Our Lady of the Streets (The Skyscraper Throne)

by Tom Pollock

  ‘You were wrong, B,’ she muttered under her breath. ‘You knew me better than anyone, but you were wrong.’

  She could have killed Salt, and she knew it. On a different day, in a fractionally different frame of mind, if she’d made the decision a minute sooner or a minute later, on one of the million moments when her anger had burned so bright in her that she couldn’t tell the difference between it and her desire to be free of him, then it would have been him and not Paul Bradley that she sent to bleed out on Crystal Palace Hill.

  Right now, she wished it had been. Tomorrow she might feel differently. Or not.

  She looked down at the notebook open in front of her. The page was blank except for one word.

  Beth.

  She stared at the white space beneath it. A few times she lowered her pen to the paper, and then pulled it back. She pressed the tip into the page and pushed harder and harder until with a loud snap it broke. Salt started at the sound and pushed himself back into the mouldering fabric of his seat. Pen ignored him.

  Without looking around from the window, Gutterglass pulled a Bic from her right hand and passed it over.

  ‘Thanks,’ Pen said.

  ‘It’ll come,’ the trash-spirit said.

  Maybe Glas was right. She remembered returning to the factory, not understanding, fleeing from the strange new architecture that had materialised amongst the ruins of the city. She’d been sure, deep down, it had to be something to do with Beth; it had to be. That certainty had turned into a cold clamp around her heart when she had seen the architecture-skinned body lying face-down and motionless on the beach.

  She remembered pulling that prone figure over by the shoulder, horrified by her stillness, her dead weight. She’d tried to set herself, to draw on all the little mental preparations she’d been making for this moment, but they were completely inadequate. What she’d felt as that face had come around to face her was sheer, unreasoning panic …

  A panic that had subsided in a welter of confusion and relief, because she knew that face, and it wasn’t Beth’s.

  ‘Glas, are—?’ she started, but she’d already asked the question dozens of times and the answer hadn’t changed.

  ‘Yes, Parva,’ she said. ‘I’m sure.’ Her voice had an off musicality; her guitar-string vocal chords were visible through a tear in her paper neck. ‘No pigeon, rat, beetle or worm anywhere in the city has seen her. But it’s more than that, we’d just know: if there was an Urban Goddess alive anywhere, we’d feel it.’

  Pen set the pen to the paper again, then she bit her lip. She was only trying to do what she’d always done, write out how she felt, but when she tried to tune into that part of her that should have been grieving, she got only static. There was no body, she told herself. So maybe … She couldn’t accept it; she couldn’t feel the truth of it. Perhaps her emotions had shut down to protect her: an induced coma of the heart. Or maybe she was just being stubborn and this way it would hurt more in the long run. But then – and she even managed a harsh little smile – that’s exactly how Beth would have done it.

  She closed the book. Not yet, she told herself. Not yet.

  The Railwraith slowed under them, its swaying becoming more pronounced. They were almost there.

  Pen tapped her fingertips on the hard cover of her notebook. A wordless anxiety rose in her. She jumped to her feet and paced up and down the aisle, ducking to peer out of the windows. She glanced back into the next carriage down and glimpsed the vague shapes of passengers that only the wraith remembered. Blue electricity danced on their teeth as they ignored one another.

  The Railwraith screeched to a halt and the doors beeped and hissed open, letting in a shaft of noon sunshine. Pen jumped out and her feet crunched coarse gravel. She squinted in the brightness, looking around anxiously.

  It was a tiny station: one track, one red-painted bench under a metal awning, one ticket booth, and one ticket machine covered in looping black graffiti, even though Pen doubted any other human had ever set foot here. The sun’s glare had turned the window on the ticket booth into a perfect mirror. Pen checked her watch. It was one minute to midday.

  There were three glass phials in the back pocket of her jeans. She pulled out the left-hand one, almost fumbling it in her haste, and eagerly unscrewed the lid, then hurled the contents against the window. As the clear liquid ran down the surface, it erased the glass and revealed tangled blonde hair and a beaming, seam-split face.

  ‘Countess!’ Espel jumped up onto the reflected countertop, ducked under the window frame and dive-bombed Pen. They fell in a tangle onto the train platform.

