The Glass Republic: The Skyscraper Throne: Book II

by Pollock, Tom

  Synod or no synod, she thought, swallowing on a suddenly dry throat; she nodded stiltedly to herself as she pulled the Tupperware out: Maybe this is for the best.

  She turned and raced back through the living room, sweeping a handful of missed pictures from the top of the TV as she went, zipped the bag shut and bolted into the cellar.

  Her mum was waiting when she came out, knotting her green dressing gown, patient suspicion on her face. Pen pushed the door closed behind her with a foot. Her mum frowned, but all she said was, ‘Leaving early for school again? Would you like some breakfast first?’

  Pen caught her lip between her teeth before she answered, stilling it as it threatened to tremble. ‘Mum, I’d absolutely love some breakfast.’

  She sat at the kitchen table and stared at her own steepled fingers while her mum pottered around behind her, clanging pots and running taps and banging cupboard doors, generating a racket fit to wake if not the dead, then certainly Pen’s still-slumbering father. Pen had an uneasy sense that her mum was summoning her husband for moral support.

  The meal laid out on the table bore the same relationship to Pen’s normal tiny morning bowl of Sugar Puffs as the US Navy bears to a rubber duck. Dark golden paratha with crispy edges and chewy middles, two wobbly-yolked boiled eggs, fruit, yogurt and, because Samira Khan was a mum and therefore knew what her little girl liked, even if she didn’t necessarily approve of it, a small bowl of Sugar Puffs. When she was done, she perched on the edge of a kitchen chair, sipping from a chipped mug of sweet tea and smiling in her faintly worried way.

  Pen took in the feast. Her stomach pitched as she thought, I’m busted. Some deep maternal instinct had laid bare her plans, and this was her mum’s way of helping: at least now she’d have one good meal in her when she ripped her folks’ beating hearts from their chests by running away again.

  But then she realised what her mother was really trying to say: You’re losing weight. Your wrists are too bony. Eat. Eat and be looked after. I’m worried about you.

  Pen hesitated, and then picked up a paratha. It felt awkward and unfamiliar in her hands. She tore off a piece and popped it into her mouth. It was delicious, and incredibly hard to swallow. The light coming through the window blushed gradually up into full brightness.

  Her dad creaked his way down the stairs. He did a double take at the bounty on the table and grumbled that his wife never laid on breakfast like this for him any more. He helped himself to some bread before shaking out the morning paper.

  Pen reached into her bag, tugged out a clipboard with a stub of pencil attached on a bit of string and set it carefully on the table.

  ‘What’s that?’ her dad asked.

  ‘Schoolwork,’ Pen replied.

  ‘“Survey on terms of residency”,’ her dad read from the form.

  ‘It’s for geography.’

  ‘You mean colouring-in.’ He harrumphed and turned back to his paper, but he was beaming. Her dad faked ‘grumpy old man’ less convincingly than anyone in living memory, but he loved to try.

  ‘I remember the day we moved here,’ he said. ‘Your mother was eight months pregnant with you, and her belly went out in front of her like the big white spaceship at the beginning of Star Wars.’

  ‘Star Destroyer.’

  ‘Right! The place was more decrepit than our eighteen-year-old cat, but it had enough space for three, and we could afford it.’

  Pen watched the levels in his and her mum’s mugs covertly. When her dad drained his dregs with a noise like ancient plumbing, she said, ‘More tea, Dad? Mum?’ Her voice didn’t even quiver.

  Her parents made happy noises and held out their mugs.

  Pen flicked the kettle on. While it was bubbling away, she pulled the synod’s bottle from her satchel. The metallic liquid inside ran like mercury, laced with an oily rainbow sheen. She shook a couple of droplets into each mug, hiding them casually with her body. Only the tinkle of the teaspoon on enamel as she stirred in the sugar gave any clue that her hands were trembling.

  ‘Thank you, dear one,’ her mum said, accepting the mug gratefully. Her dad raised his tea to his beloved of two decades, and she raised hers back. They both blew across the top of the scalding liquid, and then, with a synchronicity the synod would have been proud of, they sipped.

