The Glass God (24 page)

What he is owed.

This is my part. I am the undertaker. The city has a debt to Old Man Bone, there is a price which must be paid, and I… am asked to pay it. To make others pay it for me, perhaps I should say. Pay it for us. There must be… recompense.

I was asked to take these duties by the Midnight Mayor. Not Swift – this was a long time before Swift, before most of the Aldermen, in fact. I was one of them, an Alderman, but I had a daughter, and she… I felt unable to continue my duties to the city, shall we say, and resigned to care for her. When she passed away, I was lost. This… job… was a way out. A responsibility which I could bear, which someone had to bear, and, in my way, I have always tried to fulfil it with mercy.

There must be a sacrifice, you see. An offering made to Old Man Bone. It comes rarely, a dozen years or so, but he sleeps so long, and so deep beneath the earth, and even sleep is a form of life. Old Man Bone deals in death, but he needs life to sustain him, and so I… give it to him.

Before you judge me too hard, before you condemn my actions, let me say this: that he, like the power of the Midnight Mayor, cannot be killed. He cannot be contained, cannot be reasoned with, for he is a part of the city, and to try and control him would be like saying you shall command that every house in London no longer be made from bricks. What we are left with, therefore, is not control, but… containment.

There’s a dagger. It was used thousands of years ago in the temple of Mithras to sacrifice to the gods and, when it was not being used for sanctified purposes, it was used by more malign forces within the cult itself, to sacrifice people. How Old Man Bone found it, and why he kept it, I have never asked, but over the years it became imbued with his nature. It is rusted, ancient, scarred beyond recognition, and has been worked and worked and worked again so that now barely the point remains, hardly a needle of the original embedded in many more layers of iron. Touch any person with that blade, and they are marked by Old Man Bone, as sacrifices to his cause. He isn’t greedy. He has never asked for more than a few, and I have tried so hard with my selection. That is my responsibility, my duty. I chose those who must be given to the sleeping rag man. I hope I have chosen kindly.

When the time comes, I go out into the street with my rusted blade, and mark one, maybe two, for sacrifice. They feel no pain. It is… simply a not-being. One moment they are, the next they are not. And there are never any corpses left behind. Only…

“Shoes.”

Sharon spoke so softly she hardly realised the words had passed her lips. As the others looked at her, she nodded down at nothing in particular and murmured again, “Only their shoes are left behind.”

Chapter 39

Sacrifice unto Others

Rhys blurted, “But you
kill…
⁠”

“If Old Man Bone was not appeased,” snapped Crompton, “far worse would befall the city, I assure you.”

The druid turned to Sharon, gesturing with indignation. “But…⁠”

“Why the umbrella?” Her voice was hard and sharp. “What’s so special about it?” Crompton opened his mouth to answer, but before he could, Sharon interrupted. “No, wait, got it. Way ahead here. You can’t exactly walk around with an ancient Roman dagger, stabbing people, yeah? So you had the blade embedded in the point of your umbrella, am I right?”

Before he could agree or disagree, she snapped her fingers and added, “And the shoes that have been thrown over things, the points on Swift’s map? That’s what gets left behind when you make an offering to Old Man Bone, because those are what are stolen from the dead, and left for the living. But – wait a second… if your umbrella got stolen with the dagger in it, then you couldn’t go around making sacrifices. But Swift’s been monitoring shoes for weeks now, which means that someone pinched your umbrella, took the point out of it, and is going around doing your job for you, am I right?”

Again Crompton moved to speak, and again Sharon cut him off. “Except! We met Old Man Bone – I mean, either him, or his freaky twin brother – last night, and he was all pissed off and ‘give me what I’m owed’. And I guess he came to talk to me, because the real Midnight Mayor is currently off in swanny angel land; but, point is, Old Man Bone was kinda pissed and a bit cranky – would you say he was cranky, Rhys?”

“Not my first choice of word, Ms Li,” he said. “But I suppose it is one of several which we could try?”

