Our Lady of the Streets

by Tom Pollock

  ‘There’s something else you need to know.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I could have sent Salt.’ Pen’s heart felt like a lump of pig-iron in her chest as she said the words out loud. ‘Instead of your dad, I mean. I knew where he was – I could have made him do what I told him. I could have used him.’ Her expression was defiant, almost like she was daring Beth to hate her for that, but Beth just shook her head.

  ‘No, you couldn’t.’

  ‘What – you wouldn’t have let me?’

  ‘You kidding?’ Beth said. ‘I would have let you in a heartbeat, but I don’t think you could have. Not you. And even if you’d tried it, Dad would have begged you not to.’

  Pen looked up at her, puzzled. ‘He let me do it to him.’

  ‘That’s different, and you know it. You know what he told me, the night before he went? “Finally, something I can do.”’ Her lip twisted in a bitter smile. ‘He chose it, Pen, and that matters.’

  Pen turned the back of her hand, wrapped in wire, to face Beth. ‘Elizabeth Bradley, I am the last person who needs to be told that.’

  Beth put her hand on Pen’s shoulder. ‘You okay?’

  Pen sniffed. ‘Yeah, except my sinuses feel like they’re full of wet cotton wool – you haven’t got a tissue on you, have you?’

  Beth shook her head. ‘Couple of thousand streets of tarmac, some sodium lights, some tiny, tiny cars, but sorry, never a tissue when you need one. What kind of rubbish friend am I?’

  Pen laughed and wiped her face on the edge of her T-shirt.

  ‘Nah, you’ve got all the major bases covered.’

  ‘How’re you feeling?’

  Pen stood and stretched and the muscles along her spine popped. ‘Warlike,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah?’ Beth sounded surprised.

  ‘Not really, but I can fake it.’

  ‘Just as well; I think we’re about to get our call.’ She gestured up the hill: Gutterglass was hurrying down to meet them, arms held across his chest to keep the three deflated tyres of his torso in line with one another. When he reached them he was agitated, and his scavenged hands fidgeted.

  ‘What is it, Glas?’ Pen asked sharply.

  ‘You won’t believe this,’ he replied.

  ‘Not if you don’t actually tell us, no,’ Beth observed, her voice underlined with a dry motor-purr.

  ‘Lady Bradley, Miss Khan’ – he beamed from molten candlewax ear to molten candlewax ear – ‘I have actual, genuine good news.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  ‘What is it with you and maps?’ Beth demanded.

  Gutterglass didn’t reply; he just stood there, arms folded, his eggshells set on a pair of pigeons wheeling overhead against the blue.

  Beth looked down at the model; it was similar to the one they’d left behind at Selfridges, with cardboard streets and coathanger bridges over a silver-foil river. A single intact water bottle stood in the centre, surrounded by rat-runs of shredded plastic. Only the new districts were different: a few tendrils of housing snaked out to the west and the southeast, and most strikingly, the long sharp spike that stretched northwest into the grass, many times the length of the original city, as though London were a pendulum and this new bit of city its chain.

  On the far side, a long column of people was already trailing down the hill. They carried their still warm saucepans and the unfinished supplies in the sacks over their shoulders. The head of the line was already lost to sight behind the curve of the hill. They were following one of Glas’ rats. Three Scaffwolves slouched beside them, drawing shrieks from time to time when they snuffled the people in line. If all went well, the wolves would deliver the humans to the St Paul’s Demolition Field, and guard them there alongside Reach himself.

  If all didn’t go well …

  Beth tried not to think about that.

  ‘Glas?’ Pen said. ‘What do you want to tell us? We don’t have a lot of time here.’ She sounded pained, and the wires were twisting disquietedly in the air above her head.

  Gutterglass craned his head upwards and held up a Biro index finger. The pigeons dropped like stones towards him, but he didn’t flinch; ten feet from his head they flared their wings and slowed before alighting, one on each of his sharp cardboard shoulders. Beth half expected them to perch there like piratical parrots, but instead they each lifted a juice-carton from Glas’ body and fluttered off to drop the little boxes on the map at the tip of the city’s new northern spur.

  Gutterglass gestured grandly. ‘See?’