  They hesitated. Their expressions became fugged and confused.

  Pen jumped as if their uncertainty was a starting gun. She stepped smartly forward and prised the mugs from their rubbery fingers. She took the pair of empty flasks from her bag, spun off the lids and decanted the liquid that had been tea. It gleamed at her, malevolent and silver, before she screwed the flasks shut again.

  Something sharp caught in Pen’s chest. Her pulse was slamming but she didn’t stop. No time to hesitate. No time to think twice. This was why there was a plan. Control, Pen, stay in control. She stowed the flasks and turned on her heel, sank back into her chair and nudged her plate with her elbow so it slid to sit before her mother instead. She lifted the clipboard in one hand and her tea in the other.

  Her mug rattled on her teeth as she sipped. ‘So,’ she said, forcing herself to sound casual. Look up, Pen, look up. Her eyes were fixed on the grain of the table. The muscles in her neck felt almost paralysed. Look. Up. ‘You were saying?’

  The air felt as thick as quicksand as Pen drew her head up through it. For an instant her mum blinked at her in total incomprehension, and then she reacted.

  It was a tiny motion. Pen’s mum’s manners were immaculate and her self-control peerless, so it was only a fraction of an inch, but it tore at Pen’s heart. She watched her mum recoil from the scarred face of the girl she’d never seen before.

  ‘You were saying,’ Pen repeated, as though nothing was wrong.

  ‘I— I was saying—?’

  ‘How long you’d lived on this street,’ Pen explained. She assumed a carefully practised smile, as though slightly puzzled at having to repeat herself. ‘It’s for my survey – human geography. Like I said, Mrs Khan, I’m going round the neighbourhood. It’s really good of you and Mr Khan to help me out on my school project. Being new around here, I don’t know many people to ask.’

  ‘Ah – yes, of – of course—’ Samira Khan clutched at this conversational driftwood as if she was drowning. She looked deeply upset that she couldn’t remember any of this, but evidently she had decided to play along until a better explanation presented itself. ‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘it must be … what, seventeen years now?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Pen turned to her dad as he spoke. He kept blinking at her and then at the Olympian breakfast as though they’d both just erupted up through the floorboards.

  ‘That’s great, thanks, Mr Khan – and do you happen to remember what brought you here to Wendover Road in the first place?’

  ‘Uh—’ His teak-coloured face scrunched up earnestly as he fought for the memory.

  Pen drew in a quiet, shallow breath.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t … Work, perhaps? It was a long time ago.’

  Pen nodded her understanding and her thanks, swallowing down a mix of relief and bile before it could choke her. ‘Thank you,’ she said, wrestling her voice into the shape of gratitude. ‘That’s really helpful, Mr Khan, Mrs Khan. I’m sorry to have interrupted your breakfast. It smells delicious. Mrs Khan, you must be a wonderful cook.’

  Pen’s mum’s shy little smile battled bravely out from behind her confusion. ‘Why thank you. Would you like some bread to take with you when you go?’

  Pen’s front door shut with a dreadfully familiar crunch. She clutched a faintly warm Tupperware box of paratha in her fingers. A chill breeze whispered inside her headscarf and stroked her eyelashes. She released a single, shuddering breath.

  A hand closed on her shoulder, five slim fingers pressing in. There was a presence behind her that had not been there before. A pungent, oily liquid seeped through her jacket. Pen didn’t look back; she fumbled in her bag and passed the flasks back over her s
houlder. The hand released her and took them and a little shiver went through her as though some spindly insect were walking over her heart. She felt cold glass pressed into her palm: two slim vials. With an effort, she closed her fingers around them.

  And then the presence behind her was gone.

  ‘Okay,’ she murmured to herself. ‘Okay.’ She said it over and over, but it didn’t get any more true. ‘Okay.’

