Our Lady of the Streets (The Skyscraper Throne)

by Tom Pollock

  Ezekiel was staring at her too, so were other Pavement Priests. Even the blindfolded Lampfolk were twitching their heads in her direction.

  We’re watched over, Beth thought.

  Timon slid down until his chin was touching the earth.

  ‘BETH!’ Ezekiel screamed.

  She didn’t think.

  The spear point smashed through Timon’s mask and the limestone imploded around it. The grey hands holding him slipped away, leaving his impaled head resting on the surface. Blood ran red as shock down his chin and dripped into the dust.

  Beth slumped onto her knees, head bowed, heaving ragged breaths. Stone bodies and shattered glass surrounded her.

  ‘Oscar,’ she whispered; a wall of blue flame filled her vision from edge to edge and a concussive wave of air smacked her back as the Sewermander exploded from her hood. He soared into the air for an instant, and then dived straight back into the battlefield.

  ‘GET DOWN!’ Ezekiel roared.

  All the Pavement Priests and lamp spirits threw themselves to the floor. Gutterglass dissolved into a carpet of garbage. The clayling soldiers arced their spines to dive after them, but they were a fraction too slow and Oscar engulfed them like a cloud. With breathtaking precision, the Sewermander broke his dive a foot from the ground. For an instant he hovered there, blazing so hot even Beth had to turn her gaze away. Then he was banking and soaring upwards again, his fire now just a distortion against the blue of the sky.

  The exposed Masonry Men stood like statues in his wake, multiplied into an army by the walls of the glass labyrinth. Their clay hides were darkened to a matte finish, baked solid as though in a kiln. Smoke coiled from the scorch marks.

  Pavement Priests and Lampfolk lifted themselves to their feet. Oscar had pulled up before his fire could touch them, but they weren’t unhurt. The stoneskins’ backs had been scorched black by the radiated heat and they hissed with pain through the slits between their stone mouths. A few yards from where Beth knelt, a young Sodiumite girl whimpered in dull flickers; her shoulder blades had fused together.

  A priest in a stone toga, roaring in pain and rage, smashed his fist into one of the immobile Masonry Men and the figure exploded into a shower of terracotta gravel. Beth didn’t look round. She couldn’t take her eyes off Timon’s head where it stuck out of the ground, skewered by her spear. She could still feel the weapon’s texture on her palm.

  Ezekiel gathered himself first. He shook soot off his wings and tested them until he was satisfied by the range of movement. He eyed the carnage wordlessly for a moment, then said curtly, ‘We got what came for.’ He flickered and vanished.

  Beth was sure that she was the only one who noticed the tiny pause as he whispered in her ear, ‘Right choice.’

  He reappeared a dozen feet away, facing back the way they’d come. ‘Let’s go’ – he jerked his head at one of the fire-hardened Masonry Men – ‘before any more of them show up.’

  Beth shook herself, trying to ward off the dizziness. She sealed herself back off from the poisoned street as best she could.

  ‘All right.’ The voice she managed was barely more than a whisper now. ‘Let’s—’

  There was a ratcheting click and a cold circle pressed itself against the tiles on her temple. ‘Please don’t move, Lady Bradley. If you resist, I have instructions to kill you all.’ The voice was clipped, assured, upper class, and right beside her ear. Beth swivelled her eyes to look, but there was no one in the space where the voice was coming from. There was nothing there at all but empty air, despite the fact that she could feel the pressure of the narrow metal circle digging into her skin.

  And then she looked past that space and into the glass jags of the labyrinth walls and all the air went out of her. In the crystal-clear reflection of the glass she saw them: dozens of human figures, mixed in amongst her burned and battered band. The Mirrorstocrats wore flak jackets strapped over their suits and they held heavy, fat-barrelled rifles like they knew how to use them. Every Pavement Priest, Blankleit and Sodiumite reflection had a gun to its head.

  Beth let her awareness seep back into the street, but no matter how she groped through its murk, she couldn’t feel the Mirrorstocrats. London’s reflection was a different city and she was confined to this side of the glass. With a twinge in her heart, she finally understood why Mater Viae had encircled Her throne with the glazed wreckage.

