by Tom Pollock
And just like that, looking into his tear-streaked, terrified face, she finally knew what she wanted, and it wasn’t this – this scrambling over ceilings like a spider in the night.
Someone I want to hurt, she’d said to Espel, and that was a part of the truth, but only part.
What she wanted, what she craved, was to see him broken, his secret broken. That secret was the chain he’d bound her with, and she wanted it shattered in pieces on the floor. She wanted it out in public, where everyone who knew her and everyone who knew him could hear. She wanted to see their eyes turn from him in disgust as he crumpled under the shame of what he’d done.
And nothing, she realised with a clarity that felt like elation, nothing else would satisfy her. She understood then just how hard and how deeply she’d been clinging to the idea of his trial, even as the world had broken around her. She needed that verdict, that vindication, and the thought of giving it up just so he could die in secret, even if it was at her hands, even – she swallowed – to spare Mr B – No, that was too much to sacrifice.
‘I’ll decide what I want from him,’ she’d told the wire. No one else had the claim on him that she had.
She met his gaze.
‘You remember,’ she said. It wasn’t a question.
He stared up at her.
‘You remember,’ she repeated, her voice as cold as the barbs that held him. She slackened her grip on his neck, just enough for him to nod.
‘I could have killed you in your sleep,’ she said. ‘I could do worse than kill you now.’
He tried to close his eyes, but she brushed a barb across the lids and they snapped back open. A fresh wave of his terror drenched her; she smelled him piss himself.
‘I’ll be back for you,’ she promised. She uncoiled her wires and he plummeted back onto the heap of soiled clothes.
Pen retracted her barbs from the ceiling and dropped after him, the wires wrapped around her softening her landing. For a moment she stood and looked down at him from her own height. He gaped up at her in mute terror. She opened her palm and dropped a two-barb link of wire at his feet, where it burrowed into the clothes he slumped on. He scrambled back, his eyes frantic, his jaw gibbering, but no sound coming out. In the base of her mind, Pen suggested to the Mistress that it might like to keep the wire close to this man, and she assented without demur.
Pen turned and walked away without looking back.
A dawn light was promising itself in the open doorway. Behind her, Dr Julian Salt finally found his breath and began to scream.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
‘I thought I might find you down here.’
Beth looked up and pressed her palms together to hide the little puddle of oily tears that had collected in her cupped hands before surreptitiously wiping them dry on her jeans. At least, she reflected, her new complexion meant there was no red-eye, and her new voice was never exactly going to sound choked up.
‘What gave you that idea?’ she asked in a neutral rumble of traffic.
Her dad smiled as he looked around the bare concrete of the boiler room and made a show of wiping his forehead. ‘Because it’s so bloody hot down here, no sane person would come in here to look for you.’
He was barely through the door and dark continents of sweat were already appearing on his blue shirt.
‘Which makes you…?’ Beth left it hanging.
He shrugged. ‘When you’re a parent, sanity is basically whatever your kids need it to be.’
Beth uttered a little ‘Oh,’ and stiffened. Up to that point in her life, she hadn’t given five seconds’ thought to kids, but realising that she’d never get the chance to even decide if she wanted them still hurt.
Her dad read her expression and grimaced. ‘Crap,’ he muttered. ‘Sorry. Proverbial bull in a tact shop, me.’
‘’S’okay,’ Beth muttered. ‘I’m a bundle of nerves, nothing you could have said that wouldn’t have touched at least one of them.’
He popped himself up on the ledge beside her. ‘Want to talk about it?’
‘No. Is Pen back yet?’
He shook his head. ‘Look, Beth—’
‘I said I didn’t want to talk about it.’
He nodded solemnly. The heat had stained his cheeks wino-crimson. ‘Guess I’ll just sit here and sweat, then.’ He clasped his big hands in his lap, studying his thumbnails. Beads of perspiration collected and rolled off his nose, ticking off the seconds like a water clock.
Beth thought about ordering him out. She thought about getting up and leaving herself. In the end she just sat there, her stomach roiling inside her as her anger swelled. A couple of times he looked like he was going to speak, then he thought better of it and went back to examining his thumbs.
Finally, he stood up – and she shoved him back into his seat.
