Our Lady of the Streets

by Tom Pollock

  The child gurgled impatiently and reached for the flask. For a second, for even the glimmer of a chance, Beth was tempted to risk it. She popped the rubber stopper from the flask.

  ‘Lady Bradley!’

  Wings fluttered somewhere in the darkness. A white plastic bin bag ghosted in under the strip lights, borne by a pigeon. It billowed and folded into the shape of a swollen skull, with eggshells in the eye sockets. Beth hurriedly crammed the stopper back into the bottle and pushed the bottle into her hoodie pocket, but it wasn’t her Gutterglass was worried about.

  ‘Lady Bradley, we have a problem.’

  ‘What problem?’

  Gutterglass hesitated, eggshells blinking stupidly. Beth started to ask again when he blurted out, ‘Three hundred and fifty-eight.’

  *

  ‘Do we know who?’

  ‘The stoneskins are checking now.’

  They were back in the kitchen – Gutterglass’ paranoid sentries made it the perfect place to confer when they didn’t want to be overheard. The white bin bag had been settled on the shoulders of a makeshift body, but the hasty construction showed none of Glas’ usual attention to detail. He shed out-of-circulation coins and gelatinous bits of pasta as he fidgeted around the room.

  ‘Maybe you miscounted?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Maybe whoever it is just slipped out for something to eat …’

  Glas didn’t answer. He began chewing on a bacon-rind cuticle and accidentally pulled it free of his hand. He stood there for a moment with it dangling from his mouth, then spat it out like a cat with a dead mouse.

  ‘Maybe … ’ Beth began again, but she heard the rusty squeak of the hammer arm outside extending and retracting, and then the door was shoved open. Petris appeared framed in the doorway, then disappeared, then reappeared again a foot from Beth’s face.

  ‘We have a name,’ the granite monk said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Timon. He didn’t tell anyone where he was going and no one’s seen him all afternoon.’

  ‘Do they know why you were asking?’ Gutterglass asked, but Petris’ only answer was a stare and a withering, ‘Please.’

  ‘Timon?’ Gutterglass sounded puzzled. ‘He’s only just arrived. Why would he suddenly just up and go again now that he’s reached us?’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t like what he saw,’ Petris grunted with a spray of stony dust. ‘Not sure I blame him. Our first desertion. Still, it could be a lot worse; no one seems to have any idea why he’s gone, so if he’s running scared he’s kept it to himself. We don’t have a crisis, not yet.’

  Beth slumped back against the countertop. ‘Sure we do,’ she muttered, certain she was right.

  Gutterglass looked at her sharply. ‘My Lady?’

  ‘It’s not a desertion,’ she said, ‘it’s a defection. He’s going to Her.’

  Gutterglass straightened in alarm and Beth felt the sudden shift of attention from inside the statue as Petris turned his gaze on her.

  ‘How can you possibly know that?’ Glas demanded.

  Beth thought of the limestone-robed kid smoking miserably in the rain.

  Lady B, please: give him his mortality back. Let him die for real – let him rest. He’s earned it.

  He hadn’t even asked for himself, just for Al. She bit her lip and then said, ‘Because there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for his best friend.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  Brackish, clay-coloured water splashed onto Pen’s face and washed the dirt from between her fingers as she climbed. There was grit in her mouth and grit lodged in the folds of her eyelids. Her arms and hips and back ached. The city’s convulsions had broken the river and her destination was now perched on top of a five-hundred-foot escarpment. The only climbable side was, lamentably, the one with a torrent running down it. The waterfall wasn’t steep, mercifully, but it was slippery, a jagged façade of packed earth and tree roots and broken pipework. Pen placed each hand and foot with painstaking slowness, feeling the space underneath her like a vacuum in her gut.

  To try to take her mind off it, she played a game. She pretended to herself that Espel was climbing beside her, with that oh-so-casual scramble she used on London-Under-Glass’s rooftops, her blonde hair plastered to her symmetrical forehead by the river water.