  Very, very slowly, Beth turned until she was looking straight into the reflection. The Mirrorstocrat who’d spoken to her was a dark-haired young woman wearing a striped blouse and chinos under her bulletproof vest. She spoke not to Beth’s reflection but directly out of the mirror at her. ‘I am sorry about this, Milady,’ she said. It was neither sincere, nor especially sarcastic, just a formality, courteously observed.

  ‘You look familiar,’ Beth grunted.

  ‘I served with you under the young prince at Chelsea Bridge last year – Tonge,’ she introduced herself, and actually saluted with her spare hand. ‘Daphne Tonge, Fourteenth Marchioness of Tooting.’

  ‘You aren’t Chevaliers.’

  ‘Oh, Lord Mago, no!’ She sounded appalled by the idea. ‘We’re not police – we’re military, albeit irregulars.’

  ‘The Officer Class?’ Beth said with a curl of her closed lips.

  ‘Well, not to put too fine a point on it, yes,’ Daphne Tonge conceded.

  ‘Why?’ Beth demanded. ‘Why fight for Her? She held your city hostage, kidnapped and killed your people—’

  ‘Why?’ Tonge echoed, and an angry edge entered her sardonic voice. ‘Because your use of the past tense is a trifle premature.’

  Beth fought to think, but her brain was a fug of pain and poison and no clarity came. She played for time. ‘So what now?’

  ‘That rather depends on you. You can cooperate, in which case I’ll let your followers leave, or you can resist, in which case I won’t.’

  ‘If I come quietly, you’ll let them go?’

  Daphne Tonge sighed. ‘Not quite. You stand there quietly while I try every means I can think of to kill you, and then I’ll let them go. My instructions, I’m afraid, are expressly against bringing you in alive.’ The Mirrorstocrat lowered her gun with a slightly embarrassed air. ‘To tell you the truth, I’m not sure this will do it, but we have a considerable arsenal here to play with, and plenty of time.’

  Beth hesitated. Oscar crackled and hissed mournfully overhead, feeling her uncertainty. She licked her lips. She was so tired. She could feel the faith of every Pavement Priest and Lampie radiating out at her like physical heat: We are watched over. She could barely lift her head to look at them, though whether it was shame or exhaustion sapping her, she couldn’t tell.

  I don’t know what to do.

  She peered blearily into the reflection, trying to count the enemy. They outnumbered her two to one, even if Beth’s soldiers could manage to coordinate themselves to fight a force they could only see in the mirror. It was hopeless. There was even a reserve detachment of Mirrorstocrats clustered a little way off, their guns held up at rest – no, not at rest, she realised, poised. She could see the tension in their muscles; they were aiming, but at something she couldn’t see. A man in a grey suit suddenly whacked the empty air with the butt of his rifle; there was a puff of dust as though something – or someone – invisible had just hit the ground heavily in front of him.

  ‘Do try and keep the prisoners in line, Stephan,’ Daphne Tonge called back over her shoulder at him without taking her eyes from Beth.

  Prisoners, Beth thought frantically. There are prisoners. There must be something she could do with that information – something clever? Come on, think. But she couldn’t see a way to use it. Acid frustration bubbled up in her and she choked as she stared into the mirror. She couldn’t see a way out.

  ‘Well, Lady Bradley,’ Daphne Tonge said, pressing the gun back to her head. ‘What do you say? Shall we give this little thing a try for starters?’

  There was a whip-crack of a
ir in Beth’s ear. For a heart-stopping sliver of an instant she thought the gun had gone off, then a tendril of something black snapped past her head and the mirror shivered into splinters.

  More whip-cracks, more tendrils of darkness, more shattering glass.

  The labyrinth dissolved around them. Beth heard a gunshot – this time she was certain it was a gun – but when she cast about, nobody on her side of the mirror had fallen.

  Muffled, confused shouts came from the mess of broken glass under their feet. The snapping tendrils slowed, just a fraction, but enough to see one, clearly silhouetted against the sun: a strand of wire threaded with cruel barbs.

  Beth’s heart clamped up in her chest.

  No – oh dear God and Thames, no—

  Every muscle in her rebelled against looking, but somehow her eyes still followed the length of that strand, tracing it back to its source: a figure, standing in a haze of dust, wires snapping and coiling around it like angry snakes.