‘Wha—?’ he protested.
‘You wanted to sweat,’ she muttered, ‘so sweat.’
‘Okay …’ He massaged the knuckles of his left hand with the palm of his right. It was something he only did when he was anxious.
‘What did you think you were doing?’ She stared straight ahead as she spoke; she didn’t have to look at him to know he’d be wearing his ‘wounded innocence’ face right about now.
‘I – I don’t—’ he protested.
‘Yes, you do.’
She glanced sidelong at him as his shoulders slumped.
‘I wanted to help.’
‘By leaving me?’ She almost added again but she caught herself; he’d probably have no idea what she was talking about.
He looked at her then and his expression was stricken. His hand twitched to take hers, but then stopped, as though her not letting him hold it would be more than he could bear. ‘I … I …’ He was stammering again. She could always make him stammer, she thought; she just wished she could bring out something more useful in him.
‘I just thought – from what Parva was saying … Half the people in the city are missing, and … well, it’s obviously pretty bad. I just … Well, someone has to go.’
‘Someone does,’ Beth said flatly.
‘And it didn’t seem like there was anyone else but me.’
‘There isn’t.’
‘Then why—?’
‘Of COURSE it has to be you!’ she shouted at him. ‘Why do you think I’m down here fucking well crying? Because once you said it, what the hell else could we do?’
He gaped at her. ‘Crying?’
‘Yeah.’ She pointed at her face. ‘Tear ducts. Still got ’em. Who knew?’
‘I just thought’ – he was shaking his head – ‘I thought this was something I could do. At last, something I could do.’
‘You want something to do?’ Beth demanded incredulously. ‘How about waiting around for your daughter to actually snuff it before you run off to play martyr? How about being a dad? Do you not get that I’m dying? Do you not get that I had to bloody well fall down the last flight of steps to this basement because I need to save the energy it takes to walk for the times when people are looking at me?’
She glared at him, wounded.
‘It’s my job to care about half the people in the city, Dad. It’s your job to care about me. Do you not understand that? Or’ – she flinched as she spoke, but her words had their own momentum now – ‘or maybe you get it fine – maybe that’s what you were running away from.’
He looked horrified. ‘Beth,’ he protested, ‘I would never—You didn’t even tell me about this until two days ago – it’s taking some getting used to.’
‘I didn’t tell anyone, and you bloody well know why.’ Church-spire teeth scraped together in her mouth as she ground them. ‘Know what Pen said to me? “That whole ‘dying alone’ thing? You don’t get to do that.” But I never wanted to. You were always going to be there, at the …’
She broke off, suddenly feeling very cold, right in the core of her. She drew her knees into her chest and hugged them. After a moment, a warm, pudgy hand crept into hers
and she let it stay there.
‘I’m so scared, Dad,’ she said. ‘I’m scared of the pain, and I’m scared of the whole … nothingness thing, and I am so, so bloody scared of being alone.’
For a long time there was silence, and when he finally spoke she was startled to hear tears in his voice.
‘I know, Beth.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘But you won’t be alone: I promise you that. I’ll be wherever you want me. I’m not going anywhere.’
Beth drew in a deep breath and heaved a silent sigh. ‘Yes, you are,’ she said. ‘You have to.’
He shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter. Like I said, sanity is—’
‘—whatever your kids need it to be,’ Beth finished. ‘Not whatever they want it to be.’
Outside, feet clattered down the metal steps. A moment later the door swung open. Pen was breathing heavily, the wire wrapped tightly around her. Somehow it looked more natural on her now, like stripes on a tiger.
‘Here you are,’ she said, gasping at the muggy air. ‘What’s with the sauna? What are you talking about?’
‘Nothing,’ Beth replied before her dad could speak. ‘Was Espel there?’
Pen nodded.
‘And … ?’
‘We had a nice chat.’
Beth blinked. ‘Is that all? You look pretty shaken up.’
‘No,’ Pen said, ‘that’s not all,’ but she wasn’t looking at Beth any more, she’d turned to Beth’s dad, ‘I think I have a way to bring you back.’
