The lights shuddered, dimmed overhead. The dragon stirred. I murmured to Dana, for her ears only, “Legally the City of London is a historical anomaly; it’s been almost unchanged for centuries. They say the Mayor has the power to exclude even the sovereign from entering the city, not that anyone’s tried for a while.”
“If it’s not relevant I will actually chain you back up in that damn room myself,” sung out Dana in a fluty, frightened voice. The shadows stretched, bent at our feet.
“The city’s symbol,” I replied, keeping my voice as low and as calm as I could, “is a dragon, holding the cross of St George. And its motto…”
… darkness thickening in front of the dragon, tightening to a spot, warping, rising…
“… is
“Nice,” squeaked Dana. “Catchy.”
… rising up from the floor, forming a head, a chest, arms, a face…
“Let me handle the dragon,” I muttered.
Hunger emerged from the shadows. He stood in front of the dragon, which seemed quite content to have him there, and stretched, the darkness swirling around him. I saw Blackjack flinch in his presence, but he didn’t otherwise move. Hunger looked at the biker, like a snake drawn by movement, and grinned, exposing rotten teeth. “Poisons in your blood?” he murmured.
Blackjack looked away, and for a moment it occurred to me that the expression on his face wasn’t anger, but shame.
Hunger turned to me, still grinning; then his attention moved to Dana. “I always knew you’d betray me, to him,” he whispered, voice carrying like the hiss of a serpent. “I hoped that the pain of you betraying him would be enough to kill his heart, and let them take over what was left; but you didn’t. Little child, running back for safety.”
Dana didn’t answer.
Hunger’s empty black eyes settled on my face. “Ever killed a dragon, sorcerer?”
“Not lately,” I replied.
Behind him, the dragon flexed its claws.
“This is a beast of forgotten and disobeyed things,” said the shadow. “He is summoned from the broken street sign, from the smashed order and the bent commands, vulnerable to being summoned because so much of what he is has simply been ignored.”
A hand stroked the dragon’s metal flank, nails scraping across the rusted remains of a one-way street sign. “Little humans always think they know best. Forget the past, forget the rules, forget humility – that is their natural place, being petty things. It is why he is angry.”
I licked my dry lips and risked staring into the cracked camera lens of the dragon’s eye. It shimmered back at me.
“I hoped that she would free you,” explained Hunger. “Does that surprise you?”
“You wanted what?” Dana’s voice was a bare breath on the air.
“We thought you would let her help us,” we replied coldly.
“And why?” he asked, enjoying his moment.
“To make us fight to escape. To make me fight to protect her.”
“To make your blood burn blue!” He almost laughed it, practically clapped his hands together with childish delight. “When you are the sorcerer your blood is nothing to me. I have drunk my fill of it already and it tastes like the others, like all the other dead old men and frail little women; it barely touches a corner of my belly, it is tepid in my throat! When you are the angels, your blood burns so brightly it… it…” A whine entered in his voice, he seemed to constrict, shrink into himself like a petulant child. “Hungry.” The words rattled out thin across his teeth. “So hungry…”
“We can beat you,” we said easily.
“You’ve never killed a dragon,” explained Hunger, eyes burning bright.
I grinned. “Life is full of… well, a lot
And, because we had it to hand, we threw a wall of glass towards Hunger and Blackjack; Hunger melted into the shadows in a second, Blackjack threw himself down under the blast and the glass shattered lightly off the dragon’s metal sides. Its nostrils flared with the clanging of tempered metal, and it raised itself up, shaking its bulk with a deafening clamour. I grabbed Dana’s wrist and hissed, “You worry about the biker.”
Dana opened her mouth to complain, looked into our eyes and changed her mind. She nodded, turned and threw a head-sized ball of water at Blackjack, wrapping it around his nose and mouth as he struggled to his feet. I focused my attention on the dragon.
It raised itself up on its back legs, the slashed wreckage of a speed-humps sign warping around its thighs as it did, the bent remnants of a “dog fouling” notice cracking under the strain, and roared. The sound severed the lamps in the ceiling, which smashed down on the floor in front of it and around it; it shattered the glass of the foyer and knocked Dana off her feet. We dropped to a crouch, ready to pounce, and I dug my nails into the palm of my hand without even thinking about it, digging them deep until the blood ran. I dipped two fingers in the pool of red liquid accumulating in my hand and, the blood sloshing thinly, drew a crude cross on the floor in front of me, and another, smaller cross in the left-hand corner of the shape. The dragon lumbered towards me with surprising ease and grace, its form shimmering across the floor. It didn’t even need to claw me to death; a single swipe of its neck would break every bone in my body.
I heard the cracking of metal and saw that Blackjack had crawled away from his bike. He had a chain in his hand, which was lashing out towards Dana’s face; but she ducked, and hurled tall funnels of water at him. They spattered his face, then knocked him off his feet, and bowled him backwards like they were ocean waves breaking from a storm. The tendrils of her spell, winding around her and back through the doorway to the stairwell, led from where the taps were still running, some floors above.
Above me, meanwhile, the dragon raised a paw. Its palm, ready to smash down on my head, was a blackened “STOP” sign, graffitoed over in big green letters by some wag with the comment “Caliper Boy SMELLS”. I dropped instinctively to one knee, raising my hands above my head, and, from under this metallic death, in the second before the lights went out I shouted, “Lord lead us!”
The paw hesitated, hovering a few inches above my head, so wide that I couldn’t see the ceiling above it.
Somewhere on the foyer floor, I heard a hacking and spluttering as Blackjack tried to spit water out of his lungs; and the sloshing of Dana preparing another twist to her spell.
The paw trembled in the air above me.
“
The paw drifted to one side. A pair of camera-lens eyes stared down at us.
“You are the dragon that guarded the city of London,” we whispered frantically. “We recognise you, we know you; you are the dragon on all the old gates at the city walls, you are the symbol of the old part of the city;
A rumbling sound from somewhere inside the monster like the passing of a distant train.
“No!” The voice came from the shadows, where Hunger emerged. “No! I summoned you. Obey
“Lord lead us,” I whispered again. “We know you; Lord lead us. ‘The city of London shall have all its ancient liberties and free customs, as well by land as by water; furthermore, we decree…’”
“I summoned you!” shrieked Hunger. “You are mine! I summoned you out of the city; you will…”
“‘…know that I have granted to my citizens of London for themselves and their heirs, the citizens may appoint as sheriff whomever they want from among themselves and as judge whomever they want from among themselves to take charge please of the crown and supervise their conduct; no one else shall be judge over the men of London…’”
“They are the blue electric angels, they do not know these laws!” shrieked Hunger.
“You are the dragon of the city of London,” I whispered. “Listen to me! I’m from this city, I know its laws, I know what makes it alive, I understand it.