  ‘Ow!’ Pen muttered. ‘Knee—’

  ‘Sorry.’

  They both laughed and shifted until their limbs settled into a more comfortable position. The sun-warmed pavement felt good on Pen’s back. She tilted her head; Espel’s lips found hers and opened over them. For a little while the world disappeared.

  ‘Ahem.’

  Gutterglass didn’t even bother to make the throat-clearing noise, she just said the word. Without breaking the kiss, Espel extended first an arm and then a middle finger.

  ‘There’s no need to be rude,’ the trash-spirit murmured. ‘I simply wanted to indicate that we had company.’

  Pen felt a little flutter behind her ribs and pulled away from the kiss. Espel rolled off her and she sat up. About fifty yards from where the railway gave out, a road shimmered in the heat. It twisted past the buffers at the end of the tracks and then bore straight on, vanishing into the low skyline of Birmingham, where England’s makeshift new capital bulked on the horizon. Pen heard a buzz that might have been a distant engine or a nearby insect. Steadily the sound grew louder, until a white car with yellow hi-vis markings on its bonnet came into view over a rise.

  The fluttering behind Pen’s ribs grew stronger.

  ‘How long can you stay, Es?’ Even as Pen asked the question, she was playing the answer the steeplejill was bound to give in her head and trying not to be disappointed.

  A few days at most. The claylings may have all dropped back into the floor but there are still plenty of officer-class dickheads to keep me occupied. Plus, Case is nowhere to be found …

  ‘How long do you think?’ Espel said, cutting across her thoughts. Intriguingly, it was her right eyebrow that was arched. ‘As long as you fragging well want me to.’

  Pen blinked. ‘But Case – and the Resistance—’

  ‘We’ll find Case,’ Espel said patiently, ‘and the rest of the Faceless aren’t going keel over and die if they have to be without me for a few days. We don’t really have figureheads, Countess. That’s kind of the point of us.’

  She shaded her eyes with one hand, and then whistled. ‘Mago,’ she breathed in an awestruck voice.

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s just so much green stuff.’

  The police car pulled up at the side of the road, as close as it could get to the train tracks. The driver’s door opened. A stocky woman in a leather coat got out and then immediately ducked as a disgruntled pigeon flapped out of the car after her, soared briefly over Pen and Espel’s heads and lighted on Gutterglass’ shoulder.

  The woman in the leather coat squinted at Pen for a moment and then hurried over, her heavy boots crunching the gravel as she crossed the tracks. ‘Parva,’ she said.

  ‘Detective Ellis.’ Pen was startled. ‘I didn’t expect it to be you.’

  ‘To be honest, I didn’t really expect it to be you either, despite what your note said. But then, I didn’t expect the first message we’ve had out of London in months to come by carrier-pigeon, so what do I know?’

  Pen frowned. ‘Why did they send you?’

  ‘They put your name through the computer and came up with mine, so they called me.’

  ‘No, I mean …’ Pen listened and craned her neck to look, but no more cars were coming down the road. ‘Why just you?’

  Ellis winced slightly, but didn’t say anything.

  ‘Because
if the letter was a fake and this was a trap, they’d only lose you, right?’ Pen surmised.

  ‘I wasn’t ecstatic about it to begin with, either,’ she admitted. ‘But I’ve seen the mess those blue dragons made of the army, so I figured any protection they could offer me wouldn’t be worth much anyway.’

  ‘But you came.’

  ‘Yes, I came.’

  Pen smiled at her. ‘Sewermanders,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Those blue dragon things, they’re called Sewermanders, and they’re not all bad when you get to know them.’ Pen leaned forward and looked past her case officer’s shoulder at the car. ‘What I asked in my note – did you bring them?’

  Ellis nodded. ‘I told them to stay in the car until I’d checked it out.’

  ‘Okay,’ Pen said. The fluttering behind her ribs became a drumming. ‘There’s a present waiting for you on the train.’

  ‘A nice sort of present?’ Ellis asked. ‘Or the sort of shitbag present you promised in your note?’

  ‘The latter, I’m afraid.’

