Our Lady of the Streets

by Tom Pollock

  She screamed her throat raw and hammered on the floor. She shoved herself to her feet and cast about wildly, looking for any sign of the boy at all.

  But there was nothing: no tell tale ripple in the earth, no four-limbed ghosting shape under the floor. The Masonry Man had taken him deep.

  Pen ran at one wall and with another savage scream slammed her hand into the bricks. The pain flared, making her gasp, and she started breathing again. She stood bent over with her hands on her knees, sucking in air as the seconds came and went. Dimly she heard herself snarling for the clayling creature to come back, to come back for her, even though she had no means to fight it. She thought of the boy, darkness and earth pressing in on him, desperately straining at air that wasn’t there. Would the clayling breach again to let him breathe, or leave him buried?

  No. Pen was all but sure that the kid would live, at least for a little while. This wasn’t a kill; it was a kidnap. She’d seen Mater Viae’s creatures do it before.

  ‘There’s nothing you can do here,’ she told herself. ‘Run – run before it comes back.’ But she didn’t move. Absurdly, even though she knew there was nothing she could do to help the kid, it felt like abandoning him. ‘Run,’ she snarled at herself, and finally the muscles in her legs answered her.

  She stumbled out into the light of day, running before she even knew where she was going. She shook her head like she was dazed. She couldn’t work out what to do.

  Beth, she thought at last. I have to tell Beth.

  ‘She’s so much stronger than me,’ B had said. And Mater Viae wasn’t done yet. She was kidnapping people, and the only reason She’d do that, Pen knew, was if they had something the Lady of the Streets needed. This was important. This was bad.

  But then she slowed.

  Warn her – and then what? a desperate, lonely voice in her was demanding.

  ‘… she’s so much stronger than me,’ she remembered Beth saying.

  ‘We’re out of allies, and she’s so much stronger than me …’

  ‘… we’re out of allies …’

  Shading her eyes from the sun, she looked up. St Paul’s blazed huge and white before her on the crest of the next hill. The cranes attending it looked thin and black as burned matchsticks in the glare.

  ‘… we’re out of allies …’

  She cast around, but her gaze kept coming back, again and again, to the cathedral. Her hand went unconsciously to the sphere in her pocket.

  ‘Was it a monster?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you kill it?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  *

  Muscle memory guided Pen’s steps as she entered the tunnels under the cathedral. As she crossed the threshold, she looked up fearfully at the black metal cross-beams of the cranes. But if they were not dead, merely sleeping, then they didn’t stir.

  The cool air of the tunnel rushed into her nostrils as she left the day behind. The shadows were so dense she could barely see, but that didn’t matter; she could walk this path in total darkness. She would never forget it. It was etched far more deeply in her than the scars on her face.

  The closer she came, the heavier her feet felt. Her legs were numb, resisting her.

  ‘All there is,’ she said aloud, even though her jaw muscles were tight too, ‘is one foot after another.’

  She counted fifty paces and then turned left off the main passage into the labyrinth. She could barely breathe. She put a hand to the wall and slowed to grope along it, but she didn’t stop.

  At long last, light glimmered around a corner. She turned it and saw a small pyramidal chamber where all the walls looked like they were collapsing against one another. It was pierced by a cat’s cradle of interwoven sunbeams. Something undulated in the dust.

  Her strides became stiffer, even more awkward, her body fighting her harder as she entered the chamber. She thought of Espel, walking like she’d just learned how, thinking each step through and working with the second mind in her skull to take it, each step a negotiation, a sacrifice that made her stronger, a choice.

  Every single step was a choice.

  ‘Please,’ she whispered. ‘Please.’

  In the dust beneath her, strands of barbed wire twitched and crawled like inchworms. Dismembered like this, stranded and host-less, the creature had been too weak even to leave this room.

  Pen closed her eyes. Behind her lids, images played: of steel tendrils and blood and churning water. She felt herself flinch, and stilled it. Her scars tingled. One of the wire worms paused in its path, one barbed tip waving in the air like it could smell her.

  Pen breathed out, long and slow, and let the memories emerge through her. The tingles on her skin became deeper, darker, with remembered pain of metal thorns inside her elbows, behind her knees, constricting her chest. Her eyes still closed, she tasted the acid of the panic, and the paralysis—

  —and the power.