  ‘Come on, Countess,’ Pen imagined her saying. ‘Left foot here, right hand on that pipe there – see, it’s easy. Tell you what, make it up another ten feet and …’

  ‘I can have a rest?’ Head bent against the flow of water, Pen’s lips moved to fill in her half of the conversation.

  ‘You wish, Countess. But you can have a kiss, and then we go another ten feet.’

  ‘What do I get then?’

  ‘Another kiss.’ The steeplejill beamed an imaginary smile. ‘I am prepared to be very generous with my kisses.’

  Pen made it the ten feet, and the ten feet after that, and claimed her prizes. They were, she had to admit, pretty disappointing compared to her memories of the real thing.

  When she finally reached the top, she turned and sat herself on the edge. She was sodden – she’d climbed the whole way in the river’s full flow. She blew water off her nose. The old dye factory crouched on the river bend behind her like the husk of a giant insect, but she didn’t want to look at it yet. Instead, she gazed out over the broken city.

  In the middle distance, the spokes of the London Eye emerged from the river at crazy angles, its passenger pods dangling like clods of earth from a bicycle wheel. The spasms of the earth had split the Thames and its tributaries, glimmered in silver veins that zigzagged between those buildings still standing. Here and there, Pen could see rolling banks of fog where the river water encountered Fever Streets and erupted into sudden vapour.

  A breeze picked up, piercing her wet headscarf and freezing her ears. With a creaking sound that carried across the skyline, a cluster of satellite dishes tore themselves free from the roof of the old MI6 headquarters and were caught by the wind; it bore the dishes up and away as if they were as insubstantial as autumn leaves, scattering and swirling them across the sky. A flock of seagulls cawed and banked to avoid them. Pen eyed the dishes as they drifted over the rooftops. There was a rumour that Mater Viae could hear through those receivers, and far too many rumours like that had turned out to be true.

  Warily she watched the dishes bob up over the Olympic Stadium, gathered in from the east in the same contortions that had shattered the city and elevated Canary Wharf to its new hilltop. The stadium sat on the banked-up rubble of the houses it had crushed on its way in. Forces Pen couldn’t begin to guess at had twisted it into an infinity loop filled with dust and earth, spines snapped, glass teeth jutting from every window frame, cables flapping in the breeze.

  The wind blew stronger, shifting to the east, and the dishes scattered. The one Pen had her eye on gusted back towards her and she stiffened, ready to run if it reached her, but it dipped over the edge of the glittering thatch of broken steel and glass that covered the hill Canary Wharf now stood on. Then, buoyed up on a sudden thermal, it rose over a ridge of houses before catching on a protruding spire.

  Pen felt her throat dry as she focused on the building that had snared the dish. The spire led down into the broad sweep of a dome and then the bulk of a familiar white stone edifice that shone blinding in the spring sun.

  St Paul’s, it seemed, had survived the city’s convulsions relatively untouched. Even the cranes still reared over it, spindly dormant sentinels.

  Pen stared for a moment, then almost as a reflex, for anything else to look at, she jammed her fingers into her jeans pocket and wangled out the little glass sphere that had brought her here. Her heart snagged on the sight of the black stormcloud twisting through it.

  For the millionth time, she lifted the marble to her eye and tried to separate the minuscule images as they rushed through the glass. She closed her left eye and peered with her right until she felt it twitching in its socket, but it did no good: the p
ictures were too small and moved too fast for her to track them, and even if they hadn’t been, there were millions upon millions of them, each showing her a different reflection from inside London-Under-Glass: reflections from the inverted city’s mirrors and windows and puddles and falling raindrops. Even if she could see each frame with perfect clarity, she could sit here for a decade and she’d probably still never see Espel in any of them.

  Espel.

  Pen’s stomach flipped over at the memory of what the Mirrorstocracy had done to her steeplejill: the awakening of her id, the terrible, blameless passenger consciousness inside her, how it had fought Espel for possession of her own body, her primal and most intimate home. And then, as always, the nausea gave way to a fierce burst of pride as Pen remembered the painful, faltering, incredible steps Es had taken in collaboration with that id, doing what no one had ever believed possible: making a truce with the second mind nesting in her skull.