“Okay, maybe even a bit more than cranky, maybe he had
concerns
,” Sharon went on. “But, point being, didn’t sound much to me like he was getting these sacrifices you’ve been talking about. And you said one or two, but Swift had tracked, like, dozens of these shoes hanging over things, and, hell, I’m not saying that every pair of shoes you see hanging off something in the street means an ancient gravedigger has come back for payment. I’m just saying that’s a lot of sacrifices going down if they have which means…⁠”

She paused to collect air and thoughts, “Which so bloody means that someone else has pinched your rusty blade, done something nasty with it, made lotsa sacrifices, but clearly not to Old Man Bone, got rid of the Midnight Mayor without actually killing him – luring him, in fact, to a sticky end with this very same umbrella, minus seriously mystic magic object, in Deptford, where that all went horribly wrong, and guess who has to clean it up? Middle management, that’s who. All of which brings us to the following situation.” She paused, while the two men stared at her, chins against their chests, waiting for her conclusion. When it didn’t come, Rhys raised one cautious hand.

“Um… which following situation, Ms Li?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry, I was just going over all that in my head to see if I got it right so far. Hey – this investigation thing isn’t so tough, is it?”

“I think you’re marvellous,” he replied. “I mean, the investigation, that it is in fact, proceeding, all things considered…⁠”

“What do you do again?” demanded Crompton, turning on Rhys. “No – I remember now.
IT manager
.”

“Hey – Rhys is my bloody druid and I won’t have a word against him,” snapped Sharon. Rhys blushed almost the same colour as his hair. “You be respectful! Our situation is that we are facing… several challenging issues and potentially some tricky opportunities and we will need a unified strategy in order to develop as a team and surmount the present climate of… of it’s all gone to buggery.”

A moment while the two men translated these words. “Do you mean… we’re in trouble?” asked Rhys.

“Did I say that, did you hear me say that?”

“Yes,” grunted Crompton.

“Positive attitude!” she snapped. “Just because it looks like we’re seriously stuffed, doesn’t mean we have to undermine the process of getting unstuffed by having a stuffed approach! Look at the three hundred Greeks what defended that mountain pass against a million bloody Persians or however many it was. They didn’t have an ‘oh shit it’s a bit dodgy out here let’s go home’ approach, did they?”

“But… they died!” Rhys managed to keep his voice a bat’s shrill below a shriek.

“Not the point!”

“I’m sorry, are you
sure
you’re the deputy Midnight Mayor?” demanded Crompton.

Sharon turned her indignation on him like a blowtorch. “Hey – did I get anything wrong in any of that deductive crap? Was it not, in fact, a really mature bit of incisive insight? I’m not fishing for compliments here, I’m just looking for that bit of respect I feel is lacking from you, the guy who goes around finding human bloody sacrifices!”

She hadn’t noticed that she was shouting, until the volume was well advanced.

“Sorry,” she blurted. Then, “That was unprofessional.” Then, “Sorry.”

Rhys cleared his throat. “But… you
are
right, Ms Li, aren’t you?” Sharon glanced at Crompton, whose face, while hardly picturesque, wasn’t bothering to deny it. “And… Mr Crompton here
has
made a career out of picking people to be sacrificed to a mystic sleeping entity, yes? Which I think limits his entitlement to complain, see?”

Crompton gave a grunt. “I did what had to be done.”

“He did what had to be done,” grumbled Sharon. “That’s gotta be on so many gravestones. You!” Her glare fixed its unstoppable power on Crompton. “If you’re this Old Man Bone’s undertaker guy, then you oughtta have an idea how to fix it, right?” He opened his mouth to answer, but Sharon’s face had already scrunched up in distaste as an idea struck. “Except you bloody don’t, do you? Because if you could just fix it, you wouldn’t have asked Swift for help, and if you hadn’t asked Swift for help, he wouldn’t be missing right now. So I’m guessing you’re as stuffe–– as
challenged
by this situation as we are. What did you ask Swift to do for you, anyway?”

“I asked him to find my umbrella.”

“Your mega-mystic umbrella.”

“If we must be so crude.”

“And did he?”

“Clearly. But the vital component, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, was missing.”

“And there are shoes on the line,” she murmured, not really to anyone else in the room.

“And there are, indeed, shoes on the line.”

“This… Old Man Bone… what will he do if he
doesn’t
get these offerings of yours?”

“I imagine he’ll withdraw his services from the city.”

“Is that a bad thing? Considering the lack of Black Death around these days?”