  We’re out of allies.

  Pen opened her eyes.

  She lowered herself to a crouch. She felt like every cell in her skin was rebelling, but she did it. All the wire strands had stopped moving now. The closest one hesitated in the air, and then recoiled from her.

  ‘You remember me,’ Pen breathed. ‘You’re afraid of me.’

  Her hand didn’t shake as she held it out towards the wire. The wire shivered in the air, then, very slowly, lowered itself towards her skin. Pen didn’t flinch as the barbs bit.

  Now, she thought, knowing the Wire Mistress could hear her, I have a proposition for you.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ‘He’s barely moving.’ Gutterglass’ body was completely motionless as she spoke. Two egg-carton sockets sat empty where her eyes ought to have been. The pigeon that was seeing for her soared overhead, a black hyphen against the sun. ‘He’s still half a mile ahead of us, but he’s slowed right down.’

  ‘He’s tired,’ Ezekiel said. Beth could hear the hunter’s grim smile in his voice as he talked about their quarry. ‘He used all his energy to get himself into the labyrinth as fast as he could. He has barely anything left.’

  He’s not the only one, Beth thought. Her muscles felt like wet sandbags. She held herself stiffly upright, though, keen not to show any sign of weakness. She could feel the team they’d assembled watching her, their expectancy weighing her down.

  There were twenty-two in all, as skilled and loyal a crew as Zeke and Petris had been able to round up in the panicked twenty minutes after they’d realised Timon was gone. The five Sodiumite sisters and five Blankleit brothers had to march blindfolded, their vestigial glass eyelids unable to keep out the glare of the sun, but they moved with astonishing dexterity, even in their blindness. Dust-devils and small stones went whirling in front of them as they groped their way with their fields, their metal veins glowing like embers under their transparent skins. Behind them, twelve Pavement Priests ground their way up what was left of the road. The Heavy Brigade, Gutterglass called them: veterans all, their stone and bronze armour scored with knife-point graffiti: battle-baptistery mottos and tattoos listing Scaffwolf kills. Despite Petris’ gruff protestations, Ezekiel had insisted on leading the detachment himself.

  ‘Timon’s one of my boys.’ The angel’s tone had been harder than his limestone punishment skin. ‘I’ll do the necessary.’

  Escarpments of shattered skyscraper reared either side of them and they picked their way between fangs of glass twenty feet high. It’s like walking into the mouth of a giant shark, Beth thought.

  The silence was broken only by the grind of the Pavement Priests’ passage over the rubble, and the occasional chime of a Sodiumite foot on a scaffolding strut. Save for the muttered counsels of Gutterglass and Ezekiel, nobody spoke. They were all intent, ready. Even so, every now and then one of them would smile shyly at Beth. Nothing bad can happen to me, their eager gazes said. I am watched over. Beth sweated and smiled back and tried to keep her spine straight. She felt just as stalked as Timon.

 
I am watched over, she thought sourly, and looked up at Canary Wharf. It reared very close now, its malignant little light still blinking. Beth knew full well how far and how clearly the creature squatting at the tower’s apex could see.

  Gutterglass raised a worm-riddled hand and they stopped. ‘There’s a bend ahead of him,’ she said. ‘The labyrinth doubles back on itself. If Timon follows it, he’ll be within about a hundred yards of us for a few minutes.’ Her eyeless head turned eerily to face the Sodiumite detachment. ‘Is that close enough?’ she asked.

  Beth relayed the question with a torch pressed against the blindfold of the Sodiumite captain. The heavy-shouldered glass-skinned woman nodded impatiently.

  ‘Very well then,’ Gutterglass said. ‘Now we wait.’

  The Sodiumites stretched and set themselves for the first steps of their dance. The Blankleits arrayed themselves behind, back-up in case the Amberglow sisters couldn’t get the job done. Beth saw a couple of disgruntled flickers from them, not happy at being second string, but nothing outright racist. They must be on their best behaviour – and all because of her.