  ‘All right.’

  Pen started past her, but Detective Ellis put a hand on her arm.

  ‘Parva, I … ’ she started, then hesitated before trying again, ‘I don’t know quite how to say this, maybe it’s …’ She broke off again, clearly not understanding. ‘I don’t think they remember you.’

  ‘I know.’

  Ellis gaped at her. ‘Their own daughter? How—? What did that to them?’

  ‘I did,’ Pen said gently. She pushed the policewoman’s arm away and started walking. Footsteps crunched beside her: Espel was keeping pace. Warm fingers, callused by years of scrambling over bricks, threaded through hers and she squeezed them tight.

  When they were about ten feet from the car the passenger doors opened and a man and a woman got out. The man was short and wiry, slightly stooped around his pot belly. His black hair had been gelled back from his brow and his skin was a deep teak-brown. The woman was tinier even than her husband; everyone always said it was a miracle they’d had a daughter so tall. Pen’s mother wore a sky-blue hijab and a dress that looked brand-new. Her dad wore a suit and a striped shirt. Pen’s heart gave a little lurch. This was how they’d dress to meet an important stranger.

  And then, all at once, she was right in front of them. She stopped walking, unsure how close she could get. They eyed her uncertainly. She could see recognition in their eyes, but no warmth. They knew her from the photos in her aunt’s house, but nowhere else.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ her dad said. His voice was hurt and confused. ‘I’m not sure what we’re supposed to do.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Pen said. She didn’t try to touch them. She pulled the two remaining phials from her back pocket. Each had been labelled in a careful copperplate hand, ‘Mr Khan’ and ‘Mrs Khan’. The writing was impossibly neat. Being wasted down to a skeleton didn’t seem to have damaged Johnny Naphtha’s handwriting.

  Inside the phials, the liquid was silver as mercury. It clung to the glass.

  She took one in each hand and offered them to them, like treats for children. They took them, regarding them mistrustfully.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Pen said. ‘They’re safe.’ With a bitter tang of panic in her throat she realised she didn’t know what she’d do if they didn’t believe her.

  They looked up at her, the child they didn’t remember. Her mum unscrewed the cap first, her dad an instant later, then they looked to each other. Her mum gave her dad a reassuring smile and they linked hands, a mirror to Pen and Espel. Pen saw her mouthing, ‘One, two, three!’ to him.

  ‘Mum, Dad,’ Pen said as the phials touched their lips. She squeezed Espel’s hand tight. ‘There’s someone I want you to meet.’

  CHAPTER FORTY

  The sun sets low over Battersea, or at least over the streets where Battersea once was. Perhaps they will need new names now, these nests of alleys and overpasses; then again, perhaps not. Cities often cling to their names when they slough off everything else. Either way, it’s not up to me; these streets aren’t mine any more.

  I haul myself over the edge of a gable and the roof tiles clink as I scramble onto them. I can smell the sharp oil in my sweat and feel it running down between my shoulder blades to cool in the evening air. I race along the length of the terrace, my bare feet sure on the tiles. A steel bridge looms up in front of me and I race under its shadow. A wraith clatters overhead. It sounds its steam-whistle, challenging me, but I have no time to race. I look down into the road below me, peering into shadows and around corners. I sniff the wind, but all I smell is petrol and rain.

  I need a higher vantage. A sheer grey tower rises on the far side of the road and I pick up my pace. The wind rushes in my ears as I leap for it.

  I scrabble, and a window ledge catches my fingertips. I climb, winkling my toes into tiny crevices, scrambling crabwise upwards.

  It’s a long way up, and night settles around the city’s shoulders while I ascend. The tower’s windows become burning slabs of orange light. A woman dances towards me beneath its concrete skin, her flamenco dress picked out in aerosol paint. Her every step is graceful, for this is far more her element than mine.

  She pauses beside me and I feel the brush of her painted hand as it slides beneath my fingers. She whispers her name and invites me to dance, to take my hand from its hold and place it on the smooth surface where her palm waits. I can feel the warmth rising from the wall where her skin is painted. One of her eyes is a diamond, the other a black swirling galaxy, flinted with stars. I realise that she is blind.

