Our Lady of the Streets (The Skyscraper Throne) (10 page)

Beth felt something stir in her gut. She thought of Timon’s pleading face the moment before her spear slammed into it. ‘
Yeah
,’ she said quietly.

‘You okay?’

‘
Yeah
.’

‘You’re lying to me right now, aren’t you?’

‘
Yeah
.’

‘Ah – there you are!’

Beth looked around sharply as her dad appeared ruddy-faced in the fire-escape doorway. He carried a tray laden down with three mugs and a teapot with a coil of steam writhing from the spout.

‘Somehow I knew,’ he said as he ambled over, balanced the tray on the gargoyle’s head and wiped his hands on his trousers, ‘that given the best opportunity we’ve had in ages to get some sleep, the two of you would be up somewhere nattering.’

He poured tea into two of the mugs and Beth and Pen accepted them gratefully. He hesitated over the third, and Beth sighed and took the pot from him, filled the final mug and thrust it into his hands.

‘Only if you’re sure,’ he mumbled. ‘Don’t want to intrude.’

‘
Don
’
t worry
,’ Beth said. ‘
We were only talking about what Pen
’
s going to get up to on her date tomorrow night
.’

‘Oh, right.’ He grinned. ‘Where are you taking the young lady?’

‘A bathroom in Frostfield High that was condemned for asbestos,’ Pen said drily. ‘Romantic, huh?’

Paul Bradley pursed his lips, considering it. ‘Positively upmarket compared to some of the dives in Deptford Beth’s mum dragged me to when we first met,’ he said finally. ‘She had this thing for punk bands.’

‘
Things we do for love, eh?
’ Beth smiled around the little dull thorn she always felt in her heart when her dad mentioned her mum.

‘B.’ There was a tightness in Pen’s voice that pulled the smile from Beth’s lips. ‘There’s something else we need to talk about.’

‘What’s going on?’ Pen asked as the three of them descended the stationary escalators that zigzagged through the men’s wear and women’s wear floors. Trash hands were crawling like spiders over the pillars, prising the mirrored glass from the walls and bearing it away past the mannequin’s blank gazes.

‘
I told Glas to get rid of all the mirrors
,’ Beth replied. ‘
If Mater Viae
’
s still holding the Mirrorstocracy
’
s leash, then it
’
s probably a good idea not to give them a hundred ways to look into our house uninvited
.’ She winced. ‘
’Course, it would have been an even better idea not to set up in a dress shop packed out with half of London
’
s reflective surfaces – but hey, we live and learn
.’

They reached the fourth floor and shouldered through the doors into the electronics section. The most hardcore half-dozen of Selfridges’ stranded tourists sat crosslegged on the floor, gazing despondently at the TV screens.

‘Excuse me,’ Pen said. ‘Sorry, but we need to borrow the room.’

None of them looked round.

‘Hey!’ she shouted. A pouchy, middle-aged man put his finger to his lips and shushed her, but he didn’t take his eyes from the TV.

Pen sighed. She felt the decision – her
suggestion
to the Wire Mistress – like a nerve twitch at the base of her neck. Six wire tendrils unfurled from around her and twisted slowly through the air. She closed her eyes briefly, but she could still feel them. Their barbs shivered in the breeze like they were hairs on her arms.

Perfectly synchronised, the six wire strands found the power switches for the TV screens. The room became instantly silent.

When Pen reopened her eyes, the six men were staring at her in open-mouthed horror.

Their fear sparked something in the back of Pen’s mind; her pulse quickened. She felt the wires curl slightly, one in front of each of their faces, tensing to strike—

She stamped down on the urge. That hot metallic taste at the back of her throat didn’t belong to her. She’d felt this urge to kill before and she knew it wasn’t hers, even if it felt like it was – even if, in that moment, it felt like it was her dearest wish to end these frightened men, to discharge the violence and the anger pent up in her into their fragile flesh.

It
’
s not me
.

The wire whined, high and quiet, like an insect in her ear, but the steel tendrils relaxed. Pen stood very still and
pressed her nails hard into the palms of her hands until the urge subsided.

Behind her shoulder, engines and generators and nightclub bass surged together into a threatening growl. ‘
Get out
.’

The six men fled.

Beth came to her shoulder. ‘
You okay?
’ she asked.

‘I’m fine,’ Pen replied, unclenching her fists and letting the blood tingle back into her palms. ‘I’m just adjusting.’

She walked over to the bank of TVs and one by one flicked them back on, then picked up the remotes and held down the channel scroll buttons until they were showing the BBC, ITV and Sky news channels.

Beth stood in front of the screens. She pulled her hood down and her sleeves up. From this little distance, the tiny tiles that covered her skin looked like reptile scales. Her dad stood beside her, a protective hand on her shoulder.

