The Bride Wore Black Leather

exactly what he was drinking. It might be sparkling water from the River Ganges, and therefore good for his karma. Or it might be still water from the Reichenbach Falls. Or possibly even shimmering water from Chernobyl, the only isotonic energy drink that glowed in the dark. And if you drank enough of it, so would you. Already people around him could be heard asking if he couldn’t tune his existentialism down a bloody bit, so they could be sure where they’d left their tables?
    I was rather more interested in Old Father Time, who’d come in specially from Shadows Fall (that quiet backwater town where legends go to die when the world stops believing in them, an elephants’ graveyard for the supernatural). He was holding court at one of the larger tables and being avuncular to one and all. A wiry but imposing figure with a sharp-featured face and a great mane of pure white hair, he dressed to the very height of Victorian fashion. He stood straight-backed at the head of his table, both hands clutching firmly at his lapels, dispensing wisdom for all those with the wit to hear. There wasn’t anything he didn’t know about Time, so I wandered over to have a quiet word with him. He nodded happily at me and moved away from his table to grasp my hand in both of his.
    “John Taylor, my dear boy! Come, talk with me. I’ve been expecting you. And congratulations, on becoming Walker! About time you settled down and stopped making trouble for everyone, eh? Eh?”
    “I’m not retiring,” I said. “I’m . . . changing direction.”
    “Quite so, dear boy, quite so.”
    “Who’s running the Time Tower, while you’re enjoying yourself here?” I said.
    “Oh, I’m there, too,” said Old Father Time. “And I’m back at Shadows Fall, in the Gallery of Bone. Being in more than one place at the same time is one of the first things you learn in the Time business.” He let go of his lapels long enough to beckon me in close, lowering his voice as much as he could and still be heard. “There’s something I haven’t been meaning to tell you, until you were ready, and now I fear I may have left it too late. Now what was it, what was it? Hmm? My memory isn’t what it used to be, if it ever was. Ah yes! We, that is to say all of us here in the Nightside, we are approaching . . . a moment of decision. You know the sort of thing, one of those focal moments in Time, where everything depends on the decision one vital person will make. Which may or may not be you. The moment is very near. Oh yes. And whatever it is that’s about to happen . . . it could see the sun finally rise over the Nightside, an end to the longest night the world has ever known; and then nothing would ever be the same again.”
    “And it had to happen the night before my wedding,” I said heavily.
    “Well,” said Old Father Time, “that’s Time.”
    He went back to his table, his eyes far away, looking at the things only he could see.
    “Don’t mind him,” said Time’s usual companion, the young woman called Mad. “You should never take him too seriously. I don’t.”
    Mad was a punk, and proud of it. All leathers and chains and uncomfortable-looking piercings, with the word HATE tattooed on both sets of knuckles. I was pretty sure I hadn’t noticed her at Time’s table, but then Mad had a gift for turning up where she wasn’t wanted. (There were those who said Mad was short for Madeleine; but I’ve never been convinced.) She looked at me with her angry, fey eyes.
    “He’s been going on about the End of All Things for as long as I’ve known him,” she said carelessly. “And we’re all still here. Hey, want to see a really upsetting party trick I can do with two flick-knives and an unwilling volunteer?”
    “Not right now,” I said.
    Harry Fabulous was on the prowl and on the prod, moving easily from one group to another, smiling his professional smile and working his professional charm, happy and eager to supply everyone with anything that was bad for them, at very reasonable prices. I hadn’t actually invited him, but trying to keep Harry Fabulous out of a convivial gathering was like trying to keep ants out of a picnic. Always sharply dressed, always smiling a smile that never reached his eyes, Harry used to be the best go-to man in the Nightside. He could get you absolutely anything if you could meet his price. But then something happened, in the back room of some very private members-only club, and he was never the