The Minority Council by Kate Griffin Page A

did. I heard a voice raised in surprise; then the door eased back,the shape of a man blocking the light. I looked behind me and, yes, they were there, dozens of them swarming for cover beneath the bins and down the drainage pipes to the sewers. The smallest was no bigger than a Christmas orange, the largest had made it to the size of a young terrier. Their eyes reflected yellow in the night, their tails were mottled pink. They were only there for a second, but it was long enough. Morris Prince had seen the rats.
    The door opened further. I was already heading at a swagger for the end of the mews and the lights of the main road when a voice called out, “You! Stop!”
    I didn’t.
    “You! Hey, you!”
    There were running footsteps; and when a hand seized my collar and an arm swung me with Newtonian inevitability into the nearest wall hard enough to wind me, I wasn’t surprised. Less predictable was the flick-knife pressed against our throat. Prince still stood in the spill of light from the door; at a gesture I was dragged inside, and the door slammed shut. This time, Prince did his own work, whacking an arm across my throat and pushing me back until I couldn’t see much beyond his hairless scalp and the ceiling.
    “Who are you?”
    “Sinclair,” I wheezed. “And thanks, but no thanks, I’m going to go now…”
    The pressure tightened, causing a wave of hot black spots to blossom and burst across my eyes. I gagged and scrabbled at his arm, and he eased off just enough to let me breathe. “The rats,” he demanded. “Yours?”
    “Midnight Mayor’s,” I replied. “He’s a sorcerer. He uses the rats, the pigeons, the foxes; they all spy for him.”
    “Why here?”
    “I told you, he’s coming.”
    “Why should I believe you?”
    “You know what, maybe you shouldn’t. Maybe I should just go now. If the rats are already here, he’s not far behind.” His eyes were bright as they looked into mine; I could see every fleck of grey in the pattern of his iris. “I tried to warn you, give you time,” I added, “but sorry, too late. If you’re going to die, I don’t see why I should get burnt with you, and so if you don’t mind…”
    He grabbed a handful of my hair and slammed my head back against the wall hard enough to set off a ringing in our ears. “Who are you?!” he roared.
    “Dudley Sinclair! I have contacts with the Aldermen, they warned me to warn you. The Midnight Mayor is going to kill you,” I wheezed. “He thinks you took someone he knows, he’s going to destroy this house. The Aldermen say this will cause a war between them and the dusthouses, they don’t want that to happen, so they sent me to get you out of his way, to prevent it. I’m just a messenger!” I wailed. “I was told, get to Morris Prince, get him out, and then hide! For Christ’s sake, I don’t want to deal with some fucking mad sorcerer!”
    He hesitated, eyes darting all over our face. It wasn’t hard to feign fear. “If you are lying, they will never find your grave.”
    “Sure, sure,” I gasped. “Just let me go and I won’t…”
    “No. We go together.”
    He marched down the hall while I was dragged behind him. A door opened into a garage containing three equally tasteless cars, ranging from tasteless in size to tasteless in speed. He opened the back door to one ofthese, a silver Mercedes that would have blended into any landscape about as convincingly as Michael Jackson in Mogadishu, and I was pushed inside. One man got in next to me, and Prince sat next to the driver.
    The car was gunned into life, the garage door slid back, and we sped off.
    I was a rabbit in a car of hungry wolves.
    The lights rushing by in the night-time streets spread their hypnotic patterns across the dark interior of the car. I huddled back in my seat, and wheedled.
    “Hey, guys, seriously. I was just meant to give you the message…”
    “Enough.” Prince’s eyes were fixed everywhere on the streets around us. “Tell me about