  And then, as always, that pride shivered into icy fear as Pen relived the mirror-glass closing behind her, sealing out Espel’s face as Mater Viae’s gaunt, clay-skinned soldier advanced on her with predatory steps.

  For three months now, whenever Pen had woken up sweating and clawing at the duvet, she’d barely had to choke out a syllable before Beth was there, holding her, the light from her green eyes warding off the dark. Pen had clung to her. She hadn’t felt weak. She hadn’t felt ashamed. Now she did. Now she felt like a damned fool.

  She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, straightened her back, and then stood. There was nothing about this she’d chosen, nothing that was fair. All there was now was one foot in front of the other.

  ‘It’s no use to you, Pen,’ she whispered to herself. ‘You can’t use it.’ She closed her fingers tightly around the marble. ‘You can give it up. You can give it up.’ She had to concentrate to make sure she said it instead of her.

  The doorway to the factory creaked, but unlike the last time Pen had been there, the space beyond wasn’t flooded with darkness. Beams of cold spring light skewered the building through holes in the roof. Pen stood on the threshold for a moment and let a shiver pass through her. She took in the bare brick walls and the vast red stains of lichen and the vats and pipes and distilling columns. The place felt small; the darkness that had once made it seem infinite had been banished, but a residue of fear still clung to it. It was like a washed-out poison bottle with the skull label still stuck on.

  ‘Hello?’ she called. ‘Johnny?’

  Only echoes answered her. She advanced, the scuff and scratch of her trainers keeping her company.

  ‘Johnny?’ she called. She bit her reconstructed lip and then said, ‘I’ve got something for you. Something from the other side of the mirror – unique, like we agreed, remember? I want to trade …’

  No answer again. Pen felt a lump rise into her throat, because Johnny Naphtha ignoring an invitation to trade was like a buzzard ignoring a buffalo corpse.

  ‘Hello?’

  A scuffling sound came from behind a thicket of pipes, then it stopped abruptly, almost guiltily.

  Pen faltered. That sound hadn’t come from any oil-soaked brogue. ‘Who’s there?’ she demanded.

  No answer.

  She stopped still and listened. Very faintly, she thought she could hear the distinctly un-synod sound of someone trying not to hyperventilate. She eyed the pipes.

  Someone’s hiding from me, she thought, someone scared.

  She stifled the urge to run over and look. Instead, she sat on the ground and crossed her legs. She slipped Goutierre’s Eye back into her pocket and laid both hands open and palm-up at her sides.

  ‘I’m just here,’ she announced, clearly and calmly. ‘I’m not coming any closer, but I’m not going away, either.’

  She didn’t say I’m not going to hurt you because if someone felt the need to state that it was usually a sign it wasn’t true.

  ‘Come out if you want to talk,’ she said. ‘Or stay back there if you want. I’m in no rush.’ She sighed and looked at the walls. ‘Doesn’t look like the guys I came to see are here, which means I have to go home without what I came here for.’ She paused. ‘That’s a trip I can put off pretty much for ever,’ she added fervently.

  ‘Did … did you get sent out for milk?’ It was a high-pitched voice: a boy’s childish treble.

  ‘My dad sent me out for milk once, but I lost the money he gave me. He shouted at me for like half an hour, then he didn’t speak to me for a week, like he’d used it all up with the shouting.’

  A small grubby hand emerged from behind the pipework, followed by a bony forearm and then a shock of tangled, dusty hair. Then the boy’s whole head popped out and he blinked at Pen. He couldn’t have been more than eight. He didn’t smile, and Pen didn’t smile either. She knew better than to try to persuade him to trust her. She just sat there, with her hands open and empty, letting him see her, letting him make up his mind.

  ‘Was it milk?’ he asked again. ‘Or a paper? Or cigarettes? My dad sent me out for cigarettes once. He’s pretty dumb. The cornershop man was never going to sell them to me. I knew I was going to get yelled at. Maybe he did too. You afraid your folks are going to shout at you?’ he asked. ‘For not getting what you were supposed to get?’