  ‘Remember,’ Ezekiel was saying, ‘we’ll have a few seconds, no more. Timon will be thrashing around like a landed fish and we’ll have to get a grip on him before the Lampies lose theirs.’

  Beth was intensely aware of her own breath: the swell of her lungs, the length of each exhalation. The spiked railing hissed against its leather harness as she pulled it free and she felt the pavement-calluses on her palms fit into the rough texture of the iron. She stared at the wall of glass and crumpled metal in front of her. Her reflection was razor-sharp in the midday sun. The statues flanked her like an honour guard. She could feel them watching her expectantly.

  Something prickled over her forearm – a chill, a memory of more vulnerable flesh – and she looked up. Gutterglass’ pigeon was a dot now, wheeling against the blue; it wavered, hesitating in the sky, then suddenly, it was dropping like a stone towards them and Beth could make out its grey and blue feathers, and its claws clutching the eggshells with their white staring innards, and Ezekiel was shouting at his troops to get ready.

  The air filled with chiming as the streetlamp sisters started to dance.

  Veins blazed orange under their skin as they skipped and turned, whirling faster and faster. Their feet blurred under them. The air thickened with sudden charge and Beth felt sparks leap between her church-spire teeth.

  ‘Got him!’ they semaphored joyously as one, their minds as well as bodies linked by their fields.

  Ezekiel barked, ‘Now! Now! Now!’ and like a horizontal avalanche, the Pavement Priests surged directly at the labyrinth wall.

  The glass dissolved into sleet as they hit it and Beth threw up a hand up to cover her eyes as she charged with them. Shards tinkled harmlessly off her architecture skin. She peered through the glittering blizzard, squinting and blinking until she could make out a familiar limestone figure: Timon, flickering and struggling, held tight by invisible force.

  There was a close, deep crack of air and a winged shape shot over Beth’s head and smacked hard into Timon’s chest. The two figures blurred together, wrestling for a split second, and then the other priests piled on. An instant later the blur resolved: Timon was on his knees. Ezekiel stood over him, stone wings spread tauntingly. With one hand he gripped the back of Timon’s neck, dragging him painfully back on himself. The other statues stood back in a half-circle, watching coldly.

  ‘Timon Alexandrine.’ The angel-skinned priest spat the name into his quarry’s face. ‘For the crimes of blasphemy and treason you are hereby sentenced to immediate reincarnation, and’ – he bent close to Timon’s ear, but Beth still heard his furious hiss – ‘if I ever happen across the treacherous child you’re about to become, I’ll fucking blind it.’

  He curled his stone fist and drew it back in front of Timon’s face, but Timon didn’t even look. The expression on his mask was slack with misery; his eyes were dull inside the eyeholes.

  ‘Al,’ he muttered softly, ‘Al, mate, I’m sorry.’

  ‘STOP!’

  The shout was so loud – a sound of train-brakes and car crashes and pile-drivers – that for a moment it sounded like London itself had woken to amplify Beth’s voice.

  Ezekiel hesitated, his fist still raised.

  ‘We can’t.’ Beth stumbled as she reached them; she was wheezing and she wanted to retch. ‘Not like this.’ She looked down at the kneeling statue.

  ‘Timon,’ she said. ‘What are you doing?’

  Timon said nothing, but there was a fearful crack as Ezekiel’s gauntlet tightened and fissures split the back of his limestone neck.

  ‘Answer her,’ Ezekiel barked. ‘It’s the only reason I’m still letting you put air in your lungs.’

  Timon didn’t look at her. He seemed to lack the energy to move the stone. His voice was flat. ‘Going to Her,’ he said, then respectfully added, ‘Milady.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘’Cause Al needs me to.’

  Beth sighed and the air in front of her discoloured with turbine-steam. She dropped to a crouch in front of him. ‘She can’t help you, Timon,’ she whispered, low, so only he could hear. ‘She can’t help Al: She’s just a copy of the Goddess who took your deaths away from you, just like I am. And She can’t give those deaths back to you any more than I can.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Lady B—’

  Beth heard the stubbornness in his voice. She knew he was clinging to that stubbornness; that no logic, nothing she could say, would change his mind, and she understood exactly why.

  ‘—but you don’t know that.’

