A Madness of Angels

determined hate; his walk was uneven and when he raised his hands they trembled, the fingers convulsing in little bursts, like the nerves wanted to exercise themselves without permission from the brain. He walked up to me, stopped a metre away, looked me straight in the eye and said, “You have become a liability already, Mr Swift.”

“So shoot me!” I said.

“Don’t tempt fate.”

“I wasn’t tempting fate, I was asking you,” I replied. “I’m sure that all these lovely gentlemen with the guns” – I gestured round the court at the security guards patting down the passengers as they passed through the endless rows of metal detectors – “would be only too happy to testify the case.”

“You want the biker freed – we can do that.”

“It’s not just my personal pissed-off mood,” I retorted. “I need Blackjack.”

“Why?”

“To convince the rest of his gang to join the Whites; to stir up a few allies against Lee.”

“The Whites – Oda told me of your plan.”

“And I’m sure that when you’re done with the Tower you’ll be turning your attention to them,” I sighed, “but right now, you need them, and you still bloody need me – more than ever, by the looks of things.”

“You did this,” he snarled, eyes flashing dully in the folds of his diseased skin.

“Yes. If you’d just talked to me politely, we could have avoided this entire situation.”

“I am willing to die for my faith,” he declared, edging a step closer. “What makes you think that this curse of yours will change my mind about you?”

“Nothing at all,” I said. “You hate me and I hate you, end of story. But you need me, and I may just bloody well end up needing you and all your pig-stupid moronic cultist followers. So. I’ll lift the curse when I know that Blackjack is free. And you’ll still help me even though you don’t have a hostage against me, because you still need me against Bakker. And I won’t do anything against you because I still might need you to help against him. And when this whole thing is over we’ll do a tally list of who hurt who the more. And if it doesn’t come out even, we can fight it out till doomsday, what do you say?”

“What… help…” he spat the word, “do you need?”

“Men with weapons,” I replied. “Everyone you have available, in the Kingsway Exchange by midnight tomorrow, ready to fight it out with Guy Lee.”

“In the Exchange? Why there?”

“Because that’s where Guy is going to attack.”

“You’re sure of this?”

“Not yet. But if you give me a few more hours, I will be.”

“You’re… luring him into a trap?” suggested the man weakly. “How? Why will he attack?”

“He’ll be ordered to from above,” I replied. “Do you really want the quibbling details, or will you just help me?”

“Undo what you’ve done,” he said.

“Your word pretty please on a plate.”

“I will help you in this.”

“Your word pretty please on the Bible.”

A flicker of anger around his eyes, just for a second; but then he raised one shaking hand and said in a clear, precise voice, “I swear before God. Until the Tower is defeated and Bakker is dead, if you do not harm mine, we will do nothing to harm yours. We will support and help each other against this… greater… evil. Before God I swear.”

I grinned. “Good. I’m glad that one is sorted.”

I spoke to Blackjack on the phone before I undid the curse, just to make sure. He sounded tired, but alive, and promised that he had all his fingers intact. I asked him to find allies. When he’d heard the details, eventually, he said yes, and hung up briskly without another sound.

In the men’s bathroom, I put my hand on the priest’s forehead and slowly, shivering as it wormed its unfamiliar presence back into my skin, drew the curse out of his flesh, the sliver of blue magic trickling across my fingers and melting back into my skin.

The man said, “Is that it?”

“Yes. You’ll recover soon enough. Plenty of bedrest.”

“I do not understand how you managed to cause me harm. You were defenceless.”

“Prayer,” I replied cheerfully, washing my hands clean in the basin. “Prayer and a soul soaked in positive karma.” I glanced at him in the mirror, to find his expression not so much angry any more as curious. “And I am a sorcerer. Magic is just… a point of view. We don’t know your name.”

His eyes flashed up to mine, met them in the mirror; then he looked away. “Names give power.”

“You know that I’m Matthew Swift. I’m assuming you’re ex-directory – secret cultists tend to be – so you might as well tell me.”

“Anton Chaigneau.”

“French?”

“My mother was from the Congo. My father was from whatever Satanic pit spawns such creatures.” He was rubbing his forehead where I’d pulled the curse out, head on one side, a look of discomfort in his eyes.

I said, watching him, forcing myself to sound disinterested, “You’ve come a long way.”

“The Order is good to those who adhere to it,” he insisted. “They are kind.”

“You’re not in charge?”

“I am a servant of the Order, I bring their will…”

“Who’s in charge?”

He shook his head. “Is there anything else I can indulge you with, sorcerer?”

“Who did Oda’s brother kill?”

His face became stone for a moment, then widened out again into a tight grimace. “She told you?”

“Yes.”

“Did she tell you that her brother was a witch doctor?”

“She implied it.”

“Did she tell you that when he first discovered his magic, he tried to help the family, heal others and use his craft for goodness? Did she tell you that the power of it tainted him, corrupted him, as such power always does, and that he swore he could only do the best by creating things of such evil as, I think, will never leave her dreams?”

“Again, it was implied.”

He met my eyes and said, utterly flat, “He killed her two little sisters, and tried to kill her. He said it was a necessary sacrifice to summon creatures of knowledge, spirits. He said that nothing else would do but the blood of kin, and apologised and wept but said it was the necessary thing. Oda was fourteen at the time – her sisters were nine and eleven. She escaped, and didn’t speak for three years after. Her brother was killed by the local police when he refused to surrender himself, but not before his arts had burnt Oda’s family home, and everything she possessed, to the ground. The Order loves her. We will be a better family than any formed of kin. What do you do that’s ‘necessary’, Mr Swift?”

“Necessary?” We tried the word a few times, rolling it around our tongue and lips. “We work with you, Mr Chaigneau. Only because it is necessary. I hope to be seeing your men armed and ready for battle by tomorrow night; in the mean time, I wish you a speedy and successful recovery. Good day to you, Mr Chaigneau.”

I turned and walked away, and to my relief, no one tried to stop me. On the train, my hands were shaking. I had never played such games before; no degree of magical inclination can teach you the character skills necessary for cloak-and-dagger dealing; never before, however bad things had got, had I felt that my life was in danger. At least, not while I was technically alive, last time, and living it.

After lunch, I went back to University College Hospital.

Sinclair was still sleeping a sleep that was too close to death for our taste, and Charlie was still on the door.

“Did you visit her?” he asked, slipping into the room as I looked down at Sinclair’s sickbed and listened to the