  Beth and Pen looked at each other.

  ‘Er … no,’ Pen said.

  Gutterglass looked a little crestfallen, but he rallied fast. ‘Only the new districts are growing,’ he said, his chewing-gum vocal chords twanging visibly through a tear in his newspaper throat. ‘Chelsea, Camberwell, Tower Hamlets – they’re all still the same size they always were, don’t you see?’

  Pen shook her head slowly. ‘I’m not sure I—’

  But Beth did. ‘She doesn’t have enough.’

  Gutterglass nodded vigorously.

  ‘The growth she’s stolen – it’s not enough for the whole city, so she’s concentrating it on the outskirts. That’s why the new spur out towards Birmingham’s so narrow.’

  ‘I would surmise that she’s trying to reach the next big population centre, so she can obtain more of the … the material that fuels the city’s expansion.’ Gutterglass couldn’t suppress a smile, and his bottle-cap teeth glinted in his mouth. ‘Which, admittedly, is moderately terrible news for the people of Birmingham – apologies, Miss Khan – but it’s good news for us, because—’

  ‘—we don’t have to kill off the whole city,’ Beth finished for him.

  Glas’ smile became a full-fledged grin. He pulled a fistful of drinking straws from his coat, planted them on the inner edges of the new districts and bent them over like cranes.

  ‘Best of all, the Crane King is already in place. We can cut the new substance from the city like a tumour from a patient—’

  ‘—and Reach will be the knife,’ Pen finished. She looked thoughtful.

  ‘Is that possible, Pen?’ Beth asked. ‘Can you persuade Reach to limit himself to shredding the bits of London we tell him to?’

  Pen spread her hands. ‘I don’t know,’ she said honestly. ‘I can tell him our help is conditional on it, but once he gets going I don’t know if that’ll stop him.’ She tilted her head at the wires crisscrossing her shoulder. ‘I can probably persuade him to start there, at least.’

  Gutterglass’ smile shrank slightly, but he nodded. He’d take it.

  ‘I hate to be the one to shit in your icing,’ Petris grunted, ‘but there’s a hole in this plan you could run a Railwraith through.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The enemy,’ Petris said sourly. ‘Always a pisser when they get involved, I know, but can’t be helped. The second old Rubble-Face gets stuck into Mirror Mater’s precious new architecture, She’ll bury him in claylings. We were relying on the Demolition Fields being spread through the city so She couldn’t get to all of them. If Reach concentrates his attacks like this, he won’t stand a chance.’

  Beth looked at the map and with a little inward shudder remembered the raw speed the Masonry Men showed under the earth. Petris was right. She ran her tongue over the church spires in her mouth, testing their sharpness.

  ‘What if Mater Viae was busy?’ she asked.

  They all looked at her, Petris spraying granite dust as his neck ground around, but the only gaze Beth returned was Pen’s.

  ‘You’ve read Lord of the Rings, right?’ she asked her.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Seriously? I watched you read the whole of Anna-bloody-Karenina, and you haven’t read The Lord of the Rings?’

  ‘Couldn’t get past the singing.’

  ‘All these years, I thought I knew you.’ Beth shook her head in mock astonishment, and then began laying out her idea. As she spoke, she could feel the exciteme
nt building in her: this was a direction. After so long in hiding, this was action.

  ‘All through this, there’s been one constant in the way Mater Viae’s acted, and that’s over-reaction. Sending a whole plague into the city just to come after me, the sheer number of Masonry Men She threw down on us at Selfridges: that all tells us something: She’s smart and She’s strong, but She doesn’t do subtle. She over-commits. If we went for Her, right where She lives …’

  She reached out and toppled the upright water bottle. ‘I think She’d hit us with everything She’s got.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘Yay?’ Pen said, nonplussed, but Petris got it.

  ‘We keep Her busy horribly murdering us in Canary Wharf,’ he murmured thoughtfully. ‘Reach gets a free hand further north.’ He snorted. ‘It’s simple, at least.’

  For five full seconds, Pen just stared at him. ‘You cannot possibly be considering this,’ she said at last.

  ‘Diversion is a time-honoured military tactic, Miss Khan.’