  Beth faltered. She tried to speak but the engines of her voice wouldn’t respond.

  Pen said nothing. Wire was corded tight around her mouth, like a metal bandana, but there was no blood – the barbs weren’t biting, Beth realised; every one of them faced outwards. There was no fear in Pen’s eyes, only a dreadful concentration.

  Wires splayed out suddenly in front of her and planted themselves into the earth. With ferocious power, the Wire Mistress bore Pen forward.

  II

  THE STEEL BENEATH THE SKIN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Pen raced over the shattered glass, borne on strands of wire like insect feet. It was frightening how quickly the motion came back to her: she could feel the wire’s instincts in her, dripping through its barbs into her nerves, its muscle memory overlaying her own. She swept past Beth – barely registering the horror on her friend’s face – and dropped to a crouch amidst the shattered glass. She grasped desperately at a chunk the size of a car window, but her fingers were numb where the wire bound them and she couldn’t get under the edges of it. She snarled at the consciousness she could feel lurking at the base of her skull to loosen its grip.

  Its grip. In its grip. In the grip of the wire, wire binding her tight, wire constricting her breath, wire carrying her away, wire stopping her mouth as she screams …

  She fought the panic back down, forced the memories away. Forced herself to feel past the dreadful power in the metal strands and find the weak spots, the fissures in the steel: where Beth’s spear had severed it, the places where it had to cling to itself to hold itself together. In these places the Wire Mistress was vulnerable and she knew it.

  ‘Ease up.’ She snarled it low in the hollow of her throat.

  The pressure on her fingers eased and she finally got a grip on the fragment of glass.

  ‘Pen—’ Beth found her voice at last. ‘Pen, what did you. What did—?’ She was hovering over her, her spear wavering in her grip like she was about to try to cut the Mistress off her back.

  Without looking around, Pen uncoiled a strand from her back and slapped the weapon down. ‘There were prisoners,’ she snapped. ‘I heard him say there were prisoners.’

  Beth shook her head, not understanding. ‘Pen, what are—?’

  Muffled gunshots cut her off, the sound echoing through the glass on the ground. Pen scrabbled and finally managed to lift the fragment of broken glass to her face. She stared into the reflection. She straightened. Her heart skittered at the sight of herself, bound and bandoliered in wire, but she stayed in control. She looked past her own image into the makeshift window. She started to step in a slow circle, one foot across the other, tilting the glass this way and that, trying to get a view of the city on the other side.

  Bodies in black flak jackets lay strewn over the floor, their expensive collars sticky with the gore that was leaking from their head wounds. Pen gaped at the carnage. How? How could they have—?

  ‘Countess.’

  Pen froze.

  ‘Countess Khan.’

  Pen took one more step to the left and Daphne Tonge came into view in the mirror. She sat upright on the ground, hands limp in her lap, legs splayed out in front of her. She looked like she was sitting against something, but Pen couldn’t see what was supporting her. She kept her head very still as she spoke, but her eyes kept darting to the left and right as though she wanted to look behind her.

  ‘I bring you greetings from the Faceless.’

  Pen stared at her in astonishment. ‘You expect me to believe you’re Faceless?’ she said.

  Tonge licked her lips nervously and Pen could hear how taut her voice was. ‘I’m most certainly not,’ she said, ‘but the young lady who currently has a blade pressed to my jugular is.’

  Daphne’s eyes darted to her right again and this time Pen’s followed them. She focused on the empty space above her shoulder, on the girl holding the Mirrorstocrat, the girl she couldn’t see but knew was there. The vast majority of London-Under-Glass’ residents lacked enough richness in their own image to cast reflections, so they were not visible from this side of the mirror. Pen thought back to that reflected city, to another labyrinth and to rank upon rank of figures standing silent, their faces hidden under black hoods and behind black bandanas, agents of an invisible insurgency: the Faceless.

  ‘This Faceless girl, she’s speaking through you?’

  ‘She is,’ Daphne sniffed, ‘and I wish you’d let her get on it, because she doesn’t smell any better than she looksaaaah!’ Her head tilted back a fraction of an inch as a fine red line appeared on the skin of her neck.

  Pen flicked her gaze back to her.

