The Minority Council (21 page)

I went to my sent messages log, found the email I’d dispatched to the seventeen Aldermen whose names began with “R,” pressed my fingertip into the screen just below the file attachment sign, and pulled my finger back. The attachment fizzed out loud as it came with me, a thick tangle of amber-gold light that coalesced back into a bubble in the palm of my hand. I closed my fingers around it, trapping it like a butterfly. Then I logged off, shut down my computer and, just in case, stood back and threw a fistful of rolling electricity up its power cord and into its hard drive. The back of the machine popped open, ejecting loose circuitry and a gush of dark smoke that made our eyes water. I wouldn’t have it said that of all the computers in all the building, mine had been the only one that miraculously wasn’t affected by the spam attack.

Back onto the main floor the Aldermen were too busy arguing in their office for anyone to pay attention to the open-plan space outside with its wrecked and smoking machines. I ducked nonetheless below the line of the desks, then felt along the floor until I heard the whispering of data cables beneath the thin carpet, and pushed my bubble of light down towards it. The light wriggled beneath my hand like a trapped worm, then burst outwards, liberated and splitting into smaller parts that rushed out across the floor like a cloud of frightened fireflies. I watched as these baubles of light writhed their way
up cables and slithered round the edges of screens, bounced across the tops of computer drives and finally attached themselves like golden leeches to the back of a select few computers.

Seventeen computers, to be exact. With luck, the same ones I’d infected with the tracking spell, attached to the email and lit up for me to see.

I moved between the rows of machines, looking for one which stood out brighter than the others, and ducking behind desks whenever a door opened. At one point a team of people marched towards the lift, remembered it wasn’t working and, grumbling, headed for the stairs. Later, a door briefly opened and I heard a voice say, “… imps don’t just move nests during the mating season…”

I spent ten minutes skulking between computers, looking for the glow of my tracking spell. It was a piece of resonant magic that grew brighter when closer to similar enchantments. In theory, wherever someone had rashly forwarded the original message with the original spell attached, the spell was replicated, creating a brighter signal for the tracker to latch on to. All that was left was to hope that Rumina, whoever she turned out to be, had forwarded the email to all her friends.

Fifteen recipients I found easily, but couldn’t detect much above a simple signature on the spell; no signs that the email had been forwarded by the reader or marked as anything but junk. The sixteenth proved to be an IT specialist, whose voice I could hear from fifteen yards away through his office door. “Stupid fucking firewalls can’t even keep out fucking spam is this what we fucking pay subscriptions for NO I DO NOT WANT TO UPGRADE TODAY…!”

Finding the seventeenth and final computer took me another twenty minutes, and it turned out not to be on the fourteenth but on the thirteenth floor. A repair crew was already at work down there. They were a mixture of IT consultants in short sleeves and comfortable shoes trying to reboot the system’s smouldering remains, and black-coated Aldermen attempting to exorcise any spam by less traditional means. The Aldermen weren’t doing badly—they’d wheeled in a TV and were plugging it into every electrical appliance, with a coil of thick bare-ended wire, drawing out the spell into a whirlwind of static rage that hammered against the inside of the TV but couldn’t quite break through the screen. It would be a laborious process, but in time they’d do it: then they’d start asking just who’d spammed their system, and how. By then we meant to be gone.

There was, however, no avoiding being seen. Giving up on subterfuge, I marched across the office with all the arrogance I could muster, beelining for the toilets and keeping my glances left and right for the glow of my tracking spell to a minimum. One Alderman looked up with the beginning of recognition.

I cut him off before he could speak: “Fixed it yet? No? For Christ’s sake, what can be so bloody hard?”

Inside the toilet I counted to thirty, slowly, then set my face into a grimace of displeasure and marched back the way I’d come. I hadn’t seen the glow of the tracking spell on my first sweep of the floor, and couldn’t look again without arousing suspicion. The TV in the middle of the room was starting to smoke alarmingly, with cracks of light around the edge of the screen where the spam spell was breaking free. Several Aldermen were
flapping in frenzy as they tried to incant the spell into submission.

No glow to the right, no whiff of tracking spell to the left, doors beyond, all closed, names, titles on little plastic plaques, Accounting, Logistics, Law Liaison, Finance, there was a wall ahead, we’d have to leave if we were going to avoid suspicion, where the damn hell was that last tracking spell?, more doors, more offices: L. Carver, Department of Demons, Shades and Shadows; I. Latimer, Office of Unlicensed Exort-a-tions; P. Ling, Non-Human Resources; R. Rathnayake, Treasurer.

I turned without thinking, without slowing, put my hand on the last door handle, thanked every god there was that it was unlocked, pushed and let myself in with the ease of someone who’d planned on just this turn of events. The door clicked shut behind me and I remembered to breathe.

The office of R. Rathnayake, Treasurer, was small and ridiculously neat. What personal touches there were—here a picture of Big Ben, there a photograph of a woman feeding pigeons in St James’s Park—had been put up with such impersonal precision that they detracted from the soul of the place, leaving it more hollow than before. The in-tray was stacked medium high, the out-tray was filled to bursting. A stainless-steel mug stood on a cork mat and held a plastic filter. A computer sat on the desk, new and shining and, like all the others, hissing and spitting from the weight of enchantment trying to eat up its circuitry; meanwhile its keyboard was clean but worn, and the screen angled towards a large chair designed for maximum discomfort and a healthy spine.