  ‘If you’re a hobbit! She’s nicked this off a bloody fantasy novel.’

  ‘I don’t have a whole lot of field experience, Pen,’ Beth said drily. ‘This is what I’ve got. If any of the actual soldiers here have anything better, I would be over-bloody-joyed to hear it.’

  She looked at Petris. The Pavement Priest stood silent for a minute before uttering the single syllable she’d both expected and dreaded. ‘No.’

  ‘Really?’ Pen sounded incredulous. ‘Really? We’re going with the strategy from the end of The Return of the King?’

  ‘I thought you hadn’t read it.’

  ‘I’ve seen the films,’ she muttered.

  ‘I bet Glas has read the books,’ Beth said, pointing at the map, but Pen only glared at her.

  ‘Fine,’ she said at last. ‘But if we’re going to be this stupid, we’d better be this stupid fast. I don’t know how much longer I can get Reach to hold off.’

  Beth shrugged. ‘We’re ready if you are.’

  Pen was still looking at her, and with an unpleasant prickle, Beth realised she recognised the expression on Pen’s face. It was the way Beth had looked at Pen in the kitchen at Selfridges, just before she’d cast her out.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t think you should come, B.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Glas?’

  ‘You are very unwell, My Lady,’ Gutterglass said diplomatically.

  ‘And that means I can’t help? Sod that. I don’t want to sit this one out.’

  ‘You want us to win, though, right?’ Pen asked.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Choose.’

  ‘Ouch, Pen.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay, I’d rather have it straight.’

  Beth looked at them, and the sheer worry on their faces pushed her wounded pride back down into her chest. She thought about the ache in her muscles and the swelling in her joints; she thought about the prickling fever racing under her skin, and the way that the world blurred when she turned her head too fast. She thought about the slow, hollow ache in her stomach. She hissed in frustration. She was tempted, but her body wouldn’t allow anything else.

  And then she thought about her dad, dying, staring into space, on his back.

  ‘My decision?’ She was asking Pen.

  Pen hesitated, but then nodded.

  ‘Then I’m coming.’

  ‘B—’

  A little way up the hill, a small crowd had gathered, watching them: the seven remaining Pavement Priests, Ixia and Astral, their lights burning vaguely against the brightness of the day.

  She lowered her voice and jerked a thumb in their direction. ‘What does it say to them if I don’t?’

  ‘Does it matter?’ Pen said. ‘There are only nine of them.’

  Beth said slowly, ‘And there’s only one of me. And if you’re going to go and tangle with a Street Goddess and Her concrete army, then that’s where I am too. Even if it kills me.’ She tapped her chest, and then pointed at Pen. ‘That’s what this means, remember.’

  Pen’s lip twisted and she looked down at her feet.

  ‘If you’re there, I’m there.’

  Pen looked up. ‘Okay. Let’s let the Crane King off the leash.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The jagged wall of the labyrinth reared in front of them. The thirteen of them stood, strung out in a line, eyeing their reflections in the glass.

  They hadn’t talked much on their trek through the silent city and now they were here, they didn’t speak at all. Their heads were bowed, their breathing slow. Pen had a sense they were all putting things in order, moving around their minds like they were untidy houses, setting each thought in its right place. She bowed her head too, even though her own thoughts were anything but orderly. It had taken most of the day to walk here, and the wire’s protests had grown fiercer with every step.

  Now, the Mistress whispered eagerly, now.

  Soon, Pen begged back, very soon.

  The low sun burned in the reflection like the end of a giant cigarette. Beside it the Mistress’ strands cast long shadows over Pen’s face. The two Lampfolk raised their heads from whatever prayer they’d been saying and started warming up, their limbs growing brighter and brighter. When they’d finished, Ixia held her hand out to Astral and he held his palm above hers. There was an inch of clear air between them. White light mingled with orange. It was as close they’d get to holding hands.

  Petris and his Pavement Priests, true to their nature, didn’t move at all, but for the flickering of eyelids inside the eyeholes of their masks.

  Gutterglass tossed a scalpel end over end, catching it easily in her palm. She’d switched to a female body for the walk without saying why. Now she started to whistle through her plastic lips, and the sound carried starkly in the dry spring air.