Crompton barely twitched an eyebrow. “The gravestones will crack, the ground will open, the plague pits will boil their bones to the surface, the streets will fill with the stench of the dead, the taste of rotting flesh will float upon the air, and plague will spread like fog under the cracks of every door. At least, that’s how it was explained to me.”

Rhys smiled wanly and said, “Maybe it’s just a myth?”

“If you’ve met Old Man Bone, as you say you have,” the older man pointed out, “I find it hard to believe you would consider it so.”

Sharon said, “I know I’m not going to like the answer, but I’d feel a tit if I didn’t ask – is there any way at all we can convince this Old Man Bone dude to sit tight and
not
unleash, say, the stinking smell of death across the city?”

“Other than sacrifice…⁠”

“Yeah, other than that.”

“None that I am aware of, or would consider trying. If, however, you wanted a more expert view on the subject, you could ask Arthur.”

“Arthur…⁠?”

“He is a warden in Bunhill Fields, where they say Old Man Bone was last buried. He is also something of an expert, and may have more… radical ideas on the subject, than I do. As far as I’m concerned, the only way to appease the Old Man is to give him what he asks for, and the only way to give him what he asks for is to recover the rusted blade which should rest at the end of my umbrella.”

Sharon sighed. Her tea remained untouched on the counter beside her, rapidly cooling. “How’d Swift find your umbrella, do you know?”

“I do not. I left the matter entirely in his hands.”

“Of course you did,” she groaned. “Because nothing ever goes wrong when people do that.”

“Um… Ms Li? The T-t-tribe said one of their own had died of Black Death, recently? B-Man?”

“You talked to the Tribe?” Crompton asked Rhys. It was hard to tell if his voice held respect or incredulity.

“Black Death,” went on Rhys, “isn’t a very common disease these days, and is actually quite treatable with antibiotics.”

“And Swift went looking for B-Man,” murmured Sharon thoughtfully. “A kid who pinched things for his tribe. You know, I think I’m getting used to this whole mystic business. I’m thinking that if you went around stealing the mega-mystic umbrella of Old Man Bone, there’s bound to be a few snags. I’m thinking there might be questions asked, curses cast, nasty, depths-of-all-evil kinda curses, curses like…⁠”

“Bubonic plague?” concluded Rhys.

“Right.” She looked at Crompton, dislike flashing in her eyes. “Sound smart?”

“As no one has ever attempted to steal Old Man Bone’s blade, I can’t say for certain. But I imagine… there would be repercussions, yes.”

“Rhys,” Sharon’s eyes stayed fixed on Crompton, “remind me, when this is all over, and I’ve sorted out bingo, speed dating and council tax for Magicals Anonymous, to have a serious talk to someone about this vigilante, above-and-beneath-the-law thing that urban magic, as an institution, seems to have going for it. Don’t get me wrong,” she added, as Crompton’s face twitched. “I see how having the plague pits burst and the stench of death drifting through the streets could be a serious issue. But I just want to make sure we get magical retaliation on some sort of equal footing. Steal a mystic umbrella – get Black Death. Borrow a sacred pencil, maybe that’s only acne. You see where I’m going with this?”

“No,” barked the old man.

“Yes,” corrected Rhys. “I think it sounds very reasonable, see?”

“But B-Man must have given the umbrella away first. Otherwise Swift would have found it when he went to the hospital,” mused Sharon, her eyes focused on a place only she could see. “Which means the only guy who’d know where the blade is now, is…⁠” She gestured, not sure how best to avoid the words “dead of the plague”.

“Well, I can see the welfare of the city is in good hands,” grunted Crompton.

“You…⁠” Sharon squared up to him, shoulders back and chin out. “You sit alone in here day after day, year after year, smoking those cigarettes and watching
Countdown
, and when the sun goes down and the instinct calls, you pick up a sacrificial blade and walk through the streets searching for a stranger who looks alone, and cold, and unloved, and you walk by them as casual as anything and prick them as you pass and then they die. I mean, it may not be death, it may not be blood and rot and flesh left after, but they cease to be. And
you
do that, so I’m really not sure you get to judge, no matter what you say about death and plague and that, because actually…⁠” – ⁠she swayed with the effort of not shouting – “⁠… it may be what has to be done but it’s still fucking murder!”

“I save you.” Crompton spoke so low he was barely audible. “I save you. I do what you won’t. I
save
you. And you know it.”