  ‘If I were you I wouldn’t editorialise,’ Pen said. ‘I know scars are in right now, but trust me, there’s only so many you can live with.’ She returned her attention to the invisible presence behind the Mirrorstocrat. ‘You were their prisoners?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tonge confirmed hoarsely.

  ‘You overcame them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How?’ Pen snapped, more harshly than she meant to. ‘There were loads of them.’ She could feel the Mistress coiling and bridling in her mind, suspicious that this was somehow a trap.

  ‘There are more of us, and the posh—’ Tonge broke off, then said, ‘Oh, come on, I’m not going to say that – aaah! All right, all right!’ She recoiled as far as she could from the invisible knife. Her lip curled as she spoke. ‘The posh shits are an unadulterated shambles, a disgrace to the name “soldier”, and’ – she ground her teeth and then exhaled through them – ‘they don’t fight any better than they look.’

  Pen’s lip quirked, but she felt the wire tug at it and lost her smile. ’And?’

  ‘And they fell apart when you showed up and in the confusion, we grabbed a couple of their guns.’ Tonge swallowed, her gaze travelling, and Pen realised she was surveying all the bodies on her side of the mirror, the bodies of those she’d led.

  ‘We didn’t hesitate,’ she croaked.

  ‘So what do the Faceless want with me?’

  ‘Simply to pass on the regards of their leader,’ Tonge said. ‘Cray says hello.’

  ‘Cray?’ Pen started as another image flashed into her mind; she remembered backing away from the hulking insurgent boss on unwilling feet, leaving him in the back alleys of London-Under-Glass while the city’s black armoured police closed on him. She remembered his mutilated, symmetrical face: his makeshift razor-slash mouth and above it the ice-blue eyes that begged her to do right by the unconscious girl draped across her shoulders.

  ‘C-Cray’s alive?’ she stammered hopefully. ‘He survived? What about Jack? Jack Wingborough? Did he get out too?’

  ‘Ah …’ There was no disguising the satisfaction in the Mirrorstocrat’s voice as she delivered the news. ‘I’m afraid you misunderstood me: both Lord Wingborough and Garrison Cray were killed by Simularchy forces on Draw Night. The leadership of the Faceless has been taken over by his sister, a steeplejill called—’

  ‘—Espel.
’

  Pen whispered the name at the same time as Tonge did, and her legs would have gone out from under her had the wire strands not been holding her up. She felt gelatinous, unstable. Without her asking, more wires uncoiled and bound themselves around the edges of the mirror, holding it up for her. She pressed both her hands to the glass.

  ‘Espel,’ she said again, breathing the name. ‘Where is she? Is she here?’

  Tonge snorted. ‘You think if we’d had the leader of the Faceless in our custody all day we’d have been stuck around on sentry duty? No, she’s not here.’

  ‘But she’s alive.’ Pen’s heart suddenly felt about five times too big for her chest. She drew in a long, shivering breath. ‘She’s leading the Faceless and she’s alive. Could you …’

  She stopped and directed her gaze back at the space above Tonge’s shoulder. ‘Could you bring her here?’

  ‘Pen, no.’ A voice, a burr of motors, buzzed in her ear: Beth’s voice. Pen had all but forgotten she was there. She looked down. Beth’s architecture-clad hand was resting on her wrist. ‘We have to get out of here.’

  Pen shook her head doggedly. ‘Espel’s alive,’ she stammered. ‘She’s alive. She could come – we could talk. Es is alive.’

  ‘But you won’t be,’ Beth said, ‘not if you stay here.’

  Reluctantly, Pen followed her best friend’s gaze upwards. Oscar was wheeling and crackling frantically over their heads.

  ‘Sewermanders are coming,’ Beth said, ‘five of them. He can feel them drawing from the gas mains.’

  ‘But – but—’ Pen felt a twist of pain in her chest. She shot another look at the glass, and the promise of contact. She couldn’t bear to walk away from it knowing she might never get another chance. ‘I can’t – I can’t just—’

  Beth took her hand, threaded her rough fingers through Pen’s own. ‘You want to stay, I’ll stay. Okay? But I can’t ask them to.’ She looked over at the Pavement Priests and Lampfolk, who were already retreating.