  She stared at the patina-splotched brass numbers on her door. 47 Wendover Road. There was only one way back into that house now, and it led through a mirror – a window she would make into a door. Now she had two things to go through that door for: her mirror-sister, and a ransom for those pieces of her parents’ minds she’d just given away.

  Or else she could never go home again.

  She stumbled backwards a couple of steps, skidding slightly over the frosty pavement, then she turned and ran, unable to look at the house any more.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Pen huddled up against the cold and watched uniformed figures jog up the steps of the police station across the road. She rubbed her thumb anxiously over the screen of her phone. She’d switched it on from reflex as she’d left her street and the voicemail tone had nearly startled her out of her skin.

  ‘Parva, it’s Juliet, Detective Ellis, from Blackfriars Police Station here. I’m really sorry but the system’s completely backed up and the earliest date we could get for hearing your case was June twentieth. Listen, I know it’s a blow, but please try to stay positive. The gears grind slow sometimes, but we will get there. Call me back if you have any questions or if you just want to talk. Parva, I believe we can do this, if you stay strong, I believe we can put him away. Talk to you soon.’

  Pen started to worry at the skin on her thumb’s cuticle. I believe. Three months ago, those had been the only three syllables she’d wanted to hear from the matter-of-fact policewoman with the gentle voice. Those words had been all that mattered, but they rang a little hollow now. She felt a choking frustration rise in her. Every delay made it feel more and more like they could delay her forever, like nothing would happen at all, and now …

  June twentieth. She might never see that date.

  A stocky woman in a leather coat peeled away from the commuter crowds and headed towards the station stairs, earphones in, singing under her breath in little puffs of condensation. Pen pushed herself off the wall and stepped off the pavement. If she was going to do what she came for, now was the time.

  But halfway across the road she faltered. A black cab’s horn jolted her and she danced back to let it pass. Inside her head, she recited once more what she wanted to say to Juliet, the desperate plea she’d come here to make.

  I have to go away. I might not be able to come back. If I can’t, please, you have to go after him anyway. You have to try.

  She craved reassurance. The idea of Salt walking away from this filled her mind with a blank white fury, obliterating everything else. But now, facing the moment, she heard how it would sound to the policewoman, the unanswerable questions it would raise:

  You have to go? Go where?

  And worse, Are you having second thoughts?

  More traffic hooted at her and she edged back to the pavement. She watched the trailing edge of Detective Ellis’ coat disappear through the door. She thought briefly of following her, of making this an officially registered visit, but it would do no good, and there was no time.

  You’ll just have to come back, she told herself, surprised and a little scared by how hot her anger burned, almost stronger than the desire to see her parents again. It was as much, if not more, her need to see Salt fall that made her determined to return.

  She curled her fingers into fists, released them very slowly, and turned and walked away towards the river.

  To the east, across the water, she saw the Shard rearing over London Bridge Station, the narrow spike of the capital’s new tallest tower puncturing the skyline like a broken bodkin. A crane perched at its ragged apex like a spindly bird, and Pen shuddered.

  Her original plan had been to sneak back into the abandoned girl’s bathroom and cross through the mirror there, right to where she’d last seen Parva. But she’d sent a menacing note to Frostfield on faked-up letterhead from an expensive-sounding law firm she’d found online, saying she was still recovering psychologically from what the school had ‘allowed Trudi Stahl to inflict on her’ and that Frostfield shouldn’t try to contact her until the Khans said she was ready, on pain of bloody lawsuit. She couldn’t risk being caught back there now.

  The synod’s vials clinked in her bag as she played with the zip. The winter sun etched her reflection starkly into the windows she passed, but there were too many people, even at this hour.

  Where then?

  An idea struck her, and she hurried down the slippery stone steps next to Blackfriars Bridge.

  Her breath fogged the air in front of her face. Close to, the river looked almost cold enough to freeze. It surged sluggishly, a vast silver snake on the edge of hibernation. Pen watched the ripples in her murky reflection, the shadows cast by her raised scars. Riverside tower blocks rose behind her, warping and flexing slowly with the tide.

