polite, then the Neon Court made those members of the mafia locked away for ever gibbering at the back of the asylum look like fluffy teddy bears. It wasn’t a case of punishment and reward; you crossed the Neon Court, you died, pure, quick, simple. The only redeeming feature of the place was that it had only a few very special interests, and never messed with you unless you were stupid enough to mess with it first. And like all the best mafia families, once you were in, you never, ever got out again.
“OK,” I said, “I get it. Neutral territory. No one makes a move in this place without getting a knife in the back. Sure. Why’s Lee here?”
“There’s a pit.”
“A pit?”
“I’m sure you’ve heard of them.”
“Only by reputation and the occasional coroner’s report,” I declared, trying to contain our rising anger.
“Good,” she said, unflustered. “There’s a lot of things going down here,” she added, waving casually around the room. “Trade, sport, knowledge, games – you know how it is. Lee sends his bully dogs here to learn how to fight. And Lee likes to fight.”
“I don’t see how this will help us.”
“Know thine enemy. And…” She let out a long breath. “If you’re gonna fuck with me and mine, sorcerer, I’m gonna fuck with you and yours.”
“I guessed that much; I don’t suppose you can go into specifics.”
“You want Lee to come after us? You want it now?”
“Yes.”
“Then how do you think he’ll feel if he knows,
I took a slow, careful slurp of cocktail, smaller than I pretended. “It’s dangerous,” I said at last, “what you’re trying to pull.”
She grinned, stretched like a black leather cat. “Sure,” she said. “It’s the right place, the right time. I’m guessing Lee will know Matthew Swift is alive. I’m guessing he’ll recognise you, tonight. And if he tells his boss – and he’ll have to tell his boss – I’m guessing Bakker will order Lee to do something a little bit stupid. How much does Bakker want you back, Mr Swift?”
I shrugged.
“Mr Swift?”
As casual as a fly creeping down the side of a cream-covered bowl.
“Vera, mostly properly elected White?” I replied, staring into the depths of my glass.
“Mr Swift, how long have your eyes been blue?”
I smiled. I felt old, tired, too big for my skin.
“Bakker will want you back, won’t he, Matthew Swift?”
“Yes.”
“He’ll want Lee to find you. Bring you in. Alive?”
“Perhaps.”
“He’ll know you’re working with us, he’ll know it’s a bad idea. But you don’t argue with Robert Bakker and live. So let’s remind Guy Lee of that. Let’s show him how alive you are. Let’s make him do something stupid.”
“This doesn’t seem like a world-beater of an idea,” I said.
“Necessary things,” she replied.
It was a pit. Very much according to the traditional definition of the word. It lay beneath the club, down deep spiralling stairs where the-
That was the observers’ platform.
The pit itself lay beneath, with high black concrete walls and fierce uplighting, its floor also black, and covered with sawdust. We stood among the observers, hundreds strong, from everywhere and dressed in every way, men and women and wizards and people who had no sense of magic at all but could smell the hidden blood waiting to be spilt below. They roared and cheered and screamed with delight as a lurching demon, all bound up in chains, its skin formed from the slimy fat that congealed in the sewers, its eyes burning with blue paraffin flame, lashed and lunged at a group of three men dressed in all kinds of strange armour – shields welded from broken car doors, spears made from torn aerials sharpened to a point – who with every stab got a shriek of pleasure from the crowd, while the demon dripped bleach for blood from the tears in its warping, wobbling skin.
I knew such things existed.
Mankind has always loved its blood sports, and with magic there was an infinite variety of ways to draw fresh, exciting blood.
The smell and the sight of it nearly overwhelmed us. We struggled to control it, keep it out, shocked by the depravity, the sickness, the blackness pouring out of every wall, the bloodshot delight in the eyes of every viewer, the pain in the creatures as they suffered and died; life corrupted, twisted. It horrified us, that all these people seemed to wish to do with life was seek its end; it appalled us that any gift so great could be so easily disregarded, as if they had grown bored with ordinary living and needed to seek out this new thrill to make up for the mundanities of existence. And very quietly, on the edge of the screams and the shouts and the stench of rotting magic, was an excitement and a thrill that threatened to blanket out all sense and leave us howling like the rest.
“We can’t stay here,” we whispered.
“Why not?” asked Vera.
“It is… compelling,” we said.
She looked at us for a long moment, then muttered, “Shit, sorcerer, you’d better not go bang. Come on.”
She dragged me by the sleeve through the crowd, to where two men stood by a locked metal door, and moved to block her way. “McGrangham,” she snapped. “I’m here to see McGrangham.”
“He’s busy.”
“I want to place a really big bet; and he might want to think about doing the same.”
McGrangham’s office was soundproof and looked down on the pit. But it didn’t block out the power of that place, and we pressed our head against the glass and trembled to keep it from filling our senses with its presence.
McGrangham himself was a short man with dark hair and a big moustache, who lolled behind a desk counting crumpled banknotes and wore a mildly amused expression. “You’re telling me,” he said in an accent full of rolling rs and thick, weighted vowels, “that johnno here,” nodding at me, “is a fucking sorcerer?”
“Yes,” said Vera.
“The man’s a mess! Christ!”
“Guy Lee,” she snapped. “Guy Lee comes here to see the fights. I want you to arrange an introduction, on neutral territory, underneath the Neon Court’s eye. I don’t want anything flash; just prod Mr Swift and Mr Lee in each other’s direction. There will be payment for your time.”
“I give money to Lee, girl,” snapped McGrangham. “Why the hell would I deal with the Whites anyway?”
Vera could act the mostly properly elected head of the Whites when she wanted to; she exuded it from every pore, a dangerous, rich charisma that hinted, below the surface, at something more. “Things are going to change,” she snapped. “Bakker is going to tell Lee to do something stupid. Lee is going to obey. He, and everything about him, will be destroyed. Now I know you get your protection from the Neon Court, but you still need customers. You still need goods, trades, deals, money. Lee is going to lose all these things, and the Whites are going to get them. You seriously want to fuck around with the next big thing?”
McGrangham stared long and hard at us. “I heard Matthew Swift was dead,” he said at last.
“Imagine people’s surprise,” I growled.