  I don’t think I would fall, but I don’t pause to indulge her. I make my apologies and scramble higher, for there is no time, and there are deadlier things than her on the walls of this painted city. In the distance I hear a rhino snort.

  With an exhilarated shout, I gain the roof. Lungs heaving, I race to the far side and look down. Streetlamps are igniting across the city, etching it in shadow and orange light, but how many of the spirits dancing in their bulbs are refugees from the old city, and how many were dreamed into existence with the new, I cannot say.

  The towers are taller in this new London, the architecture stranger. The railings lining its parks are jagged-edged and sharp. Its shadows whisper promises and threats. Ahead, beyond the old burned-black apartment blocks and the new ring of church spires that rise up from the city like teeth, I see the river glint.

  It’s awake, I think. In her name, it’s awake.

  The sentient water zigzags between the new buildings, it arcs gracefully over bridges and then dips to crash through tunnels hidden far under the street. The Thames’ course changes according to its mood now; this new city is its playground. Rediscovering its freedom has made it a fickle thing, and the humans beginning to recolonise the city will have to work hard to stay on the River’s good side.

  I see them occasionally, tiny figures moving in the windows of abandoned houses. Perhaps soon they’ll be dancing with the Lampfolk or bartering octaves of their voices to hungry spiders in exchange for a message carried to their families. Perhaps they’ll seek counsel from the veterans, the survivors, the ones who sit on doorsteps still marvelling at the freshly closed cuts in their hands and feet. I wish them all the luck they’ll need, but they’re not my concern. I scour the streets below me but find no sign of my quarry. I heave out a breath, and run on.

  My muscles are burning. I’ve been running for four nights now, my bare feet sucking up energy from the street to keep me fresh. During the daylight hours I sleep fitfully in the shadows of the high-rises. My own dreams are full of her. I glance down at the tower-block tattoo on my wrist.

  It’s four nights since I woke in an empty alley, my skin leaching colour from the asphalt, the light from a single dancing Sodiumite drawing my shadow across the floor. Four nights – my flagging heart trips faster at the thought – and perhaps she can say the same.

  I remember my own voice: Your body is a city now. Your mind is a
citizen. Mine is a refugee.

  It’s a desperate hope: if the city is real now, out in the world, shouldn’t the citizen be too?

  Four nights, I wonder. Who knows what she might have seen in four nights in this city she once wore as a skin, where her dreams and her nightmares were born into brick? Would she be helpless before it, paralysed by recognition? Or does she navigate these streets more expertly than I ever could?

  Is she, even now, stalking me?

  I cannot know. Nothing is certain now. She was the blueprint of this city. She was its essence and its source; these streets were her body and her brain. I remember the hooded girl who walked beside me while she slept, a girl who never forgot her human skin. All I can do is hope that, like me, that girl is restored to sight and smell and blood and bone and breath – that when this city was born out into the world, she was born with it. And so for her, the only one who has ever frightened me enough to make me brave, for my scarred, scared brave girl of a conscience,

  I’m hunting.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Well, we made it.

  Enormous thanks to Jo Fletcher and to Nicola Budd, Andrew Turner, Tim Kershaw and the whole team at Quercus for shepherding these stories out of my head and onto the page. Extra special gratitude to my agent Amy Boggs for being a rock, and helping me bring this home.

  Thanks also to Den Patrick, James Smythe, Emily Richards, Helen Callaghan, Sam Miles and Glen Mehn, who were invaluable to this final volume, and to Kim Eyre and Marek Kochanowski, the teachers who helped set me on this path in the first place.

  I’m hugely grateful to Sarah Pollock, Barbara Pollock, David Pollock, Sally Simpson, Barbara Barrett, Robin Barrett, Moira Barrett, Olivia Simpson, Aislinn Laing, Hugo Laing and the rest of my extended family for their tolerance, love and advice. That goes quintuple for my wife, Lizzie Barrett, who has to live with me every day.

  I cited a lot of authors in this section of the first two books, and I felt their influence no less when writing the third. There is one name still to add though: Jon Courtenay Grimwood, who sets the gold standard for writing voices in people’s heads (among other things).