  It was a mirror of sorts, and out of the way – and if this didn’t work, at least she wouldn’t be pulling fragments of broken glass out from between her fingers.

  Before her nerve could fail, she unscrewed the cap on one of the vials and tilted her wrist, letting the clear fluid it contained splash onto the Thames. It spread like oil, stilling and clarifying the surface until the water beneath it was utterly invisible. The reflected buildings ceased their slow surging; their images were frozen in place, distorted, like in funhouse mirrors.

  And Pen’s reflection …

  Her breath caught. Her reflection had vanished.

  She craned forward, but where her reflected face ought to have been she saw only the steps and the railings above her. It was as if she was invisible. A couple walked arm in arm along the embankment behind her. Pen heard them chatting, but she didn’t see them reflected either.

  A wry smile touched her lips as she realised what had happened.

  Tentatively, she reached down towards where the water’s surface ought to have been. Her fingers brushed nothing but air.

  There was a hole in the river.

  It was the shape of the puddle she’d poured from the vial. The wavy, distorted buildings she was looking at weren’t reflections, she realised, but real: solid mortar and masonry beneath her. It was as though she’d smashed a hole in what she’d thought was a mirror and found it was a window instead. The Thames lapped at the edges of the hole. Droplets splashed over and fell upwards into the reflected sky like inverse rain until they were lost to sight.

  Pen’s stomach clenched as she tiptoed to the river’s edge. Down or up, whichever, it was a long, long way to fall.

  A sudden burst of synth and bass from her phone made her jump, almost tipping her in.

  The text was from Beth: I need to see you.

  Pen hesitated, her thumb poised over the keys to send the automatic response. With her other hand she reached into her bag and touched the other thing she’d brought with her: an eggshell made of stippled brick, with a few slate feathers inside.

  No messages, she told herself, no clues, no cryptic comments. She would leave no broken picture for Beth to piece together, no ‘Fractured Harmony’. Beth was too smart. She’d work it out and come after her, and then it would be her in the synod’s factory, paying the same awful price that that Pen had – or a worse one, because who knew what sacrifice Johnny Naphtha would extract from the new Daughter of the Streets if she put herself in his debt.

  With a whispering sigh the hole in the river started to contract. The window was closing.

  She put the phone back into her bag without answering it, braced herself and willed herself to jump. For a dreadful instant her legs wouldn’t obey her. She watched the hole diminishing. In just a few more seconds the gap w
ould be too narrow to fit through. She had a brief vision of getting stuck – her head and torso sticking up out of the Thames, while her legs waved up from the surface of its mirror river like some mad synchronised swimmer’s.

  The hole was shrinking more quickly now. She could see her own reflection returning in its wake. She concentrated and her knees bent agonisingly slowly under her.

  ‘Pen!’ she snapped at herself, and jumped. For a split second she kicked at empty air, and then she plummeted down through the hole in the river. The water at its edge splashed over her face.

  What felt like a half-ton of paratha surged up into her throat as she gagged. The distance to the reflected buildings stretched away beneath her flailing legs. She fell, faster and faster, until the wind pummelling at her face snapped her head back. She stared upwards: she was plummeting through a tunnel in the water like some kind of aquatic rabbit. For a moment she glimpsed the towers of her home city gleaming in the bright winter light, an impossible distance above.

  And then the tunnel-mouth closed over her—

  Water roared down and the liquid walls crashed in towards her. She snatched a single frantic breath before the restored Thames smashed into her like a giant fist. She jerked hard upwards as the water broke her fall. She tumbled, her blood drumming in her ears. Every beat of her heart made her head throb. She thrashed and floundered, kicking upwards, desperate for air, but the water around her stayed the same dank, uniform green, with no sign of the sun. She was sinking. She could feel some invisible force dragging her downwards. She flailed her arms frantically but sluggishly, the water feeling treacle-dense as, still kicking hard, she strove to rise. Her lungs felt like they were going to burst, but no matter how hard she squinted through the silty Thames she couldn’t see the surface.