I looked, and there it was, the glowing leech of my
tracking spell, lurking in a USB portal at the back of the computer and pulsing gently as it fed off all the magic I’d emailed into the system. I prized the spell free with my thumb and snuffed it out in a little pop of power. Then I sat down in front of the screen and dragged out into my hand the thick static mess of enchantments corrupting the hard drive. It came free as another bubble of spitting electric-white chaos, and I chucked it into snapping oblivion via the nearest mains socket. That done, I found myself looking at a desktop of such precise organisation that we felt a part of our soul shrink to behold it. All the rogue files, random shortcuts and clips of odd tunes that cluttered the computer system of the average mortal had been filed away, under such catchy titles as—“Committee Minutes, Preliminary,” “Committee Minutes, Final,” “Fiscal Reports 09-10” and “Fiscal Reports 10-11,” each of which contained yet more subfolders, and folders beyond that. I flicked through without knowing what I was looking for and, finding nothing exciting, opened the email.

My luck, always a fickle little madam, grudgingly gave the nod; she was already logged in.

And there was my email, flagged in red. She’d forwarded it to five people, creating the replication that my tracker spell had found so tasty. Three had replied: C. Caughey, L. Holta and T. Kwan. I knew one of them already: C. Caughey—Cecil, for who knew what crime his parents had chosen to punish him—an Alderman who took executive magic to its logical conclusion, choosing to spend his days ordering others to do legwork for him while he sat at the top of the office bewailing the trials of being in management. T. Kwan I’d also heard of—had there been a Tommy Kwan who’d once sent me a memo
about waste in the catering department? Two hadn’t replied—B. Fadhil and

and really it had been too good to last, hadn’t it?

and R. Templeman.

I leant back in the chair, lacing my fingers behind my head.

Templeman.

An Alderman who actually bothered to talk.

Too good to be bloody true.

I read down.

From: R. Rathnayake

To: T. Kwan; L. Holta; R. Templeman; C. Caughey; B. Fadhil

Subject: Fw: What the hell is this?

Just received this. How does he know? What does he know? Who’s talking? There are clearly references to both the eye and the culicidae here—does he know the rest? We need to meet as soon as possible; tell no one else, we don’t know who to trust.

Yours,

Rumina

I scrolled over to the replies. T. Kwan was brief and to the point:

From: T. Kwan

To: R. Rathnayake; L. Holta; R. Templeman; C. Caughey; B. Fadhil

Subject: Re: Fw: What the hell is this?

Usual place, at six?

Tommy

L. Holta had a lot more to say.

From: L. Holta

To: R. Rathnayake; T. Kwan; R. Templeman; C. Caughey; B. Fadhil

Subject: Re: Re: Fw: What the hell is this?

Rumina –

What the fuck is this? What kind of stupid half-witted game is this man playing? Does he know what he’s dealing with? Jesus this is a total bloody balls-up. Someone must be talking to him. Let’s just hope he’s too bloody thick-headed to understand what it means. Suggest we close the eye for now until we can find what’s leaking, and make sure the summoner is out of town. The last thing we need now is Swift getting his hands on the culicidae.

Lucy

Finally, C. Caughey, clearly not a man for whom crises happened, gave a more considered view:

From: C. Caughey

To: R. Rathnayake; T. Kwan; R. Templeman; L. Holta; B. Fadhil

Subject: Re: Re: Re: Fw: What the hell is this?

I’d say this isn’t actually that bad. Of course it’s a little alarming that someone is attempting to inform Swift about the eye, but the details they’ve given are extraordinarily vague and he clearly isn’t taking them seriously. The only thing which I can foresee likely to make the situation worse would be overreacting now
and provoking him into an actual investigation. All in all, a lucky escape.

Yours,

Cecil Caughey

Chairman

P.S. There’s some sort of file attached to this email—has anyone else got it? My computer’s playing up and the IT boffins are useless at talking sense.

No one had bothered to answer this last question.

I sat back in Rumina Rathnayake’s office chair, nudging it from side to side with my foot. Then I went through her desk. For the most part its contents were depressingly practical—stationery, a packet of aspirin, a couple of over-the-counter pick-me-ups for when the day got hard, a shirt in a dry-cleaner’s bag and, right at the back of one drawer, a pack of cigarettes, two of the dozen gone. I nudged the last drawer shut, turned back to the computer—and froze as, with a merry beep, the screen flickered and a new message appeared.

From: R. Templeman

To: R. Rathnayake

Subject: Re: Fw: What the hell is this?

I opened it carefully, half expecting it to bite, a virus bigger and badder than the one I’d made, leaping out of the screen with tooth and claw.

Just words, nothing more.

They said:

Swift, I know you’re there. I know you’re reading this. Imps do not spontaneously move nests without incentive, and I can recognise a Trojan spell on my hard drive.

I apologise for the situation—it was not my intent to deceive you unnecessarily on any count.

I will call you this evening, if that suits you.

As always, I would urge you to desist from any rash action, and please be aware that this building is being monitored by the fairy godmother’s associates. I assume that the business with the hoax bomb alert was your doing—it will not be enough. They will find you, unless you move quickly.

Rest assured I remain,

Yours sincerely,

Richard Templeman