  Pen shook her head, but solemnly, to indicate that even though she wasn’t, that would have been a wholly reasonable thing to be afraid of.

  The boy came wholly out from behind the pipes and stood, swivelling from his hips, his arms flapping by his sides. He was the kind of bony that made him look like he had too many joints. He scratched the top of his head. ‘Didn’t mean to take your spot,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know it was yours.’

  ‘It’s not,’ Pen said, shrugging. The boy shrugged too. He walked to within ten feet of her, frowned, and then, apparently judging this to be a safe distance, he sat down opposite her on the dusty floor. She watched him begin to cross his legs to mimic hers, then hesitate as he realised that tangling his legs like that would make it that much harder to escape if she turned out to be hostile, and the fact that Pen’s legs were crossed in turn made him marginally safer from her. Maybe he knew she’d done that on purpose, maybe not. He drew his knees up under his chin instead, put his hands palm-down on the ground. He looked like a frog ready to jump.

  ‘What happened?’ Pen asked after a long silence.

  ‘Got lost,’ he said, simply.

  ‘Your parents left you?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Got lost,’ he emphasised, and scowled at her for not listening. ‘Not parents, neither,’ he corrected her. ‘Mum. Our street got hot and melted our car, but we weren’t in it. We ran instead, but I got left behind. She told me to hold onto her hand but the ground shook and I couldn’t.’ He sighed, a big, demonstratively adult, sigh. ‘I tried, but I bet she won’t believe me. Bet the first thing she does when I see her is yell at me for not holding onto her hand.’

  ‘Parents, huh?’ Pen said, rolling her eyes and smiling and trying very, very hard to swallow.

  The boy considered this for a while. ‘Yeah,’ he said. He frowned at her. ‘What happened to your face?’

  Pen ran a finger over the ridge of one of her scars. ‘Got into a fight.’

  ‘Cool,’ the kid whispered, impressed. ‘Bad one?’

  ‘Yep.’

  The kid beamed. ‘Was it a monster?’ he asked.

  Pen didn’t ask what monsters he’d seen that might have made him jump to that conclusion. ‘Yes, it was.’

  ‘Did you kill it?’

  Pen hesitated and glanced over her shoulder. As luck had it, she could see St Paul’s framed in the doorway, still standing, its dome shining hazily in the sun. ‘Actually? I don’t know if I did.’

  The boy pondered this. ‘I could help you kill it,’ he said after a while. ‘And then you could help me find my mum.’

  The outlandish balance of this proposal struck Pen so hard that for a second she wondered if the kid was Johnny Nap
htha in disguise. Then she laughed. ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘My friend and I put it out of action pretty good. I can try and help you find your mum anyway, though,’ she offered. She probably could, too, if the woman was still alive. There were only a handful of uninfected places where London’s trapped residents gravitated to, and she knew them all: the big Asda in Clapham Junction, the shopping centre in Liverpool Street Station, or maybe she’d been at Selfridges the whole time, though Pen shrivelled inwardly at the thought of going back there and being thrown out again.

  The boy looked suspicious.

  ‘Why?’ he asked.

  Pen shrugged.

  ‘It’s what friends do, I guess.’

  ‘Are we friends now?’ the boy frowned again, but not suspicious any more, only puzzled. Then he beamed at her. ‘I have lots of friends.’

  ‘Oh yeah? What are they like?’

  He looked at her critically. ‘Not as tall as you.’

  Pen snorted. ‘Yeah, well, I suppose I would be freakishly lanky for an eight-year-old.’

  ‘Me too,’ said the boy. ‘I’m the tallest in my—’

  He broke off as a pair of clay-grey hands breached the floor under him like water and seized his ankles. Pen started hard. She saw the boy’s skin go white around the Masonry Man’s grip, and then he vanished, dragged under like the ground was a riptide. He didn’t even have time to cry out.

  Pen tried to lunge forward, but her crossed legs were too long and awkward and she couldn’t get them untangled quickly enough. She sprawled forward onto her face. A second later she was up on her knees, her hands pattering over the floor where the boy had been sitting, but they just left handprints in the dust on the solid concrete.

  Pen screamed.