‘
What are we looking at, Pen?
’ Beth asked.

‘It’s more what we
aren’t
looking at,’ she replied. ‘What haven’t we seen at all?’

They went back to watching the screens. One of them showed a satellite image of London, a red line demarcating the affected area. A government phone number was scrolling continuously across the bottom of the screen. Another showed the acting Prime Minister barking something; the volume was too low to let them hear it clearly. The third replayed the footage from the previous night’s disaster. Pen’s gut twisted as she watched the Sewermanders fly into the helicopter again and again in slow motion.

Beth shook her head slowly. ‘
Still not getting
—’ she began, but Paul Bradley interrupted her.

‘Refugees,’ he murmured.

Pen snapped her fingers and pointed at him. ‘Right?’ she asked him. ‘I mean, look at that map.’ She pointed to the leftmost TV screen. ‘Something like fifteen per cent of the country used to live inside that red line. The streets are empty now. I know some people died in the symptoms, but we’re not exactly hip-deep in corpses, are we? So’ – she spread her arms – ‘where did everybody go? They can’t all be hiding out in the Clapham Junction Asda.’

‘
They got evacuated
,’ Beth said. ‘
Like your mum and dad. They got out
.’

‘Then like your dad says, where are the refugees? It ought to be bloody
chaos
out there, B. We should be seeing pictures of tents and trucks and food shortages and who knows what else. When that hurricane hit New Orleans a few years back, they ran out of food, water, medicine – the works. They were living in stadiums. It was bedlam. Do you know how many people lived in New Orleans back then?’

‘
No
—’

‘Me neither, but I bet it’s a hell of a lot less than the eight million who used to live here.’ Pen was pacing, buzzing with energy as she talked it out. She waved her hands agitatedly, and it was only when she saw the wild way that they were looking at her that she realised the wire strands trailing from her back were mimicking the motion. She dropped her hands back to her sides.

‘It’s been bugging me for ages, but it wasn’t until I saw what I saw yesterday that I put my finger on it.’

Beth looked at her sharply. ‘
Until you saw what, yesterday, Pen?
’

‘At the synod’s factory – one of Mater Viae’s Masonry soldiers took a child.’

‘
A child? I don
’
t understand
.’

‘The synod must have abandoned the place because there was this kid hiding out there. A clayling reached right out of the floor and dragged him back under. At first I thought it had killed him, but it hadn’t. It took him
alive
, Beth – the way I’ve seen them take people before.’

And with that, she was back in that huge dark room beneath the palace in London-Under-Glass, her feet crunching the broken bottles strewn over the floor and knowing that for every bottle there was a victim: a scared, lonely human, kidnapped, their memories stolen and their body executed, weighted and dumped in the river.

She couldn’t keep the shiver out of her voice as she said, ‘I think I know where the missing people went.’ She walked to the wavy, frosted window and opened it out onto the night. Canary Wharf pierced the darkness in the distance, the only tower in London where the lights were still burning.

‘She took them.’

For a long time, no one spoke.

‘
I don
’
t know, Pen
,’ Beth said at last. ‘
There
’
s a lot of assumptions there
.’

Pen nodded slowly. ‘Yeah, there are,’ she admitted, ‘and
maybe they’re wrong, but they fit, and I don’t know what else does. And what if they’re
right
?’

She felt the hum in the barbs over her diaphragm as urgency entered her voice. ‘I
know
Her, B – I’ve seen Her do this before. People aren’t
people
to Her. She doesn’t care about them. She wouldn’t be taking them if She didn’t plan to use them. And there are thousands, and thousands missing, so—’ She hesitated, licked her lips. ‘So whatever that use is …’

‘
… it
’
s big
.’ Beth finished the sentence for her.

‘We have to find out what she’s up to. And if I’m right – if she does have them, we have to help those people – we have to try at least. B, there’s’ – Pen spread her hands and a helpless laugh burst out of her – ‘there’s no one else who
can
.’

Beth stood motionless for a second, arms folded. The green light from her eyes spread over the floor. She looked troubled. ‘
Maybe there
’
s no one who can at all
.’

She met Pen’s gaze then, and Pen shrank away, shriven by how sick her friend looked, how tired. Beth’s folded arms suddenly didn’t look defiant but like they were all that was holding her together.

‘
You saw what happened when we went after Timon
,’ she said. ‘
We could barely handle one of their patrols. We would have been swamped by the Sewermanders and reinforcement Masonry Men if we
’
d hung around any longer
.’ The city-voice sounded parched and weary, and Pen began to understand just how much yesterday’s battle had taken from her.