  ‘I do,’ she said. She stood up. ‘Bring him,’ she said to Ezekiel. ‘We’re taking him back with us.’

  ‘To do what?’ Ezekiel spluttered. ‘We can’t spare the men to guard him – he’s confessed his treason, right in front of you!’

  ‘And I’ve decided to be lenient.’ Beth stared at him, letting the green light from her gaze pour right into his eyes until he had to look away. ‘You heard what I told you to do, Stonewing. The question is, are you going to obey? Make up your mind quickly, because I’ve only got so much leniency in me today.’

  For a moment she thought the angel-skinned zealot was sizing her up, the way he had months back, before she’d fully transformed, before his uncertainty collapsed into his need to believe in her. Beth’s fist tightened on the shaft of her spear as she wondered how strong that need still was. The tight-shut pores on the soles of her feet tingled, ready to let the street in.

  Ezekiel’s stone neck creaked as he bowed his head. ‘Yes, My—’ he began, but he never finished his sentence.

  Beth followed his gaze. The surface of the ground they stood on was rippling like a pond in a breeze. Ezekiel sucked in his breath, even as the ground began to shudder.

  ‘CLAYLINGS!’

  A pair of sinewy grey arms burst up from the ground and seized the hem of Ezekiel’s robes, the liquid street dripping from them like water. The old Pavement Priest flickered; there was a rush of air and suddenly the Masonry Man’s arms were gouting stumps and Ezekiel was crouched, his stone right wing slick with asphalt-coloured blood.

  Soft detonations echoed behind Beth and she spun around to see hollow-cheeked Masonry Men standing amongst them, their mouths puckered in soundless howls. One of them erupted from the floor in front of her; its shadow bled over her for a second before she slashed it from the air with her spear. Her ears filled with the grinding of stone as the Pavement Priests engaged.

  Statues blurred into stop-motion speed, dis- and reappearing, their gauntlets ripping into clayling skin, exposing grey ribs and veins and pulsing organs. Masonry Men screamed softly and fell, but as they perished even more emerged, teeming from the earth like termites from rotting wood. Beth dropped her weight a few inches and relaxed, opening herself to the street. The city’s force surged up into her. She tasted the toxins in the back of her throat. She shuddered and gagged and seized on the ene
rgy like a drowning woman onto air.

  She surged into the mêlée, sliding swift and smooth on the city air, slashing and stabbing, goading her burning muscles. She slammed her spear into a grey throat and shrieked her fury into the blank face of the Masonry Man as she cut him down.

  ‘Lady, help me!’

  Beth staggered backwards, blinking, casting about for the source of the voice. A bronze-armoured priest was sunk waist-high in the pavement and a dozen slick grey hands were dragging him down. He gaped down at himself, then back at her. She could feel his astonishment and his sense of betrayal that she’d let this happen to him.

  ‘My La—’ His voice cut off as they pulled him under.

  Beth lurched forward, spear raised, but it was too late. Her ears filled with more implosions – more enemies arriving. Gutterglass was swearing filthily, lashing out with tentacles of plastic and rotting rubber hose. Stoneskins were screaming and yelling; Lampfolk were blazing and dancing furiously. From the corners of her eyes she could see them crack and gutter into darkness.

  ‘Lady Bradley!’

  It was Ezekiel’s voice.

  Beth’s heart lurched as she turned. Her eyes found the stone angel; he was on one knee, sheltering under the sweep of his wings, clay figures dragging at him with their talons, but whatever he was screaming for, it wasn’t help. His stone arm was extended, pointing.

  Fifty yards from where she stood, Timon was being hauled under the earth. He wasn’t struggling. His eyes were open, his carven muscles slack. They were bearing him slowly, carefully under, cradling his neck where Ezekiel had fractured it. They were taking him alive.

  ‘Lady Bradley!’ Ezekiel roared again, and Beth knew what he was demanding. She drew her spear back above her shoulder, but the muscle locked, rebelling.

  Only Timon’s chest and head were above ground now, the wolf-heads she’d drawn on his shoulder level with the pavement. He looked at her with a dreadful pleading. I have to help Al, she could see him thinking. And he would, if she let him – by running to Mater Viae with all their secrets.