  And then there was Beth. For once, Pen had no idea what her best friend was thinking. She checked her lead-flashed fingernails and then reversed her grip on the spear. ‘Pen,’ she asked, ‘do you want to pray?’

  Pen shook her head. ‘I prayed Asr back at Crystal Palace.’

  ‘Okay, then. Care to knock?’

  Pen felt the twitch at the base of her neck as she passed on the suggestion.

  Wires lashed forward, hard. The silence shattered as the glass shrieked and dissolved into a glittering cloud. Everyone but Pen flinched and threw their arms across their eyes, but she just peered through the hail at the wire limbs flickering and darting, slashing the walls to tiny shards and bending back steel joists, taking the already broken buildings and tearing them further down. There was a hot taste in her mouth: dust and violence and thunderous noise. The Mistress’ glee at the destruction flowed back into her.

  And then it was over: the last of the broken glass tinkled as it settled on the ground, and then the silence returned. A path through the labyrinth gaped in front of them, fringed by fractured glass and twisted steel. At the end of it, hazed slightly by the distance, rose Canary Wharf.

  Beth shot her a look, one eyebrow raised as if to say, Yikes, Pen!

  Pen’s fractional smile said, I know.

  As one, they started forwards.

  They walked steadily, their eyes fixed on the tower as it drew closer. Stone growled over stone as the Pavement Priests advanced. Pen’s heart was slamming at the base of her throat. She wanted to scream, to run – forwards or back – or do anything but keep this maddening pace. But she couldn’t. They had to give their enemy enough time.

  The powdered glass crunched underfoot like snow. Why is it always glass? Pen asked herself, desperate to distract herself from her own fear. She remembered the cavernous chamber underneath the Shard in the mirror-city, with the broken bottles carpeting the floor and Mater Viae’s green eyes shining through the dark.

  She’s the monster who burst through the mirror, she decided. It kind of makes sense that glass is the trail She leaves in Her wake.<
br />
  Lost in her thoughts, she almost didn’t react as the wire sprang off her palm towards the ruins. ‘No!’ she hissed, jerking it frantically back. It snapped and hissed at her disconsolately. ‘Not yet.’

  The tower was close now. Pen couldn’t see the tip of its pyramidal roof any more. The throne was on the far side and the growing sound of the waterfall suggested Mater Viae was still sitting atop it, but Pen knew She knew they were there.

  The ground shuddered under them. Pen lurched, but recovered her balance.

  The glass carpeting the floor sounded like wind chimes as it resettled.

  ‘Beth,’ Pen said.

  ‘I see it.’

  Ahead of them, a single emaciated figure stood at the mouth of the passageway. Pen watched its clay-covered ribcage swell as it breathed. Two more Masonry Men breached behind it, landing in total silence, the liquid street dripping from their limbs.

  ‘Steady,’ Beth ordered.

  With every step it became harder not to run. The ground shuddered again and again in waves. More and more grey figures burst from the asphalt ahead of them, rank upon rank of them, erupting from the road like they’d been grown from it. They blocked off all light from the end of the passage.

  ‘What are they waiting for?’ one of the Pavement Priests muttered.

  ‘Us,’ Pen said. She was struck by how lonely the thirteen of them must have looked, delivering themselves up to an army. ‘They want to know what we’re doing.’

  A single clayling stepped forward from the front rank. He moved his mouth and his ribs strained against his skin like he was shouting, but Pen heard no words. ‘B—’

  ‘Steady.’

  The Mistress raged in her mind. ‘Beth, I don’t know how long I can—’

  Motion rippled through the claylings. They arched their backs, put their hands flat forwards like blades.

  ‘B—’

  ‘Now, Pen!’ Beth cried.

  Pen didn’t even feel herself ask the wire; it uncoiled from her hip and shot into a crevice in the ruins. Its barbs shrieked down to metal buried somewhere under the rubble, and then that rubble began to move.

  Slabs of broken window slid to the ground as the metal beneath them shifted. Rust sprayed as bolts spun and locked and steel poles slid into place. Growling their hollow growls, Scaffwolves rose from their haunches and prowled forwards.