‘
I
’
m sorry, Pen. I believe you, and I want to help, I really do. But we won
’
t even get close
.’

Pen held her gaze, but Beth’s green eyes burned sadly in front of her until she let her head drop.

Pen turned and pulled the window shut.

‘There … there might still be a way.’ Paul Bradley’s voice was shaking.

Pen looked around, startled.

‘W-w-w—’ he started, then he stopped, wet his lips and tried again. ‘We can’t get in through force; Beth’s right about that, but there might be another way?’ His eyes, very wide, darted between the two girls’ faces before settling finally on Pen’s.

‘They’re … they’re taking people, you said. Taking humans. Well … ’ He smiled nervously and gestured to himself in a bashful
Ta-dah!

‘
Oh, for God
’
s sake
,’ Beth snapped, rolling her eyes.

‘It might work, Beth,’ he insisted. He spoke very fast, his words running into each other, as though afraid that if he paused for too long he might lose the courage to speak. ‘It might be the only way. Humans, right? We don’t have many, and it can’t be you’ – he gestured to Pen, who was staring at him. ‘She knows you – you said that. She’d spot you straight away. But she doesn’t know me. It
has
to be me.’ The truth of the words seemed to dawn on him even as he spoke them. ‘It’s like Parva said: there’s no one else.’

‘
This. Is. Ridiculous
,’ Beth snapped harshly. ‘
Even if I was willing to consider it, which I
’
m not, how would you get back to
us, genius? How would you get the word out? In case you hadn
’
t noticed, there
’
s kind of a shortage of people coming back
out
of Canary Wharf with stories to tell. Now, I don
’
t know why that is, but if they
’
re in there I doubt it
’
s
’
cause they
’
re having too much fun!
’

He flinched, but he didn’t look away from the architecture of his daughter’s face. Then he said what Pen had been afraid he was going to say from the moment he opened his mouth. ‘Maybe I don’t need to come back.’

‘
What?
’ Beth demanded bluntly.

‘Gutterglass,’ he answered, ‘Gutterglass could give me a – a rat, or a beetle or a Ribena carton or something to carry with me. She could watch, listen through it … I don’t know, but that way if I – even if I don’t … ’ He tailed off and then muttered, ‘Well, either way, you’d know.’

But Beth was already shaking her head. ‘
Glas doesn
’
t have that kind of range
,’ she said.

He frowned at this immediate dismissal. ‘You could at least ask her. How do you know?’

‘
I. JUST. KNOW
.’

Beth’s shout was like a building collapsing, and Pen wondered if somewhere in the miniaturised architecture of her body, some tower had given way to generate it. Beth slumped, breathing heavily. ‘
Let
’
s just drop it
,’ she muttered.

Pen eyed her. She wanted so badly to do what Beth said. She wanted to tell Paul his plan was brave but unworkable. She wanted to forget she’d ever brought it up.

But the serious face of the little boy at the synod’s factory
stared at her from her memory, and in her ears she heard the crunching of glass beneath her feet.

She met Beth’s gaze, but only for an instant.
I
’
m sorry, B
, she thought. ‘There might be another way,’ she said.

‘
What?
’ Beth’s voice was deadly quiet.

‘There might be another way,’ Pen repeated, ‘even without Glas: there might be a way to do what your dad’s talking about.’

Beth didn’t say anything, but Pen really believed that that was hope in his voice as he said, ‘What?’

‘Hold out your hand.’

He obeyed with a puzzled frown. Pen took his hand in both of hers and turned it gently over so the palm was towards the floor. She plucked a half-inch-long piece of wire with two barbs, one at either end, from the back of her own hand. It writhed and twisted in the air like a worm.

Paul’s eyes widened. ‘Will it hurt?’ he whispered.

Pen shook her head and smiled as best she could. ‘Like a jab at the doctor’s,’ she reassured him. ‘No worse than that.’

He swallowed hard, screwed his eyes closed and nodded. Avoiding her best friend’s burning green gaze, Pen laid the strand gently on his skin. The wire coiled, flopped restlessly, and then the barbs bit.

Pen felt a jolt. A shiver ran through her. In its wake another layer of sensation overlaid her skin, dulled as if by morphine but there. She felt the prickle of two-day stubble on her neck, the drag of an extra three stone of stomach
around her waist. She smelled the anxious fug of his sweat, suddenly close, as if it were coming from her own pores.

‘Mr B,’ she said, her voice a little unsteady, ‘open your eyes.’

She
felt
the reluctance in her own eyelids as he obeyed.

Pen blinked and inhaled sharply. It was vague, a hazy extra layer just beyond her own sight, but she could focus on it if she tried. Blurred by Paul Bradley’s frightened tears, she saw her own face.