“I think I can kill it,” I said. “But I need to see Bakker first.”
“Well, that’s a problem, since I’m imagining you’re not his favourite person right now and the guy’s as hard to find as El bloody Dorado.”
“You misunderstand. I think, to kill it, I’ll have to kill him.”
“Why?”
I lowered my voice. “You keep a secret?”
“No,” she replied. “Not unless it’s fucking monumentally important.”
“This one could be. This could be the key to everything, the answer to the question you didn’t know to ask.”
She shrugged. “Hit me; no promises.”
“The shadow, and Bakker?”
“Yeah?”
“I think they might be the same thing.”
She opened her mouth to protest, then hesitated, face shuttering down, blanking off all emotion. “Oh,” she said finally, a long slow sound. “Shit. You got proof?”
“I’ve got… a lot of circumstance.”
“Who else knows – suspects – whatever?”
“No one that I know of. Although I guess the Beggar King will have it figured out, and if there’s any sorcerers still left alive, not hiding or mad, they’ll have guessed. But they’ll be afraid.”
“What makes you so sure of this?”
I thought about it, licking my lips, remembering the taste of blood. “The people who are attacked. The nature of the attacks and the creature – hungry, longing for life that it can’t have, a shadow. Something Bakker’s sister said; he wanted her to summon some creatures, voices in the wire, he thought they would keep him alive. ‘Make me a shadow on the wall’. It attacked her and let her live – why? And lastly…”
“Lastly?” she asked, sharp, when I hesitated.
“I’ve seen the creature’s face. It has his face, withered and pale, but still his face. The shadow is related to Bakker – I don’t quite know how, but I’m almost convinced of it. I think that if you stop Bakker, you stop the shadow. Chicken and egg.”
She drew in a long breath. “Yeah. Right. OK. Let’s say I’m running with this for a moment. But to kill Bakker you’re going to have to eliminate his security: Guy Lee, maybe a few others – Dana Mikeda, almost certainly. To do that, you risk drawing the attention of this shadow. You’re also going to have a problem with Mikeda.”
I looked up sharply and saw her eyes fixed, intelligent and bright, on my face. “It’ll be fine,” I said.
“She was your apprentice,” she said mildly. “I hear that sorcerers get quite attached to their apprentices.”
“It’s complicated.”
“I bet it is.”
“I’ll deal with it,” I said, harsher than I’d meant.
“I hope you do. You’re going to have to anyway. Were you and Elizabeth Bakker…?” I didn’t answer the lilting question in her voice. She added, “Probably not important.”
“No,” I said sharply. “Not to you.”
Her smile lurked for a second; a moment of cruelty, verging on laughter. “All right, Mr Matthew Swift,” she said finally. “I think it’s fair to say that you have got our attention. What exactly do you want to do?”
I sagged, unable to hide the sudden relief. “It’s very simple. I need to eliminate Guy Lee and his underworld army, and I need help to do it.”
“I don’t trust that girl you’re with.”
“Neither do I. You ought to know that she won’t be your friend, when this is over.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Have you brought me trouble?”
“I’m sorry. I had no choice.”
“No choice? In what?”
“I need people to help me against Lee. I’m willing to pay as high a price as need be.”
Her jaw tightened. “I see. Sorcerers.”
“What does that mean?”
“You are usually so high on your own power that you forget the other bastards in your way. You say things like ‘necessary sacrifice’ or ‘needful losses’, because you have to be the fucking hero.” She rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Bloody sorcerers.”
“You’re leaping to conclusions,” I said mildly.
Her eyes flashed. “It’s how Bakker began,” she said. “Things are
“You’ve got some way of beating Lee without getting my people killed?”
“Does he know you’re here?” I gestured at the paint-encrusted walls. “I mean, down here, in the Exchange?”
“No. Perhaps. No.”
“I imagine it’s a secret you like to keep well.”
“Very,” she said. “Why?”
I looked down the long, splotched corridor. “Nuclear bunker?” I asked.
She nodded.
“That could come in handy.”
The doors were painted green, were thick and made of iron, and clanked, with solid locks. The walls between each room were half a foot thick, the fire notices thirty years old, the ventilation system chugging and clogged with the thick dirt that drifts down eventually on all things in the city, turning even white marble foggy black. There were a lot of doors; they at least had been well maintained. There were miles of dipping and winding tunnel, slowly sloping upwards, their gradients almost imperceptible. Signs had been painted onto the occasional wall with an arrow pointing towards their destination – Chancery Lane – High Holborn – Lincoln’s Inn – Aldwych. As we walked I could feel the rattling of the Piccadilly line in the walls beside us. Vera said, “There used to be other trains too.”
“Which ones?”
“The Post Office ran trains between its depots. The government always had something being moved about down here. The markets – they’d bring meat to Smithfield in subterranean trucks. Some of the lines never went above ground. You can’t say that about many trains in the city. But it’s different now. People forget about the things underground.”
I thought about the spirit I’d spoken with in Camden, guardian of the old railway line, and the empty magical circle that I’d intended for Khay. Perhaps, I thought, it might still have its use.
When I emerged, up a hooked ladder embedded in a concrete wall stained with flaking rust, it was to one side of Lincoln’s Inn, in a shaft full of the roar of sucked-in wind and heavy machinery. For a moment I thought it might be daybreak; but the clock on Holborn tube station left no room for doubt. Time moved differently underground. It was a drizzling, overcast evening, with the thin London rain and thick London clouds that never quite do their stuff, but constantly threaten.
Vera left me there. She said she didn’t like to be seen above ground, and didn’t offer to shake my hand goodbye.
Oda was standing outside Holborn station, her bag of weaponry slung over her shoulder, mobile phone in her hand. The big stone-built blocks of Kingsway and the wide, blank slabs of High Holborn’s offices met in a medley of traffic lights, bright corporate signs, and crowding pedestrians jostling for space while the bendy buses hogged the middle of the road.
“Well?” I said, blinking as my eyes adjusted to the grey, monochrome evening outside after the glaring bulbs and sinking shadows of underground.
“They cut off a couple of the biker’s fingers,” she replied briskly, folding the phone up and slipping it into her pocket.
“They