CHAPTER NINETEEN
‘How’s he doing?’ It was the sixth time Beth had asked since they’d got back to Selfridges twenty minutes ago. She was perched up on the edge of the kitchen counter, worrying at the cuticle on her thumb with one lead-flashed thumbnail. A little mound of brick dust had collected on the tiles between her feet.
‘He’s fine.’ Gutterglass sounded distracted, but betrayed no loss of patience. The trash-spirit stood very still, her back against the side of the fridge. The kitchen lights filled her stained-newspaper eye sockets with shadows; her eggshell eyes were several miles away, staring down from the claws of a pigeon wheeling high over Greenwich. It was Glas’ job to keep watch for Sewermanders and make sure that Beth’s dad fell prey only to the intended monster.
‘He’s just waiting,’ Glas said calmly. ‘He seems perfectly comfortable.’
Pen decided not to contradict her. She didn’t know how much of the acid swilling around her stomach was down to her own nerves and how much down to his and how much down to the fact that he’d spent the whole time gnawing anxiously on triangles of a giant Toblerone he’d nabbed from the department store’s stock. He was onto his second bar now. Pen could feel the ghost of all that chocolate pitching to and fro in her belly like a stormy sea.
Beth shoved herself off the counter and began to pace again. After a few lengths of the kitchen she wheeled towards Pen. ‘And his… his escape route. It’s in place?’ It wasn’t the first time she’d asked this either, but once again Pen just nodded.
‘How close?’ Beth asked. ‘How close did you get it to the wharf?’
‘About a half a mile.’
Beth started to chew her cuticle. Her iron church-spire teeth grated horribly over brick. ‘That’s not close enough,’ she fretted.
‘It is,’ Pen reassured her again.
‘Get them closer.’ Beth’s order was probably more peremptory than she’d meant it to be.
Patient as an imam, Pen went back over the plan. ‘B, the wires are as close as I can safely get them. We have no idea how long they’re going to need to lie there undetected. Any closer in, they’d hit the labyrinth, and that means the patrols. If some Masonry Man or Mirrorstocrat stumbles over a bale of barbed wire fifteen feet from their queen’s throne and realises it wasn’t there yesterday, the whole game’s up.’
Beth’s green gaze lingered on Pen for a second more than was comfortable. ‘Half a mile’s a lot of ground to cover in a hurry.’
‘I know, but I can do it.’ Pen fervently hoped that she was right. She closed her eyes, and looked only through Paul’s. Without her own vision to distract her, the bright light and sharp shadows of the dye factory came into focus. The concrete floor of the factory was covered in dust and small stones. The sky, seen though great rents in the roof, was a fathomless blue. When he looked up (which Pen, paranoid that he was going to give the game away, wished he would stop doing) she could see Gutterglass’ pigeon: a tiny dot, circling overhead.
‘Nothing for miles,’ Gutterglass intoned, in response to yet another question from Beth that Pen hadn’t caught. ‘It’s a desert, basically. Nothing’s moving.’
And again, before she could stifle it, Pen felt a little traitorous rush of hope: maybe no one was coming. Maybe, having swept through this area less than a week before, Mater Viae’s hunters would think it empty and not bother to return. Maybe Mr B would just sit on his rock in the middle of the factory nibbling until he ran out of Toblerone, and then he could just pick up and come home.
I have to tell you, Parva, You’re not the only one sort of hoping that.
It wasn’t Paul’s voice, exactly, sounding inside her head: his manner, yes, and his inflection, but the voice was the one Pen heard whenever she read a book, the same one she heard when the wire spoke to her.
Crap – sorry, Mr B, she thought back to him, that just slipped out. She hesitated. I really can get you back, you know.
I don’t doubt it.
It touched Pen deeply that that seemed to be true.
As best as she was able, Pen had taught him to hide his thoughts from her, making him practise for hours on end. He had to hold an idea in his mind and concentrate on it until it drowned out everything he wanted to keep secret. It had added three days to their prep time, but Pen had insisted. A connection this intimate to her dad already felt like a betrayal of Beth. It would have felt unutterably wrong that his mind should be naked to hers; that, in what might turn out to be his most desperate moments, he should have no choice over what he showed her.
