onto our knees, pain bursting behind my eyes and static filling my head. We crawled onto our feet, swaying slightly, and blinked away liquid salt. The great man was laughing, a huge deep sound tinted with a hint of broken gearbox. He turned to the crowd like a wrestler, and then turned back to see us. We put our head on one side, blue fire filling our eyes, rage and pain and blood. We said, “Do it again.”

“Lol!” he replied.

“Do it again.”

He swung his fist again, but this time he went for our face, as slow and merry as an avalanche. We moved; stepped to one side and under his swipe with slightly more than human speed, and as his hand went by, we bit it. It probably hurt our teeth more than it hurt his hand, but he was caught off guard and surprised, snatching his fingers away, two little neat rows of bite marks deep in the top of his hand between his thumb and middle finger, deep enough to draw blood. His friends laughed at this too, and then his other arm came up, more as an afterthought than with any real intent, and caught us round the side of the head like a crowbar, knocking us back to the ground. We fell awkwardly, one leg stuck out behind us, one knee bent, and this time, made no great effort to rise.

He examined his hand, rubbing away the blood that was welling with a casual swipe of his other arm, then looked down at us with a curious expression.

“U bite lil 1?” he asked, as a master might chide an ignorant puppy.

“We bite and we bleed. You may, if you are not too blind and foolish, have noticed that part. When we bit you, some of our blood got onto your skin. Let’s just hope some of it didn’t get
under
your skin as well.”

His look of bemusement deepened, then lifted into a moment’s revelation. Not a total fool, then, this mortal. But still enough of one. We
closed our eyes, let the blue fire that danced in front of our eyelids spread, fill our mind, fill our body, burn and buzz through our blood, let the power of it, the power of what we were, blue electric angels, gods from the machine, spread all the way down to the toes so that pain became merely a brighter burning in the inferno, and fatigue just a dream on the other side of a nightmare, and we stood, and let our blood catch fire. Brilliant, blue electric fire, the fire of what we were, of our natures, we let it ignite inside us, and on our face, and on our skin, writhing bursting bright blue maggots of flame that snapped and crackled around us, let it burn in our eyes, let it burn under our flesh, let it burn over our skin, let it burn in our hair, let it rage and spill and tumble, brilliant electric glory.

And that little blood of ours that was on his hand: that caught fire too. We saw his face tighten with pain as it burst into electric fire, sparking and snapping over his flesh, biting with little angry lightning teeth. But if that had been all of his bad luck, he might have rejoiced. It was not. A tiny part of our blood, one part in a million, had got from our bite into his skin and into his blood, and suddenly he threw his head back and screamed, clawed at his own hand like he was trying to pull it off and when he couldn’t, clawed at his own head like he was going to yank it clear of his shoulders and closed his eyes just a second too late for all not to see the insides of his eyes turn bright brilliant blue, the same blue of ours, and he screamed and screamed and screamed and we let him scream. We let him writhe at our feet and dribble and claw at us and try to shape the word ‘mercy’, we let him do all that and smiled and

smiled?

and let it burn still, the brilliant glory of it burning and

I said, “Enough.”

And blinked away the fire from my eyes.

Slow retreat of glorious flame …

I shook it free from my skin, pushed it back into my bones, wiped it off my arms, let it burrow back into my blood. “Enough!” I repeated, louder, as the screaming of the man at my feet broke down to sobs. “Enough.”

The others were silent. The entire circle was silent. I tugged at my arms; the fires across our skin had eaten loose some of the gaffer tape.
I tugged harder, and it snapped. There were little plastic burn marks all around my wrists, but the pain felt, to us, distant, an afterthought that would almost certainly plague us in some few hours to come. I knelt in front of the shaking giant man, touched his shoulder with my fingertips. He looked up with eyes back to unnatural grey, shedding dusty tears down his scarred face. He saw us and for a second was afraid, then a tongue pierced through with metal licked his lips and his hand reached up and caught mine by the wrist. Instinctively I reached down inside for power, felt static rise to my fingertips, but paused when I saw the look in his eyes.