Read Online The Midnight Mayor by Kate Griffin - Free Book Online Page A

in doubt, a sorcerer’s first line of defence is mains voltage, and I wanted there to be plenty around.
    Vera’s voice from next door, speaking to more voices. “Asleep . . . Look, is this necessary? I mean, I know that . . . no, no, I’ll do it.”
    The bedroom door eased open. Vera stood in the light. “Matthew?” she called gently towards the bed.
    “I’m here,” I said. “I’m up.”
    “Yes,” she murmured, looking me over. “There’s some people here I think you should talk to.”
    “Who are they?”
    “They might be able to help.”
    “Who are they?”
    “Aldermen.”
     
    Aldermen.
    I loathe the Aldermen. Not the fluffy, cocktail-sausage-and-champagne aldermen, they weren’t the problem. The other Aldermen. The ones who only come out at night. Protectors of the city. The ones who do whatever it is that is necessary for the city to be safe; and right there was the problem. Sometimes “necessary” didn’t mean “right”.
    I am scared of the Aldermen.
    And the problem about Aldermen was that they never came out for the little things.
    There were three of them, but none of them. On the surface they looked like escapees from the English Civil War, all big hats and black coats with fat black buttons. When the coats came off, the truth underneath was no better: pinstriped grey suits, silver ties and bright pink shirts designed to suggest the wearer’s uniqueness, and which every fashionable young suit wore to work. There were little, little hints as to their nature, once you bothered to look; one had on his right fist a collection of rings, one of which was burnt with the symbol of the twin keys. Pinned above a silk handkerchief sticking out of an old-fashioned waistcoat pocket, another had a small badge of a red dragon holding a shield. A third had the two red crosses, the smaller one etched into the upper left-hand corner of its larger twin, that were stamped on the emblem of the Corporation of London. Secret societies are extra-thrilling when you can feel the smugness of wearing them on your sleeve and still not being noticed.
    They looked at me, we looked at them. I got the feeling they weren’t happy either.
    Then one said, “So which are you?”
    Vera rolled her eyes. The Alderman who’d spoken was young, male, and destined to rule the world. He had dark blond hair, slightly curled, a face just bordering on deeply tanned; bright blue eyes, a hint of freckle and a set of teeth you could have carved a piano with. If I hated Aldermen on basic principle, I hated him on direct observation.
    “It’s not that simple . . .” began Vera, and I realised that she was also afraid. It takes a lot to frighten Vera.
    “Of course it’s not,” said the middle man. He was older, with a little lined face from which boomed a great rolling voice, and neat precise hands. When he smiled, his every feature crinkled gnomicly, and so great were the welcoming good manners in his voice and every other aspect of his presence that I automatically didn’t believe them. “Mr Swift,” he said, “I am Mr Earle.”
    He held out a hand only a few veins thicker than a sheet of paper. I shook it. “Mr Kemsley” - the young man with the teeth - “and Ms Anissina.” Ms Anissina was a woman in her mid-thirties, wearing clothes for a bright twenty-something and a hardened face fit for a dying warlord. Everything else about her was a frozen blank, neither hostile nor friendly, happy nor sad, lively nor subdued: just stone in a suit. Either she was a woman of hidden depths, or there was nothing beneath that marble surface to hide.
    “I gather you’ve been injured; would you like to sit?”
    I nodded, considering there was nothing to be gained from feigning a strength I obviously lacked. The one sofa had only space on it for three good friends. They left it all to me, and dispersed themselves casually around the room, just far enough apart to make it impossible to look at more than one Alderman at a time.
    Mr Earle took