Still, Mr B wasn’t inclined to hide. She could feel his emotions, solid and strong: his love and his worry and his unswerving faith in Beth, his anxiety that he might screw this up, his impatient resignation that there was nothing he could do to prepare for it so he might as well stop fretting, and then his frustration at his inability to stop fretting, and so on. She could even feel a hunk of rock under his left thigh as if it were pressing into her own skin, and she hoped he’d decide to move off it soon.
And of course, she could also sense the ocean of fear in his mind. She stood beside him on the shore of it while it raged and swelled, threatening to drown him, and all the while he resolutely ignored it.
I’m not ignoring it, he corrected her with a kind of taut amusement.
No? she asked.
What do you think the chocolate’s about? I’m feeding the fear so it doesn’t eat me. It’s like a tribute.
You eat when you’re nervous?
That, and I’m tempting Fate – hoping it’ll let me stick around long enough to have to deal with the diabetes.
Her eyes still closed, Pen felt her mouth curl into a smile. He might just be putting a brave face on it, but she figured that was more than brave enough.
He looked around the factory and she looked with him, saw dust devils twisting in a morning breeze, heard the hush and slither of the river outside, felt the slow swell of his breathing.
What are we doing? The thought rose in her mind and she was powerless to stop it. Why are we here? Suddenly this laughable excuse for a plan seemed as flimsy and transparent as Clingfilm. What would happen to Mr B once he was taken – even assuming he was taken at all? What if they just left him under the ground? What if whatever Mater Viae was doing with her prisoners required summary execution first? What if she was just pushing them off the top of Canada Tower while cackling maniacally like a pantomime villain?
Parva, do you mind thinking about something else? She could feel his me
ntal wince.
Sorry.
It’s all right. She felt him hesitate, and then, The answer, by the way? To all those ‘what ifs’?
Yeah?
Is that it’ll be okay: you’ll be okay, and so will Beth. You get that, right? Tell me you get that, Parva.
She could feel how important this was to him. I get it, Mr B. She projected the thought with as much conviction as she could muster and his fear instantly lessened.
You’ll look out for her?
I always do. And call me Pen.
Call me Paul.
Okay. She sucked in a sharp breath. Paul?
Yes, Pen?
Get ready. They’re coming.
The factory floor started to tremble. Tiny stones rattled over the surface. A tide of dust billowed an inch up from the ground. For a second the ocean of fear in Paul’s mind threw up a tidal wave that dwarfed them both, but with an effort of will that awed Pen he held on to his calm. His grip tightened on the half-eaten Toblerone. He raised it uselessly over his head like a club.
‘Paul,’ Pen snapped – she said it aloud too – ‘your feet!’
They looked down together: the concrete in front of his feet was churning like a boiling liquid. Pen felt a spasm in her chest and didn’t know whose heart it was. Grey fingertips breached the floor, then grey knuckles. Greedy grey hands lurched forward, grasping blindly. With a cry of fright, Paul screwed his eyes shut and plunged them into darkness.
‘I’ve lost him,’ Gutterglass reported clinically. ‘Miss Khan, it’s with you now.’
Pen barely heard. She couldn’t answer. She couldn’t breathe. Solid rock was on all sides of her, flowing over her skin, under her arms, into her pores and her eye sockets, in between every strand of her hair, pushing down and up and in on her with the weight of a mountain. There was no air. No light. No air. No air. Her pulse was like a jackhammer in her skull, threatening to break it apart – no, not her pulse, their pulse, hers and Paul’s. They were one, and they were dying. Panic burst from her chest and swarmed her under.
Seconds thudded past. She felt lightheaded, but she didn’t pass out. The pain in her heart and her skull didn’t diminish, but it didn’t grow any worse either. There was a pressure more solid than the rest across her chest, across Paul’s chest: an arm, pulling him through the liquid earth. A hand was pressed over his mouth and somewhere in the darkness above him another arm was stretched upwards, the fingertips trailing through the surface of the city and into the light. Air rushed into the pores on the Masonry Man’s skin, through the tiny cavities in his ceramic body and flowed into the vacuum that clawed at Pen’s lungs – at Paul’s lungs – not filling them, nowhere near filling them, but providing enough, just barely enough, for him to breathe …
